Accelerated Degree host Blog Award

I have been nominated for the distinction of Most Fascinating Blog of 2012 in the category of Librarian Blog.
Here is the letter I received.

Hi there, It's finally here - voting starts today! The voting will continue to March 6 at 11:59 P.M (EST). The site with the most votes will win the grand prize, a $200 restaurant gift card as well as permission to display the prestigious "Winner" emblem on their website! All blogs listed on the ballot are randomized every time the poll is accessed to ensure the fairness and integrity of the results. All votes are 100% anonymous and secure through the use of a 128 bit SSL connection. The ballot contains a list of 100 nominees which have been chosen by our editorial staff and were selected from a pool of over 2,300 submissions. Click here to view the voting page. Share this link in a blog post and on your facebook/twitter to maximize your votes. Good luck and thank you for your participation! Matthew Pelletier Director of Public Relations Accelerated Degree Programs

The Healing by Jonathan Odell

This powerful novel begins in the 1933 when a woman's dead body and her small child, Violet, who was around seven years old show up at Gran Gran's home. A white man brought them to Gran Gran, an older woman who was once the healer on the slave plantation, and who knew the mysteries of root magic and birthing. Gran Gran is unsure what to do with this mute child who is traumatized by the death and disappearance of her mother. Gran Gran begins to dose her with sleeping remedies, and slowly the girl is not shaking, and twitching, and is beginning to be drawn to Gran Gran, following her around in the small home. The child finds clay masks hanging in a back room, and seems confused. Gran Gran explains about the clay masks that she had made many years ago to remember that people who once lived on the slave plantation with her. She relates her story to Violet, of how she had been brought up in the master's mansion when the master's daughter dies of fever. She is dressed up in the dead daughter's dresses on Sunday to soothe the master's wife who is dealing with her grief. When the master suddenly brings home an expensive slave woman, Polly Shine, to heal the sick slaves, Polly decides that she needs to help this young girl, called Granada, remember her people and teach her how to heal them. The book is full of slave stories that go back generations, and it is Polly who helps the people remember that the master doesn't own their freedom, and they must remember that it is God who created the world, not the master. This powerful mystery that Granada is just learning about, heals Granada herself and gives her the vision that had been lost to her. And it is these stories that are also used to heal Violet, who remembers her own story. This is an excellent story that could begin a dialog about race and personal power.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

I read this book over the winter, but I didn't know there was a movie coming out. Often I read the book and listen to the audio book. The audio version had various narrators to give voice to the mother, the child and the grandmother. The questions that kept coming up in my mind, the parts that didn't make sense, many of them were resolved at the end of the book. The boy, Oskar Schell, has lost his father during the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City on 9/11/2001. He lives with his mother, and his grandmother lives in an apartment across the street. he is very close to his grandmother, in fact he would stay with her when he was younger and his parents were at work. Now he is about nine, can go home by himself, but still he will call his grandmother and ask if she is okay. He is not coping with the death of his father very well. He is tormented by the phone calls that his father made to the apartment during the attack, but he cannot bring himself to talk to his mother about those calls. His father kept saying, please pick up, we may be going to the roof to be rescued, but he never said goodbye, or I love you, and this is something that Oskar wants to keep to himself. He is going through his father's things and finds a vase, with a key inside. He decides that this key must be important, he must find the lock it belongs to, and thus the story begins; he is meeting many people in New York City as he tries to solve the mystery his father has left for him. There are flashbacks into the grandmother's life, her childhood in Germany, the death of her family in the bombing during the war. Little by little we find out the deep secrets of her marriage, her husband, and why Oskar's father was raised by his mother alone. The story has twists that make it interesting, things the child doesn't know, but his mother does, and his grandmother cannot tell him. Those little revelations make up the book, and how all of us have to deal with grief in our own way and find our own answers. I look forward to the movie, but I know beforehand that some characters were mixed together, and that in itself makes it seem weird. My first reading of anything by Jonathan Safran Foer, a young writer.

