Children's Books at Rowan Public Library

by Amy Notarius Rowan Public Library

Several children’s books at Rowan Public Library recently caught my attention. These clever stories with fun illustrations should appeal to a variety of young readers. 

In Mike Curato’s Little Elliot Big City, Little Elliot is a polka-dot elephant living in the big city.  And he has a big problem. He’s too small. He can’t reach the top shelf of the freezer or get the attention of a taxi driver. Worst of all, no one sees him when he tries to buy a cupcake!  But then Elliot meets someone even smaller than he is, and working together they find new ways to enjoy the city’s sights and special treats. Set in 1940s New York City, the illustrations, with lots of brown and green hues, are the real star of this delightful story. 

In Millie Waits for the Mail, by Alexander Steffensmeier, Millie the cow takes a particular delight in scaring the mail carrier.  Every day Millie searches for a new place to hide. But what’s fun to Millie leads to broken packages and nightmares for the carrier. And when Millie accidentally ruins the carrier’s bicycle, they come up with a surprise solution that benefits both of them. Children should get a big kick out of the illustrations here as Millie pops up in unexpected places all over the farm. 

In Eileen Christelow’s The Desperate Dog Writes Again, Emma the dog lives happily with George, her owner, and a cat.  But one day a new woman enters George’s and Emma’s life and Emma is not happy. At times like these, Emma thinks, the only place to go is the library!  At the library, Emma sends an email to Ask Queenie, the advice column for dogs having problems with difficult humans.  But things go from bad to worse when George’s girlfriend brings her own dog to visit! Emma is beside herself. When Queenie’s advice to Emma—you must be on your WORST  behavior—backfires, Emma becomes even more unhappy. Older children should enjoy the humor of a story told from the pet’s perspective, and all readers can find something to like in the colorful, comic strip panel-like illustrations.  

Check out these and other fun books for young readers at Rowan Public Library today.

Library Notes

 by Rebecca Hyde Rowan Public Library

            A conversation about books and reading might touch on what is the best American novel or what you’re reading now.  Less frequently asked would be “What are you rereading? How many times?  And why?

            Maureen Corrigan shares her rereading experiences in “So We Read On:  How the Great Gatsby Came to be and Why It Endures.”  As a high-school student, Corrigan read Gatsby and thought it “a boring novel about rich people.”  At fifty-five, she considers it “The Great American Novel, “ which deserves to be read at least twice in one’s life, if not every five years.  What happened to Corrigan and why did her opinion of the novel change?

            She became, over the years, a literary critic, book reviewer, teacher, and little older.  Her advice is: “First … you have to wise up a little, get older, become more vulnerable to both the sadness of everyday life and its loveliness.”   “The Great Gatsby” is the grim story of a man’s fall from grace, suggesting that the American Dream may be a mirage.  It takes on the tough subjects of social class and empty idol worship, be it romantic love or the rewards of self-improvement.  For Corrigan, the language of the telling sets the novel apart.  In the “most beautiful sentences ever written about America,” Fitzgerald makes the Dream irresistible.  And Corrigan, because she hasn’t “learned enough,” because she wants to “look harder, read smarter,” will in a year inevitably pick up and read “Gatsby” again.

            “My Life in Middlemarch,” by Rebecca Mead, is a memoir, a biography, and literary criticism.  Mead was seventeen when she first read “Middlemarch” by George Eliot, still living in the English town where she grew up and prepping with a tutor for her university entrance examinations.  She loved “Middlemarch” because it gratified her aspirations to maturity and learnedness.  She completely identified with Miss Dorothea Brooke, and admired what little she then knew about George Eliot.  Every time she went back to it, the novel “opened up” further. 

