An NPR Best Book of the Year A PopSugar Best Book of June! "An absolute joy to read. I completely demolished it one sitting."—NPR.org Nominated to the 2022 YALSA Quick Picks for Young Adult Reluctant Readers list A 2021 Junior Library Guild Young Adults Selection Korean American social media influencer Sunny is shipped off to a digital detox camp in this hilarious, charming romantic comedy. Perfect for fans of laugh-out-loud coming-of-age stories. Sunny Song's Big Summer Goals: 1) Make Rafael Kim my boyfriend (finally!) 2) Hit 100K followers (almost there...) 3) Have the best last summer of high school ever Not on Sunny's list: accidentally filming a PG-13 cooking video that goes viral (#browniegate). Extremely not on her list: being shipped off to a digital detox farm camp in Iowa (IOWA??) for a whole month. She's traded in her WiFi connection for a butter churn, and if she wants any shot at growing her social media platform this summer, she'll need to find a way back online. But between some unexpected friendships and an alarmingly cute farm boy, Sunny might be surprised by the connections she makes when she's forced to disconnect. Praise for Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous: "Sunny Song is one of the most hilarious, heart-warming, relatable teen characters I've had the pleasure of encountering. A must-have."—Sandhya Menon, New York Times bestselling author of When Dimple Met Rishi "A true delight!"—Helen Hoang, USA Today bestselling author of The Kiss Quotient "Sunny will easily endear herself to many readers."—Booklist "Park smartly and honestly weaves Sunny's nuanced experience as a Korean American into a story that is ultimately about human identity in our advanced age of social networking."—Kirkus Reviews "Suzanne Park smartly explores identity, specifically when it is intertwined with social media...an insightful, pertinent and humorous novel."—Shelf Awareness Also by Suzanne Park: The Perfect Escape
The Portal in the Park is a quirky fictional fable with uplifting hip-hop songs.Scott is a typical eleven-year-old boy who pulls the reader with him into a world of spiritual awakenings of the body and mind. He accidentally falls through a portal and takes a scary journey into another dimension inhabited by creatures who attempt to destroy his spirit. But then, magical creatures who speak and sing their conversations teach Scott about feelings and emotions and the importance of exercise to build endorphins?the body?s natural stress relievers. Throughout his travels he explores good and evil, and experiences a personal transformation. A modern day Siddhartha with an urban edge. It is an informative children?s book in a league of its own. Physical therapist teams up with rapper, Grandmaster Melle Mel, the father of hip-hop, and together they have produced a unique multimedia book for the up-and-coming multitasking generation. The Portal in the Park includes a two-CD set of complete text, seven inspirational songs, and sound effects performed by Grammy-winning hip-hop artist Grandmaster Melle Mel.
The humorist asked his readers to share their least favorite tunes and chronicles the hilarious responses. When funnyman Dave Barry asked readers about their least favorite tunes, he thought he was penning just another installment of his weekly syndicated humor column. But the witty writer was flabbergasted by the response when over 10,000 readers voted. “I have never written a column that got a bigger response than the one announcing the Bad Song Survey,” Barry wrote. Based on the results of the survey, Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs is a compilation of some of the worst songs ever written. Dave Barry fans will relish his quirky take. Music buffs too will appreciate this humorous stroll through the world’s worst lyrics. The only thing wrong with this book is that readers will find themselves unable to stop mentally singing the greatest hits of Gary Puckett. Praise for Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs “Barry is his usual puckish self, but the real surprise here is how funny many of the survey respondents are.” —Kirkus Reviews “Who can resist such a book?” —Publishers Weekly
"Prince: All the Songs is a major achievement...[It] may be the definitive single-volume book about Prince for both its breadth and the way it views his life through the songs that were the true essence of his being." - Psychobabble Spanning nearly 50 years of albums, EPs, B-sides, and more, read the full story behind all of the songs that Prince ever released. Moving chronologically through his epic back catalogue, expert author Benoît Clerc analyses everything there is to know about each song and session. No stone is left unturned across more than 600 pages, illustrated with incredible photography throughout. From the inspiration behind the lyrics and melody to the recording process and even the musicians and producers who worked on each track, uncover the stories behind the music in this truly definitive book - a must-have for every Prince fan.
This book explores the relationship between three African American women's dance-art-music sensibilities within the context of a Pan African aesthetic. Its purpose is three-fold: to show commonalities between Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone's lives and original compositions; to codify, examine and evaluate their selected song performances in accordance with the Pan African aesthetic "Nzuri theory/model;" and to illuminate the vast sources of transformational values that aesthetic analysis of African American song performance can foster. Following concordant procedures and principles of Afrocentricity, the study focuses on Smith, Holiday and Simone's performances as part of a whole African artistic and cultural value system. The goal of the Afrocentric methodological structure is to locate relevant African dynamics in songs and to promote knowledge for cultural transformation and continuity. Its use in this study provides meta-criteria for analyzing African American music, which the author has used to uniquely argue connections between African cultural memory and African-derived cultural expression.
#1 New York Times bestselling author! In Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl, Cath is a Simon Snow fan. Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan, but for Cath, being a fan is her life-and she's really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it's what got them through their mother leaving. Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere. Cath's sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can't let go. She doesn't want to. Now that they're going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn't want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She's got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words . . . And she can't stop worrying about her dad, who's loving and fragile and has never really been alone. For Cath, the question is: Can she do this? Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind? A New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of 2013 A New York Times Best Seller!
Songs of Joshua Tree explores music over the course of history in the area that now comprises Joshua Tree National Park and its gateway towns. This book is the result of the author's work as artist-in-residence at the park in 2014. It provides a folk-life ethnohistorical look, in an accessible story form, at music of the Native Americans who inhabited the park starting in the 1600s; the songs of the homesteaders, miners and cattlemen of the 1800s and 1900s; and the contemporary music scene of the last 50 years.The geographic area covered by the book is Joshua Tree National Park itself, and the towns of Twentynine Palms, Joshua Tree, Yucca Valley, Pioneertown, and Landers - towns whose history is intertwined with that of the park property. The musical genres covered include sacred and leisure music of the Indian tribes, folk music, rock and roll, jazz, classical, and non-traditional forms of music such as therapeutic sound baths, and the natural sounds of the park wilderness. The focus of the book is primarily on music of the people who made the area their home, but also touches on famous musicians who have come to Joshua Tree, to perform, to reflect, to create.