Maybe you've been to Greenfield Village and seen the horses at work.
Or maybe that's one of the things you're planning to do this summer. Maybe you're just a big fan of horses.
Come to the Pittsfield Branch Library at 2:00 p.m on Tuesday, June 19, 2012 to see the author
and photographer talk about their book The Horses of Greenfield Village. Hear the story of these
wonderful working animals.
For all ages, kindergarten and up.

2011 LEGO Contest
If it's summer it's LEGO Contest time! One of our largest and most anticipated events is scheduled for Thursday, August 2, at the Kensington Court Hotel, 610 Hilton Blvd., (near Briarwood Mall). Last year we had over 200 entries and we can be sure there will even more this year!. Preschoolers, Kid, Teens and Adults are invited to participate. New this year: PEOPLE'S CHOICE! Attendees of the contest may vote for one project in each age category. People's Choice winners will receive a special LEGO trophy. For all the details read the complete rules and guidelines, and then start building!

Thursday, June 14 | 7:00-8:30 p.m. | 1831 Traver Road | All Ages

Meet at the Project Grow Garden of the Leslie Science and Nature Center, 1831 Traver Road and join a naturalist from Natural Area Preservation (City of Ann Arbor) on a nature walk. Learn about native plants and trees, ecological restoration, and responsible use of public lands, as well as volunteer activities in Ann Arbor Parks.

Black Pond Woods is named for a small, vernal pond whose basin was carved by receding glaciers. Tannins and humic acids from leaf litter cause the water color to be dark brown, thus giving rise to the name “Black Pond.” This pond provides favorable conditions for frogs and salamanders. The land around the pond includes an oak-hickory forest, a savanna, and a wet meadow.

Join us on a nature walk full of fascinating things to see. Prepare for a potentially “buggy” evening as mosquitoes are likely to be out in full force.

“During the darkest days of the Civil War, wicked cutthroats came into possession of six pistols of otherworldly power. The Sixth Gun – the most dangerous of the weapons – has vanished. When the gun surfaces in the hands of an innocent girl, dark forces reawaken. Villains thought long dead set their sights on retrieving the gun and killing anyone in their path. Only Drake Sinclair, a gunslinger with a shadowy past, stands in their way.”

Thus begins The Sixth Gun, a fast paced supernatural horror series currently consisting of three volumes – Book 1: Cold Dead Fingers; Book 2: Crossroads; and as of April 25, Book 3: Bound. Follow Drake, Becky, O Henry, and Gord through a wild and twisted old west.

One more thing - Book 1: Cold Dead Fingers is up for two Eisners, Best Writer-Cullen Bunn and Best Coloring-Bill Crabtree.

While researching The Lions of Little Rock, author Kristin Levine zeroed in on 1958 when Little Rock, Arkansas, was starting to react to forced integration of the public schools. By setting her novel at that time, she gives it a compelling undertone, as readers witness the governor closing the high schools and citizens forming groups such as the Women's Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC).

This historical novel for youth offers dynamic characters and plot, starring painfully shy twelve-year-old Marlee. Readers will be moved when Marlee bids good-bye to her beloved older sister who is sent away for high school. Left at home, Marlee struggles to make friends, when suddenly an unexpected friendship with a new girl, Liz, boosts her confidence and helps her to understand where she stands in the fight against racism. I found Levine's book informative, warm, and highly entertaining. Reviews have been strongly positive, including this from the New York Times Book Review: ". . . Satisfying, gratifying, touching, weighty — this authentic piece of work has got soul." Levine also wrote The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults.

MINECRAFT is the biggest thing to hit cubes since ice! AADL is proud to launch MINECRAFT ANN ARBOR, a Minecraft server for Ann Arbor, by Ann Arbor, and of Ann Arbor! We'll be working together in creative mode not just to make crazy Minecraft stuff, but also to make models of Ann Arbor as of now, 1950, 1900, and 1850, plus who knows what else!

You can reach MINECRAFT ANN ARBOR by pointing your home copy of Minecraft at minecraft.aadl.org ; you can also point your browser to http://minecraft.aadl.org to reach this blog, where we'll organize building projects, talk about server changes, and keep the community going!

Stay tuned for updates, discussion, and big projects.... and for Summer Game players, there will surely be some Summer Game badges and challenges you can only complete inside MINECRAFT ANN ARBOR!

Also, we are working on installing Minecraft on computers at the library, so if you don't have Minecraft, you can come play it at AADL locations without a Minecraft login. So stay tuned for that too!

