Big Doings at Parkland Community Library!!!
Tomorrow, Feb. 25, 2006, Steve Abrams does a program entitled Masks, Makeup and Mystery at 2 p.m. Steve is an excellent presenter and he's bringing slides and maybe a mask or two from the University of Pennsylvania Museum. This is a Commonwealth of PA Lecture series thingy. (I have to say that.)
On Wednesday - March 1 at 7 p.m. - Susan Bartoletti is here to talk about her Newbery Honor book Hitler Youth. I read the book and it was amazing! I find it hard to believe what people will believe and what they will go along with. The way Hitler and his propaganda machine used the children of Germany is just another reprehensible part of their legacy. Anyway, try to make it if you can.

Now on to books. I just catalogued a picture book called Tadpole's Promise by Jeanne Willis. I'm wondering what kind of response I'm going to get to this book. OK, a rainbow colored caterpillar falls in love with a tadpole and vice versa. The caterpillar makes the tadpole promise that he will never change. The tadpole promises but of course he does change and the caterpillar crawls off and cries herself to sleep. She wakes up as a butterfly. The tadpole is now a big frog. The butterfly returns to look for her love, the tadpole, and the frog...Well, what do you think the frog does? Yup. Then, the frog wonders whatever happened to his love the rainbow colored caterpillar. There, now you don't have to read it.
What do you think parents will say about this book? Hmmmm?
I also catalogued Dear Miss Breed by Joanne Oppenheim about a librarian who corresponded with students who were sent to the internment camps for Japanese Americans during WWII. I haven't read the whole book but just paging through it touched my heart. This is a TRUE story with actual photographs and transcripts of letters. The story is as much about the kids as it is about Miss Breed.

Oh and I have to apologize. Fray, mentioned by Okuni in an earlier post, is a GRAPHIC NOVEL not manga as I so ignorantly mispoke. What was I thinking? I know better than that!!
I'll just chalk it up to old age.