Shelf Space: What's New at the Harvard Public Library, 3/7/25

Drawing Deena  
by Hena Khan

Deena uses her artistic talents to ease her parents’ financial woes. She creates a logo and social media account to promote her mom’s home-based business selling clothes from Pakistan to the local community, and soon business picks up. But at the same time Deena’s cousin and best friend start to act funny. Suddenly Deena’s creative outlet becomes another thing that makes her feel nauseated and unsure of herself. After she reaches a breaking point, both she and her mother learn the importance of asking for help.

This Table
by Alex Killian and Brooke Smart

This picture book traces a table and its transformation from a seed to a tree to a treasured object in a home. Strong and stable through the years, the table becomes a space for being together, for birthday parties and science projects, and for meals. “This Table” will inspire conversations about the ordinary objects in our lives and their role in creating lifelong memories. 

Salty Mary
by Cynthia Hand

Mary, a mermaid, is in love with the so-called prince of Charles Town, except he doesn’t love her back, which is inconvenient. Since she’s a mermaid, being brokenhearted means she’ll—poof!—turn into seafoam.

Mary, a mermaid, is pulled out of the sea and up onto a pirate ship. To survive, she joins the pirates, but she isn’t willing to just sing the yo-ho-hos. She wants the pirate life, all of it, and she’s ready to make a splash ... by becoming captain. She won’t let anyone stop her—not Blackbeard’s cute son, not her best friend from back under the sea who’s having a bit too much fun with his new legs, and certainly not everyone who says she can’t be a pirate just because she’s a girl—from proving that she’s worth her salt.

Shift Happens
by J. Albert Mann

Long before the first labor unions were formed, workers still knew what exploitation looked like. It looked like the enslavement of Black people and generations of children dying in dangerous jobs and wealthy people hiring private militaries to attack their employees.

But workers have always found a way to fight back.  From 30,000 young seamstresses striking in the early 1900s to Uber drivers organizing for change today, we’ve learned we’re stronger when we are united.

“Shift Happens” is a smart, funny, and engaging look at the history of the worker actions that brought us weekends, pay equality, desegregation, an end to child labor, and more.

The Lost World of the Dinosaurs: Uncovering the Secrets of the Prehistoric Age
by Armin Schmitt

No other class of animals captures the imaginaiton of children and adults alike than dinosaurs. This book is an all-encompassing exploration traveling back in time into the world of the primeval giants, the largest land creatures that ever inhabited Earth.

With the help of cutting-edge technology, the age-old tale of the dinosaurs is revitalized, complete with illustrations that help us imagine dinosaurs like never before.

Schmitt describes excavating at a dig site. He also conjectures why birds survived the asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous period, unlike the dinosaurs. And he tackles the quesion of climate change and its effects on the dinosaurs’ survival compared to our current climate crisis.

The Blue Hour
by Paula Hawkins

Welcome to Eris, an island with only one house, one inhabitant, and one way out, unreachable from the Scottish mainland for twelve hours each day. Eris was once home to Vanessa, a famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared twenty years ago ... and now is home to Grace, a solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation.

But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling, and the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge.