LibraryPoint Blog

One of my favorite customers called me to tell me that he loved the book Until Tuesday.  I am sure that this story about a veteran spoke to him since he is also a veteran who happens to love dogs. 

Until Tuesday is the true story of a highly-decorated Iraqi war veteran who returns home as a war hero.  However, Luis Carlos Montalvan has such incredible injuries to his body and his psyche that he cannot cope with everyday life. He hovers on the brink of suicide until he meets Tuesday, a golden retriever who also had an emotionally difficult journey to get to Luis.

This readalike is in response to a patron's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids.  You can browse the book matches here.

World War Z by Max Brooks: "Brooks tells the story of the world's desperate battle against the zombie threat with a series of first-person accounts "as told to the author" by various characters around the world. A Chinese doctor encounters one of the earliest zombie cases at a time when the Chinese government is ruthlessly suppressing any information about the outbreak that will soon spread across the globe. The tale then follows the outbreak via testimony of smugglers, intelligence officials, military personnel and many others who struggle to defeat the zombie menace." (Publisher's Weekly)

If you enjoyed World War Z and other books dealing with pandemics and global menaces, here are some other novels you may enjoy:

Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber
When the Imperial prison barge Purge breaks down in a distant, uninhabited part of space, its only hope appears to lie with a Star Destroyer found drifting, derelict, and seemingly abandoned. But soon after a boarding party returns from a scavenging expedition, a horrific disease breaks out and takes the lives of all but a half-dozen survivors whose only option forces them to return to the Star Destroyer--and the soulless, unstoppable dead waiting aboard its vast emptiness. (worldcat.org)

Feed by Mira Grant
The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beat the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED. NOW, twenty years after the Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives-the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will out, even if it kills them. (catalog description)

In celebration of National Library Week, April 14-20, we're offering a week free of fines!

There will be no late charges for overdue materials returned April 14-20.

Don't know what to do with your newfound fortune? You can spend all the money you saved at our HUGE spring book sale, beginning Saturday, April 20 (Friends preview Friday, April 19)!

Autism is a neurological disorder that is diagnosed in an estimated one in 88 children every year, usually within the first three years of life. Depending on the degree of affectedness, the children may or may not be able to communicate readily or form meaningful relationships with others. Children and adults with autism may be able to function independently in later life, or they may always require a strong support system. In April 2002, a Congressional hearing declared autism to be a national health emergency, and as awareness has grown, so have diagnosis rates.

Support and understanding for families with autistic children has also increased tremendously in the past decade. A local group, the Autism Society of Northern Virginia, has decided to embrace their children's differences and have dubbed April as Autism Acceptance Month.  A very active group, they are hosting the Autism Acceptance Walk, a fundraiser with a sensory-friendly carnival which will be held from 1-4 pm on Sunday, April 28, 2013, at the Fredericksburg Fairgrounds. 

A Change in Classification

The behavior of some autistic children may seem strange to those who are unfamiliar with it: repetitive motions, an inability to tolerate change or to tolerate a great deal of stimulation of the senses. For many years an official diagnosis of autism was separate from one of Aspergers or PDD-NOS, but that has changed with the issuing of the latest edition of the DSM-V (the DSM is the manual used by clinicians and researchers to diagnose and classify mental disorders) due out in May of 2013. According to an article on the Autism Research Institute's Web site: