Sing With Me!

A couple of pictures from this week's Sing With Me! program in Youth Services-- our new sing-a-long program for families with children ages 4-8.

Singing along

Doin' the Hokey-Pokey!

Join us for Sing With Me! again at 4 P.M. on February 14th, March 6th, March 20th, April 3rd, and April 24th. This program is drop-in, but please call the morning of to reserve a space.

Did You Know?: Materials for the Vision-Impaired

A full range of materials for the vision-impaired of all ages, with free mail loan of recorded and Braille books and magazines, and necessary playback equipment is available to Connecticut state residents unable to read conventional print because of a visual or physical disability. These materials are available to Perrot patrons through the Connecticut State Library System. Web info is available at http://www.cslib.org/lbph.htm, or you may contact our Reference Department for assistance.

Hey, Mom! Do YOU Know the Code?

BF -------> Boyfriend or Best Friend
GF -------> Girlfriend
P911 -----> Parent Alert
POS ------> Parent Over Shoulder
A/S/L ----> What’s your Age/Sex/Location?
MORF ---> Male or Female?
POP -----> Parent on the prowl – can’t talk freely
5 --------> Parent nearby – don’t text anything suspicious
55 -------> Coast is clear – say anything you want
CTN -----> Can’t talk now

We all know that it’s important to supervise our kids’ online activities. This month’s issue of Parents magazine offers a few helpful rules for you to establish with your child.
Want to know more? Take a look at Parents magazine and the books below at Perrot!

• LOGGED ON AND TUNED OUT: A Non-Techie’s Guide to Parenting a Tech-Savvy Generation, by Vicki Courtney (248.845 COURT)
• GENERATION MYSPACE: Helping Your Teen Survive Online Adolescence, by Candice Kelsey (305.235 KELSE)
• WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOUR KIDS DOING ONLINE?: How to Understand the Electronic World Your Children Live In, by Barbara Melton and Susan Shankle (004.69 MELTO)

Our Picks!: Books About Love and Friendship

Check out our brand-new Youth Services' Our Picks! list for February 2008-- in honor of Valentine's Day, it features Youth Services Staff's favorite books about love and friendship. You can view the full list here.

Also, don't forget to take a look at our Valentine's Day section next time you're in the Library!

Build Vocab and Feed the World's Hungry!

Check out (or revisit) FreeRice.com. The site asks visitors to match vocabulary words with their closest synonyms. For every word you match correctly, 20 grains of rice will be donated to the World Food Programme, whose mission is to feed the hungry in developing nations. The site has donated more than four billion grains so far. Be sure to stop by and help feed the hungry-- and your mind!

February 5th in Youth Services

Youth Services programs WILL be held on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008.

[Greenwich Public Schools are closed for the primaries that day.]

Databases You May Have Missed: Art Databases

The Greenwich Libraries subscribe to many interesting and useful databases-- all too many of which are overlooked! This post is the first in a series highlighting databases that you may not have heard about. All are free to access with your Greenwich/Perrot Library Card number.

Our community relishes looking at art, buying art, and appraising antiques. Within this framework, we have several databases that are essential to keep current with art trends and prices.

• Artnet: Artnet gathers together thousands of artists and their works, with more than 1,000 galleries being represented. One can search for particular paintings or representative works to judge auction prices. Buy, sell and research online. Only accessible within the Libraries.
• Ask ART: A great place to search for American artists, see their paintings, get artist biographies, and even check auction records. Only accessible within the Libraries.
• Grove Art Online: This resource encompasses the entire sets of The Dictionary of Art and The Oxford Companion to Art. Any additions are date-stamped. Explore art and art forms, styles and cultures, artists and their biographies, and much more. Accessible both inside the Libraries and from home.
• P4A Antiques Reference Database: This database can be used to estimate the value of antiques. Great fun for antique researchers. Accessible both inside the Libraries and from home.
  

Read the Book, Then See the Movie

Too often, movies are a shallow example of the book that inspired them, but sometimes movie adaptations make excellent partners with their books.

For instance, Gone with the Wind makes for an incredible visual epic as a movie-- its seems just like the author would have intended. Also, film version of The Kite Runner is very true to the novel, and deepens our understanding of the current events in Afghanistan.

What are some movies you've seen lately that are just as great as the book on which they were based? Comment on this post!

New Youth Services Drop-In Program Added

Youth Services has added a drop-in program to its Winter/Spring 2008 Program Session:

TALES FOR 1s AND 2s
For Ages: 12-36 months
Description: Tunes and tales for one- and two-year-olds. Children attend with an adult caregiver.
Duration: 30 minutes
Offerings: Drop-in. Fridays at 10 A.M., February 1st through April 11th. No program on February 22nd or March 21st.

