Mini Book Of The Week

40 easy-to-read mini-books on fiction and nonfiction topics for every week of the school year.

A beautifully surreal and gently humorous picture book about cultural differences, empathy and the power of perspective, from internationally acclaimed author-illustrator Shaun Tan. Eric is a foreign exchange student who comes to live with a typical suburban family. Although everyone is delighted with the arrangement, cultural misunderstandings ensue, beginning with Eric's insistence on sleeping in a pantry cupboard rather than a specially prepared guest room. The family takes Eric on a number of excursions, but they're never sure if he's having a good time, as he just doesn't say very much. He's mostly interested in small things he discovers on the ground. When Eric leaves the family suddenly, they're unsure if they've done something wrong. But Eric leaves them a surprise gift that they'll never forget.

“An intoxicating blend of music, love, and family from one of the essential writers of the internet generation” (Stephanie Danler). Have you ever wondered what your mother was like before she became your mother, and what she gave up in order to have you? It’s the early days of the new millennium, and Laura has arrived in New York City’s East Village in the hopes of recording her first album. A songwriter with a one-of-a-kind talent, she’s just beginning to book gigs with her beautiful best friend when she falls hard for a troubled but magnetic musician whose star is on the rise. Their time together is stormy and short-lived—but will reverberate for the rest of Laura’s life. Fifteen years later, Laura’s teenage daughter, Marie, is asking questions about her father, questions that Laura does not want to answer. Laura has built a stable life in Brooklyn that bears little resemblance to the one she envisioned when she left Ohio all those years ago, and she’s taken pains to close the door on what was and what might have been. But neither her best friend, now a famous musician who relies on Laura’s songwriting skills, nor her depressed and searching daughter will let her give up on her dreams. “A zippy and profound story of love, loss, heredity, and par­enthood (Emma Straub), Perfect Tunes explores the fault lines in our most important relationships, and asks whether dreams deferred can ever be reclaimed. It is a delightful and poignant tale of music and motherhood, ambition and com­promise—of life, in all its dissonance and harmony.

The things you need to do to set up a new software project can be daunting. First, you have to select the back-end framework to create your API, choose your database, set up security, and choose your build tool. Then you have to choose the tools to create your front end: select a UI framework, configure a build tool, set up Sass processing, configure your browser to auto-refresh when you make changes, and configure the client and server so they work in unison. If you're building a new application using Spring Boot and Angular, you can save days by using JHipster. JHipster generates a complete and modern web app, unifying: - A high-performance and robust Java stack on the server side with Spring Boot - A sleek, modern, mobile-first front-end with Angular and Bootstrap - A robust microservice architecture with the JHipster Registry, Netflix OSS, the ELK stack, and Docker - A powerful workflow to build your application with Yeoman, Webpack, and Maven/Gradle

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “This is the most important book ever written about time management.” —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of WorkLife What if you stopped trying to do everything, so that you could finally get around to what counts? Nobody needs to be told there isn’t enough time. Whether we’re starting our own business, or trying to write a novel during our lunch break, or staring down a pile of deadlines as we’re planning a vacation, we’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and ceaseless struggle against distraction. We’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient and life hacks to optimize our days. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the question of how best to use our ridiculously brief time on the planet, which amounts on average to about four thousand weeks. Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing that many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we can do things differently. Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.

A RICHARD & JUDY BOOK-CLUB PICK Now a major new TV series with Paramount+ starring Emma Appleton and Colin Morgan The incredible new break-out thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author. Shortlisted for the Irish Crime Book Awards 2021

Is there someone you love from the bottom of your heart? Do you sometimes find it difficult to tell them how you feel? This gorgeous book will help you. The heart-warming rhyme will touch the heart of the one you love, and express everything you feel in the cutest way. The clean design and contemporary styling will appeal to existing Peter Rabbit fans and is sure to catch the eye of anyone looking for a gorgeous way to say 'I love You'.