(Update:  The Read for my School Campaign has already met its goal and is now closed.  You can still read books online and choose a different campaign to give books to another organization.  2/22/12)

Starting this Valentine’s Day, continuing through March 14,  you and the children in your life will have the chance to read and give to your public elementary school!

 
For the INFOHio e-book collection, access our library’s catalog and select the Discovery Portal. In the drop down box, select E Resource Collection

ere he drove out of sight,

“Happy Christmas to all,

and to all a good night!”

Clement Clarke Moore wrote A Visit from St. Nicholas for his children in 1822.  He first published anonymously, then admitted to it in 1844.  The poem has influenced the American vision of Santa Claus, how he looked, the names of his reindeer, and what he does on Christmas Eve.  Without looking at the book, can you name the reindeer?

For love and for living,

And they all had a wonderful

Happy Thanksgiving.

Dav Pilkey -

‘Twas the Night before Thanksgiving

This week I am sending home Birthday Book letters.  If you would like to purchase a book to honor your child’s birthday, fill out the form and send it back to school.  I will help your child choose an age appropriate book that will be donated to the library after the birthday child has read it.  Did you know that 463 books have been donated to the library through this program so far?  The students are very proud of their birthday books and look for them year after year.

–The state of the library IS improving!  We now have heat and working bathrooms down the hall near the gym!  Yayyy!

-Mrs. Newmister

Visit the bookfair homepage and you can preview featured titles and create a wishlist.

If you are an adult and would like to volunteer an afternoon, please contact me at lnewmister@pettisvilleschools.org.

Something new this year:  You can continue to shop the bookfair online from November 3-11.

Letters and fliers will be sent home Friday, October 28.

The front entrance to the library is blocked off by construction, so please enter at the side door by the parking lot in front of the new building entrance when you come to the fair.  Hope to see you at the fair!

The high school collection – back half of the library- is still covered as there is a hole in the ceiling where the pass through (atrium) from the new building is being built. When the custodians can get a plastic barrier up, I can uncover the bookshelves and we can start checking out books to grades 7-12.

Students will have to walk outside to get to the library, so if it is raining we will cancel class visits and reschedule at a better time. There will be no computer access, no online catalog or researching. I urge families to browse the catalog at home and write down the call number, author’s name and title of any specific book a child may want. This will be good practice for catalog and location skills, which are necessary for lifetime learning. Otherwise, children can just browse the shelves and pick something that looks interesting at the moment.

At this time, there is no phone, no running water, no heat or air conditioning in the library. I think that’s ok for a 20 minute visit to get some books….at least in October! If it’s cool out, the children will have their jackets on anyways for the walk over.

The best way to reach me is by email- lnewmister@pettisvilleschools.org. But keep in mind that I cannot see my email until I am somewhere with a wireless connection. Feel free to send handwritten notes as well, ask your child’s teacher to put it in my mailbox, which I check every day.

I will not be in the library all the time. I have been helping Miss McCartney with getting the new classroom computers up and running. I am going from classroom to classroom, so I cannot predict where I’ll be and when.

I am looking forward to bringing children to the books -

Mrs. Newmister

****************************************
BEFORE:

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AFTER:

An earthquake caused more than 27,000 books to fall from the shelves at the University of Maryland’s McKeldin Library.

It was all picked up in 24 hours. Sorting and shelving still had to be done.

Great people work in libraries.

See more photos at Flickr

(CNN) — Are you a person who loves to read books? If so, you’re set for life.

It’s one of those things most of us seldom pause to think about. After all, much of the news about the book publishing business has been kind of grim lately. The Borders bookstore chain is shutting down, thus erasing from the American scene more than 600 big, often beautiful, book-crammed edifices, perfect for wandering around and browsing. The digital revolution, as exciting as it is, has made the publishing industry exceedingly nervous about the economics of its enterprise, and about what will become of traditional books, the ones printed on paper and bound between covers. Stand-alone book review sections in newspapers have, with a few exceptions, all but disappeared.

So what, exactly, is there to be cheery about if you’re a book lover?

