Getting ready for the upcoming award season? Be sure to see The Kids Are All Right, one of the most popular new DVD (and Blu-ray) titles at the Library.

Starring Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a couple in a long-term relationship struggling with complex challenges, including their son’s desire to meet his biological (donor) father, played by Mark Ruffalo, "Kids" as a warm and witty film. Bening and Moore are both nominated for Golden Globes in the Best Actress in a Motion Picture Comedy or Musical. "The Kids Are All Right," directed by Lisa Cholodenko, is nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Comedy or Musical. Excellent performances make this emotionally honest film a must see.

Check out Lisa Cholodenko’s other films, High Art (1998), with Ally Sheedy, Patricia Clarkson, and Radha Mitchell inhabiting a creepy cool NYC art world fueled by drugs and dashed dreams, and Laurel Canyon (2002), in which Frances McDormand plays a free-spirited, successful record producer whose uptight Harvard grad son (Christian Bale) moves to LA for his residency with his fiancee (Kate Beckinsale) in tow. Both films, which are in the Library's DVD collection, feature great casts who give memorable performances.

Update: Bening won the Golden Globe for her category and has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress. "The Kids Are All Right" has been nominated for Best Picture and Mark Ruffalo has been nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

Local author and storyteller Shutta Crum has given a gift to librarians and children (and librarians who are still children!): a book filled with magic, scary sea monsters, baby dragons, knights, adventure, fantasy and a loving family. Thomas and the Dragon Queen is a book that you can hand to the early elementary reader with great confidence because it will happily hold their attention, but won't keep them up at night. Crum gives us a hero who is as big as a minute and as brave as a tiny squire can be. As Thomas journeys to rescue a princess, he discovers his unique strengths and encounters delightful surprises on the dragon queen’s island. Illustrator Lee Wildish enhances the tale with stark images of barren isles and playful pictures of loping dragonlets. Thomas and the Dragon Queen will make a rich and memorable read-aloud on a cozy winter night.

Seattle elementary school teacher Richard Glaubman had never written a book before. After reading an article about George Dawson, a man who learned to read at age 98, Glaubman flew to Dallas, Texas, to meet Dawson and learn his life story -- a story Glaubman hoped would inspire his students. The result of that meeting is this gem of a book, Life Is So Good, the remarkable autobiography of George Dawson, co-written by Richard Glaubman.

Born in 1898 into an East Texas hardscrabble life, Dawson learned from his father how to be a good man and how to face life’s challenges with quiet resolve. To save on food money, Dawson's father got him his first job working for a nearby white farmer. George turned his wages over to his father until he was 21, and then rode the rails for nine years, traveling and working in many places and living in hobo camps with people from many cultures. He later married and, with his wife, raised seven children, all of whom attended college. George Dawson had pride in everything he did and people trusted him, but the burden of illiteracy followed him everywhere. In January 1996, at the age of 98, George decided it was finally his time to learn how to read. His bold decision inspired many others to join him in the same adult education program in Dallas.

"Life Is So Good" won the Christopher Award for writers whose work "affirms the highest values of the human spirit." It is the selected book for Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads 2011, the theme of which is What Makes Life Worth Living?

P.S. I Hate It Here!: Kids’ Letters From Camp, selected and edited by Diane Falanga, is a collection of letters that kids sent to their parents. The author got the idea after receiving a letter from camp from her daughter. After sharing it with fellow parents, Falanga found that they, too, had letters to share. If you like reading letters such as those in Found Magazine, or you think kids say the darndest things, these letters will make you laugh.

The kids write about flying ants, slow dancing with girls, and trees falling on cabins. Some inform their parents of ailments such as lice, rashes, exposed bone, and chlorine-induced migraines. One boy begs his parent to let him get a mohawk, while many send desperate requests for food (not junk food, but Doritos).

As the title suggests, some of the kids hate camp and want to go home. One cries “histarkally,” another feels like they’ve been shot in the head, and one writes that they have “thrown up because of worryness.” Not all of these honest and heartfelt letters are woeful though, as there are a few kids who beg to be signed up for next year.

When reading these letters you truly feel for the kids, but you can't help but laugh and be reminded of your own 5th grade camp experience.

Pittacus Lore's sci-fi thriller, I Am Number Four, is best tagged as Alex Rider meets The Hunger Games, as readers tail 15-year-old John Smith, one of nine refugees from Planet Lorien who is hiding on Earth from the merciless Mogadorians. Aiming to wipe out the super-powered teens one number at a time, the Mogadorians have killed three of the Loriens already, and John is Number Four.

