December 2025 – Jenny Arch

Some “sparklets” from my November reading – nearly all, unusually, adult and YA books (except Kate DiCamillo and Laurie Halse Anderson. Maybe you’ve heard of them?). See previous quotes from books here.

“There is no alternative” really means “Stop trying to think of an alternative.” …Its job is to extinguish your imagination and foreclose on the possibility of your even conceiving of another way of doing things. (Enshittification by Cory Doctorow)
The lump in my throat was part sorrow and part gratitude. Maybe that’s what it always is, and we just forget to notice how lucky we are because we’re so busy choking and trying not to cry. (Wreck by Catherine Newman)
She would succeed because she believed she could. What was magic after all but having the gall to believe you could tell the world around you how it ought to be and then watching as it did as it was told? (Verity Vox and the Curse of Foxfire by Don Martin)
“War is the enemy of all families.” (Rebellion 1776 by Laurie Halse Anderson)
My grandfather once said that happiness isn’t a story. So, there isn’t much to say about those first weeks. (The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck)
“I think that’s what faith is, you know? Living with the tension of not knowing what happens next.” (“Indoor Kids,” Alex London, It’s A Whole Spiel, ed. Katherine Locke)
Every time has its own evil but a human being can always be good. (In the Name of Salome by Julia Alvarez)
If you’re scared of something you should find out all about it. (The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman)
All of this she had imagined, and what she had experienced in her imagination gave her courage… (Lost Evangeline by Kate DiCamillo)
History no longer simply happened, like an accident; it was told, like a story. (The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow)

Sometimes being a children’s librarian looks like: reading books at storytime, blowing bubbles for babies, putting out fresh coloring sheets, filling a display with books for Asian-American Heritage and Jewish-American Heritage Month (both in May, along with Mental Health Awareness month), contacting balloon artists and magicians and zoo educators and musicians to come to the library, or planning summer reading…in November.

And sometimes, it looks like listening as people tell you about a family dog who’s approaching death, or a new pregnancy that means a child is about to become a sibling, or an upcoming move out of state, or an impending divorce. “Do you have a book about that?” they’ll ask, after revealing this big thing they’re facing, and yes, I do.

I’m grateful to the authors and illustrators who bring these stories to the page with such sensitivity, creativity, tenderness, and humor. I’m grateful to the agents and editors and publishers who help these stories become books in libraries and bookstores. And I’m grateful to the people who come to the library and trust us to find the books that can help them through whatever they are facing in life today.

Here’s yet another reason we shouldn’t ban books about tough topics: books help us through hard times. They help grown-ups explain inevitable life-and-death experiences (babies being born; pets and grandparents dying) and other big changes (divorce, moving) and or things that loom large in littles’ lives. Here are just a few books on some of these subjects; there are many, many more.