Room: Official Teaser Trailer

Check out the teaser trailer for Room, based on Emma Donoghue’s best selling book, below! You have plenty of time to read the book before the movie hits the theaters in October - click here to place your hold today!

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, ROOM is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another. (Publisher Summary)

Surprise winner for UK's Orange Prize

At age 25, Tea Obreht is now the youngest person ever to win the UK's coveted Orange Prize for fiction. Her debut novel, The Tiger's Wife, was received across the English-speaking world to great critical acclaim and has now achieved yet another distinction with one of the UK's highest literary honors, which also comes with prize money in the amount of £30,000. The book is set in the Balkans just after their civil war, and is partly inspired by Obreht's own personal history: born in the former Yugoslavia, Obreht emigrated to the United States at the age of 12. Other books in consideration for this prestigious award included Emma Donoghue's Room, The Great House by Nicole Krauss, Aminatta Forna's The Memory of Love, and Annabel by Kathleen Winter, all of which are available through your Community Library. Click here to read the full report on this year's Orange Prize from The Guardian.

Child Abuse in Truth and Fiction

Books that deal with heavy topics such as child abuse are often among the most popular, explaining the enduring success of A Child Called "It", a victim's memoir published in 1995. Stitches, a memoir in graphic format, tells of the author's traumatic childhood in which his radiologist father tormented him until the author ran away at the age of 16. The Martian Child, also a true story, is slightly more uplifting, telling the inspirational story of a single man who adopts an abused child. The recently published fictional title Room, which tells the story of an abused son who is raised in a closet-sized room, is so popular that the library had to purchase seven copies (plus a few in large print and audio) to keep up with the demand. And the library's copy of You Don't Know Me, the fictional story of a 14 year old boy's abuse at the hands of his stepfather was last checked out mere days ago, despite the fact that it has been a full decade since it was published. For more stories on this heavy topic, search the keywords "child abuse" or "abused children" in your Community Library's catalog.

Memory of Love wins Commonwealth Writer's Prize

Congratulations to author Aminatta Forna, who recently won the £10,000 (US$16,233) Commonwealth Writer's Prize for her novel Memory of Love. In the book, a gifted young surgeon is haunted by memories of the civil war that has decimated his Sierra Leone home; meanwhile, a patient relates disturbing stories about the post-colonial years and a well-intentioned British psychologist draws all of them into the path of an enigmatic woman. Other books that were recognized by the awards committee include Room by Canadian author Emma Donoghue, in which an abused five-year-old boy narrates the story of his life growing up in a single room, and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by UK author David Mitchell, a work set in 1799 Japan telling the story of an ambitious clerk for the Dutch East Indies Company who has only five years to amass enough money to marry his sweetheart back home.

Indies Choice Book Awards

The American Booksellers Association has announced the winners of this year's Indies Choice Book Awards. Owners and staff at independent bookstores with membership in the ABA were eligible to vote on the best books of the year. For more info, see this article from Bookselling This Week.

Adult fiction: Room by Emma Donoghue Adult nonfiction: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand Adult debut: Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes Young adult: Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly