Author: Library User

Young Adult & Children’s Books on The Point

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Joining Mindy today on The Point’s monthly show on books were Sara Hines of Eight Cousins Books and Mary E. Cronin. The topic was books for children and young adults, and below you will find a list of books that were mentioned, as well as listener picks. We know we discovered lots of new titles we want to read! Miss the show? You’ll be able to listen online!

Jill Erickson, Head of Reference and Adult Services at FPL, took this month off from the book show, but will return next month with Peter Abrahams who will be joining Mindy and Jill to discuss books in translation.

MINDY’S PICKS

Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site by Sherri Dusky Rinker and illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld

Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin

I am Gandhi (Ordinary People Change the World) by Brad Meltzer

Martin Sandler books

Journey by Aaron Becker

The Little Sock Pirate by John Whelan; illustrations by Clara Urbahn

SARA’s PICKS

Brick by Brick by Giuliano Ferri

A Hat for Mrs. Goldman: a story about knitting and love by Michelle Edwards; illustrated by G. Brian Karas

The Smallest Girl in the Smallest Grade by Justin Robert; illustrated by Christian Robinson

The Pants Project by Cat Clarke

Cilla Lee-Jenkins: future author extraordinaire by Susan Tan; illustrated by Dana Wulfekotte

My Beautiful Birds by Suzanne Del Rizzo

The Journey by Francesca Sanna

Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson

Diversity in Children’s Books 2015 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Saints and Misfits by S. K. Ali

Patina Jason Reynolds

Long Way Down (book in verse) due out in October

MARY’S PICKS

Parrots over Puerto Rico by Susan L. Roth and Cindy Trumbore

River Friendly, River Wild by Jane Kurtz and Neil Brennan

Flood by Alvaro F. Villa

Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson

Posted by John David Anderson

This Day in June by Gayle E. Pitman

Sparkle Boy by Leslea Newman

Doing Her Bit: a story about the Woman’s Land Army of America by Erin Hagar; illustrated by Jen Hill

American Street by Ibi Zoboi

Fred Korematsu Speaks Up by Laura Atkins and Stann Yogi; illustrations by Yutaka Houlette

The Reading Without Walls Challenge

The Nantucket Sea Monster: a fake news story by Darcy Pattison

Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown

A Psalm for Lost Girls by Katie Bayerl

LISTENER PICKS

The Cookie Loved ‘Round the World: the story of the chocolate chip cookie by Kathleen Teahan

One by Kathryn Otoshi

Big Hair Don’t Care by Crystal Swain-Bates and Megan Bair

Hippos Go Berserk by Sandra Boynton

Mad Scientists Club by Bertrand R. Brinley

Shadow Man by Melissa Scott

Windows and Mirrors

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Stephanie Seales, a library staff member who works both in the Children’s Room at the Main Library and at the North Branch, (and in her spare time is a book critic in the Young Readers division for Kirkus!) was recently on the radio:

“I was recently privileged to be featured on NPR station WCAI’s The Point for a short segment on children’s books (you’ll find me around the 25:00 minute mark). I shared a few new, quality titles that feature racially and ethnically diverse protagonists. When children and teens read books that serve as both windows & mirrors, they increase their capacity for empathy and expand their worldview. The following titles are the ones I highlighted on The Point and have appeal to a broad audience:

PICTURE BOOKS (roughly ages 3-8)

One Word from Sophia illustrated by Yasmeen Ismail and written by Jim Averbeck

Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music, illustrated by Rafael López and written by Margarita Engle (sadly, didn’t make it onto the show)

MIDDLE GRADE (roughly ages 8-12)

Ghost by Jason Reynolds

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

GRAPHIC NOVELS (all ages)

Princeless, written by Jeremy Whitley and illustrated by M. Goodwin & Jules Rivera

Moon Girl and the Devil Dinosaur, Volume I: BFF by Amy Reeder, Brandon Montclare, and Natacha Bustos

Young Adult (roughly ages 14 & up)

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson (sadly, also didn’t make it onto the show)”

Our New Assistant Director Has Arrived!

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We asked Jennifer Woodward, our brand new Assistant Director, to write something about her first week at FPL for the blog, and she did! We are so delighted she is here!

“Hello! My name is Jennifer Woodward and I am the new Assistant Director here at the Falmouth Public Library. I am thrilled to be here. I spent my first week on the job getting to know the library staff and the library building, as well as learning my new tasks and more about Falmouth. The library staff welcomed me with a party which featured a pie making contest! Both Liz Farland and Tammy Amon won the coveted Golden Spatula awards.

