We surveyed the WPL staff and board to find out their favorite books of 2020. Here are their choices!

STAFF PICKS

William Dalrymple

William Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.

Augustine Sedgewick

The epic story of the rise of coffee in the Americas, and how it connected and divided the modern world.

The order of time

Written with the poetic vitality that made Seven Brief Lessons on Physics so appealing, The Order of Time offers a profoundly intelligent, culturally rich, novel appreciation of the mysteries of time.

The Unsettlers traces the search for the simple life through the stories of three families of new pioneers and what inspired each of them to look for--or create--a better existence.

How to be an antiracist

In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active role in building it.

White Fragility

In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo explores how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.

Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.

One Long River of Song

A life's work, One Long River of Song invites readers to experience joy and wonder in ordinary moments that become, under Doyle's rapturous and exuberant gaze, extraordinary.

Jeanne

In linked essays as lucid and invigorating as mountain air, Deep Creek delivers Houston's most profound meditations yet on how 'to live simultaneously inside the wonder and the grief'.

Isabel Wilkerson

Isabel Wilkerson gives us a portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores how America today and through has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

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STAFF PICKS

The glass hotel

Emily St. John Mandel

A captivating novel of money, beauty, white-collar crime, ghosts, and moral compromise in which a woman disappears from a ship off the coast of Mauritania and a massive Ponzi scheme implodes.

Before we were yours

Memphis, Tennessee, 1936. The five Foss children find their lives changed forever when their parents leave them alone on the family shantyboat one stormy night.

Little fires everywhere

When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town.

Elizabeth Strout

"Olive Kitteridge has returned, as indomitable as ever, this time as a person getting older, navigating her next decade as she comes to terms with the changes--some welcome, some not--in her life.

Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in public housing in Glasgow, Scotland.

A long petal of the sea

In the late 1930s, civil war gripped Spain. Roser, a pregnant young widow, finds her life intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love.

Fredrik Backman

Taken hostage by a failed bank robber while attending an open house, eight anxiety-prone strangers discover their unexpected common traits.

The midnight library

While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

Follow me to ground

Ada and her father, touched by the power to heal illness, live on the edge of a village where they help sick locals by cracking open their damaged bodies or burying them in the Ground nearby.

How much of these hills is gold

Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence.

Andrew Davidson

An extraordinary debut novel of love that survives the fires of hell and transcends the boundaries of time.

Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone family, the complicated reality of being a grown up, and the consequences of doing the right thing.

Proulx tells the stories of descendants as they travel back to Europe, China, and New England, always in quest of a livelihood or fleeing stunningly brutal conditions--war, pestilence, Indian attacks.

The Orphan Collector

Ellen Marie Wiseman

Powerful, harrowing, and ultimately exultant, The Orphan Collector is a story of love, resilience, and the lengths we will go to protect those who need us most.

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STAFF PICKS

Antiracist baby

Illustrations and rhyming text present nine steps Antiracist Baby can take to improve equity, such as opening our eyes to all skin colors and celebrating all our differences.

Robin Stevenson

In this photographic concept book, babies and toddlers are introduced to the PRIDE flag and the meaning behind each color.

May we have enough to share

Richard Van Camp

A beautiful board book about gratitude by celebrated Indigenous author Richard Van Camp, complemented by photos from tea&bannock, a collective blog by Indigenous women photographers.

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STAFF PICKS

The antlered ship

An inquisitive fox named Marco and a bored flock of pigeons join the crew of deer Captain Sylvia, setting sail in her antlered ship in search of a wonderful island and finding friendship on the way.

What do you do with an idea?

A boy has an idea which makes him uncomfortable at first but he discovers it is magical and that, no matter what other people say, he should give it his attention.

This is how we do it

Follows the daily lives of seven children from around the world, including such places as Japan, India, Uganda, and Italy, and discusses how schools, meals, and play can be different or similar in dif

The most magnificent thing

A little girl has a wonderful idea. But making the most magnificent thing turns out to be harder than she thinks. All of her efforts are "wrong," so she has a tantrum and talks about quitting.

In winter Charles and his trusty toboggan set out to find the wish tree, and along the way he helps to make the wishes of his friends Squirrel, Fox, and Beaver come true.

What we'll build

A father and his young daughter gather their tools and begin building a future where love can be set aside until it is needed, enemies become friends, and exploration is key.

This Spanish edition of Caldecott Honoree Yuyi Morales's Dreamers is the author's own immigration story and a tribute to the transformative power of hope and reading.

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STAFF PICKS

My life in the fish tank

When twelve-year-old Zinnia Manning's older brother Gabriel is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, it turns her family's world upside-down, especially since they are keeping the information private.

The canyon's edge

A year after the death of her mother in a restaurant shooting, Nora is left struggling to stay alive when a climbing trip with her father goes terribly wrong.

Molly Moon's incredible book of hypnotism

Unlucky and unloved, Molly Moon, living in a dreary orphanage in a small English town, discovers a hidden talent for hypnotism and hypnotizes her way to stardom in New York City.

¡El héroe perruno es encarcelado por un crimen que no cometió! Mientras sus amigos tratan de probar su inocencia, Hombre Perro intenta encontrar su lugar entre perros y humanos.

City of secrets

Since his father's death, Ever Barnes has secretly been in charge of an amazing mechanical building but now, ruffians are after him and his new friend Hannah, the building owner's spunky daughter.

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Seraphina, half-dragon and half-human, searches for others like her who can make the difference in the war between dragons and humans in the kingdom of Goredd.

The ballad of songbirds and snakes

Suzanne Collins

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games.

There will be soon be a firery reckoning, in which dragons wither finally become extinct or Ver's glory days are back.

We are not from here

Jenny Torres Sanchez

With nothing but the bags on their backs and desperation drumming through their hearts, Pulga, Chico, and Pequeña know there is no turning back, despite the unknown that awaits them.

Go with the flow

Abby, Brit, Christine, and Sasha are fed up. Sick of an administration that puts football before female health, the girls confront a world that shrugs at the thought of menstruation revolution.

Strange Planet is an adorable and profound universe in pink, blue, green, and purple, based on the phenomenally popular Instagram of the same name.

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