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Asparagus!

by potterbee

Asparagus season is in full swing in Michigan this time of year! Michigan asparagus season begins in late April-early May in the southwest corner of the state; it wraps up in late June in the north. A recent frost has slowed the initial harvest this season but since the majority of the asparagus crop is still protected underground, it will continue to pop up through the month of June. Asparagus is a member of the lily family, so it has very extensive root systems. It grows mostly along waterways and the roots can go as deep as twelve to twenty feet.

20 Michigan family farms harvest approximately 20 million pounds of asparagus on 9,500 acres of land. It takes four years for an asparagus field to fully mature; fields last for approximately 20 years.
A single asparagus plant can produce 25 or more spears over the 7-week harvest season. During the growing season, asparagus is harvested every day as the spears can grow two to three inches a day. Harvesting stimulates production, when a spear is cut, the plant sends up another shoot. Once the harvest is complete, the remaining spears are allowed to grow up and leaf out. These plants will grow up to six feet tall and, once leafed, will look like giant ferns. This fern is nurtured all summer and feeds the root system for the following year's harvest.

Learn more about this vegetable through many items found in our collection!

Oceana County, Michigan is known as the "Asparagus Capital of the World" for its high production of asparagus.The rich history is shared in the documentary Asparagus!.

Asparagus is one of the most nutritionally well-balanced vegetables in existence. The leading supplier among vegetables of folic acid and it offers a wide array of nutrients in significant amounts for a healthy diet. Find recipes in Vegetable literacy or Vegan brunch.

Asparagus can be crafty, The gourmet paper maker.

A little bit wacky and fun to read picture book story for kids is The Mighty Asparagus.

Learn to hunt this rich vegetable with Euell Gibbons classic Stalking the Wild Asparagus.

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Blog Post

PreK Bits - "B" is for BUGS

by ryanikoglu

Ms. Rachel brought Bug Stories to Storytime.
We counted bugs and sounds from the NOISY COUNTING BOOK.
We played “Eensy Weensy Spider” … you can singalong at home with CDs EENSY WEENSY CD Of LITTLE FINGERPLAYS and NURSERY RHYME TIME.
We danced Fast and Slow to the song "Fireflies". You can hear and learn the song from the CD HAPPY AS CLAMS by Lena.
Once there was a Bug who had a bowl of SOUP For ONE ... until more Bugs arrived!

For more favorite books with bugs in them try these:
MAMA LOOK! … Baby creatures and their mothers.
DU IZ TAK? … Learn how to speak in “Bug” language.
BUG BEAR … When a bug won’t leave you alone.
FLY! … Worm can wiggle. Ant can march. What can Fly?
SOME BUGS … Backyard bug behavior in rhyming text.
BUG IN A VACUUM … Oh my! A different view!
STEP GENTLY OUT … Magnified photos of bugs, and poetic text to describe the insect world.
1001 BUGS To SPOT … A picture puzzle book.
The ANT And The GRASSHOPPER … A fable.
BUGS 7 stories about bugs all in one bag … A set from the Stories To Go Collection.
BZzzzzz ... and away we GO !

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Blog Post

Stellar New Children’s Books

by manz

These are two of my favorite new oversized picture books, both in content and in illustration.

The Blue Hour by Isabelle Simler has the most beautiful etchings you’ll find in a story and is an absolute work of art in every respect. The words are sweet and quiet. The pages and the animals featured are all shades of blue. Pale blue, ocean blue, royal blue, slate blue, and so many more blues you never noticed. It is a treat for the eyes as the animals in the page go throughout their day until the blue hour sets in.

In contrast, Big Dogs, Little Dogs: A Visual Guide to the World’s Dogs by Jim Medway has no story and very little words. What it does have is oodles of illustrations of a variety of dogs! Just about every breed you could think of, from toy dogs to sporting dogs, is included. But the best part is the page with the mixed-breed dogs, which invites the reader to guess what breeds make up each dog. The book is a delight, and features a dandy appendix that lists the breeds with info about them.

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Blog Post

Ramona Blue

by potterbee

Julie Murphy is back with a new novel, Ramona Blue, a story about a strong, marginalized teen doing her best to make sense of who she is.

Ramona Leroux is a 6 foot 3, blue-haired, gay teen who lives in a FEMA trailer with her dad and sister, Hattie, in Eulogy, Mississippi. Things aren't looking so stellar for Ramona after her dreamy summer romance comes to an end, and her grand plans to leave Eulogy don't look quite as likely when her family suddenly needs her more than ever. But when her childhood friend, Freddie, moves back to town, their reconnection brings more than either of them ever expected.

