Library Notes
February 24, 2013
Dara L. Cain
The Caldecott Medal: Celebrating 75 Years of Distinguished Picture Books
January 28th was a very exciting day in the library community! At the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle “approximately 12,500 webcast viewers joined more than 1,300 onsite audience members for the 2013 ALSC book and media awards.” This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Caldecott Medal which was established in 1938 and named in honor of nineteenth-century English illustration Randolph J. Caldecott. “This medal is to be given to the artist who has created the most distinguished picture book of the year.”
The prestigious Caldecott Medal was awarded this year to This Is Not My Hat illustrated and written by Jon Klassen. In this humorous story a little fish knows that it is wrong to steal a hat from a sleeping big fish but decides he can’t help it if the hat fits him perfectly. There’s just one problem! The unsuspecting little fish doesn’t realize that the big fish wants his hat back, and rightfully so. Readers will enjoy anticipating the consequences as the big fish chases the unsuspecting little fish.
The Caldecott committee selected five Honor Books this year noteworthy of attention. Creepy Carrots! illustrated by Peter Brown and written by Aaron Reynolds is a cleverly-frightful tale. Jasper Rabbit insists on eating the best carrots grown in Crackenhopper Field every morning, noon, and night. Things take an unsuspecting turn for Jasper when he senses that he is being followed. Is it Jasper or are the carrots from Crackenhopper Field “creeping” up on him everywhere he goes? Taking matters into his own hands Jasper comes up with a plan to keep the creepy carrots inside the carrot patch permanently.
Extra Yarn illustrated by Jon Klassen and written by Mac Barnett takes place in a cold soot covered town where a young girl named Annabelle discovers a mysterious box filled with colored yarn. After knitting a sweater for herself, her dog, a boy and his dog, her classmates, her teacher, her parents, the people in town, and the buildings it seems that there is an infinite supply of yarn in the box. When the archduke arrives and demands that Annabelle sell him the magic box, she refuses, and he decides to steal it. Much to his dismay he finds the box empty and tosses the box into the sea. Magically, the box finds its way back to a happy Annabelle who has transformed the town from black soot to a plethora of beautiful colors.
How many kinds of green are there? There’s forest green, sea green, jungle green and khaki green just to name a few! Green illustrated and written by Laura Vaccaro Seeger is an engaging concept book that explores the color green using cleverly positioned die-cuts of varying sizes, shapes, and quantities that form unexpected connections between adjacent spreads. A “slow green” inchworm becomes the hook on which hangs a “faded green” sign and the “glow green” fireflies become the leaves on the “shaded green” tree. Seeger takes it one step further by discussing the absence of green: a stop sign is “never green” to the “forever green:” a child planting a seedling that becomes a massive tree.
Elliot, a quiet boy who enjoys wearing tuxedos, discovers during his visit to the aquarium that a penguin would be the perfect pet. What could be more wonderful than a “properly dressed” penguin! In the story One Cool Friend, illustrated by David Small and written by Toni Buzzeo, an absentminded father agrees to his son’s request. In this humorous tale Elliot sees to it that his penguin named Magellan receives the upmost care after doing the proper research. He creates a home for him at night in the freezer with a supply of frozen seafood to eat. During the day he lets him splash around in a tub of ice water. In his bedroom there is even an ice skating rink created from a backyard wading pool and an air conditioner. How will Elliot’s father react when he realizes what he has agreed to?
Does the phrase, “I’m not tired” and “I’m just not sleepy” sound familiar to any parents? In the charming bedtime story Sleep Like a Tiger, illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski and written by Mary Logue, a not-so sleepy girl in a red dress and crown has very understanding parents who innocently coax her to bed as they talk about the ways different animals fall asleep. The child, snug in her pajamas, imitates each of the animals she talks about - from bears who are “mighty sleepers” to snails that “curl up like a cinnamon roll.” Finally, she drifts off to sleep imagining herself snuggled into the tiger’s tail while embracing her own stuffed tiger.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Library Notes
Blissful Journeys: One Reader’s Vicarious Trip through Love and Happiness
February 17, 2013
Pam Everhardt Bloom
The thought of February makes me want to cry. Cold weather is not my idea of a good time. Add dark skies and my normally sunny disposition takes a nosedive. In February, I always make the effort to sit in the sun when the occasion presents. I also look for books to lighten my mood.
