Join the Talk It Up! book club at Kingwood Branch Library in January as we read and discuss Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng.
"Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in Harvard University's library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve 'American culture' in the wake of years of economic instability and violence.
To keep the peace & restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, & libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic including the work of Bird's mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.
Bird has grown up disavowing his mother & her poems ; he doesn't know her work or what happened to her, & he knows he shouldn't wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is drawn into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, & finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change."
A limited number of copies of the book selection are made available each month for check-out at the downstairs circulation desk at the branch.
