Snippets from the Shelves

A sunny sky and a cool breeze greeted the 60 pets and their families who attended the 30th Annual Pet Show sponsored by Meadville Public Library and Dad’s Products, Inc. Dad’s provided rosette ribbons, pet food samples and trophies for the pet show winners.

Chance, owned by Lita Ruhl, won the trophy for Best Cat in Show. Buddy, owned by Dante Hagberg, took the trophy for Best Dog in Show, and Abby, Cheyanne Crum’s dog, sang her way to the trophy for Most Talented.

Summer’s almost here! The 2008 Summer Reading Club, “Catch the Reading Bug” starts June 2 and lasts until August 8. This state-wide theme features cartoon insects from artist Harry Bliss whose work with Doreen Cronin has yielded such best-sellers as “Diary of a Worm,” “Diary of a Spider” and “Diary of a Fly.”

This summer’s program is open to children from toddlers to sixth graders with enough prizes, activities and performers to make the summer fly by.

Activities will have a buggy theme and special programs will include a magician, Doc Dixon, and the annual pet show in July cosponsored by Dad’s Products. There will be programs about many interesting and helpful insects. Each arts & crafts program will be divided into two activities – one for younger children and one for older, elementary-school-aged-children.

To participate, a child must be a member of one of Crawford County’s libraries. Preschoolers and summer visitors will receive a summer library card. An Insect Investigator’s special notebook will be issued to record each reader’s and listener’s progress through summer reading pleasure and prizes.

For every library book read, children will get a stamp in their notebook. Preschoolers must listen to two books to get a stamp. For every four stamps, a prize may be selected from the display case. When 12 stamps have been collected, participants qualify for two chances to win one of the Grand Prizes. The drawing for the prizes will be during our Summer Reading Club Party at 10 a.m. on August 8th.

Now that everyone has had the chance to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and although it’s supposed to be the last of its kind, series fans can take heart that other series authors have produced new titles to keep all of us reading. For the fall months ahead, you can look forward to the following new additions.

The Nixie’s Song, Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles, by Holly Black
May Bird: Warrior Princess, May Bird series by Jodi Lynn Anderson
Monday with a Mad Genius, Magic Tree House series
by Mary Pope Osborne
Molly Moon, Micky Minus and the Mind Machine, Molly Moon series
by Georgia Byng
Eulalia, Redwall series by Brian Jaccques
Clementine’s Letter, Clementine series by Sara Pennypacker
Peter and the Secrets of Rundoon, Peter and the Starcatcher series
by Dave Barry
Into the Mist, Land of Elyon series by Patrick Carman
The Heir of Mistmantle, The Mistmantle Chronicles by M.I. McAllister
Judy Moody and Stink: The Holly Joliday, Judy Moody series
by Megan McDonald
The Time Thief, The Gideon Trilogy by Linda Buckley
Faerie Lord, Faerie Wars Chronicles by Herbie Brennan
Magic and other Misdemeanors, The Sisters Grimm series
by Michael Buckley

Commmonwealth Libraries, along with school and public libraries, provide on-line resources from reliable publishers to help locate useful information for students. You need Internet access and your public library card and you’re ready to start.

Go to our library’s web site, www.meadvillelibrary.org, and look for the icon above. (It’s in the lower right-hand corner of the home page.) Click on the icon. You’ll need to type in your library card number and the letters and numbers on the blue “Power Code” sticker on the front of your card.

The POWER Library (Pennsylvania Online World of Electronic Resources) has sorted dozens of information sources into subject categories. In the top golden bar there is a link to the “Children’s List” which offers resources of particular interest to children.

Many hours of exploration and discovery can be enjoyed by sampling each of these information sources.

BOOKS
“Access PA” helps you track down favorite books or older books that our library doesn’t have. Books on “Access PA” can be borrowed for you through the library no matter where they are in the commonwealth.

“NoveList K-8” has a key word search that helps track down stories if all you can remember is a part of the story or a part of the title.

“Book Collection: Non-fiction” helps to pinpoint the informational books that might help with last minute book reports or with information you need to complete a homework assignment. The entire text of the book is available in some cases, and you can choose the reading level or check to see how many pages the original book has.

MAGAZINE ARTICLES

The “Primary Search,” “Kids Search,” and “Middle School Search” sites provide citations to magazines, and in some cases, the full text of the article.

MAPS AND PHOTOGRAPHS

The “AP Multimedia Archive” provides access to news photographs sorted into the following categories: Today, U.S. News, International, Sports, Entertainment, Weather, and Correlations which are the state educational standards for selected subjects. The maps on this site were used in various published news articles. Another good source for maps is SIRS Discoverer, also found on the Power Library web site. Do a bit of exploring and you’ll be surprised how much “Power” you have.
IN ADDITION

If you go back to the Meadville Public Library main page and click on “Children” (under Departments) you will find even more sources if you select the heading “Homework Help.”

