Summer Reading

It's that time of year once more . . .when lots of information comes out about the library's Summer Reading Program. This year's theme One World Many Stories will offer a wonderful program that will be ready to launch on Tuesday, May 31. All you need to do before that date is to stop in the library and sign up. Sign up will begin on Monday, May 23, when our doors open and will be available during library hours that entire week. Our groups start with the Wee Ones and go up through the group for children entering fifth and sixth grade in the fall.

What is the purpose of signing up, you ask. Sign up allows you to assist your child in setting a realistic reading goal for the five-week program. As an incentive, the library offers an opportunity for children to earn a summer reading tee shirt if they set a goal of at least ten hours of reading during the five weeks and reach that goal. In addition, library staff members get an idea of how many children to plan for at the weekly story and craft sessions for the various age groups. In addition to just reading, these age group sessions give the children a fun time at the library each week at a designated time.

Special programs are also offered for the whole family throughout summer reading. When you sign up, you will be given a schedule of everything happening at the library. The schedule includes a section to tear off and turn back in when your child's reading goal is met. Summer is a busy time and not everything may fit into your family's schedule, but you are welcome to participate in summer reading however it works best for your family.

It is a research-proven fact that children lose reading skills over the summer if they do not practice. What a fun way to make sure your children get in some reading during the summer!

Up to this point, children have been the topic, but the teens have their own program entitled You Are Here. Special activities are planned for them during the five weeks. They sign up just like the children and set their goal to work toward the tee shirt. Voracious readers in both the children's and teens' groups (those who read 35 hours or more during the five weeks of summer reading) qualify for our High Readers Club. Those young people will be treated to an outing at the end of the program.

Novel Destinations is the theme of our Adult program this year. It will run from May 31 through July 18. At sign up, adults will receive a special passport and an opportunity to turn in tickets to qualify for prize drawings.

In keeping with this year's One World Many Stories theme, lots of new books have been purchased. The My First Book series will help to explore how various words are said in various other countries. Books in the series include, but are not limited to, Japanese Words, Vietnamese Words, Italian Words, and German Words. Another new title is Monkey by Gerald McDermott. Monkey is a trickster tale from India and is an example of some of the stories that will be shared during our weekly story and craft sessions.

Kicking off our special programs will be Laercio Lobo and Iago Goncalzes from Brazil. Both of these young men are attending college here in Liberal. That program is on Wednesday, June 1 at 3:30. On Thursday evening, June 2 at 6:30, will be Llamas on the Lawn, featuring the llamas of Terryl and Betty Hollman. The following week, June 7 at 6:45 will be a Multi-Lingual Story Time featuring Fannie Benincasa reading in French, Olga Cisneros reading in Spanish, and me reading in English

Fannie will return on Wednesday, June 8, at 3:30, along with Juraj Stepanovic, for a program on the European countries of France and the Czech Republic.

On June 17, Dr. Randy Gill will present a program on India at 2:00 p.m.

Another Seward County Community College student, Nathan Nelmes, will be presenting a program on Australia on the 23rd at 2:30. Week five of summer reading will include two young men from the continent of Africa--Idowu (John) Esomojumi and Opeyemi Salami, telling attendees about their African countries on Tuesday, June 28, at 1:30. Our final program is the Lee Richardson Zoo on Thursday, June 30, at 2 p.m. They always bring an intriguing set of animals to show and ask only that the audience be punctual and remain quiet during their presentation.

Have we got excitement? You bet! Plan to join us for a good time this summer. See you at Memorial Library!

Fiction

So, Poppets, we meet again to discuss books and whatever else I feel is relevant--you, of course, have no say-so in subject matter--but I'm sure we can find some things to "chat" about as we go along. So, did everyone make it through Mother's Day--without a guilty conscience, that is? I hope all of you who have mothers--and are lucky enough to be in that position--thought of a card and/or present to honor the fact you do have a mother, still, in your life. By and large, we mothers meant well, and had to learn some lessons, and shed some tears, and are proud of our children's lives and achievements--and deserve every box of candy and card we get!

Didja see the pictures of the royal wedding? (How could you have avoided them--they were all over the place!) Lovely bride with an elegant wedding dress, her groom looked dashing, and they are off on their honeymoon--well done, guys! Now, we have Prince Harry--and he'll be a handful for some blushing bride (which, actually, in this day and age rarely blush after the 7th grade!) So, I walked into the library, here in Liberal, and found a movie cut-out poster, 8 ft. high, of Robert Pattinson,of the Vampire movies, behind my chair--and not a vampire in sight, although there were snickers from the staff!

