Library programs canceled through the end of March

In an effort to comply with CDC & MN Dept. of Health recommendations in limiting social gatherings, Pioneerland Library System is suspending all programming & outreach activities through the end of March.  At this time the library will remain open for regular services.

The sock animal workshop for March 16 is postponed indefinitely.  We will notify the people who had signed up when we are able to reschedule.

Storytimes and Brickheads Lego building are called off for the remainder of March.  Mystery book club will not meet March 18.

The March book sale is canceled.

The Friends of the Litchfield Library March meeting is canceled.

CLASS FULL - Adult Arts & Crafts Program: Rustic wood and wire photo holder

Information table about census jobs

A representative from the U.S. Census Bureau will be available at an information table at the Litchfield Public Library from 10 am to 1 pm on Friday, January 24. Learn about how to apply for one of thousands of temporary 2020 census jobs.

Census results determine how funds are spent on roads, schools, and hospitals, as well as the number of seats each state has in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Pay for Meeker County census workers starts at $19 per hour. Information is also available at 2020census.gov/jobs.

NOTE: the event scheduled for Saturday, January 18, has been cancelled due to the weather forecast.

Snow is Falling, Books are Calling

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

This year’s adult winter reading program has begun, with the theme “Snow is Falling, Books are Calling.”  Our winter reading program is intended to encourage and reward reading by adults during this cold and snowy time of year, like we do with the kids during the summer.

Sign up between now and March to participate, and you’ll get a red and black buffalo plaid-accented book bag while supplies last.  You’ll also get a stack of book review forms and a card for keeping track of the reviews you turn in.

When you turn in a short book review for something you read between the day you sign up and the end of March, library staff will stamp your card.  When you’ve turned in three, you can choose a small prize.  When you’ve turned in three more, you can choose another prize, plus we’ll put your completed card into a drawing.  The Friends of the Litchfield Public Library sponsors three gift certificates to local businesses for that drawing.  The program can be completed only one time per person.

The small prize choices this year include a mug, a book light, a phone charger adapter for the car, a large candy bar, buffalo plaid earrings, and a mouse pad.  As always, these are the choices while supplies last – although we won’t run out of candy bars. 

You can read anything you like for the program.  It doesn’t have to be a library book or something new.  You choose what you’d like to read.  It can even be an ebook or audiobook – that’s still a form of reading!

The book review forms are short, with no spot for a name, so they’re anonymous once you turn them in.  We set them in a basket at the front desk, and you are welcome look through them to find out which books our library users recommend or don’t recommend.

So once you sign up, what should you read?  I have a list of the most popular books in Pioneerland Library System last year, which is almost like a recommendation from the thousands of people who use the libraries in our region.  The most popular book of the year was “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens.  That novel about a girl abandoned to grow up alone in the marshlands of North Carolina was published in August 2018 and is still in high demand in our library system and around the country.

The other top adult novels of the year were “Wolf Pack” by C.J. Box, “Neon Prey” by John Sandford, “The 18^th Abduction” by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro, “The Great Alone” by Kristin Hannah, “Every Breath” by Nicholas Sparks, “Someone Knows” by Lisa Scottoline, “Long Road to Mercy” by David Baldacci, “Holy Ghost” by John Sandford, and “The Boy” by Tami Hoag.

The adult nonfiction books with the most checkouts in Pioneerland in 2019 were “Becoming” by Michelle Obama, “Educated” by Tara Westover, “Girl, Wash Your Face” by Rachel Hollis, “Girl, Stop Apologizing” by Rachel Hollis, “Killers of the Flower Moon” by David Grann, “Hillbilly Elegy” by J.D. Vance, “Love Thy Neighbor” by Ayaz Virji, “The Pioneers” by David McCullough, “A Woman of No Importance” by Sonia Purnell, and “The Library Book” by Susan Orlean.

There’s no risk to signing up for the winter reading program.  We won’t call you to see if you’ve finished your books yet.  Why not challenge yourself to a goal of reading a few books this winter?  Reading books can help you be more creative, focused, and empathetic.  And in case you’ve forgotten, which many of us do when life gets busy, reading can be fun.  Like the winter reading program slogan says, books are calling to you!

Art Norby - Author Talk

Needle Felting: Succulents

The Greatest Hits from Winter Reads

Library column for April 17, 2019
by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

At the end of March, we wrapped up the adult winter reading program.  Ninety people signed up to participate this year, and as a result we have a whole basket of book reviews the participants turned in to earn their prizes.  It’s always fun to find out who the most popular authors were among our local readers.

