Eat Books?

In early April each year Edible Book Festivals are held in locations around the world. On April 9, 2011 Hooksett Public Library will host it's own Edible Book Contest.

"Mouths and minds will be salivating once again on April 9 from 9am - 12pm at the Hooksett Public Library. Do the titles "The Cherry Cheesecake Murder," "How to Eat Fried Worms," and "Everything on a Waffle," ring a bell? They were past entries in our "Edible Books" contests. You will never look at these books the same way once you participate in or attend the “Edible Books” contest!"

Book of the Week #13

Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season by Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King (NY: Scribner, 2004)

As baseball season is about to start, this seemed like a good book for this week.

 "Early in 2004, two writers and Red Sox fans, Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King, decided to chronicle the upcoming season, one of the most hotly anticipated in baseball history. They would sit together at Fenway. They would exchange emails. They would write about the games. And, as it happened, they would witness the greatest comeback ever in sports, and the first Red Sox championship in eighty-six years. What began as a Sox-filled summer like any other is now a fan's notes for the ages." (publisher's blurb)

Stewart O'Nan will be at Gibson's on Sunday, April 3, 2011 at 2pm talking about his new novel, Emily Alone.


The Red Sox home opener against the NY Yankees is on 4/8/11. Closer to home, the NH Fisher Cats opener is 4/7/11. May the best teams win!

Exeter Book Events This Week

This is a great week for book-lovers to be in Exeter, NH!

Tonight (Tuesday, 3/29/2011) at 7pm Water Street Bookstore is hosting a staff picks night.
"A handful of booksellers, including Liz Whaley, Jean Paul Adriaansen and weekend bookseller Sarah Connell, will be talking about some new and old favorite books. We'll have wine, freebies and maybe even some discounts. No need to RSVP--just show up, and bring a friend!"

Tomorrow night (Wednesday, 3/30/2011) beginning at 6:30pm there will be a Crime Writers Panel at the Exeter Public Library. Lara Bricker, Cornelia Read, Toby Ball and Kevin Flynn will be on a panel speaking about crime and mystery writing. This event is free and open to the public!

Ladybug Nominees 2011

The Ladybug Picture Book Award committee has chosen the nominees for the 2011 Ladybug Picture Book Award. New Hampshire children, from preschool to third grade, will select the winning picture book when they vote in November 2011.

Full catalog records for all of the nominated titles are available in the NHU-PAC. Voting materials will be posted on the Ladybug web page in August. If you want to get ahead of the crowd you can go ahead and order your Ladybug Stickers anytime.

And the 2011 nominees are:

• City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Willems and John J. Muth (Hyperion, 2010)
• Guyku: A Year of Haiku for Boys by Bob Raczka and Peter H. Reynolds (Houghton Mifflin, 2010)
• Hibernation Station by Michelle Meadows and Kurt Cyrus (Simon & Schuster, 2010)
• In the Wild by David Elliott and Holly Meade (Candlewick, 2010)
• Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein (Candlewick, 2010)
• Memoirs of a Goldfish by Devin Scillian and Tim Bowers (Sleeping Bear, 2010)
• One by Kathryn Otoshi (KO Kids Books, 2008)
• Rubia and the Three Osos by Susan Middleton Elya and Melissa Sweet (Hyperion, 2010)
• The Cow Loves Cookies by Karma Wilson and Marcellus Hall (Margaret K. McElderry, 2010)
• Ugly Pie by Lisa Wheeler and Heather Solomon (Harcourt Children's Books, 2010)

 

Ladybug is on Facebook

It was suggested to me recently that the Ladybug Picture Book Award should have it's own Facebook page. Well now it does -- please find us on Facebook!

Margaret Atwood on "The Publishing Pie: An Author's View"

This talk is both thought provoking and funny. Well worth watching.

Book of the Week #12

Oraculous Tales: Sword of the Ramurai by Becky Ances & Ryan Wilson (Peterborough, N.H.: Moo-Cow Fan Club, 2008).

Before she moved to China to teach, author Becky Ances lived in New Hampshire. In this, the first book in her Oraculous Tales series (illustrated by her husband Ryan Wilson), Moo-Cow and the gang travel to ancient Japan and Ramses is mistaken for a Samurai. Mixed in with the story are illustrated pages that describe things in the story--like a katana, using chopsticks, and samurai armour. The story is both fun and funny with quite a bit of education snuck in among the adventures.

"Cookies and a story. What could be better than that?" (p. 8)

LAL NH semi-finalists selected

There were 115 letters that advanced to level 3 judging and from those 47 were selected as New Hampshire's 2011 Letters About Literature semi-finalists. The state winners at each competition level will be selected from these outstanding letters. Envelopes are going out today to each of the students whose letters were selected as semi-finalists. Once we receive signed release forms back from each student we will announce their names.

Here are the schools whose students wrote semi-finalist letters. There were also a few individual entries from students who did not indicate which school they attend.

