New Year's Holiday Hours

The Library hours for the New Year's holiday will be:

Mon., Dec. 31 9am to 4pm
Tues., Jan. 1 Closed

Happy New Year to you all!

The Library is an Open Vault!

I heard a commercial on TV this morning announcing that some Disney "Classics" on DVD were going "back in the vault" on January 31. It's a great marketing campaign: Parents, you'd better buy these movies now before they're taken away from your kids forever (or at least until it's time for a re-release)! How can we deprive our children of Bambi, Lady and the Tramp, or The Chronicles of Narnia?

But wait! You don't have to buy these DVDs...

Your public library is an Open Vault! We have each of these films (and more) in our Children's Room and you can borrow them anytime you want! They will not be sent to Movie Purgatory until the next ad campaign. Always remember that libraries hold thousands of classic entertainment treasures for reading and viewing for all ages and you can bring them home for free! Libraries, like Disney, really do make wishes come true!

I Resolve to.....

The New Year is almost here and some of us have been making those dreaded New Year’s resolutions. Does the mere sound of the words put you into a panic? Have you ever managed to actually keep a New Year’s resolution? If you have you are amongst the minority. Statistics have shown the success rate to hover somewhere around 5%, but hey don’t let that stop you because someone has to make up that 5%--right! One of the top resolutions made is to--you guessed it-- lose weight. Having recently had a baby I know a little bit about losing weight and the trick is to find what works best for you--diet, exercise, a combination of both. The library has a great selection of books on dieting (look in 613.25) and books on low calorie cooking (look in 641.563). If exercise is your goal, and you are not a gym person (which I am not), check out our selection of exercise DVDs. Yoga, pilates, and belly dancing are few of the offerings we have. Go ahead and try something new it will help to make the cold winter months go by quicker, and hopefully you will lose a couple pounds in the deal. Good luck!

Not Yet Drown’d

Not Yet Drown’d by Peg Kingman

Catherine MacDonald is living a quiet life in 1820’s Scotland with her brother and her step daughter, Grace. Her husband and twin brother have both died leaving her unsure of her life’s purpose when a package arrives from India. It contains a beautiful shawl, unusual tea, and bagpipe music scores in her twin brother’s handwriting. Then a long lost relative of her husband’s, a headstrong, hard woman, comes to take Catherine’s beloved Grace back to America with her. Add to this a mysterious Indian woman who repeatedly comes to Catherine’s aid. Events build until Catherine is forced to flee to India with Grace, determined to find out what really happened to her twin brother.

This novel started off a little slowly, but it is well worth reading through the first few chapters to get to the exotic adventures that fill the rest of the book.

Funniest Titles of 2007

I must read 10,000 book reviews over the course of a year. Why I keep lists of some things baffles even me, but here are my Favorite Funny Titles from 2007. Most are fiction (with the majority being 'punny' mysteries), but there are a few non-fiction titles mixed in as well.

Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund by Blaize Clement (the 2nd Dixie Hemingway, petsitter, mystery)

Edward Trencom’s Nose: a novel of history, dark intrigue and cheese by Giles Milton (comic thriller set in a London cheese emporium)

Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him by Danielle Ganek (the NY art world as seen by a Soho gallerista)

Even June Cleaver Would Forget the Juice Box: cut yourself some slack and still raise great kids by Ann Dunnewold

An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England by Brock Clarke (the Emily Dickinson homestead fire was an accident, he swears)

Drunk, Divorced and Covered in Cat Hair: the true misadventures of a 30-something who learned to knit after he split by Laurie Beasley Perry

If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start with Your Legs: a guide to understanding men by Big Boom (why would you trust the advice of an author named Big Boom?)

The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming by Lemony Snicket (great Christmas/Hanukkah story for ages 4-8)

I Am America (and So Can You) by Stephen Colbert (the host of The Colbert Report) ... we also have this on audio CD

The Da Da De Da Da Code by Robert Rankin (promises to leave Dan Brown fans “breathless”!)

Here Lies the Librarian by Richard Peck (hey, this title isn’t funny…who put this on the list?)

Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson (for teenagers)

Boobs: a guide to your girls by Elisabeth Squires (yes, it’s about breast health)

The Alphabet from A to Y, with Bonus Letter Z! by Steve Martin & Roz Chast (Martin’s other bestseller is Born Standing Up...also on audio CD)

The Barnacle Barb and her Pirate Crew series by Nadia Higgins which includes such titles as Pegleg Gets Stumped, Aye, my Eye!, Blimey, that’s Slimy, Walk the Plank, Plankton and Break a Sea-Leg, Shrimp Breath

Hell Hath No Curry by Tamar Myers (a Penn. Dutch mystery with recipes)... 10 other very funny titles available too!

Right From the Gecko by Cynthia Baxter (sequel to Who’s Kitten Who?)

Kilt Dead by Kaitlyn Dunnett (a Scottish dancer sleuths)

Claws and Effect by Rita Mae Brown (the 9th Mrs. Murphy cat mystery)

Died in the Wool by Rett MacPherson (mystery at a textile factory)

Cries and Whiskers by Clea Simon (the 3rd Theda Krakow Boston-based mystery, following Cattery Row)

Antiques Maul by Barbara Allen (see also her Antiques Roadkill)

Trick My Truck But Don’t Mess with My Heart by LuAnn McLane (author of Dark Roots & Cowboy Boots...you get the idea)

Please feel free to add to this list!!!

Conundrum of the Day

We were surprised to see one of our patrons twice in the same day. She explained that we had called her cell phone to tell her that a book had come in for her. Since she was in the Library at the time and did not want to violate our cell phone policy, she did not answer her cell phone! Now that’s a good Do Bee.

Holiday Hours

The Library will be closed for the Christmas Holiday Monday, December 24 & Tuesday, December 25.

What Daemon Are You?

If you have seen the scenes from the movie The Golden Compass, you may have wondered about the Polar Bears, Monkeys, and Tigers called Daemons. They are not animals, pets, or demons. Daemons are the soul of a human in animal form. Who you are is reflected in the type of animal that appears as your Daemon. At the official website of The Golden Compass movie you can get your very own daemon by answering a short 20-question quiz. Just click on the Daemons tab, then choose "Meet Your Daemon". I am matched with a handsome lion. What kind of Daemon do you have?

If you love the movie, make sure to read the rest of the Dark Materials trilogy.

Banning Bonanza Burgeoning---What's Going on?

There've been a rash of censorship incidents at libraries lately, more than I've ever noticed at one time. What's going on? Is our society growing less tolerant of others' views or are books more viscerally objectionable?
Here's some of the books in the news recently:

• It's Perfectly Normal by Robie H. Harris was purposely kept overdue from a Lewiston, Maine library by a woman claiming the book was sexually graphic, with "amoral abnormal contents".
• Seacoast NH author Rodman Philbrick's The Last Book in the Universe was banned in an elementary school in Bellevue, California because it was about gangs. (Philbrick's The Young Man and the Sea was the "Dover Reads" book selection a couple years ago!)
• The enormously popular Golden Compass trilogy by Philip Pullman (now a hit movie) was pulled from shelves in Toronto, ONT and Oshkosh, WI for its alleged anti-Catholic bias.
• Similarly, a pastor in Wakefield, MA decreed that the Harry Potter books would not appear in his Catholic school library's collection.
• Sexy by Joyce Carol Oates was kept in the Boulder, MT High School library by a vote of 4-1 by a Reconsideration Committee. An English teacher there wanted the book removed for liberal use of the f-word and sexual themes.
• A board in Lower Macungie, PA voted to keep King and King by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland on library shelves despite a petition by 40 residents citing the book's homosexual themes.
• An attempt to censor C.S. Adler's The Shell Lady's Daughter in the Campbell Co., WY elementary school was laid to rest by an 11-2 vote by a committee. The parent of a 4th grader had objected to the book's themes of "sexual thoughts, promiscuity, and suicide."
• The school board in Tuscaloosa County, AL voted to keep Ellen Wittlinger's Sandpiper in its high school library despite complaints about its "graphic language".

Now I confess that, other than the Harry Potter series, I haven't read any of these specific titles. But my views on the subject are simple. If you object to the material, don't read it. Remember that other people will want to read it, even if you don't. Keep an eye on what your children are reading and if you don't think it's appropriate for their age or maturity levels, feel free to ban it from your household. But your values may not be my values; your "objection threshholds" may be higher than mine. Every person must make the decision for himself or herself or their own family. That's why it's called The Freedom to Read!

