Giving Back to Rowan County

 by Jennifer Nicholson  Rowan Public Library

When Mr. Fred Rogers from Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, was young, he would often see or hear about events that would frighten him as a child.  His mother would always say, “Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping.”   As the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma continue, many children might see or hear about events that frighten them.  Having children look for helpers is way to help calm fears and worries, but can also help teach children to give and help others in return. While families can help by donating to the American Red Cross and other organizations helping those affected by recent natural disasters, there are plenty of opportunities for families to help those here in Rowan County.

The Children and Teen’s Departments of the Rowan Public Library is thrilled to introduce a new program for children to learn how to give back to Rowan County, and for teens to earn volunteer hours needed for community service requirements for school and scholarships.  Give Back Saturday is a once month program where children and teens will be introduced to local charities and organizations, and can give back to the community through various crafts and projects, which RPL will donate to the charity of the month.  The first Give Back Saturday, will be at Headquarters (201 West Fisher Street, Salisbury) on Saturday, September 23rd from 10:00 am-11:00 am.  Staff from RPL and Meals on Wheels will be on hand as children and teens will be creating placemats for senior citizens and learning about the Meals on Wheels program. Children and teens of all ages are welcomed. For more information on Give Back Saturday, please call the Headquarters’ Children’s Departments at 704-216-8234.

There are many other ways that children and teens of Rowan County can give back to their community.  Recycling at home or reading to a neighbor are some simple ways that even young children can help.  Volunteering or donating to local organizations like Faithful Friends Animal Sanctuary of Rowan County or to a local assisted living center are ways that older children can help, or for families to do together. 

For teens, the Salisbury Youth Council provides teens with the opportunity to help create a more positive community, by building leadership skills and team work, while creating service projects to help various community events such as Friday Night Out and Movies in the Park.  The Salisbury Youth Council is open to any teens who live in Rowan County and are current 9-12th graders.  For more information on the Salisbury Youth Council or to apply, please visit: http://www.salisburync.gov/Government/BoardsCommissions/Pages/Salisbury-Youth-Council.aspx

Helping and giving back opportunities are not only available for children and teens of Rowan County, there are many great ways for adults and families to help.  The Friends of the Rowan Public Library is an organization that helps support the Rowan Public Library, by providing funding for various programs such as concerts, storytelling festivals, and RPL’s Summer Reading Programs.  Families and adults can join the Friends of the Rowan Public Library by visiting https://www.rowancountync.gov/772/Friends-of-the-Library, or can help by participating in the Friend’s Annual Book Sale.  Preview sale starts on Friday, October 27th for Friends members’ only, public sale starts on Saturday, October 28th and running until Monday, October 30th.  Individuals and families can become members of the Friends for a small annual fee.  For more information regarding the Friends of the Rowan Public Library, please visit their website or call your local branch location.

Having children look for helpers and becoming helpers themselves can be a way to help children cope with recent current events.  There are many ways for families, children, and teens, to give back to Rowan County, and to gain new awareness of their community.  For more information on organizations listed here, please visit their website, or you can call any RPL location for additional information regarding RPL programs and Friends of the Rowan Public Library.

Reading Nominated Juvenile Books: NC Children’s Book Awards

By Amber Covington Rowan Public Library

Looking for a way to get your child into reading? Introduce him or her to the nominee list of picture and junior books for the 2017-2018 North Carolina Children’s Book Award. In its 25th year, this book award selects a committee of Librarians across the state from public and school libraries that come together to create a list of picture books and chapter books.

