Morris Award

The William C. Morris YA Debut Award, first awarded in 2009, honors a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens and celebrating impressive new voices in young adult literature. Use this short URL: www.ala.org/yalsa/morris. 

From the ALA website:

The award's namesake is William C. Morris, an influential innovator in the publishing world and an advocate for marketing books for children and young adults. Bill Morris left an impressive mark on the field of children’s and young adult literature. He was beloved in the publishing field and the library profession for his generosity and marvelous enthusiasm for promoting literature for children and teens. 

Click here to see the 2011 Finalists.

100 Notable Books of 2010

.... as described online by the New York Times today. See links to previous years' lists also.

National Book Award

And the Winners are.....
Fiction: Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon
Nonfiction: Just Kids by Patti Smith
Poetry: Lighthead by Terrance Hayes
Young people’s literature: Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine
Lifetime achievement award: Tom Wolfe

See brief review of each in this Washington Post summary.

School Library Journal Best Books for 2010

Enjoy this year's lists:

Best of 2010: Picture Books

Best of 2010: Fiction

Best of 2010: Nonfiction

The New York Times Will Begin Publishing E-Book Bestseller Lists Early In 2011

The New York Times reported  that it would publish e-book best-seller lists in fiction and nonfiction beginning early next year. This new best-seller list is prompted by the huge and dramatic growth in sales of ebooks.

See Julie Bosman's recent article in The New York Times.

Bosman writes that  e-book sales in the first nine months of 2010 were $304.6 million, up from $105.6 million from the same period in 2009, a nearly 190 percent increase.

The lists, like their print book lists, will be compiled from weekly data from publishers, chain bookstores, independent booksellers and online retailers, among other sources.

Listening right now to Rebecca Skloot discuss her book

Science teacher Amy Ludoph and I are attending the lecture and book signing for this amazingly well researched book: 
The Immortal Life of HEnrietta LAcks

Lecture, Book signing and Dinner with
Best-Selling Author Rebecca Skloot
5 pm Tuesday November 16, 2010
Northwestern University Chicago Campus, Thorne Auditorium, 375 East Chicago Ave.
sponsored by The Chicago Council on Science and Technology and Children’s Memorial Research Center

Skloot’s wonderfully accessible work is now being made into an HBO movie produced by Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball. 
Skloot takes readers on an amazing journey that explores the complicated legacy of one woman’s unwitting contribution to modern science. I learned that HeLa cells continue  to  grow ....if we could gather all cells grown to date we'd  have the weight in cells of 150 Empire State Buildings.
Skloot learned about HeLa cells in high school and was curious about their origins.  Skloot spent 10 years researching the life of Henrietta Lacks who was a poor uneducated black woman in the Jim Crow South. In the 1950s who worked the same tobacco fields as her slave ancestors.  When she died of cervical cancer  at age 31, her cells—taken without her family's knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine.  HeLa cells became essential for creating the polio vaccine. They were also used to find out more about cancer, viruses, and the effects of the atom bomb. HeLa cells became useful for developing in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping. Henrietta's cells, still alive today, have been bought and sold by the billions.

The Lacks family did not learn about her cells “immortality” until more than twenty years after Henrietta's death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent and without any monetary compensation. The most amazing piece of this story is how Rebecca Skloot gained the access to this family which had been used and abused by others. Black Americans in East Baltimore had fear of John Hopkins using their bodies and tissues for research. The HeLa cells are connected to the unethical history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control our own tissues. Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. and became highly interested in answers to her questions:

• Had scientists cloned her mother?
• Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space?
• What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen?
• If her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

The book is an amazing accomplishment not only in terms of the writing and research, but also in human terms. Skoot's dogged determination to honor the family legacy comes shining through this absorbing narrative.This energetic science writer has just moved to Chicago!

Civil Rights viewed in a new "light"

Historical fiction really does combine a good dose of history with fiction. Such a genre seems like it could be difficult to write - how much of and which facets of fact and fiction swirled together makes for the read that is "just right"?

Whenever I read historical fiction, I learn something new and think "why didn't I just read this book in my social studies class? It would have made all the difference." I think historical fiction is overlooked too often as boring, stuffy, something a reader may not be able to relate. However, especially when the history is interwined with fiction, - history comes to life in an engaging, educational, and accessible format.

A "just right" read comes in Sources of Light by Margaret McMullan. She lived in Jackson, MS from 1963 to 1969, a pivotal time in U.S. History, and provided the setting for this book.