New York Times Names 10 Best Books of 2007

The New York Times has named its top 10 books for 2007. Visit their web site to read the full book reviews. The library currently owns 6 of the titles and the rest are on order. Happy reading!

Fiction:

1. Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas. This first novel explores the fragmented personal histories behind four desperate days in a black writer’s life.
   
2. Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson. Translated by Anne Born. In this short yet spacious Norwegian novel, an Oslo professional hopes to cure his loneliness with a plunge into solitude.


3. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño. Translated by Natasha Wimmer. A craftily autobiographical novel about a band of literary guerrillas.


4. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. Layoff notices fly in Ferris’s acidly funny first novel, set in a white-collar office in the wake of the dot-com debacle.


5. Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. The author of “Jesus’ Son” offers a soulful novel about the travails of a large cast of characters during the Vietnam War.

Nonfiction:

1. Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. The author, a Washington Post journalist, catalogs the arrogance and ineptitude that marked America’s governance of Iraq.


2. Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. Kalish’s soaring love for her childhood memories saturates this memoir, which coaxes the reader into joy, wonder and even envy.


3. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin. An erudite outsider’s account of the cloistered court’s inner workings.


4. The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History by Linda Colley. Colley tracks the “compulsively itinerant” Marsh across the 18th century and several continents.


5. The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross. In his own feat of orchestration, The New Yorker’s music critic presents a history of the last century as refracted through its classical music.

New Dowloadable Audio Books

These downloadable Audio Books were just added this month. Happy listening!

Title	Author
Amazing Grace	Steel, Danielle
Born in Death	Robb, J.D.
I Am America And So Can You	Colbert, Stephen
Skipping Christmas	Grisham, John
Blood Memory	Iles, Greg
Cape Perdido	Muller, Marcia
The Ever-Running Man	Muller, Marcia
From the Corner of His Eye	Koontz, Dean
I Am Legend and Other Stories	Matheson, Richard
Neverwhere	Gaiman, Neil
The Sea	Banville, John
"T" is For Trespass	Grafton, Sue
The Abstinence Teacher	Perrotta, Tom
Blood Brothers	Roberts, Nora
A Christmas Beginning	Perry, Anne
Classic Crime Short Stories	Rendell, Ruth
Confessor	Goodkind, Terry
Evil Genius	Jinks, Catherine
A Free Life	Jin, Ha
The Highlander's Touch	Moning, Karen Marie
"J" Is For Judgment	Grafton, Sue
Noble Lies	Benoit, Charles
Rhett Butler's People	McCaig, Donald
A Single Shard	Park, Linda Sue
The Street of a Thousand Blossoms	Tsukiyama, Gail
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox	O'Farrell, Maggie
Winter Moon	Koontz, Dean

What Is Your Favorite Theme Song?

Remember how you felt when one of your favorite television theme songs came on? Now you can relieve many of those moments by browsing through the TV Theme Music website. Over 3000 tunes from all sorts of television shows, from the wistful Cheers theme to the raucously upbeat Banana Splits song are available on this fun website.

Merriam-Webster Announces the 2007 Word of the Year

The votes are in based on a combined list of twenty of the most frequently looked-up words and most popular submissions on Merriam-Webster OnLine.

I must confess I never heard of the winner.

"w00t (interjection) expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word "yay"."

The list contain words that are old and well know(conundrum), old and obscure (sardoodledum), and newish (blamestorm). Have some fun and try to work them into your conversations. I think the Circulation Librarian has used Pecksniffian several times already.

Don’t Ask Us if We Have J.K. Rowling’s Latest Book

We don’t and we won’t. For starters, it cost $4million dollars and that would empty the book budget for many years to come. J.K. Rowling only made seven copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard. The leather bound books are covered in semi precious stones. Six of the books will be given to those closely involved in the Harry Potter book series. The seventh was auctioned off today in London to benefit Rowling’s charity, Children's Voice.

Gift Ideas for Adults

Finish your Christmas shopping at the Library. We offer an assortment of gifts unique to Dover.