Each book chosen as a nominee has been published within the past two years and have been selected to instill a love of reading with books within children’s literature. The picture books list includes the following titles:
“Ada Twist, Scientist” by Andrea Beaty
“The Bear and the Piano” by David Litchfield
“Giant Squid” by Candace Fleming
“Lion Lesson” by Jon Agee
“Little Red and the Very Hungry Lion” by Alex Smith
“Maybe Something Beautiful: How Art Transformed a Neighborhood” by F. Isabel Campoy
“Quit Calling Me a Monster!” by Jory John
“Thunder Boy Jr.” by Sherman Alexie
“The Toad” by Elise Gravel
“Water is Water” by Miranda Paul


The junior book list includes the following books:
“Ada Lovelace, Poet of Science: the First Computer Programmer” by Diane Stanley
“All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook” by Leslie Connor
“Garvey’s Choice” by Nikki Grimes
“Ghost” by Jason Reynolds
“Moo” by Sharon Creech
“A Poem for Peter: The Story of Ezra Jack Keats and the Creation of The Snowy Day” by Andrea Pinkney
“Save Me a Seat” by Sara Weeks and Gita Varadarajan
“Some Writer: the Story of E.B. White” by Melissa Sweet
“The Terrible Two” by Mac Barnett and Jory John
“Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions” by Chris Barton
“Wish” by Barbara O’Connor

There are several activities families can enjoy described the activity booklet listed on the NC Children’s Book Award website. Each book has a short description of topics, videos, websites, discussion questions, and art activities in the activity guide. Stop by the library to checkout the titles we have available.

I have read several books from both categories and I have enjoyed reading “Thunder Boy Jr.” by Sherman Alexie in the picture book category. I am torn between two books in the junior book category and they are “Moo” by Sharon Creech and “Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaker Stream of Inventions” by Chris Barton. These books depict characters that leave their reading inspired to make a contribution to the world through dedication and perseverance.

Here are a few rules to follow before beginning your reading. Children voting in the picture book category should read at least 5 nominees. Children voting in the junior book category should read books. Beginning in November children may begin nominating their favorite picture and junior books until March 2018. All votes will be tallied before a winner is announced from each category of picture book or junior book next spring. Want to read more about the North Carolina Children’s Book Award visit www.nccba.blogspot.com.

Library Card Sign-up Month

 by Laurie Lyda  Rowan Public Library

Library Card Sign-up Month is currently underway at libraries nationwide, and Rowan Public Library’s recent preparation for our celebration has had me pondering what libraries have meant in my life.

To put it mildly, they’ve meant a lot.

I love libraries – I always have. The sight of neatly organized shelves, tables arranged for study and conversation, and quiet study carrels (which were usually my favorite spots) have always filled me with a quiet joy. Even the smell of libraries makes me happy.

For me, libraries represent knowledge and freedom. I grew up without the Internet and mostly without chain bookstores, so visiting the library and getting access to new books or magazines to read and new films to watch was amazing. I cherished those opportunities.

Even now, one of my favorite things to do when traveling is to visit libraries – they reveal so much about the local communities. When examined altogether, the content of un-curated flyer collages on community boards, the themed displays, the advertised programs and events, and even the aesthetic arrangement tell a story about what that particular library does. And that’s a story that I always enjoy reading.

Libraries and communities enjoy a reciprocal relationship in so many ways. Libraries are constantly in a state of change as they evolve to meet the needs of the people they serve. They develop programs, acquire resources, and strive to inspire – and all in ways that will contribute to the quality of life for the communities of which they are a part.

Throughout this constant evolution, though, one of the core tenets remains one of the most vital: Libraries are bigger on the inside.

One of my favorite “Doctor Who” episodes is “Silence in the Library” (reboot series 4, episode 8) – not only because it introduces River Song, but also because the entire planet is a library.

The. Entire. Planet.

Imagine that for a second. The concept makes me both giddy with excitement and a little sad – I’d never be able to read my way through an entire, continent-sized section or view every display!

Though our physical libraries may not be planet-sized, they still hold worlds of knowledge. And our engagement with those resources allows us to travel through time and space – without necessarily having to delve into the “big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff,” as Ten (David Tennant) puts it.

So, whether you frequent the Headquarters, East, or South Rowan Regional branches of Rowan Public Library, you can explore lost worlds with books like David Grann’s nonfiction “The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon.” Or, you can travel back in time with stories like Erik Larsen’s historical narrative about the Chicago World’s Fair and H.H. Holmes in “The Devil in the White City.” Those who prefer fiction can delve into countless worlds that range from Harry Potter to the estates of Jane Austen’s novels to the dystopian world of a post-Yellowstone super volcano eruption. 

