This is Sarah Enright, with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out. Today I am recommending In the Quick by Kate Hope Day, an unconventional novel with timeless quality and a remarkable heroine that’s been described as Jane Eyre meets The Martian. June is a brilliant and gifted twelve-year-old girl living in the unspecified future. Her dreams and ambitions all point towards following in the footsteps of her late uncle, a scientific astronomer credited with inventing the crucial tools that have advanced space travel. June begins attending the training school at the ..read more

This is Billie Voss with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out. Today, I am recommending Dear Emmie Blue , a novel by Lia Louis. The story begins with a 16-year-old girl named Emmie Blue, who releases a balloon with her email address and a big secret into the sky from Kent, United Kingdom. Weeks later, on a beach in France, a young man named Lucas Moreau finds the notecard and uses the email to share that he had found her note. He was her age, and had just moved to France from London. From this email exchange, Emmie becomes known as balloon girl to Lucas and an en ..read more

This is Tyler Nordstrom with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. The Name of the Wind is a fantasy novel written by Patrick Rothfuss and is the first book in a trilogy that Rothfuss has yet to complete. At the beginning of the book, a mysterious innkeeper is revealed to be a man named Kvothe, a legendary sorcerer or arcanist in hiding. When a traveling scribe named the Chronicler recognizes Kvothe, the Chronicler asks him if he will recount his story. Kvothe assents and narrates his incredible past, telling of how as a young boy he realized that he had a natural ..read more

This is Jenn Delperdang, with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. The 90’s are having a nostalgic moment right now—from TV show reunions to fashion trends, hints of this decade can be found everywhere. Today, I am recommending The People We Keep by Allison Larkin—a story that begins in 1994 when sixteen-year-old April Sawicki is living alone in a run-down motor home in the small town of Little River. April’s mother abandoned her when she was very young, and her father is mostly absent from her life—choosing to stay with his new girlfriend and her son. Music is A ..read more

This is Kristina Yezdimer from the Sioux City Public Library and You’re Listening to Check It Out. Today I’m going to recommend the delightful kids’ chapter book Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling. Aven Green was born without arms, but that hasn’t stopped her from doing almost everything that other 13-year-olds can do. With help from her supportive parents, she has learned to successfully navigate the world using her feet, a hook, and lots of practice. She’s great at soccer, plays the guitar, and she’ll tell you how she manages it all in her blog, along with posts li ..read more

This is Jenn Delperdang, with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out. Today I am recommending two books that weave together the events of one of the most traumatic days in U.S. History— The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett Graff and Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11 by Mitchell Zuckoff. Journalist and former POLITICO editor Garrett Graff conducted interviews for three years with hundreds of people—government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, and friends and family members of victims to create an hour-by-hour remembrance of S ..read more

This is Jennifer Havlik with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out. Today I’m recommending All the Children are Home by Patry Francis. This recently released work of historical fiction is a heart-wrenching coming of age saga told from multiple perspectives and spans the 1950s and 1960s. Unable to bear children, suburban Boston residents Dahlia and Louie Moscatelli become long-term foster parents. Because of secrets from her own past, Dahlia initially has three rules when taking on a placement: no delinquents, no newborns, and absolutely no girls. After eleven year ..read more

This is Sarah Enright, with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out. T oday, I am recommending, The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner, a dual timeline tale packed with history, fantasy, deceit, poison, and murder. First, we’re transported to 1791 London where Nella lives and works in an apothecary shop hidden in a dark alley. The shop, along with her ability to concoct healing remedies and aptitude for serving others was inherited from her late mother. After a dreadful betrayal by a man she deeply loved, she’s compelled to use her skillset to provide a menacing servic ..read more

This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. Today, I’m recommending Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala. I absolutely devoured this debut entry in her food-focused cozy mystery series. It might be a generalization, but in my experience many cozy mystery fans read them because they are looking for a thrilling mystery story that’s also very comforting (aka not too suspenseful, not too gory, and not too complicated). But you know what else is comforting? Delicious recipes. So, when you think about it, there’s really nothing that makes more s ..read more

This is Jessi Wakefield with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. “In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw.” With this opening line, Anna North’s newest novel Outlawed pulled me in and held me there for the rest of the ride. North writes of an alternate history in which a Great Flu wiped out 9/10ths of the U.S. population, the country fell apart, and a woman who could not bear children to rebuild the population was considered a witch, something that was a hangable offense. At first glance, married life for 17-year-old Ada is everything she would ever hop ..read more