The Love Haters by Katherine Center

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In an effort to avoid being laid off from the video production company she works for, Katie Vaughn agrees to a month-long visit to Key West, Florida to shoot a recruiting video for the Coast Guard. The video will feature a rescue swimmer, Tom “Hutch” Hutcheson. Katie has previously heard of Hutch because he took the internet by storm several years before, after he rescued Jennifer Aniston’s dog.  

The first problem with Katie taking this assignment, which she omits from her co-worker Cole, who gives her the assignment, is that she cannot swim. Plus, there is no way she is getting into a swimsuit or announcing her weight before boarding the Coast Guard helicopter, like the requirement lists.

Katie struggles with low self-esteem, especially as it relates to body image. During childhood her stepmother often placed her on a diet because she thought she was overweight, and several years ago, during her relationship with a boyfriend who had just become a famous musician, internet trolls said mean and hurtful things about her physical appearance. Years later, she still struggles to maintain a positive body image. So thinking about sporting a swimsuit, even as part of an assignment, or sharing her weight gives her major anxiety.   

But first things first, Katie arrives in Key West and is greeted by her landlord and Hutch’s Aunt Rue.  Rue is the most colorful person that Katie has ever met and it is thanks to Rue that she begins to step outside her comfort zone, at least a bit.

Katie soon meets Hutch at a swim class event hosted by Rue, but their first interaction does not go as smoothly as she would have hoped.  His giant Great Dane plows into her at top speed and she ends up getting about a million splitters in her backside from the wood floor. Since Hutch is trained in first aid, he ends up getting a firsthand look at Katie’s bum as he removes them. 

She neglects to tell him that she will be working with him, but once he finds out, he is not happy.  He had thought that her co-worker Cole would be making the video. Even though he is angry, the two are soon working closely together and Katie makes it her mission to make a great recruiting video that features him, and also to record him as part of her personal side project, A Day in the Life YouTube series.  

A wrench is thrown in Katie’s plan when two surprise visitors show up at Aunt Rue’s. She will has to decide whether to risk her closeness with Hutch or possibly lose her job.

Center’s romantic comedies offer so much in addition to a good love story.  They have relatable conflicts as part of each story and THE LOVER HATERS is no exception.  It deals with self-esteem, friendship, confidence, imperfections and healing in a funny and accessible way.

Also noteworthy is this book’s cast of characters are eclectic and add dimension to the story. Katie’s cousin and best friend, Beanie, is such a hype woman for her, and Beanie’s personality is confident and no-nonsense.  Rue gives Blanche Devereaux from “The Golden Girls” vibes, but less man-hungry; and her group of friends, affectionately called “The Gals” provide Katie a circle of women who help her through several tricky situations.

If readers are looking for a summer beach read, this one would be perfect for most! 

Review written by: Jeana Gockley, Joplin Public Library Director

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Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

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It’s 1909 and Emily Wilde is a professor of dryadology at Cambridge University. A scholar that excels in her area of all things faerie, Emily is meticulous, devoted to her interests, logical, intelligent, and introverted, preferring the company of her dog Shadow, books, and the faerie folk she meets while pursuing her studies. People perplex her, and she finds social interactions very difficult. As part of her scholarly studies Emily has decided to create the world’s first Encyclopedia of Faeries, a source book for all things fair folk. 

Emily has been working on this project, traveling around the world to visit locations with different types of faeries. She frequently interacts with those she meets, although carefully and thoughtfully, as not every faerie is the same. What might entice one faerie to approach her could enrage another. This is one of the inspirations for Emily’s encyclopaedia, learning these things about faeries and recording them for other scholars and interested individuals. 

To her chagrin, Emily isn’t as isolated as she might prefer because of her office neighbor and friend Wendell Bambleby, although I highly doubt Emily would be pleased to label him as a friend. Wendell is Emily’s opposite: loud, lazy, dashing, energetic, and worse yet for Emily, very social. He is her scholarly rival and often reviews her papers for her, whether she wants him to or not, but something Emily cannot fault Wendell on is his deep knowledge of the folk. More so, Emily has a sneaking suspicion that Wendell himself might be fae, although she is yet to prove it. 

