"A library book, I imagine, is a happy book." Cornelia Funke

"Everything puts me in mind of a story." Ben Franklin

Monday, December 29, 2008

Super Cute Animal Rescue Program!

Tri is ready to meet fans!
Blossom the Beagle is ready to be adopted!

Today at my library, Miss "Carol Has Her Nose in a Book" hosted a wonderful animal rescue program. Our guests were Homeward Bound http://www.homewardboundrescue.com/, the Humane Society http://www.mnhumane.org/and the K9 unit http://www.ci.west-saint-paul.mn.us/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC=%7B327EFD67-EC59-4B64-A75B-1105C0329D3A%7D with the West Saint Paul police. They brought lovely animals: Blossom, the Beagle, Phineas, the American Pittbull puppy, Tri, the kitty, and Mike, the German Shepherd police dog.

I'm crazy about animals. so this was really exciting for me! More pictures to come.

Monday, December 22, 2008

150 books you should read

Floating Lush found these lists at http://jezebel.com/5053732/75-books-every-woman-should-read-the-complete-list and http://www.esquire.com/the-side/feature/75-books?src=rss

and so I had to see how many I'd read.

From the woman's list:

  1. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
  2. The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
  3. Bastard out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison
  4. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
  5. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
  6. Possession, A.S. Byatt
  7. And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
  8. The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
  9. The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank
  10. The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston
  11. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin
  12. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
  13. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
  14. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
  15. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
  16. A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith
  17. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft

And I'd like to read: Beloved, Toni Morrison , Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert, My Antonia, Willa Cather and Love In The Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Now for the men's list, from Esquire;

  1. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
  2. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
  3. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
  4. The Shining, Stephen King
  5. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
  6. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
  7. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien
  8. Slaughter House Five, Kurt Vonnegut
  9. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

And I'd like to read: As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner and A Good Man Is Hard To Find, Flannery O'Connor

Obsolete Librarian?



My husband and I were watching some episodes of Season 2 of The Twilight Zone when we ran across the above episode. Burgess Meredith plays a librarian declared obsolete by the State and targeted for termination. I love the fuss that he causes when he states his profession!

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Tonight's Pajama Storytime


lions-tigers-bears-cats
Originally uploaded by rosebuddls

We will be doing stories about:

Lions:

  • We're Going on a Lion Hunt by David Axtell
  • Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen

Tigers:

  • Charles Tiger by Siobhan Dodds
  • The Dancing Tiger by Malachy Doyle
  • Tiger Can't Sleep by S. J. Fore

Bears:

  • Orange Pear Apple Bear by Emily Gravett
  • Old Bear by Kevin Henkes
  • Bears by Ruth Krauss
  • Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson

Oh My!:

  • The Seals on the Bus by Lenny Hort

Black Box by Julie Schumacher


I loved this brief and important novel. If you or someone close to you has suffered from depression, you will be able to identify with Elena and her family as her sister Dora slides into mental illness.


In Elena's close knit family, she is the steady one, the level one, the one who never cries. Her older sister Dora is more fun and popular until her sudden change into an angry, apathetic and suicidal stranger. The family and especially Elena are left reeling. She knows that she must save Elena, but what does that mean? Why are her parents keeping secrets from her and refusing to listen to her opinions? With support from her "grandma therapist" and her new friend Jimmy, Elena will try to muddle through this dark and lonely experience.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Here's to One Hundred More!

I like Polly Horvath's books. I have read Everything on a Waffle, The Trolls, The Canning Season and now, My One Hundred Adventures. I think that this new book may be my favorite.

The summer that Jane is twelve and living with her poet mother and younger sister and brothers in their home on the beach, she prays for 100 adventures. Her prayers are nearly answered (okay, she has fourteen adventures, but they're special ones) as she gets roped into heisting a hot air balloon to deliver bibles, treks around a lake looking for a transparent "poodle," is blackmailed into babysitting a family of untidy, unruly little children and more. Throughout the summer, Jane meets several of her mom's former boyfriends, and learns a lot about the adults around her.

My favorite thing about Horvath's books is her quirky sense of humor. Jane describes a farmer walking down the road with his cows, "It would be peaceful to walk some cows. They wouldn't bark alarmingly. They would moo in celestial harmony." I get a huge kick out of this!

This is fun reading and a nice change for me. It is lighter, without being fluff. Adults like me can read it and enjoy themselves, and I think thoughtful kids will like it too.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott


This book has certainly caused a lot of buzz. You've probably heard of it. Like 33 Snowfish by Adam Rapp, which puts us readers into the lives of abused, sexually exploited and damaged kids, or Doing It by Melvin Burgess, that delivers us teen sexual fantasies with more detail than any of Judy Blume's most censored material ever did, it expands the limits of Teen fiction. I feel that, like 33 Snowfish, it does so successfully and seriously.

Our 15 year old narrator, known as Alice, was abducted five years ago from a school field trip. Since then she has been raped, abused and completely controlled by Ray, who is unstable and certainly capable of murder. Alice's brightest hope is to die, but then one day Ray decides that she should help him pick her replacement, a sweet little girl who will never be allowed to grow up. Alice will accept any means to free herself from Ray. Or so she believes.

