Coming soon to a library near you…

I just got back from rummaging around the new books trucks out in the annex garage and we have some good stuff headed your way!

Where’s My Mummy by Carolyn Crimi:  A baby mummy and his mummy mummy play a game of hide and shriek before bed.  While looking for his mummy, he runs into several scary monsters…but he’s not afraid of any of them…he’s afraid of the mouse!  I’d love to pair this story with Big Bad Bunny by Billingsley for a fun, “scary” storytime.

Everybody is getting a copy of If You Give a Cat a Cupcake by Numeroff.  It’s sure to get as many laughs as the previous books in the series.

Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles #2: A Giant Problem has 14 holds on it, so you probably won’t see it on your shelves for awhile.

Olympic National Park by Jankowski includes photos and information on Olympic National Park as well as a password to log on to the website, myreportlinks.com, which lists helpful web links on the topic.

Patron with a biography assignment?  Hand them (esp reluctant reading boys,) Knucklehead: Tall Tales and Almost True Stories of Growing up Scieszka by Jon Scieszka.  At just over 100 pages, I think it’s the perfect length for the biography assignment.  School Library Journal gave it a starred review and said, “
Just try to keep kids away from this collection. Entertaining and fast-moving, silly and sweet, this homage to family life is not to be missed.”

Are elephants really afraid of mice?  Does lightning ever strike twice?  Find the answers to these and many more myths, mistakes, and misconceptions in, Actually, Factually by Guy Campbell.

A few weeks ago I was talking about the Noel Streatfeild books, Ballet Shoes, Theater Shoes, etc., and their continuing popularity.  Well I just noticed that we have several copies of the BBC’s Ballet Shoes DVD waiting for processing.  This is the 2007 version with Emma Watson, (of Harry Potter fame,) and is sure to be a hit.  Try and make a connection with the books through display or discussion!

AWE-some

I just left Vancouver Community Library where IT was installing the 3 new bilingual AWE stations to replace the story and brain stations.  They look great.  We were able to configure the stations to have different activities on each one.  When I left, 2 of the 3 stations were in use and the boys using them were enjoying them.  They were young, but they weren’t requiring any adult instruction to use the machines.  If you’re in VA, be sure to stop by and check out the stations!

Olivia on TV

Coming in 2009 will be an animated TV series of Ian Falconer’s Olivia.  The series will air on Nickelodeon.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

I just saw that the YA novel, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, will be released as a film in November of this year.  This is also a 2009 YRCA nominee, so we have plenty of copies in the system.  I added a link to the trailer to the books to movies page.

New Hitchhiker’s Guide

Eoin Colfer, author of the popular Artemis Fowl series, will be writing the 6th book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series.  More here.

New book trailer

I added a book trailer for Roland Smith’s new book, I, Q to the book trailer page.  (I embedded the video right into the page, not sure if that is preferable to clicking a link.)  The trailer is silly, but noteworthy because it is recognizably filmed in Portland.  This is the first book in a series and it  has an interactive website with games, character information, a message board, etc.

Sex and the City…for teens

This is YA news, but I just read from multiple sources that Candace Bushnell, author of Sex and the City, has signed with HarperCollins to create a teen series based on Carrie’s high school years called, The Carrie Diaries.  The first one should be out in 2010.   Interesting.

Updating Booklists

I just sent this email out to branch supervisors.  I am encouraging all staff with an interest in children’s literature to submit suggestions!

I am beginning to update FVRL’s printed booklists for kids.  I am starting with the following lists and I am encouraging all staff to recommend titles:

Animal Stories for Kids
Fiction and nonfiction

Books for Beginning Readers
Readers and ENF

Concept Books
Alphabet, Number, Colors, Shapes, Opposites

Please include:
*list title
*book title and author
*publication date
*if you’ve read the book or not
*age level recommendation, if known

Please send me your suggestions by Friday, October 3rd.

Spooky Reads

I just finished reading (listening to on CD, actually,) Avi’s The Seer of Shadows.  This was a good pre-Halloween read.  It’s set in 1872 in New York city. The protagonist is a photographer’s apprentice whose portraits of the living include images of spirits.  If he takes enough pictures of someone, the spirit that is near them is released into the world.  When this happens with one wealthy couple, the girl that they  mistreated comes back to exact her revenge.  This is a fun, not too spooky read.  I would recommend this to someone looking for something spooky, but not a Goosebumps or Scary Stories type book.

Another spooky book I recently read was Darkside by Tom Becker.  This UK import won the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize (for new authors) and was long-listed for the Manchester Book Award.  Kirkus called it “contemporary gothic horror of the juiciest kind.”  14 year old Jonathan, whose father suffers from bouts of mental illness and who never knew his mother, lives in modern day London.  When he is pursued  by kidnappers, he escapes into Darkside, a community within London which is unknown to most Londoners and only accessible by a few hidden entrances and is populated by the worst kind of people.  I couldn’t put this book down.  I was immediately sucked into the story and was anxious to read the second one, Lifeblood, which is on order.  I would give this to older kids and young teens (it’s reviewed for ages 10-14).  Reviews compare it to the Cirque du Freak series and the Last Apprentice series, but I haven’t read either of those, so can’t verify the comparisons.

Back-to-School

The Olympics feature on the kids page has been replaced with a back-to-school page.  Check out the book and website recommendations for heading back to school here:  http://www.fvrl.org/kids/feature.cfm