In 1962, Sam and her mother move from Pittsburgh, PA to Jackson, MS, an entirely new environment for Sam. As a freshman in high school, Sam struggles with the same issues as teenagers today. What is most poignant is how she grapples with ethical, social, and political questions of the time that have no easy, nor sometimes logical, answers.

Sam experiments with and learns to listen and speak through photography - what becomes her very own Pentax camera, the developing room, and the photographs that capture moments and memories. Sam can't be like all the other girls; her mom isn't even like all the other moms in the community. She also knows how to use a camera to be an activist, make a statement, and help her friends - those her age and adults. Sam encounters situations in life that influence her to be a good person, to help others, and, when necessary, to move with the ebb and flow of life.


The characters are real, the emotions are honest and raw, the actions are true to form, and the issues are bold. The sentences are well-written, creative, and provide for so much imagery, I had to laugh, smile, or grab a tissue.
One of my favorites: "The corners of Mill Welty's eyes crinkled like tissue paper as she smiled and welcomed us all (214).
A line I will try to remember: She'd told me fear was just one more thing you could change into something else, something else like anger or even love."

Source of Light provides the right aperture (I hope I'm using that word correctly!) on the history of our country in a way that is accessible, meaningful, and reflective.

I like the idea of curating tweets - be sure to follow the YALSA blog

Here's a sample from this week's blog:

Tweets of the Week – November 5, 2010
Linda W Braun | Prof. Development | Friday, November 5th, 2010

Tweets of the Week – November 5, 2010

Linda W Braun | Prof. Development | Friday, November 5th, 2010

A short list of tweets posted over the last week that librarians and the teens that they serve may find interesting:

• eschoolnews: parents more likely to purchase mobile device for child for classroom use http://tinyurl.com/2vx5olz – @wsstephens
• FCC taking on cyberbullying in schools http://reut.rs/a3lkQ4 Order linked to e-rate – @StephenBalkam
• 8 Tools Your Virtual Team Shouldn’t Live Without http://tinyurl.com/2abznod – @OPENForum
• WSJ.com – Why E-Books Aren’t Scary, according to Stephen King (unless an electromagnetic pulse deletes everything!) http://on.wsj.com/akBi7U – @jendimmick
• Does Screen Reading Count?: It should, according to this study. I’m not so sure the experience is the same, and I’… http://bit.ly/ciKmPK – @educationweek
• NPR.org » Wikipedia Teams Up With Academia http://tinyurl.com/2fa5lks – @pollyalida
• School Principals and Social Networking in Educationhttp://www.mchdata.com/PDFs/PrincipalsandSocialNetworkingReport.pdf – @libraryms
• Time to start reading & digesting latest Project Info Lit report. http://bit.ly/9Z0vqh – @sfrancoeur
• Supreme Court’s Video Game Violence Word Cloud http://bit.ly/aVOfhw – @fastcompany
• You’re the Boss: When the Tech Guy Is 13 (or Even 10) http://nyti.ms/dkpD6z – @nytimestech

If you aren't on Twitter yet for professional development, you need to be!

Night of the Living Librarians

Have fun watching: ALA Book Cart Drill Team Competition in Washington D.C., June 27th, 2010

Here are the winners of the competition which includes Mindi Maneck, our very own student teacher/librarian. The Pitt team took home "The Golden Book Cart."

Mindi explains:

We chose Saint-Saens's music, and asked Neil Gaiman permission to use parts of his audiobook from The Graveyard Book (he wrote us yes! A very exciting moment, indeed). Our graves included names from the book, and funny library names (like "Melvil Dui" and "The Card Catalog"). Jon Scieska and Mo Willems were the MCs. I was so excited when Mo Willems chose me to interview at the end (I was also out of breath, and very nervous!). He's one of my very favorite children's books authors.

If you're a Lord of the Rings fan...

and have about 16 minutes to kill you may enjoy The Lord of the Libraries, shared by librarian Phil Bradley on Twitter.

Summary of an article about ebooks: "At the Tipping Point"
from Library Journal, August 2010 Vol. 135 No. 13

This article is split into four sections. The first is called “Libraries, Ebooks, and Competition” by Eric Hellman. He compares ebooks to the internet and how it changed the balance of knowledge with the public. It is important for libraries to stay with technology to keep up with the shifting needs of the community.

