SJCPL Blog

La Revolución-Wisin y Yandel

Yo No Canto, Pero lo Intentamos-Espinoza Paz

Down To Earth-Alexis & Fido

The Last-Aventura

As you get ready to celebrate Independence Day, you might be surprised to learn that even before there was the United States, there were American libraries! Children’s Services discovered that today, July 1, is the anniversary of the opening of the first circulating library in America.

Libraries have existed around the world since millennia before the famed Library at Alexandria, and libraries belonging to individuals and churches and schools came to this country with colonists from various lands. However, these libraries carried mostly books used for reference, along with histories and occasionally great literature. Most people could not get access to these books, since they were not public. Individuals could get access to collections held by institutions, but only by purchasing membership in these libraries, and even then they could only use the books inside the library. Kind of like a gym membership today!

Libraries that let members check books out are a relatively new phenomenon. The first American library that allowed books to circulate was a members-only library started by a very famous American. Can you guess the date, person, and place associated with the first lending library in America?

Was the opening date July 1 on 1631, 1731, 1831, or 1931?

Was the founder John Harvard, Benjamin Franklin, Melvil Dewey, or Franklin D. Roosevelt?

Was the library in Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, or Washington, DC?

Please post your guesses below. I’ll post the answers on Friday!

I know a title in all caps (no pun intended) is like shouting…but hey, there has just been a resurrection!

Ol’ Cap has been through a lot…bombarded with super-soldier serum, losing his sidekick Bucky, frozen in a block of ice for decades, beaten up by fascists and terrorists from all sides, and then finally shot to death on the steps of a New York courthouse. Fans have stuck through all the story lines, including the infamous Winter Soldier series where Bucky is discovered to have survived after all. Bucky becomes the Winter Soldier, eventually morphing his ideals into a new Captain America. But starting today, the Cap we know and love is reborn–in a mini-series accompanying the regular Captain America title. Fans are in a frenzy. Marvel knows this which is why they are putting out two regular covers and at least two variants. At $3.99 a pop, that ain’t cheap folks. I wonder what Cap would think. I’m a fan geek of Cap anyway and am excited to welcome him back into the world just the same.

(This better not be another trick of the Red Skull and his Cosmic Cube….stay tuned…)

Meanwhile, be sure to check out what SJCPL has to offer on the Captain!

FICTION

The French Gardener by Santa Montefiore
Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire by Margot Berwin
House Secrets by Mike Lawson
Thicker Than Water by Anthea Fraser
The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

NONFICTION

The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles
Free Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had without Going Nuts with Worry by Lenore Skenazy
Love Is a Verb by Gary Chapman
Once in a Lifetime Trips: The World’s 50 Most Extraordinary and Memorable Travel Experiences by Chris Santella
Twitter: Tips, Tricks, and Tweets by Paul McFedries

DVDs

Hulk vs.
Jonas Brothers Concert Experience
Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li
12 Rounds
Two Lovers

CDs

Another Lost Decade: The ‘80s Romance–Various Artists
Feel Me or Kill Me–Pastor Troy
Gospel Keepsakes–Hank Williams
Let the Dominoes Fall–Rancid
Talk of the Town–Darren Rahn

CHILDREN’S

Annie and Snowball and the Cozy Nest by Cynthia Rylant (Grades 1–2)
Evolution Revolution: From Darwin to DNA by Robert Winston (Grades 3–4)
Miranda’s Beach by Holly Keller (Preschool)
Sahwira: An African Friendship by Carolyn Marsden (Grades 4–7)
The Underground Gators by Tina Casey (Preschool)

AUDIOBOOKS

Everlasting by Iris Johansen
Hungry Girl: The Official Survival Guides by Lisa Lillien
Roadside Crosses by Jeffery Deaver
The Way Home by George Pelecanos
The Wildwater Walking Club by Claire Cook

With school out and temperatures soaring, we’ve seen a lot of business in Sights & Sounds this summer. Our Wii & X-Box game rentals are very popular, as are movies and music. Here are a few movie titles that have been especially popular this summer; so popular, in fact, that we’re ordering more copies.

The Closer–Season 4 of TNT’s popular TV series fronted by Kyra Sedgwick is flying off the shelves. The show centers around a Georgia police detective who is leading a high profile crimes unit in Los Angeles. Season 4 is described by producer James Duff as a “meditation on power and its many forms.”

True Blood (HBO, Season 1)–Based on the popular vampire novels by Charlaine Harris, True Blood features a spitfire heroine, Sookie Stackhouse, who can read people’s minds. But when a vampire named Bill enters her world, she finds she can’t read his mind. Set in the small southern town of Bon Temps, Sookie finds romance with this mysterious and dangerous man.

Weeds (Showtime, Season 4)–A widowed housewife becomes the neighborhood marijuana dealer in order to make ends meet. The show’s theme was inspired by the current medical marijuana debate in California. Mary Louise Parker won a Golden Globe award for her performance on the show.