Dover Public Library Bookbag. The latest design of our popular bookbags has a zippered pocket inside, handy for keys and library cards, as well as a pocket on the front of the bag. $15.00

Birds Eye View of Dover 1888, a poster sized map from the Friends of the Library.$5.00

Notepaper featuring five historic scenes of Dover. $4.00

The Port of Dover: Two Centuries of Shipping on the Cochecho by Robert Whitehouse and Cathleen Beaudoin. $25.00

Factory on Fire! Cocheco Mill Blaze of 1907 Revealed DVD. $20.00

The Great Blaze: A Look Back at Dover's Deadly Mill Fire DVD. 12.95

Come on in and see what else we have to offer!

Gift Ideas for Kids

It is probably pretty obvious what my gift suggestion for kids is, I am a librarian and this is a library blog, but I will say it anyway--books. Now I know some of you are probably thinking this would be a boring gift for a kid, but I hope most of us have fond memories of childhood books. I still have a book of poetry, that I was given when I was very young, that I love to look at. My husband has books that were given to him by his grandparents where they wrote a note on the inside front covers, a nice keepsake. And to make it easy for you to choose, our children's room staff has compiled a lovely list of their book picks for various age groups, and made it available in the library and on our website. If nothing on our list catches your fancy you can look at the NY Times Children's Bestsellers list for what is currently popular. Happy holidays!

Get in the Holiday Spirit with Santa Clause 3

Join us on Saturday, December 8th at 2:00pm, in the Library Lecture Hall, for a free screening of Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause. This movie is rated G so it is great for the whole family. Here is the gist of it:

It's Christmas time once again and Scott Calvin juggles a full house of
family and the mischievous Jack Frost, who is trying to take over the "big
guy's" holiday. At the risk of giving away the secret location of the North
Pole, Scott invites his in-laws to share in the holiday festivities, and
upcoming birth of baby Claus with expectant wife, Carol. Along for the
adventure are Scott's extended family, son Charlie, ex-wife Laura Miller,
her husband, Neil Miller and their daughter, Lucy who, together with head
elf Curtis, foil Jack Frost's crafty scheme to control the North Pole.

Cormac: The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing

Cormac: The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing by Sonny Brewer

I can’t believe I read the whole thing in one night. I have been in a slump lately; no books or audiobooks have thrilled me. Many were tossed aside after a few lackluster chapters. Cormac: The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing was a book I could not put down. Cormac is a personable Golden Retriever who rarely leaves his owner’s side. They go to work together, they hang out at home together, their bond is deep. Sonny, the author, leaves Cormac with a friend while he goes off on a book tour. The nightmare begins when he gets a phone call telling him that Cormac has disappeared. Neighbors thought they had seen him in the back of a strange red pickup truck. The pound does not have him, shelters and vets have not seen him either. The breakthrough finally comes when a young girl admits Cormac was left at the pound. The director stonewalls until lawyers are brought in and then admits that Cormac was given to a Golden Retriever Rescue in another part of the country. The chase is on to find him before he vanishes forever.

The author does a splendid job building the tension in this true life story as well as bringing Cormac with all his eccentricities to life. A treat for any dog lover.

Take a Quiz, Feed the World

Test your vocabulary skills while you help feed the world. Here’s how you can play:

Click on the answer that best defines the word. If you get it right, you get a harder word. If wrong, you get an easier word. For each word you get right, Free Rice will donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. Its lots of fun; words range form easy to unusual. Do you know what caprine and scintillation mean? If you do, don’t be supercilious, be insuperable and help make an oblation of rice!

The Future is Now

This weekend I experienced science fiction transformed into reality. I saw Butterscotch; a toy horse that whinnies, swishes his tail, blinks, and moves in response to the touch of your hand. It reminded me of Ray Bradbury stories where the toys becomes a little too sophisticated for the good of their human owners. Every where I went huge plasma screen TVs were on sale, reminding me of another Ray Bradbury story. In “The Pedestrian” a man is arrested by police for his unusual behavior. He is out walking, enjoying the night air while everyone else sits in their living rooms, illuminated by the ghostly blue flicker from huge TV screens hanging on the walls. Ray Bradbury was particularly prescient with the story he titled “The Murderer”. His portrait of a world of constant background noise from radios, TVs, and wrist radios much like the modern cell phone, was written in 1953! The Murderer is sent to a mental institution because he began gleefully destroying all the noise making machines after realizing, “The telephones such a convenient thing: it just sits there and demands you call someone who doesn’t want to be called. Friends were always calling, calling, calling me. Hell, I hadn’t any time of my own. When it wasn’t the telephone it was the television. The radio, the phonograph….It was music by Mozzek in every restaurant, music and commercials on buses I rode to work. When it wasn’t music, it was interoffice communications, and my horror chamber of a radio wristwatch on which my friends and my wife phoned every five minutes.”

