Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Sandy's Favorites 2014

It's been a pretty ridiculous year for me.  I had a baby, and they aren't kidding when they say that it changes everything.  My free time has diminished a bit, and I've found myself wanting to occupy this free time with new activities.

What all of this boils down to is the fact that I haven't read nearly as many books this year as I have in the past.  According to Goodreads, I've read 43 books, most of which are novels for children or teens.  Not included in this total are several works of adult nonfiction all about pregnancy, parenting, and making baby food that I didn't feel the need to review.

Forty books doesn't seem like much when you consider that in 2009  (a year post-grad school where I only worked part time) I read 175 books.  Even in 2013 I read 75 books, nearly double this year's total.  Still, 40 books is perfectly respectable.  Besides, I like to think that I've made up for the lack of quantity with the quality of the books that I have read since many of these books have completely blown me away.  Here are a few of my favorites:

Chapter Books

The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier
Molly and Kip are Irish siblings who don't seem to have parents to care for them.  Molly takes a job as a housekeeper to a formerly wealthy family that is down on its luck.  But it's not just the money that seems to be troubling this family.  The entire family seems sickly, and everyone seems to be getting treasures from a mysterious source.  There is also the Night Gardener who appears during the night, and though know one know exactly what his intentions are, they certainly do not seem to be good.  This bit of Gothic horror features fantastic storytelling, and I love how the horror elements mirror some of the other issue that the characters are dealing with.  Given the masterful writing, I think that this book has a shot at a Newbery Honor.

The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm
One evening, Ellie's mother comes home with a teenage boy in tow.  Strangely enough, her scientist grandfather seems to have uncovered a sort of fountain of youth and have given himself a young body.  Through a series of episodes, Ellie and her grandfather explore the wonders of science and discover what it really means to grow up and to grow older.  This book is an unusual blend of sci-fi and contemporary fiction that will appeal to fans of both Wendy Mass and Madeleine L'Engle.

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Wilson
So much has already been said about Wilson's memoir told is verse, which recently won the National Book Award.  It's a bit of a patchwork dealing with Wilson's family, the era in which she lives, race, and other small details from her childhood.    This memoir seems to be this year's "it" book and is widely favored to win this year's Newbery Medal.  It's worthy of the hype.

Teen Reads

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
The Sinclair family is everything they are supposed to be:  Beautiful, athletic, and incredibly wealthy.  Every summer they vacation on a private island near Martha's Vineyard.  Cadance, the oldest grandchild, looks forward to spending these summers with her cousins and Gat, the nephew of her aunt's boyfriend.  But then one year Cadance has some sort of accident.  She can't remember what happened and no one seems terribly interested in telling her.  During her 17th summer on the island, Cadance tries to piece together bits of memory to figure out what happened.  What makes this story stand out is Cadance's narrative voice.  The way that this story unfolds and the fact that she is so unreliable make this book stand out in the crowd.

Six Feet Over It by Jennifer Longo
Leigh's father decides to uproot the family and operate a cemetery, and he does not seem particularly willing to look further than the kitchen table for ready employees.  Leigh finds herself working in the cemetery's office selling graves after school.  Meanwhile she has her own grief to deal with after being uprooted from her beloved home by the sea, the death of her best friend, and her sister's cancer treatments.  This book sounds very dark and while it certainly does have its morbid moments, Leigh's sarcasm and ready wit help to keep it from being depressing.  Leigh is a character that I grew to love as she developed over the course of this novel.  This is my favorite book of the year.

A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller
Victoria dreams of being an artist.  Unfortunately, as a woman in Edwardian England her options are fairly limited.  Getting into a proper art school will be next to impossible without some assistance, and her father absolutely refuses to pay her tuition.  The plot thickens with a sweet police constable / artistic muse, some periphery involvement in the suffragist movement, and a wealthy finance who might not be the easy solution Vicky was hoping for.  This book was a tad predictable in terms of plot, but this author definitely did her research about this era.  Readers will enjoy being pulled into this fascinating time period.

Monday, December 29, 2014

Lily Rose May

A little girl, 5 or 6 years old, came in to the library today looking for a book that she had checked out from the library before.  She told me that the name of the book was "Lily Rose May."  I looked this up in our catalog and nothing came up, so I assumed that she was misremembering the title of the book.  I asked if she could tell me what the story was about.  To paraphrase:

"It was the story of the Princess and the Pea, and there was a princess in the castle who didn't like peas but then she tried the peas and she liked them."

Hmm.

I turned to my handy friend NoveList to see if the database could help me solve this puzzle.  I decided to try searching for "Lily Rose May" first to see what came up since the girl seemed to remember that particular phrase very distinctly, even though I couldn't at all figure out how this phrase connected to the story.  Sure enough, the first title the came up in the results was the book she was looking for!

The book in question was, "The Princess and the Peas" by Caryl Hart.  In this story a girl named Lily-Rose May dislikes peas.  Her father takes her to the doctor who diagnoses her with princess-itus and sends her to live in a castle where she discovers that peas are the perfect princess food.  It seems that she eventually learns to like peas.  Turns out that the girl who was searching for the book has remembered the little girl character's very distinct name.  The fact that both the book's description and reviews of the book contain this name make finding this book a lot easier than I'd originally expected.

Monday, December 15, 2014

Wrapped Book Display

My Teen Advisory Group had a great idea for a book display this month.  We wrapped up books and set them out under a decorated Christmas tree.  I made up some stickers that listed the book's genre and affixed the stickers to the books.  People could then take one of the wrapped books and check them out with their library cards.  They wouldn't know anything about the book except for the genre until they took the book home and unwrapped it.


Since my library has RFID, checking out one of these wrapped books is super easy.  The wrapping paper doesn't get in the way of anything with RFID - just place the book on the pad and you're done.  Libraries that scan barcodes for checkout would need to take extra steps to either ensure that the books' barcodes remain visible or to write the barcode number on the wrapped book for manual entry.

December is a slow-ish month at the library with so much else going on, but the display has still been moderately successful.  The teens that I've spoken to who have checked out these books have all been intrigued by the mystery.

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Just a little something...

Today I went to take a quick lunch break, leaving the Children's Desk unattended for a few minutes.  When I returned, this was waiting for me on the desk:


Awww!  Too sweet (even if we are missing an "r").

Monday, December 1, 2014

What Are You Thankful For?

November's teen passive program drew its inspiration directly from one of my favorite holidays:  Thanksgiving.  Bad news:  I neglected to take a picture of the display before taking it down.  You're stuck listening to me describe it instead.

Setting up this passive program was super easy.  I made a large sign on 17x11" paper with the question, "What are you thankful for?" written on it.  Then I put out some quarter sheets of colored paper and pens.  The teens could write their answers out and post them to the bulletin board.  Easy!

Most of the answers were very nice.



A few were a little bit more...interesting.


Teenagers:  Gotta love them!

I've also learned that when asking the teens to write something simple like this, a smaller piece of paper is best.  Even these quarter sheets were too large since the answers were so brief.  Next time I might use Post-Its, or perhaps cut these quarter sheets in half.