Today marks the birthday of 83-year-old poet John Ashbery.

Ashbery has many books in our poetry section. One of his most notable would be Self-portrait In A Convex Mirror, which won not only the National Book Award in 1975, but also the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Also in his long list of publications is April Galleons, which Library Journal reviewed, saying the "...seamless style allows a rich assemblage of voices to move nimbly between high comedy and low, among fable, memory, and meditation."

His latest is Planisphere, which came out last year and is named after a device which shows the visible stars for any date and time.

The Nutbrown Hares find Colors Everywhere.
Alison’s Zinnia is an alphabet book of names and flowers, with full-page illustrations of each flower by Anita Lobel.
A little girl knows EXACTLY what she does NOT want to wear in Too Purpley!
Among the stories in Virginia Tashjian’s classic With a Deep Sea Smile we told “The Lady’s Room” in Preschool Storytime at Malletts Creek Branch this week.
Pinkalicious is what happens when you eat too many pink cupcakes.
When the mice begin to step in the paints they find new colors of Mouse Paint.

The World Wildlife Fund has put out a list of Ten Species to Watch in 2010. On the list with tigers, polar bears, mountain gorillas, and giant pandas, among others, are monarch butterflies. Their fate is tied to their habitat being destroyed by natural disasters and industrial development, affecting breeding patterns.

Every year millions of monarchs leave their locations and travel thousands of miles to Mexico or California to the overwintering site where they will reside until the following Spring. (Envision a forest of pine trees that are completely covered in monarchs!) How do they know how to get from Michigan or Kansas down to the same spot in Mexico every year? That is THE question, and it has been well studied for years. Not only is their migration fascinating, but their complete life cycle is as well.

To read up on the monarch butterfly, AADL has you all set with a list of books. For the younger set I recommend Monarchs, and The Monarch's Progress: Poems With Wings. For the adults, a real winner is Chasing Monarchs: Migrating with the butterflies of passage, by Robert Michael Pyle. For more info, MonarchWatch.org is an excellent source for all things monarch, whether you’re a student, a teacher, or a life long learner.

When you see those orange beauties flying in the sky this Summer, or perhaps perched on some milkweed, give them a second look.

When a critic remarks that "Michael Crichton might have produced this had he had a literary sensibility. Thoroughly well-written, grounded in science and a sorrowful sense of human nature, this book is utterly memorable", you pay attention.

Science writer and journalist Laurence Gonzales' debut novel Lucy** is "explosive and daring".

Scientist Jenny Lowe rescued Lucy, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a primatologist from the jungles of the Congo during a civil war uprising and brought her to live in the suburbs of Chicago. It turns out that Lucy's incredible physical and intellectual powers are due to her unique heritage: she is half human and half bonobo. Forced to go public, Lucy becomes an instant and endangered celebrity, accruing marriage proposals and death threats.

"Lucy is irresistible, her predicament wrenching, and Gonzales' imaginative, sweet-natured, hard-charging, and deeply inquisitive thriller will be a catalyst for serious thought and debate", raising profound questions about identity and family, the moral, ethical, and philosophical issues of genetic engineering.

As part of his research, Gonzales observed the largest colony of bonobos in the world at the Milwaukee Zoo, an hour from his home. Bonobo extinction is a real threat, hear and watch the many faceted discussion on the Diane Rehm Show.

For a first person account of working with bonobos in the wild, read Vanessa Woods' Bonobo Handshake : a memoir of love and adventure in the Congo (2010).

Readers interested in relationships between primates and humans will not want to miss Sarah Gruen's Ape House coming out in September. This is her new novel after the blockbuster of a debut Water for Elephants.

** = Starred Reviews (In the interest of full disclosure, reviews are mixed. You be the judge but I LOVED it).

Man Booker Prize 2010 fiction longlist announced today

Twelve novels are on the Man Booker Prize fiction longlist for 2010. The Booker, the leading literary prize in the English speaking world of fiction, comes with a £50,000 purse.

This year's longlist includes:

Peter Carey for Parrot and Olivier in America, a fictional account of the life of Alexis de Tocqueville. Carey has won the Booker twice before.

Room, by Emma Donoghue. Reminiscent of the real-life horror story of kidnapped Jaycee Lee Dugard, five-year-old Jack has been imprisoned with his mother his whole life. What happens when they escape?

Paul Murray for Skippy Dies. A Dublin boarding school is the setting for this dark comedy about Skippy, a dead fourteen-year old student, and how he got that way.

We will post the shortlist on Tuesday, September 7. The winner will be announced on Tuesday, October 12 on the BBC News at 10 p.m.

vault curtis: comics storefront

Vault of Midnight, an Ann Arbor institution for 15 years, has won this year's Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award. The award, handed out to a store who has "done an outstanding job of supporting the comics art medium both in the community and within the industry at large", was given out last night at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con, the comic industry's biggest event of the year. As frequent partners with Vault of Midnight, we can attest to their involvement with the community; almost any day of the week you can walk in and find a book signing, an art show, or a game night happening at 219 S. Main Street.

Stores from all over the US and Canada are entered into the running for the award, and owners Curtis Sullivan and Steve Fodale were surprised to get the award. Read more about the win on annarbor.com and then stop in to say congratulations!

vote

The primary election Tuesday, Aug. 3 will include candidates for mayor, city council, county commissioners and state and federal elected officials. City of Ann Arbor polling locations will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Several polling location changes are in place for the August 3rd primary so be sure to check the list for your polling location. And remember to bring photo I.D. with you to vote.

Not sure what your exact polling location is? Not sure if you're registered to vote? Visit the Michigan Voter Information Center, the State of Michigan online voter information center. The City Clerk is still accepting applications for absentee ballots and will be open on Saturday, July 31, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. In-person requests for absentee ballots will be accepted at the City Clerk's Office, 2nd floor of City Hall, until 4 p.m. Monday, Aug. 2.

The Blank Generation - The Birth of Punk

In 1970s New York City, Patti Smith Group guitarist Ivan Kral was making home movies of his friends and fellow musicians, never knowing that they would all one day be famous. Bands such as Blondie, The Ramones, and the Talking Heads were all playing sets at the legendary CBGBs while being filmed on black and white 16mm. The Blank Generation was about to be born. When Kral started getting together with filmmaker Amos Poe, they created a special film that's now like a time capsule back to NYC's early punk rock and glam scene. With silent video footage, Kral and Poe added the audio from demos and live recordings separately. Amazingly, the rare video of the bands in the film is often the earliest available footage in existence.

The Blank Generation will be shown at the Michigan Theater this Thursday, July 29 at 7:00 PM, and Ivan Kral himself will be making a special appearance. You can't get this on DVD. This is not one to be missed!

What is it about digging into an enormous box of junk that makes me so happy? I just spent a couple of hours at the fabulous Scrap Box. There, I met an old friend who is working on their new facebook page, dumpster dove and filled my trunk with junk for the Bizarre Bazaar and Swap-O-Rama experiments. Come one, come all!