Best of
Slice-Of-Life

2001

Nodame Cantabile Vol 1 - 23


Tomoko Ninomiya - 2001
    As an extremely talented pianist who wants to be a preschool teacher, she prefers playing by ear rather than reading the music score. She is messy and disorganized, takes baths several days apart and loves to eat, sometimes stealing her friend's lunchbox when it is filled with delicacies.Shinichi Chiaki is Momogaoka's top student. Born into a musical family, he is talented in piano and violin and has secret ambitions to become a conductor. As an arrogant multi-lingual perfectionist who once lived abroad in the music capitals of the world as a young boy (namely Prague), he is trapped in Japan because of his childhood phobia of airplanes and the ocean.They meet by accident. Nodame quickly falls in love, but it takes much longer for Chiaki to even begin to appreciate Nodame's unusual qualities. Their relationship causes them both to develop and grow. Along the way, they meet some crazy people (like Masumi, Mine, and Stresemann) and make lasting friendships. Because of Nodame, Chiaki gets the opportunity to lead a student orchestra and begins to have a broader appreciation of people's musical abilities. Because of Chiaki, Nodame faces her fears and enters a piano competition. Opportunities open up as both begin taking risks, stretching themselves far more than they ever thought possible.After graduation, Nodame succeeds in curing Chiaki from his phobia and they both move to Paris where Nodame continues her piano studies at the Conservatoire de Paris while Chiaki starts a professional career as a conductor. In Europe, they encounter new friends and rivals, as well as keep in touch with their friends from Japan.-Wikipedia

Just Between Series


Gina L. Dartt - 2001
    They're forced to face their fear and inexperience while deal with a melding crew, a disastrous away mission, and the Captain’s sense of duty and feelings of responsibility for stranding the crew in the Delta Quadrant...This is a very large series, consisting of 50 stories broken down into five 'seasons'. It follows the trials and tribulations of the relationship between Janeway and Seven which begins somewhere near the end of the first year Seven came on the ship (season four on the show) and carries them all the way back to the Alpha Quadrant and to a new vessel.Posted: February, 1998 - January 26th, 2001Cover by Calli's Creations

If I Should Speak


Umm Zakiyyah - 2001
    Months after it was released, it quickly became a bestseller. Used in college classrooms and in book clubs, readers express the profound impact the story has had on their lives.

Kuma-Kuma Chan, the Little Bear


Kazue Takahashi - 2001
    Daily chores and seasonal activities become infused with special meaning when they are performed by this adorable creature. Kuma-Kuma Chan goes about his days in contented solitude, engaged in activities such as eating breakfast, gazing at clouds, listening to the rain, writing letters, and wondering where to go with his new bag. At night he watches the sky darken and brushes his teeth before bed. He gardens in the spring, trims his hair in summer, composes a love song in the fall, and seeks a warm, sunny spot on the floor in the winter. Children and adults alike will take delight in repeating aloud the name of their new, steadfast storybook friend and look forward to spending more time in his imagined world.

Planetes, Volume 1


Makoto Yukimura - 2001
    His team consists of Hachimaki, a hot shot debris-man with a sailor's affinity for the orbital ocean; Fee, a tomboy beauty with an abrasive edge and a penchant for smoking; and Pops, a veteran orbital mechanic whose avuncular presence soothes the stress of the job. Planetes follows the lives of Yuri and his fellow debris-men as they work and ruminate at the edge of the great empyrean sea.

Willow and Twig


Jean Little - 2001
    Her mother has taken off again, she has to look after her brother Twig, and they're out on the streets of Vancouver with nowhere to go. Then Willow remembers her grandmother, whom she hasn't seen in years. Gram doesn't even know Twig exists, and Twig is, well, difficult. But Gram is her only hope now. After a few urgent phone calls from a police station in Vancouver to Ontario, Willow and Twig are on their way across the country to a grandmother they hardly know, and a strange household made up of an eccentric uncle, a hostile aunt, and a motley crew of animals. Willow is entranced by this new home-but is it really home? Are they safe at last?

Colcha


Aaron A. Abeyta - 2001
    His forty-two poems take the reader on a journey through a contemplative personal history that explores communal, political and societal issues as well as the individual experiences of family and friends. With his distinctive voice, Abeyta invites people of all cultures to enter his poems by exploring the essence of humanity as expressed by his particular Hispanic culture and heritage.Marked by intimacy and deep sentiment, Colcha not only acquaints us with the land of Abeyta's people, but also reveals the individuals from his life and family history in the most colorful and delicate detail. We meet his abuelitos (grandparents) in poems such as "colcha" and "3515 Wyandot," and hear of their connection to the tierra and its seasons, their labor and its bounty presented both viscerally and lovingly. We also meet the nameless people: the rancheros and the herders and the farmers, the locals in their pick-up trucks, and the women who make the tortillas. Abeyta's reflections on the plight, loves, joys, failures, and exploitation of the common person in such poems as "cuando se secan las acequias," "untitled (verde)," and "cinco de mayo" belong to the literary heritage of such poets as Pablo Neruda, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Walt Whitman.Colcha is not just for those who love poetry, but for all people who wish to be moved by the music of language and, while listening, perhaps to gain some personal insight into their own lives and cultural traditions.