Summer Challenge 2024 - Recommendations for Teens and Adults

Looking for a challenge this summer? Pick up a Summer Challenge Bingo Card from any GVPL location! Complete at least 4 of 16 fun challenges (in a row, in any direction) for a chance to win prizes!

Check out these recommendations to help you get started!

Updated June 22, 2024
Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
Black boys like me : confrontations with race, identity, and belonging
Morris, Matthew R.
Paper Book
'This is an examination of the parts that construct my Black character; from how public schooling shapes our ideas about ourselves to how hip-hop and sports are simultaneously the conduit for both Black abundance and Black boundaries. This book is a meditation on the influences that have shaped...
And Then She Fell: A Novel
Elliott, Alicia
Paper Book
*NATIONAL BESTSELLER* *Indigenous Voices Award winner* *Amazon First Novel Award winner* *First Nations Communities READ Award winner* *Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction* *Named a Globe and Mail and CBC Best Book of the Year* From the...
Silk : a world history
Prasad, Aarathi
Paper Book
A Smithsonian Magazine Best History Book of 2024 A Library Journal Selection for Best Nonfiction of 2024 A Next Big Idea Book Club Must-Read for April "Aarathi Prasad's Silk: A World History is a love song to this protean material. . . . Beautiful [and] fascinating." --Wall...
Portrait of a Body
Delporte, Julie
Paper Book
A portrait of flourishing desire in a body ever-changing As she examines her life experience and traumas with great care, Delporte faces the questions about gender and sexuality that both haunt and entice her. Deeply informed by her personal relationships as much as queer art...
Coexistence: Stories
Belcourt, Billy-Ray
Paper Book
A collection of intersecting stories about Indigenous love and loneliness from one of contemporary literature's most boundless minds. Across the prairies and Canada's west coast, on reserves and university campuses, at literary festivals and existential crossroads, the characters...
The reason you walk
Kinew, Wab
Paper Book
No Marketing Blurb
Parade : A Novel
Cusk, Rachel.
Paper Book
Midway through his life, an artist begins to paint upside down. Eventually, he paints his wife upside down. He also makes her ugly. The paintings are a great success. In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. The attacker flees, but not before turning around to contemplate her...
Death by a Thousand Cuts: Stories
Bhat, Shashi
Paper Book
Longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize * A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year * An Apple Canada Best Ebooks of 2024 * A CBC Books' Best Canadian Fiction of 2024 A breathtaking and sharply funny collection about the everyday trials and impossible expectations that come...
Becoming a Matriarch
Knott, Helen
Paper Book
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER Co-winner of the 2024 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature Winner of the Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes (part of the BC and Yukon Book Prizes) Shortlisted for the 2024 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize Finalist for the...
Last Woman : Stories
Baker, Carleigh.
Paper Book
From one of the country's most celebrated new writers, a blistering collection of short fiction that is bracingly relevant, playfully irreverent, and absolutely unforgettable. There's a hole in the ozone layer. Are teenage girls to blame?  Floods and wildfires,...
Do You Remember Being Born?
Michaels, Sean
Paper Book
FINALIST FOR THE 2023 PARAGRAPHE HUGH MACLENNAN AWARD FOR FICTION Scotiabank Giller Prize-winner Sean Michaels' luminous new novel takes readers on a lyrical joy ride--seven, epic days in Silicon Valley with a tall, formidable poet (inspired by the real-life Marianne Moore) and her...
Knit a mini ocean : 20 tiny sea creatures to knit
Ishii, Sachiyo
Paper Book
Knit 20 tiny, adorable sea creatures! "A whale of an addition to the world of amigurumi. Knitters who enjoy the ocean and the tiny creatures who live in it will appreciate these delightful projects". - LIBRARY JOURNAL STARRED REVIEW Choose from a shoal of ocean...
Truth telling : seven conversations about Indigenous life in Canada
Good, Michelle
Paper Book
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER High Plains Book Award FINALIST for the Writers' Trust Balsillie Prize for Public Policy FINALIST for the Indigenous Voices Award Longlisted for the First Nation Communities READ A bold, provocative collection of essays exploring...
Filthyratbag: a journey through growing up, grieving & turning pain into diamonds
Mountjoy, Celeste.
Paper Book
The artist known as Filthyratbag aims for the heart in this illustrated memoir on grief and Gen Z girlhood, shot through with equal parts incredulity and longing Celeste Mountjoy makes art that explores anxiety, feminism, addiction, body image, relationships, and power. With...
Braiding sweetgrass
Kimmerer, Robin Wall.
Paper Book
A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Bestseller Named a "Best Essay Collection of the Decade" by Literary Hub As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member...
Secrets of the octopus
Montgomery, Sy
Paper Book
Take an illuminating journey into the life of the octopus, one of nature's most intelligent and complex animals. Learn from an international bestselling author, the world's brightest octopus researchers, and vivid National Geographic photography to come closer than ever to these...
The future
Leroux, Catherine
Paper Book
Winner of Canada Reads 2024 * Longlisted for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction * One of Tor.com's Can't Miss Speculative Fiction for Fall 2023 * Listed in CBC Books Fiction to Read in Fall 2023 * One of 20 Books You Heard about on CBC Last Week * One of Kirkus Reviews' Fall 2023 Big Books...
The hidden life of trees : what they feel, how they communicate : discoveries from a secret world
Wohlleben, Peter
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER * One of the most beloved books of our time: an illuminating account of the forest, and the science that shows us how trees communicate, feel, and live in social networks. After reading this book, a walk in...
Unrooted : botany, motherhood, and the fight to save an old science
Zimmerman, Erin
Paper Book
Growing up in rural Ontario, Erin Zimmerman became fascinated with plants - an obsession that led to a life in academia as a professional botanist. But as her career choices narrowed in the face of failing institutions and subtle, but ubiquitous, sexism, Zimmerman began to doubt herself - and to...
Intervention Earth: Life-Saving Ideas from the World's Climate Engineers
Dyer, Gwynne
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER Historian, journalist, and author Gwynne Dyer interviews the world's top 100 climate scientists to discuss the extraordinary measures we must contemplate to counter the irreversible effects of climate change. The global climate emergency is now an...
City limits : infrastructure, inequality, and the future of America's highways
Kimble, Megan
Paper Book
An eye-opening investigation into how our ever-expanding urban highways accelerated inequality and fractured communities--and a call for a more just, sustainable path forward "Megan Kimble manages to turn a book about transportation and infrastructure into a fascinating human...
The complete Persepolis
Satrapi, Marjane
Paper Book
Here, in one volume: Marjane Satrapi's best-selling, internationally acclaimed graphic memoir of growing up as a girl in Iran during the revolution has for twenty years been a classroom staple, a feminist manifesto, and one of the most popular and widely known graphic novels of all time. <...
Creative stained glass : 17 step-by-step projects for stunning glass art and gifts
Springael, Noor
Paper Book
A beginner friendly guide to making stained glass art using the most popular and accessible method, copper foil. The traditional art form of stained glass has become extremely popular again and this collection has everything you need to know to get started on this...

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.