The second section is called “Ebooks and the Retailization of Research” by Barbara Fisher. This section looks at the downside of ebooks. Four major points against ebooks are the inability to share books, the ability of amazon to simply make a book vanish, the ability for others to see what and how long you were looking at a book, and the lack of browsing capabilities like in a bookstore. While this could make books cheaper and easier for everyone to get, there are also a lot of problems with ebooks and ebook readers.

The third section is called “Ebook Sanity” by Jason Griffey. This section questions what exactly libraries are trying to do with ebooks. The purpose of a library is to share knowledge and in what Griffey calls a “misfit between models,” limiting the number of digital copies to fit the limitation on checkout copies is simply silly.

The fourth section is called “E-Texts for All (Even Lucy)” by Char Booth. This section is about the inaccessibility of ebooks for the blind. Originally, because Braille texts aren’t very practical, online texts were created for blind people. However, as ebooks have become increasingly commercial, they have become increasingly inaccessible to people unable to see.

Every section was interesting, but most of them brought up points that don't have answers yet, especially the section by Jason Griffey. This article focuses on how ebooks relate to libraries, but authors, publishers and literary agents are also arguing over the prices and accessibility of ebooks. Even amazon is in the fray, trying to lower ebook prices so more people will buy kindles.

Banned Book Week starts today

Thanks to Stephen's Lighthouse for showcasing this video and keeping an important idea at the forefront of our thinking.

Jeannette Walls in Winnetka

From the Bookstall website: JEANNETTE WALLS talks about her writing and the phenomenal success of her memoir The Glass Castle and her most recent bestseller, Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel, the compelling story of her grandmother that became an instant classic when it was first published, in 2009. It’s new in paperback. For more information call: 847 446-8880. In addition to a luncheon, JEANNETTE WALLS will speak about and sign her books at the store at 7 pm on Tuesday, September 14, 2010.

The Hunger Games: The whole series

The last book in The Hunger Games series is finally out! For anyone who hasn't read the books, they are about a futuristic America in which The Capitol rules twelve districts with an iron fist. To show their power, the Capitol forces the districts to send two teenagers to the hunger games in which they must fight for survival - and against each other. This series questions just how would a person be willing go to protect those they love or for an ideal? How much of themselves would they be willing to sacrifice to stay alive? These questions persist throughout the entire series. It is a fun read, but at the same time, it makes you question what is really the right thing to do. I would suggest this series to everyone I know.

Breakfast Club and 25 years

I have been thinking about Breakfast Club lately and just learned that the 25th (!) anniversary collection is coming out today.

All of that angst and all of the issues about identity and "fitting in" are still universal themes which are appearing in novels for young adults. An example that comes to mind is Perfect Chemistry by Elkeles, one of the titles nominated this year for the Abe Lincoln award. Check out reactions to this book and others at our companion blog, Uber Abe 2011. Leave a comment and let us know ... do these books realistically portray issues that teens face today? Will we be seeing them at the movies or being reissued in 25 years?

12 Events That Will Change Everything, Made Interactive

"12 Events That Will Change Everything," which appears in the June 2010 issue of Scientific American has an interactive companion website.  IGSS students will be exploring global ethical issues in 2010-11 and hopefully, they may want to  explore some of the global ethical issues related to future events and how societies can best respond.

I am currently looking at essays from a recent NT library purchase:

This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future
Edited byJohn Brockman. Harper Perennial,which is Part of a series stemming from his online science journal Edge (www.edge.org), including What Have You Changed Your Mind About? and What Is Your Dangerous Idea? 

In this book author and editor Brockman presents 136 answers to the question, “What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?” 

From the book's website: Milan architect Stefano Boeri responds with a single sentence: “Discovering that someone from the future has already come to visit us.” Most others take the question more seriously; J. Craig Venter believes his laboratory will use “digitized genetic information” to direct organisms in creating biofuels and recycling carbon dioxide. Like biofuels, several topics are recurrent: both Robert Shapiro and Douglas Rushikoff consider discovering a “Separate Origin for Life,” a terrestrial unicellular organism that doesn’t belong to our tree of life; Leo M. Chalupa and Alison Gopnik both consider the possibility resetting the adult brain’s plasticity—its capacity for learning—to childhood levels. Futurologist Juan Enriquez believes that reengineering body parts and the brain will lead to “human speciation” unseen for hundreds of thousands of years, while controversial atheist Richard Dawkins suggests that reverse-engineering evolution could create a highly illuminating “continuum between every species and every other.” 