For those who enjoy films, RPL’s ever-expanding film collection may hold something of interest: It houses recent releases, classic cinema, and documentaries, among other genres.

Book-to-film adaptations are a perennial favorite. For example, Grann’s book has been adapted into the film “The Lost City of Z,” starring Charlie Hunnam, which is on order for RPL’s circulating collection.

“Doctor Who” is an example of a topic that transcends resource genres: RPL has several classic and reboot episodes on DVD, graphic novels, nonfiction books about the show, and even Justin Richards’ “Time Lord Fairy Tales.”

Remember, too, that many items in RPL’s circulating collection can be sent to your branch of choice. So, if you live in China Grove and want to check out “Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor” but find it’s only available at the Headquarters branch in Salisbury, you can place the item on hold and have it sent to South Rowan Regional for pick-up. This is a great convenience that I personally make use of on a regular basis.

For those who want to explore digital resources, researchers can quickly fall down the rabbit hole, traveling from database to database, searching out the articles and eBooks and other materials that are of interest to them. Some customers express a lack of confidence in their skill at navigating online resources; if you’re in this group, I encourage you to take some time just to practice. Getting familiar with the way online resources work is imperative to feeling more confident. And, if you get stuck, call or visit your nearest branch for assistance.

The libraries in our lives allow us to explore universes galore – a fact I’ll always be grateful for, despite my eternal disappointment that I’ll likely never have the opportunity to explore them via a Tardis.

If you haven’t been to the library lately, Library Card Sign-up Month is the perfect time to do so. For more information about Rowan Public Library, its locations, services, and resources, please visit www. RowanPublicLibrary.org.

The Next Great American Novel

by Jenny Hubbard  Rowan Public Library
               
One of the reasons I read is to help clear the clouds from my brain.  Due to recent national events, the skies there are overcast, grayer than usual. I’m baffled.  Given all that our country has endured, how is it possible that the institution of racism still finds a home on our soil? 

Just last week, I checked out from Rowan Public Library a novel recommended to me by my sister Leigh—Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi.  Usually I turn to non-fiction to supply me with causes and reasons, reserving fiction for pleasure, inspiration, and spiritual nourishment, but this is the rare book that delivers all of the above. To call Homegoing (as it has been called by people way more credible than I) a great American novel is to catalogue it alongside Beloved, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Huckleberry Finn; and certainly, it deserves to stand in that company.  It has earned big honors, top awards. But I would argue that Gyasi’s masterpiece reaches beyond what Toni Morrison, Harper Lee, and Mark Twain have said about the institution of race.  It reaches beyond by stretching back, all the way back, to the beginning of slave trade in Africa.

The novel covers 300 years in 300 pages, so the pace is swift, yet the writing is clear as a bell:  “This was how they lived there, in the bush: Eat or be eaten. Capture or be captured. Marry for protection. Quey would never go to Cudjo’s village.  He would not be weak.  He was in the business of slavery, and sacrifices had to be made.”  And in a later chapter we get this:  “For Sonny, the problem with America wasn’t segregation but the fact that you could not, in in fact, segregate. Sonny had been trying to get away from white people for as long as he could remember, but, big as this country was, there was nowhere to go.”

At the start of the book is a family tree to help us follow the descendants of two half-sisters born in the eighteenth century.  Gyasi gives each generation its voice, and while she could end on a note of despair, she chooses instead an uplifting image: two modern-day academics, a young man from one family line and a young woman from the other, in love and swimming together at the Ghanaian shore where their roots lie buried.  Without melodramatizing or preaching, Gyasi, a young woman born in Ghana and raised in Alabama, led me to a clearer understanding of why racism in America is so complicated and why it’s still here.  It takes more than love to conquer hate, Gyasi seems to be saying.  It takes knowledge—and acknowledgment.