My most recent position was the Director of the public library in Northbridge Massachusetts. I’ve also worked in a corporate library, a law library and two other public libraries in Massachusetts. I grew up in Massachusetts, mostly in Plymouth, and spent my adult years (to date) in Metrowest and Central Massachusetts.

One of my new tasks is to choose which fiction books and DVDs to buy for adults. If you have any suggestions or thoughts about what you would like us to buy,  I would love to talk to you about it!

Thank you to the library staff and Director Linda Collins for helping make my first week a successful one.  And I hope to see you at the library soon!”

Books About Ephemera on The Point

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Mindy and Jill were delighted to be joined today by Ken Gloss of the Brattle Book Shop located in Boston. Ken arrived with piles of ephemera, and below you will find the books that Jill mentioned, with a few bonus titles. If you are interested in local postcards, check out our digital Robert C. Hunt Postcard Collection, and for menus drop by the New York Public Library Lab’s historical menu collection! Miss the show? You can listen online!

Encyclopedia of Ephemera: a guide to the fragmentary documents of everyday life for teh collector, curator, and historian by Maurice Rickards

Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewlery by Leanne Shapton

Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton

The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: a novel in pictures by Caroline Preston

S. by J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst

Richard Nickel: Dangerous Years: What He Saw and What He Wrote by Richard Cahan & Michael Williams

Scrapbooks: an American history by Jessica Helfand

No Time For ..

The Postcard Age: selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection by Lynda Klich and Benjamin Weiss

Urgent 2nd Class: creating curious collage, dubious documents, and other art from ephemera by Nick Bantock

Vintage Ephemera from the collection of Cavallini & Co. by Brian D. Coleman

Simon Says …

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I am always astonished by all the science that takes place in the town of Falmouth, thanks to all of our scientific institutions. Recently I met Simon Ryder-Burbidge who is a guest student at WHOI. He and his colleagues are conducting a survey to understand how the community of Falmouth experiences “connection” to the ocean. They want to build a model for the design of community-based ocean policy, and they need your help! The survey is daunting at first, but as Simon tells me: ” It was a difficult balance to make it a manageable length without losing too much.” However, he also shares: “That being said, I’ve been very impressed by the level of participation so far. Some of the open-ended responses have been an absolute joy to read, and others very informative. People have been really generous with their time, and I do feel that something good is growing here.”

Simon and his colleagues are only looking for Falmouth residents, but Heather Goldstone, of WCAI, is also interested in your ocean stories. She writes: “Wherever you’re from, tell us your best ocean story. Throughout the summer, Living Lab Radio will be featuring your tales of ocean connections. E-mail a brief version of your story and your contact information to Living Lab Radio, or leave us a voicemail at (508) 289-1285.”

So you have two great opportunities to tell the world what the ocean means to you! You can find Simon’s survey for resident’s of Falmouth at www.lowlanderpress.com. As long as I was chatting with Simon, I also thought I’d ask him if he had any favorite books about the ocean, and this is what he told me:

“As for books, I have really been enjoying one called Cod by Mark Kurlansky (very locally relevant) at current. Blowing my mind about once per chapter so far.
Another one I really liked was Sex in the Sea by Marah Hardt. Some crazy stuff going on under the water. “
The full titles are Cod:  A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World and Sex in the Sea: Our Intimate Connection with Kinky Crustaceans, Sex–Changing Fish, Romantic Lobsters and Other Salty Erotica. Try some ocean reading to get you in the mood for filling out a survey or telling your ocean story!
Jill Erickson
Head of Reference & Adult Services

Books About Boats on WCAI

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This morning was pledge drive at WCAI, so the book show was a little bit shorter than normal, but we had lots of calls! Thanks to all of you who called with your boat book suggestions! There was so little time and so many calls, that both Vicky and I are going to give you some bonus books in today’s book blog. If you missed the show, not to worry, you can listen online!

Mindy’s Pick

How I Became a Pirate written by Melinda Long, illustrated by David Shannon

Vicky’s Picks

Wooden Boats: In Pursuit of the Perfect Craft at an American Boatyard by Michael Ruhlman.   About the boatyard of Nat Benjamin and Ross Gannon on Martha’s Vineyard.