Many of these ideas are related to those in the Scientific American article. The June article is available full text in the library's print periodicals section.  ProQuest database does not offer the article full-text.

Finding Mrs. Warnecke and inspiration for teachers

I often check the new non-fiction books in the public library, especially the section on education and recently picked up Finding Mrs. Warnecke, probably because the subtitle, "The Difference Teachers Make", captured my attention. I read this slim book (140 pages) in a day and it caused me to reflect about those teachers who inspired me, about my own practice, and about the hard work ahead for new teachers.
I am grateful to countless educators and remembered so many who seemed to care about their students -- the French teacher who invited a class of junior high students to her home for fondue; the Home Ec teacher who praised my inept sewing attempts, and gave me the confidence to take lessons to develop a lifelong hobby; the Math teacher who helped me to "see" the geometry proofs; the Science teachers who took true joy in our "discoveries"; and the Social Studies teacher who mentored me throughout high school and into college.
This small book made me realize anew how much more we can do for our students, reinforced how important it is to be there for them and illustrated how much they give back to us. Even now, in summer school with fewer students, I have several students who stop by every day and make it a point to say 'hello'. I believe they know I care.
I do want to share this book with colleagues (even though it is somewhat repetitive and the focus is often on younger students, there are high school examples). And I plan to send a copy to my niece who is getting her Masters in Education and to one of my son's friends who will be "Teaching for America" next year. I know that as new teachers they will have moments of great joy and great sadness in the classroom and I hope that this book will comfort and inspire them.

Summer Reading for College students

Earlier this month, a report about books which are being assigned for college SUMMER reading was released. The group, National Association of Scholars, who compiled the report is known for its conservative position (hence the labeling of these choices as “Beach Reads”), and the report was subsequently mentioned in several publications:

Report Assails 'Liberal Political Agenda' of Summer Reading Programs for Freshmen June 04, 2010 By Kelly Truong - Chronicle of Higher Education
What Freshmen Will Read June 04, 2010 By Scott Jaschik - Inside Higher Ed
Enrique Goes to College June 06, 2010 By Peter Wood – Huffington Post

One can download the entire list, but here are the titles used by 6 schools or more (about 290 colleges/universities/community college were included):
Enrique’s Journey (10); Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (9); Three Cups of Tea (9); The Soloist by Lopez (8); Omnivore’s Dilemma (7); Persepolis(7); Last Lecture (6); Mountains Beyond Mountains (6); Outcasts United(6); This I Believe-I (6); Zeitoun (6).

..... .....

Kristof on Father's Day

Just had to share this week's article by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times. He offers a unique perspective on some potential gifts for Father's Day. His book, Half the Sky, is on my "to read" pile. If you have read it, please leave a comment and let us know what you thought.

Greil Marcus - Notes on the making of A New Literary History of America

We recently purchases several copies of this new title of interest to American Studies, English and U.S. History teachers. These  notes come from the Harvard University Press Publicity Blog which give insight into the undertaking of writing cultural history:

Part 1 - "Scare quotes are the enemy" - how he worked with writers to avoid contracting the deadly "narrative disease" we know by the name of scare quotes... quotation marks placed around a single word or phrase to indicate that the word or phrase does not signify its literal or conventional meaning.

Part 2 - "Placing Bets"  -"how the process of editing a project conceived so sprawlingly involves a good deal of "placing of bets, and how, once you're committed to taking these sorts of chances, the book can and will begin in some measure to assemble itself"

Part 3 - "Throwing the cards in the air" -how the narrative that emerged was never anyone’s explicit intention ....Slavery and its legacies comprise the great social movement of the nation—...and how the book is, in part, and in a certain way as a whole, the literary history of that movement.

Part 4 - “Playing a hand” - how “at the source of the American Dream itself lies slavery.”

Part 5 - "The speech of our time” - about the evolution of the American voice...the search for a national voice, a form of speech that everyone could understand, and speak.

Web 2.0 Summer Reading

Steve Hargadon offered a recommended reading list on 2.0 and its impact on education in the February 2010's School Library Journal.

We have recently completed purchasing of most of the titles he suggested and they are available for your perusal this summer:
Here Comes Everybody by Shirky
Why Students Don't Like School by Willingham
Disrupting Class: How disruptive innovation will change the way the World Learns By Christensen
The World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education and
Born Digital by Palfrey, a subject of an earlier blog post.

