Blog Post
Leo Dillon, one half of the award-winning Dillon & Dillon illustrators' team, has died
by sernabad
Leo Dillon who with Diane, his wife of 55 years, won multiple awards for their collaborative illustrations, has died.
The Dillons met at the prestigious Parsons School of Design in NY and became instant, fierce competitors. Ms. Dillon said their marriage was a 'survival mechanism to keep us from killing each other.' They attributed the success of their artistic sharing to the presence of It who helped wed their two styles.
The couple won multiple awards, including two back-to-back Caldecotts. When they won the 1976 Caldecott for Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears: A West African Folktale, Mr. Dillon, of Trinidadian descent, became the first African American to win that award. The very next year, the Dillons won the Caldecott again, this time for Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions.
Their ouuvre of children's literature illustrations accompanied an equally significant reputation as illustrators of science fiction covers. Five years before their first Caldecott, they captured the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artists.
Blog Post
Maurice Sendak, beloved children's author, has died
by sernabad
Maurice Sendak, wildly imaginative children's author/illustrator, died today.
Sendak, an award-winning author and illustrator, blew the lid off staid, squeaky clean children's books with his delightfully cranky, naughty subjects: "I don't care" Pierre (1962) and grumpy Max in Where the Wild Things Are (1963), which won the 1964 Caldecott.
He was also a lightning rod for criticism -- a naked Mickey in In the Night Kitchen (1985) had some school librarians "clean up" the content by slapping a diaper on Mickey.
In September of 2011, Sendak published Bumble-Ardy, the tale of a pig, orphaned when his parents become meals, who throws himself a rambunctious birthday party.
In February of 2013, My Brother's Book, an homage to his much-loved late brother, Jack, will be published.
Mr. Sendak, who was 83, died in Connecticut following complications from a recent stroke. To borrow from his 1993 book, We Are All in the Dumps...
Blog Post
Celebrate Free Comic Book Day with the Family Comic Jam
by K.C.
Saturday, May 5 -- 9:00 a.m.-Noon -- Downtown Multipurpose Room -- All Ages
Work as a family to make your own comics story!
In this hands-on workshop teaching artist Jerzy Drozd will show you how a cartoonist uses shape, size, and line to write with images. Then each family or group will divide up into a team consisting of a writer, artist, and letterer, switching between jobs with every page. The result is an improvisational cartoon story you create together.
This event, for all ages, coincides with Free Comic Book Day and Vault of Midnight will be donating comics to give away.
Blog Post
Take a Hike@Bird Hills
by K.C.
Thursday, May 3 | 7:00-8:30 PM | Bird Hills Natural Area | All Ages
The City of Ann Arbor Natural Area Preservation staff will lead a nature walk in one of Ann Arbor's most beloved parks, Bird Hills. Covering 147 acres, it is the largest park in Ann Arbor.
Learn about ecological restoration and responsible use of public lands. Opportunities for wildlife viewing are plentiful. If we’re lucky, we may get to view some early spring bloomers like trillium, jack-in-the pulpit, and more. Black, red, and fox squirrels, ground squirrels, deer, and butterflies are very common in Bird Hills. Dress comfortably to walk and enjoy nature.
We'll meet in the parking lot off Newport Road, just north of M-14. This event is for all ages.
Blog Post
Bookshare Celebrates its 10th Anniversary!
by Beth Manuel
Access to books for education, employment & social inclusion has dramatically increased for people with print disabilities. An early ebook innovator, Bookshare developed a new approach to digital rights management (DRM) which include both electronic fingerprints in the books as well as legal agreements & social pressure. Bookshare's parent company, Benetech is a leading provider of accessible open content and open source tools to improve accessibility. Bookshare started with volunteers digitizing and legally sharing materials over the Internet with others who had qualified print disabilities. To date, over 180 publishers have now contributed over half of the 140,000 titles in the collection. For more information about Bookshare or to see if you or a family member qualify, click here.