            Now in her forties, Mead is still reading “Middlemarch” but with the sensibility of one who has experienced what Eliot called “the actual friction of life.”  What now resonates in her rereading is not the hopes and dreams of youth but the resignations attending middle age, of doors closing behind one, of alternative lives unlived.  In her rereading of the book and her research into Eliot’s life, Mead works toward a new sense of a life well-lived.:  Dorothea’s fate is to be a “heroine of the ordinary”: “Having aspired at the novel’s outset to do good for others in some grand but abstract way, she discovers that the good she is able to do is in relation to the lives that touch her own more closely, even if doing so may be inconvenient or painful for her.”

            For Mead, reading and rereading “Middlemarch” is part of her own experience of life.  It is one of those books that seem to grow along with the reader.  Rereading can be transformative.

           

           

           

           

Baby Time

by Jennifer Nicholson Rowan Public Library

This week is a little sad for me, I just finished planning my son’s third birthday party; and I realized that my sweet, cute, adorable baby is not a newborn anymore.  He is growing up so fast, as I am sure every parent knows just how I am feeling!  Looking back I can remember how I felt three years ago; as an expecting first time mother, full of hope and worry, and not knowing what to do!  Babies do not come with manuals, but there are many great resources available to help!

A couple of weeks ago you probably saw an amazing article by Dara Cain, reviewing many of the great online resources that the Rowan Public Library has to offer for young children. Yet, many do not know that the Rowan Public Library also offers great resources for babies and first time moms as well! The library offers programs and storytimes that are geared just for babies.  These interactive programs introduce babies into the world of music and stories allowing babies to develop literacy skills and social skills.  Likewise, these storytimes serve as a great outlet for moms, dads, and caregivers, as well, by providing an opportunity to interact with their child, but also with other adults!  Storytimes help serve as a reminder for all of those silly songs and stories, which you probably heard as a child, but forgot as an adult. I cannot tell you how many times I sung Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star!  For more information visit our website at Rowanpubliclibrary.org, or for times and locations see below:

Baby Time- Storytimes

Headquarters (Salisbury)                Wednesdays                          10:00am

East (Rockwell)                                 Mondays                                 10:00am

Toddler Time

Headquarters (Salisbury)                Tuesday                                 10:30am

East (Rockwell)                                 Mondays                                 11:00am

Tiny Tumblers

South (China Grove/Landis)                       Tuesdays & Thursdays        10:30am

            The Rowan Public Library also offers many great books, which yes, almost seems as if there is a manual for babies!  Many of these books offer wonderful, colorful pictures and tips; such as Heading Home with Your Newborn, by Laura Jana and The Essential First Year, by Penelope Leach; other books are great go to guides like the Mayo Clinic Guide to Your Baby’s First Year and What to expect the First Year, by Heidi Murkoff.

            However, one of the most terrifying and daunting challenges that I experience, and I am sure that every parents worries about is finding a great daycare or preschool.  Trusting someone else to take care of your most precious child is scary.  Yet, many parents are unaware of the many great resources available to them to help with find the perfect daycare and preschool.  The library again does offer many great book resources like, How to choose the best preschool for your child by Jenifer Wana.  Yet, there are also many great online resources such as, http://ncchildcare.nc.gov.  This site created by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services by the Division of Child Development and Early Education, this site allows parents to find and search for daycares and preschools in their area, either by city or county.   Parents can search for center-based childcare or family based childcare centers, by star ratings, and by child’s age.  This site provides parents with tips and questions to ask when visiting and looking at schools, and offers parents a great guide in choosing the best care for your child.

            Being a first time mom does not have to be scary.  The Rowan Public Library is here to help first time moms, by connecting moms other moms, through Storytime, or by checking out many of the books and online resources that we have available.  For more information or questions please checkout our website at Rowanpubliclibrary.org or by calling us at 704- 216-8234.

                                                                                                Jennifer Nicholson

                                                                                                Librarian/YA Coordinator

Jana, L. A. (2011). Heading Home with Your Newborn: From Birth to Reality (2nd ed.). Elk Grove Village, IL: The American Academy of Pediatrics.

Leach, P. (2010). The Essential First Year. New York: Dk Publishing.

