It’s officially fall—if you listen carefully, you might be able to hear the post-summer whimpering of kids consigned to classrooms again. At one high school in New York, however, that also means creating comic books about their lives. In Manga High: Literacy, Identity, and Coming of Age in an Urban High School, Michael Bitz “explores the convergence of literacy, creativity, social development, and personal identity” and includes students’ original art and writing from his four-year study.

While hooking teens on writing via comics makes sense, something tells me that math might be a harder sell. Jo Boaler, a professor of mathematics education at Stanford University, sees this as a crisis. After following student progress and observing successful strategies, she articulates a new course of action in What’s Math Got to Do with It?: Helping Children Learn to Love Their Least Favorite Subject—and Why It’s Important for America.

Moving on to my own most favorite subject, Worlds of Sound: The Story of Smithsonian Folkways tells of Moses Asch’s lifelong quest to document “folk expression” in all its forms—folk, bluegrass, country, jazz, blues, and sound recordings that included tree frogs, the poetry of Langston Hughes, train locomotives, and civil rights sit-ins. His label’s amazing treasures became part of the Smithsonian collection after his death (and are available in our Smithsonian Global Sound database).

To see if any of our other new books sound good, look for the New Titles link in the catalog or check out the displays at the Lincoln Park or Loop Libraries.