Teen Read Week 2006

This week (October 15th-21st) is Teen Read Week! During Teen Read Week, you can vote on your favorite Young Adult Books from the past year. The winners are called the Teen's Top Ten. This year's nominees are listed below (the links go to the titles in our catalog, so you can request the books). Vote for your favorite nominees here. You can vote for up to three books.

• 13 Little Blue Envelopes, by Maureen Johnson
• A Certain Slant of Light, by Laura Whitcomb
• Art Geeks and Prom Queens, by Alyson Noel
• Blackthorn Winter, by Kathryn Reiss
• Captain Hook: The Adventures of a Notorious Youth, by J.V. Hart
• Eldest, by Christopher Paolini
• Elsewhere, by Gabrielle Zevin
• Far From Xanadu, by Julie Ann Peters
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling
• Heavy Metal and You, by Christopher Krovatin
• I, Coriander, by Sally Gardner
• If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where’s My Prince?, by Melissa Kantor
• Megan Meade’s Guide to the McGowan Boys, by Kate Brian
• Mimus, by Lilli Thal
• Nailed, by Patrick Jones
• Peeps, by Scott Westerfeld
• Poison, by Chris Wooding
• Powder Monkey: Adventure of a Young Sailor, by Paul Dowswell
• Rebel Angels, by Libba Bray
• Skybreaker, by Kenneth Oppel
• Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer
• Wolf: The Journey Home, by Asta Bowen

When this year's Teen's Top Ten results are in, we'll post them here on the blog.
P.S. Once you vote at the ALA page, comment on this post and tell us which books you picked.

Sneak Peeks for this Week!

Stop by for Sneak Peeks, our new video preview program for kids, this Thursday, October 19th, 2006, at 4 P.M. This week's movies are for kids ages 4-8. Sneak Peeks is a drop-in program, and will take place in the Youth Services Program Room.

Here are this week's selections:


LOOK! LOOK! LOOK!
13 minutes
Three little mice discover the art of seeing when they find a picture postcard.
From the book by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace



BECAUSE YOUR DADDY LOVES YOU
9 minutes
Young children will be reassured by this tale of a father’s unconditional love and patience.
From the book by Andrew Clements

LON PO PO: A RED RIDING HOOD STORY FROM CHINA
10 minutes
In this Chinese version of the classic fairy tale, a mother leaves her three children home alone while she goes to visit their grandmother.
From the book by Ed Young




Hope to see you there! Questions? Please call us at 203-637-8802.

National Book Award Finalists Announced

The National Book Award Finalists were announced today. The awards will be presented on November 15, 2006, in New York City (call 212-685-0261 for tickets!).

Here is the list of Finalists [Any title that is hyperlinked is available through the Greenwich Library system]:

Fiction:

• Mark Z. Danielewski, Only Revolutions
• Ken Kalfus, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country
• Richard Powers, The Echo Maker
• Dana Spiotta, Eat the Document
• Jess Walter, The Zero

Non-Fiction:

• Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68
• Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone
• Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
• Peter Hessler, Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present
• Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
  

Poetry:

• Louise Glück, Averno
• H.L. Hix, Chromatic
• Ben Lerner, Angle of Yaw
• Nathaniel Mackey, Splay Anthem
• James McMichael, Capacity

Young People's Literature:

• M.T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party
• Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death
• Patricia McCormick, Sold
• Nancy Werlin, The Rules of Survival
• Gene Luen Yang, American Born Chinese

Read any of these books? Comment on this post with your thoughts.

2006 Booker Prize Winner Announced

Kiran Desai was announced as the Booker Prize winner yesterday, for her novel The Inheritance of Loss. This literature prize started in 1969 and is awarded to the best book of the year by a writer from Britain, Ireland, or a Commonwealth country. Desai is the youngest woman author to ever receive the honour. The story draws on Desai's experiences as she left India as a teenager, and went to England and then the United States to live. Desai also published a novel in 1998 called Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, which was well received by literary critics.

