Staff Book and Media Recommendations

Jean Longo is a Research & Learning Librarian at the University of Central Oklahoma.

The House in the Cerulean Sea

TJ Klune

The House in the Cerulean Sea is a captivating story filled with magic and surprise.  Forty-year-old prickly Linus Baker lives a quiet solitary life in a rainy city, in a tiny house with a cat called Calliope.  At home once he gets past the pipe smoking Mrs. Klapper, he is happy listening to his old Victrola and conversing with Calliope.

He has a very special job as a caseworker for a governmental agency called the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY).  He takes the rules and his job extremely seriously and writes objective and meticulous reports about the orphanages he observes.  It is the quality of these reports that has him summoned by Extremely Upper Management.  While meeting with Extremely Upper Management, he is given a top-secret assignment to visit an isolated orphanage on Marsyas Island.  So, Linus and Calliope get on a train and take it to the end of the line.  He is tasked with determining if the six dangerous magical youth living together are a danger to the world.