Ladbybug Picture Book Award Nominees for 2009

The Ladybug Picture Book Award is designed to promote early literacy and honor the best in recent children's picture books. A committee of children's librarians from around New Hampshire selects 10 picture book titles early in the year. Then, during Children's Book Week in November, New Hampshire children from preschoolers to those in third grade vote to select the award winner. The award is a project of the Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library.

Nominees for 2009 are:

A Visitor for Bear by Bonny Becker

Bedtime at the Swamp by Kristyn Crow (on order)

Tadpole Rex by Kurt Cyrus

Big Chickens Fly the Coop by Leslie Helakosk
Bats at the Beach by Brian Lies

Bear's Picture by Daniel Pinkwater
Those Darn Squirrels by Adam Rubin (on order)

Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle

Too Many Toys by David Shannon
Waking Beauty by Leah Wilcox (on order)

Check them out and let us know your favorite!

The Teen Corner Needs a New Name

The Teen Corner is the section of the library where we keep all the young adult materials: fiction, paperbacks, magazines, graphic novels, comic books, suggested reading bookmarks.... Recently we moved some books around to be able to give the Teen Corner more breathing room. This means that the Teen Corner is no longer a mere corner so we need your bright ideas for a new name. Please submit suggestions at the DPL by April 18th. The winning entrant will receive a $25 gift certificate to Target.

A Novel That Leaves No Regrets

Alan Brennert has returned with another superb historical novel about Hawaii, this one titled Honolulu. The novel begins in Korea where daughters are not appreciated, and are given names like Anger, Pity, Sorrow, and Regret. Regret becomes a picture bride who leaves a bleak future in Korea in the hopes of a better life in the paradise of Hawaii. She arrives in Hawaii in 1914 and is married to the man who paid for her. The struggle to build a life together on the pineapple plantation ends when he begins to beat her. Regret flees to Honolulu, changes her name to Jin, is taken in by a wise cracking prostitute, and learns how to make her way in the bustling island city. History provides an panoramic backdrop of racial intolerance, Spanish Flu, the Depression, and World War II.

I had a hard time putting this book down. The characters were all so beautifully developed that it felt like saying farewell to friends when the novel finished. Make sure to read this intriguing history of Honolulu, and the Hawaiians, Koreans, Japanese, and Americans who built it. You won't regret it.

Friends of the Library Membership Saves You $10 in Overdue Fines!

The Friends of the Dover Public Library will be recruiting new members for their organization during National Library Week, April 12-18. It’s just $10 annually to join and only $7.00 for seniors. Plus, an exciting new membership benefit has just been added. Anyone joining the Friends during the month of April 2009 will receive a Friends’ Coupon Book with ten coupons, each one good for $1.00 off your overdue library fines. So if you sometimes owe the library money, redeem these coupons (one per visit) and the cost of your Friends of the Library membership will turn out to be free!

The Friends of the Library help raise funds for library programs and equipment through their book and book-related merchandise sales and last year contributed nearly $15,000 to the library, purchasing such items as museum passes, window shades and drapes, youth contest prizes, carts and stools, computers, carpeting and lighting fixtures. The Friends also pay for all speakers’ fees for special library programs. The Dover Public Library is seeking a few dozen new Friends and, with the new coupon book, your membership could turn out to be cost-free! Please consider joining the Friends of the Library during their annual membership campaign this month. For more information please call the Dover Public Library 516-6050.

Downloadable Audio Books Become More Apple Friendly

The NH Downloadable Audiobooks Consortium has released this exciting news:

"We are happy to announce that the NH Downloadable Audiobooks Consortium is now able to purchase MP3 audiobooks! MP3 audiobooks contain no DRM (Digital Rights Management) and are compatible with any music player, including iPods and Mac computers.
Up until this point, our current collection of digital audiobooks contains approximately 2400 unique titles in WMA (Windows Media Audio) format. These titles cannot be played on iPods or Mac computers. Only soon-to-be-purchased MP3 titles will be compatible with iPods and Macs.
Mac users will need to download a Mac-compatible version of the OverDrive Media Console prior to using the service and will only be able to checkout MP3 audiobook titles.
At this point of time, not all publishers provide their content in MP3 format. The Consortium will still purchase much of its content in WMA format, but if there is a choice between the two formats for any given title, the MP3 format will be purchased."

OverDrive Media Console For Macs

View more presentations from bibliotecaria.

You can download audiobooks using your home computer and your library card. Go the Library’s homepage and click on Download Audio Books. You can also click here to see a list of compatible devices.

Listen Up!

Have you looked at the downloadable audiobooks recently? More titles were added this month.

