CASA Book Nook
Welcome to the CASA Book Nook!
Please see our recommended reading list below - choose one or all - write a brief synopsis after reading each book and e-mail to your supervisor - you will receive 2 hours of in-service credit towards your annual requirement of 12 in-service hours. Let us know if you have any great books to add to the list!
Recommended Reading!
Here you will find books suggested by our very own staff and volunteers! Let us know if you have some to add - and happy reading!
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism
By Robin DiAngelo - The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality.
Small Great Things
By Jodi Picoult - (fiction) The best books make you see differently. This is one of them. The eye-opening new novel from Jodi Picoult, with the biggest of themes: birth, death, and responsibility. Small Great Things is about prejudice and power; it is about that which divides and unites us. It is about opening your eyes.
I Beat the Odds: From Homelessness, to The Blind Side, and Beyond
By Michael Oher - The football star made famous in the hit film (and book) The Blind Side reflects on how far he has come from the circumstances of his youth. Michael Oher shares his personal account of his story, in this inspirational New York Times bestseller.
Caste: The Origins of our Discontents
By Isabel Wilkerson - In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
Noah's Rights
By Kenni York - Nearly every two minutes in America someone is sexually assaulted. Olivia Collins, an urban author residing in the heart of the hood, knows this better than anyone. Working hard to repress her own issues, Olivia encounters Noah, an underprivileged foster kid who views himself as a number; a statistic. As the awkward duo gets to know one another, secrets about Noah begin to unfold while unraveling Olivia's resolve and forcing her to deal with her own demons. No one understands her sudden and unexplainable connection to or concern for the young boy, but their relationship runs deeper than anyone around her could ever understand given her undisclosed past. Olivia's certain that she and Noah share a bond solidified by a common pain making them nearly one in the same, for she too is a statistic in her own way.
Have you Seen Luis Velez
By Catherine Ryan Hyde - Raymond Jaffe feels like he doesn’t belong. Not with his mother’s new family. Not as a weekend guest with his father and his father’s wife. Not at school, where he’s an outcast. After his best friend moves away, Raymond has only two real connections: to the feral cat he’s tamed and to a blind ninety-two-year-old woman in his building who’s introduced herself with a curious question: Have you seen Luis Velez? Mildred Gutermann, a German Jew who narrowly escaped the Holocaust, has been alone since her caretaker disappeared. She turns to Raymond for help, and as he tries to track Luis down, a deep and unexpected friendship blossoms between the two.Despondent at the loss of Luis, Mildred isolates herself further from a neighborhood devolving into bigotry and fear. Determined not to let her give up, Raymond helps her see that for every terrible act the world delivers, there is a mirror image of deep kindness, and Mildred helps Raymond see that there’s hope if you have someone to hold on to.
The Book of Lost Friends
By Lisa Wingate - Bestselling author Lisa Wingate brings to life startling stories from actual “Lost Friends” advertisements that appeared in Southern newspapers after the Civil War, as newly freed slaves desperately searched for loved ones who had been sold away.Louisiana, 1875: In the tumultuous era of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest: Hannie, a freed slave; Lavinia, the pampered heir to a now destitute plantation; and Juneau Jane, Lavinia’s Creole half sister. Each carries private wounds and powerful secrets as they head for Texas, following roads rife with vigilantes and soldiers still fighting a war lost a decade before. For Lavinia and Juneau Jane, the journey is one of stolen inheritance and financial desperation, but for Hannie, torn from her mother and siblings before slavery’s end, the pilgrimage west reignites an agonizing question: Could her long-lost family still be out there? Beyond the swamps lie the limitless frontiers of Texas and, improbably, hope.Louisiana, 1987: For first-year teacher Benedetta Silva, a subsidized job at a poor rural school seems like the ticket to canceling her hefty student debt—until she lands in a tiny, out-of-step Mississippi River town. Augustine, Louisiana, is suspicious of new ideas and new people, and Benny can scarcely comprehend the lives of her poverty-stricken students. But amid the gnarled live oaks and run-down plantation homes lie the century-old history of three young women, a long-ago journey, and a hidden book that could change everything.
Somebody's Someone: A Memoir
By Regina Louie - In this poignant and heart wrenching true story, Regina Louise recounts her childhood search for connection in the face of abuse, neglect, and rejection.What happens to a child when her own parents reject her and sit idly by as others abuse her? In this poignant, heart wrenching debut work, Regina Louise recounts her childhood search for someone to feel connected to. A mother she has never known--but long fantasized about-- deposited her and her half sister at the same group home that she herself fled years before. When another resident beats Regina so badly that she can barely move, she knows that she must leave this terrible place-the only home she knows.Thus begins Regina's fight to survive, utterly alone at the age of 10. A stint living with her mother and her abusive boyfriend is followed by a stay with her father's lily white wife and daughters, who ignore her before turning to abuse and ultimately kicking her out of the house. Regina then tries everything in her search for someone to care for her and to care about, from taking herself to jail to escaping countless foster homes to be near her beloved counselor. Written in her distinctive and unique voice, Regina's story offers an in-depth look at the life of a child who no one wanted. From her initial flight to her eventual discovery of love, your heart will go out to Regina's younger self, and you'll cheer her on as she struggles to be Somebody's Someone.
Through the Eyes of a Foster Child
By Daryl Brougham - In 1990, at the age of ten, Daryl Brougham was told by a social worker he was useless and would end up in jail. By 1997, he had attended 27 schools, been through over 30 social workers and lived in more than 30 different foster homes. During his 18 years as a state ward he suffered repeated sexual, physical, emotional and psychological abuse. Rising above all the abuse, Daryl proved that social worker wrong.
Before We Were Yours
By Lisa Wingate - Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.
An Invisible Thread
By Laura Schroff - This inspirational New York Times bestseller chronicles the lifelong friendship between a busy sales executive and a disadvantaged young boy, and how both of their lives were changed by what began as one small gesture of kindness.