HCPL’s Wilberforce Branch
This week’s story comes from Sarah Underwood who visits our Wilberforce branch.
Wilberforce library has been a huge part of my kids life! Julie has helped them learn to read and encouraged them to love books. The opening of the new library has increased our visits to several times a week.
Share your story with us! Go to www.haliburtonlibrary.ca and tell us what your library means to you!
Pink by Lili Wilkinson
Ava Simpson is uber cool. She’s all about an ultracool attitude, ultraradical politics, and ultrablack clothing. And she’s sick of all of it. She’s ready to become someone new. She’s ready to strip the black dye from her hair and become someone who fits in. Someone with a gorgeous bf, someone who wears pink.
But changing yourself is more complicated than just changing the colour of your favourite sweater. As Ava is taken under the wing of the perky, popular Alexis, she finds fitting in – with her edgy girlfriend Chloe, the handsome Ethan, her new pastel friends, and the misfits of the stage crew for the school musical – raises issues that she never imagined, and she realizes that her shiny new life is much more fragile than she thought.
YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, and a Stonewall Award Honour Book, Pink by Lili Wilkinson is a light hearted but timely story about a teen’s attempt to figure out who she really wants to be.
*Originally published in the Minden Times on June 11th, 2015.
HCPL’s TOP FICTION
1. In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume
2. The Fixer by Joseph Finder
3. Cash Landing by James Grippando
HCPL’s TOP NON-FICTION
1. Darkness Descending by Ken Jones
2. Yoga For Life: a journey to inner peace and freedom by Colleen Saidman Yee
3. The Ghost In My Brain: how a concussion stole my life and how the new science of brain plasticity helped me get it back by Clark Elliott
HCPL’s TOP JUNIOR TITLES
1. The Stars Never Rise by Rachel Vincent (YA)
2. Tales From a Not-So-Dorky Drama Queen by Rachel Renee Russell (JF)
AUDIO and VIDEO at HCPL
1. Island of Lemurs: Madagascar (DVD)
2. Finders Keepers by Stephen King (Book on CD)
*Originally published in The Highlander on June 11, 2015.
Bessie Sullivan, County Librarian: Hello, I’m Bessie Sullivan from the Haliburton County Public Library and this is Library Moments. Once a week some of us from the library will come and talk about books, upcoming events, or the services we offer at the library.
Empathy is the capacity to understand what another person is experiencing from within the other person’s frame of reference, or as the old saying goes, “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.”
Why is empathy important? Without it, we think that everyone else’s experiences are just like our own and we are unable to put ourselves in their position so that we can understand how they might be feeling.
Reading research suggests that readers are more empathetic than non-readers. Of course we don’t need proof that reading is good for you, but having it is nice.
This week on Library Moments Sherrill Sherwood, Erin Kernohan-Berning and I will each talk about a book that helped us develop empathy.
Sherrill Sherwood, Collections Development: “Everybody is smart in different ways. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its life believing it is stupid.” Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt, a juvenile fiction book, is an uplifting novel that will speak to anyone who’s ever thought there was something wrong with them because they didn’t fit in. Before reading this book I thought dyslexia meant seeing letters or words backwards, making reading and writing a challenge. What I didn’t know is that letters can appear to be jumping, with headaches a common occurrence when struggling to read the moving inscriptions. I also never truly related to the emotional pain of watching everyone else sail along in school when it’s impossible to keep up. The main character Ally has been smart enough to fool a lot of smart people. Every time she lands in a new school, she is able to hide her inability to read by creating clever yet unruly distractions. She is afraid to ask for help; after all, how can you cure dumb? However, her newest teacher Mr. Daniels sees the bright, creative kid underneath the trouble maker. With his help, Ally learns not to be so hard on herself and that dyslexia is nothing to be ashamed of. As her confidence grows, Ally feels free to be herself and the world starts opening up with possibilities. She discovers that there’s a lot more to her, and to everyone, than a label, and that great minds don’t always think alike.
