The Explorer

You may not know this, but that kid who sits next to you in Language Arts class may be a published book reviewer.

Yes, it’s true. Your friends and classmates from all around Skokie have read and reviewed more than 100 books, including many that weren’t even on the shelf at the time of the review, and others that went on to win big-time book awards.

The newest issue of UNDER the COVER (code name “V4.N1“) is packed with book reviews written by students from Fairview South, McCracken, and Old Orchard Junior High. It features new and soon-to-be-popular books such as Sarah Dessen’s Along for the Ride; The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly; Peace, Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson; and When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.

So, as long as you’re sitting at the keyboard, why not take a few clicks to see what V4.N1 is all about? This and all seven issues we’ve published since 2007 are available on our website and in print (for those of you who love the feel of paper in your hands). You can also pick up a copy in the Youth Services Department at Skokie Public Library.

UNDER the COVER. Book reviews by teens. For teens. Pass it on.

The December issue of News & Notes for K-8 Teachers hot off the keyboard! This issue features grade level resources about Ancient Egypt,  information about the upcoming Family Winter Reading Club, after-school programs for tweens, and Arie Crown Day School’s “reading links” program. We’ve also included a rerun of our K-8 eNews subscription options to help you conveniently keep in the know about Library resources for teachers via regular email and RSS feed.

Read the full issue online. In the meantime, here’s the highlights…

Curriculum Connections

• Exploring Ancient Egypt

The Reading Corner

• Family Winter Reading Club
• Booktalks and puppet shows in your classroom
• After-school programs for junior high students
• Teachers can now download audiobooks

Share & Share Alike

• Read Around Arie Crown

Elementary Tech

• Subscription options for K-8 News & Notes
• Sign up now to receive News & Notes via email or RSS feed

Teen Read Week is over, but great books for teens go on forever! If you’re in junior  high, you’re in luck. Some of the best books being written today are for you! Here are some great ones:

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Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Chick Lit meets football! D.J. Schwenk is a big, strong athletic girl who does most of the work on her parents’ Wisconsin dairy farm. Popular? No. Rich? No. Stylish? Definitely, no! But D.J. is a worker. In fact, she is doing so much work on the farm that she’s had to give up basketball and track, two sports she excels in. She’s also failing English, but you gotta do what you gotta do, right? D.J. knows a lot about  football. Her two older brothers were football stars in high school, her dad used to be a coach, and D.J. used to spend hours training with her brothers.  Nevertheless, she is horrified when she is asked to coach Brian, the handsome, popular, rich, spoiled quarterback of her high school’s arch rival team. But you gotta do what you gotta do, right? From the beginning, she and Brian can’t stand each other. But then things begin to change. If you want to read a fun, funny story about a most unlikely pair, pick up Dairy Queen. You’ll love it!

Peak by Roland Smith

Peak is 15, and he goes to a private high school in New York City. Peak is the son of two mountain climbers, now divorced. His mom has given up climbing and remarried, but his dad still leads expeditions up mountains all over the world. Peak has inherited his parents’ gift for climbing, but there are no mountains in New York, so he has taken to climbing buildings. As the book opens, he’s reaching the top of his seventh building, only to be met  by a  NYPD SWAT team. He is in big trouble. The authorities agree to drop charges if Peak will desist from any more climbs and let all the publicity die down. Enter Peak’s famous father, who offers to take Peak on one of his climbs. This seems like a perfect solution to the problem, except for one little detail: Peak’s dad conveniently forgets to mention that the climb will be to the summit of Mount Everest.

Code Orange by Caroline Cooney

Mitty Blake   is a terrible student, always doing the least amount of work he can get away with.  He just doesn’t care about school at all, but he really wants to stay in his Advanced Biology class because he likes a girl in the class. So when Sunday night comes around, and his topic for a paper on infectious diseases is due Monday morning, he figures he’d better get to work. Leafing through an antique book on infectious diseases, he finds an envelope marked “Scabs – VM epidemic, Boston 1902.” He handles the scabs, puts them back in the envelope, and then looks up VM. It turns out that VM, or Variola Major, is smallpox, a horrible, often fatal disease that has been eradicated by world-wide vaccination programs.  Since smallpox no longer poses a threat, people are no longer vaccinated for it. As Mitty reads more about this deadly disease, he starts to wonder if handling those scabs has caused him to become a human incubator of the smallpox virus. And if so, what should he do? If you like suspense at its finest, pick up Code Orange. I bet you’ll read it in one sitting!

