AliceBakerBlog

Tripping to the Jungle

Our last Preschool Storytime of the spring series was held yesterday.  Ms. Maria, decked out in her pith helmet, led her rapt listeners on a trip to the jungle.  They enjoyed stories and songs and made a little music of their own.  Here are the stories Ms. Maria read:

Slowly, Slowly, Slowly, Said the Sloth by Eric Carle,

Jazzy in the Jungle by Lucy Cousins,

Jungle Song by Miriam Moss,

and they listened to this great music:

The Lost Songs of Kenland by Ken Lonnquist,

Irrational Anthem by Jim Gill.

Staff Pick

Our goddess of Children's Services, Maria, is raving about a YA novel, Whale Talk, by Chris Crutcher.  She listened to the audio and says it had her on the edge of her seat.  The story begins as the story of a group of misfit kids who form a swim team, The Cutter All Night Mermen.  But the tale spins into far more than an us-against-them adolescent tale.

Lots of buzz these days on great writing and original concepts in YA lit.  Maria says this is a book to put high on your list.

Last Spring Lapsit

Our spring series of Baby and Me Lapsit Storytimes wound up this morning with a session about My Five senses.  Ms. Lynette shared stories and offered several fun sensory activities for the little ones--things to smell, shakers to shake, yummy textures to feel.

Here are the books read this morning:

My Five Senses by Margaret Miller.

Look Out for Rosy by Bob Graham.

Baby and Me Lapsit Storytime is a relatively new event here at Alice Baker Library.  With the coming of the Summer Reading Program, our regularly-scheduled lapsits are now over until fall.  What do you think about this?  Would you like to see these story programs for wee ones continue in the summer? 

Please give us some feedback.  We'd love to hear your opinion on this subject.

Pandora

Do you like to listen to music on your computer?  Check out Pandora, a great site that will create "radio stations" and choose music for you to listen to based on parameters you enter.  Like Eric Clapton?  It will play a selection of Clapton music and other artists in the same bluesy vein.  Tiring of that, you might select a single favorite song.  Pandora will present a set including this song and other music similar in genre, tempo, and outlook.  You can program up to 100 different channels.  It's a great way to learn about new music.  Best of all, it's free.

Through an Australian Lens

Living in the United States, it's easy to become (and remain) insulated from international thinking and to lose perspective on American life and culture.  It's always interesting and eye-opening to see international opinion of America.

The Pulitzer Prize for Literature was awarded this week to Geraldine Brooks for her book March.  March is the story of the father of the Louisa May Alcott's Little Women family, who exists in Little Women as only the shadowy dad away fighting the Civil War.  In March, he takes center stage as Ms. Brooks imagines his battlefield experiences.

Sounds like an intriguing read, especially for anyone who grew up reading Louisa May Alcott's books about the March family.  But this post isn't about that, it's about international reaction to this book's having received the Pulitzer.

In an article in a Sydney, Australia newspaper, a reporter named Russell Wenholz ponders what the big deal is with the American Civil War anyway, and attributes the continuing parade of books about the Civil War to "American self-promotion".

I have never been able to see how a conflict - which in this case resulted in the eloquent northerners making the slave-owning southerners the most beautiful losers of all-time - can have forged a nation. So many books and movies have come out of America that seek to foist this opinion upon us....

What is it about this war? The high number of deaths per soldier? The needless slaughter? Perhaps it was the "civil" bit. It was American against American. Perhaps that is what appeals to them. It was exclusively theirs. No one else was involved. Is this something to be proud of?

Read more...

A Washington Post review of March is here.

World Beat: International Poetry Now

I'm feeling obligated to point out more poetry since this is National Poetry Month.    Every once in awhile I'll come across a poem and be utterly transported, but most of the time I guess I don't take the time to be transported.

This is a genre I don't read enough of, and I bet you don't either. That's why National Poetry Month is a good idea.  It's a good reminder to step out of the box occasionally.  Powell's Blog has a review of a new poetry anthology called World Beat: International Poetry Now, edited by Eliot Weinberger.

This book is a veritable feast. Having said that, I feel compelled to add the obvious observation that not every poem or poet will appeal to every reader, but I feel very strongly that this book contains something of intense pleasure for everyone. Anne Carson. Kamau Brathwaite. Nicanor Parra. Bei Dao. Octavio Paz. How can you go wrong?

Read more...

Fibonacci!

Internet culture is continually amazing and fun.

A couple weeks ago, a writer named Gregory K. Pincus wrote a blog post challenging readers to write "Fibs", poems based on a mathematical progression called the Fibonacci Sequence, which would dictate the number of syllables in each line.  A Fibonacci Sequence would go like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc.

The post was referenced last week at slashdot.org, a website delivering "news for nerds", and the idea has taken off like gangbusters.  I read about it a couple days ago on a knitting blog, of all places.  This blogger challenged readers to write fibs about knitting:

I
wish
I had
a winning
lottery ticket
I'd have all the yarn I could want
...contributed by a reader named Carey in The Knitting Curmudgeon's comments.

This morning, the whole idea is anointed with an article in The New York Times.  Check it out and try your own hand at writing a Fib or two. 

What a fun and vibrant salute to National Poetry Month...

Reference Books!

Powells Blog has a new entry about favorite reference books.  I had never heard of some of these, but they sound fascinating.  Books to get lost in...

Here are a couple of the books mentioned: (with links to iBistro)

The Word Menu:
Really, this book is indispensible. I send it to people so often that I buy it in bulk. It's like a giant thesaurus of nouns — what other book will give you three pages of all the different names for kinds of underwear? A marvellous book for anyone who wants to call things by the right names.

The Timetables of History:
This book has saved me from the ignominy of being the "B-Minus Time Traveler" many a time. Not sure if two people were contemporaneous, or if Lincoln could have ever seen an Impressionist painting? This is the the place to begin puzzling it out.

Read more...

Going to the Zoo

Ms. Lynette took our tiniest patrons on a Storytime trip to The Zoo on Tuesday, April 12.  The books she shared were:

Peek-a-Zoo by Marie Torres Cimarusti.

Polar Bear, Polar Bear by Bill Martin.

Going to the Zoo by Tom Paxton.

Staff Picks

Today:  a staff recommendation.

Maria, our head of Children's Services, has been enjoying 700 Sundays, by Billy Crystal, a warm and touching memoir by the well-known comic.  It's a book version of his very successful one-man show of the same name, whcih has played on Broadway in the last few years.  But it's less about Billy Crystal himself and more about his father and their relationship which was cut short by his father's early death.

Billy Crystal grew up in a large and warm Long Island Jewish family.  His father was a jazz musician and the extended family had other show business connections, guaranteeing some brushes with celebrity.  Thus Billy's early acquaintance with the likes of Billie Holliday and Louis Armstrong.  This alone makes for a great story.

But the poignancy of Billy's feelings for his father round out the tale, with generous doses of nostalgia for the world of the 50s and 60s, the cars we drove, the Yankees, the Beatles, delivered with great affection and many other notes of warmth and remembrance.

Maria heartily recommends!