Some related titles which we also own include:
Teaching the Digital Generation: No more cookie cutter high schools;
Best ideas for Teaching with Technology; and
Transforming Classroom Practice

If you have more to suggest, please post a comment below.

Bookleads Wiki

 Recently shared by the BRIGHT IDEAS blog:

Joyce Valenza blogged about this terrific wiki a few days ago.
Resources on the wiki include:

• reading suggestion portals
• book blogs
• ebook portals
• book-related podcasts
• trailers and videos
• book clubs and discussion guides
• authors who Skype
• author sites
• YA author blogs
• for librarians
• reading promotion programs
• book widgets
• elementary reading lists
• middle school reading lists
• high school reading lists
• authors who tweet
• If you liked Twilight
• fansites

Apply to join the wiki here.  I will embed RSS feeds to changes on this wiki at the top left.

No Shelf Required - Blog on ebooks

Sue Polanka is Head of Reference Instruction at Paul Laurence Dunbar Library at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. She has been exploring e-book platforms distributors and aggregators. Currently she is investigating open-access digital textbooks.
Open-access digital textbooks are protected by a Creative Commons license and are free to users who give attribution to original authors. What are the advantages?

• keeping content current and timely
• customizing content for a course
• breaking the textbook into granular pieces for instructors to personalize and adapt
• making the content portable and adaptable
• offering students free and lower-cost alternatives to print books

Polanka believes that librarians should get involved with open-access books and can become key players by investigating the offerings, checking the content against existing textbooks and state/national standards.

Options:
CK 12 Foundation (http://ck12.org)  See California Free Digital Textbooks Initiative
Connexions (http://cnx.org) Rice University - thousands of modules for social sciences and humanities (for the higher ed market)
Flatworld Knowledge (http://www.flatworldknowledge.com) 
Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (Merlot) (http://ww.merlot.org) 


I placed a blog feed for No Shelf Required on this blog:  top left

The Shallows by Nicholas Carr

It's Friday afternoon and during a free period, I am looking at news online and came across a follow-up article to Nicholas Carr's Atlantic Monthly piece of a few years ago titled, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?".

Carr has expanded his argument into a forthcoming (June 7, 2010) book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains. I particularly love this blurb from the publishers: "Nicholas Carr has written an important and timely book. See if you can stay off the web long enough to read it! (Elizabeth Kolbert)" I am going to try and am adding Carr's new title to my Summer Reading List -- watch the New Trier Library page for other Summer Reading ideas.

In the meantime, here is a recent Salon.com review of The Shallows. Read the review, think about concentrating and focus -- the author, Laura Miller, does a great job of illustrating her point.

Olive Kitteridge author coming to Wilmette

Elizabeth Strout will discuss Olive Kitteridge at 2 p.m. May 16 at the Wilmette Park District Community Recreation Center. This talk is part of the Wilmette Public Library's One Book, Everybody Reads program and tickets are required. Read more in an interview from Pioneer Press or contact the Wilmette Public Library.

Yankee Girl discussions led by New Trier students; author visits this week

Yankee Girl is one of those middle school titles that adults can learn from reading, too. The setting is Jackson, Mississippi in 1964 and a key theme is the struggle to find the moral courage to stand up for others and what you believe. Bullying is shown in numerous examples and with excerpts from contemporary newspaper accounts. The story focuses on Alice, whose FBI father is recently transferred to Jackson, and on Valerie, whose stoic ability to endure harassment while trying to be the first African American to legally integrate a 6th grade class is inspirational.

Recently, several New Trier students led book discussion groups on this title at Sunset Ridge (Northfield) and Skokie (Winnetka) schools. The New Trier students’ participation was part of the Winnetka-Northfield Public Library’s One Book-Two Villages program. This week, Yankee Girl’s author, Mary Ann Rodman, will be visiting to share her thoughts on writing this book. In addition to school visits, she will be attending a book discussion, writing workshop, book signing, and a separate luncheon with proceeds benefiting the Winnetka Alliance for Early Childhood. More details are available at the Winnetka Public Library’s web site.

During July, the One Book-Two Villages program will host Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help – if you have already read that book, pick up Yankee Girl and compare how the same time and place serves as a powerful background for younger characters struggling to understand meanness and prejudice.