Title	Author
A Darker Place	Higgins, Jack
A Feast for Crows	Martin, George R.R.
A Lion Called Christian	Bourke, Anthony
A Storm of Swords	Martin, George R.R.
Among the Mad	Winspear, Jacqueline
An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England	Clarke, Brock
Beyond the Gap	Turtledove, Harry
Blood and Ice	Masello, Robert
Corsair	Cussler, Clive
Dark of Night	Brockmann, Suzanne
Don't Look Twice	Gross, Andrew
Envy	Godbersen, Anna
Fault Line	Eisler, Barry
First Comes Marriage	Balogh, Mary
Happy for No Reason	Shimoff, Marci
How We Decide	Lehrer, Jonah
Jesus, Interrupted	Ehrman, Bart D.
Locked Inside	Werlin, Nancy
Mary, Mary	Patterson, James
Never Give Up	Bruschi, Tedy
Night and Day	Parker, Robert B.
Promises in Death	Robb, J.D.
Rumors	Godbersen, Anna
Safer	Doolittle, Sean
Suite Scarlett	Johnson, Maureen
Swine Not?	Buffett, Jimmy
Terminal Freeze	Child, Lincoln
The Ascent of Money	Ferguson, Niall
The Breath of God	Turtledove, Harry
The Butcher's Boy	Perry, Thomas
The Interpretation of Murder	Rubenfeld, Jed
The Last Stand of Fox Company	Drury, Bob
The Lost City of Z	Grann, David
The Luxe	Godbersen, Anna
The Sign of the Beaver	Speare, Elizabeth George
The Survivors Club	Sherwood, Ben
The Underneath	Appelt, Kathi
Wait Till Helen Comes	Hahn, Mary Downing
While My Sister Sleeps	Delinsky, Barbara
Whisper to the Blood	Stabenow, Dana

Come Read to Goldie

Dover Public Library will be offering Paws For Reading again in the Children's Room. Children ages 6 - 10 can read to Goldie, a Certified Therapy Dog, for a fifteen minute session.

Paws For Reading is designed to allow kids the chance to read to a non-judgmental listener who will accept the story exactly as they read it. This gives kids a chance to experience stress free reading. Children find themselves relaxing and having fun while reading! They come to think of themselves as good readers, which helps their self esteem and makes them eager to read. And eager readers practice their reading more often, leading to improved reading skill.

If you would like to come read to Goldie, she will be here:
Saturday, April 4 (10:30-11:30)
Tuesday, April 21 (6:30-7:30)
Saturday, May 2 (10:30-12:00)
Tuesday, May 19 (6:30-7:30)

Make sure to sign up in advance in the Children's Room. Goldie is a very popular visitor!

Crafty Toddlers

You may be stopped in your tracks by the outlines of children in the downstairs hallway. Fear not, it is not part of a CSI: Dover episode.

The artwork is part of the "Wonderful Me" storytime for toddlers which also offers songs, rhymes, and fingerplays. Both parents and kids were able to participate in this storytime craft. Parents traced the outline of their child, and the children got to decorate their portraits. Some of the life-size drawings are hanging in the hallway by the Children's Room.
Make sure to stop and admire the artwork, it will bring a smile to your face.

Paws for Reading

Paws for Reading was a smashing success with every session full. Everyone enjoyed reading Goldie a good book and Goldie loved hearing the stories. We have plans to have Goldie visit us again so watch here for news of her return.

Enter the Peeps Show!

The Dover Public Library is looking for some creative peeps to enter our Peeps Show contest. Build a diorama using peeps of any color in a standard size shoe box. The theme is up to you; recreate a favorite scene from a movie or book, re-enact current or historical events, or use your peeps as social commentary.

Harry Peeper and the Deathly Mallows by Erica Perl

Children through age 12 can compete in the Kids Division, peeps, er, people ages 13- 17 can compete in the Teen Division, anyone 18 or older is invited to compete in the Adult Division.


On the back of your shoe box, please include your name, address, phone, age, and e-mail (if applicable), and title of your Peeps Show. The Peeps displays can be dropped off at the Dover Public Library beginning April 1st through April 10th. The Peeps will be displayed during National Library Week, April 12th through April 18th.


Peeps can be picked up Monday, April 20th - Friday, April 24th. All Peeps not picked up by the deadline will be discarded or eaten. Prizes in all categories will be awarded April 17th. The winner in each division will be awarded a $25.00 Target gift card.


Judging will be based on originality and creativity.

Have You Visited A Library Lately?

A front page story in the Sunday, March 15th issue of Foster’s Daily Democrat reported on the fate of the Rollinsford Public Library. Though very pleased about the vision and insight of those residents who voted to keep the town’s fledgling library open, and happy for the volunteers who worked so hard to make this dream come true, I was most distressed by one resident’s comment that a public library is “an institution rendered obsolete by the Internet.” My question is: Have you visited a public library lately?

