Horn Book-Boston Globe Award Winners 2008

If you want to read some award-winning books, try these three top winners:

Nonfiction: The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sis. This book is AMAZING, with gorgeous pictures that evoke, more than any words could, the way it was in the Czech Republic in the Communist Era. Moving, surreal, intense--this book is really not for little kids, rather it's a picture book for "big" kids, teens and adults. Sis also wrote and illustrated Tibet Through the Red Box, another picture book that was never intended for small children. His books, even the simplest picture books that are intended for preschoolers (such as Madlenka or Fire Truck), are a marriage between art and text in which each aspect is vital, and in which there is a slightly sly wink at the adults reading the book out loud to a child.

Picture book: At Night by Jonathan Bean. I'll be honest, I didn't really notice this small book when I bought it for the library back in April, but now that I revisit it, I find it charming and sweet. This is one of the valuable lessons of awards: sometimes it makes you take notice of books you may have glossed over otherwise. The simple story shows a girl who can't get to sleep in her room and who goes up to her building's rooftop garden to sleep under the stars and city lights. The most tender and reassuring part of the story is the way her mother follows her to the roof and sits beside her as she sleeps. This would be a great bedtime story, especially for the espresso-snorting preschooler in your life, who can never fall asleep.

Fiction & Poetry: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. First of all, a disclaimer: I have always had a thing for Sherman Alexie. Who can resist a guy who writes a book called The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven? And who adapted that story for Smoke Signals (a GREAT movie)? And he's gorgeous. And he was hilarious on Steven Colbert's show...so there you have it: Shannon likes SHerman Alexie. And Shannon LOVES The Absolutely True Diary. It's funny and heartbreaking and has great (occasional) illustrations. Read. It. Now.

Why Vampires?

Check out our awesome new SlideCast presentation on the vampire phenomenon. This is a podcast/slide show hybrid that included book, movie and game reviews, interviews and musings about WHY people like vampires so much. 16 minutes long--ignore my lisp (I don't have a lisp in real life, do I? No one's ever said so. Why should I have one in this recording?!) Chick HERE to watch and listen.

Google Gadget anyone?

I just heard about the possiblity of creating a gadget that one could embed on iGoogle that would list books out, due dates, etc.  I want this!  As an avid used of various gadgets to make my life easier and at least quasi-organized, I can see this being very iuseful.  Anyone out there know how to code gadgets?  I think it would be a great addition to the creation of the Horicon Virtual Library.

Pets at the library

Tortoises & Chinchillas in the library! Kimberly Weggeland of Hoffers Tropic Life in Milwaukee has been bringing exotic pets to the Tuesday morning storytimes. On November 11th the kids got to pet the softest fur in the world--that of Chili the Chinchilla. Chili showed us how much chinchillas love to take dust baths.

On November 25th, Kimberly brought two tortoises to storytime--one tiny baby, and the other a much larger five-year-old. The storytime kids counted the bumps on the tortoises backs (always 13!) and held the baby tortoise (you hold it like a cheeseburger!) and touched the lumpy scaly skin of the larger tortoise.

Who knows what may come next? Come to storytime and find out: Tuesdays at 10 and 11 a.m. This year's last daytime storytime will be on December 16. Evening storytimes are Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m., until the 17th. Sadly, there are no pets at the evening storytimes--but we have plenty of fun without them.

Go to our flickr account to see lots of photos of our special guests.

When Librarians Go Bad

I must admit it; I have defected to the camp of e-books. I recently purchased an Amazon Kindle. This e-book reader allows me to instantaneously download any one of about 170,000 books, which I then can read on the non-backlit totally page-like screen. I bought it so I don't have to lug around so many textbooks, because I'm taking classes right now, and because I can send any article or assignment to my Kindle and not have to murder trees to print stuff out. But I confess, I never thought I'd like the thing. I'm a big fan of the dead tree--in the book that is. While I love audiobooks, there's really nothing like the smell of paper and ink, and the feel of the paper under your hands.

But then I got the Kindle, and suddenly I don't mind the lack of paper and ink smells at all--because the thing is so lightweight, and convenient, and I can set the text to the largest font size and read in bed without wearing my glasses (which I haven't been able to do since I was 8!)

Suddenly, I'm a convert. But, hey, what about libraries? Why can't we circulate Kindle editions just like other items? Shouldn't we be able to let any Kindle owners with Horicon cards check out these cool e-books? That's up to Amazon, and so far, they're not up for it. And I feel like a lousy librarian--suddenly I'm buying books instead of checking them out! Bad librarian, bad! (Now, will the NetLibrary books work on the Kindle, hmmm? I know I can download free ManyBooks or Project Gutenberg classics...)

But what do you think? Are e-book readers like the Kindle the wave of the future? Will you miss the smell of paper and ink? Or will you be thrilled to leave the trees intact and read without your glasses on? --Shannon B.

rss feeds and calendar downloads

Hey: I want everyone to get up to the most current information on what is going on at the library. So here are two ways you can be in the know: first of all, look at the "subscribe to" in the upper right hand corner of this blog and add the rss feed to your iGoogle, Atom, Yahoo homepage and so on. If you use Google Calendar, you can also add our calendar to yours through your GCal settings.