Silly, Scary and Interesting!

By Jan Pease

New books: be on the lookout for these interesting titles!

Sometimes a book just resonates with you.  Sometimes an author surprises you.  Eoin Colfer has accomplished that in his new book, “The Dog Who Lost His Bark.”  Mr. Colfer usually writes suspenseful, humorous stories like the “Artemis Fowl” series.  “The Dog Who Lost His Bark” is a sweet story that is beautifully illustrated.  Although it touches on some heavy subjects like abuse and abandonment, things work out in the end.   I was interested in this book because I re-homed a tiny little dog that had been debarked.  She has about half a bark, and it’s surprising what a difference that makes in her vocalizations.  If you’d like to see a clip of her bowing and grinning, visit my Facebook page.  Go to www.facebook.com and type Jan Pease in the search bar.

Another beautifully illustrated book was just published by Patricia MacLachlan, “The Hundred-Year Barn.”  Ms. MacLachlan is an award-winning author, and illustrator Kenard Pak is an award-winning artist and animator.  This book is just lovely.  It captures the feeling of generations living on a farm  

throughout many seasons.

I love koalas.  Actually, I like to watch animal and veterinary shows on PBS, National Geographic Wild, National Geographic, and Animal Planet, to the despair of family members who prefer “something with a plot.”  “Don’t Call Me Bear!” is a funny book written by Aaron Blabey that tells the story of a koala who resents being called a bear.  As in “koala bear,” which is what most of us call this adorable marsupial.  The Koala says, “G’day my name is Warren and I’ve got something to share…Just because I’m furry DOESN’T MEAN THAT I’M A BEAR!” 

“Bruce’s Big Storm,” by Ryan T. Higgins, is another grumpy animal story.  This is the new book in the “Mother Bruce” series.  Instead of Mother Goose, we have Mother Bruce, who raises a family of  baby geese.  In “Bruce’s Big Storm,” Bruce gives shelter to his animal friends and ends up with a very full house in spite of his grumpiness.

Just in time for Halloween, the library has received two very silly “scary” books.  “Giracula,” by   Hide your pies and cakes!  “The Curse of the Werepenguin,” by Allan Woodrow, is written for slightly older but still silly readers.  A boy named Bolt visits a baron who claims to be a distant relative but seems to be a twelve-year-old boy who wears tuxedos and shouts at people all the time.  When Bolt is bitten by the baron, he turns into a half-boy, half-penguin creature.  And it only gets worse from there.

Caroline Watkins, is about a vampire giraffe that has a taste for sweets.

 These sentimental, interesting and silly books are waiting for you at Litchfield Library.  See you there!

Puzzling out library shelf space

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

We’ve been playing musical chairs with some of the book collections at the Litchfield library lately. Shelf space is always tight, so we look for creative ways to make room for everything, especially the most popular things.  I’ll give you an explanation of where to look for the collections that have been moved, in hopes that fewer people will be lost while looking for their favorite books.

The library’s large print book collection is well-used, and it hasn’t been in the most user-friendly spot for the past few years: on low shelves behind the computers.  You’ll find the large print books now on full-height shelves along the back wall of the library, behind the regular adult fiction.  We even managed to keep them up off of the bottom shelf, for less bending to reach books. 

You’ll find the adult paperback collection now on the short shelves where the large print books had been.  This places them in a more visible spot, instead of hiding in the back corner of the library.

In the coming weeks, we’ll move the reference books to the tall shelf behind the paperbacks.  We don’t have many reference books anymore, but sometimes people need to consult things like a book of quotations, a concordance, or a dictionary. We keep a small selection of these books in the library without making them available for check out.  

The oversized books will move along with reference; these are unusually tall books that don’t fit on regular library shelves.  Moving both of those will give the adult nonfiction section just a bit more room.

All of this rearranging has happened along with removing books that haven’t been checked out in a few years, the difficult but necessary thing that must happen in order for the library to add newly published books.  The public will have an opportunity to buy some of these, among all of the books offered at the Friends of the Library book sale on Saturday, November 16.

So if you go looking for the large print books or the paperbacks, what kinds of things might you find?  The Litchfield library gets two westerns, two mysteries, and two books that can be described as “gentle reads” in large print automatically every month.  We’ve found that our large print readers especially like those kinds of books. 

We also get some of the most in-demand titles in large print as they are needed.  For example, the library has “Searching for Syvlie Lee” by Jean Kwok, a Chinese-American family drama about a woman who goes missing in the Netherlands and her sister who goes looking for her, discovering family secrets in the process.

One of our most recent large print westerns is “Hang Them Slowly” by William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone.  William Johnstone died in 2004, but his niece is continuing his popular series.  This new addition to the Range Detectives series finds two undercover detectives posing as cowboys getting caught up in a Montana range war.