It is horrific stuff and Scott tells her story without flinching. She also completely gets inside her character. I kept wondering why I was subjecting myself to something so disturbing, but it seemed important that I finish. There was no bizarre plot twist (I'm think Breathe My Name by R.A. Nelson), no scenes of hyped up drama. The story itself is riveting enough, and although it's terrible to ingest, it's beautifully and straightforwardly told.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Getting the message

All right, I am terribly slow on this one. I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak received the Printz honor in 2006. I have to shamefully admit that I never really looked into it because of...its cover (ducks). It didn't appeal to me. Happily, I was recently reading plots for audio books and it grabbed me. Also, I had read and loved The Book Thief. Newly motivated, I listened to the whole shebang unabridged and read with a charming Australian accent by Mark Adan Gray. Crazily, I couldn't stop imagining protagonist Ed as a younger and Australian version of Callum Blue, who played Mason on Dead Like Me.

So: Ed is working as an underage taxi driver when he happens to be at the right place to foil an inept bank robber. Tauted as a hero, Ed's life takes a turn for the mysterious when he receives a playing card with addresses of strangers that he is supposed to help. But how? And who sent these tasks his way?

I loved Ed, his shiftless friends, smelly dog and the way he changes people's lives, especially his own. Zusak has created a book that will make you think and make you laugh. Ed is compassionate without being cloying and one's actions can make a difference even in an imperfect world.

This book cemented my high opinion of Zusak's writing. He may be my new favorite author for teens. I know that he has at least two other books that I haven't read. Yeah!

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

MLA Library Conference!


On Thursday, I attended the MLA conference, held this year at the Sheraton in Bloomington, MN. Like last year, I had a fine time, in spite of the fact that I needed to get up at 5:30 to make the breakfast. I was motivated though, because the speaker was Will Weaver, author of the Minnesota Book Award winner Defect. He gave a fantastic speech, and graciously signed my copy of the book.

The workshops that I chose were:



One Conference, One Book Discussion: Defect
When Love Hurts: Taking the Pain Out of Romance Readers' Advisory
50 in 75 Book Talks (50books in 75 minutes)
Public Library Services for Special Needs Youth

I enjoyed them very much. Mr. Weaver was present for the discussion of his book, which added a very interesting dimension. It was also fun to hear about his other work. It made me want to run back to the library and check out Memory Boy. Here is the Publisher's Weekly review from the Amazon site:
The year is 2008, two years after a massive volcano has wreaked havoc in the United States. The air is polluted with ash, crops keep failing, fuel is scarce and looting is rampant. Sixteen-year-old Miles knows that the only way for his family to survive is to head to their cabin in the Minnesota wilderness. Relying on knowledge passed down to him from an elderly friend, Mr. Kurz, Miles constructs a man-powered vehicle out of bicycles and sailboat parts to transport himself, his parents and younger sister. Suspense builds steadily as the traveling foursome contends with hostile strangers, including road bandits and a sheriff who has allowed his relatives to occupy their cabin. Though it looks like the Newells have reached a dead end, Miles forms another plan. In an imaginative and plausible rendering of a futuristic society, Weaver plants enough familiar details so that readers can relate--including Dairy Queens and McDonald's restaurants (though meals cost 10 times as much), plus Miles's memories of school, suburbia and Mr. Kurz's nursing home. Although danger lurks around every corner, audience members will rest assured that Miles, armed with good instincts and highly developed mechanical skills, will be prepared to combat whatever roadblocks his loved ones meet. Ages 12-up.
Weaver's new book, Saturday Night Dirt, is about stock car racing and should grab guys who might not otherwise read much. He also formed a stock car racing team with a teen driver. Read more here: http://www.motornovels.com/
The romance readers' advisory session was run by Jennifer Brannen of Saint Paul Public Library. I have to confess that romance is not my genre, but Jennifer's enthusiasm was contagious. She also had authors Connie Brockway, http://www.conniebrockway.com/ and Tate Hallaway, http://tatehallaway.blogspot.com/ speak, and they were fun and well-spoken. I came away with a broader view of what makes a romance, and a desire to look into a couple of the titles for myself. The Landlord's Black-Eyed Daughter by Mary Ellen Dennis snagged my attention because it is based on Alfred Noyes' poem "The Highwayman." Shannon Hale's Austenland is about a woman who gets to spend two weeks in Regency England, via a vacation to an English estate filled with Austenesque character actors.
Lunch was followed by the delightful 50 book talks in 75 minutes. In this session a panel of librarians introduced us to books in the mystery, romance, young adult, World War II and literary fiction categories. The Young adult titles were:
(Which have I read? Those in red.)
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Thieves Like Us by Stephen Cole
The True Meaning of Cleavage by Mariah Fredericks
Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr
Black Box by Julie Schumacher
The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
Rucker Park Setup by Paul Volponi
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

Three of the literary titles were also YA. These were: Looking For Alaska by John Green, Black Juice by Margo Lanagan and How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff. The talks lit a fire under me to get reading True Meaning..., Black Box and How I Live Now.
Finally, was Public Library Services for Special Needs Youth. This workshop fills a need for us, I can say. We see a number of special needs teens at my library. Although the panel ran out of time before teens were discussed, it was a very informative talk. They cited the stat that currently 1 in 150 kids is autistic. That is surprising to me.
The capper of the day was that I won the BWI prize drawing and got about ten teen books and movies.
DVDS: The Grudge II and Big Daddy
Books:
Ever By Gail Carson Levine
It was awesome. Thanks, BWI!
I'll fill in some of these sketchy details later. Check back!