Monday, February 18 | 6:30pm-8:30pm | Pittsfield branch | For Grade 6 - Adult

Join us for an evening of making decorative pins and hair clips out of felt and other embellishments. You’ll cut out your shapes, jazz them up, and sew and glue them into place. All materials will be provided, just bring your creativity!

For more fun with felt, check out this list of books.

If you are a parent with a child on the autism spectrum, here is an opportunity to explore the possibilities on Saturday, February 23 at 1:00 pm. Dr. Rick Solomon, from the Play Project, will be there to chat with parents and children. Kids will have an open space, or quiet space to play with construction toys, puppets and much more. Let the kids try out combinations of soothing scents with expert Michelle Krell Kydd, who recently interviewed
Temple Grandin about her sense of smell.

Writers, actors, poets, storytellers, and artists of all sorts will be enriched by visiting storyteller, Carol Birch’s workshop on The Whole Story. Carol will focus on using imagery to extend the experience of the story, and explore the feelings and attitudes within the tale. Join us on Saturday, February 16 at 10 am at the Downtown Library for this rare opportunity, , co-sponsored by the Ann Arbor Storytellers' Guild!

Matthew Pillischer, director of this 2012 documentary, will lead a discussion after a screening of the film. Broken On All Sides: Race, Mass Incarceration and New Visions for Criminal Justice in the U.S. focuses on mass incarceration in the U.S. and racial inequalities in the criminal justice system. It discusses the theory that mass incarceration has become "The New Jim Crow" by targeting people of color and allowing much of the discrimination that was legal in the Jim Crow era to be applied to "criminals."

Using interviews with people on many sides of the criminal justice system--including Michelle Alexander the author of the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads book, The New Jim Crow-- the film attempts to answer and provoke questions about the American penal system.

Cosponsored by the UM Community Scholars Program.

Thursday, February 21 | 6 - 8:30 PM | Grade 9 - Adult | Downtown Library Lower Level Multi-Purpose Room

Tuesday, February 26 | 7:00-8:30 PM | Malletts Creek Branch - Program Room

Prescribed or controlled burning is a technique sometimes used in forest management, farming, or prairie restoration. Fire is a natural part of both forest and grassland ecology and controlled fire can be a tool for foresters. Controlled burning also stimulates the germination of some desirable forest trees, thus renewing the forest.

The 2013 Spring Burn Season is upon us! The City of Ann Arbor's Natural Area Preservation staff will discuss what controlled burns are and why they are used in Ann Arbor's natural areas. This presentation is recommended for anyone interested in helping with burns, as well as anyone simply interested in learning more about why and how they are conducted.

Boy21 is a novel about basketball and so much more, encompassing male friendship, poverty, the Irish mob, grief, and love. I highly recommend this fast read by Matthew Quick, who became one of my favorite teen authors with his 2010 book Sorta Like a Rock Star.

Quick's latest novel, published in 2012, opens in ugly, tough Bellmont, Pennsylvania, where quiet, obedient Finley lives with his wheelchair-bound grandfather and widowed father. Finley -- whose childhood is a mystery until late in the book -- is flourishing as the only white kid on the high school basketball team. When the coach asks him to mentor a hot new -- and very mysterious -- player from California, Finley does, but suddenly luck and life seem to turn against him and toward the new guy. Nonetheless, Finley continues to support his friend, "Boy21," and their friendship grows, until Finley's girlfriend Erin is injured and Finley can't stand it anymore.

This book offers strong characters, action, dialogue, and -- hard to believe with all the bad luck going around -- a semi-happy, if old-fashioned ending. Particularly appealing to me were the threads of responsibility, loyalty and friendship among two extraordinary young men.

The critically-acclaimed documentary 5 Broken Cameras is one man’s view of his village’s fight against encroaching development. Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat buys his first camera to document the birth of his fourth son. Over time he also begins filming the non-violent protests that take place in Bil’in, a West Bank village in Palestine, that begin after Israeli developers erect a separation fence and begin taking over part of the land in and near Bil’in.