John plans to hide out in the rural town of Paradise, Ohio, with his guardian, Henri, and blend in as an average high school student. But several challenges, including a burgeoning love interest, a particularly sinister bully, and Number Four’s own growing powers are rapidly making him a marked target.

I Am Number Four is the first novel in the planned six-book series, "The Lorien Legacies." A film version is already in production for a 2011 release, with producers Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay behind the action, and hotly buzzing actor Alex Pettyfer in the lead role.

Eva Nine, a curious and sensitive 12-year old, lives in an underground home on the planet Orbona in Tony DiTerlizzi's The Search for WondLa, a great read-aloud or read-alone book for age 10 and up.

Eva is cared for, guided and nurtured by her Muthr (Multi-Utility Task Help Robot). When a marauder destroys her underground sanctuary she is forced to flee above ground. In a trip that’s the reverse of the famous fall down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland, Eva is thrust upward into unrecognizable territory, full of strange creatures and a wicked queen who wants Eva as a specimen in her freeze-dried menagerie. From there, her journey is more reminiscent of Dorothy’s in The Wizard of Oz, as her search for a family of like beings is sweetly buffered by her awareness that she is well-loved by the alien creature companions she finds along the way.

DiTerlizzi’s gorgeous two-color illustrations enhance the cinematic quality of his writing. Readers with a webcam can use augmented reality pages in The Search for WondLa to reveal additional information about Eva Nine's world. The ending is a stunning shocker that will leave readers clamoring for the next installment.

The Ann Arbor District Library will be hosting author Scott Westerfeld on Friday, October 29, at the Downtown Library at 7:00 PM. Mr. Westerfeld will be on tour promoting the recent release of Behemoth, the sequel to his book Leviathan.

Leviathan is a living airship in this steampunk World War I story. The young prince of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire gets caught up in a battle between the German steam-powered machines and the Darwinists’ beast-like creatures. As in every war, there is military action, as well as the human side of the story. The young prince must figure out who he can trust and which side he’s on. Along the way he meets Dereyn, a girl who has disguised herself as a boy and is serving on the airship.

Based on real World War I events, the action in "Leviathan" goes cover-to-cover and leaves readers wanting more. Now there is "Behemoth", and the exciting story continues. Both titles have illustrations by Keith Thompson that help the reader picture this imaginative war story. Both books will be on sale at the event, courtesy of Borders, and the author will be available for signing.

Melody is a brilliant, funny, and stubborn 11-year-old who is restricted to a wheelchair by severe cerebral palsy. She can’t walk, move, or speak on her own. Doctors, teachers, and even her parents can’t determine how much Melody really knows or can learn. But Melody knows. She has been absorbing words, language, ideas, and knowledge her entire life, with the help of neighbor, Mrs. V, and her family.

Fifth grade provides an opportunity to leave the special education classroom for part of each day for some inclusion classes, where Melody hopes to make new friends and the Quiz Bowl team. She has high hopes that her new Medi-Talker computer device will give her thoughts a voice, and allow her to finally communicate with those around her. But fear, prejudice, and misunderstanding creep in as teachers and fellow students question her intellect and continue to isolate her. Yet, Melody perseveres.

Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper, is fiction recommended for grades 4-6. Draper's novel has received the trifecta of starred reviews from School Library Journal, Booklist, and Kirkus. Check the AADL catalog for the book’s availability, and feel the heartbreak, as well as the limitless capacity, of the human spirit.

Five-year-old Jack, the narrator of Room by Irish-Canadian author, Emma Donoghue, has lived in Room his whole life. Ma, his extraordinary young mother, has created a rich life for him under the most shocking conditions, for Room is an 11- by 11-foot impenetrable garden shed that has imprisoned Ma for seven years. Grabbed off her college campus at 19, Ma fills Jack’s days with ingenious activities designed to nurture his body, mind, and soul. For Jack, Room is mostly safe, except for his having to sleep in Wardrobe during the nocturnal visits of Ma’s kidnapper rapist. When that changes and increasing incidents of violence seem imminent, Ma devises a brilliant, desperate escape executed by Jack. Their journey from deprivation to acclimation into the Real World is fraught with unexpected dangers and no guarantee for success.

Jack’s ‘voice’, believable, charming, often funny, and at the same time so terribly skewed by his imprisonment, resets one’s every assumption about normal daily life. Donoghue, shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize, makes one wish for a wholly unique set of superlatives to lavish on this remarkable achievement.