This month’s display: Black History

Library volunteer Tracie Merrill continues her series of monthly displays featuring a single theme with this month’s focus on Black history. Stop by the library to browse special selections in fiction, nonfiction, and movies for all ages.

Think that “history” in this context only refers to events of the past? One of the current topics of interest in the Young Adult and children’s literature communities right now is portrayal of characters of color, including how those characters are pictured on the covers of those books. This essay on “Kids of Color and the New American Whitewashing” by Colleen Mondor provides a good overview of the issue, with lots of author comments and helpful links.

2/3: New at the library this week

Movies:

District 9
Mamma Mia!
The hangover
Quantum of solace
Julie & Julia
The secret life of bees

(all movies are on dvd unless otherwise noted)

Books:

Ash / Malinda Lo
In the wake of her father’s death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.
The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King’s Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash’s capacity for love-and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love. (Age Range: Young Adult)

Library board report

The library board met last night for their regular quarterly meeting.

In old business, the board reviewed a draft bylaws update, specified a few changes, and agreed that the revised draft would be circulated by email for approval.

Also discussed were strategies for increasing circulation of less-visible items. Tracie Merrill described a monthly-themed book display she has undertaken as a project, and asked board members to suggest titles they feel would be appropriate when she emails them with each month’s subject. Several suggestions were made at the meeting for the upcoming Black History Month display.

Library Director Shirly Giles submitted a report that she will be attending the state library convention in Anchorage in March, part of her continuing education required under the terms of the library’s grant from the State of Alaska.

Proposed lighting and shelving upgrades were reviewed for new board members. Tracy Philpot made a suggestion of a potential source for more footstools that could be used to access the more neglected books on the highest shelves and agreed to undertake recruiting that donation.

The next regularly-scheduled board meeting will be April 28.

1/20: New at the library this week

Movies:

Home on the range
Batman : The movie
I am legend
Lord of the rings : The fellowship of the ring
Hulk
Shrek 2
Transformers : Season 2
Sinbad : Legend of the Seven Seas
Spy kids 2 : The island of lost dreams
The story of Jesus for children

Looking for tax forms?

The IRS has cut back on tax form distributions over the past few years and no longer sends out that big bundle to either the library or the Post Office.

All of the tax forms and publications are online, however, on the “Forms and Publications” page of the IRS website. They can be downloaded and printed out or you may order them to be delivered by mail.

If you don’t have online access at home, don’t forget that we can help you use the free public computers at the library. You are also welcome to print from online sources, and we charge only $.10 a page for this service.

City Councilman Walter McInnes dropped by the library recently to report that the city office also has copies of some IRS forms as well as Permanent Fund Dividend applications.

1/14: New at the library this week

Movies:

Australia
P.S. I love you
The Rocky Horror picture show
The last picture show
New in town

(all movies are on dvd unless otherwise noted)

Books:

Deeper than the dead / Tami Hoag
California, 1984. Three children, running in the woods behind their school, stumble upon a partially buried female body, eyes and mouth glued shut. Close behind the children is their teacher, Anne Navarre, shocked by this discovery and heartbroken as she witnesses the end of their innocence. What she doesn’t yet realize is that this will mark the end of innocence for an entire community, as the ties that bind families and friends are tested by secrets uncovered in the wake of a serial killer’s escalating activity.

Detective Tony Mendez, fresh from a law enforcement course at FBI headquarters, is charged with interpreting those now revealed secrets. He’s using a new technique-profiling-to develop a theory of the case, a strategy that pushes him ever deeper into the lives of the three children, and closer to the young teacher whose interest in recent events becomes as intense as his own.

As new victims are found and the media scrutiny of the investigation bears down on them, both Mendez and Navarre are unsure if those who suffer most are the victims themselves-or the family and friends of the killer, blissfully unaware that someone very close to them is a brutal, calculating psychopath.

12/24: New at the library this week

Audiobooks

I heard that song before / Mary Higgins Clark
Kay Lansing grew up in Englewood, New Jersey, daughter of the landscaper to the wealthy and powerful Carrington family. One day, accompanying her father to work, six-year-old Kay overhears a quarrel between a man and a woman that ends with the man’s caustic response: “I heard that song before.” That same evening, young Peter Carrington drives the nineteen-year-old daughter of neighbors home from a formal dinner dance at the Carrington estate, but she is not in her room the next morning and is never seen or heard from again.
Decades later, a cloud of suspicion hangs over Peter, not only for his neighbor’s disappearance but also for the subsequent drowning death of his own pregnant wife in their swimming pool. But when Kay Lansing, now a librarian in Englewood, asks Peter’s permission to hold a literary benefit… (read a sample chapter

Fury / Robert Tanenbaum
In Brooklyn, a female jogger is brutally raped; the assailants are convicted and later exonerated by the Kings County DA. Now the guilty are filing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the city of New York, the police, and the two Brooklyn Assistant DAs who tried the case. Caught in the glare of the media-frenzy, Butch Karp may be blinded to the lethal maneuverings of a terrorist cell plotting to bring the city to its knees by striking Times Square on New Year’s Eve. But the destruction begins far below ground, in the subway system — where Karp’s family may become their first victims…. (read an exerpt; abridged, cd)

Movies:

Santa buddies : The legend of Santa paws
The proposal
(all movies are on dvd unless otherwise noted)

12/22: New at the library this week

Movies:

Public enemies
Harry Potter and the half-blood prince
Angels & demons
The punisher
Cranford
Collision
Is anybody there?
Place of execution
Inspector Lewis, Series 2 (complete, 4 discs)
(all movies are on dvd unless otherwise noted)

Books:

The angel’s game / Carlos Ruiz Zafón
In an abandoned mansion at the heart of Barcelona, a young man, David Martín, makes his living by writing sensationalist novels under a pseudonym. The survivor of a troubled childhood, he has taken refuge in the world of books and spends his nights spinning baroque tales about the city’s underworld. But perhaps his dark imaginings are not as strange as they seem, for in a locked room deep within the house lie photographs and letters hinting at the mysterious death of the previous owner.
Like a slow poison, the history of the place seeps into his bones as he struggles with an impossible love. Close to despair, David receives a letter from a reclusive French editor, Andreas Corelli, who makes him the offer of a lifetime. He is to write a book unlike anything that has ever existed—a book with the power to change hearts and minds. In return, he will receive a fortune, and perhaps more. But as David begins the work, he realizes that there is a connection between his haunting book and the shadows that surround his home. (read an exerpt)

Booksigning a success

If you weren’t there Thursday evening to hear Erin and Hig, you missed an exciting evening.

Join us for an evening with Erin & Hig

Seldovian author Erin McKittrick and fellow trekker Bret Higman will be at the library this Thursday evening for a slide presentation on their journey and book signing of Erin’s new book, Journey on the Wild Coast.

Please join us for this free event in the Multipurpose Room at 7 pm.

Books will be available for purchase and signing, or you are welcome to bring copies you’ve already purchased to be signed.

This is a perfect opportunity to cross off those remaining gifts on your Christmas list with a real Seldovian flare.

Mark your calendar: Thursday, December 10 at 7 pm in the Multipurpose Room. See you there!