April 22nd and Book Titles

April 22nd is a busy day on the New Trier Campus -- there is an assembly about Haiti, observation of the Day of Silence and Earth Day celebrations.

If you are looking for a good book to read on any of those topics - check out the public lists (a tab at the upper right corner) available in our catalog. Some suggestions are also posted on the library bulletin board and/or on display near the circulation desk.

New Abe Lincoln Award Nominees for 2011

Lincoln Award 2011 (royal background)

View more presentations from Naomi Mellendorf.

Ms. Jackson's Art Students: Book Art in the New Trier Library

What We're Reading...

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks by E. Lockhart a National Book Award Finalist and recently named to the 2010-2011 Abraham Lincoln Book Award List is the story of 15-year-old Frankie Landau-Banks, who attends the elite Alabaster Preparatory Academy on the East Coast. The summer between her freshman and sophomore year, Frankie develops into a beautiful young woman. So much that when she returns to school in the fall, many of her peers don't even recognize her. After earning the attention of Matthew Livingston, an attractive, highly-sought after senior on campus, Frankie begins competing with Matthew's friends for his attention. Frankie takes matters into her own hands when she uncovers secrets and begins anonymously assigning orders to the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds, an exclusive group that Matthew and his friends belong to.

Beautiful Frankie wants nothing more than for others to see beyond her looks at who she really is. This story will resonate with girls trying find their place amongst a sea of others.

To see another side of reality, read True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall by Mark Salzman. Salzman is a writer whose arm is twisted by a volunteer coordinator to whom he just can't say no. Well, he does say no, at first. However, the coordinator persists, and he obliges. He has no idea what will come of facilitiating a writing group for boys/young men at a junvenile hall.
What he agrees to do impacts his life, the lives of the young men, and the employees at the facility. What comes from this writing group permeates throughout the facility in the most positive way.

This story is not just about his life-changing experience. The young boys and young men who participate in the writing group Salzman facilitates influence their own lives and each others. Their writing is bruttal, scary, sad, and true. It's a reality that is too common for so many young people in the United States. Their stories are means of survival, wrong people, places, and times, of adults who never were allowed a childhood of adolescence.

The story of Salzman and the writings of these "students" may make you laugh, maybe cry, or, if nothing else, make you think about the influence of race, class, socio-economic levels, equity and equality, and the lost potential of these innocent souls.

Worthwhile Nonfiction Read for Students

Linchpin is Seth Godin's new book. A review on amazon describes it this way: ""Everyone’s an artist now."

"By Seth’s definition, an artist is not just some person who messes around with paint and brushes, an artist is somebody who does (and I LOVE this term) 'emotional work'.”

"Work that you put your heart and soul into. Work that matters. Work that you gladly sacrifice all other alternatives for. As a working artist and cartoonist myself, I know exactly what he means. It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it.

The only people who have a hope of becoming linchpins in any organization, who have any hope of changing anything for the better in real terms, are those who have the capacity to do “emotional work” at a high level—to be true artists at whatever they set their minds on doing. The guys who just plod around the office corridors, just turning up for their paycheck.... Well, those guys don’t have a prayer, poor things. The world is just too interesting and competitive now.

And Seth then challenges us, the readers, to become linchpins ourselves. To make the leap. To become artists. To do emotional work, whatever the sacrifice may be. It’s our choice, and it’s our burden."
Listen to and/ or read an interview with Seth Godin.

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

For the time being, Mudbound is my new favorite book. Actually, it's in a tie with The Help by Kathryn Stockett.
The Help has a spirit of realism that engages the reader to think, to question, to understand, and to wonder. This realism threads the reader into the story quickly and easily, as if you are sitting in the living rooms or kitchen tables of these individuals who could be neighbors, friends, or family members. I soon forgot I was reading a piece of fiction; it read more like chapter from one's life; a primary source, of sorts - a piece of historical and cultural sentiment unearthed by accident.

Mudbound intertwines a collective history and culture with individuality - a narrative of expectations, experience, and perspective. Each character is deeply indebted to one or another, yet wanting to gain freedom from that which they are beholden. A history lesson taught not through facts and figures, but through words, emotions, and actions.

The age-old saying of "actions speak louder than words" resonates within this story of individual needs versus family duty, race and class, and personal identity. Laura, Jamie, Henry, Ronsel, Hap, and Florence are all individuals or personalities one could meet today. The voices are loud, yet controlled; their actions controlled, yet meaningful, and their silence says more than any words.