The film documents the village’s five-year struggle to get the barrier taken down and development stopped. During this time,as Burnat is shot at and his cameras are destroyed during the protests, we see events unfold through one camera after another. Viewers not only witness the growth of Burnat’s youngest son, who is one day a baby and by the film end is attending the protests, but also the daily struggle of the community and Burnat’s family as they band together against military action. They are brutalized, arrested and defeated daily, but are led by such passionate leaders that they don’t give up, despite their sadness and anger. Burnat’s film is a touching, disturbing, personal account of the Bil’in residents and their part in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

5 Broken Cameras, by filmmakers Emad Burnat, a lifelong inhabitant of the Palestinian village of Bil'in, and Guy Davidi, an Israeli documentary filmmaker and teacher who was born in Jaffa, is a nominee for this year's Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Kate Cross opens her Clockwork Agents series with Heart of Brass (2012), and quickly follows with Touch of Steel * (2013).

In Heart, set in 1898 London, Lady Arden Grey is an undercover agent for one of the most powerful organizations of this steam powered world - the Wardens of the Realm, a group with extraordinary abilities, dedicated to protecting England against evil.

Her husband and fellow agent Lucas Grey, Earl Huntley disappeared during a secret mission. Now, Arden is being stalked by an assassin working for their rival - The Company who is none other than Luke.

"Cross has imagined a fascinating world of science in Victorian England. Her characters are three-dimensional and sympathetic; the devices (including the first vibrator) add punch to an already rich love story. Inventive and extremely clever dialog and situations make this series debut an enthralling read".

In Touch, reeling from her brother's death, American spy Claire Brooks has vowed revenge on the member of The Company who she believes to be responsible: Stanton Howard. But when she chases the man to London, Claire is captured by the Wardens of the Realm and placed in the custody of the Earl of Wolfred, the dashing Alistair Payne.

Seeing the prospect of retribution slipping away, Claire convinces Alistair that she has defected and will help him take down The Company. As they travel via steam liner, Claire and Alistair must pretend to be engaged, neither could deny the growing attraction between them.

Kate Cross also writes as Kathryn Smith. Writing steampunk allows her to combine her love of fashion, history and science fiction.

For fans of The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook (A Novel of the Iron Seas).

*= starred review

Mike Birbiglia directs and stars in the indie comedy Sleepwalk With Me. Loosely based on Birbiglia’s life, his best-selling book, and his off-Broadway show, the film tells the story of the aspiring comedian as he struggles with his comedy act, drags his feet in his relationship, and battles a severe sleep disorder that spins out of control as he continues to ignore it. While trying to avoid committing further to his girlfriend of eight years, Mike hits the road for several comedy gigs. Along the way he finds adventure, freedom, jokes that are actually funny (revolving around his girlfriend), and a bit of joy that was missing from his life. Reality hits when Mike has a sleepwalking episode one night while sleeping and jumps through a second story window -- an event which actually happened to him.

From the producers of the public radio show This American Life, the critically-acclaimed Sleepwalk With Me is both funny and heartwarming, with a comedy style that is similar to Woody Allen films -- a humor that is personal, self deprecating, and deadpan. It’s the kind of film that has you laughing at moments of this man’s life, but at the same time feeling sympathetic toward this character, is truly suffering. I don’t know about Birbiglia’s future as a stand-up comedian, but he definitely has a strong film presence and a wonderful mind for storytelling.

Maria Semple's Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a witty, satirical and highly entertaining novel. The story follows the antics of Bernadette Fox – best friend and mother to 15-year-old Bee Branch, opinionated and idiosyncratic wife to Microsoft-guru Elgin Branch, and enemy to all meddling and annoying "gnats" of Seattle private-school society – from the Emerald City to the Great White Continent.

When Bernadette's daughter Bee aces her report card and makes plans to collect her promised reward – a family trip to Antarctica – her mother is forced to face the unthinkable: a three-week trip on a boat full of strangers, across the most treacherous body of water on earth, to an unforgiving land of ice and snow. Days before the trip Bernadette disappears, sending Bee on a journey to find the one person on whom she could always depend.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette is told in a flowing collection of emails, FBI documents, letters, faxes, and newspaper article clippings gathered by Bee to tell the tale of how the agoraphobic Bernadette, a once brilliant and revered architect, haunted by the past and unsure of the future, escaped her quickly deteriorating life to find herself – at the end of the world.