Herreshoff: American Masterpieces by Maynard Bray, Claus Van Der Linde and photos by Benjamin Mendlowitz

The Lazarus World Voyage: A Hurricane Wreck Circumnavigates the Globe by Tim Sperry.  5 young men, most from Marion, Mass. who sail around the world.

The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float by Farley Mowat – hilarious!

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick

Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown

Spartina by John Casey

Not enough time for:

Brilliant Beacons: A History of the American Lighthouse by Eric Jay Dolin

Crossing the Bar: The Adventures of a San Francisco Bay Bar Pilot by Captain Paul Lobo.  Captain Lobo lives part of the year in Falmouth.

Ninety Percent of Everything Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate by Rose George

Two Coots in a Canoe: An Unusual Story of Friendship by David Morine

A Path in the Mighty Waters: Shipboard Life & Atlantic Crossings to the New World by Stephen R. Berry

First You Have to Row a Little Boat: Reflections on Life and Living by Richard Bode

Children’s Books

Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus – based on the true story of Manjiro, a 14 year old Japanese boy who was shipwrecked in 1841 and picked up by an American whaling ship whose captain was from Fairhaven

A Storm Without Rain by Jan Adkins – 15 year old boy from Buzzards Bay goes back in time and meets his grandfather.

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome – Classic! (I had this on my list too! Jill)

Jill’s Picks

Stuart Little by E. B. White (Particularly chapters VI, VII, and XIV.)

Schooner: building a wooden boat on Martha’s Vineyard by Tom Dunlop, photographs by Alison Shaw

Tinkerbelle by Robert Manry

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog!) by Jerome K. Jerome

The Green Ray  by Jules Verne

Hemingway’s Boat: everything he loved in life, and lost, 1934-1961. (p. 56 mentions his trip to Cape Cod & Nantucket)

Food at Sea: shipboard cuisine from ancient to modern times by Simon Spalding

NOT ENOUGH TIME FOR

“The Sea and the Wind That Blows” essay by E.B. White in Essays of E.B. White. The first sentence: “Waking or sleeping, I dream of boats — usually of rather small boats under a slight press of sail.”

A Unit of Water, A Unit of Time: Joel White’s Last Boat by Douglas Whynott

Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers by Henry David Thoreau

On the Water: Discovering America in a Rowboat by Nathaniel Stone

Images of America: Steamboats to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket by William H. Ewen Jr.

Little Pig Saves the Ship by David Hyde Costello

LISTENER PICKS

Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum

The Endurance: Shackleton’s legendary Antarctic expedition by Caroline Alexander

The Adventures of Onyx and the Fight Against the Falls by Tyler Benson

Patrick O’Brian Aubrey/Maturin series. Here is the order.

Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling

10,000 Leagues Over the Sea by William Albert Robinson

Voyages to Galapagos by William Albert Robinson

Horatio Hornblower novels by C.S. Forester. Dan Tritle tells us the character of Captain Kirk was based on the character of Hornblower!

Summer Reading on The Point

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On today’s radio book show on The Point on WCAI we talked about great books for summer reading, if you have time for summer reading. If not, hold on to our suggestions until the autumn! Mindy Todd was joined by Jill Erickson, Head of Reference and Adult Services at the Falmouth Public Library and Jennifer Gaines, librarian at the Woods Hole Library. Thanks to all of our many callers, with all of your great book suggestions!

Our Books & Authors Festival will feature 16 authors over 8 weeks with 11 events! Authors include Robert Finch, Ellen Herrick, Patrick Dacey, Anne LeClair, and Anita Diamant! You can see all the details here! Geoff Wisner will be here on August 2nd, and you can read more about his visit and Thoreau’s 200th anniversary here.

Mindy’s Picks

Beyond the Bright Sea and Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk

Jennifer’s Picks

Summer World: a season of bounty by Bernd Heinrich

Population: 485, meeting your neighbors one siren at a time by Michael Perry

Coop: a year of poultry, pigs, and parenting by Michael Perry

Eels: an exploration, from New Zealand to the Sargasso, of the world’s most amazing and mysterious fish by James Prosek

The Boys in the Boat:nine Americans and their epic quest for gold at the 1936 Olympics  by D. J. Brown

House on Crooked Pond by M. L. Shafer

The Children of Green Knowe by L. M. Brown. The first in a series of six books.

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Nantucket Summer by Leila Howland. Contains Nantucket Red and Nantucket Blue in one volume.

Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. Here’s more information on the Woods Hole Library Summer Book Club, Social Justice.

Jill’s Picks

Art of the National Parks by Jean Stern, Susan Hallsten McGarry, and Terry Lawson Dunn

The Outer Beach: a thousand-mile walk on Cape Cod’s Atlantic Shore by Robert Finch.

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

“The Fall River Axe Murders” by Angela Carter in Saints and Strangers and in her Burning Your Boats: the collected short stories.

See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt. Tinder Press edition now available.

Home Made Summer by Yvette Van Boven

Thoreau’s Wildflowers by Henry David Thoreau, edited by Geoff Wisner, with drawings by Barry Moser

Thoreau’s Animals by Henry David Thoreau, edited by Geoff Wisner, illustrated by Debby Cotter Kaspari

The Shark Club by Ann Kidd Taylor

Picture Books:

Duck’s Vacation by Gilad Soffer

Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall (And this supplies the illustration for this blog!)

The Storm by Akiko Miyakoshi

Listener Picks

Y is for Yesterday by Sue Grafton. Put in your hold now! Due out August 22nd.

My Struggle. Book One. by Karl Ove Knausgaard

The Hate u Give by Angie Thomas

Ruthless River by Holly Conklin FitzGerald

Bless Me Mother: how church leaders fail women by Finbarr M. Corr

The News from the End of the World by Emily Jeanne Miller

Edgar & Lucy by Victor Lodato

The Rent Collector by Camron Wright

Monticello: a daughter and her father by Sally Gunning

The Nature of Cape Cod by Beth Schwarzman

Summer Reading Suggestions!

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Hello Summer! As teachers and school staff wind down the school year, children’s departments in public libraries across the country are gearing up for summer reading! Here in the FPL Children’s Room, we’ve got lots of great upcoming events for our summer reading program entitled, “Build a Better World.” Some programs that I’m particularly looking forward to are the Summer Reading Kick Off Party, Saturday Cinema at the Library, and the Stuffed Animal Sleepover. See the FPL EventKeeper calendar for more events and info!

As a supplement to school summer reading lists, I’ve created a list of FPL Summer 2017 Recommended Reads. This is my third year creating such a list and at the risk of tooting my own horn, I have to say I think this is the best one yet. Not only is the design better (highly recommend canva.com for any readers who are looking for a good, free design program), but this year I’ve added pictures of the recommended books’ covers to make finding them easier. I am also intentional in including a diverse array of quality titles that serve as windows and mirrors for all readers! There is something for everyone here so stop by the FPL Children’s Room to find the book that’s right for you!

Stephanie Seales, Children’s Room

Bird Books on The Point

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Today was the monthly  WCAI book show with Mindy Todd on The Point. We hope you got to hear Dennis Minsky  and Jill Erickson talk about bird books. We had such big piles of bird books, we think we’ll be doing another bird book show in the fall! Sorry we were pre-recorded today, so you couldn’t call in with your favorites, but if you have a favorite bird book, please add a comment to our list! Miss the show? You can listen here!

 

Dennis’s Picks

“Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats

“The Kookaburas” and “White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field” from House of Light by Mary Oliver

Mind of the Raven by Bernd Heinrich

The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman

Birdscapes: birds in our imagination and experience by Jeremy Mynott

Wesley the Owl: the remarkable love story of an owl and his girl by Stacey O’Brien

The Peregrine by J. A. Baker

The Running Sky by Tim Dee

 

Jill’s Picks

The Eponym Dictionary of Birds by Bo Beolens, Michael Watkins, and Michael Grayson

Bright Wings: an illustrated anthology of poems about birds edited by Billy Collins with paintings by David Allen Sibley (Includes Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens

The Birdman’s Wife by Melissa Ashley. Nominated for the Australian Book Industry Award for Fiction.

John Gould’s Birds, with a biographical introduction by Maureen Lambourne

A Convergence of Birds, edited & introduced by Joanthan Safran Foer

Joseph Cornell’s Manual of Marvels: how Joseph Cornell reinvented a French agricultural manual to create an American masterpiece

Mr. Cornell’s Dream Boxes by Jeanette Winter

Birds Art Life: a year of observation by Kyo Maclear

A Year of Falmouth Birds by Craig Gibson, photographer

 

 

 

Mysteries on The Point!

