Climate change is absolutely the issue of our times. Right now, Australia’s burning, the Amazon’s burning, Siberia’s burning. Indonesia’s drowning. There are avalanches and floods in Pakistan. In Canada, we’ve seen extreme fire seasons in the west, flooding in the east, the Arctic sea ice at its lowest in the satellite record. At the same time, we’re experiencing the world’s sixth mass extinction, and this one’s because of us.

This month’s book display offers a look at the extent of the problem, and because that can leave you feeling hopeless, we’ve included plenty of books on making change. Have a look, borrow a book, get active.

If you’d like to consult the book list (which also contains e-books that aren’t on the physical display), you can find it here.

You’ll find the book display in its usual place, but the books on book trucks while we await our fancy new book display shelving.

Into The Garden

Ah, spring! Time to get your hands dirty messing about in the garden. Or, just to read about gardens – no one’s judging!  Either way, we’ve got you covered. This month’s book display features books to inspire and advise in the actual hands-on garden (how about Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, or Practical Botany for Gardeners); books about gardening (perhaps Envisioning the Garden: Line, Scale, Distance, Form, Color, and Meaning); city farms (Farm City: The Education of a City Farmer, or how about The Vertical Farm); and urban sustainability (Agriculture in Urban Planning, or The Art of Building a Garden City).

Or maybe you want to let your mind wander the garden without getting your hands dirty. We’ve got all kinds of options for you! Gardens literary (The Quest for Shakespeare’s Garden, maybe, or Garden Plots: Canadian Women Writers and Their Literary Gardens); historical (Working the Garden: American Writers and the Industrialization of Agriculture, or On Other Grounds: Landscape Gardening and Nationalism in Eighteenth Century England and France); and biographical (The Gardener of Versailles: My Life in the World’s Greatest Garden or Vita Sackville-West’s Garden Book).

And there’s fiction and poetry, too! – we could go on and on! So drop by to borrow a book and then head out into the garden to read it.

In celebration of Indigenous Awareness Week, the new Redpath Book Display brings you art, poetry, novels, cultural studies, history – you name it! – by Indigenous writers and artists in Canada.

Come browse and borrow. We’ll be stocking all month, so check back often for new titles!

To check out what titles we’ve put together for you, take a look at this list of WorldCat Discovery records. Open the record titles to read the summary descriptions of each book.