As far as paperbacks, one of the newest additions is “The Wallflower Wager” by Tessa Dare.  The latest in Dare’s “Girl Meets Duke” regency romance series features an aristocratic spinster who rescues every lost or wounded animal she finds.  Her “wealthy and ruthless” new neighbor insists she get rid of the menagerie, so she enlists him to find homes for the creatures. 

You can find little paperback or big large-print editions of many books at the library.  If Litchfield Library doesn’t have the format you want, ask staff to find out for you whether the publisher has printed that kind of edition and if we can order it from another library.  As always, there’s no charge to request books from other libraries throughout Minnesota.

Meet Mary Poppins and Bert

Wind's in the east...  Bring the kids to Litchfield Library on Thursday, October 10, at 4 p.m. for a brief Mary Poppins storytime.  Mary Poppins and Bert will blow in for a meet and greet and to read the Mary Poppins picture book. 

Featuring the cast of Litchfield High School's fall musical, Mary Poppins.

Parents, it's Up to You!

By Jan Pease

Why did an estimated 27% of Minnesota’s five-year-old children enter Kindergarten unprepared?   I tend to focus on that number, but that also means that 73% of our kids did enter Kindergarten ready to learn.  Since I began working here in 1991, that number has been about the same:  roughly one quarter of the children entering Kindergarten are not ready for the experience of school. 

For several years I’ve been a partner of Read Aloud.org, an organization that encourages parents to read to their children: “Every child. Every parent. Every day.”  Their Read Aloud Toolkit gives a lot of information about this subject, and I’ve borrowed a lot of that information for this essay.  According to Readaloud.org, the single most important thing we can do to help our children learn and develop is reading aloud to them.  Children are born with about 100 billion neurons in their brains.  By age three there will be about 1,000 trillion connections between them.  Reading, talking and singing to children builds these connections.

 

At Litchfield Library, we have discussed trying the 1000 Books before Kindergarten program, which involves record keeping and prizes.  I’ll leave that for my successor to implement.  Someday. 

For now, I encourage families to read 15 minutes each day, just as regular as tooth brushing is in most families. According to the Read Aloud Tool Kit, “only 48% of children in this country are read to each day.”

If you read just 15 minutes a day to your child, for 5 years, that adds up to 27,375 minutes.  I can easily read a picture book in 15 minutes, even with talking and asking questions about the book.  That number of minutes would equal 1,825 books.  That’s a lot of books!

That leads me to another point.  Reading isn’t passive.  To draw your child into the story, ask questions.  If a book is about fall, ask, “what colors do you see?”  and “why do some trees lose leaves and others don’t?”  If you’re outside, even without a book, look up at the clouds. Ask, “what’s in the sky?”  or “what  does that cloud look like to you?”  “What kind of cloud is that?”  Or from October first on, “is that a snow cloud?”  

A final point: it’s so important to talk, read, and sing to small children.  In 1995 a book was published   about an important study of how much parents interact with their children. The title is “Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children,” by Betty Hart Ph.D and Todd R. Risley, Ph.D. It is available through mnlink.org and amazon.com.




A newer study by Jill Gilkerson, Ph.D and Jeffrey A. Richard, MA is found in their book, “The Power of Talk: The Impact of Adult Talk, Conversational Turns, and TV during the Critical 0-4 years of Child Development.”  This was published in 2009, but I haven’t found a copy of it, although articles by Jill Gilkerson, Ph.D are available through mnlink.org. Both studies showed that the number of words young children are exposed to has a direct impact on school and life success.

I had a delightful time interacting with a 15 month old child who is just starting to talk.  She climbed on a couch, and we quickly made up a game of pretending she was asleep and waking up.  So fun.  So important.  See you at the library!

mothrmöv

On September 20^th, three special guests visited the library and presented a wonderful story time.  A harpist, an English horn player, and a dancer performed “The Ugly Duckling,” the well-known story by Hans Christian Andersen.  The dancer interpreted each character.  Children were entranced, and responded to the music whether happy or sad.

Performances such as this are paid for with funds from the Clean Water Land and Legacy Amendment.  I am so happy to see our tax dollars used to introduce children to classical music and dance. Rural libraries especially benefit from this program, letting us provide wonderful performances that our children would not usually see in person.

The next extra fun thing we’ll have at the library is a visit from the Tail Waggin Tutors on October 12 at 10:00. These wonderful dogs are certified therapy dogs and love to listen to young readers read. 

And now for some new books!

Kate McMullan has a brand new book, “As Warm As the Sun.”  This sweet story is about a French bulldog named Toby who has to get used to his new bulldog sister, Pinky.  (They had me at French bulldogs)  Toby loves to bask in the sun, and Pinky is determined to prove that she is the perfect “warm as the sun” companion. 

“Ball and Balloon,” by Rob Sanders, is about jealousy between a ball and a balloon.  I didn’t expect it   For example, read this exchange between Ball and Balloon:  “How did you learn to fly?” asks Ball.  Balloon hadn’t learned to fly.  It was just something inside him.  “Gas,” he replied.”  I’m still laughing.
to be so funny.