Young Critics Who Carry Clout

The Young Critics' Club has been featured on Shelf Awareness, an e-newsletter for the book trade, in an article entitled "Young Critics Who Carry Clout."

Long before Oprah's Book Club, there was the Young Critics' Club in Old Greenwich, Conn. For 25 years, what began as a group of 20 fifth-, sixth- and seventh-graders has been meeting after school on alternate Fridays at Perrot Library. Why? Because they want to get publishers' brand new galleys before anyone else, said Kate McClelland, founder of the club and former assistant director of the public library (she's recently semi-retired, but said she will not give up the club). "They're just as eager to read the new stuff as adults are," McClelland said. "The galleys make them feel like insiders." Only three galleys of any one title circulate so that students are reading and commenting on a variety of books.

Read the rest of the article here: http://news.shelf-awareness.com/msgget.jsp?mid=2008523

Listen to Perrot's Own Kate McClelland on NPR!

Our beloved former Assistant Director/Head of Youth Services, Kate McClelland, was featured in a piece on NPR's All Things Considered on Monday. The segment, entitled "Stories of Magic, Medieval Times Win Book Awards," discussed the 2008 Caldecott and Newbery Award Winners. Listen to Kate jubilantly discuss the surprise Caldecott win of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, shortly after the award winners were announced at ALA's Midwinter Conference in Philadelphia. Just go to this page and click on "Listen Now."

Some Great Books You May Have Missed

Recently three New York Times book reviewers (Michiko Kakutani, Janet Maslin, and William Grimes) put together lists of their 10 favorite books, chosen from among those they reviewed during the past year. Among those highlighted in the article “A Year of Books Worth Curling Up With” were. . .

Fiction:

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz: Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd, a New Jersey romantic who dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love.
• House of Meetings, by Martin Amis: In 1946, two brothers and a Jewish girl fall into alignment in pogrom-poised Moscow. The fraternal conflict then marinates in Norlag, a slave-labor camp above the Arctic Circle, where a tryst in the coveted House of Meetings will haunt all three lovers long after the brothers are released.
• Away, by Amy Bloom: When Lillian's family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, she comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York's Lower East Side, to Seattle's Jazz District, and up to Alaska.
• Find Me, by Carol O’Connell: Tough-as-nails detective Mallory follows a serial murder from her own apartment building to the desert heart of Route 66, where she finds a procession of mourners searching for their missing children.
  

Non-Fiction:

• When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa, by Peter Godwin: A brilliant memoir about a son's return to Africa to uncover the secrets of his family and his home. Bearing witness to Zimbabwe's dramatic spiral downwards, Godwin discovers why Africa was his father's sanctuary from another identity and why his family chose to stay amidst the chaos.
• Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal, by Ben Macintyre: Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also one of the most remarkable double agents Britain has ever produced. Inside the traitor was a man of loyalty; inside the villain was a hero. The problem for Chapman, his spymasters, and his lovers was to know where one persona ended and the other began.
• Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality, by Pauline W. Chen: Final Exam follows Chen over the course of her education, training, and practice, as she grapples with the problem of mortality, and struggles to reconcile the lessons of her training with her innate knowledge of shared humanity.
• Einstein: His Life and Universe, by Walter Isaacson: Based on newly released personal letters of Einstein, this book explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk-- a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate-- became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe.

[Click on each title to view that item in the catalog and to place a hold.]

Third Title in Inheritance Trilogy Announced

The title and cover of the third book in Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Trilogy has been announced! The book is called Brisingr, after the Old Norse word for "fire." The book will be released on September 20th, 2008.

Passport Day, March 1st

The Old Greenwich Post Office is sponsoring another U.S. Passport Day at Perrot on Saturday, March 1st, 2008, from 9:30 A.M. to 4 P.M.

File the paperwork to get your U.S. Passport. Photo services will also be available at the event, for $15. Bring your checkbook (Passport Fees are $82 for children under 16, and $97 for Adults), and your identification (you will need a previous passport or your birth certificate, as well as a photo ID).

If you'd like more information about Passport Day at Perrot, please call the Old Greenwich Post Office at 203-637-1405.

Remember, according to new passport regulations, you must now show your passport upon your return from Canada, Mexico, or the Carribean. You can read more about these new requirements here.

For other general information about obtaining a U.S. Passport, visit the U.S. Department of State's Passport Page.

Do you love to travel?

Perrot has recently purchased some new books from Insight Guides called “Smart Guides.” These new guides tell you “Where to go, what to see, and how to get there” and are arranged from A-Z within themes. They’re a handy size and well-illustrated.

Our latest Smart Guides are Copenhagen, Hong Kong, Las Vegas, London, Sydney, and Venice – all 2008 editions.