Madea Goes to Jail–Based on the play by Tyler Perry, the plot centers around Madea Simmons, played by the author, going to jail for her anger management problems. The popular character of Madea was based on Perry’s aunt and his mother. In character, she dispenses wisdom in a no-nonsense manner.

Coraline (available July 21 on DVD)–There’s much anticipation for the release of Neil Gaiman’s animated stop-motion 3D fantasy-movie, based on his novella of the same title. The lead character, Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning), stumbles into an alternate version of her house known as the “Other World.” Her “other mother” (voiced by Teri Hatcher) is intent on giving Coraline the attention she feels is lacking in the real world.

Published June 26, 2009. View the complete list from The New York Times.

Hardcover Fiction:

1. KNOCKOUT, by Catherine Coulter. (Putnam, $26.95.) Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock — F.B.I. agents as well as husband and wife — try to protect a 7-year-old with psychic powers from her exploitive criminal uncle.

2. THE BOURNE DECEPTION, by Eric Van Lustbader. (Grand Central, $27.99.) Robert Ludlum’s character Jason Bourne helps to avert a possible world war.

3. THE ANGEL’S GAME, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. (Doubleday, $26.95.) A Barcelona writer accepts a sinister commission.

4. RELENTLESS, by Dean Koontz. (Bantam, $27.) A writer is pursued by a sociopathic critic.

5. THE PHYSICK BOOK OF DELIVERANCE DANE, by Katherine Howe. (Voice, $25.99.) A graduate student is caught up in her research on a healer accused of witchcraft in Salem.

Hardcover Nonfiction:

1. LIBERTY AND TYRANNY, by Mark R. Levin. (Threshold Editions, $25.) A conservative manifesto from a talk-show host and president of Landmark Legal Foundation.

2. HORSE SOLDIERS, by Doug Stanton. (Scribner, $28.) A small group of Special Forces soldiers fought the Taliban on horseback shortly after 9/11.

3. OUTLIERS, by Malcolm Gladwell. (Little, Brown, $27.99.) Why some people succeed — it has to do with luck and opportunities as well as talent — from the author of Blink and The Tipping Point.

4. A BOLD FRESH PIECE OF HUMANITY, by Bill O’Reilly. (Broadway, $26.) The Fox News commentator on his upbringing and career.

5. RENEGADE, by Richard Wolffe. (Crown, $26.) The rise of Barack Obama, based on the author’’s coverage of the campaign and on a dozen interviews.

Children’s Chapter Books:

1. ALONG FOR THE RIDE, by Sarah Dessen. (Viking, $19.99.) A summer on two wheels for a girl ripe to learn more about herself and the people she cares about. (Ages 14 and up)

2. L.A. CANDY, by Lauren Conrad. (Harper/HarperCollins, $17.99.) Excitement in T.V. land by someone who has been there. (Ages 14 and up)

3. THE HUNGER GAMES, by Suzanne Collins. (Scholastic, $17.99.) In a dystopian future, a girl fights for survival on live TV. (Ages 12 and up)

4. TWILIGHT: DIRECTOR’S NOTEBOOK, by Catherine Hardwicke. (Little, Brown, $17.99.) The making of “Twilight,” the movie. (Ages 9 to 12)

5. THE GRAVEYARD BOOK, by Neil Gaiman. Illustrated by Dave McKean. (HarperCollins, $17.99.) To avoid a killer, a boy lives in a cemetery. (Ages 10 and up)

From 1887 to 1970, the Smithsonian’s Bureau of Ethnology published frequent scholarly reports on various aspects of Native American cultures. These Bulletins include dictionaries and bibliographies of many different Native languages, archaeological discussions of unearthed artifacts, recordings of music and folk tales, examinations of petroglyphs and textiles, and more. For instance, Bulletin 10, published in 1889, is devoted solely to “the circular, square, and octagonal earthworks of Ohio.” (Oval earthworks are in a separate volume–just kidding!) The Bulletins cover not just the United States but also the (then) territories of Alaska and Hawaii as well as the countries of Mexico and Central and South America.

On the shelves in Local & Family History, you can find volumes ranging from 1903, Natick Dictionary by James Hammond Trumbull (with an introduction by famous writer and public intellectual Edward Everett Hale), all the way through 1929’s Chippewa Customs, by Frances Densmore.

Many famous people contributed reports to these series. The dean of American physical anthropology, Franz Boas, authored several volumes on our shelves, including Bulletin 26’s Kathlamet Texts, a book documenting a northwestern Indian language that was spoken at the time (1901) but has since disappeared. William Henry Holmes, respected archaeologist and head of the Bureau of Ethnology, wrote Handbook of Aboriginal American Antiquities (1919, vol. 60).