Now that the first day of school is past, we can all relax.  “Butterflies on the First Day of School,” by Annie Silvestro, is a gentle story about a little girl named Rosie who bravely faces her first day of   Her mom helpfully tells her her tummy ache is just butterflies in her stomach.  When Rosie and her equally shy friend start to talk to each other, beautiful butterflies fly out of their mouths.  While I find this a little disturbing, none of the reviewers at amazon.com mentioned that.
school.

Finally, Susan and James Patterson (yes, THAT James Patterson) have released “Bigger Words for Little Geniuses.”  This is their third “little geniuses” book.  The first two were “Big Words for Little Geniuses,” and “Cuddly Critters for Little Geniuses. The Pattersons are indeed husband and wife.  The “Big Words for Little Geniuses” book was a big hit with the geniuses in our family.  The books are exactly what they say – collections of unusual words that require a dictionary to understand and pronounce.

These books, and more, are waiting for you at our local bibliotheca.

Another Day that will Live in Infamy

By Jan Pease

When you see the date, “September 11,” does a chill run down your spine?  I remember coming to work that day having just heard that America was under attack, including Minneapolis.  We quickly looked at the news on the Internet, a new thing back then, and discovered that Minneapolis was fine, but that the east coast was in turmoil.  A book salesman was visiting the library whose brother worked at the Pentagon. What a day.  Anyone who was alive back then probably can still recount what they were doing when they realized the magnitude of the attack.  2001 was 18 years ago. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, an estimated 28.5% of Americans are under 18.  So what do we tell them, especially if they’re children?

Here is a list of books that explore this day in our history.

“The September 11 Attacks Transform America,” by Whitney Sanderson, published in 2018 by The   This nonfiction book is part of the “Events that Changed America” series.
Child’s World, is a book with a lot of information in only 32 pages.

“America is Under Attack,” by Don Brown, was published in 2011 by Roaring Brook Press.  This book is designed for very young children, but has great information.  Don Brown is a well-known author of books for young children that delve into history.  

“A Nation Challenged: a Visual History of 9/11 and Its Aftermath,” staff at the New York Times and published by Scholastic in 2002 as a young reader’s edition.  This book is shelved in the adult area (973.931).  Reviews of the book are mixed.  The photography and text in the first part of the book are described as spectacular, but the second half of the book shows a bias against American involvement in Afghanistan. 

Sometimes fiction books can help a reader process a tragic event.  “I Survived the Attacks of September 11, 2001,” by Lauren Tarshish, is part of the very popular “I Survived” series.  In this book, a boy skips school and rides the train into New York City to visit one of his dad’s friends, a  firefighter.  Just as he reaches the fire station, the planes crash into the twin towers.    Ms. Tarshish thinks and writes about famous disasters, and her books just fly off the shelves.

“Nine, Ten: a September 11 Story,” by Nora Raleigh Baskin, looks at the days just before September 11, and how the disaster changes the lives of four young people in different parts of the U.S.

Finally, “Truthers,” by Geoffrey Girard, examines conspiracy theories inspired by 9/11.  For an interesting time, read some of the reviews at Amazon.com about this book.  Mr. Gerard tells an  intriguing story about a young girl’s search for truth hidden among her father’s bizarre claims of what really happened on that tragic day.

 (Note: one Amazon reviewer seems to have mixed up “Truthers” with “Among the Truthers,” by Jonathan Kay, an examination of various conspiracy theories.

Where were you on that fateful morning?  I was at Litchfield Public Library!

   

Revised job posting - Library assistant

JOB OPENING: LIBRARY ASSISTANT III
LITCHFIELD PUBLIC LIBRARY

Job Description: Provides reference, research, and specialized circulation services to library patrons in locating and utilizing library materials and services.   Handles incoming and outgoing interlibrary loan deliveries.  Leads a craft program for older children.

Qualifications:  Knowledge of library system operations, procedures, and resources; ability to work effectively with the general public; ability to plan, implement, and promote specialized events and programs; ability to maintain cooperative working relationships with coworkers; proficient with computers and related technology; ability to work independently; strong communication skills.

Education and experience required: High school diploma or equivalency, plus one year of directly-related experience; or a combination of education, experience and training necessary to perform the essential requirements of the work. 

Physical Requirements:  Must be able to walk, stoop, kneel, crouch, reach, lift, feel, grasp, talk, hear and see.  Some light lifting and carrying may be required up to 25 pounds.

Hours:  Mondays 1-8 pm, Tuesdays 1-8 or 3-8 pm, Wednesdays 9:30 am-2 pm, and one to two Saturdays per month 9:45 am – 5 pm.  Additional subbing as needed.

Application deadline:  Until filled

Applications available at the library or www.pioneerland.lib.mn.us .  Submit them to:

Beth Cronk
Litchfield Public Library
P.O. Box 220
Litchfield, MN 55355

Phone: (320)693-2483

We made a small change to this job description: they will lead a craft and activity program for 3rd through 5th graders rather than teens.