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Yantandou by Gloria Whelan
by Tahira
Yatandou lives in a small village in Mali. She pounds Millet with her pounding stick for food with her mother and the women of the village. She can’t wait until the new contraption the women are saving money to buy comes to her village so that they never have to pound Millet again. Gloria Whelan gives the reader an intriguing look into the life of a little girl a world away.
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Kid Bits - 4th/5th grade MYSTERY
by ryanikoglu
A NEW "Enola Holmes Mystery" just landed on the youth fiction shelves, The Case Of The Left-Handed Lady. Nancy Springer writes with a gift toward strong females characters, a good story, and settings in history. The "Enola Holmes" mysteries are written from the point of view of "Enola", Sherlock Holmes younger sister. The previous title is The Case Of The Missing Marquess. The setting is London in 1898. Nancy Springer is author of another strong series "Tales of Rowan Hood", placed in Sherwood Forest at the same time as the adventures of Robin Hood. Of course Rowan is a girl.
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If you loved "To Kill a Mockingbird"......
by Maxine
Carrie Brown's second novel, The Rope Walk is a stirring, atmospheric coming of age story of ten year old Alice Macauley who is the youngest child of five and the only daughter of Archie MacCauley, Shakespeare scholar, professor and widower. They live in a small town outside the college town of Brattleboro, Vermont. Alice grows up rough-housing with her older brothers who she adores but is anticipating a lonely summer as they all return to work and school after her birthday celebration. But into her life comes Theo, a bi-racial boy and an adventurer like her. They are both invited to come and read to Kenneth Fitzgerald, an artist dying of AIDS who has come to live with his sister. Themes of prejudice, friendship and tolerance pervade this novel whose luminous prose takes us all back to those long idle summers when, as children, days of lying in a hammock climbing trees or building forts in a stream were enough to make us happy.
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Anne Enright wins the 2007 Man Booker Prize
by sernabad
Last night, Anne Enright became the second Irish woman (Iris Murdoch was the first) to win the much coveted Man Booker Prize.
Ms. Enright, 45, won for The Gathering, her fourth novel, which follows the lives of Veronica Hegarty and her nine siblings, one of whom has recently died tragically. Ms. Enright leaves no family dysfunction unturned in this family saga, praised by one reviewer for its ‘exhilarating bleakness.’ In a radio interview in the UK yesterday, Ms. Enright described her winner as “…the intellectual equivalent of a Hollywood weepie.”
The Man Booker Prize comes with a £50,000 ($101,874) purse.
Blog Post
Blog Action Day
by manz
October 15 is Blog Action Day. Where the question asked is: “What would happen if every blog published posts discussing the same issue, on the same day?” The issue this year is the environment. It is encouraged for everyone with a blog to post something about the environment relating it to their own topic.
The library has many great books about the environment, both fact and opinion based. One of my favorite authors to tackle environmental issues is Derrick Jensen. He does it in such a personal way and his books really punch you in the gut and make you think about the world around you and your existence in it. Here are a few of his books that we have at the AADL: A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, Endgame Volume I, The problem of civilization, and Endgame Volume II, Resistance. Log into your own blog and get posting!
Blog Post
Homework Bits - "Electric Heroes" using the CATALOG
by ryanikoglu
A 4th/5th grade assignment is to find information on "Electric Heroes" and their inventions.
1. Choose CATALOG tab along the top of the website.
2. Use the link to "More SEARCH OPTIONS".
3. Enter "electricity", "AND", "inventors", then press SEARCH. You get a list that includes A Dangerous Engine: Benjamin Franklin; Nikola Tesla And The Taming Of Energy; Thomas Edison: Inventor Of The Age Of Electricity; and TV's Forgotten Hero: The Story of Philo Farnsworth.
Did you notice the Dewey Decimal Addresses are 921? This is the address for biographies. Then you look for the last name of your person.
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Comics Workshop for Teens! Today!!
by anned
Hey! Want to learn more about comics? Working on a webcomic or graphic novel? Need some help developing your characters and making them more expressive?
Comics artist Jerzy Drozd will be at the Pittsfield Branch at 6:30pm today to teach you how. The focus of the workshop will be exploring, developing, and expressing the inner lives of comics characters in humorous stories.
Blog Post
New Books in Spanish!
by Beth Manuel
New on our shelves en Espanol for kids are books from the series Magic Tree House and lots of Junie B. Jones as well as beautiful picture books like Martina una Cucarachita muy Linda. Esplendido! For adults, look for the graphic novel series by Iranian author Marjane Satrapi Persepolis which was released last spring in theaters. Also on shelves now are translated to Spanish bestsellers like Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray Love or Come, Reza, Ama.
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The impending death of the used bookseller
by remnil
provocative article on Entrepreneur.com recently profiled several industries on the verge of extinction. Among the condemned: record stores, newspapers, and used bookstores.
As the article notes, newspapers aren't really going to die; they're just going to change. But what about those book and record stores? It would perhaps be more accurate to say that and record stores are under threat. Sure, a few widely successful independents will remain. But even iconic independents are finding it harder to stay open.
What do you think? Are independent book and record stores disappearing? Should we even care, in the age of the long tail thrift and accessibility of Amazon and Barnes & Noble? Or will such stores simply adapt like their allegedly-doomed newspaper brethren?
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What is a Slan?
by RiponGood
A Slan is a highly evolved human, discovered by Samuel Lann. The legend says Lann exposed his wife to a mutation machine, producing three mutated offspring, two girls and a boy. Over a period of 1500 years, more Slans appeared. During that time, mankind and Slans fought a bitter war, in which the humans triumphed. It is not the human policy to hunt down and kill any Slan. So goes Slan by A. E. van Vogt, written in 1946. We also have an audio version.