Book Review: Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Watching Mister Rogers' Neighborhood by Melissa Wagner and Max Dalton

Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood
written by Melissa Wagner with art by Max Dalton (158.1 Wag)

This compact little hardback book gathers together quotes by Fred Rogers and memories of his iconic Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood children’s series, under a variety of thematic chapters, including “You Are Special”, “Be a Helper”, “All Kinds of Feelings Are Okay”, “Don’t Forget the Fun”, “We Are All Neighbors” and more. Much like previous “All I Need to Know I Learned…” books by other authors, the main lessons are distilled into their most simplistic aphorisms, but the heart of how Mister Rogers addressed sensitive issues is still effectively captured.

I enjoyed revisiting the memories of growing up with Mister Rogers Neighborhood, which this book brought up for me, a child of the late 1960s/early 1970s. For anyone who didn’t grow up with Mister Rogers, this book may not hit its mark. My only real complaint was that I wasn’t a particular fan of the art throughout the book. Other readers may not have an issue with that, so if you’re looking for some good life lessons as doled out by Mister Rogers, give this one a try.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the films Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood on DVD, or The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers by Maxwell King or I’m Proud of You: My Friendship With Fred Rogers by Tim Madigan, and the various DVDs in the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood series owned by the libraries.] [ publisher’s page for Melissa Wagner ]

See Scott C’s review of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, here on BookGuide in April 2020
See Scott C’s review of Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, here on BookGuide in November 2018
See Scott C’s review of The World According to Mister Rogers, here on BookGuide in June 2017

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

Book Review: Thin Ice by Paige Shelton

Thin Ice
by Paige Shelton

Elizabeth Fairchild, a bestselling author, is kidnapped. Injured in her escape, she decides to recover as Beth Rivers in a small Alaskan town. Staying at a halfway house for convicted women, she takes on the job of running the local newspaper. When a local woman is found dead and the authorities find the dead woman is using a false name, Beth starts to poke around. Struggling with her own flashbacks, Beth is afraid her kidnapper has followed her. Is she in danger of being next?

This is a great first book in a new series. I can’t wait to read the next book. The characters need a little more developing, but hopefully that will happen with time. I like small town mysteries and this certainly fits the bill. There’s great tension and it will be interesting to see if the kidnapper finds Beth or will he be caught by the authorities (or Beth’s mother) in Missouri?

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow, A Borrowing of Bones by Paula Munier, or Slipknot by Linda Greenlaw]

[ official Alaska Mystery Series page on the official Paige Shelton web site ]

Recommended by Marcy G.
South Branch Library

Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

Book Review: A New Leash on Love by Debbie Burns

A New Leash on Love
by Debbie Burns

I actually read the fourth volume in this series previously, and enjoyed that enough to want to read the stories of the characters who populated the background of that tale. A New Leash on Love is the first in the series, centered on the High Grove Animal Shelter, a no-kill animal shelter in St. Louis, Missouri.

In this first volume, the central character is Megan Anderson, a young woman filling in as the temporary head of the shelter. Her match is Craig Williams, a marketing exec going through a divorce and hiding some baggage he’s carrying. When Craig shows up at the shelter to surrender a chocolate lab puppy, which has proven to be more than his 13-year-old daughter can handle, he and Megan have a very antagonistic first meeting. However, as his daughter Sophie becomes a young volunteer at the shelter, he and Megan have to see more of each other, and they realize they both made incorrect assumptions.

The chemistry of the characters is very nice, and there are a handle of memorable supporting cast. The descriptions of how a no-kill animal shelter operates, and how the staff of a shelter try to rehabilitate abandoned or surrendered animals so that they can find new “forever homes” really added a nice layer to the storytelling.

I wouldn’t call it one of the best romance novels ever, but it is a pleasantly charming start to a series, and makes me want to read more.

[This is only the first in what has become a five-volume series (so far), as of 2020. If you like this, you’ll enjoy the rest of Debbie Burns‘ books.]

[ official Debbie Burns web site ]

See Scott C.’s review of Love at First Bark, the 4th volume in this series, on BookGuide in December 2019

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

New Booklist on BookGuide: Pandemics & Plagues in Fiction, DVDs & Non-Fiction

As the world continues to live under pandemic circumstances during the Coronavirus/COVID-19 crisis, a lot of readers are gravitating towards past (and present) fiction that is set during times of a pandemic or plague.

We've added an extensive booklist to the resources on BookGuide, listing several dozen novels in the Lincoln City Libraries' collection that feature this subject. In addition, we've got a list of non-fiction titles that addess plagues and pandemics, and a list of movies that has spiked in interest lately.

Check out the list of recommended materials at the following link: 

Pandemic & Plague Literature

May the 4th Be With You -- Happy Star Wars Day 2020 -- Check out our Star Wars resources on BookGuide!

Here at the library, we have two resource pages for fans of Star Wars:

The Star Wars Review Page -- which gathers all the Star Wars book, DVD and CD reviews we've published over the years on our Staff Recommendations pages, into a single large page.

and

Star Wars: The Reading List -- which lists all professionally published Star Wars fiction, from a variety of different publishers, from the late 1970s to the present.

As you prepare for the last movie of the original Star Wars series, we hope you'll stop by these two pages as you look for additional Star Wars reading ideas. And have no fear -- there will be new Star Wars films coming in the future!