Shipwrecks are the subject of many books in our collection, perhaps because New England has a long shipping history, and shipwrecks are obviously part of that history. Here's just a sampling:
Yesterday, at their annual meeting, the American Library Association announced the winners of its Youth Media Awards. The two biggies are the Newbery Award and the Caldecott Award. The 2012 Newbery Award for the most outstanding contribution to children's literature is Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos [J GAN]. The 2012 Caldecott Award for the most distinguished American picture book for children is A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka [JP RAS].
The Caldecott Honor Books are Blackout, illustrated and written by John Rocco [JP ROC], Grandpa Green illustrated and written by Lane Smith [on order], and Me...Jane illustrated and written by Patrick McDonnell [JP MCD].
Singer, Etta James, passed away last week. There's a nice tribute at Weekend Edition on NPR. Be sure to check it out.
A winter garden in an alder swamp,
Where conies now come out to sun and romp,
As near a paradise as it can be
And not melt snow or start a dormant tree.
It lifts existence on a plane of snow
One level higher than the earth below,
One level nearer heaven overhead,
And last year's berries shining scarlet red.
It lifts a gaunt luxuriating beast
Where he can stretch and hold his highest feat
On some wild apple tree's young tender bark,
What well may prove the year's high girdle mark.
So near to paradise all pairing ends:
Here loveless birds now flock as winter friends,
Content with bud-inspecting. They presume
To say which buds are leaf and which are bloom.
A feather-hammer gives a double knock.
This Eden day is done at two o'clock.
An hour of winter day might seem too short
To make it worth life's while to wake and sport.
from West-Running Brook [811 FRO]
When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind.
My MakeupHead over to A Teaching Life where Tara is rounding up the Poetry Friday offerings for this week.
by Rochelle Kraut
on my cheeks I wear
the flush of two beers
on my eyes I use
the dark circles of sleepless nights
to great advantage
for lipstick
I wear my lips
Amen, Daniel G. The Amen Solution: The Brain Healthy Way to Lose Weight and Keep It Off. [613.25 AME]
My Bomb
Better than a dream, it left gargantuan
roses in the Japanese garden, and the rabbits
heavy as children. we would crouch
in the classroom beneath our desks
and concentrate on being small, study
the whitecaps of our knees. Once
we went below the library,
the dark shelves stacked with cans
of creamed corn, green beans, mandarin oranges
we'd eat like the dead for five years
and rise again. Thus,
I learned the catechism: proton, electron,
neutron. I learned to contemplate
the Invisible. I went to sleep
in the fire-cloud folding like the brain
and dreamt about the power of my bomb,
girls flashing to the sidewalks, cities
filigreed, the bird-cinders,
light bright as the mirror on the shoe of God
and afterward, pink as phoenixes,
the American Beauties pressing
their mammoth lips to the charge of the ski.
This is how I loved the earth
with my life. With the pure nuclei of
my matter. How it fell into my hands.
Better than desire,
my bomb lit the face of my own
twentieth century. I had it
so no one could use it. I would have more
so no one could have enough.
NH Digital Resource Consortium from DeerfieldCS on Vimeo.
Myers is a talented writer of poetry, fiction, biographies, and picture books for children and young adults. A small sampling of his titles that are in our collection includes Blues Journey [J 811 MYE], The Greatest: Muhammad Ali [J B ALI], Jazz [JP MYE], Monster [YA MYE], 145th Street: Short Stories [YA MYE], and Sunrise Over Fallujah [YA MYE, also YA AB/CD MYE].The machine was also the target of some hostility from professional hand-knitters around the country. Most famously, in Leicester in 1779, a man called Ned Lud broke into a cottage and ("in a fit of insane rage," according to the Oxford English Dictionary) destroyed two stocking frames. Mr Lud unwittingly lent his name to the 18th century anarchist, anti-technology movement, the Luddites.So that's the story behind the word!
