Special Collections

She Is Not Invisible

by Marcus Sedgwick

Prize-winning author Marcus Sedgwick explores obsession, trust and coincidence in this page-turning thriller about 16-year-old Laureth Peak's mission to find her missing father. A mission made all the more difficult by one fact: Laureth Peak is blind.Laureth's father is a writer. For years he's been trying, and failing, to write a novel about coincidence. His wife thinks he's obsessed. Laureth thinks he's on the verge of a breakdown. He's supposed to be doing research in Austria, so when his notebook shows up in New York, Laureth knows something is wrong.On impulse, she steals her mother's credit card and heads for the States, taking her strange little brother Benjamin with her. Reunited with the notebook, they begin to follow clues inside, trying to find their wayward father. But the challenges and threats that lie ahead are even tougher for Laureth than they would be for any other teenager - because Laureth has no vision to guide her.Also available as an audio book, read from braille by Anna Cannings.

Date Added: 02/16/2018

The Fault in Our Stars

by John Green

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.

Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning-author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.

Young Readers Choice Award Winner, 2015

Date Added: 02/16/2018

All the Light We Cannot See

by Anthony Doerr

*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti* Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure&’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum&’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure&’s converge. Doerr&’s &“stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors&” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer &“whose sentences never fail to thrill&” (Los Angeles Times).

Date Added: 02/16/2018

Blindsided

by Priscilla Cummings

In many ways, Natalie O'Reilly is a typical fourteen year old girl. But a routine visit to the eye doctor produces devastating news: Natalie will lose her sight within a few short months. Suddenly her world is turned upside down. Natalie is sent to a school for the blind to learn skills such as Braille and how to use a cane. Outwardly, she does as she's told; inwardly, she hopes for a miracle that will free her from a dreaded life of blindness. But the miracle does not come, and Natalie ultimately must confront every blind person's dilemma. Will she go home to live scared? Or will she embrace the skills she needs to make it in a world without sight?

Date Added: 02/16/2018

The Young Unicorns

by Madeleine L'Engle

The young unicorns is a novel of suspense set in New York City's Upper West Side near a great cathedral, where much of the action takes place. The large cast of characters includes the Austin family and Canon Tallis (already well known to L'Engle fans), but the most important are Emily Gregory and Josiah (Dave) Davidson.

Emily is a brilliant girl musician of twelve who has been blinded in an accident that occurred in her home under peculiar circumstances. Emily has learned Braille and manages to continue with her music and school studies with the help of seventeen-year-old Dave, who acts as her reader. Dave is a gifted, intelligent boy from a broken family and had at one time been a member of a tough gang known as the Alphabats. These young hoodlums have a bad influence on the life of their section of the city.

When the story opens, Dave has broken with the Alphabats and is finding, through his work with Emily and his acquaintanceship with the Austins, who live upstairs in Emily's house, a new and more satisfactory life. When the Alphabats try to force Dave back into their orbit, he resists them.

But gradually we learn that something more sinister than the mere gang rituals of adolescent goons is taking place: that an evil intelligence is operating on a far more dangerous level and that not only Emily and Dave, but the Austin children too, and even their father, are targets for corruption or destruction. How they are saved is the climax of a highly original story that mirrors much of the violent disturbance of life in our cities today."

Date Added: 02/16/2018