2006 Summer Reading Club Grand Prize Winners

YWCA music classes (K – Grade 1) MacKenzie Dingeldein
YWCA music classes (Grades 2-4) Madison Mitcham
YMCA 3-month Family Membership Hannah Kaufman
Haley Hunter
Gaylin Petro
Jacob McMullen
Kaitlyn Price
Lasy Welsh
Wild animals stuffed animal collection and book
Nina Cosdon
Shipwreck books Charli Severo
Junie B. Jones books and bag Elaina Snyder
Neon bright stuffed animals and book Courtney Brubaker
Fishing gear Danielle Waresak
Wizard books Brid Freiberg
Board book collection Kairlyn Labonowski
Beatrix Potter books and puppet Nicholas Sternby
Pony Pal books and model horse Suzan Gard

Fun! Friends! Prizes! Reading with the Meadville Public Library is a four-star guarantee for the best summer ever. Read anything you like - adventure, graphic novels, travel, biography, poetry. There are books about sports, books about space travel, books about fairies, books about art, books about everything! Read to someone who doesn’t read yet, or have an older Book Buddy read to you. You have the whole world of reading to pick from.

We will have parties, prizes, special activities, and events – a non-stop good time. You may even get school credit next fall for books you’ve completed. This year’s theme is ‘Paws, Claws, Scales and Tales!’ We will have lots of books and activities about animals (including our annual Pet Show on July 8 in Diamond Park), but that’s just the beginning.

Sign up for Summer Reading Club 2006. It all starts June 5th.

Publishers have discovered sneaky ways to teach science and history in their new nonfiction series.

Cartoon-style illustrations are always an attention grabber and Scholastic has taken advantage. There are currently 26 books in their “You Wouldn’t Want To…” series, with more on the way. So far they have covered American History (Civil War soldiers, colonists, pioneers, Apollo 13 space mission, the wild west); sailing on the high seas (the Titanic, the Mayflower, whalers, pirate ships); ancient history (Rome, Egypt, Greece, the Aztecs, Alexander the Great) and more. The texts are brief and fact-filled, but the captions provide those surprising and sometimes gory details that children love to know.

Picture Window Books recently joined the parade with cartoon illustrations for their books, but they are specializing in Greek myths. They currently have books on the Trojan Horse,
Perseus, Jason and the Argonauts, Theseus, Hercules, and Odysseus.

Younger children have not been neglected. Picture Window Books recently published two series of question and answer books. Do Frogs Have Fur? is an example of their Animals All Around series. Questions with obvious “NO!” answers encourage children to turn the page to find out what animal really does have fur. The second series, “Who Is It? Science,” features close-up cropped illustrations that feature one part of an animal – its tail, its nose, its ears, its feet, its eyes, its legs, its mouth, or its skin. The animals chosen are easy for young children to correctly guess before turning the page and learning how useful that body part is.

Making learning fun by making it child-friendly is what these series are all about.

Gertie, the Children’s Room giraffe, will be the official greeter for visitors to our revamped web page: meadvillelibrary.org/childrens.

All of our usual links are here with a new feature in the center of the page.

Each week our blog will feature a different children’s author. There will be links to their official web site and the Pennsylvania libraries (including ours) that have copies of their books. There will also be a reverse-order ranking of their top ten most popular books as determined by the circulation records here at Meadville Public Library.

Some of the authors are more famous than others, but all have wonderful stories to tell.

As the weeks pass, the newest profile will show up at the top of the list, but the older ones will still be available by clicking the word “authors” in the left-hand column.

There will be additional surprises in weeks to come, so stop by often!

Fall is a great time of year to catch up on what’s new in children’s fiction. Many books are published during this season, and with cooler weather blowing in, it’s a nice time to cozy up to the latest in the series you enjoy most.
Currently, at the Meadville Public Library Children’s Room, we have the latest for several series. ‘High Rhulain’ (the 18th book in Brian Jacques’ Redwall series), ‘Eldest’ ( the second installment in the Inheritance Trilogy), ‘Lionboy: The Truth’ (the third book in the Lionboy Trilogy), ‘Moonrise’ (Warriors: the New Prophecy Book 2), ‘Vox’ ( the 6th book in the Edge Chronicles) ‘Junie B., First Grader: Jingle Bells, Batman Smells! (p.s. So Does May)’ (the 25th book in the Junie B. Jones series), and of course the infamous 12th book in the ‘Series of Unfortunate Events.’
If you’re looking for a good read further down the road, releases for later in the year and early next year will be ‘Ptolemy’s Gate’ (Jonathan Stroud’s final book in the Bartimaeus Trilogy), ‘Dawn’ (Warriors: the New Prophecy book 3), ‘Eyes of the Storm’ (Bone #3), ‘The Tenth Power’ (Kate Constables 3rd and final book in the Chanters of Tremaris Trilogy), ‘The Blue Djinn of Babylon’ (the second book in the Children of the Lamp Series) and ‘Celandine’ (the sequel to ‘The Various’ by Steve Augarde).
There are many others to enjoy in our collections here in the children’s room and if you can’t find what you’re looking for, just ask… requests are considered an important part of keeping our shelves stocked with what you like best.

Many of the graphic novels for children started their lives as syndicated comics or comic books. Essentially, each title represents one comic book or a series of comics released separately that told a continuing story.

Some examples of these are:
“Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories”
“Bone Out from Boneville, “ and “Bone, the Great Cow Chase” by Jeff Smith
the “Star Wars Clone Wars” books by Haden Blackman
the Superman books by Mark Millar

Others take familiar characters or stories and translate them into the illustration-heavy graphic novel style.
Nancy Drew has new stories written by Stefan Petrucha
The Hardy Boys are in new stories by Scott Lobdel
“The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” was adapted by Robin Lawrie

Occasionally, an author writes just for graphic novels.
“City of Light, City of Dark” by Avi
“Tex the Cowboy” by Sarah Garland.