As part of her research for her encyclopaedia Emily sets off to the fictional village of Hrafnsvik. Its description is similar to rural Norway, and its people have what they call Hidden Ones, or faerie, living in their surrounding area. Emily arrives with bad luck after bad luck: her cabin is cold and dirty, she cannot chop the wood to warm it, sheep frequently find their way inside and destroy her belongings, and worst of all Emily unintentionally angers the village leader on her first day there. But silver lining: Emily immediately finds evidence of faerie, even befriending a brownie she names Poe. 

To her shock, her bad luck seemingly continues when Wendell unexpectedly shows up. It’s pretty clear to the reader that Wendell has a thing for Emily, and she for him, but Emily herself has no idea. Even though Emily is put out by Wendell’s appearance he arrives just in time, as citizens of Hrafnsvik are going missing and disturbing faerie things are afoot. Even though Emily attempts to observe simply from a research perspective her kind nature and knowledge of faerie culture pulls her into helping the villagers, Wendell at her side. Emily finds herself deeper and deeper in the faerie mystery at hand, Poe, Wendell, and the townsfolk contributing to save their village and ultimately Emily when she digs herself too deep into the mystery. 

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett is a fun historical fantasy with captivating world building. It’s magical to read with great descriptions, settings, fantasy, and characters. Emily is a bit of a curmudgeon, independent, and a lovable character that I really enjoyed. The story feels magical, like many of its faerie characters, and the budding romance between Emily and Wendell is cute to read. This novel is the first in a trilogy, with the final novel released earlier this year. After reading the trilogy I will say the first was definitely my favorite, as the independent spirit I so admired in Emily seems to take a slight backseat to her romantic life in the following novels. Overall, I fell into this cozy novel and enjoyed wandering the faerie-filled pages with Emily.

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Review by Sarah Turner-Hill, Adult Programming Coordinator

Children’s Art Books for Summer Reading 2025

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Summer reading is well under way at Joplin Public Library. In the world of Youth Services, we have been reading lots of books, having a lot of fun, and making a lot of art. As you may recall, the theme of JPL’s 2025 summer reading program is “Color Our World.” In my last review, I shared Lian Cho’s picture book Oh, Olive! about a little girl who paints outside of the lines (literally and metaphorically).

We still have plenty of time left in summer break and it will likely only get hotter outside. For this month’s review, I want to share about a few art books that will entertain young readers and provide restless kids with some fun activities during the dog days of summer.

How To Be a Color Wizard: Forage and Experiment with Natural Color Making by Jason Logan combines art and nature activities for upper elementary and middle school-aged kids. The photographs are nature-based and aesthetically pleasing and the activities are fun and actually achievable for the target demographic. This book was published by mitKids Press, a publishing house affiliated with MIT that focuses on STEAM-based titles. Activities include making colors from natural materials such as berries and leaves, looking at colors in the world like a mantis shrimp, and making a paintbrush wand. Logan suffuses the book with magical language befitting a book a Hogwarts student might purchase from Flourish and Botts. I love that this book treats learning and experiment as serious work for kids, even when the actual experiment tasks the reader with pretending to be a shrimp.

The artwork and photos in the book are aesthetically pleasing, and the activities range from silly and easy for a preschooler to more challenging and appropriate for an upper elementary or middle school-aged reader (or even an adult reader). How to Be a Color Wizard is a beautiful, useful, and inspiring book to come back to over and over again.

Speaking of artistic inspiration, I first heard about the artist Alma Thomas through the picture book Ablaze With Color: A Story of Painter Alma Thomas. The 2022 biographical picture book was created by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art docent Jeanne Walker Harvey and illustrator Loveis Wise. Ablaze with Color tells the story of African American artist Alma Thomas beginning with her childhood in Georgia. Growing up in the early 1900s, Thomas experienced significant racial injustice. The author does not delve into the specifics of those injustices, though she does acknowledge how it impacted Alma’s family and how they responded. Her parents surrounded Alma and her sisters with art and culture, fostering a love of art in their daughters. At fifteen, their family moved to Washington D.C. so the girls could go to school. Alma taught art to local African American children, who were not permitted to attend segregated classes. Throughout her life, Alma taught and fostered art in her community. At age seventy, she began creating her own art. Loveis Wise does Thomas’ art justice through the use of patterns and bright colors, honoring, but not imitating, Thomas’ circular designs made up of colorful dashes and stripes. The writing is poetic without being overly sentimental, and it captures Alma Thomas’ aspirations and ability to see color and make art of her surroundings. The book begins with a quote from President Barack Obama that he made during Black History Month in 2015. Michelle Obama selected Alma Thomas’ painting Resurrection to hang in the White House, making Thomas the first African American woman with that honor. Ablaze with Color would be a great read aloud for early elementary-aged students and would provide many craft opportunities. Thomas’s use of patterns and colors lends itself well to creating with collages, painting with Legos or Blocks, printmaking, coloring, mosaics, and stamping. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas is home to Alma Thomas’ Lunar Rendezvous–Circle of Flowers, which is well worth the drive. Happy reading and creating!

Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham

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January 28, 1986, was the day NASA’s carefully cultivated image literally blew up at 46,000 feet. If you are of a certain age, you probably recall where you were when you heard the news. That morning, the space shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven crew members. The inquiry that followed revealed that in order to meet its frenetic launch schedules, NASA officials were willing to overlook known problems with the shuttle’s reusable solid rocket boosters. In Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham unpacks the story with methodical detail. It’s chilling because in reading the preceding engineering and managerial decisions, you know you are also reading the anatomy of a future catastrophe.

Tragedy is nothing new in NASA’s storied history of course, with Higginbotham taking us back to the deaths of the Apollo 1 crew during a lauchpad test. Going forward, astronaut trainees were required to listen to the audio of the crew members imploring that they be released from the command module because they were burning to death. Higginbotham also revisits how a fickle public became rather blasé with repeated moon landings, with some complaining to television networks that their favorite programs were being interrupted with yet more moon-landing footage.

Funding NASA has always been fraught, regardless of the space program. When the space agency decided to pursue flying a reusable space plane with reusable solid rocket boosters, the new astronaut class was preparing to fly missions under the very real possibility that the new shuttle program would not come to fruition. Cost overruns and delays continually tested Congress’ patience.

If you’re a space dork (like me), you’ll devour reading about the interregnum period between the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. The focus changed from swaggering test pilots manning moon-shot rockets to research-based scientists conducting experiments in orbit. The test pilots still had their place, to be sure. Someone had to land an orbiter reentering as a glider. But gone were the days when Mercury astronauts enjoyed dollar-a-year leases on sports cars.

Nonetheless, as with any space program, defining “acceptable risk” is a necessity. Engineers didn’t really know if this new space plane/truck would survive reentry. And firing rockets with solid propellants may indeed save money, but it’s also exceptionally dangerous. Once lit, the rocket fires until it’s out of fuel. Higginbotham compares it to lighting a firework. When the various shuttles did eventually launch, the percussion waves were so pronounced and damaging, high-pressure streams of water were sprayed around the lauchpad to dampen the acoustics.

Thiokol, a private contractor based in Utah, designed and built the boosters. Given their massive size, they had to be built into segments for transportation. Once at Cape Canaveral, they were made vertical and sealed with rubber O-rings. After the boosters burned their fuel, they were released from the shuttle and then retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean. In the process of repurposing the rockets, Thiokol engineers discovered that the O-rings were less than reliable. If enough gas escaped from any given segment, the results would be catastrophic for the crew.

Higginbotham provides an in-depth history of the O-ring debacle. No internal memo or meeting escapes an airing. We know where this is heading of course, and it’s amazing the astronauts were never briefed on the suspect O-rings. As we winnow our way down to the January 1986 launch, we come across every frustrating misstep. There was extra publicity with this launch as one crew member was middle school teacher Christa McAuliffe. She was the first of NASA’s “teachernaut” program, a publicity effort to demonstrate the accessibility of space flight.

The unusually low air temps that week led to the unprecedented recommendation among Thiokol engineers to scrub the launch. The O-rings, they argued, would be compromised under such conditions. Administrators decided to fire the rockets anyway. Launch schedules had to be made and all eyes were on this launch in particular. On the morning of January 28, it looked as though it would be a successful booster firing, with the shuttle ascending as planned. But then at 11:39 A.M., it exploded in full view.

NASA originally reported that the crew was vaporized in the explosion. However, the wreckage pulled from the ocean revealed human remains. So it’s quite possible the crew was conscious as the orbiter plummeted to the ocean. After a dramatic investigation, changes were made with the booster rockets and space shuttle flights resumed. Still, make no mistake, there were deep rifts within NASA.