This fallacy that the Internet would kill the use of libraries arose in the mid-90s, but was quickly dispelled. Tech-savvy librarians rose to the challenge and wisely embraced the Internet’s potential and integrated its use into our core services. Anyone who takes the time to discover the services in today’s modern public library will find things a far cry from the dusty archives of old. The Dover Public Library began to offer free Internet to its patrons beginning in late 1996 and just over 1800 people used the World Wide Web at the library in 1997. Today we have 10 Internet workstations which registered over 30,000 public Internet sessions during 2008. (And this doesn’t even count our Wi-Fi users who also get free Internet here on their own laptops.) Our librarians teach Internet searching skills and email basics; we offer 22 specialized online databases for researchers; there are thousands of free downloadable audio books available through our website (http://www.dover.lib.nh.us/ which had over 1.7 million hits last year). And of the 18,117 patron requests we filled last year in Dover, nearly 13,000 of these were placed online through our electronic card catalog.

So, if everyone is now using the Internet for everything, even in the library, well then book circulation must be down, right? Wrong! Use me as an example: I use the Internet probably as much as the next person, but my reading habits haven’t changed in the slightest. I still read printed books as much as I ever did (although I also admit to loving my Kindle!). Media- and book-related websites also do their part to spur good old-fashioned reading, a wonderful and rewarding pastime that will never be “obsolete”. The Dover Public Library’s circulation in 1998 was 267,785 items; in 2008, we lent 298,956 items, an 11.6% increase---all in the era of the Internet! So while we still fulfill our traditional role as book providers, libraries have managed to incorporate many cutting-edge, web-based services at the same time.

The library plays an even more important role as Americans face tough economic times. Patrons are visiting their library in even greater numbers to borrow free books, CDs, and movies and to attend free programs. Many studies have shown that in economic downturns, libraries become even busier. We are certainly experiencing this phenomenon in Dover as we hear about patrons dropping Netflix subscriptions to borrow our DVDs for free; checking out our paperbacks rather than spending $8 on a one-time read; getting their music and audio downloads from our CD collections for free; or attending our no-cost Saturday afternoon first-run-movie matinees.

Libraries everywhere are meeting the educational, informational and entertainment needs of their communities by providing a broad range of services for people of all ages and backgrounds. The citizens of Rollinsford are to be congratulated for recognizing that they have put in place not just a library, but a brand new community center and a valuable and important contributor to the quality of life in their town. I urge everyone who hasn’t been to their local library lately to come and “check us out”!

Cathleen Beaudoin
Director of the Dover Public Library

Grey Skies and Empty Book Shelves

Things were looking pretty bleak a few weeks ago; the skies were grey and the ground was covered with snow and ice. Worst of all, I was down to one book to read and there were no other novels around that caught my interest. Things are looking up now; the days are sunnier, things are melting, and some of my favorite novelists have released new titles!

Lisa Lutz has written another smile-inducing novel about the lunatic family of detectives, the Spellmans. In Revenge of the Spellmans, Izzy is hiding from her family in her brother's secret apartment, in danger of losing her bartending job, has a car that constantly goes missing, her sister Rae is accused of cheating on the PSATs, her brother David looks unkempt and is missing a lot of work, and Izzy's parents are pressuring her to commit to the family business.

Deanna Raybourn, who is a great favorite with many of the librarians, has written another novel about Lady Julia Grey, Silent on the Moor. The impulsive, strong willed Julia chases down the reclusive Brisbane and confronts him at his decrepit manor house on the isolated moor. My only complaint so far is the perfectly dreadful cover which makes it look like a frothy romance novel, rather than the dark Victorian mystery loaded with undercurrents and fascinating characters that it is really is.

Virgil Flowers is back in John Sandford's Heat Lightning. I have grown to vastly prefer the laconic, cool Flowers to the overblown ego of Sandford's other character, Lucas Davenport. This time Flowers is tracking down a killer who inserts a lemon into his victim's mouths, and has a connection to a disturbing incident during the Vietnam War. The audio book is terrific.

Last, but not least, is another entry in Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher series. These are some of the best audio books I have heard. The narrator is wonderful, the opening music sets the mood of the roaring twenties, Australia makes for a vivid backdrop, and the clever, unconventional Phryne Fisher is a joy to follow. In Murder in Montparnasse, Phryne must find out killed two of friend's of Bert and Cec, which leads to events that happened in Paris during the first World War, and some dark memories from Phryne's past.