Author of Dumplin’, Murphy is familiar with navigating the world of girls on the brink of self-discovery. In Ramona Blue, she addresses how we use labels and identity markers for defining the relationships we engage in. With coming of age to adulthood labels change and it's challenging to redefine who were and who we are now. Heartfelt, humorous, fun and sure to be a must-read for teens and fans of YA fiction.

A recent interview with the author can be found in current issue of Book Pages.

An exquisite, thoughtful exploration of the ties that bind and the fluidity of relationships, sexuality, and life.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

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PreK Bits - "G" is for Growing GARDENS

by ryanikoglu

Ms. Rachel, Banjo Betsy, and Ms. Allison brought garden stories to Preschool Storytime.
“The Garden” is a story within FROG & TOAD TOGETHER …Toad finds out that growing one IS hard WORK !
We danced to “Puddles” with Charlotte Diamond's song from her CD MY BEAR GRUFF.
INCH BY INCH … an inchworm meets a robin and the rest is taking measurements.

For more favorite Garden stories try the following:
INCH BY INCH: The Garden Song … the text is the classic folksong, accompanied by lovely pictures on every page. You can sing as you read.
“The Garden Song” is a classic folk song recorded with favorite performers on any of these CDs for children:
SING With FRED by Fred Penner; PICKIN’ & GRINNIN’: Great Folk Songs For Kids with Maria Muldaur and many more artists; PETER, PAUL And MOMMY, TOO with Peter, Paul and Mary; and OWL SINGALONG with Raffi.
MY BUSY GREEN GARDEN … a tribute to bugs, bees, and birds.
PANDORA … Pandora nurses a young bird back to health and notices how the bird changes her landscape.
THERE’S A TIGER In The GARDEN … the power of imagination.
DU IZ TAK? … a Caldecott Honor Book 2017 that teaches you how to speak in “Bug” language. There are fabulous illustrations too.
UP In The GARDEN And DOWN In The DIRT … especially fun for what goes on down-in-the-dirt.

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The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry - Selected and Introduced by Paul Kingsnorth

by ballybeg

Wendell Berry’s formula for a good life and a good community is simple and pleasingly unoriginal. Slow down. Pay attention. Do good work. Love your neighbors. Love your place. Stay in your place. Settle for less. Enjoy it more. (from the introduction)

Two of my all-time favorite authors have collaborated to produce what one, Paul Kingsnorth, considers a selection of the best of the other, Wendell Berry, into one volume, The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry. It is necessarily limited, containing none of Berry’s poetry or fiction and only 31 of his hundreds of essays. Kingsnorth hoped to represent the best of Berry’s writing and thinking over the last five decades, as an introduction to his work and an impetus to read more of it and, to that end, I believe the book succeeds. Berry is the venerable man of letters, with an earthy wisdom, unashamed traditionalism, incisive intelligence, and passionate resistance to those who would desecrate the Earth. If you have never read Wendell Berry, or have only read selectively, and don’t anticipate reading through all of his work, this collection is a splendid representation of the scope of his talent and profound understanding of the world. Paul Kingsnorth says, “I recommend reading him now. It would be the equivalent of reading Thoreau or Emerson when they were still alive and writing.”

Now in his eighties, Berry still lives and farms in the Kentucky hill country he moved back to in the 1960s, five miles from where he, his parents, and grandparents were born and raised. He left behind a promising career in NYC to return home. All his stories, poetry, and essays, all of his deep and insightful thinking about the land and how to preserve it, have been cultivated by his devotion to this place. He writes:

When I have thought of the welfare of the earth, the problems of its health and preservation, the care of its life, I have had this place before me, the part representing the whole more vividly and accurately, making clearer and more pressing demands, than any idea of the whole. When I have thought of kindness or cruelty, weariness or exuberance, devotion or betrayal, carelessness or care, doggedness or awkwardness or grace, I have had in my mind’s eye the men and women of this place, their faces and gestures and movements. p.3

Berry defies categorization in simple terms, challenges traditional labels, and embodies contradictions. He is deeply immersed in the old ways of the pre-industrial, agrarian tradition of the South, but trained in prestigious, urban universities around the world. He is extremely prolific and productive, while taking the time to plow with horses and to write with a pencil and pad of paper. He lives quietly and simply on a rural hillside, while challenging the political, economic and cultural trends of our times. He is religiously committed to his family and farm, but has risked arrest in numerous protests of strip-mining in Kentucky. He sides repeatedly with the people who have no power and the land which has no voice, yet is never maudlin or sentimental. Wendell Berry speaks truth to power, and truth to complacency, like no one else today.

