Frank Carlson Library

"Rion Kwirk comes from a rather odd family. His mother named him and his sisters after her favorite constellations, and his father makes funky-flavored jellybeans for a living. One sister acts as if she's always on stage, and the other is a walking dictionary. But no one in the family is more odd than Rion's grandfather, Papa Kwirk. He's the kind of guy who shows up on his motorcycle only on holidays handing out crossbows and stuffed squirrels as...

Clayton feels most alive when he's with his grandfather, Cool Papa Byrd, and the band of Bluesmen -- he can't wait to join them, just as soon as he has a blues song of his own. But then the unthinkable happens. Cool Papa Byrd dies, and Clayton's mother forbids Clayton from playing the blues. And Clayton knows that's no way to live. Armed with his grandfather's brown porkpie hat and his harmonica, he runs away from home in search of the Bluesmen, hoping...

After her grandfather's death, a young girl explores her Baba Bazorg's house. As the girl wanders through the house, almost idly, her Baba Bazorg's house stands in for the man himself, with each object she describes standing as a touchstone to a memory, and each memory serving as a window into the relationship between the child and her grandfather. As she looks through its rooms, the things she sees and the object she touches bring to life memories...