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View this item in the catalog. (Season One)

Parks and Recreation is a “mockumentary”-style comedy featuring the staff of the parks and recreation department of the (fictional) town of Pawnee, Indiana. The first season of Parks and Rec might not hook you, but the second and third season are well worth it: the characters, especially Deputy Director Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), improve, becoming both more likable and funnier, and their interactions and relationships are more believable as the actors develop a rapport. Parks and Rec is an amusing window into small-town government; most viewers will quickly identify a favorite character, from optimistic Leslie to work-averse Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) to office clown Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari).

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Meet Flavia de Luce, a bright and devious eleven-year-old; often left to her own devices, she is an amateur chemist and avid student of poisons. Set at Buckshaw, the crumbling family house, in England in the 1950s, Flavia is intrigued rather than horrified when murder occurs nearby, and throws herself into the investigation with gusto. Being a mystery, the novel is plot-driven, but Flavia is a highly amusing character (though rather more capable, observant, and self-aware than most real-life eleven-year-olds). This is the first in a series of four (so far) mysteries in which Flavia stars, and if you like this one, you’ll almost certainly enjoy the rest: The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, A Red Herring Without Mustard, and I Am Half-Sick of Shadows.

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Seventeen-year-old Marcus Yallow circumvents his San Francisco high school’s clumsy surveillance with ease, but when a terrorist attack blows up the Bay Bridge, Marcus and his friends are in the wrong place at the wrong time. They are picked up by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), imprisoned, and interrogated. Once Marcus is freed, he finds that his city now resembles a police state, with privacy and security being sacrificed in the name of freedom. In response to this crackdown, Marcus uses all the technology skills at his disposal to take down the unethical DHS. Doctorow keeps the plot moving swiftly forward, and packs a significant amount of information, from history to hacking, into the story without making it seem like a lecture. Little Brother is riveting in its pacing, characters, and the story’s twists and turns, and it is as thought-provoking as any dystopia before it or after. A real page-turner, great for young adults especially.