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Today on The Point we talked about mysteries! If you missed the show, you can listen online. By the way, the great photo that WCAI used to illustrate the radio show was taken from the back cover of Killer Verse: poems of murder and mayhem. Jennifer Gaines of the Woods Hole Library (and enthusiastic mystery reader) joined Mindy Todd and Jill Erickson for a lively discussion on what a mystery is and why one kind of mystery appeals to one person and not another, not to mention the plight of a library cataloger trying to decide where to SHELVE a novel that might be a mystery and might not.

Jennifer asked if we could post our mystery lists, and they are now posted! The lists include Stand-Alone Mysteries, Mystery Series Set in Foreign Cultures, and Mysteries Set in the United States.

I mentioned the Twitter conversation with Neil Gaiman‘s twitter followers, which began here, and then continued over here. And thus began a cataloging conversation for the ages between an international world of public and academic librarians, and just readers who love Neil Gaiman. As Susan Wyndham commented: “Great question, great discussion. Can we have librarians unleash Dewey knowledge every week? Are there other tricky books?” To which Mr. Gaiman wrote: “probably another question for the librarians.” The conversation itself surrounded Gaiman’s newest book Norse Mythology,  and you will see in the link that we have decided to put one copy in fiction and one copy in non-fiction.

But I digress! The real discussion was about how deeply librarians care about where to put mysteries, and thus what IS a mystery, and also some great books about mysteries. The list of books discussed are below. We hope you enjoyed the show! We did!

 

Jennifer’s Picks

MYSTERIES, American in which winter weather figures heavily:

William Kent  Krueger:  character Cork O’Connor in Minnesota;

Julia Spencer-Fleming:    “novels of faith, murder, and suspense” Characters Rev’d Clare Ferguson & police Chief  Russ Van Alstyne, upstate New York, town in the farm and factory land nestled against the Adirondacks, In the Bleak Mid-Winter, etc.

MYSTERIES, Canadian:

Louise Penny: province of Quebec, village of Three Pines

MYSTERIES/Thrillers, Scandinavian Noir

(Sweden) Hennig Mankell, Kurt Wallender series; Steig Larsson, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc.

(Norway) Jo Nesbo;  Karin Fossum

(Iceland) Arnaldur Indridason

(Denmark) Peter Høeg , Smilla’s Sense of Snow

MYSTERIES, Travel Destinations

Cara Black: Paris

Martin Walker: South of France, the Dordogne with his Bruno, Chief of Police

Donna Leon: Venice

Janwillem Van de Wetering: Amsterdam

MYSTERIES, crossed with historical fiction

Jacqueline Winspear: Maisie Dobbs, mostly WW1, English nurse

Todd, Charles: Bess Crawford, WW1 battlefield English nurse (also Inspector Rutledge) “vivid period mystery series” (New York Times Book Review)

Kuhns, Eleanor: Will Rees, weaver, Shaker communities, 1790’s

King, Laurie R.: Mary Russell/ Sherlock Holmes

MYSTERIES, Cape Cod and the Islands  There are lots, but these are the ones we talked about:

Craig, Philip:  The Vineyard, fishing derby, Z

Phoebe Atwood Taylor, Cape Cod in the 1920’s, sleuth Asey Mayo charges along the sandy back roads of the Cape in his roadster

MYSTERY, LIBRARIES (who knew?)

Jenn McKinlay: Due or Die

 

 

Jill’s Picks

The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Mystery by John Charles, Candace Clark, Joanne Hamilton-Selway, and Joanna Morrison. (See how many people it takes to describe what a mystery is!)

The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery by Bruce F. Murphy

Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes by Michael Sims

On Conan Doyle or, The Whole Art of Storytelling by Michael Dirda

Buried Angels by Camilla Lackberg (And the Wellfleet copy is back! And copy should be available very soon!)

Killer Verse: poems of murder and mayhem edited by Harold Schechter and Kurt Brown

Pistols and Petticoats: 175 years of lady detectives in fact and fiction by Erika Janik

Women Crime Writers. Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s edited by Sarah Weinman

Women Crime Writers. Four Suspense Novels of the 1950s edited by Sarah Weinman

The Arvon Book of Crime and Thriller Writing by Michelle Spring and Laurie R. King

The Strand Magazine (Feb.-May 2016 issue has interview with Mark Gatiss, co-creator of Sherlock.)

Listener Picks

Louise Penny mysteries. The first one in the series is Still Life.

Michael Connelly mysteries. The first one in the series is The Black Echo.