easy english news

AADL carries the Easy English News at all of our locations. This publication is written at a 3rd or 4th grade reading level but with newsworthy topics of interest to adults. Let all your English Language Learning friends & relatives know about this resource in our collection. Their website is awesome, too!

Want to know what your favorite musicians are up to today? The AADL has eight magazine titles covering everything related to music. For the guitarists and drummers among us, check out Guitar World and Drum! magazine for techniques and tips from current and legendary players. For the latest news, pics, and updates from your favorite music makers, check out Revolver: The World's Loudest Rock Magazine, AP: Alternative Press, Rolling Stone, Spin, Vibe, and XXL: Hip-hop on a Higher Level.

The AADL owns 47 teen magazine titles covering topics such as lifestyle, fashion, gaming, music, sports, celebrities, and everything in between. You can now request magazines for pickup at your local branch library.

The Gourmand Awards are given to notable books in a variety of food and drink categories as well as magazines. They are judged by culinary arts professionals from around the world. It is free and open to anyone to enter: authors, publishers or even readers. Over 150 countries had entries for this year’s competition. This year also included best culinary app which went to America’s own Dorie Greenspan’s Cooking with Dorie. Her books have won numerous awards and she is a pioneer in developing a cooking app. Here is a sampling of other Gourmand award winners from our collection:

See mix drink: Gourmand award winner for best cocktail book
Food lover's guide to wine: Best book for Matching Food and Drink
Lucky Peach: Best cooking magazine
Eleven Madison Park Cookbook: 3rd place best authors and chef
Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook: Book of the Year Finalist
Food of Spain:Best World Cuisine cookbook
How Italian Food Conquered the World: 4th place Best Italian cookbook
How to Cook Indian: 3rd place Best Asian cookbook
Extra Virginity: the sublime and scandalous world of olive oil:Winner in the Sustainable category
Fundamental Techniques of Classic Bread Making:3rd Place for cookbooks about bread making
Loukoumi Celebrity Cookbook: 2nd place for Fundraising, Charity, &Community cookbooks and 3rd place went to the free (with donation going to Relief for Japan fund) online cookbook from Microsoft .Net gurus, Net Gurus can Cook

Calliope -- pronounced kuh LIE o pee -- was a muse of the arts and sciences and it also serves as the name of an oldie but a goodie magazine for kids that is now back on the shelves of your library. Exploring world history, this Cobblestone publication covers history by highlighting art, museums, and maps for grades 5 and up.
Newly added are two Canadian magazines, Yes Mag The Science Magazine for Adventurous Minds. Topics in the premiere issue include: keeping turtles out of shrimping nets, extreme racing-what makes these athletes tick, and how to make a balloon-powered mini-racer. The companion mag for younger audiences, Know features in its premier issue caves, beehives protecting farmer's crops from elephants, a home lab recipe for 'drip-drop' rocks, along with a look and find challenge in each issue.
What are you waiting for? Check these out today.

This may be refresher for some of you, but for many it will be a bit of NEWS! At all of our branches, we get several newspapers every day. Some newspapers, however, only come a few times a week or even just a few times a month.

We also have a steady supply of backdated newspapers available on microfilm at our Downtown branch, on the second floor. By clicking this newspapers link, you can see all of the newspapers that the AADL owns.

To search even more newspapers - including the Ann Arbor News, Detroit News, and New York Times, just to name a few - you can visit our newspaper database collection if you are have an AADL library card. Some of these newspapers go all the way back to 1831! You can always access this collection of databases and many others from the research tab, located at the top of aadl.org.

Ever wonder why Jack Bruce of Cream, Jethro Tull's Glenn Cornick, Free's Andy Frasier, or Third Power's Jem Targal had such a fat round bass tone yet could play a quick flurry while playing each note distinctly? Well, meet the 1962 Gibson EB Series bass in the December issue of Bass Player magazine!
A recent addition to the library's magazine offerings, Bass Player is filled from cover to cover with profiles of gifted musicians and their instruments. It includes tutorials displayed in notation as well as tab and has extensive reviews of the latest gear and accessories. There are also frequent articles detailing the history of specific bass designs both classic and obscure like the Gibson EB, or, in the same December issue, the Fender P-bass of the 1950's.
Bass Player magazine also includes a record review column called, The Graveyard, where readers are directed to classic recordings featuring groundbreaking bassists. As an example, the December 2011 issue has a review of Blue Cheer's, Vincebus Eruptum and commentary on the playing style of their powerhouse bassist, the late Dickie Peterson.
Even the magazine's advertisements, featuring the latest and greatest of four, five, six, and even seven string basses, can get any bass player ready to walk that beat!