Throughout the book, Higginbotham gives us brief histories into the lives of the Challenger crew. President Reagan, along with his speechwriter Peggy Noonan, certainly did their part to humanize the first astronauts to perish during flight. In a public address just after the explosion, Reagan said, “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.” To Reagan’s credit, he understood that space exploration holds liminal space within our minds, and as such, during times of tragedy, words to describe what is almost indescribable matter.

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Review by Jason Sullivan

Finlay is Killing It by Elle Cosimano

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The fifth Finlay Donovan book is out and reminded me how much I enjoy this series. I could tell you about #5 but if you are going to read about Finlay’s crazy life you have to start at the beginning. Each book starts where the last one ended so it is one continuous story.

The first in the series, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It by Elle Cosimano, starts with a typical morning for Finlay. The nanny is late, she’s mopping up the coffee and grinds results of a forgotten filter, her two-year-old needs a diaper change, and five-year-old Delia gave herself a haircut. Of course Delia didn’t just whack off hair she took some scalp too. Finlay’s already late for an appointment with Sylvia, her editor, and the nanny is not answering her phone.

A call to ex-husband Steven nets a lecture and the news that he fired the nanny. With no time for a proper fix and at Delia’s insistence the blood flow is staunched with a burp rag then the cut hair is attached to her head with tape and covered with a cap. The duct tape, bloody rag and knife go in the diaper bag and they are out the door.

After dropping Delia at pre-school and Zach with his dad, Finlay just makes it to meet Sylvia hoping her wig-scarf and sunglasses are enough to hide her identity. Finlay is banned from this Panera for fighting with her exes fiancée, formerly their real estate agent and Steven’s mistress. As she and Sylvia discuss the progress or lack of for her latest thriller, the occupant of the next table notices the duct tape, knife and rag in Finlay’s bag. Sylvia leaves as does the woman from the adjacent table. Finlay then spies a note left on her tray.

$50,000 cash, Harris Mickler, address and a phone number. Intrigued by that dollar sign and all those zeroes, Finlay calls the number. It’s the woman who sat next to them and what she says is confusing. Her husband is not a nice man and has done terrible things so she wants him gone. She was going to take the money and leave him but it’s better this way and she wants Finlay to do it. Do what? After telling her Harris will be at The Lush that night she hangs up.

A confused Finley notices the bloodied items in her bag and starts to recall her conversation with Sylvia. Realization dawns that Mrs. Mickler thinks Finlay is a hit woman.

Even though she is desperate for money with bills unpaid and Steven threatening to sue for full custody of their children, Finlay is not a killer. But she is curious about Harris. Once her sister reluctantly agrees to babysit, Finlay dons her wig scarf and heads to The Lush.

When she observes Harris spiking the drink of his companion Finlay switches the drinks and Harris is the one drugged. She manages to get him out of the bar but he passes out by her minivan. Finlay’s intent is to take him to Mrs. Mickler but she adamantly refuses so Finlay heads home to figure things out. She parks in the garage but leaves the van running, it’s cold out, to go inside and call her sister. When she comes out the garage door is closed but the van is still running and Harris is dead.

As she is trying to do CPR the babysitter shows up to collect her belongings. Vero is ready to bolt and Finlay is going to turn herself in but then they find that Harris was involved with some very bad people. People who would hurt Finlay and her children if they find out Harris is dead.

For a cut of the money and room and board, Vero becomes her nanny again and her partner in crime. They have to hide Harris’ body and figure out who killed him so Finlay can stay out of jail and finish a novel she hasn’t even started.

Even with plenty of bodies, bad guys, and suspects this is a light-hearted read. There is a lot going on but Cosimano does a great job with the flow of the novel so you never get lost in the details. If you are a Stephanie Plum fan, you should check out Finlay Donovan. You won’t be sorry.

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Review written by: Patty Crane, Reference Librarian

Culture: the story of us from cave art to K-pop by Martin Puchner

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It can be easy to dismiss popular culture as trite and inconsequential. Superhero movies, fantasy television shows, romance novels, Korean pop music; it can all seem a little meaningless, even to the fans. I, personally, have been known to lose interest in something if I sense that it is becoming “too popular.”

But Martin Puchner’s CULTURE: THE STORY OF US, FROM CAVE ART TO K-POP invites readers to take a deeper look at these fluffy topics from a historical perspective.