Mayo Clinic. (2012). Mayo Clinic Guide to Your Baby's First Year. (E. Krych, R. Johnson, & W. Cook, Eds.) Intercourse, PA: Good Books.

Murkoff, H., Eisenberg, A., & Hathaway, S. (2003). What to Expect the First Year. New York: Workman Publishing.

Wana, J. (2010). How to choose the best preschool for your child : the ultimate guide to finding, getting into, and preparing for nursery school. Naperville, Ill: Sourcebooks.

Easy Listening

 by April Everett Rowan Public Library

                Like many in our community, I am fortunate to have parents who took the time to read to me every night before bed as I was growing up.  I firmly believe this early auditory connection to literacy at instilled in me a love of reading.  Fast forward eighteen years to college, where I majored in English and managed to eliminate all the childhood joys of reading in one brief semester (reading 45 novels for one class will do that).  Despite a four year hiatus from “reading for fun,” I somehow found my way back to my roots and reestablished my love of reading.

Fast forward another six years to my first job out of graduate school, which came with a 50-minute one-way commute.  By the time I would get home from work, I was exhausted and not in the mood to sit down with a book.  Then a fellow librarian introduced me to audiobooks, these wonderful mechanisms that allow you to read and drive at the same time!

Audiobooks are not a new invention.  The early days of audiobooks relied on LP recordings of available print materials.  In the 1930s, the Library of Congress created “talking books” for the blind.  By the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs were funding audiobook recordings of classic works that were staples of library and classroom collections.  Early recordings were typically a straight reading of a printed text by one person with little or no characterization, music, or sound effects.

Today’s audiobooks come in a range of options.  Some productions offer a full-cast of narrators, with alternating voices creating distinct characters for the listener.  Others offer a single narrator tasked with a fully voiced recording.  Narrators can profoundly impact the way the listener perceives characters and plot.  Take, for example, the Artemis Fowl children’s series, primarily narrated by Maxwell Caulfield.  His ability to seamlessly transition between characters—whether female or male; Native American or British—is certainly notable.  My husband and I listened to the entire series and were aghast to find that book five in the series had a new narrator.  While the interim narrator was equally as talented as Caulfield, his characterization of Butler (one of the main characters) completely changed the way we had perceived Butler’s demeanor and even his stature. 

For avid book lovers, it may feel like “cheating” to listen to an audiobook.  But there are many proven literacy benefits to be gained from listening to a well-read audiobook.  There has been a great deal of research supporting positive effects on vocabulary development, fluency, and comprehension.  Take, for example, Life of Pi by Yann Martel.  I tried to read the book years ago and found myself bogged down in foreign words and names that I could not pronounce.  Listening to the audiobook allowed me to have an authentic reading of the text in which the narrator had done the work of researching pronunciation and accents.

Being an audiobook narrator may seem like an easy job, but there’s a lot that goes into making a top notch production.  Narrators are responsible for pacing, setting, and mood, in addition to presenting the voices.  Many narrators color code scripts to keep track of changes in points of view, and they always read the book from cover to cover at least once prior to recording.  As in the case of Life of Pi, narrators are also responsible for researching pronunciations of unfamiliar words or names and being able to sing tunes if required by the text.

Beyond the recording studio, there is a whole team of people who make the audiobook come to life, including a studio director, producer, recording engineer, and postproduction engineer.  Audiobooks can take anywhere from three weeks to three months to produce.  Most audiobooks are released at the same time as their print counterpart, but publishers often have the ability to create one quickly if a book unexpectedly hits the best sellers list.

Before your next road trip or commute to work, stop by your local branch of Rowan Public Library and consider checking out an audiobook version of a book you enjoyed reading.   If you have a mobile device or computer, visit www.rowanpubliclibrary.org and download a free audiobook from one of our subscriptions to NCDigital, OneClick Digital, and more.  Compare how the narrator affects your perception of the characters, scenery, and other aspects of the book this time around.  In the process, I’m confident you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how quickly you get to your destination!