Librarians' Picks: Archivist's Story and Leonardo's Lost Princess

What's on your reading list? Montgomery County librarians share their recommendations. Tell us in the comments what you're reading this week.

Children's Fiction

Amber Brown is Tickled Pink by Bruce Coville and Elizabeth Levy

Putnam, 2012

Easy Fiction

Ages 8 to 10

From the publisher: Amber can't wait to be Best Child when her mom and Max get married, but planning a wedding comes with lots of headaches. Amber can't find the right dress, her dad keeps making mean cracks about Max, and Mom and Max have very different ideas about how much this wedding should cost. Her mother even suggests they go to city hall and skip the party altogether! Even though adults can be a lot of work, Amber is determined to be the best Best Child ever. She helps find the perfect location, makes her dad shape up, and, with the help of best friend Justin, gives the perfect wedding speech.

The late Paula Danziger called Bruce Coville and Elizabeth Levy her best friend and her other best friend, and this close connection enabled them to lovingly continue her series and capture Amber Brown's voice, sense of humor, big-heartedness, and her fondness for puns.

Children’s Non-Fiction

Adopting a Pet by Janice Biniok

J 636.0887 BIN

Grades 4 – 7.

This book provides information on adopting a pet, such as the responsibilities of pet ownership, tips on making a home safe, proper nutrition, exercise, grooming, housetraining and health care

Young Adult Fiction

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

Age 12 and up

A high-intensity tale shot through with spectacular magic battles, savage mayhem, cool outfits, monsters, hidden doors, over-the-top names, narrow escapes, evil schemes and behavior heroic, ambiguous and really, really bad. When the murder of a favorite uncle touches off a frantic search for a fabled superweapon known as the Scepter of the Ancients, 12-year-old Stephanie is abruptly pitched out of her mundane life. She hooks up with Skulduggery Pleasant: a walking, wisecracking, nattily dressed, fire-throwing skeleton detective, and similar unlikely allies to fight a genially sadistic sorcerer out to conquer the world and to bring back the bad old gods. [from Kirkus Reviews]

Adult Fiction

Archivist's Story by Travis Holland

Moscow, 1939. In the recesses of the infamous Lubyanka prison, a young archivist is sent to authenticate an unsigned story confiscated from one of the many political prisoners there. The writer is Isaac Babel. The great author of Red Cavalry is spending his last days forbidden to write, his final manuscripts consigned to the archivist, Pavel Dubrov, who will ultimately be charged with destroying them. The emotional jolt of meeting Babel face-to-face leads to a reckless decision: he will save the last stories of the author he reveres, whatever the cost. [from the publisher]

Adult Nonfiction

Leonardo's lost princess : one man's quest to authenticate an unknown portrait by Leonardo da Vinci by Peter Silverman

741.945 SIL

How an oddly attributed $19,000 picture proved to be a $100 million work by Leonardo da Vinci-a true art-world detective story. In late 2010, art collector Peter Silverman revealed that a German, early 19th century portrait he had bought for $19,000 was, in fact, a previously unknown drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, an exquisite depiction of Bianca Sforza, rendered 500 years ago. In Leonardo's Lost Princess, Silverman gives a riveting first person account of how his initial suspicions of the portrait's provenance were confirmed repeatedly by scientists and art experts. He describes the path to authentication, fraught with opposition and controversy. The twists and turns of this fascinating, decade-long quest lead from art history to cutting-edge science, and from a New York art gallery to Paris, Milan, Zurich, and finally a Warsaw library where the final, convincing evidence that the portrait was indeed by Da Vinci was found. Unearthing the secrets of a work that were almost lost to history, the book is ideal reading for art lovers and anyone interested in an astounding case of "whodunnit". (from the publisher)