Blog Post
A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur
by Grace22
The Ann Arbor Young Actor's Guild will present a lively adaptation of Mark Twain's classic book on April 27 and 28. Twain's book tells the story of Hank Morgan, the quintessential self-reliant New Englander who brings to King Arthur’s Age of Chivalry the “great and beneficent” miracles of nineteenth-century engineering and American ingenuity. Through the collision of past and present, Twain exposes the insubstantiality of both utopias, destroying the myth of the romantic ideal as well as his own era’s faith in scientific and social progress.
Mark Twain first published his novel in 1889. Since then, this famous story has been adapted many times. In A Knight in Camelot Whoopi Goldberg plays a computer scientist whose computer malfunctions. This causes her to be sent back in time with her laptop. She uses the device to amaze the court of the 6th-century English King Arthur and his court.
It has been said that If Mark Twain were alive today, he'd probably be publishing interactive novels on the Web. Like many people of his time, he embraced new technological developments and saw them as a measure of human potential. But Twain was also keenly aware of the limitations of technology, as he shows in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Blog Post
Drop-In Homework Help will resume on April 30th
by schoenbaechlere
Tutoring sessions will resume on Monday and Wednesday evenings on April 30. Homework Help will continue throughout the spring. Please read on for more details about homework help at AADL.
Looking for help with your homework? Look no further than AADL’s Downtown Library. The University of Michigan Chapter of Circle K is once again providing tutoring for students in grades K-12. Stop by the Youth Department Story Corner Mondays and Wednesdays between 4:00 and 8:00 pm to take advantage of this great service!
AADL also provides access to Brainfuse, an online tutoring service. Live tutors are available from 2:00 -11:00 pm every day!
Blog Post
Happy Anniversary, Phantom Tollbooth!
by Grace22
This beloved children's adventure novel and modern fairy tale first published in 1961 was written by Norton Juster and illustrated by Jules Feiffer. It tells the story of Milo, a boy bored by the world around him; every activity seems a waste of time. One afternoon he receives a mysterious package that contains a miniature tollbooth and a map of "the Lands Beyond". Having nothing better to do, he decides to drive through it in his toy car. He finds himself in a land called the Kingdom of Wisdom. He meets the "watchdog" Tock, who becomes his companion, has many adventures, and goes on a quest to rescue the princesses of the kingdom, Princess Rhyme and Princess Reason, from the castle of air. Wonderful and surprising plays on words and puns are an important part of the story.
We have two different editions of the book on BOCD, one narrated by Norman Dietz, and the other performed by David Hyde Pierce.
The CBS Sunday Morning show aired a segment yesterday celebrating the fiftieth anniversary, with a profile of the author and the illustrator.
Blog Post
Little Gems
by StoryLaura
Check out the amazing miniature display in the Youth Department. Thanks to the Ann Arbor Little Gems Miniature Club, you will see tiny treasures, from Snow White’s cottage to a classic bakery with petite goodies. On May 12th at 1 pm, at our Malletts Creek Branch, fourth graders and up are invited to create a magical Woodland Hide-A-Way, with experts from the Miniature Club. There are so many talented miniature artists around! Stop by the glass case Downtown to see the hide-a-way made of bark and stones and moss, that you can make too. It's the one with the elfin figure in the acorn cap! So many possibilities!
Blog Post
The Mildenhall Treasure
by Grace22
Buried one foot below the surface of a field called Thistley Green in the English town of Mildenhall, a most fantastic Roman treasure lay for centuries until a ploughman came along in the 1940s and accidentally dug it up. What followed was a tragedy, involving human greed and abuse of a good man's innocence. Gordon Butcher, discoverer of this treasure, was entitled by British law to the full amount of its market value. Although Butcher was not aware of this law, another ploughman named Ford did know about it, and managed to bamboozle Butcher out of the fortune.
This remarkable story was written in 1946 by a young Roald Dahl, who went on to write such beloved classics as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach. Dahl's inimitable style blazes through even in his early career. The true story, republished with stunning art by Ralph Steadman, is as riveting as if it had happened today, with heartbreaking notes of unbearable unfairness and sincere naiveté. Each page, thickly covered with rich, dark splashes of paint, sketchy faces, and bits of collage, has a wild and ominous tenor, reflected in the ferocious weather that fateful day when the hapless farmer discovered--and lost--the greatest treasure ever found in the British Isles.