It all makes me wonder what other science fiction scenarios will soon be come reality….

Dial One to Speak to a Real Human Being

Our intrepid Library office manager spends many hours on the phone ordering books and dealing with all sorts of vendors trying to get the best deal for the library. When you spend this much time on the phone you grow to despise those automated telephone systems. One of her favorite web sites is Get Human. They offer phone numbers for hundreds of companies and the numeric codes that will get you out of the dreaded automated telephone system and talking to a real live human.

As the Seasons Turn

The Circulation Librarian is always finding the cutest bookmarks to tempt unwary readers. They are often seasonal; in October she set out bookmarks that looked like candy bars wrappers. The Hershey chocolate bar bookmark was deliciously realistic. This month’s irresistible bookmarks feature a snowman and a gingerbread man. Why do her bookmarks always make me feel hungry?

Norman Mailer Wins a Dubious Literary Prize

Maybe it’s a good thing Norman Mailer is not alive to personally receive this particular prize. He is the 2007 winner of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award for the most awkward description of an intimate encounter. The Literary Review, a British magazine, started the Bad Sex in Fiction Awards in 1993 to “draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it”. Previous winners include Sebastian Faulks and Tom Wolfe.

Be a Good Host, Visit Your Library

Recently I was checking out stacks, and stacks of books to a mother and daughter, and they were talking about their book choices ..."these are for Uncle Frank, these are for Grandma, some magazines for cousin Lynn...." I suddenly realized they were getting books for their holiday guests--what a cool idea! When I questioned them they said they always borrowed books for their guests--fiction, non-fiction, biographies, magazines-- depending on the tastes of their guests. They wanted their guests to feel at home, and since they were avid readers it just made sense. Okay, maybe Martha Stewart had already thought of this, but I had not. I am definitely going to steal this idea next time I have overnight guests. Be a good host, visit your library.

Teen Readers’ Favorite Book is New Moon

More than 6,000 teen readers across the country chose New Moon by Stephenie Meyer as their favorite book in the annual American Library Association Teens’ Top Ten vote. New moon is the second book in an incredibly popular series about teenage vampires.

The 2007 Teens' Top Ten is:

1. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
2. Just Listen by Sarah Dessen
3. How to Ruin a Summer Vacation by Simone Elkeles (not owned by DPL)
4. Maximum Ride: School's Out - Forever by James Patterson
5. Firegirl by Tony Abbott.
6. All Hallows Eve (13 Stories) by Vivian Vande Velde
7. Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
8. River Secrets by Shannon Hale
9. Bad Kitty by Michele Jaffe (not owned by DPL)
10. Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks

The Chicken or the Egg?

Libraries have embraced blogs as wonderful ways to communicate regularly with our patrons. That was certainly our purpose in starting one here in Dover. We have a printed newsletter, but we can only afford to print 500 copies a month. Blogs can reach thousands! Plus, we always have a lot more to say than can fit in the 4 pages of our newsletter...about our profession, the books and movies we read and view, our patrons and their stories, funny incidents, etc. ...and a blog just fits our workstyle perfectly. We try to write what we might say in conversation with a patron at the front desk.

Well now, our blog has been included in a new book by library/media/tech guru Walt Crawford called "Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples". He calls our blog a "robust ,varied blog offering a variety of voices on a variety of topics." I think it made his list because we post often, we're sometimes lengthy (mea culpa, that's usually me), we attempt humor, we include illustrations and photographs, and we get some public comments. For whatever reason, we're happy to be included.

However, Walt's book may generate interest by people like me in Libraryland who read his "Cites and Insights" publication, but how do we get regular folk, general ordinary book lovers, to tune in regularly? Does the blog ever really translate into more use of the library or, at the very least, engender good feelings about the library? We thought our blog would be a great (and free) publicity tool but how do we generate enough publicity for the blog itself so that "write it, they will come" actually comes to fruition? But thanks for listing us Mr. Crawford, we'll take all the hits we can get!!