• Listen to Desai read from The Inheritance of Loss, at The New York Times

Short-listed Booker Prize Books available at the Greenwich Libraries:

• The Secret River, by Kate Grenville
• Mother's Milk, by Edward St. Aubyn
• Carry Me Down, by M.J. Hyland
• The Night Watch, by Sarah Waters

A Young Young Critics' Club Pick

Abadazad Series Book 1: The Road to Inconceivable, by J. M. DeMatteis, with illustrations by Mike Ploog

When the first three issues of J. M. DeMatteis and Mike Ploog’s Abadazad hit the comic-book stores two years ago, they found an immediate-- and passionate-- audience. No one could resist the heart-tugging story of Kate and her brother Matt, lost in the world of Abadazad, or the comics' stunning artwork. Now Abadazad is a book series-- and, true to its origins, it’s an original: it takes place in three distinct worlds; it cuts between nineteenth-century storytelling and a contemporary girl’s diary; it features comic-book panels, "antique" illustrations, and spot art-- and all the while, it seamlessly keeps you turning page after page.

Click here to watch Emily H., of the Y2C2, talk about the first Abadazad book in a short video clip. [The video is in .WMV format, which is playable with Windows Media Player.]

Author Bob Spitz to Speak at the Library

Rock journalist Bob Spitz, author of, The Beatles: The Biography, will speak about and sign copies of his book on Thursday, November 2nd, 2006, at 7:30 P.M. in the Library.

About the Book:
The product of almost a decade of research, hundreds of unprecedented interviews, and the discovery of scores of never-before-revealed documents, Bob Spitz's The Beatles is the biography fans have been waiting for-- a vast, complete account as brilliant and joyous and revelatory as a Beatles record itself. Spitz begins in Liverpool, a hard city knocked on its heels. In the housing projects and school playgrounds, four boys would discover themselves-- and via late-night radio broadcasts, a new form of music called rock 'n roll. Spitz takes us down Penny Lane and to Strawberry Field (John later added the s), to Hamburg, Germany, where-- amid the squalor and the violence and the pep pills-- the Beatles truly became the Beatles. We are there in the McCartney living room when Paul and John learn to write songs together; in the heat of Liverpool's Cavern Club, where jazz has been the norm before the Beatles show up; backstage the night Ringo takes over on drums; in seedy German strip clubs where George lies about his age so the band can perform; on the lonely tours through frigid Scottish towns before the breakthrough; at the Abbey Road studios, where a young producer named George Martin takes them under his wing; at the Ed Sullivan Show as America discovers the joy and the madness; and onward and upward: up the charts, from Shea to San Francisco, through the London night, on to India, through marmalade skies, across the universe-- all the way to a rooftop concert and one last moment of laughter and music.


"A consolidating and newly illuminating work. . . It chooses perception over presumption in ways that set it off from the pack."-- Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"With this massive opus, veteran music journalist Spitz tells the definitive story of the band that sparked a cultural revolution. . . . Although this is a hefty volume steeped in research, Spitz writes economically, and with flair, letting the facts and characters speak for themselves. . . [Readers] will come to appreciate the band even more for knowing the incredible personal odysseys they endured." -Booklist, starred review

Click here to listen to an NPR story about the book.

Please call 203-637-3870 for more information about this and other Library events.

A Peek at Sneak Peeks!

Sneak Peeks, our new video preview program for kids, will take place this Thursday, October 7th, 2006, at 4 P.M. This week's movies will be aimed at kids ages 7-14. It is a drop-in program, and will take place in the Youth Services Program Room.

Here's what's on the menu for this week:

Intricate Minds II
Understanding Classmates with Asperger Syndrome
16 minutes







Pearl Harbor Child
First-person accounts of the attack on December 7, 1941, described by both military and civilian survivors.
34 minutes

Hope to see you there! Questions? Please call us at 203-637-8802.