Moments of laughter, reflection, and learning exist in the mud, the racism, the patriotism, and the culture of the land which owns the people. Dare I say that it even made me cry.

Ms. Brennan

Howard Zinn Tributes

Howard Zinn, activist historian, died on January 27th. The first print run in 1980 for Zinn's A People's History of the United States was just 5,000 copies, but it has sold more than 2 million copies according to The Washington Post. Read the Post's tribute and the one by the Zinn Education Project which also contains an interactive timeline and lists of recommended books and websites. We own several titles authored by Zinn, including the recently purchased graphic novel version shown here.

Digital give-aways make "best-sellers" lists

Did you know that more than half of the “best-selling” e-books on the Kindle, Amazon.com’s e-reader, are available at no charge? Read today's New York Times article: On Kindle's List, the Best Sellers Don't Necessarily Need to Sell.

I discovered that Amazon will sell you Free Kindle Books and How to Find Them (revised 11/09) (Kindle Edition) for $1.99. The product description promises to show you "where you can receive several hundred thousand (actually over a million) free books, blogs, short stories, and other content." The guide also explains how to download free books from the web and then transfer them to the Kindle. You can also click on Listmania and find some free books from readers' lists. However, these are books that I would never read. That may sound like an elitist librarian speaking, but would you read Serial by Jack Kilborn, "a terrifying tale of hitchhiking gone terribly wrong"? Maybe if you're a teen who's hijacked your mom's Kindle and you've already blown through your allowance and you have nothing to do but lay on the beach in the summer. Even then, probably not.

Giving away e-books by some publishers is a plan to attract paying customers. CEO of HarperCollins says that "free is not a business model". Oh yea? It certainly is a business model according to Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson. Anderson's argument is that the most effective price is zero. Although critics challenge his conclusions,I heartily recommend it because his examples are easy to understand, e.g. giving away cell phones to attract customers to a phone service contract for 2 years. Stop in at the Winnetka Library to pick it up!

Shanghai Girls Presentation

Since the Winnetka Campus book group is meeting today to talk about Lisa See's Shanghai Girls, it is worth mentioning that local reviewer/presenter Barbara Rinella will also be offering a review next Friday at 11:30am at Kenilworth Union Church -- contact them for details on tickets ($25) since seating is limited and reservations are required by next Monday, Jan. 25th. Rinella's presentations are extremely popular and quite an experience.

Going Bovine

Libba Bray is positively funny and creative! Her new book Going Bovine is the recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature.

Synopsis from RandomBooks:

All 16-year-old Cameron wants is to get through high school—and life in general—with a minimum of effort. Its not a lot to ask. But that's before hes given some bad news: hes sick and hes going to die. Which totally sucks. Hope arrives in the winged form of Dulcie, a loopy punk angel/possible hallucination with a bad sugar habit. She tells Cam there is a cure—if hes willing to go in search of it. With the help of a death-obsessed, video-gaming dwarf and a yard gnome, Cam sets off on the mother of all road trips through a twisted America into the heart of what matters most. Can Cameron find what he's looking for?

American Library Association announces literary award winners

The American Library Association (ALA) today announced the top books, audiobooks and video for children and young adults – including the Caldecott, King, Newbery and Printz awards – at its Midwinter Meeting in Boston.

Read the complete lists of all the 2010 literary award winners.

Follow the ALA Youth Media Awards live on Jan. 18, 2010

ALA |

The American Library Association (ALA) will provide a free live webcast of its Youth Media Awards, a national announcement of the top books and media for children and young adults, on Jan. 18, at 7:45 a.m. EST.

The award announcements are made as part of the ALA Midwinter Meeting, which will bring together librarians, publishers, authors and guests to the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center from Jan. 15 to 19.

The ALA will instantly announce presentation results using Twitter. Members can view live updates on the ALA Youth Media Awards press kit and via tweets at http://twitter.com/ALAyma.

Great YA Books! Watching Live Tweets from the ALA Midwinter Conference

Librarians are now tweeting favorite teen reads for 2009! I love learning from the web in real time. That is one of the great things about Twitter.

