News & Updates
From Box to Shelf: Behind the Scenes at the Library
March 2, 2026 – Library staff love when new boxes of books arrive – and library patrons are often eager for the newest releases – but it takes more than unboxing those books to get them onto library shelves and into readers’ hands.
Check These Out: Books Elysha Loves
Feb. 23, 2026 – The Cedar Rapids Public Library is made possible by our incredible staff. And we are staffed by book lovers. To celebrate the people who keep our library running, we're highlighting different staff members and books they love.
Busse Branch Construction On Schedule
Winter weather has not slowed progress on the Busse Branch, which is set to open this fall. Spaces are beginning to take clear shape, including staff offices, meeting rooms, and collection areas.
Recommended Reads
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Fireworks
** Winner of the 2026 Caldecott Medal! **
Fireworks is a sparkling picture book from the award-winning team of Matthew Burgess and Cátia Chien, highlighting the simple delights of a steamy July day in the city as two siblings eagerly anticipate a spectacular fireworks display.
POP!
As a hot day sizzles into evening, everyone on stoops and sidewalks looks skyward on this special summer night—the Fourth of July! Words and art blossom into flowers of fire across the sky, making this a perfect read for firework enthusiasts in cities and suburbs everywhere.
*SEVEN STARRED REVIEWS * A NEW YORK TIMES/NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST ILLUSTRATED CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE YEAR * THE SOCIETY OF IULLUSTRATORS GOLD MEDAL WINNER * KIRKUS' BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR * BOOKLIST'S EDITOR'S CHOICE PICKS OF THE YEAR * SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR * PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR * A HORN BOOK FANFARE PICK * THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR * CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST OF THE YEAR * NPR'S BEST OF THE YEAR ROUNDUP*
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All the Blues in the Sky
** Winner of the 2026 Newbery Medal! **
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year | A Chicago Public Library Best Kids’ Book of the Year | An NCTE Charlotte Huck Award Honor Book | A 2025 Horn Book Fanfare Selection Book | A BCCB Blue Ribbon Book
# 1 New York Times bestselling and Newbery Honor author Renée Watson explores friendship, loss, and life with grief in this poignant novel in verse and vignettes.
Sage's thirteenth birthday was supposed to be about movies and treats, staying up late with her best friend and watching the sunrise together. Instead, it was the day her best friend died. Without the person she had to hold her secrets and dream with, Sage is lost. In a counseling group with other girls who have lost someone close to them, she learns that not all losses are the same, and healing isn't predictable. There is sadness, loneliness, anxiety, guilt, pain, love. And even as Sage grieves, new, good things enter her life―and she just may find a way to know that she can feel it all.
In accessible, engaging verse and prose, this is a story of a girl's journey to heal, grow, and forgive herself. To read it is to see how many shades there are in grief, and to know that someone understands. -
Dog Man: Big Jim Believes: a Graphic Novel (Dog Man #14): from the Creator of Captain Underpants
*Newest Publication date -November 11, 2025* Power up with Dog Man: Big Jim Believes from the global #1 bestselling author and award-winning artist Dav Pilkey. Join the journey as our heroes discover the influence of belief and find truth from within. With threads of self-awareness, confidence, and integrity, Dav Pilkey masterfully crafts a humorous and heartfelt adventure, weaving together the importance of truth, goodness, and believing in yourself.
The celebration comes to a halt for our heroes in Dog Man: Big Jim Believes when the mischievous Space Cuties From Space return. Our caped crusaders -- Dog Man (aka Scarlet Shedder), Commander Cupcake, and Sprinkles -- along with Mecha Molly discover that the city has changed, and nothing is how it should be. Can Big Jim's positivity and innocence help our heroes? Will Dog Man, Big Jim, Grampa, and Molly have the courage to trust each other and save the day? How does the past help shape the future? And who is the chosen one?
Readers will want to hold onto their hero capes as they soar into a new thrilling Dog Man story. The series follows the hilarious adventures of Dog Man, a lovable canine superhero and his friends. Each exciting graphic novel features inspiring characters, animated Flip-O-Ramas, and more!
For additional awesome, action-packed, inspiring escapades filled with creativity and imagination, read Dav Pilkey's Cat Kid Comic Club series, Super Diaper Baby graphic novels (now in full color), Captain Underpants series, and Dragon series. Also be sure to check out the two acclaimed major motion pictures: Dog Man and Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie.
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Absolute Wonder Woman Vol. 1: the Last Amazon
Without the island paradise, without the sisterhood that shaped her, without a mission of peace...she's still the Absolute Amazon!
Spiraling out of the catastrophic events of Absolute Power, a new side of the DC Universe is born-the Absolute Universe!
In a different, darker world, Diana of Themyscira was not raised in paradise, but instead was exiled to the underworld as a baby and raised by an enemy. Darkness and exile did not destroy her; instead, they made her all the stronger-honed into an even greater weapon by tragedy, danger, and magic. Long denied her Amazonian heritage, Diana has finally reached the time for her to rejoin the surface world. Armed with new weapons forged in Hell, and a mission that looks a bit more like justice than peace, Diana will not be stopped on her quest to save the world and discover her place in it, even if that means carving it herself!
Eisner Award-winning writer Kelly Thompson is joined by breakout superstar artist Hayden Sherman to reinvent Wonder Woman from the ground up! Collects Absolute Wonder Woman #1-7. -
My Hero Academia, Vol. 41
*Vol. 41 is here!* Midoriya inherits the superpower of the world’s greatest hero, but greatness won’t come easy.
Published June 6, 2025.