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Blog Post

PreK Bits - "W" is for WEATHER

by ryanikoglu

Ms. Rachel, Ms. Allison, and Banjo Betsy presented stories and songs to go with WEATHER this week at Storytime.
“The Wind and the Clothes” and “Spring Showers” were both bunny stories from WAITING-For-SPRING STORIES by Bethany Roberts. This book is out-of-print and lives on in other library collections. You can borrow it through MelCat … the Michigan Electronic Library Catalog.

For more stories about WEATHER try these favorites:
Stories-To-Go: WEATHER … a set of weather stories, and an activity folder with ideas to expand the theme at home. Check it all out at once!
WATERSONG … Fox’s journey to take shelter from the rain …
The STORM … a little boy watches a storm coming. Will he still get to go to the beach the next day?
THUNDERCAKE … Let’s bake one!
PUDDLE … a bored child. A rainy day. A clever Mother. More to say.
TOAD WEATHER … a lovely picture book about true phenomenon.
A BOY ASKED The WIND … the world's most celebrated winds, starting with the Chinooks. Build your wind vocabulary.
PITTER And PATTER … two squirrels and introduction to the hydrologic cycle of weather.
WHOSE HAT IS THAT? … I don’t know but it looks good on YOU!
KITE DAY: A Bear And Mole Story … two friends make a kite.

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Meet “It’s All Write!” 2017 Judge #9: Brooks Benjamin!

by BugsAndSlugs

The ninth judge for this year's “It’s All Write!” Teen Writing Contest and author of the 2016 YA novel My Seventh-Grade Life in Tights is Brooks Benjamin.

Brooks Benjamin describes himself as a reader, writer, teacher, and eater of pizza. He is also a fan of choreographed dance, which lead him to form a New Kids on the Block tribute dance crew in sixth grade. Perhaps this is why his debut novel My Seventh Grade Life in Tights is about Dillon, who wants nothing more than to be a real dancer.

Dillon's Dad wants him to play football, his friends and co-founding members of his freestyle crew think dance studios are for sell-outs, and Dillon just wants to follow his heart. "This first novel is a fun exploration of middle-school friendships and the stigmas that come with certain hobbies...a fresh and winning debut about the power of self-expression." (Booklist)

Stay tuned for more information about “It’s All Write!” Teen Writing Contest 2017 Judges!

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Anything is Possible

by mansii

Returning to the heartbeat of the small town Midwest after a detour to New York City life, Elizabeth Strout revisits the characters of her successful narrative My Name is Lucy Barton in her emotionally barring new work: Anything is Possible. Through a network of short stories that hold their own yet weave into one another, this work explores how single moments hold lasting sway over our futures. An "invisible" school janitor's faith in a small girl propels her forward as a successful writer--now his good faith in people is being tested. When a child is shocked with the image of her mother's affair, it opens lifelong caverns of insecurity; now she has the opportunity to see past her pain in being a catalyst for good in the life of a new generation. Those who felt a kinship with Lucy Barton will find their understanding of this character enlarged and will feel the significance of each person that passes through the life of another, no matter how brief the stay. What do we run away from, and how do we arrange our escape? How often are we torn apart by the two-edged sword of love and hate, and yet how often do we hold the keys to small miracles in our own two hands? This long established, Pulitzer winning author richly explores what it is to be a soul in a world of souls.

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Dig if you will the picture : funk, sex, God and genius in the music of Prince

by potterbee

Today marks one year since the passing of Prince., a beloved artist for many. Recently released is a biography of his life, work, and the artistry of Prince, entitled, Dig if you will the picture : funk, sex, God and genius in the music of Prince.

Ben Greenman (New York Times bestselling author, contributing writer to the New Yorker) presents a unique and kaleidoscopic look into the life, legacy, and electricity of the pop legend Prince and his wide ranging impact on our culture. Uniting a diverse audience while remaining singularly himself, Prince was a tireless artist, a musical virtuoso and chameleon, and a pop-culture prophet who shattered traditional ideas of race and gender, rewrote the rules of identity, and redefined the role of sex in pop music.

Greenman has been listening to and writing about Prince since the mid-eighties. Here, with the passion of an obsessive fan and the skills of a critic, journalist, and novelist, he mines his encyclopedic knowledge of Prince's music to present a biography and the story of the paradigm-shifting ideas that he communicated to his millions of fans around the world.

Greenman's other published work includes collaborations with George Clinton and Questlove on their celebrated memoirs.