These outstanding books are currently on this year’s VOYA list  for grades 7-8, along with seven others. Stop by the YS Department, pick up a list, check out some books, and read – for the fun of it!

It’s Teen Read Week, a week designated by the Young Adult Library Services Association, a division of the American Library Association, to celebrate the joy of reading for teens. This year’s theme is Read Beyond Reality @ your library, which encourages teens to read something out of this world, just for the fun of it.

One of my favorite books read last year was Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. I am thrilled that this book is on our current Voice of Youth Award List for 7th/8th grade students. In the book, life on Earth is rocked when the moon is struck by a meteor.  The impact sets off a series of catastrophic events such as tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Eventually there are power outages, food shortages and mass destruction. Sixteen-year-old Miranda and her family must struggle to survive. Told in diary format, this story draws the reader in from the first chapter. I couldn’t put this book down and after reading it I made sure my pantry was stocked with lots of food and bottled water in case what was presented in this book ever became reality. There is a companion book to this one called The Dead and the Gone and the second companion book will be coming out next year and is called The World We Live In. I can’t wait to read it. For a sneak peek at the third book in the series, check out the author’s blog at susanbethpfeffer.blogspot.com. For other great books for teens, visit our Teen Read Week display in Youth Services.

I always love to know what readers think of the books I recommend. Feel free to add a comment to this blog post to share your thoughts about this series or to recommend other books that are “out of this world.”

That’s right Peek-A-Book fans, it’s that time again! There are six brand new picture book previews available on the Peek-A-Book kiosk! Parents, please bring your kids in to the Youth Services Department so they can view these fun and colorful puppet-presented book talks. These new titles will be available together for only a limited time - for one week beginning Saturday, October 17:

Best Best Friends by Margaret Chodos

Clare and Mary are best friends, but on Mary’s birthday, the best best friends get into a big, big fight. Caldecott-Honor winner Chodos-Irvine shows young readers that even best friends fight sometimes, but love will triumph every time.
Visit the Peek-A-Book every week for six new book previews!

Comets, Stars, The Moon, And Mars: Space Poems And Paintings by Douglas Florian

From the moon to the stars, Florian’s new high-flying compendium features 20 whimsical poems about space.

Visit the Peek-A-Book every week for six new book previews!

The Crow (A Not So Scary Story) by Alison Paul

In this fun and not-so-scary read-aloud, a girl sees a crow outside her window and soon her imagination gets the better of her.

Visit the Peek-A-Book every week for six new book previews!
Visit the Peek-A-Book every week for six new book previews!

Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich: And Other Stories You’re Sure to Like, Because They’re All About Monsters, And Some of Them Are  Also About Food by Adam Rex

Nineteen hilarious poems delve into the secret lives of Frankenstein, Wolfman, Dracula, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Bigfoot, Godzilla, and others.
Visit the Peek-A-Book every week for six new book previews!

Gregor Mendel: The Friar Who Grew Peas by Cheryl Bardoe

Regarded as the world’s first geneticist, Mendel overcame poverty and obscurity to discover that animals, plants, and people all inherit and pass down traits through the same process. Children will be inspired by Gregor’s never-ending search for knowledge, and his famous experiments are easy to understand.
Visit the Peek-A-Book every week for six new book previews!

Kitty Cat, Kitty Cat, Are You Waking Up? by Bill Martin Jr.

Kitty Cat should be getting ready for school, but instead she’s practicing her purr, looking for her socks, chasing a little mouse, and other things. Will Kitty Cat make it out of the house in time for school?

Visit the Peek-A-Book every week for six new book previews!

There are currently over 200 picture books available at Skokie Public Library where an animated book preview is also available on the Peek-A-Book kiosk. New book previews, like these six, are added every month for your child’s viewing and reading pleasure.

