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.

Previews of Coming Attractions!: Wildwood Dancing

High in the Transylvanian woods, at the castle Piscul Draculi, live five daughters and their doting father. It's an idyllic life for Jena, the second eldest, who spends her time exploring the mysterious forest with her constant companion, a most unusual frog. But best by far is the castle's hidden portal, known only to the sisters. Every Full Moon, they alone can pass through it into the enchanted world of the Other Kingdom. But their peace is shattered when Father falls ill and must go to the southern parts to recover, for that is when cousin Cezar arrives. Though he's there to help the girls survive the brutal winter, Jena suspects he has darker motives in store. Meanwhile, Jena's sister has fallen in love with a dangerous creature of the Other Kingdom-- an impossible union it's up to Jena to stop. When Cezar's grip of power begins to tighten, at stake is everything Jena loves: her home, her family, and the Other Kingdom she has come to cherish. To save her world, Jena will be tested in ways she can't imagine...

The Young Critics' Club often gets to read books months before they are released in bookstores! Wildwood Dancing is the highly anticipated young adult debut from Australian fantasy author Juliet Marillier.

Click here to watch to watch a Young Critics' Club member talk about Wildwood Dancing in a short video clip. [The video is in .WMV format, which is playable with Windows Media Player.]

Watch for the book in January of 2007.

Please lock your bike

Two bicycles have been stolen recently from Perrot's parking lot. If you bike to the library, PLEASE lock your bike onto our bike rack (located in the larger end of our parking lot, near the U.S. Mail box).

Introducing... the DVD Diva!

Looking for an interesting movie, or have a movie you'd like to recommend? Check Perrot's blog each month for a dispatch from the DVD DIVA! She'll be suggesting new movies (and some old-time favorites), including links to reviews. Don't forget to add your comments! Discuss the monthly movies you've seen, or suggest some titles of your own.

Here are the DVD Diva's picks for September:


Distortion: Emotionally scarred in the wake of a terrorist attack, a Tel Aviv playwright attempts to make sense of the carnage and his own tangled personal life by writing a new play. When writer's block sets in, he hires a detective to trail his girlfriend.

More information at Internet Movie Database [IMDb]



Who Am I This Time?: A small town community theatre's shy leading man meets the lovely telephone worker who's new in town. Based on the short story by Kurt Vonnegut. Directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Susan Sarandon and Christopher Walken.

More information at IMDb




Sliding Doors: A London woman's love-life and career both hinge, unbeknownst to her, on whether or not she catches a train.

More information at IMDb

September is National Library Card Sign-Up Month

Nearly 2/3 of Americans have library cards. If you're among the 1/3 that don't, now is the time to get one! Stop by to sign up-- it only takes a minute!

Your library card is your key to Perrot's collection of over 70,000 items, as well as Greenwich Library's collection of over half a million items. Resources include a wide range of books, magazines, music CDs, DVDs, videos, audiobooks and materials in languages from around the world.

If you are an employee of the Town of Greenwich, you are eligible for a Greenwich library card! Library staff from Perrot and the Greenwich Libraries will have a booth set up at Greenwich Town Hall from 12P.M.-2 P.M. on September 11th through 15th, 2006, to accept library card applications. Just look for the sign in the Town Hall lobby!

Perrot's Youth Services department is also having a special library card promotion-- sign up for a library card or update your information and receive a special treat!

Check out this list of 52 suggestions for ways to use your library card [in .PDF format].

First Day Jitters?

Early childhood experts agree that being prepared for a new experience and knowing what to expect are keys to relieving anxiety. At this time of year, patrons of Perrot’s Youth Services Department often come looking for books that will help them to help their little ones make a successful transition to a “school” situation, whether that means day care, playgroup, preschool, pre-K, or the big leap into (gulp!) kindergarten.

Click here for a list of some of our favorite picture books about starting school.

Three from Thalia

Three new book recommendations from Thalia:


Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia, by Elizabeth Gilbert

An inspiring account of one woman’s inner and outer journey to find truth and the quintessential best of three countries.




A Bike Ride: 12,000 Miles Across the World, by Anne Mustoe

The wonderful, historically descriptive travelogue of a non-athletic professor who biked up to 50 miles a day.






Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, by Immaculee Ilibagiza with Steve Erwin

A deeply inspiring true story of faith and survival.





Have you read any of these books? Comment on this post with your thoughts!