One of the most popular was William Kent Krueger and his Cork O’Connor mystery series.  Participants turned in eight reviews of seven of his books; two people reviewed the newest, Desolation Mountain.  On the review forms, we ask people to rate the book on a scale of five stars.  Two different people (based on the handwriting) wrote in additional stars beyond the five because they loved the books so much!  The readers enjoyed the realness of the characters, the Minnesota setting, and the themes of the books.

The Dassel Library is bringing Kent Krueger to the Dassel History Center for an event on Tuesday, April 30, at 7 p.m.  He’s a wonderful speaker.  All are welcome to attend this event that’s funded with money from Minnesota’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. 

The author with the most reviews this year was J.D. Robb.  Readers turned in nine reviews of seven of her books.  All of the books were from the popular In Death series somehow, featuring police officer Eve Dallas.  The odd one of the bunch was the short story collection Unquiet, which contains an In Death story, among others by different authors.  Two people reviewed that collection, and neither liked it as well as readers liked the novels in Robb’s own series; those got five out of five stars.

James Patterson’s books are popular every year in the reading program.  This year we’ve got eight reviews of seven different books.  Two people reviewed Along Came a Spider, the first in the Alex Cross mystery/thriller series featuring forensic psychologist Dr. Cross.  One of them loved it and the other hated it.  The Patterson reviews are mixed overall, mostly landing somewhere in the middle of the road. 

Minnesotans love John Sandford and his novels, which he likes to set in Minnesota, his former home.  Local readers turned in five reviews of four of his books, and they rated them quite highly.  The repeat was Holy Ghost, the newest in the Virgil Flowers series.  Did you know that Sandford’s real name is John Camp and that he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for a series of articles he wrote about the farm crisis for the Pioneer Press?

Our local readers turned in five reviews of Kristin Hannah books, two about the same book, The Great Alone.  The library’s adult book club read this book for our meeting this month, and our members generally enjoyed it.  The reviews for the winter reading program gave it four and five stars, saying this story about a family moving to Alaska had lots of excitement. 

Overall, our winter reading participants read a vast variety of books.  While there were other repeated authors, such as Debbie Macomber, Nora Roberts, and Jodi Picoult, most of the hundreds of book reviews were for unique authors and books.  People who use the Litchfield Library don’t all read the same thing.  As they taught me in library school, every person has his or her preferred book, and every book its reader. 

Book Club Kits: The Latest and Greatest

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Our Friends of the Litchfield Public Library group is always looking for ways to help the library.  Recently they received a donation from Joe and Nancy Paddock of ten copies of Nancy’s Minnesota Book Award-winning memoir.  The Friends purchased a tote to put them in and gifted the set to the library.  Our library system cataloged it as a book club kit, and it’s now available for anyone in the system to borrow for use with their book club or other group.  You can find it by searching “Book Club in a Bag: A Song at Twilight of Alzheimer’s and Love.”

You can find all of the book club kits in Pioneerland Library System by searching “Book Club in a Bag” as a title.  They really aren’t in bags; they come in plastic tubs.

One of the newest book club kits is “Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are So You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be” by Rachel Hollis.  This was, and continues to be, one of the most popular books of the past year.  Litchfield Library has owned a print copy of this book since last April, and it has yet to make it to the shelf; it has been checked out to people on the waiting list this entire time.  We also got an audiobook copy in November.  The twelve-copy kit belongs to the Dawson library, but you can request that it be sent here if you’d like to use it for your book club or group of friends.

On Tuesday, March 5, Hutchinson author and historian Mary Krugerud will be giving a presentation at the Litchfield Library about her new book, “The Girl in Building C: The True Story of a Teenage Tuberculosis Patient.”  Join her in the meeting room at 6:30 to learn about the history of tuberculosis, its treatment, and Minnesota sanatoriums.  Minnesota Historical Society Press recently published this collection of Marilyn Barnes’ letters to her family from the Ah-gwah-ching State Sanatorium in Walker, Minnesota in the ‘40s.  Litchfield Library has a copy of this book, but Dawson Library has a ten-copy book club kit available to order.