Added to this year's collection is Holmes: The Magazine to Make it Right full of inspiration and tips on the best practices and products for your home. Who is this Holmes guy, you may be asking? He is a Canadian professional contractor who began to learn the trade as a six year old following his Dad around and asking questions. Now he has a popular TV show, currently in its fifth season, creator of the Holmes Foundation which is a charitable foundation that supports the training of youth in the skilled trades through apprenticeships and scholarships, and in addition, is thriving as a twenty year contractor renovating homes.
For other home maintenance and do-it-yourself repair you might also try: This Old House, Old House Interiors, Fine Homebuilding, or The Art and Craft of Custom Home Building.

Lucky Peach is a new food magazine published quarterly and is a collaboration between David Chang, a James Beard Award-winning chef and Peter Meehan, a New York Times food writer. Together they also wrote the book, Momofuku a celebration of ramen noodles, but written as part memoir and showcased by delicious photographs.
Recently added to the AADL offerings of over 600 magazine titles, the debut launch of Lucky Peach surprise, surprise, is the 'Ramen Issue' with 170 pages of interesting tales, recipes, and photographs. It is not 20 simple recipes you can whip up in 20 minutes; it's not that kind of foodie magazine.
Don't miss on page 121, 'A Recipe in Haikus' by Peter Meehan, 'Corn With Miso Butter and Bacon'
Alongside the newly added, 'Lucky Peach' magazine, you'll find Gluten-Free Living, edible WOW, and Living Without: The Magazine for People With Allergies & Food Insensitivities.

When I was homeschooling my sons, I took them to the library to choose whatever books they wanted. They would take their books to the circulation desk while I stood there hoping to see at least one fiction book. Why fiction? Simply because I wanted my sons to share in my appreciation for the elements of fiction: Plot, Setting, Character, Conflict, Symbol, and seeing the world from another Point of View. I never succeeded in passing on my love of fiction to my sons, however, we found a compromise with fiction and non-fiction; magazines. Below is a list of magazines that will appeal to boys whether they prefer to read fiction or non-fiction:

Grades 1 – 5
Boys' Life : for all boys, Highlights for Kids, National Geographic Kids, Nintendo Power, Owl, Ranger Rick, Sports Illustrated Kids, WWE Kids, Zoobooks

Grades 6 – 12
Drum, ESPN, Game Pro, Guitar, Game Informer, Mad ,Thrasher, Transworld Skateboarding, White Dwarf

Looking for ways to kick up your book group this summer? At a recent Booklist webinar, several publishing bigwigs tossed around ideas for making your group more social and less stuffy.

Magazines. If you're stressed for time and reading Cutting for Stone in four weeks just isn't going to happen, then consider using an issue of a magazine or just one article. You can now put magazines on hold through your online account at the AADL, and the title selection is massive. Try a trending topic in a lesser known mag, like Commentary or The Crisis. Or go for the adventurous with Rock and Ice or Ski.

Go Out. Minnesota's largest open book group goes by the name Books & Bars, who says their group "isn’t your mother’s book club. We provide a unique atmosphere for a lively discussion of interesting authors, fun people, good food and drinks." They read everything from The Hunger Games series to McCarthy's The Road.

Some libraries are also organizing book groups in social settings, like Skokie Public Library's LitLounge, which hosts book swaps and trivia nights in addition to discussions. At the Oak Park Public Library in Illinois, they have Genre-X, a twenties and thirties book group that meets at The Snug, a room at the local brewpub and discuss in person what they've been chatting about via their Goodreads group.

For more book group ideas from Booklist, check out their quick and insightful blogs.