Review Thursday: Children's Fiction

The Switch (2009)
Anthony Horowitz

Thirteen-year-old Tad Spencer lives with his rich mother and father. He gets whatever he wants but Tad is unhappy. One night he wishes he were someone else. When he wakes up, he is Bob Snarby, a poor son of carnival workers. He soon wishes he is Tad Spencer again. Tad runs off to a fortune teller who informs him that he is stuck being Bob Snarby until January 13, 3216. Will he ever be Tad Spencer again? This book goes nicely with The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain.

Thank You, Lucky Stars (2008)
Beverly Donofrio

Ally is ready to start 5th grade with her best friend Betsy. They have been looking forward to the 5th grade talent show since kindergarten. Imagine her surprise when she spots Betsy with their enemy Mona! Ally discovers that Betsy and Mona are going to be part of a rock band for the talent show. The only girl interested in being friends with Ally is the new strange girl named Tina. Can the two of them put on a good performance for the talent show? Will Betsy be friends with Ally again? Pair this book with The Kind of Friends We Used to Be by Frances O’Roark Dowell.

The Year of the Bomb (2009)
Ronald Kidd

It’s 1955 and the United States lives in fear that Russia may decide to drop a few bombs. To escape the worry, Paul, Arnie, Crank, and Oz love to go see horror movies. They become excited when they find out that a new horror film called “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” is going to be filmed in their hometown, Sierra Madre. They get to meet some extras on the set named Laura and Darryl. The four boys soon discover that Darryl is a government agent looking for communists on the movie set and at a nearby university. Should they help him or prevent him from falsely accusing people and ruining lives? For facts about the Cold War try The United States in the Cold War: 1945-1989 by Christopher Collier.

Tips for Weeding Your Collection

Just like a garden, library collections need to be weeded of materials no longer useful, in order to make room for what the customer needs now. Weeding the shabbier materials also makes for a brighter more attractive collection. Remember, you don’t want a MUSTIE collection:

• Misleading
• Ugly
• Superseded
• Trivial
• Irrelevant
• Elsewhere

Take a look at the book Weeding Library Collections: Library Weeding Methods by Stanley Slote for more tips.

There are a number of Web sites available to help you formulate your policy and help with training. The Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records has a useful guide which discusses weeding in depth.

The Alachua Country Public Schools offers a guide specifically for school libraries. The book Less is More : A Practical Guide to Weeding School Library Collections by Donna J. Baumbach is also useful.

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission has a manual for training in the art of weeding.

Online Faxing

Do you have customers asking you about faxing for job applications or any other reason? While it can be expensive to fax from a copy shop such as Kinkos or Staples, there are services online that will allow faxing online.

One easy to use service is called Fax Zero. Users don't need to register to use the service, but are limited to two faxes of up to three pages per day. Documents for faxing can be a Word or Excel document or PDF. Fax Zero is free to use.

Free Fax requires a person to register in order to use the site. Faxes can be copied and pasted or typed into a text box. Free Fax is, as the name implies, free.

Efax and MyFax include one-month free trials, but require registration before using and a fee after the first month.

I keep hearing about library mashups. What are they?

Library mashups are one of the ways libraries are integrating more services into websites. According to Nicole C. Engard, a mashup is "a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool." Library mashups have been used to add value to websites through music, commenting, video, and news.

One example of how the Maryland State Library Resource Center is using library mashups is Mapping the African American Experience in Maryland created by the African American Department. This site combines Google Maps with photos and information from the library’s collection illustrating buildings, sites, and historic districts relating to the African American experience in Maryland. Through these kinds of web services, library mashups help to provide innovative ways for libraries to connect patrons with information.

Program Help - Top Ten Resources

This is the first in a series of "top ten" lists. If you are looking for resources to make 2010 the best year ever for your library programs, look no further! The websites in this guide discuss several aspects of programming.

Event$ "on the cheap": Keeping the "bottom line" in mind is important in these budget-conscious times. Here are several websites with programming ideas that are inexpensive or free.

1. Hudson Valley Library E-Z Program Database

This is a searchable database of free and inexpensive program ideas, created by librarians in New York. Ideas are searchable by cost range, topic, audience, and/or program type.

2. What's Your Story? Find it at the library.

From the state library of Montana, this list of programming ideas for adults includes forty topics. Each is discussed in detail, with a catchy title, possible subtopics, approximate program time, suggested types of speakers, and more.

