Ladybug Voting Deadline is Today

Today is the deadline for 2006 Ladybug Picture Book Award ballots! I have counted over 10,000 votes so far and there is a good-sized stack of tally sheets yet to be counted. The Madison Library completed their voting and The Great Fuzz Frenzy was their local favorite. Will it be the 2006 winner? We won't know until all the votes are counted so be sure to send me your tally sheets by 5pm today!

Blogs and the Centers for the Book

When I decided that the NH Center for the Book should have a blog I started by looking around to see who else had done such and thing and what did and didn't work for them. There is a listserv for the directors of the 51 state Centers for the Book (I am counting D.C. as a state -- I think it should be one) and I started there. I heard back from a few people who said they don't have blogs but would like me to share what I learned. So, here it is.
I discovered a couple of blogs that relate to state centers for the book but none that seem to be entirely about or published by state Centers. It appears that New Hampshire is the first Center for the Book to have its very own blog.

Here are some of the related blogs I found:

• Fairfax County Public Library has both a blog and an affiliate Virginia Center for the Book (thanks to Katie Strotman for telling me about this one). Their statement on why and how they moderate comments is very well stated.
• The Indiana State Library has a blog with archives going back June 2004 which includes the Indiana Center for the Book as a category.
• The Oklahoma Department of Libraries has a link on its website to a blog called Reading Oklahoma which had interesting book-related stuff on it, though its connection (if any) to the Oklahoma Center for the Book was not clear.

This blog, like many, is a work in progress. It will evolve and change as technology and the NH Center for the Book do. It is open for comments from anyone (they will be moderated to avoid spam and such) and I hope you will take moment to tell me what you think of this latest experiment in communication.

Pat Frisella, NH Poet

This seems to be the day to learn more about NH poet Pat Frisella, she has been turning up in my reading and email today. She recently received the Anthony Piccione Memorial "Poets For Peace" Award. The December 2006 issue of The NH Writer's Project newsletter Ex Libris includes an article by Pat about her experience editing the anthology The Other Side of Sorrow. Pat is the current showcase poet chosen by NH Poet Laureate Pat Fargnoli. She is also a new entry in the NH Author's database.

30 days, 50,000 words

The Nashua Telegraph had an interesting story today about writing in NH:
"More than 450 aspiring writers in New Hampshire are racing to write a 50,000-word novel by Nov. 30.The contest is known as NaNoWriMo, short for National Novel Writing Month and the starting gun went off at midnight on Nov. 1. Participants from all over the world signed up in advance and must write 50,000 words, roughly a 175-page book, by midnight Nov. 30."

Author Bruce Graham

Vermont resident Bruce Graham will be at the Fiske Free Library in Claremont on Monday, December 4th at 7:00 PM to talk about his new book, Haven.

Giving Thanks to SJH

Happy Thanksgiving!
As you get ready to celebrate tomorrow you may want to take a little time to learn more about the New Hampshire author who convinced Abraham Lincoln to create Thanksgiving. Check out NH Public Radio's Sarah Josepha Hale, The Mother of Thanksgiving. Sarah Josepha Hale, born in Newport in 1788, is the woman in whose honor the Hale Award is given each year.

Rabid Reader: the wiki

Dover Public Library has put together a really interesting Wiki called The Rabid Reader. It includes pages about books that someone liked and created a page about. The pages can be commented on -- did you also like the book, did you not, etc. -- or you can add your own page about a book that isn't listed yet. There are also a couple of "If you liked this book, try these" pages which were interesting, although some insight into what the poster felt made Janet Evanovich a read-alike for Carl Hiaasen would have been good.
I thought this was an excellent use of technology to provide a venue for talking about books!

Two stepping with e e cummings

NPR did an interview this week with singer-songwriter Kris Delmhorst whose new CD, Strange Conversation presents musical interpretations of various poems. Among the poems included on the CD is Anyone Lived in a Pretty Cow Town by e e cummings (late of New Hampshire's Silver Lake) which Delmhorst has set to a Texas 2-step.
It is a cool idea for a CD and the cover art will appeal to the more bookish among us.

Teen Book Award Nominations Sought

The Flume: NH Teen Reader's Choice Award is now accepting nominations for 2008. Each year teens (grades 9-12) nominate titles, published within the last two years, that they think deserve to be recognized. Librarians then narrow the group of titles to a list of 13 and teens vote for the winning title. Nominated titles can be fiction or nonfiction, they must have a publication date within the last two years.