Calling All 6th, 7th & 8th Graders!

Yankee Book Swap

Wednesday, March 26th from 4 to 5:30 pm

at the

Bedford Free Library

Bring a book you give away,

your sense of fun,

(you might not go home with

the book you expected!)

& your appetite.

Eat, Swap, Talk!

Registration is helpful but not required; the more the merrier!

The Sledding Hill by Chris Crutcher

By now you all know that I am new here. And new to being a YA librarian. So I guess you won't mind finding out that prior to taking this job I had never read a book by Chris Crutcher and I didn't know a thing about him. I didn't know, for instance, that he has the same birthday as me (July 17th) or that he is known for writing controversial books. Books that even wind up on the banned books list.

I decided to read The Sledding Hill because I liked the cover and because our library has lots of books by Chris Crutcher and it looked like a book that maybe a boy would want to read. I did not read any reviews before I started in on page one.

In fact, I read the entire book before I read a review. I was astounded to learn that people considered this book potentially controversial. I just thought it was a great story full of interesting ideas and pretty good writing to boot. Goes to show you what I know.

So I guess if you want to read a controversial book, this would be a great choice. And maybe that's a more attractive reason for a young person to read it than an adult like me telling you why I think it would be good for you.

I could post an excerpt or a review, but I'd really rather have you Read It For Yourself, the way I did, and then let me know what you think.

5th Grade Girls Book Group

This is my first book group here at the Bedford Free Library and I am very excited about it. The book we will be discussing is River Boy by Tim Bowler.

We will meet at the library on Thursday, February 14th at 7:00 p.m.

Books are being held at the children's circulation desk for you to pick up.

Come in or call (234-3570) to sign up now!

JANUARY

“… a hot bath is the best place for all of us in the miserable month of January. The excitement of Christmas is long past and school is soon beginning again and there is really nothing to look forward to except the cold weeks ahead. If I had my way I would remove January from the calendar altogether and have an extra July instead.

For the last twelve months we have been living in one year and now all of a sudden it is another. It is extraordinary how this tremendous change takes place in the space of a fraction of a second. As the clock approaches midnight on the thirty-first of December you are still in the old year, but then all at once, one millionth of a second after midnight, you are in the new. I have always found this sudden change from one year to another awfully hard to get used to, and all through the new January that follows I keep writing down the old year instead of the new one on letters and cheques and other bits of paper. The same sort of thing happens on your birth when you are nine years old one day and ten years old the next. It is lovely to be a year older, but it is the suddenness of it all that is so amazing.”

~ from My Year by Road Dahl

What would YOU write?

I 've started listening to audio books in the car. It's half an hour from my home to the library and I thought this would be a smart way to get ahead at reviewing materials for our YA collection. (After all, I can only read so fast, and there are so many books, you wouldn't even believe.)

I thought I would skim the books, skipping chapters, listening just enough to get a feel for the quality of the writing, the general plot, the moral (if there is one) and the ending --in other words, the stuff a librarian would need to know in order to decide whether a book is 'good' for kids to read. A great time-saver, I thought.

So now I'm in the midst of Inkspell, which I am listening to only because I simply had to know what happened after Inkheart, which I listened to last month. (You can see how this is not working out so well as a time-saving tool. 13 hours of listening to Lynn Redgrave read me the first book was more than enough to determine that Cornelia Funke is an author well worth reading. And I haven't skipped a single word, never mind an entire chapter.)

Today I got to the part where Meggie and Farid find Fenoglio in the Inkworld after Meggie has read the two of them there so that they can warn Dustfinger about Basta.

I was relieved that there seems to be a way for Meggie to get home (assuming of course that Fenoglio can find write the right words), but more than that, I found myself shaking my head in wonderment at the scope of this story and the patience of its teller. When you think about it, she has done much more than Fenoglio, for she has created two worlds for her readers. Amazing, really.

Can you imagine what it would be like to start with a blank sheet of paper and have it turn out to be a book read by millions? Where does that first idea come from?

And wouldn't it be a grand and glorious thing to give the world a story that lasts forever?

But I am not a writer, and over the years I have managed to make my peace with this, telling myself that readers play just as important a role. After all, what value is the story if it never gets read?

Of course I've never asked Cornelia Funke, but I imagine the reason she has such patience for telling Meggie's story is that it's precisely the sort of story she would most like to be told -- a story so rich and full of detail that it's hard to believe it's not real.

This got me thinking about what kind of story I would write --I mean, if I ever could. What type of story do I like most to hear? Coming at it from that direction, maybe I could write something someday. Who knows? Anything's possible, right?

And then, not surprisingly, all of this thinking about stories led me to wondering about you.

If you could give the world just one story to last forever, what would YOU write?

UMD's

Some libraries in our system now have UMD's (Universal Media Discs). These optical discs are for use with PlayStation Portable. Go to http://www.westchesterlibraries.org/ and search by keyword 'UMD' to find out which games, movies and TV shows are available. Choose what you'd like and order it through inter-library loan. It'll be here in a few days' time.

Virtual Library System

Did you know you can access your library account via the internet?

Just go the the homepage: http://www.westchesterlibraries.org/ and click on 'Reserve/Renew'.

From there, click on 'My Card & Renew Items', enter your library card number and you'll be able to review your account record.

Look up the status of items you have checked out and renew before you get fines!

You can also search the catalog and place holds to reserve items. You'll get a phone message when your items are ready to pick up.