Please let me know if your child has a favorite Peek-A-Book preview that you’d like me to present again for an upcoming week. Thanks!

A webcast is an audio or video stream that is broadcast over the Internet. Webcasts are sometimes live–like breaking news or a concert on the other side of the globe–or they are prerecorded and available for viewing at any time from a website to your computer.

Skokie Public Library is hosting a live webcast with Kate DiCamillo on Sunday, October 25 at 3:00pm. DiCamillo will lead a book group discussion of her newest novel, The Magician’s Elephant, from Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C.

A few of our Youth Services staff have read The Magician’s Elephant. Here’s what Holly told me about the story:

Ten-year-old Peter Augustus Duchane spends his only coin to ask a fortune teller about his sister, who was previously presumed dead.  At the very same moment Peter receives his nonsensical fortune to “follow the elephant,” a flustered magician conjures up a live elephant which falls through the opera house’s ceiling, injuring a lady in the audience. The story weaves together love, despair, and hope with a host of seemingly unrelated characters who start to believe that anything is possible.

If you’ve read the Magician’s Elephant–and even if you haven’t–why not come out on a Sunday afternoon and join us for the webcast? We’ve got plenty of seats in our Mary Radmacher Meeting Room; registration is required so we can make sure there’s room for everyone. Download your very own invitation and then sign up to reserve your seat for the webcast!

Pssst… If you’re curious about webcasts and how they work, check out the Library of Congress Webcasts and the Exploratorium Webcast Archive.

What’s a WEview? Well, if I read a book and evaluate it, it’s called a review. So if more than one person reviews the same book I think it can be called a WEview!

The first book I’d like to WEview is Umbrella Summer by Lisa Graff.
Umbrella Summer is a tender, funny, sometimes heartbreaking, yet uplifting book about a 10-year-old girl named Annie who is grieving the loss of her older brother, Jared. Because Jared’s death was a result of a sporting accident, Annie becomes extremely cautious of anything that might hurt her. She covers herself in Band-Aids, wears her bike helmet to walk across the street, memorizes symptoms from an encyclopedia of diseases, and refuses to participate in anything where she might get hurt. Annie’s friends lose patience with her strange behaviors and tell her she’s no fun anymore, which leaves her feeling angry and alone. It isn’t until Annie meets a new neighbor who who is grieving her own loss, that the two unlikely friends move out from their umbrellas and into the sunshine.

I enjoyed this book so much that I actually read it twice! Annie, as a character, is so well developed, and her emotions so real, that I felt like I knew her personally. Obviously, Annie was really hurting inside from losing her brother, but she tried to deal with her hurt by being overly cautious and a bit of a hypochondriac. I had such compassion for her because I understood her completely.

I’ve shared this book with some of Skokie Library’s very best readers, and I’m looking forward to hearing what they have to say about it!

September 26-October 3 is one of the most important weeks in the year: Banned Books Week. Every year, we celebrate our freedom to read by displaying books that have been banned or challenged.

Banning a book is removing it from the shelves in schools, libraries or book stores, so that people don’t have access to it. Challenging a book is attempting to have a book removed or restricted.

You might be wondering why anyone would want to ban a book. Usually the reason is fear that its ideas will be harmful to the reader. Banning or restricting books, speech or ideas is also called censorship. But in the United States, we are all guaranteed the freedom to say what we want, and to write what we want, and to think what we want. Books help us think by sharing information and ideas with us. Even ideas which we do not agree with can help us to form our own ideas and opinions. When books are banned, we cannot read their ideas, so book banning limits our freedoms.

As a child, only your parents have the right to help you decide what to read. When you are an adult, only you should have that right.

Here are some ways that you can help to celebrate our freedom to read.

• Stand up for freedom of expression whenever you feel it is threatened.
• Read widely. Remember that the success of a democracy depends on having voters who are educated and  able to think for themselves.
• Talk about censorship and freedom of expression with family and friends.