• Barnard School 
• Crossroads Academy
• Gilford High School 
• Haverhill Cooperative Middle School 
• Hopkinton Middle High School
• Infant Jesus School
• Lisbon Regional School 
• Londonderry High School 
• Londonderry Middle School 
• Milford Middle School 
• Oyster River Middle School 
• Plainfield Elementary School 
• Saint Mary Academy 
• Sandwich Central School 
• Seacoast Charter School 
• Stratham Memorial School 
• Three Rivers School 
• Trinity Christian School

 

Book of the Week #11

Jake's Run by Jerome R. Mahoney (College Station, TX: Virtualbookwork.com, 2006)

"Jerome R. Mahoney is a fine writer, with a great sense of humor. He understands small-town life inside out and knows how to create characters that readers will care about. Jake’s Run is an entertaining and insightful novel." - Howard Frank Mosher

A small town is made up of many different communities and Jerome Mahoney does a wonderful job of showing his readers the various communities that make up Woodbine, Vermont. These communities come together--not always peacefully--when a very large bull named Jake decides--thanks to a gate left open by a mooney teenager--to wander around a bit. The attempts to find and return Jake, and the village life that he wanders through make up this novel. If Rebecca Rule had written Trailerpark, it might have been a lot like this book which gives us a look into the private moments of the residents of a small town and shows us the funny side of them.

Happy Birthday Douglas Adams!

Today is the 59th anniversary of the birth of author Douglas Adams.

"Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty- five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things." -- Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." --Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

Several of Adams' books are available through New Hampshire Downloadable Books.

Book of the Week #10

Thirteen Women: Inside New Hampshire's Female Majority Senate by Michaeline Della Fera (Spring, TX: L&L Dreamspell, 2010)

"The voters of New Hampshire changed the course of history forever when in November 2009 thirteen women, eleven democrats and two republicans, were elected to steer the state through one of its worst economic crises. Thirteen Women, Inside New Hampshire’s Female Majority gives the reader a rare glance inside Senate chambers. Thirteen Women documents these women Senators’ personal struggles and remarkable abilities to juggle their lives and commitments with the demands of the campaign trail. Thirteen Women further portrays the women’s determination, work ethic and dedication, to not only the constituents of New Hampshire, but to the continuation of the political process, aka women’s style." (back cover)

Michaeline Della Fera will be speaking this week:

•  Dunbarton Public Library on Thursday, March 10, 2011 from 7pm – 8pm
• Toadstool Bookshop, Milford on Saturday, March 12, 2011 from 2pm - 4pm.

Book Event Sampler

Here are some of the book events going on in NH this week.

Tuesday, 3/8/11

• Hannah Holmes will be at River Run at 7pm talking about Quirk: Brain Science Makes Sense of your Peculiar Personality
• Gibson's will host Margaret Roach, author of And I Shall Have Some Peace There: Trading in the Fast Lane for my Own Dirt Road at 5:30 (note that the time is earlier than usual)

Thursday, 3/10/11

• Jennifer Chiaverini will be at Gibson's at 7pm talking about her latest Elm Creek Quilts novel, The Union Quilters
• Poet Don Kimball is featured at the monthly Hyla Brook Reading on Thursday, March 10, 2011, 6:30-8:30pm. The series, affiliated with the Robert Frost Farm, takes place at BeanTowne Coffee House & Café, on Rte 111 in Hampstead. Also reading is Margaret Bobalek King, a member of the Hyla Brook Poets. The Reading Series is free and open to the public.
• The Mystery Book Group will meet at 7pm at White Birch Books to discuss The Rhetoric of Death by Judith Rock

Saturday, 3/12/2011

• Rob Huckins will be at Toadstool Bookshop, Peterborough at 2pm talking about American Dreamland
• Toadstool Bookshop, Keene will host La Rosa Chronicles author K Spirito beginning at 2pm

Sunday, 3/13/11

• Jill Weber will be at Toadstool Bookshop, Milford at 2pm to sign The Story of Purim by Eric Kimmel which she illustrated.

Happy Birthday Talking Books!

Today the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS)—the Library of Congress’ talking-book and braille program—will celebrate 80 years of helping visually impaired and physically handicapped individuals enjoy reading their favorite books and magazines.


This free library program brings reading materials in digital audio and braille formats straight to the homes of patrons from preschoolers to centenarians. Books on digital cartridge, digital talking-book players and braille books are sent to patrons via the U.S. mail at no cost to users. People who sign up with the program also have the option of downloading books and magazines over the Internet in audio or braille format.

“Talking books offer a wonderful opportunity for anyone who cannot use regular print materials because of blindness or a physical handicap,” says NLS Director Kurt Cylke. “For 80 years this service has been a priceless gift.”

The NLS collection of more than 400,000 titles of bestsellers, classics, biographies, romance, and other genres delights even the most selective readers. Magazine-lovers enjoy free subscriptions to more than 40 periodicals in audio format, including Consumer Reports, National Geographic, and Sports Illustrated for Kids, and 30 periodicals in braille, such as Ladies Home Journal, ESPN: The Magazine and the New York Times Large-Print Weekly.

The NLS program also keeps pace with the latest book titles, adding 2,500 annually. Patrons learn of new releases through two bimonthly magazines, Talking Book Topics and Braille Book Review.

Patrons are served locally through a national network of cooperating libraries. Beginning with just 19 libraries in 1931, the NLS network today includes 113 libraries throughout the United States and its territories. Congress appropriates funds annually to the Library of Congress for the NLS program, while regional and sub-regional libraries receive financial support from federal, state, and local sources.

U.S. residents and citizens living abroad whose blindness or physical handicap makes reading regular printed matter difficult may be eligible to participate in the audio and braille books program. By law, priority is given to U.S. military veterans. Those interested in learning more or signing up may call 888-NLS-READ or visit www.loc.gov/nls/.

In New Hampshire this great program is administered by the Talking Books section of the New Hampshire State Library.