Tweens Read: Mark Twain Nominees

Pick up copies of this month's book, "Light and Air" by Mindy Nichols Wendell, at the Youth Services desk at the Middendorf-Kredell branch. Join us for a monthly book club featuring the 2026-2027 Mark Twain Award Nominees. We’ll read a different nominee each month and come together to share thoughts, opinions, and favorite moments! More about this month's book: When Halle and her mother both come down with TB, they are shunned and then they are sent to the J.N. Adam Tuberculosis Hospital: far from home, far from family, far from the world. Tucked away in the woods of upstate New York, the hospital is a closed and quiet place. But it is not, Halle learns, a prison. Free of her worried and difficult father for the first time in her life, she slowly discovers joy, family, and the healing power of honey on the children's ward, where the girls on the floor become her confidantes and sisters. But when Mama suffers a lung hemorrhage, their entire future, and recovery is thrown into question. Light and Air deals tenderly and insightfully with isolation, quarantine, found family, and illness.