So, this is the easy way to segue into my first Fiction title--"The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead," by Paul Elwork, and it combines mystery and fantasy and has received excellent reviews. "It is the summer of 1925: Emily Stewart and her brother, Micheal, are 13-year-old twins--privileged, precocious, and wandering aimlessly around their family's Philadelphia estate." Emily spends her days imagining characters and strange creatures and Micheal "keeps to himself", reading by the river and longing for mysteries to solve. One day Emily discovers "a secret talent--she can secretly crack a joint in her ankle so the sound seems to burst in mid-air" and, quite naturally, the children who live around there are fascinated by these "spirit knockings."

Now, the year, again, is 1925 and many adults are still affected by WW1 and these sounds and signs are upsetting to them. Finally, their "game" spins out of their control with fatal results, for them and others who've been touched . A good read.

Now, onto a very well-known author, Jayne Ann Krentz, (writing as Amanda Quick) who has written the second book of the "Looking Glass Trilogy", entitled "Quicksilver". She is always an interesting reach-out-to-grab-you writer. This book should be no exception, concerning, as it does, the adventures in Victorian times of a glass reader, Virginia Dean, and a paranormal investigator, Owen Sweetwater (you just know that they are destined to come together in the 3rd novel!)

There are psychical as well as physical monsters who are preying on women and children in Victorian England and Sweetwater, who is a member of the exclusive Arcane Society, is always ready to defend them from the monsters. Virginia knows that "dark energy emanates from mirrors" and she can sense it and read it, and while other members of the Arcane Society may think she's "a charlatan, even a criminal", Sweetwater knows her powers of glass reading are very real. Then, there is the factor, in every good story, of romance, mystery, and, in this case, a dangerous "dark spirit" lurking in the mirrors that some characters want to contact and others to destroy. I have certainly enjoyed exploring this strange, passionate story and I'm certain others will.

I've never read any of James Patterson's series, "The Women's Murder Club", but I've certainly heard about the 10 books recounting their adventures--and here's his newest, "Tenth Anniversary"--which also means, actually, several mysteries to look into. The wedding celebration of Det. Lindsay Boxer is marred by the discovery of a mutilated teenage girl, left to die, and no trace of her newborn baby, and Asst. District Attorney, Yuki Castellano, is in the process of prosecuting a woman accused of murdering her husband in front of their two children--which comes to a screeching halt when Boxer says she has evidence that could free the wife. That dilemma becomes a choice of "should she trust her best friend or follow her instinct?"

So, there is mystery, human elements of revenge and love, and I believe I can state "without fear of contradiction", that an author who has sold more then 250 MILLION copies of his works knows how to grab people's interest and keep it until the last page. His characters are always "human", as their problems are any of ours--and the solutions seem to work well for all. I am not in favor of printing stories with so much white page surrounding the words--I always feel a little cheated as if the author should have written more--but certainly in this case, the story carries well. The character of Lindsay Boxer and her new husband, Joe, are loving and believable, so get it and enjoy.

If anything happens to Danielle Steele so that she, mercifully, stops producing mediocre books every time she sneezes (you can tell she is not one of my favorite authors!), don't despair, dear Poppets, because we always have the mother-daughter team of Mary and Carol Clark. Yes. For a long time, I predict, we'll have Mary and Carol, unlike one of my favorite radio comedy teams--Amos and Andy--or Abbott and Costello--or Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin (the last 2 teams in the movies).

However, Carol Higgins Clark has a new one out, "Mobbed", and it features P.I. (you do know that's for "Private Investigator", I assume) Regan Reilly and her husband, Jack, head of the NYPD Major Case Squad, who are going to the Jersey shore for the week-end to celebrate Regan's mother's birthday. Her mother calls and asks if Regan can come up right away and Regan does and learns it's all about an outrageous garage sale, and the contents are everything that the young and beautiful actress, Cleo Paradise, left behind when she mysteriously fled her house.

Regan's mother, Nora, had just had a jolting conversation with her best friend, Karen Fulton, who's learned that selling Cleo's "stuff" was her mother, Edna's, idea. Karen's heading East but asks Nora to please go to the house and curtail her mother's "plan." (It's too late to cancel that plane flying over the beach with a banner advertising the sale of Cleo Paradise's belongings). Once inside the house, Regan and her mom, Nora, start to speculate over why, exactly, would Cleo leave all her belongings behind? Good suspenseful story!

So, as George Burns used to say, at the end of his and Gracie Allen's radio and TV show, "Say goodnight, Gracie" and she would obediently say, "Goodnight, Gracie" and so I say this to you--in the sense that our chat over books, for this time at least, is over. Enjoy each day, stop smoking--period--, remember "Father's Day" is fairly soon, and be friendly to strangers passing through--a smile is only a frown turned upside down! Bye!