Favorites from a Homeschooler

The Our Picks! recommendations page for this month features selections from Laurie, a Youth Services Staff Member and homeschooler. View the book list, "Favorites from a Homeschooler," here, and take a look at some of these homeschooling links:

• Connecticut Homeschooling Network
• National Home Education Legal Defense
• Home Education Magazine
• Life Learning Magazine

Jack Prelutsky Named First Children's Poet Laureate

Kids' favorite Jack Prelutsky has been named the very first Children's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation! Mr. Prelutsky has written over 35 books, which together have sold over a million copies. He will receive a special medallion and $25,000. Mr. Prelutsky said of the honor, "I'm honored and baffled by this whole thing. And tickled."

• "Poetry Writing: A Workshop with Jack Prelutsky," at Scholastic
• "Never Poke Your Uncle with a Fork: The Wit and Wisdom of Jack Prelutsky," at the Poetry Foundation Site
• Poetry Books by Jack Prelutsky at the Greenwich Libraries

Community Reads: When the Emperor Was Divine, by Julie Otsuka

Perrot's Community Reads program will be held on Monday, November 13th, 2006, at 7:00 P.M. in the Library. Esther Bushell will lead a discussion of the novel When the Emperor was Divine, a poignant novel of a Japanese's family's ordeal in an internment camp during World War II. The author, Julie Otsuka, will read excerpts from the book. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at Just Books, on Arcadia Road in Old Greenwich. Or click here to place a hold on this book through the library.

About the Book:
Julie Otsuka's commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any we have ever seen. With crystalline intensity and precision, Otsuka uses a single family to evoke the deracination-- both physical and emotional-- of a generation of Japanese Americans. In five chapters, each flawlessly executed from a different point of view--the mother receiving the order to evacuate; the daughter on the long train ride to the camp; the son in the desert encampment; the family's return to their home; and the bitter release of the father after more than four years in captivity-- she has created a small tour de force, a novel of unrelenting economy and suppressed emotion. Spare, intimate, arrestingly understated, When the Emperor Was Divine is a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and an unmistakably resonant lesson for our times.


"Prose so cool and precise that it’s impossible not to believe what [Otsuka] tells us or to see clearly what she wants us to see. . . . A gem of a book and one of the most vivid history lessons you’ll ever learn." –USA Today

"Exceptional. . . . Otsuka skillfully dramatizes a world suddenly foreign. . . . [Her] incantatory, unsentimental prose is the book’s greatest strength." –The New Yorker

"Heartbreaking, bracingly unsentimental. . . .rais[es] the specter of wartime injustice in bone-chilling fashion. . . . The novel’s honesty and matter-of-fact tone in the face of inconceivable injustice are the source of its power. . . . Dazzling." –Publishers Weekly



Please call 203-637-3870 for more information about this and other Library events.

Banned Books in the Adult Department

The Adult Reference Staff has put up a display of many Banned Books on the 1st floor of the Library. The display includes many books that will surprise you, since they seem so "mainstream" to us today-- The Great Gatsby, 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird, Gone with the Wind, Go Tell it on the Mountain, and The Sun Also Rises, to name a few. It ends up looking more like a required school reading list than a compilation of challenged books! Come to Perrot and check out a Banned Book to read this week!

Happy Belated Birthday, Shel Silverstein!

September 25th would have been author and poet Shel Silverstein's 76th birthday. His last book, Runny Babbit, was published in posthumously in 2005. It was a favorite of our Young Critics' Club (and our Youth Services librarians!), and we're sure you'll love it, too!

Other Shel Silverstein Favorites (Click to place holds):

• The Giving Tree
• A Light in the Attic
• The Missing Piece
• Underwater Land (CD)
• Where the Sidewalk Ends

The DVD Diva's Top Picks from Korea

The DVD Diva's latest picks are three movies from Korea. Read a history of Korean cinema here.