My adult book club is currently reading “The Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead, using the twelve-copy book club kit from Montevideo Library.  This book won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.  It’s an imaginative take on the actual history of slaves escaping the South.  If you’d like to join us, you can check out a copy at the library’s front desk and come to the meeting at noon on Tuesday, March 12.

Another new book club in a bag is “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI” by David Grann.  We read this interesting true crime book in the adult book club last year.  This tub contains ten copies of the book, and it’s housed at the Montevideo library.

Benson has an eight-copy book club kit of “Sister Secrets: A Brother’s Reveal” by Matthew Valan.  I wasn’t familiar with this title, which was published by North Dakota University Press in 2018.  The author is a minister who lives on his farm near Moorhead, and he delves into his family history with this story of his two sisters who were diagnosed too late with bipolar disorder. 

If you have a book club that you can trust with copies that are checked out to you, a kit is a great option for getting many copies at once.  There are 71 different book club kits in Pioneerland with more added all the time. 

Hygge at the Library

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

As we wind up the month of January, some of us are starting to get tired of winter.  But if you subscribe to the Scandinavian idea of hygge, the key is to embrace winter instead of wishing it away.  Winter has its own beauty and blessings.

In that spirit, the library will be having two Hygge Saturdays in February.  On February 2 and February 16, the first and third Saturdays of the month, we’ll set up the library meeting room with board games, puzzles, coloring sheets, free books, crocheting supplies, and a hot chocolate bar.  Drop in for some low-key, cozy fun between 1 and 3 p.m. 

The Friends of the Library always has a cart of free books next to the lobby, except when it’s a book sale weekend.  If you want to find some free books to keep, or to just not have to return by a deadline, come in to browse those anytime.  These books are things that don’t sell on the book sale, but they’re still often popular when they’re on that cart -- plus that inventory turns over frequently, so you may see entirely different things by the time you visit again. A few of our patrons like to stock up from that cart in case they get snowed in and need more books to read.

If you’re looking for a book to check out to read on a winter day, of course we have many more of those.  Here are a few of our newest additions:

The Flimflam Affair is the latest Carpenter and Quincannon mystery from Bill Pronzini.  Sabina Carpenter and John Quincannon run a detective service in San Francisco at the turn of the last century.  In this installment, a medium and his assistant are swindling grieving people out of their money, and the detectives must find a way to reveal them as thieves.  Meanwhile, they’re solving a murder, a theft from a burglarproof safe, and a mystery involving a gang of counterfeiters that includes a man who’s supposed to be dead.

Pictures of Longing: Photography and the Norwegian-American Migration is a new release from University of Minnesota Press.  It was written by Sigrid Lien, a professor of art history and photography studies at the University of Bergen, Norway, and translated into English by Barbara Sjoholm.  In the 1800s and early 1900s, more than 750,000 Norwegians emigrated to America, a large percentage of Norway’s population.  The immigrants sent thousands of “America-photographs” home.  The author examines a selection of these photos and explains to the reader how to interpret them, telling stories about immigrants and photographers as she goes.  Not surprisingly, many of the photos in the book are from Minnesota and North Dakota.

The Litchfield Women’s Community Club has given the library a donation for large print books from time to time, either in memory or in honor of one of their members.  We have two new large print books from their recent donations:  Freedom’s Light by Colleen Coble and Night of Miracles by Elizabeth Berg.  

Freedom’s Light is an inspirational novel about a young widow who is tending a pair of lighthouses in Massachusetts during the Revolutionary War.  Night of Miracles is a small-town story about an older woman who is inspired to begin teaching baking classes and who looks out for people around her who need some help; it has a theme of coming together to harness the power of community. 

Come to one of our programs for some comfortable time of connecting with others (part of the definition of hygge), or check out some books to take to your own cozy home.  Either way, I hope the library helps you enjoy the rest of your winter.

Adult Winter Reading starts today!

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Now that it’s January and the holidays are done, Pioneerland libraries are launching this year’s adult winter reading program, Winter Reads.  It’s an easy way to set yourself a goal to read several books before the winter is over and earn prizes for doing it.

Litchfield Library’s program begins today and ends March 30.  When you sign up, you get a book bag, a bookmark, a few book review forms, and a punch card.  Each time you turn in a brief review of a book you read, we’ll mark your card.  When you turn in three reviews, you can choose a prize: a mug, a large candy bar, an ice scraper, a stocking cap, or lip balm.  When you turn in three more, you’ll be entered in a drawing for gift certificates to local businesses, sponsored by the Friends of the Litchfield Library. 

The program works in a similar way for the libraries in Grove City, Cosmos, and Dassel, but the prizes will work slightly differently.

It’s all very easy, with no one holding your feet to the fire to complete the program, so sign up to join in this winter’s challenge.  You can read any book you want, whether it’s checked out from the library or something you own, as long as you read it after you sign up for the program.  You can read fiction or nonfiction.  You can even listen to it in audiobook form or read it as an e-book.

Need some ideas about what to read?  Here are a few new titles available at the Litchfield Library.

Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World is a nonfiction thriller by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, Pulitzer Prize-finalist Wall Street Journal reporters.  This bestseller covers a decade of massive international fraud by a Malaysian graduate of the Wharton School of Business, a real-life Gatsby.

Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey is a biography by Mark Dery.  Gorey was an eccentric writer, illustrator, and artist who lived from 1925 to 2000.  You may have seen his Gothic pen-and-ink drawings in books such as The House with a Clock in Its Walls or The War of the Worlds, or his animated introduction to the PBS Mystery series in the ‘80s.

Evening in Paradise is a critically-acclaimed collection of short stories by Lucia Berlin.  Her short story collection, A Manual for Cleaning Women, was published posthumously in 2015 to great praise, with her style being described as “gritty glamour.”  The New York Times said, “Lucia Berlin spent her career in obscurity.  Now, she is being hailed as a literary genius.”

The Calculating Stars is a science fiction novel by Mary Robinette Kowal, the first in the Lady Astronaut series.  It imagines an alternate history, with a huge meteorite obliterating much of the east coast in 1952.  With human extinction looming, an international coalition is racing to colonize the moon.  A former WASP pilot and mathematician is working on the project as a calculator, but she has dreams of becoming the first female astronaut. 

Take the opportunity of these cold, dark winter days to enjoy a book or two.  Winter is a great time to read.

Adult Book Club - Wonder

Adult Book Club for May: The Round House

Find a Book to Finish the Winter Reading Program

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

The adult winter reading program runs until the end of March, so if you’ve signed up, you still have a couple of weeks to turn in your book reviews.  The mugs are a really popular prize choice this year.  You will need to read and review three books to get a prize and six to be entered in a drawing.

One good source for book ideas is BookPage, the book review magazine we get at the library.  It’s funded by the Friends of the Litchfield Public Library, and many copies are available at the front desk each month for people to take home.  Walter Mosley is on this month’s cover, since he has a new book out, titled Down the River Unto the Sea.

What else is new in fiction lately?  Kristin Hannah has a very popular new book, The Great Alone.  In 1974, a former Vietnam War POW impulsively moves his wife and 13-year-old daughter to Alaska so that they can live off the grid.  But the family is completely unprepared for the harsh reality of life in the wilderness.  As winter descends, the father’s mental state deteriorates, and mother and daughter learn just how alone they are.  This one has a bit of a waiting list, but reviews suggest it’s worth waiting for.

Fifty Fifty is one of James Patterson’s newest, written with Candice Fox.  This is the second book in the Detective Harriet Blue series.  In this installment, Harriet’s brother has been accused of murder, and her outburst at his trial gets this Australian detective reassigned to a tiny town in the Outback.  Harry needs to escape a man holding her hostage to save the people in the town from a mass murderer and reach a young woman in Sydney who has the information to exonerate her brother.  Thrilling stuff!

The new Girl on the Train is The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn.  Books with potentially unreliable narrators have been popular since Gone Girl.  The Woman in the Window references Hitchcock movies, with the agoraphobic main character Anna spending her days watching film noir classics, drinking wine, and watching her neighbors.  Anna sees something she shouldn’t while spying on the new neighbors, but is it real or imagined?  The book is in development for a movie version.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones saw a sudden boost in popularity when Oprah picked it for her latest book club selection.  People magazine also named this its book of the week right before Oprah’s announcement.  Newlyweds in Atlanta are starting on successful careers when husband Roy is sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit.  His wife struggles alone for five years and takes comfort with an old friend, and then Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned and he returns to resume his life with her.  Dealing with issues of race, marriage, and loss, reviewers say Jones has written a complex and powerful story.