Frances Densmore, noted ethnomusicologist, was one of the few people in American society who valued Native American music and culture at a time when the US government’s policy was to strip American Indians of all aspects of their cultures. In 1907-1909, Frances (above, with Blackfoot Chief Mountain Chief) recorded and analyzed songs of the Chippewa Indians. Her report (Bulletin 45) is a fabulous resource on Chippewa music. It includes not only musical scores for all the songs but also who sang the songs (young or old, men or women), descriptions of musical tone and emphasis, phonetic transcriptions of the words, definitions of the words, signs and drawings and actions that accompany the songs, an explanation of the songs’ context, and names and short profiles of the people who sang the songs to her.

One of the interesting features of these volumes is what the anthropologists thought interesting and worthy of comment. In Bulletin 34 (1908), Ales Hrdlicka, a Czech anthropologist who was the first curator of what is now the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History analyzes southwestern and Mexican Indians’ physical characteristics and compares them to those of whites. Some of the comparisons seem laughable now; who would even think to test whether Indian and white children’s body temperatures were the same? (Surprise, surprise:  they were!) Hrdlicka also spends three pages discussing his investigation of the quantity of gray hair of hundreds of Natives from all ages and tribes had.

Less benignly, when examining Native Americans, Hrdlicka also took several separate measurements of head size. (See image at right of a head-measuring device in use around this time.) In the early twentieth century, head size was thought to correspond with intelligence, and was used in arguments to support theories that certain “races” were superior to others. Hrdlicka himself was ambivalent on this issue. He refused to denounce the unsavory applications of anthropometrics, but on the other hand he was Central European (often one of the “races” considered inferior) and was the first proponent of the theory that all people on earth came from a common ancestor in the “Old World.” Despite its idiosyncrasies, though, even this report contains detailed and useful information about native medical practices and artifacts, health and disease, diet and living conditions, and even occupations.

If you have Native American, Alaskan, Hawaiian, Mexican, or Central or South American heritage, are interested in anthropology, or just want to learn more about Indian cultures, stop by Local & Family History to look at some of these rare Bulletins. They are a fascinating glimpse into cultural practices of the past that live on today.

By now we’re all aware of the passing of Michael Jackson. History and the passage of time have not been too kind to the man who once ruled the pop/rock world. Say what you will about him as a person, but the guy knew how to sing, dance, create public hysteria, and, for good measure, make a music video.

For anyone doubting the sheer level of excitement that Michael Jackson once brought to his performances, and the insanity that could be brought on by nothing more than a mention of him or a simple wave of his hand (I shudder at the idea of having to explain that to future generations), just watch the man in “Smooth Criminal” from the album Bad and keep in mind this may be in the top 5 of Michael Jackson’s music videos.

1958-2009

Do you like shocking endings? You certainly get one in My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult. In this novel, a teenager who was brought into life for the purpose of serving as a donor to her chronically ill older sister decides she has endured enough painful medical procedures. She hires a lawyer and sues her parents for medical emancipation, causing family relationships to conflict with legal issues. Don’t you dare peek at the book’s ending. Also available as a book on CD and iPod audiobook.

FICTION

Between the Assassinations by Aravind Adiga
Dismantled: A Novel by Jennifer McMahon
Embrace the Grim Reaper by Judy Clemens
A Thread of Truth by Marie Bostwick
The Year That Follows: A Novel by Scott Lasser

NONFICTION

Blue Collar, Blue Scrubs: The Making of a Surgeon by Michael J. Collins
In the Black: Live Faithfully, Prosper Financially—The Ultimate 9-Step Plan for Financial Fitness by Aaron W. Smith
It’s Not That I’m Bitter…or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World by Gina Barreca
Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding
Promises I Made My Mother by Sam Haskell

DVDs

Anyone Can Dance: Hip Hop Volume II
Confessions of a Shopaholic
Inkheart
The Pink Panther 2
Wrestlemania 25th Anniversary

CDs

Goodbye to the Machine–Hurt
My Precious Little One–Rick Springfield
Now We Can See–The Thermals
Shallow Life–Lacuna Coil
Superunknown–Soundgarden

CHILDREN’S

Black Dragon Codex by R.D. Henham (Grades 3–6)
Farley Follows His Nose by Lynn Johnston (Preschool)
Goldilicious by Victoria Kann (Preschool)
Mudshark by Gary Paulsen (Grades 3–5)
Smoke Mountain (Seekers, Book 3) by Erin Hunter (Grades 4–7)

LOCAL HISTORY

Finding Anyone, Anywhere, Anywhen by Noel Elliot
Finding Granddad’s War by Jeffrey A. Badger
History of the Stutz Fire Engine Company by Rodger Birchfield
19 Stars of Indiana: Exceptional Hoosier Women by Michael Maurer
South Bend Ghosts & Other Northern Indiana Haunts by Stephen Osborne