3-Iron: When a mysterious drifter breaks into a mansion, he discovers a lonely, beautiful woman trapped in an abusive marriage. When she escapes on the back of his motorcycle, their romantic adventures are just beginning.

More information at IMDb (Internet Movie Database)





Untold Scandal: Set in 18th-century Korea, this movie is based on the French novel Dangerous Liaisons. Lady Cho decides to get revenge on her husband after he seeks out the services of a young concubine, So-ok. She asks her womanizing cousin, Cho-won, to seduce the girl. Cho-won doesn't see this as enough of a challenge. He instead suggests he takes on the challenge of seducing an honorable young widow, Lady Chung. Lady Cho makes a wager with Cho-won, offering herself to him if he succeeds in seducing the widow. But things take an unexpected turn when Cho-won begins to develop genuine feelings for his prey.

More information at IMDb


Samaritan Girl: Jae-Young is a prostitute who is "managed" by her best friend Yeo-Jin. Yeo-Jin fixes dates, takes care of the money, and makes sure the coast is clear. When Jae-Young falls in love with one of her customers, she has to supress her feelings towards him. One day, Yeo-Jin fails to notice police officers who are searching for underaged prostitutes. To avoid getting caught, Jae-Young jumps out of a window, nearly killing herself. On her deathbed, she wishes to see the man who she fell in love with and turned away from. Trying to understand her best friend, Yeo-Jin tracks down every man Jae-Young has ever slept with.

More information at IMDb

Banned Books Week 2006

Harry Potter. The Chocolate War. Captain Underpants. Bridge to Terabithia. The Giver. Goosebumps. The Witches. A Light in the Attic. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A Wrinkle in Time. Every year, there are hundreds of attempts to remove books like these from schools and libraries. Celebrate YOUR freedom to read and the right to choose your book during Banned Books Week, September 23rd to September 30th, 2006.

The most challenged and/or restricted reading materials have been books for children. However, challenges are not simply an expression of a point of view; on the contrary, they are an attempt to remove materials from public use, thereby restricting the access of others. Even if the motivation to ban or challenge a book is well intentioned, the outcome is detrimental. Censorship denies our freedom as individuals to choose and think for ourselves. For children, decisions about what books to read should be made by the people who know them best—their parents! "Throughout history, there always have been a few people who don’t want information to be freely available. And this is still true," says American Library Association President Leslie Burger. "The reason more books aren’t banned is because community residents--with librarians, teachers and journalists-- stand up and speak out for their freedom to read. Banned Books Week reminds us that we must remain vigilant."

Comment on this post and and tell us your favorite banned book!

• The Ten Most-Challenged books of 2000-2005
• The 100 Most-Challenged books of 1990-2000
• Vote for your favorite Banned Book!
  

Troilus and Cressida Shakespeare Colloquy

Can you top this-- Shakespeare and Homer in tandem? Shakespeare was famously belittled by Ben Jonson for having "small Latin and less Greek," but he did know the classics, thanks particularly to Ovid and Chaucer, and he borrowed storylines and characters as freely from the Greeks as from the Romans and later Italians. Troilus and Cressida is a Shakespeare-loving classicist's dream, a drama drawn from the world of The Iliad. Troilus and Cressida themselves are not Homer's characters, but this is the Trojan War: Ulysses is here, Achilles, Hector, Helen-- the whole gang. What Shakespeare makes of Homer's characters and the issues of The Iliad will surprise you; it is a "modern" play, impossible to classify as tragedy, comedy, or history, but it is surely fasinating. --Anne Gilhuly

Anne Gilhuly will lecture on Troilus and Cressida, a play set in the Trojan war by William Shakespeare, at Perrot Library. The event will also feature dramatic readings from the work by players Florence Phillips and Dick Leonard. This event will take place in the library, on Wednesday, October 4th, 2006, at 7:30 P.M. Reply to this post with questions, or call 203-637-3870.