Tween Summer Activities

The Tween summer activities start next Friday, July 8th! If you are between the ages of 9 and 12, sign up for summer reading and join us for weekly Friday afternoon activities from July 8th - August 12th!

The first Tween Activity will be an origami workshop held in the John Clarke Children's Program Room off the Children's Department from 3:00pm - 4:00pm. Come for a snack and learn how to make some travel-themed origami. Supplies and snacks will be provided.

For more information about the Tween Activities, visit our summer reading website or stop by the Children's Desk.

Hope to see you there!

Summer Books...What to Read?

If you are looking for a great book to read this summer, browse one of our recommended summer reading lists. The lists are organized by grade level and are available for printing on our summer reading website. Here are just a few suggestions from the 3rd and 4th grade reading list:

Akimbo and the Elephants by Alex McCall Smith

Ten-year-old Akimbo lives on a game preserve in Africa. His father is the head ranger, and Akimbo is eager to help him whenever he can—even if it means getting into some pretty dangerous situations. In Akimbo and the Elephants, ivory poachers are killing grown elephants for their tusks and leaving the calves to die. When the authorities fail to turn up new leads, Akimbo sets out to save the elephants by posing as a hunter himself.

Star Maker by Laurence Yep

With the help of his popular Uncle Chester, a young Chinese American boy tries hard to fulfill a promise to have firecrackers for everyone on the Chinese New Year in 1954. Includes an afterword with information about the Chinese customs portrayed in the story.

P is for Passport by Devin Scillian

A passport and rhyming text celebrate the author's adventures discovering differences as well as similarities, from "A" for the variety of animals that populate the planet to "Z" for the time zones that mark the days around the world.

Tween Summer Reading Activities

For the second year in a row, the Children's Department will be hosting special Friday afternoon activities for Tweens, ages 9 - 12, who are registered for the children's summer reading program. Ms. Barbara and I will be doing some very exciting things this summer including a book discussion of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin, a matinee of Alice in Wonderland (the 2010 version starring Johnny Depp) and many cultural craft projects celebrating our One World, Many Stories theme! For a complete list of the Friday activities and more information about the Tween program, visit our website. Tween activities begin on Friday, July 8th and continue through Friday, August 12th. No registration is required for the individual activities - just sign up for summer reading. We hope to see you there!

Summer Reading: One World, Many Stories

Summer Reading kicks-off on Saturday, June 25th at 10:30am with a storytelling performance by Chris Kavi Carbone. It's a celebration of Italy through story and song. Come along on a magic gondola of the imagination - with guitar, mandolin and voice.

June 25th is also the first day you can begin logging your reading in your paper reading log (at the library) or in your online reading log.

Register NOW for summer reading! You don't want to miss any of the fun we have planned for this summer. Register by visiting the children's desk, calling 401-847-8720 ext. 204 or going online.

Year 4 in Review!

Wow, as I write this, I can't believe Book Buddies has completed 4 years! We've read so many great books and had a lot of really great discussions and activities. We've also had some wonderful club members over the years, some who were only with us for a short time and others who've been along for the ride since the beginning! Thanks to all who have participated with such eagerness and excitement.

It was another great year featuring two more author phone calls: Frances O'Roark Dowell (Falling In) in September and R.L. LaFevers (Flight of the Phoenix) in March. A BIG thank you to the authors for participating in our book club, it is always such a thrill. Talking to authors NEVER gets old...

It was another year of reading widely across many genres: fantasy, ghost story, mystery, historical fiction, realistic fiction, graphic novel and our very first vampire story! We actually did more fantasies this year than ever before. And although fantasy has never been my personal favorite, I very much enjoyed the ones we read.

Even though it is nearly impossible for me to pick out a favorite from the 9 books we read this year, I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed Turtle in Paradise and can see why it has won so many awards. I look forward to reading more from Jennifer L. Holm in the future.

And thanks to all the faithful readers of the Book Buddies Blog. I hope it has been fun to keep up with what we are doing in book club and that you have found it informative. I will continue to post over the summer, books and information related to our summer reading program, One World, Many Stories.

I hope you have a fantastic summer and I look forward to Book Buddies: Year 5!

May Meeting Wrap-Up

The Book Buddies Book Club met yesterday for our final meeting of this school year. We had a lovely party complete with ice cream sundaes (with loads of toppings!), cupcakes and cookies! The idea was for everyone to make and enjoy an ice cream "fountain" in honor of our May book, Regarding the Fountain by Kate Klise.

We had a great discussion and everyone really liked Regarding the Fountain. We loved all of the ideas that Sam N.'s class come up with about what kind of fountain their school should have (my favorite was the aquarium-fountain) and we had fun thinking of outrageous fountain ideas for our own schools (my favorite was a fortune-telling fountain).

We all liked the format of the book (Regarding is an epistolary novel: a novel in letters) and counted up the dozens of means of communication used to tell the story. From letters to newspaper articles to telegrams and police reports, we thought it was an ingenious way to tell a story. We also felt that the story would have lost a lot of its charm had it been told in a more traditional sentence & chapter format.

We talked about writing letters vs. writing emails and the pros and cons of each form of communication.

Finally we brainstormed other possible titles for the book including "The Geyser Creek Fountain" and "Letters to Florence."

Following our discussion we broke into two teams for a very competititve trivia contest. Both teams did a great job and blew me away with how much detail they remembered from the story.

Overall it was a great meeting and a terrific way to end another fantastic year of Book Buddies. Thanks to all the Book Buddies members for coming all year long and for such great book discussions. Hope to see you all back in September!

New Children's Poet Laureate

The Poetry Foundation has announced that the new Children's Poet Laureate will be J. Patrick Lewis! Mr. Lewis takes over for the fabulous author and poet, MaryAnn Hoberman. He is the author of over 50 poetry books for children including A World of Wonders: Geographic Travels in Verse and Rhyme and A Hippopotamusn't: And Other Animal Verses. Stop by the library and borrow one his poetry books today!