Consider this: novels have always been popular culture; all of the works that we think of now as classic literature survived because they were popular. Don Quixote was so popular when it was published that an unauthorized sequel became widely circulated – an early instance of what we would now call fanfiction.

As Puchner’s book shows, culture is often developed by borrowing. Interpreting traditions that you do not understand and giving them a new meaning. He illustrates this point by examining the ways that the Romans adapted Greek gods to suit their own needs.

The Chauvet cave paintings (which have intrigued me for a long time because of their significance in the history of animation) were created over a period of thousands of years. Each generation of humans visiting the site and adding new images to instruct or entertain future visitors.

Puchner appreciates this collective experience of culture and argues against the possibility of ownership over a culture. Culture is evolving, changing as it is passed from one group of people to another.

Modern viewers think of Hokusai’s Great Wave as being indicative of Japanese art because it became so culturally significant, but printmaking is actually a technique they borrowed from China.

Traditional Japanese art was generally created with watercolors and ink, but an interest in cheap, reproducible images brought printmaking into the country. Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji took this popular technique and managed to show its versatility — and the potential it had in the hands of a master.

Cultural shifts are generally a result of this natural evolution, people passing down knowledge or rebelling against what came before. It changes to fit the needs of those currently using it.

It is not possible to know how future generations will view the culture that we are living in right now. But reading CULTURE inspired me to look at what is popular in a new way. Each chapter is dedicated to a new waypoint in our global cultural history. It examines how that moment in history is indicative of both its time and ours.

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Book review by Alyssa Berry, Technical Services Librarian

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

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Journalist Alice Scott longs to move from writing features and profiles on minor celebrities to writing a complete biography on someone uber famous. Someone like Margaret Ives, a former media darling who comes from one of the most famous families of the twentieth century. Despite Margaret being in hiding for at least three decades, without any known sightings, Alice thinks she has finally found her. Yes, it will be fun to try something new and grow her skills, but it will have the added bonus of making her mom finally take notice of her work. 

Alice is one of the most positive people you will ever meet and she can hardly believe her luck that she has finally managed to track down Margaret.  She arrives on Little Crescent Island, Georgia and can hardly wait to convince Margaret to start working with her.  That is until she bumps into Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Hayden Anderson as she is leaving Margaret’s house. Now Margaret’s comment about having “a couple of other branches to shake” makes more sense.  

Hayden Anderson is a music journalist, but is best known for writing a Pulitzer prize-winning celebrity biography on a famous Americana singer with dementia. Alice cannot believe that she might miss out on this opportunity after spending so much time tracking down Margaret.  

Margaret invites both of them to work with her for one month. They will take turns meeting with her, and at the end of the month, they will each have a chance to pitch their idea for the book, then she will choose who she wants to work with.   

Neither are happy about having to audition for this opportunity with Margaret, but it’s the chance of a lifetime, so they both agree to move forward. What follows is a month of meetings and competition for the coveted contract. Also during this time, the pair of writers get to know each other better thanks to run-ins at the small town’s local coffee shop and restaurants. Though talking about the book is off limits because they have both signed a NDA.  

My favorite part of this novel was Alice’s perpetually upbeat attitude and the story of Margaret’s life. I adore Emily Henry and her books. What a treat to have another one this year! 

Review written by: Jeana Gockley, Joplin Public Library Director

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How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

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Louise never thought her family was weird, really. She’s always heard comments, even from her cousins, but Louise never agreed. Sure, her mom had an obsession, verging on unhealthy, with dolls and puppets. She packed their house full of them, various sizes and materials, and even created art with them, like when she recreated the painting of The Last Supper but with squirrel puppets coming out of the painting in place of the people. Louise, and her brother Mark, grew up with puppets as a big part of their lives, whether they always wanted it that way or not. When their parents unexpectedly die, Louise and Mark are forced to go back to their childhood home to take care of arrangements and sell the house. But when things start getting extra weird around the house, Louise can’t help but wonder: what is up with her weird family? This is the premise of horror author Grady Hendrix’s novel How to Sell a Haunted House.

When Louise is old enough she leaves home and moves across the country, getting as far away from her family as possible. She likes her reserved father well enough; it’s her mom that was always choosing Louise’s estranged younger brother, Mark, over Louise and insisting on filling the house with her weird art creations, puppets, and dolls that Louise couldn’t take any longer. Plus, her and Mark never get along, Louise annoyed by the way Mark always seems to get things handed to him so easily by their parents. Still, Louise loves her parents, despite their quirks. So when Louise gets an unexpected call from Mark telling her that their parents have died in a car accident, Louise is devastated.