If you liked Me Before You and After You by Jojo Moyes, you’ll want to read Still Me, the third in the series.  Louisa Clark has moved from England to New York, taking a job with an extremely rich family and trying to make a long-distance relationship work.  This installment is about Louisa learning to be herself, and it’s described as funny and charming.

Winter isn’t quite over yet, and March often brings snowstorms.  Pick up a novel or two and make the best of it. 

Happy Pi Day!

Find Your Winter Project

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

On cold winter days, many people like to have a project to work on at home: a puzzle, a quilt, a piece of furniture.  The library is hosting a workshop where you can learn a new artistic skill, plus we have several new books that could help inspire or guide your winter do-it-yourself project.

On Monday, January 22, Jen Anfinson will be teaching a calligraphy workshop from 6 to 7:30 p.m.  The class will cover techniques and styles of traditional and modern calligraphy. It’s open to adults and teens age fifteen and up, and all supplies and equipment will be provided. The class is free to attend, but space is limited.  Sign up at the library’s front desk or call us at (320)693-2483. 

On to the books you can check out for your artistic inspiration:  

Those who enjoy drawing and painting may be interested in If You Can Doodle, You Can Paint: Transforming Simple Drawings into Works of Art by Diane Culhan.  This book encourages the artist to explore their personal style by doodling, sizing up these small drawings, and adding color with pencil and paint.  The book is intended to be an unintimidating way to move step by step into creating full-sized paintings.

For a book to take your drawing in a very different direction, look for Designing Creatures and Characters: How to Build an Artist’s Portfolio for Video Games, Film, Animation, and More.  Author Marc Taro Holmes has worked on art for video games such as Dragon Age Inquisition and Baldur’s Gate.  The book focuses on creating and developing characters visually, whether with pencil and paper or with digital art.  One of my children used this book to get started on some character design that she has continued to build on through sketches, so I would say it is inspiring.

 

Hello Tokyo: 30+ Handmade Projects and Fun Ideas for a Cute, Tokyo-Inspired Lifestyle is a craft book for those who enjoy Japanese culture.  Perhaps you have a young person in your life who is into manga or anime and would enjoy exploring whimsical Japanese decorating and papercrafting. The author, Ebony Bizys, is an American who lives in and blogs about Tokyo.

On the more serious crafting side, Heirloom Wood: A Modern Guide to Carving Spoons, Bowls, Boards, and Other Homewares is a basic woodcarving book.  Author Max Bainbridge discusses wood types and basic tools, then moves on to detailed projects to make for the kitchen.

If you’re making a piece of furniture rather than a cutting board, the book Joinery may be what you need.  The editors of Fine Woodworking magazine have put together a comprehensive resource for choosing the type of joint you want, designing and cutting accurately, and solving your mistakes.  Joinery is where you can tell if a piece of furniture is made really well, and this book claims to be able to improve the skill of the builder whether they’re a novice or have plenty of experience. 

Sewing Happiness: A Year of Simple Projects for Living Well is a combination sewing-pattern book and memoir.  When author Sanae Ishida developed a chronic illness and lost her job, she turned to her old hobby, sewing, to find success at something.  She ended up discovering her passion. The book contains twenty projects, including household items and children’s and women’s clothing. 

Sometimes it’s actually a good thing to have a chance to work on creative projects indoors during the winter, without feeling guilty that the lawn isn’t getting mowed or the garden isn’t being weeded.  Hibernate a bit and find something that makes you happy this winter.

Reading is Snow Much Fun

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Now that it’s January, the adult winter reading program is underway at the library.  This year’s theme in Pioneerland and Plum Creek Library Systems is “Reading is Snow Much Fun.”

The adult winter reading program works a lot like the summer reading program for kids. You sign up at the library and you get a book bag and a bookmark.  This year’s bags are tan and black, good for those who prefer subdued colors instead of the brightly colored bags we’ve had in recent years.

You’ll also get a punch card and some book review forms.  When you read a book between January 2 and March 31, you fill out a brief book review form, saying what you thought of the book.  When you bring a completed form to the library, we’ll mark your punch card.  Once you fill the card with six books, you can choose a prize.

This year’s prize choices include playing cards in a carrying case, a can holder, a large chocolate bar, a flash drive, a notepad set, and, of course, a mug.  Some people collect winter reading mugs!  All of these are available while supplies last, so the sooner you read six books, the more choices you’ll have.

Those who complete the program will also be entered into a drawing for gift certificates for local businesses, sponsored by the Friends of the Litchfield Library. 