World Book Night

The Tipp City Library supports World Book Night, April 23, 2012. I will be handing out books to new readers to encourage reading. I have chosen the title from a list of free books. I am going to chose a place to hand books out so that I can reach people who don't normally come to the library. In addition to World Book Night, April 23 is Tipp City Library's Big Read Book Discussion night at 7 pm. The Big Read for Dayton this year is Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, a true story of a Muslim man caught up in the drama of Katrina. This also coincides with the anniversary of the Flood in Dayton. Some Big Read events will be on the Dayton flood. The Miami Conservancy has on online display of pictures of the flood in the area. I was surprised to note that when they had to build the dams in Dayton, two town were moved, Fairfield and Osborne, thus Fairborn was created. Allan W. Eckert's book, A Time of Terror: The Great Dayton Flood, 1965 tells first-hand accounts of that time.

Pauline Persing has been teaching art to young people for many years. She has provided at display at the library for the month of February. She posted information about the art and the techniques she is teaching on her blog. http://www.paulinepersing.blogspot.com/ Click on to see the display at the library.

I have been nominated for the 2012 Most Fascinating Blog of the year under the category Librarian Blogger for my post on the Classics Book Discussion on The Great Gatsby. Maybe my love of the novel came through on my blog. It has been a wonderful year reading the classics and discussiong them with library patrons. We have announced the books for the next four months:

For March 5th at 7 pm and March 15th at 1 pm: Middlemarch by George Eliot, 1871
For April 2nd at 7 pm and April 12th ar 1 pm: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, 1915
For May 7th at 7 pm and May 10 at 1 pm: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, 1961
For June 4th at 7 pm and June 14 at 1 pm: A Passage to India by E. M Forster, 1924
I hope to draw more people in by offering the discussion at two different times.
Let me know what you think about reading these books. and vote for my blog.

Announcing Poetry Appreciation Class for April 2012

Interested in poetry? Want to learn more? Tipp City Library is hosting a poetry class on Fridays in April of 2012 from 4-5 pm. Hosted by Susan Hoke, teacher and poetry writer; she will be using the book Poetry matters : writing a poem from the inside out / Ralph Fletcher. This is a very basic book. She will be introducing terms and styles of poetry. Registration is requested, drop-ins will be acceptable. We will order the books for the participants and make them available for check out. The title of the 5 week class, running from April 6th through May 4th is "April is the Coolest Month for Poetry." Once you have some of the basics down more help on poetry can be found in Stephen Fry's book, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within. Funny thing happened to me last night. I was searching through the magazine donation box, and a man reading poetry in the rocking chair by the window asked me to recommend a poem. The first that came to mind was, "When Your Father Dies" by Diana Der-Hovanessian.  This was shared by my brother when my father died, and I love it. Of course I couldn't put my hand on it that moment. He had a big book of poems and wanted me to recommmend a poem in the book, so I found a poem by W. H. Auden , " In Memory of W. B. Yeats." It was a beautiful moment, a man sharing his love of poetry with me on the day Susan had offered to teach an appreciation of poetry class. Check out this website about Ohio Writers: http://www.wiredforbooks.org/

AncestryPlus

Just checking out some of the databases that the OPLIN libraries provide for the libraries in the state of Ohio and I just noticed that they added Ancestry, in-library version.  At the library on Feb 25 I am going to present a demonstration of AncestryPlus. It will be a computer hands-on computer class so sign-up is limited. Log in is available in the library only. Check it out, you never know what you will find.

Humor for the New Year

I have been reading so many humorous books that I have lost track. My first was "If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon" by Jenna McCarthy. This was my introduction to Jenna McCarthy,  She is an author who writes for magazines. On the Self magazine website I found a listing of articles that she wrote on how to keep your relationship sexy. Her book was all about the "men are from Mars" take, how annoying he can be, and she gathered lots of quotes from women with titles that said,"at least I'm not married to him." I loved reading all the little stories of their relationship and how she adapts to his style, and how patience he is with her idiosyncrasies, especially since she is writing about their relationship. And I can understand that many of the stories were probably exaggerated but, there had to be some tiny element of truth. I found the book hillarious.