Leaving her young daughter Poppy with her ex, Louise travels home to help Mark with arrangements. Louise is horrified to find that Mark has made all decisions and has arranged a company to come in and completely clean out their childhood home so it can be sold. Louise digs her heels in and insists on going through things herself, especially when she learns that all of her mom’s art collection has been left to her. Usually she would make a planned, organized list and get rid of the art, but because her and Mark are not getting along whatsoever she stubbornly refuses to get it done quickly (as only a sibling can). 

As Louise goes through the house questions begin popping up in her head. Why is her dad’s cane that he couldn’t get around without still in the living room? Why does the TV keep turning on with two of her mom’s dolls (named after Mark and Louise) sitting in front of it? Why is the attic access boarded up? One afternoon Louise falls asleep at the house, and wakes up to find one of the squirrels from her mom’s recreation of The Last Supper climbing onto the bed, and another curled around her throat. To be clear, these squirrels are not alive, but puppets. Louise attempts to rationalize what is happening, as our brains tend to do in high-stress situations, but after the squirrels attack Louise she isn’t sure if something is wrong with her and she is going through a mental break, or if something unthinkable is happening: haunted puppets. 

Louise gets her answer when their mom’s favorite puppet, Pupkin, somehow gets out of the trashcan Louise threw it in and attacks Louise, only to be saved by Mark. Now Mark and Louise must put aside their childhood dislike of one another and band together against the puppets, and ultimately learn how to sell a haunted house and confront their generational trauma. 

I appreciate the way Hendrix writes horror. He managed to make this novel spooky and funny and moving all at once. Rather than all scary all the time, Hendrix weaves in true to life emotions and situations for his characters, and adds a dash of humor. Part of the novel is horror and psychological thriller, yes – I mean come on, puppets that come to life? No thank you. However, the other part of the novel is about Mark and Louise reconciling with one another and traumatic experiences they had as children. They start the novel immersed in one set of emotions and opinions about one another, and those perceptions shift as the novel progresses. While some of the novel did read too slowly for me, I liked the combination of family dynamics and horror, and the dark humor sprinkled throughout. This is the first book I’ve read by Hendrix and it won’t be my last – I enjoy the way he navigates the genre of horror. 

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Review by Sarah Turner-Hill, Adult Programming Coordinator

OH, OLIVE! by Lian Cho

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Next Tuesday kicks off the most exciting time of year: Summer reading at the Joplin Public Library! If you are unfamiliar, the summer reading program is an eight-week, all-ages reading challenge accompanied by fun and educational events. Notable events this summer include a sourdough making program for adults, a Tiny Library Desk concert in the Teen Department, and storytellers, jugglers, and scientists in the Children’s Department.

Participants in the reading challenge must read a specific number of hours and complete 10 activities to earn a prize. Readers can also enter to win grand prize drawings at the end of the summer.

Our theme for this year’s summer reading program is “Color Our World,” and our artwork and events are focused on all things color and art. As such, I would like to share one of my newest favorite picture books with beautiful art.

Oh, Olive! is the latest release from Lian Cho, one of my new favorite picture book creators.

This book has so many beautiful and tiny details to examine. You could spend five minutes reading the story, or you could spend twenty minutes looking closely at individual details and colors, analyzing Cho’s choices. Oh, Olive! is also funny! Cho’s book tells the story of Olive Chen, “the most magnificent and brilliant artist in the whole wide world.” Olive is tragically misunderstood by her parents, both very serious artists. Olive’s square-shaped father only paints squares. Olive’s triangular mother only paints triangles. Olive, on the other hand, loves colorful, abstract art. From page to page, Olive can be seen pouring paint buckets, splattering brushes, and licking her canvas. Even her teacher tries to box her praising the shape-centric artwork of her classmates while suggesting that Olive try a shape next time instead of commenting on the beauty and color of her abstract piece.