“Le Road Trip: A Traveler’s Journal of Love and France,” by Vivian Swift fits the bill. Who wouldn’t want to travel vicariously to France when the illustrations so beautifully duplicate a moment in time? The book is filled with hundreds of beautiful watercolors that document the author’s honeymoon journey. Ms. Swift is a seasoned traveler, as is her new husband, and this memoir/journal is full of tips and musings of their road trip and their leisurely exploration of a much loved and visited France. This is not a guide book in the traditional sense. Instead the book opens with the author’s statement, “Every road trip has its ups and downs, just like a love affair, or the stock market…But more like a love affair.” With chapters titled “Phase One: Anticipation,” to “Phase Five: The Going Gets Tough,” this book might make the perfect belated Valentine gift to yourself in the cold dreary month of February.
A selection that unexpectedly fit my category of light fare and a book I continue to think about is, “Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World” by Eric Weiner. Weiner, a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio has reported a multitude of sad situations throughout the world. This time the field of positive psychology becomes Weiner’s guidepost as he sets out to discover places of bliss. He describes carrying a conviction based on a Henry Miller saying, “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
See them I did and I laughed out loud while reading this book. Ten countries in ten chapters with an introduction and epilogue; at the very least you might just find a new understanding of happiness. Or like me, a newfound obsession with Iceland. (Note: Asheville, N.C. is mentioned in one chapter.) The book on CD is also available at the library and I intend to listen to Weiner reading his book as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, I’m currently reading “12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time: A Semi-Dysfunctional Family Circumnavigates the Globe” by Mark Jacobson. Jacobson, a respected writer and journalist, sets off on a three month journey with his wife and three children, ages 16, 12, and 9. Light fare from a man who is known for exploring the seamy side of urban life? The first chapter, “Burning is Learning,” finds the family at the Holy River Ganges witnessing a cremation. Decidedly different from my view of world travel, I’m laughing by chapter two as I read Jacobson’s rational for whisking his children away from Brooklyn, N.Y.; “The biggest swindle in the history of the species was underway right here in the U.S.A. Corporate social engineers, closet Mengeles every last one of them, had dismantled the stages of human development… Like Moses, I would lead my children from pop bondage.” More than just a travel book, this book, like “Le Road Trip,” is a love affair. Jacobson, however, is in love with his children and this book will make any parent smile.
Love of place, love of happiness, love of family; it is a blissful journey for February. My mood has lifted.
Blissful Journeys: One Reader’s Vicarious Trip through Love and Happiness
February 17, 2013
Pam Everhardt Bloom
The thought of February makes me want to cry. Cold weather is not my idea of a good time. Add dark skies and my normally sunny disposition takes a nosedive. In February, I always make the effort to sit in the sun when the occasion presents. I also look for books to lighten my mood.
“Le Road Trip: A Traveler’s Journal of Love and France,” by Vivian Swift fits the bill. Who wouldn’t want to travel vicariously to France when the illustrations so beautifully duplicate a moment in time? The book is filled with hundreds of beautiful watercolors that document the author’s honeymoon journey. Ms. Swift is a seasoned traveler, as is her new husband, and this memoir/journal is full of tips and musings of their road trip and their leisurely exploration of a much loved and visited France. This is not a guide book in the traditional sense. Instead the book opens with the author’s statement, “Every road trip has its ups and downs, just like a love affair, or the stock market…But more like a love affair.” With chapters titled “Phase One: Anticipation,” to “Phase Five: The Going Gets Tough,” this book might make the perfect belated Valentine gift to yourself in the cold dreary month of February.
A selection that unexpectedly fit my category of light fare and a book I continue to think about is, “Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World” by Eric Weiner. Weiner, a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio has reported a multitude of sad situations throughout the world. This time the field of positive psychology becomes Weiner’s guidepost as he sets out to discover places of bliss. He describes carrying a conviction based on a Henry Miller saying, “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
See them I did and I laughed out loud while reading this book. Ten countries in ten chapters with an introduction and epilogue; at the very least you might just find a new understanding of happiness. Or like me, a newfound obsession with Iceland. (Note: Asheville, N.C. is mentioned in one chapter.) The book on CD is also available at the library and I intend to listen to Weiner reading his book as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, I’m currently reading “12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time: A Semi-Dysfunctional Family Circumnavigates the Globe” by Mark Jacobson. Jacobson, a respected writer and journalist, sets off on a three month journey with his wife and three children, ages 16, 12, and 9. Light fare from a man who is known for exploring the seamy side of urban life? The first chapter, “Burning is Learning,” finds the family at the Holy River Ganges witnessing a cremation. Decidedly different from my view of world travel, I’m laughing by chapter two as I read Jacobson’s rational for whisking his children away from Brooklyn, N.Y.; “The biggest swindle in the history of the species was underway right here in the U.S.A. Corporate social engineers, closet Mengeles every last one of them, had dismantled the stages of human development… Like Moses, I would lead my children from pop bondage.” More than just a travel book, this book, like “Le Road Trip,” is a love affair. Jacobson, however, is in love with his children and this book will make any parent smile.