Library Hours for the Thanksgiving Weekend

Library hours for the Thanksgiving Holiday will be:
Wednesday, Nov. 21 - 9am to 5:30pm
Thursday and Friday, Nov. 22 & 23 - Closed
Saturday, November 24 - 9am to 5:00pm
Sun., Nov. 25 - Closed

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Listen All the Way to Grandma's House

Are you going to be one of those unfortunate travelers braving the airports over the Thanksgiving holiday? If you are, why not load up your MP3 player with a few audio books to occupy your time? Many new titles have been added this month.

Among the new downloadable audio book titles are:

Title	Author
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress	Sijie, Dai
Blue Christmas	Andrews, Mary Kay
Charlie Bone and the Invisible Boy	Nimmo, Jenny
Creation in Death	Robb, J.D.
Fatherland	Harris, Robert
King Dork	Portman, Frank
A Lick of Frost	Hamilton, Laurell K.
Look Me in the Eye	Robison, John Elder
The Secret Life of Josephine	Erickson, Carolly
Sixteen in Nome	Brand, Max
Stone Cold	Baldacci, David
Third Degree	Iles, Greg
American Creation	Ellis, Joseph J.
Charlie Bone & the Castle of Mirrors	Nimmo, Jenny
Darkness Falls	Mills, Kyle
Double Cross	Patterson, James
The Heir	Bradford, Barbara Taylor
Last Night at the Lobster	O'Nan, Stewart
The Race	Patterson, Richard North

Saying Thank You is a Piece of Cake

Our wonderful patrons know how to keep the librarians’ spirits up. Thank you Joanne and Michael!

Unattended Children at the Library

Late one afternoon last week, a mother dropped off her 10-year old child at the Library while she went to an exercise class downtown. Library policy states that no child under 8 may be left unattended, so the mom was well within our rules in leaving her son in the Children's Room unaccompanied. Unfortunately, she did not realize the Library closes at 5:30pm on Thursdays. We were left with a conundrum: no way to reach the mother (her cell phone was off), and a Library that was closing. Luckily the child was able to reach his older sister for a ride home, but the staff stayed on the premises with the child until she arrived. It's not the first time something like this has happened. I came across a sign in another blog which could offer a possible solution.

And the winners are...

The 58th annual National Book Awards were handed out in New York City this week. Winners included:

FICTION: Denis Johnson for "Tree of Smoke" a novel about two American families swept up in the Vietnam War.

NON-FICTION: "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA" by Tim Weiner who examined over 50,000 official documents pertaining to the 60-year existence of this U.S. spy agency.

YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE: "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian", a coming-of-age story by Sherman Alexie which follows an adolescent boy trying to break away from the life he seems destined to live.

ENJOY THEM ALL!

Colorful Creations

Come in and see the exquisite bracelets, necklaces, and earrings crafted by Annemarie in the display cases in the Reference Room and the magazine area. The Library is always looking for local craftspeople and artists who would like to display their work at the Library throughout the year. If you are interested please contact Sandra Erdmann.

Something for the Grammar Freaks

Find out if you know when to use "it's" or "its and "there," "their," or "they're" with this fun little quiz. If you grew up in a household like mine, with a mother who would correct us by saying things like “that is THEY, not, that’s them.” you will find it a piece of cake. I only missed one, don’t tell my Mom, or the Library Director either because she knows her grammar like nobody’s business. Hmmm, was that correct grammar?

Anyway if you have fun with the quiz, and pondering the subtleties of the English language, you may want to check out:

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss
Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies by June Casagrande
When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It by Ben Yagoda
Spunk and Bite by Arthur Plotnik
Right, Wrong, and Risky by Mark Davidson
Much Ado About English by Todd Watson

Check Out Those Charities!

My Dad recently called me to get more information on a story he had just seen on Good Morning America. It seems that several Veterans charities had been given failing grades for using under 35% of money collected “on actual bona fide charitable programs”. I was able to find the text of the article on GMA’s website for him as well as passing on websites of charity watchdog groups.

Before you give money this year, make sure to check up on the groups you are interested in at
http://www.give.org/
http://www.charitynavigator.org/
http://www.charitywatch.org/azlist.html