The art elevates the story and affirms what readers will instantly recognize: Olive is something special. The art in the first three-quarters of the book is all grayscale, except Olive. Where her parents, classmates, and her neighborhood are all gray, white, and black, Olive is red, blue, and yellow. Where they have small scowls or bored expressions, Olive has a smile that takes up her whole face. Color follows Olive everywhere. She typically stands proudly atop puddles and splatters of paint in a range of colors, including orange, green, purple, pink, and yellow. Also, Olive’s art is undeniably beautiful.I read this aloud to a first-grade class last week and one of the students exclaimed, “the illustrator is an amazing artist!” First grader, you are correct. The student also opined that Olive’s parents had bad taste, which I may or may not have agreed with.

Eventually, after some encouraging words from her classmates, Olive’s color spreads from student to student, from her teacher to her neighbors. By the end of the book, everything is colorful and everyone is smiling. Oh, Olive! is the story of a tenacious young girl following her heart. It is also a gentle encouragement for kids who might think they aren’t “good” artists. I am hopeful that they will take Olive’s words to heart and understand that “anyone can do it.” You can find Lian Cho’s Oh, Olive! at the library. You can also find more information about summer reading through our website at www.joplinpubliclibrary.org/summer-reading. Happy reading!

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Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne

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One not-small benefit of working at a library trucks with it a problem, and it can be stated the same way for both: a sizable reading list. Zero sympathy is expected, of course. As the saying goes, that’s like complaining that your shoes made out of gold are a touch too tight. Nevertheless, the problem remains, especially since this space is most often used to review new books. So what is to be done? In this instance, you just go ahead and pick up a title published 15 years ago,Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne (not to be confused with Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann).

As with his latest book, His Majesty’s Airship, Gwynne excels in conveying both social and political history with a compelling narrative. It helps, of course, that he chooses historical periods abounding with intrigue. Here, we’re taken back to the nineteenth century in what is now Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma. It was ruled by the Comanches, and the land was known as the Comancheria.   Gwynne notes that given how rapidly the eastern agrarian tribes were subdued and relocated, the thought of Indian resistance west of the Mississippi River was not fully appreciated. The Plains Indians, also known as horse Indians, were war machines who—long before white settlers began moving en masse from the east—made war with each other. In addition to the Comanches, there were—to name a few—the Sioux, the Cheyenne, and the Apaches.

What made them so fearsome was something the Spanish inadvertently gave them: the horse. And it was an aggrieved band of people that migrated out of Wyoming who used horses most expertly, a group believed to have once been Shoshone. They would become the Comanches, and apparently they held grudges like no other. Anyone these nomads came across were subjected to absolute terror. Torture killings were common among other Plains Indians, but even the other tribes feared the Comanches.

Reading about such torture is difficult to process. We want to sort out the “why?” concerning this level of viciousness. Was the reputation the point, a cruelty that preceded them, thus clearing their path to more favorable hunting grounds? Even if that was a contributing reason, it was more than that. It’s almost as if Gwynne knows that the reader is jumping back a little, for he explains that fifth century Romans saw the Celts in much the same way. They couldn’t work out their world. The Comanches believed in many spirits. But, writes Gwynne, “there was no ultimate good and evil: just actions and consequences; injuries and damages due.” (Of course we know that whites often saw the Indians as nothing more than savages, which spurred their own orchestrated brutalities.)

As the Comanches bedeviled all comers (the Spanish and then the Mexicans), they faced their own growing peculiar problem: the Texan. Land grants are powerful enticements. And the Mexican government quite often offered them land on what would become Texas. Let these settlers deal with the Comanches, it was thought. Gwynne details a Comanche raid on an early Republic of Texas fort. It was more like a family compound than a fort, which was built too deep in Comanche territory, a reckless act to be sure. The Fort Parker massacre of 1836 was big news at the time, most notably because two children were taken. John Richard Parker would be released years later via negotiation. His sister, Cynthia Ann Parker, disappeared.

This hapless settler existence led to the formation of the Texas Rangers. Gwynne takes us through its early days, and it’s a wild ride. Basically, the Rangers were competent only when they had competent leadership, which was few and far between. One effective leader was John Coffee Hays. He understood that to fight the Comanches, you had to fight like them. He also knew they were predictable in battle to a fault. Add to that the fact that Hays was fearless and the end result was a turning of outcomes. Here’s Hays before a battle, sounding like someone out of an old western movie: “Yonder are the Indians, boys, and yonder are our horses. The Indians are pretty strong. But we can whip them. What do you say?” Well, the boys did follow him, and whip them they did. He understood surprise attacks and that on the plains there was “no expectation of honorable surrender.” The Comanches probably thought he was crazy going into a fight where he was on the wrong side of ten-to-one odds. We do know they had a name for him: Devil Jack.