According to the American Library Association, there were 513 attempts to ban or challenge books in 2008-09. Here are a few examples, from the Illinois Library Association’s annual list:

The Twilight series was ordered removed from the shelves in a middle school in Capistrano, California because a parent was concerned about sexual content in the fourth book in the series. The books were later put back on the middle school shelves.

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The Fighting Ground by Avi is about twenty-four hours in the life of a boy during the Revolutionary War. It was banned from a middle school’s shelves in Panama City, Florida after a parent noticed that there were some profanities in the book.

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The Great Tree of Avalon: Child of the Dark Prophecy by T.A. Barron was pulled from the shelves of a middle school library in Lackawanna, New York because a parent was concerned that the book deals with the occult. It was later reinstated by the school board.

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And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell has been the subject of multiple challenges. This picture book about two male penguins who raise a female penguin was banned from 16 elementary school libraries in Loudoun County,Virginia because of complaints that it dealt with homsexuality. It was later reinstated. Challenges also occurred in Dublin, Ohio; Ankeny, Iowa; Prince Frederick, Maryland and Farmington, Minnesota. After review the book has been retained on the shelves in all the above cases.

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And of course we can’t forget Harry Potter. Since its publication in 1997, J.K. Rowling’s series about the boy wizard has consistently been challenged.  An example from 2003: In Cedarville, Arkansas, the school district voted to restrict students’ access to the books because they promote disobedience and disrespect for authority, and because they deal with witchcraft and the occult. Students in the Cedarville district now have to obtain signed permission from their parents to check out the books.

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So come on in to the Youth Services Department during Banned Books Week, and take a look at our display of banned and challenged books. Then check one out, and judge the book for yourself! There is no better way to celebrate your freedom to read!

The October issue of News & Notes for K-8 Teachers hot off the keyboard! This issue features grade level resources for science fair projects, summer reading recap, programs and services for teachers and classrooms, and Middleton School’s library card campaign. We’re also introducing new subscription options to help you conveniently keep in the know about Library resources for teachers via regular email and RSS feed.

Read the full issue online. In the meantime, here’s the highlights…

Curriculum Connections

• Science fair projects

The Reading Corner

• Summer reading club
• Booktalks and puppet shows in your classroom
• Wendy Mass to visit Skokie Public Library
• Playaways: a new collection
• Teachers can now download audiobooks

Share & Share Alike

• Middleton School’s library card campaign

Elementary Tech

• New subscription options for K-8 News & Notes
• Sign up now to receive News & Notes via email or RSS feed

Our fall sessions of storytimes started this week and it’s already a lot of fun! First, there are a few new things: We now have a drop-in storytime for 2- to 5-year-olds on Monday mornings at 10 a.m. Led by Gudrun, this is a great opportunity for parents and caregivers who cannot commit to a registered program during the five-week sessions to just drop by the Library and share in the storytime experience. Carolyn’s Monday session of Rock and Read for Babies still takes place at the same time, but it has been moved to the Mary Radmacher Meeting Room to accommodate a larger group. For the three weeks in between each session, we’ll still be offering Fairytale Storytime — featuring Mary’s fantastic storytelling — plus another new program: Book Bonanza, pairing stories with a craft.

But the storytime that  I am personally most excited about is Toddler Time! Okay, that’s because I lead that particular storytime, but it’s also because I LOVE 2-year-olds! We’ve all heard of the “terrible twos.” I am not a parent (nor do I play one on TV), so I realize that I haven’t experienced all the ups-and-downs of raising a toddler, but I really see that age as a “terrific” year. A 2-year-old is transitioning from baby to child and experiences so much growth — physical, emotional, mental, social — in that one year span. I’ve worked at the Library for more than 10 years now, and in that time I’ve seen so many kids grow up. My first batch of Toddler Time kids are now junior high age; I cannot believe “I knew them when.” And just like pre-teens and teens, 2-year-olds also have  a “spontaneity” that keeps you on your toes. So, if you know a 2-year-old looking for a creative outlet where they’ll be accepted and appreciated for who they are, consider signing them up for Toddler Time on Tuesday or Friday mornings.

Check out our Storytime Calendar for more information about ALL of our storytimes. Many require registration, so sign up TODAY for the current session!