3. Calendar of Teen Programming Ideas

This wiki by YALSA, the Young Adult Library Services Association, presents ideas for teen programming in a calendar format. Everything from national holidays to library-specific events like Teen Read Week gets its due in this resource with something for everyone.

Working the Crowd: Partnerships with other community organizations can benefit everyone involved. Look in your community for like-minded organizations, and approach them about working together.

4. Check your community's website for a list of organizations, like this one from Salisbury, MD.

Making Your Mark(er): Arts and crafts make-and-take events are great for children and teens. To cut down on costs, you can ask for donations of art supplies from community members (everyone needs to clean out their closets sometime!) or local stores.

5. Choose crafts that are inexpensive to make, like origami boxes. View the directions with pictures here.

Here are two great books with lots of inexpensive ideas for kids' crafts:

6. Kids' Crazy Concoctions: Different mixtures in this book include homemade Play-Doh and other recipes for art supplies that use inexpensive household ingredients.

7. EcoArt!: Earth-friendly art and craft experiences for 3 to 9 year olds: Suggestions for activities made with recycled or reusable materials turn one person's trash into another person's treasure.

Looking Ahead: Find out what made your program great, and what to do next. Use your most important resource to the fullest - your patrons! Here are some websites including ideas for questions to use in both planning and follow-up surveys.

8. For planning programs: Planning Programs Survey

9. To follow up after a program: http://www.slrc.info/WorkArea/showcontent.aspx?id=42890

10. SurveyMonkey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/

SurveyMonkey is free, easy to use, and compiles survey results for you. If you prefer, you can use paper surveys.

Use what you learned from your patrons' feedback to make your next program even better. Good luck and here's to a fun and exciting year of great programs in 2010!

Review Thursday: Adult Fiction

Yes, My Darling Daughter by Margaret Leroy (2009)

Four-year-old Sylvie is a puzzle. Besides her sickening fear of water and nightmares, there are her odd allusions to a house where she lived once, in a place she identifies with a magazine picture of an Irish fishing village in Connemara, far from the English flat where she has, in fact, always lived quietly with her unmarried mother, Grace. Sylvie’s oddities alienate their friends, cause daycare to expel her, force Grace to quit her much needed job, and--worst--make Grace feel harrowingly bereft of her own child. After other desperate measures, she agrees to take Sylvie to Connemara under the supervision of Adam, a Psychic Institute researcher who believes Sylvie experienced a trauma there in a past life. A Connemara cottage which Sylvie joyfully reclaims as “my house" belonged to a troubled woman named Alice who disappeared seven years ago with her daughter. To solve the mystery of Sylvie’s eccentricity, Adam and Grace must uncover the truth about Alice—a labor fraught with peril, since Alice’s foe lives on.

Though Gothic conventions flourish in the seaside episodes, Leroy’s psychological realism, especially in depicting Grace’s maternal distress and growing attraction to Adam, keeps the novel fresh and suspenseful, her musical prose and sensuous descriptions (tulips are “bright toy-soldier red,” and a store purchase goes into “lots of whispery tissue paper”) a constant delight. She resembles Daphne Du Maurier and Anne Rivers Siddons as vivid stylists who specialize in psychological anomalies and high-pitched drama.

What are some upcoming movies based on books? How can I keep up with this?

There are many places you can check for upcoming movies; in the writing credits on these websites you can find out if the film is adapted from a book. These sites are not always complete, so it is worth checking more than one. Movie release dates are always subject to change, especially dates further in the future, so it is always good to check.

One site from a “book-centric” point-of-view is Book Reporter.com.

Film sites that are good to use, and link to more information about the films, include:

Variety Film Release Chart
As this is an entertainment industry newspaper, it is likely to be the most accurate the further one goes into the future, but in the basic listings, it won’t tell you whether the film is based on a book.

Internet Movie Database Coming Soon
Click on the title for more information, e.g. writing credits.

Three more films sites that include upcoming films listings, but are especially good for finding reviews, are:

• Movie Review Query Engine
• Metacritic
• Rotten Tomatoes

And, finally, a good place to check for over 1,250 older films adapted from books, check Mid-Continent Public Library’s “Based on the Book”.

Some upcoming 2010 films based on books to look forward to include:

• Alice in Wonderland (March 5)
• Jonah Hex (June 18)
• The Twilight Sage: Eclipse (June 30)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I (November 19)
• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (December 10)