Thanks for your interest in a blockier side of town, and THANKS FOR PLAYING!

Ray Bradbury, brilliant, prescient, prolific writer of science fiction and fantasy, died yesterday in Los Angeles.

Bradbury is credited with bringing science fiction into mainstream fiction by dispensing with a lot of the technical lingo and focusing on speculation and metaphors to dig into science and technology versus civilization.

Mr. Bradbury won dozens of awards for his enormous body of work. He captured his first prize, the 1947 O. Henry Award, for a short story called Homecoming, which was discovered by Truman Capote, who was an editor at Mademoiselle Magazine. One of his most well-known books, The Martian Chronicles further advanced his career in 1950.

Bradbury followed that success with Fahrenheit 451 in 1953. He took his notion about literature and society -- "You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them." -- and turned it into a classic that has been read by generations of high school students. In 1966, it became a chilling movie, starring Julie Christie and Oskar Werner.

Bradbury's passion for books and reading and libraries was in stark contract to his skepticism for formal education. He elaborated on this contrarian idea in an essay he wrote that can be found in the May 1971 issue of Wilson Library Bulletin (45, 9, 842-851). The title speaks for itself -- How Instead of Being Educated in College, I Was Graduated from Libraries.

Paying tribute to his grandfather, Danny Karapetian said, "...to read him was to know him. He was the biggest kid I know."

Bradbury was 91.

Sunday June 3 | 1:00-3:00 PM | Downtown 4th Floor Meeting Room

Chickengirl is back! Cartoonist and children's book illustrator Jannie Ho will offer a demonstration on the use of Adobe Illustrator for creating comics and discuss the pros and cons of creating and submitting work with Illustrator. Illustrator is a popular tool in the publishing world and one to become acquainted with if you have never used it.

Join the Forum to get fresh ideas for your next comics or graphic novel creation. Drawing supplies will be provided, so drop in to draw, learn, and network with other cartoonists.

Three weeks is a long time to fuss with a blog and it's time to let go. I still don't think I am doing this book justice but I hope you will trust me about this "luminous, haunting, and unforgettable" debut novel by Karen Thompson Walker. The premise is rather simple while the narrative voice is not.

The world awakes one Saturday morning in October to find the rotation of the Earth on its axis slowing down (thus The Slowing). Days and nights grow longer. Gravity is affected. Birds can't fly and people are getting sick. In a California suburb, 11 yr. old Julia is dealing with the catastrophe utterly "unimagined, unprepared for, unknown", with stoic determination and optimistic innocence.

The Age of Miracles * * is middle school - "the time when kids shot up three inches over the summer, when breasts bloomed from nothing, when voices dipped and dove". While some girls turn beautiful, a few boys grow tall, Julia still looks like a child. Apart from the usual adolescent angst of friendship, first love, budding sexuality, Julia must navigate her family's volatile dynamics and secrets; learn the meaning and demands of loyalty, honesty, kindness, and responsibility, against the backdrop of an ever-shifting reality.

"Walker (a former Simon & Schuster editor) captures each moment, intimate and universal, with magical precision. Riveting, heartbreaking, profoundly moving".

Inspired by the Tsunami which packed a force powerful enough to shorten the length of the day by microseconds, the rights to this debut have been sold to 25 countries, with an initial print run of 100,000 - HUGE.

* * = starred reviews

Doc Watson, whose lightning-speed flatpicking style of guitar playing befuddled those who have tried to emulate it and who brought new life to folk music, died yesterday In Winston-Salem, NC, following complications from colon surgery.

Blinded when he was one, Doc Watson's first instrument was the harmonica. A few years later, at age 10, his father gave him a banjo and a neighbor gave him guitar lessons.

He eventually graduated to the electric guitar, playing with a rockabilly bind with an unreliable fiddle player. To fill the fiddle gap, Doc Watson figured out how to translate that sound to his guitar.

In the 1960s, Ralph Rinzler, a prominent folkie, encouraged Watson to go back to the acoustic guitar. Watson immediately became a hot commodity on the folk music circuit.

Toward the end of the 60s, Merle Watson, Doc's teenage son, joined his dad for a wonderfully successful run, fueled by their performance on Will the Circle Be Unbroken?, the million-plus album by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

Doc Watson's career was nearly derailed by his grief over the death of Merle in 1985, the result of a tractor accident.

Watson, who earned eight Emmys despite his deeply ingrained modesty, was 89 years old. His was the second death to rock the North Carolina and the national music world. Beloved Earl Scruggs died in March.