Things are definitely looking up; Spring is coming and I have a nice comforting stack of books to plow through.

7th Annual Dover Public Library Poetry Contest

The Dover Public Library is pleased to announce the 7th Annual Dover Public Library Poetry contest for grades K-12. Prizes will be awarded in six different categories: Grades K-2, 3 & 4, 5 & 6, 7 & 8, 9 & 10, and 11 &12. Deadline for entry is April 13th. Students may pick up information about the contest at the Dover Public Library, any Dover school library, or at our website at http://www.dover.lib.nh.us/. All participants are invited to attend an “Evening of Poetry” on Tuesday, May 12th at 6:30pm; refreshments will be served. Students are invited to read their poetry at this event, but this will be purely voluntary. For more information about the contest please contact Denise LaFrance at 516-6082.

Another Look at Shakespeare

BBC News reports that the first portrait of Shakespeare painted during his lifetime has been unveiled in London. An art restorer recognized a painting in the National Portrait Gallery as a copy of a painting his family had owned for centuries. He and Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells subjected the painting to a battery of tests; tree-ring-dating to determine the age of the wood panel, X-ray examination, and infrared reflectography, which produced convincing evidence that the panel dated from around 1610 and was the source for the Folger painting of Shakespeare, as well as other portraits.

It is a fascinating story. Don't you think the portrait looks amazingly like Joseph Fiennes as the Bard in Shakespeare in Love?

Are You a Borrower or a Buyer?

"There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't." Robert Benchley

I must fall into the first group because I have often thought that one is either of library user or one is not. I have been going to libraries ever since my mother brought me as a small child. We faithfully visited every week, stocking up on all sorts of books from Dr. Seuss to Laura Ingalls Wilder on to Louisa May Alcott. My husband, on the other hand, usually thinks of purchasing books rather than borrowing them from the Library. After years of impassioned pleas he has learned to ask if I can get a specific title for him rather than immediately running to the bookstore. I was interested to read a column in the Denver Post by Barry Osborne called "My Library Year; a Confirmed book-buyer disavows stores to discover the joys and savings of checking out public volumes". I suspect given the difficult economic times we will see many more confirmed book buyers become library borrowers.

What about you; are you a borrower or a buyer?

Antique Bicycle Display

Our art display this month is a little different. Zip Zamarchi is showcasing his antique bicycle collectibles and art collection. The penny farthing bike is well worth the visit and the vintage cycling posters are beautiful. There has been a great deal of discussion on how exactly one would get on this spectacular bicycle. I found a youtube video that gives a neat explanation and demonstration.

Listen Up!

Have you looked at the downloadable audiobooks recently? New titles are constantly being added. These are some of the latest titles that were added:

3 Willows Brashares, Ann
A Game of Thrones Martin, George R.R.
Assassination Vacation Vowell, Sarah
Birds of Prey Jance, J. A.
Bloody Jack Meyer, L. A.
Brides of Prairie Gold Osborne, Maggie
Category Five Donlay, Philip S.
Caught Stealing Huston, Charlie
Code Black Donlay, Philip
Curse of the Blue Tattoo Meyer, L. A.
Dark Challenge Feehan, Christine
Dark Fire Feehan, Christine
Dark Gold Feehan, Christine
Dark Magic Feehan, Christine
Defiance Tec, Nechama
Eclipse Patterson, Richard North
Eve Elliott, Elissa
Everlost Shusterman, Neal
Fire and Ice Garwood, Julie
He Comes Next Kerner, Ian
Heroes of the Valley Stroud, Jonathan
Just After Sunset King, Stephen
Lamb Moore, Christopher
Love in the Time of Colic Kerner, Ian
Mr. Timothy Bayard, Louis
Nothing to Fear Cohen, Adam
On the Grind Cannell, Stephen J.
Opening Atlantis Turtledove, Harry
Relic Preston, Douglas
Run for Your Life Patterson, James
Scat Hiaasen, Carl
She Comes First Kerner, Ian
Stonehenge Cornwell, Bernard
The Black Tower Bayard, Louis
The Bodies Left Behind Deaver, Jeffery
The Dante Club Pearl, Matthew
The Dawn Patrol Winslow, Don
The Eye of Jade Liang, Diane Wei
The First Man in Rome McCullough, Colleen
The Lost Witness Ellis, Robert
The Loved Dog Geller, Tamar
The Pluto Files Tyson, Neil deGrasse
The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 Krugman, Paul
The Survivors Club Gardner, Lisa
The Unpossessed City Fasman, Jon
The Yankee Years Torre, Joe
Three Weeks to Say Goodbye Box, C. J.
Under the Jolly Roger Meyer, L. A.
With Wings Like Eagles Korda, Michael