Want to follow the tweets? Log on to Twitter and search the hashtag: #alamw10

View some teen recommendations (bbya contenders)from Sunday afternoon's teen panel:

Wintergirls ("scared the crap out of me")

Watersmeet ("fantasy, but believable")

The Unnamables ("different for fantasy")

Tales of Madman Underground (realistic language)

Crash into Me ("not like an adult trying to talk like a teen")

Selkie Girl by Laurie Brooks

Fire by Cashore (great prequel and a great book)

Fire, Swim the Fly & Going Bovine (all have multiple teen fans from this panel)

Swim the Fly by Don Calame - good, relatable mix of sports and humor. boy teen's favorite book of 2009 is Don Calame's Swim the Fly

Teen loves Catching Fire so much she forgot to eat

Goth Girl Rising, teens finds better than Fanboy & GG

Catching Fire, Swim the Fly, and Fire are big teen favorites

Search all the hashtags: #bbya #yalsa #alamw10 if you are buying teen fiction

Click here to view the Best Books for Young Adults Teen Session live YALSA blog post.

Civil War Espionage

Dara Horn's All Other Nights was recently named to Booklist's Editor's Choice list of Adult Fiction titles for 2009. The title refers to the question, 'How is this night different from all other nights?', traditionally asked at Passover Seder and carries the reader through the years 1861 to 1865 with appearances by numerous historical figures, especially Judah Benjamin, Secretary of State for the Confederacy. Geography is expansive, too, including New York City, New Orleans, Mississippi, Richmond, and Washington, D.C.

Perhaps most intriguing, though, are the spy networks and the difficult moral choices faced by the characters as they struggle with obligations to family, to self and to country. If you like historical fiction, mystery, and romance, you will enjoy this book as much as Booklist's editors did.

Obesity in Youth: Causes, Consequences and Cures

Obesity in Youth: Causes, Consequences and Cures is a recent NT Library acquisition which deals with the obesity epidemic facing children and adolescents. The book begins with an examination of key genetic influences and dietary patterns; later chapters focus on treatment and prevention. There is an important focus on psychological aspects of obesity such as teasing, body image, mental disorders and the psychosocial consequences for children, families and society.

First Lady Michelle Obama has teamed up with the Muppets to tackle childhood obesity. She has spoken several times about the importance of nutritious food and healthy school lunches. Grist reports that White House is embracing the “addiction model” of food consumption as described by former FDA chief David Kessler’s new book The End of Overeating: which has become a "bible" for Obama and her food policy team.

What I find interesting is that chef Jamie Oliver is the 2010 TED winner. He has taken cooking to the activist level:
“Every child should be taught to cook in school, not just talk about nutrition all day. Good food can be made in 15 minutes. This could be the first generation where the kids teach the parents.” – Jamie Oliver
Usually, highly scientific or philosophical thinkers are awarded prizes. Looks like TED also values pragmatists.

NPR Takes a Look Back @ 2009 Books

If you missed the end of the year's best book lists of 2009, not to worry, you can take a look at the new year's best book lists of 2009. Best cookbooks, mysteries, foreign fiction, debut fiction and more. Here are the picks from NPR's critics and correspondents:

Enjoy NPR's Book Notes

The Favorites by Mary Yukari Waters

The lineage of women, matriarchs, daughters, and family relations are the focus of The Favorites. And, add in the complicated personal identity of being half-American and half-Japanese, and you read a story that unfolds the layers of complexity of Japanese tradition, challenges of new versus old, and family secrets untold, or so some believe.

After living her first seven years in Japan, Sarah now returns to Japan with her mother seven years later, for summer vacation. By force and by curiosity, Sarah learns family history, including second marriages, adopted children, and deep-seeded love. Because of this trip, Sarah sees her mother in a whole new light - more confident, playful, and full of laughter and ease. Aside from Sarah, the other family members begin to grow, change, and relations develop that once never existed.

While Japanese traditions may differ from other cultures, the principals are no different. Certain circumstances call for certain actions, and one does what is needed at the time. Respect is of the utmost importance and, as a result, much is left unsaid and buried deep inside. \

This tale brings laughter, smiles, confusion, and the rules of life all in one. After reading The Favorites, you just might want to hug your mother, sister, grandmother, aunt, or cousin, and, together, have a cup of tea.

85 Reasons to be Thankful for Librarians!

Looking for ways to take advantage of your school or public library? Check out the following blog post.
85 Reasons to be Thankful for Librarians!

Daniel Pink's New Book: Drive

Daniel Pink, author of a Whole New Mind recently published a new title: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us Watch the video! Sounds like a worthy purchase.

Two questions that can change your life from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.