Love of place, love of happiness, love of family; it is a blissful journey for February. My mood has lifted.
Sunday, February 03, 2013
Take a delightful dip into thrilling true crime stories
By Edward Hirst
Rowan Public Library
The appeal of historical true crime is not so difficult to imagine: vivid eras are brought to life in these accounts; they are usually well researched. Readers are offered the satisfaction of the compulsion to face the worst in human nature; the assurance that justice has been done, and the chance to empathize with the victims in their hours of need.
Erik Larson conveys what life was like in Chicago as the 19th century drew to a close in the book “The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America.” Chicago’s city leaders were out to prove to the nation and to the world that Chicago was up to the challenge of putting together a monumental World Exposition.
Larson goes into great detail to describe the effort put forth by numerous architects, builders and politicians. He also tells the darker story of H.H. Holmes, whose engaging charm seduced at least a score of unfortunate women, and the activity that took place at a building just a short distance away from the fair site.
“The Great Pearl Heist” is the story of an elaborate criminal scheme that unfolded over a period of several months in 1913 London. The pearls in question were part of a magnificent necklace that had been assembled over a long period by Max Mayer, one of the finest jewelers in London. It was a situation made for a heist, and one of the greatest criminals of the period, Joseph Grizzard, seized the opportunity to make it.
Fortunately for law and order, the London’s Scotland Yard and the underwriter who had insured the necklace for Lloyd’s of London were just as inventive and daring.
In “The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago,” Douglas Perry writes about Maurine Watkins, a girl reporter with the Chicago Tribune in the 1920s, who was the first to cover the sensational story of two Jazz Age women who killed their men with the same casualness they gave to filing their nails. In this account, journalist Perry illuminates both the murderesses who held court at Cook County Jail and the newspaper writers who showcased them.
Paul French writes in the book “Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China” of a mutilated corpse that is found at the base of Fox Tower on Jan. 8, 1937, which poses a special problem for Peking police.
The victim was a free-spirited young woman named Pamela Werner. When Pamela wasn’t attending school in Tientsin, she lived in Peking with her adoptive father, Edward Werner, a scholar and former British consul. She had been beaten to death and then dumped at Fox Tower.
The British government increased its efforts to impede the investigation, suggesting that a cover-up, if not a full-blown conspiracy, was afoot. Racial bigotry also played a role in the British government’s insistence that the investigation should focus on Chinese rather than foreign residents.
Be sure to stop by Rowan Public Library for your chance to step back in time.
By Edward Hirst
Rowan Public Library
The appeal of historical true crime is not so difficult to imagine: vivid eras are brought to life in these accounts; they are usually well researched. Readers are offered the satisfaction of the compulsion to face the worst in human nature; the assurance that justice has been done, and the chance to empathize with the victims in their hours of need.
Erik Larson conveys what life was like in Chicago as the 19th century drew to a close in the book “The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America.” Chicago’s city leaders were out to prove to the nation and to the world that Chicago was up to the challenge of putting together a monumental World Exposition.
Larson goes into great detail to describe the effort put forth by numerous architects, builders and politicians. He also tells the darker story of H.H. Holmes, whose engaging charm seduced at least a score of unfortunate women, and the activity that took place at a building just a short distance away from the fair site.
“The Great Pearl Heist” is the story of an elaborate criminal scheme that unfolded over a period of several months in 1913 London. The pearls in question were part of a magnificent necklace that had been assembled over a long period by Max Mayer, one of the finest jewelers in London. It was a situation made for a heist, and one of the greatest criminals of the period, Joseph Grizzard, seized the opportunity to make it.
Fortunately for law and order, the London’s Scotland Yard and the underwriter who had insured the necklace for Lloyd’s of London were just as inventive and daring.
In “The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago,” Douglas Perry writes about Maurine Watkins, a girl reporter with the Chicago Tribune in the 1920s, who was the first to cover the sensational story of two Jazz Age women who killed their men with the same casualness they gave to filing their nails. In this account, journalist Perry illuminates both the murderesses who held court at Cook County Jail and the newspaper writers who showcased them.
Paul French writes in the book “Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China” of a mutilated corpse that is found at the base of Fox Tower on Jan. 8, 1937, which poses a special problem for Peking police.
The victim was a free-spirited young woman named Pamela Werner. When Pamela wasn’t attending school in Tientsin, she lived in Peking with her adoptive father, Edward Werner, a scholar and former British consul. She had been beaten to death and then dumped at Fox Tower.
The British government increased its efforts to impede the investigation, suggesting that a cover-up, if not a full-blown conspiracy, was afoot. Racial bigotry also played a role in the British government’s insistence that the investigation should focus on Chinese rather than foreign residents.
Be sure to stop by Rowan Public Library for your chance to step back in time.
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