In addition, Hays utilized the latest in firearm development to level the fight. Comanche warriors using bows and arrows on horseback was an overwhelming force. Hays quickly ordered the newly invented Walker Colt revolvers, which equalized a battle. Given the firearm’s effectives, it’s surprising that once Hays left for California, future iterations of the Rangers didn’t follow his lead. Even when Texas became part of the United States, the U.S. Army was slow in evolving away from the pomp of European battlefield plumage that in no way suited Indian warfare.

The Civil War meant the “Indian problem” would have to wait. The Comanches raids continued and the various tribes settled old scores with each other. It was a strange time where horse Indians raided Oklahoma reservations, where it was not unusual to see a reservation Indian owning a Black slave.

It was also during this time when Cynthia Ann Parker was found. But far from having experienced decades of torment, she had become one of the wives to a Comanche chief. She was found in the aftermath of a battle between her Comanche band and the Texas Rangers, a fight that ended with her husband being killed. Captured with her infant daughter, but separated from her two sons, she could no longer speak English. Not that she would acknowledge her captures anyway. It wasn’t until she was asked if she was Cynthia Ann Parker, that she stood, patted her chest, and said, “Me Cincee Ann.” She and her daughter were not allowed to return to the tribe. Bereft over the loss of her husband and the separation from her sons, she tried to escape many times. In her early days of captivity, she was even tied up and made to sit in what amounted to a freak show, where passersby would gawk at the “white squaw.” She would never see her sons again.

With the conclusion of the Civil War, the same men who fought in it were now the ones holding political office. Having witnessed great carnage during the war, they had little patience with the remaining Plains Indians. Disease and white buffalo hunters had already dwindled their ranks. With succinctness, Gwynne says, “There was no such thing as a horse Indian without a buffalo herd. Such an Indian had no identity at all.”

In 1867, representatives from a U.S. peace commission, which included General William Tecumseh Sherman, and representatives from various tribes met in an area just south of Wichita, Kansas. This was it, and the Indians knew it. They would no longer be free Indians. What remained of Comancheria was no longer theirs. Sherman told them there was nothing they could do about it, saying, “You can no more stop this than you can stop the sun or the moon.”

Not all entered the reservation. Some bands still roamed free. But by 1874, the U.S. government would no longer tolerate Indians who raided and killed. The U.S. Army cornered these remaining Indians in the Texas panhandle. And with the assistance of .50 caliber rifles—also called “the big fifties”—the Texas-Indian Wars came to an end. One Comanche warrior who surrendered was Quanah Parker, one of Cynthia Ann Parker’s sons.

Quanah, once a warrior who gave white Americans no quarter (especially Texans), actually had been advocating peace within his band before surrender. Once on the reservation, he adapted fairly well, even becoming friends with the Army officer who commanded the effort to force the Comanches to surrender. This was the new reality, so he embraced it. Whereas most Comanches found the notion of private property alien, Quanah realized this was the new way. His letterhead identified him as a Comanche chief and he relished the attention he received. He met with Theodore Roosevelt and happily appeared before crowds in headdress and buckskins, often beginning his speeches with a “ladies and gentlemen” salutation.

Gwynne’s writing style possesses an energy that almost dares you to put the book down. And thankfully he doesn’t make sweeping normative judgments about what transpired. Quanah’s embracing his new reality is not presented as some sort of lodestar of achievement that other Indians were meant to follow. Gwynne notes that, unlike Geronimo, Quanah’s standing among his tribe remained throughout his life. Perhaps it’s because his existence was an unusual one from the start. When his father was killed and his mother taken, he was treated poorly within his Comanche band because he was half white. Not until he distinguished himself as a warrior did he re-elevate his status. The man who once killed many a Texan would go on to adopt two white boys, one he found working at a circus in San Antonio. He reconnected with his extended Parker relatives, and two of his daughters married white men. To Gwynne, Quanah’s optimism is impressive, especially since he once lived a life of freedom on the plains. There’s even some optimism on his gravestone:
Resting here until day breaks
And shadows fall
And darkness disappears
Is Quanah Parker, the last chief of the Comanches

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Review by Jason Sullivan