Just this: There are so many wonderful books that have been written over the centuries, books that will thrill you and make you cry and change you and bring laughter to you and keep you up all night. Even if you did nothing else for the rest of your life but read, you would only be able to get to the most infinitesimal percentage of books that you would be destined to adore. They’re just waiting for you — waiting to be found, right now.

And in most cases, even in these rugged and scary economic times, they’re free.

“The serendipity, the discovery inherent in finding books on a public library shelf,” Molly Raphael, president of the American Library Association, was saying to me the other afternoon. “The act of walking alongside a shelf of books with their spines facing out toward you, and reaching for one and starting to look through it….”

The cult and culture of newness in our society has made us too willing to believe that “new” automatically equates to “good.” A book that was stirring and lovely when it was written — whether 15 years ago or 60 years ago or 150 years ago — does not lose its power just because it sits on a library shelf for decades at a time with no one pulling it out. The great majority of books in any city or small-town public library are not currently being discussed on television or radio talk shows; the authors are not on tour. But, years ago, someone decided for a reason that those books were meant to be bound between hard covers. The reason was that the writing inside was intended to last.

The cult and culture of newness in our society has made us too willing to believe that “new” automatically equates to “good.”
And the pleasure, for us, is in finding them and bringing them home. I’ve been reading a lot of older books lately, and the passage of time diminishes the joy not at all.

A few of them: “Cast of Characters,” a novel by Al Morgan, published in 1957, about the interconnecting lives and stories of a small group of people, both famous and obscure, whose paths cross at the premiere of a run-of-the-mill Hollywood movie. “No Orchids for Miss Blandish,” by James Hadley Chase, published in 1939, a crime novel so uncompromisingly tough and stark that it makes the work of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler at times seem almost timid. “The Golden Ham,” by Jim Bishop, published in 1956, a you-are-there, moment-by-moment, fly-on-the-wall narrative biography of Jackie Gleason at the instant the new medium of television was making Gleason celebrated in a way people in the pre-TV era could not have comprehended.

Public libraries themselves are facing difficult times. They’re losing funds and cutting hours, or even entire days; budgets for purchasing new books are being slashed; staff is being laid off.

But the glory of the American public library system remains. Use of a library is complimentary for all who wish to come in. A library card is in almost all cases absolutely free. You can search for books yourself, or you can ask for, and receive, the expert help of a librarian. There are, according to figures provided by the ALA, 9,221 public libraries in the U.S. If you add to that libraries on college campuses, in schools, in armed forces and specialized facilities and in government buildings, the number becomes 122,101.

And that point I made at the beginning of this column, about there being more good books out there waiting for you than you could read in a lifetime? Consider these figures: The Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio, public library (and branches) has 9,261,259 volumes. The Detroit public library has 7,366,782 volumes. The Dallas public library has 5,462,742 volumes. The St. Louis public library has 3,381,858 volumes.

Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal selects the writer each week for a terrific column called “Five Best.” The premise is simple: One man or woman who is an expert in a given field is asked to recommend and write brief reviews of five books he or she loves that were published any time in history. The column turns that culture of newness, of hotness, on its head, with great results. Readers of the column, Rabinowitz told me, eagerly seek out the books in libraries or in used bookstores. She said that she tells each week’s writer of the column not to worry whether or not readers have ever heard of the books; she instructs them: “The more obscure, the better.”

No one can predict with certainty what is going to become of the book business in the century ahead of us. But there is something about life that all of us, in the back of our minds, know is true: The best and most unforgettable moments have a way of blindsiding us, of appearing as if by magic when we aren’t even looking for them. So it is with books. They’re out there, on library shelves in the town where you are reading these words. Some haven’t had their covers opened in years, or been carried out the front door of the library. Maybe you and one of them were meant for each other. It’s summer. What have you got to lose?

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bob Greene.

Editor’s note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a bestselling author whose books include “Late Edition: A Love Story” and “Chevrolet Summers, Dairy Queen Nights.”

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/08/21/greene.books/index.html?hpt=hp_c2