New Digital Titles: Monday, November 24

Do you prefer to read books on your Kindle, iPad or other tablet, or even on your smartphone? If so, you should know about the OWWL Digital Library. This service offers a digital library of more than 19,000 ebooks, audiobooks, and magazines, including best-sellers, children’s books, business, and romance. This free service requires only a library card! You can find out more information and directions at the Library’s OWWL Digital Library page.

Looking for some suggestions for good digital books to read? Here are a few that were recently added to the collection, for adults and children:

The Polar Bear and the Ballerina

When dancers have a photoshoot at the Central Park Zoo, a young ballerina and a polar bear form a special friendship. When his new friend leaves her scarf behind, the polar bear must venture through Central Park and out into Manhattan to return it before her performance at Lincoln Center. However, the theatergoers eye the strange bear with suspicion. When the ushers won’t let him inside, the ballerina comes to his rescue and welcomes him in. The polar bear has dreamed of seeing the ballet, and now he gets to be a part of it in the most surprising way. The wordless narrative is told through expressive and detailed oil paintings. For ages 4-8.

Butterfly Heart

Vilda takes life as it comes, talking for hours with her best friend, Alma. It’s never been a big deal to Vilda that her mother’s side of the family is Sámi and her father’s is Swedish, but as summer vacation starts, she wants to know more about her indigenous roots—and she’s looking forward to her beloved grandfather, Áddjá, teaching her the Sámi language. Then Áddjá has a fatal heart attack and, overnight, Vilda loses not only a person she loves most in the world, but a crucial link to her history and identity. And all this comes while her body is changing, and she’s swamped by confusing thoughts and feelings about an older boy she meets at her grandfather’s funeral. Feeling whole seems impossibly hard to reach. For ages 12-18.

The Path of the King

Best known for penning the spy thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps, author and politician John Buchan produced dozens of fiction and non-fiction works over the course of his career. The Path of the King is a sprawling epic that takes the reader on a trip through the lives of centuries’ worth of kings and leaders, beginning in ancient times and ending with a surprising twist in nineteenth-century America. Fans of fast-paced historical fiction will love this inventive novel.