What can you read for the reading program?  Anything you want.  It can be fiction or nonfiction.  It can be new or old.  It can be an e-book, a print book, or an audiobook.  It can be a kids’ book; many adults read YA books these days.  You don’t even have to check it out from the library, although most people do.  If you got a book for Christmas, go ahead and read that!

We usually see many reviews coming in for books by bestselling authors.  So what’s popular right now?  One book that’s developing a hold list at the library is Dark in Death by J.D. Robb.  This latest “In Death” novel comes out at the end of the month.

Promise Not to Tell by Jayne Ann Krentz has library patrons lining up to get it when it comes out this week.  This thriller is a sequel to When All the Girls Have Gone.  Krentz also writes under the pen names Amanda Quick and Jayne Castle.

Unbound by Stuart Woods also has had fans waiting for it to come out this week.  This is the 44^th book in the Stone Barrington thriller series.

Danielle Steel’s Past Perfect came out about a month ago, and it’s remaining popular.  This domestic novel is about a family moving into a mansion and discovering it’s haunted by the family who lived there a century ago – and that they can share the house and become friends.  It’s a very different take on a ghost story!

Whatever you choose to read, the adult winter reading program can be a way to set a reading goal during the cold months and to be rewarded with a small prize for meeting it. As George R.R. Martin said, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”

Adult Book Club for December: A Christmas Carol

Adult Coloring in December

Adult Coloring in November

Adult Coloring - New Program at the Library

No need to sign up.  Supplies provided.

Children's books still fun for adults

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

This fall is the 75^th anniversary of Little Golden Books, those inexpensive, golden-spined classics of all of our childhoods.  On Tuesday, September 19, the Litchfield Library will be hosting a presentation on the history of Little Golden Books.  At 6 p.m., collector Ellen Radel will share her extensive knowledge of these special children’s books, show us her collection and read one of her favorite Little Golden Books.  She will have some books available for sale at the end. 

If this date doesn’t work for your schedule, you can catch Ellen at the Dassel History Center on Sunday, September 10, at 3 p.m., or at the Hutchinson Library at 6:30 p.m. on September 26, among other Pioneerland libraries that are hosting programs.

Even as adults, we can enjoy children’s books.  In the new book Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult, author Bruce Handy examines classic children’s books.  Handy is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine and was nominated for an Emmy in the ‘90s for writing for Saturday Night Live.  He researched the classic children’s books he read to his kids, such as Goodnight Moon, Charlotte’s Web, and The Cat in the Hat.  In this book he shares perspectives on how we see these books differently as adults than we did when we were children ourselves.  Do you love the artwork of Beatrix Potter or Maurice Sendak?  Do you agree with Handy that Ramona the Pest is as iconic an American character as Tom Sawyer or Jay Gatsby? (I do.)  Reviewers say this book is a pleasure to read, with plenty of humor, and it’s an interesting look at the history and significance of our favorite children’s books. 

Speaking of Goodnight Moon, we have a new biography of its author.  In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown by Amy Gary shows that Brown was very different than the quiet classic she’s famous for.  She began writing children’s books for a school, with a mission to create stories that were more than fairy tales and that had gender equality in mind.  Brown prepared for her writing by doing things children would do: picking daisies, watching the clouds, and otherwise observing nature so that she could capture a child’s sense of wonder.  Her approach to writing changed the children’s publishing business.  She also lived an adventurous, bohemian life: as NPR put it, she was no old lady whispering hush.

The editor of the New York Times Book Review, Pamela Paul, has a new book out called My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues.  Paul has kept a notebook all her life called her book of books, or “Bob” for short, which lists all of the books she has read.  The first chapter is called “Brave New World: You Shouldn’t Be Reading That.”  In it, Paul describes what it was like to be a bookworm when she was growing up, and she talks about her adventures in the library, checking out things she was proud of reading, like “Little Women,” and things she was embarrassed about, like Sweet Valley High and Judy Blume books.  She eventually realized the librarians weren’t judging her.  Paul’s memoir should appeal to people who love books and like to think about how the books we read are a part of our lives.

It can be really fun to revisit classic children’s books, whether you’re reading them to your children or grandchildren or just going back to enjoy something on your own.  Did you love The Poky Little Puppy or The Monster at the End of This Book?  Come to our program on the history of Little Golden Books at one of the local libraries and enjoy the nostalgia.