Erin Kernohan-Berning, Branch Services Librarian: There isn’t one of us who will escape losing a loved one, and sadly that loss is very likely to be after a prolonged illness. In A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness and illustrated by Jim Kay, Connor’s mother is very ill with cancer, and her treatments are failing. Connor is plagued regularly by a nightmare in which his mother is being pulled over a cliff into a pit by a dark and growling monster, the only thing between safety and being pulled in is her grip on Connor’s hands. After one of these nightmares another monster comes to visit Connor, but this time he doesn’t seem to be dreaming. The old yew tree starts to visit him every night at 12:07am, apparently at Connor’s bidding, leaving behind a mess of leaves and berries in his wake. But how did Connor call the monster? And for what purpose? The monster promises to lead Connor to the answer in the form of four stories, the last of which Connor will have to tell facing the thing he is most terrified of. A Monster Calls is based on an unfinished story by Siobhan Dowd, a popular YA author from Ireland who died of cancer. Ness deftly explores a number of aspects of dying and illness from the loved-one’s perspective, including feelings of exhaustion, isolation, denial, and acceptance. This short, unassuming, darkly illustrated junior book contains a powerful story whether you have cared for a dying loved one, or know someone who has or is, and is appropriate for young and adult audiences. A box of tissues nearby is recommended. A Monster Calls was the winner of the 2012 Carnegie Medal for Children’s Literature, and it’s companion prize the Kate Greenway Medal for Illustration. A movie adaptation also written by Ness is due to be released late 2016. The book is available at HCPL in print, as well as audiobook voiced by Jason Isaacs of Harry Potter fame.
Bessie: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah is a novel about world war two that tells the story from a perspective I had never considered before. This is a tale of two sisters; Vianne and Isabelle, and Vianne’s part of the story takes place in an occupied French town where shortages of food and fear of the Nazi soldiers runs rampant. When France is overrun, Vianne is forced to take an enemy into her house, and suddenly her every move is watched; her life and her child’s life are at constant risk. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around her, she must make one terrible choice after another. What makes the situation worse is that even though forced to take a Nazi officer into her home, Vianne faces disdain from her village for supporting the enemy. Ultimately all she is trying to do is keep her daughter and herself alive and hope that one day her husband returns from the fighting. What surprised me about this story was how sensitively Hannah portrayed the first officer in Vianne’s house. You really got a sense for a person who was someplace he didn’t want to be and missing his family’s normal routine as badly as Vianne was missing hers. It was hard to view him as the enemy. To me, it felt like we had two people caught in a situation that was not of their making who were supposed to hate each other for no other reason than that their countries were at war.
We can’t possibly experience everything there is to experience in life, but perhaps by reading about other people’s situations we can better understand what other people are going through and how they may feel about it. Thanks for listening to Library Moments here on 100.9 CANOE FM.
*Originally aired on 100.9 CANOE FM May 31st – June 6th, 2015.
This week’s story comes from Linda Dodds who visits our Gooderham branch.
I started going to a public library as a student in a one room school where our teacher would take a car load of us once a week to get books. This began my love of reading. As parents of three kids we always visited the library in the towns we lived in weekly. The libraries were also a free source of holiday activities for them to take part in. They still visit the library in the cities they live in as we do in Gooderham. Without our Library we would never have had access to all the books we have read and enjoyed.
Share your story with us! Go to www.haliburtonlibrary.ca and tell us what your library means to you!
HCPL’s TOP FICTION
1. Finders Keepers: a novel by Stephen King
2. Close to Hugh by Marina Endicott
3. A Pitying of Doves by Steve Burrows
HCPL’s TOP NON-FICTION
1. Crime Seen: from patrol cop to profiler, my stories from behind the yellow tape by Kate Lines
2. To Explain the World: the discovery of modern science by Steven Weinberg
3. Letters To My Grandchildren by David Suzuki
HCPL’s TOP JUNIOR TITLES
1. Charmed by Michelle Krys (YA)
2. Thea Stilton and the Lost Letters by Thea Stilton (JF)
AUDIO and VIDEO at HCPL
1. American Sniper (DVD)
2. Piranha by Clive Cussler (Book on CD)
*Originally published in the Highlander on June 4, 2015.
Between Gods by Alison Pick
Available in print and ebook on Overdrive
From the Man Booker-nominated author of the novel Far to Go comes an unflinching, moving and unforgettable memoir about family secrets and the rediscovered past. Alison Pick was raised in a supportive, loving family. She grew up laughing with her sister and cousins, and doting on her grandparents. Then as a teenager, Alison made a discovery that instantly changed her understanding of her family, and her vision for her own life, forever. She learned that her grandparents, who had escaped from the Czech Republic during WWII, were Jewish and that most of the paternal side of her family had died in concentration camps. She also discovered that her own father had not known of this history until, in his twenties, he had a chance encounter with an old family friend–and then he, too, had kept the secret from Alison and her sister.
In this by times raw, by times sublime memoir, Alison recounts her struggle with her journey to convert to Judaism, her battle with depression, and her path towards facing and accepting the past and embracing the future.
Between Gods by Alison pick is one of the nominees for the 2015 Evergreen™ Award. Read as many as you like from the list and vote for your favourite in October!
Library Lowdown 