Midoriya’s epic final battle with Shigaraki reaches its earth-shattering crescendo! With Danger Sense stolen away and the villain threatening to wipe Japan off the map, Midoriya has to get really creative with his Quirks to survive. The Second’s plan to smash the vestiges of One For All into the core of Shigaraki’s psychic space is the last chance the heroes have to stop All For One’s grand schemes from coming to fruition. But first, Midoriya has to land a solid punch!
Midoriya’s epic final battle with Shigaraki reaches its earth-shattering crescendo! With Danger Sense stolen away and the villain threatening to wipe Japan off the map, Midoriya has to get really creative with his Quirks to survive. The Second’s plan to smash the vestiges of One For All into the core of Shigaraki’s psychic space is the last c -
Partypooper
TO BE PUBLISHED October 21, 2025** International bestselling author Jeff Kinney serves up heaps of laughs in Partypooper, the 20th book in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series
You're Invited--RSVP for Fun!
Over the years, Greg Heffley has chronicled his mishaps and misadventures in a series of diaries--make that journals--but book 20 of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Partypooper, really takes the cake!
Expect gobs of fun and over-the-top antics as Greg throws an epic birthday party for none other than himself. So come celebrate and laugh alongside Greg, his family, and the entire world of Wimpy Kid fans.
Collect all the books in the #1 bestselling Diary of a Wimpy Kid series: Diary of a Wimpy Kid (#1) | Rodrick Rules (#2) | The Last Straw (#3) | Dog Days (#4) | The Ugly Truth (#5) | Cabin Fever (#6) | The Third Wheel (#7) | Hard Luck (#8) | The Long Haul (#9) | Old School (#10) | Double Down (#11) | The Getaway (#12) | The Meltdown (#13) | Wrecking Ball (#14) | The Deep End (#15) | Big Shot (#16) | Diper Överlöde (#17) | No Brainer (#18) | Hot Mess (#19) | Partypooper (#20)
See the Wimpy Kid World in a whole new way with the #1 bestselling Awesome Friendly books, told from the perspective of Greg Heffley's best friend Rowley Jefferson: Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid: Rowley Jefferson's Journal | Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Adventure | Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Spooky Stories -
Karen's Ghost: A Graphic Novel (Baby-Sitters Little Sister #11)
THE NEWEST BABY-SITTERS LITTLE SISTER (GRAPHIC NOVEL #11).
Another graphic novel in this fun series spin-off from The Baby-sitters Club, adapted and illustrated by DK Yingst!
Karen thinks there's a ghost in her house! But she has never really seen the ghost of Old Ben Brewer... until now.
Karen and her stepsister, Kristy, have found out that Ben Brewer and his spooky friends are going to have a birthday party in their attic on Halloween night! It used to be fun having a ghost around. But now Karen isn't so sure!
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Dear Dad: Growing Up with a Parent in Prison -- And How We Stayed Connected
A stunning graphic novel memoir about growing up with an incarcerated parent.
" ...Your dad is coming back home."
As far back as nine-year-old Jay Jay Patton can remember, her dad, Antoine has been in prison. Growing up in Buffalo, New York with her mom and younger brother, she's only been to visit him twice. Instead, the two have sent each other numerous letters -- Jay Jay's letters can take weeks or months to reach her dad, and some never even get delivered. What's it going to be like having Dad home?
This powerful coming-of-age graphic novel memoir tells Jay Jay Patton's life of growing up with a dad in -- and out of -- prison. How she and her dad were able to develop a powerful father/daughter bond and create Photo Patch -- a life-changing application that connects children to incarcerated parents. Because no child should have to grow up unable to engage with their parents. As Jay Jay says: "it's not a privilege for a kid to be able to talk to their parent. It's a right."
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Hell Followed with Us
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A furious, queer debut novel about embracing the monster within and unleashing its power against your oppressors.
"A long, sustained scream to the various strains of anti-transgender legislation multiplying around the world like, well, a virus." —The New York Times
Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him—the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world’s population. Desperately, he searches for a place where the cult can’t get their hands on him, or more importantly, on the bioweapon they infected him with.
But when cornered by monsters born from the destruction, Benji is rescued by a group of teens from the local Acheson LGBTQ+ Center, affectionately known as the ALC. The ALC’s leader, Nick, is gorgeous, autistic, and a deadly shot, and he knows Benji’s darkest secret: the cult’s bioweapon is mutating him into a monster deadly enough to wipe humanity from the earth once and for all.
Still, Nick offers Benji shelter among his ragtag group of queer teens, as long as Benji can control the monster and use its power to defend the ALC. Eager to belong, Benji accepts Nick’s terms…until he discovers the ALC’s mysterious leader has a hidden agenda, and more than a few secrets of his own. Perfect for fans of Gideon the Ninth and Annihilation.
A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
A William C. Morris Award Finalist
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
A YAVA Award Nominee!
A Booklist Editors' Choice Selection
A BCCB Blue Ribbon Book
Named to the ALA Rainbow Roundtable's Rainbow Book List -
The Prom Queen (Fear Street) by R.L. Stine
ON NETFLIX NOW! "FEAR STREET: THE PROM QUEEN," is the latest installment based on classic R.L. Stine novels, following 2021's trilogy of slashers. Set in the neon-drenched 1980's, Prom Queen follows a whole new generation of Shadysiders as they prepare for their senior prom.
It’s 1988 in Shadyside. A spring night, soft moonlight, five beautiful prom queen candidates, dancing couples at the high school prom—these should be the makings of a perfect, romantic night. But Lizzie McVay realizes someone is brutally killing the prom queen candidates one by one and she may be next on the list.
Can she stop the murderer before the big dance is over…for good?