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Pride Month at the BWG Library

Check out this week's picks from the BWG Library
Pride Month
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It is Pride Month and the BWG Library has booklists for kids, teens and adults celebrating all the colours of the rainbow! Below are a few of our librarians’ favourite picks, but to access copies of the full lists, visit https://bit.ly/bwgpl_recommendations2021.  

Librarians are always looking for suggested books our community members would like to see in our collection. You can message any recommendations to the BWG Library through Facebook or email [email protected]. Help us grow our collection and let us know which resources you think we should share with the BWG community!

Llama Glamarama, by Simon James Green (Kids Pick)

Meet a dazzlin' dancin' llama who learns to march to the beat of his own drum by strutting his stuff with Pride (and a funky feather boa)! Will this vibrant celebration give Larry the pride he needs to bring his dance back home? A bright and colourful rhyming story with a powerful message about celebrating differences, 'Llama Glamarama' is the perfect Pride picture book for everyone!

The List of Things That Will Not Change, by Rebecca Stead (Kids Pick)

Despite her parents' divorce, her father's coming out as gay, and his plans to marry his boyfriend, ten-year-old Bea is reassured by her parents' unconditional love, excited about getting a stepsister, and haunted by something she did last summer at her father's lake house.

The Magic Fish, by Trung Le Nguyen (Teen Pick)

Real life isn't a fairytale. But Tié̂n still enjoys reading his favorite stories with his parents from the books he borrows from the local library. It's hard enough trying to communicate with your parents as a kid, but for Tié̂n, he doesn't even have the right words because his parents are struggling with their English. Is there a Vietnamese word for what he's going through? Is there a way to tell them he's gay? This beautifully illustrated story follows a young boy as he tries to navigate life through fairytales, an instant classic that shows us how we are all connected, and that no matter what-we can all have our own happy endings.

You Brought Me The Ocean, by Alex Sanchez (Teen Pick)

Jake Hyde yearns for the ocean and is determined to leave his hometown in New Mexico for a college on the coast, and while his family and friends encourage him to stay, he must deal with his secrets of being gay and some strange new blue markings on his skin giving him a glow when he touches water.

Honey Girl, by Morgan Rogers (Adult Pick)

With her newly completed PhD in astronomy in hand, 28-year-old Grace Porter goes on a girls' trip to Vegas to celebrate. She is not the kind of person who goes to Vegas and gets drunkenly married to a woman whose name she doesn't know, until she does exactly that. This one moment of departure from her stern ex-military father's plans for her life has Grace wondering why she doesn't feel more fulfilled from completing her degree. But when reality comes crashing in, Grace must face what she's been running from all along, the fears that make us human, the family scars that need to heal and the longing for connection, especially when navigating the messiness of adulthood.

Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing, by Lauren Hough (Adult Pick)

As an adult, Lauren Hough has had many identities: an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a cable guy, a bouncer at a gay club. As a child, however, she had none. Growing up as a member of the infamous cult The Children of God, Hough had her own self robbed from her. The cult took her all over the globe-to Germany, Japan, Texas, Chile-but it wasn't until she finally left for good that Lauren understood she could have a life beyond "The Family." Along the way, she's loaded up her car and started over, trading one life for the next. At once razor-sharp, profoundly brave, and often very, very funny, the essays in Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing interrogate our notions of ecstasy, queerness, and what it means to live freely. Each piece is a reckoning: of survival, identity, and how to reclaim one's past when carving out a future.

Ammonite, Bonus DVD Pick

In the 1840s, acclaimed self-taught palaeontologist Mary Anning works alone on the wild English coastline. She hunts for common fossils to sell to rich tourists to support herself. When one such tourist arrives in Lyme, he entrusts Mary with the care of his young wife Charlotte, who is recuperating from a personal tragedy. Despite their differences, it is the beginning of a passionate and all-consuming love affair that will defy all social bounds and alter the course of both lives irrevocably.