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Reading Room Blog

What hath Harry Potter wrought?
Caroline Parr, Children's Book Columns, LibraryPoint Blog, Reading Room Blog, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Favorite Characters, Made Into Movies
11/18/2010 - 3:11pm

Was it only twelve short years ago that “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” changed the children’s book world forever? This Friday’s release of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the first installment of the last Harry Potter film, brings it all back.

I can still remember eagerly reading an advance copy of the first book and falling head over heels into the world of Hogwarts. J. K. Rowling used familiar elements – a school setting, an orphan, wise teachers, magic – in a fresh story that was notable for its wild invention. Bertie Botts’ Every Flavor Beans, portraits that came to life, the sorting hat, Muggles: these clever new creations were what readers noticed first. It was only with the unfolding of succeeding books that Rowling’s masterful plotting became apparent. Like many others, I devoured the final book over the course of a weekend, tearing up in places and turning the last page with mingled satisfaction and regret.
 
The effect on young readers was the real phenomenon. Kids who might once have eyed thick books with trepidation now proudly announced that they’d read a whole Harry Potter book in one sitting! They read the books over and over, sharing jokes and sayings from the books with their friends. It’s not too much to state that J.K. Rowling created a new generation of fantasy readers.
 
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Slow Down and Enjoy Picture Books
Caroline Parr, Children's Book Columns, LibraryPoint Blog, Reading Room Blog, Picture Books
10/20/2010 - 2:22pm

A recently published New York Times article, “Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children,” is causing an uproar in the children’s book world.  According to reporter Julie Bosman, booksellers are selling fewer picture books than ever, and not just because of the economic downturn. “Parents have begun pressing their kindergartners and first graders to leave the picture book behind and move on to more text-heavy chapter books,” she reports. One bookseller noted that parents are now buying their four-year-olds “Stuart Little” while classic picture books languish on the shelf. 

Some of this could be linked to standardized testing, but it may also be due to the pressure parents feel to accelerate their children’s learning at an ever faster rate.
 
Those of us who love picture books lament this trend. Even if your four-year-old is enjoying “Stuart Little,” what is he missing by jumping to chapter books three or four years ahead of schedule? What great picture books are going unread?  
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Get to Know These Girls
Caroline Parr, Children's Book Columns, LibraryPoint Blog, Reading Room Blog
10/14/2010 - 10:07am
          Two new novels for middle grade readers couldn’t be more different except for one thing: they both concern eleven-year-old girls who have more to offer than first meets the eye.
 
          In Jennifer Holm’s “Turtle in Paradise,” everyone is doing their best to scrape by. It’s 1935, the midst of the Depression, and Turtle’s flighty mother finally has a job as a housekeeper. But her mother’s new boss doesn’t like kids, and her new boyfriend Archie has no room for her, so Turtle is sent far away to Key West, Florida, where her mother’s sister lives.
 
There this tough, sharp-tongued girl finds a whole new world that’s entirely different from the New Jersey shore she knows. Turtle describes Key West as looking “like a broken chair that’s been left out in the sun to rot.” But it’s also green, covered with vines, brightly colored flowers and palm trees. All the kids go barefoot, most of them are related to her, and news of her arrival is soon all over the island thanks to the “Conch Telegraph.” 
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Snow Book Group
Book Groups, Book Groups Monthly Selection, Reading Room Blog
02/19/2014 - 8:43am
Star Island by Carl Hiaasen

Join a lively and fun discussion of the month's selected title. Refreshments served. Meets the third Tuesday of every month at 10:30 a.m.

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Readers of the Round Table (Montross)
Book Groups, Book Groups Monthly Selection, Reading Room Blog
02/18/2014 - 5:53pm
Alice, I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

Meets from 11:00 - noon on the second Friday of each month. 

Current Selection:

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Written in Virginia Book Group (Montross)
Reading Room Blog
01/14/2014 - 12:06pm
Skipping Christmas by John Grisham

Meets the fourth Thursday of the month at 6:30-7:30 p.m.

Current Selection:

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Moosewood Restaurant: Cooking for Health
Cookbooks, Diets, LibraryPoint Blog, vegan, Vegetarian, Virginia Johnson, Shelf Life Blog, Cooking, Reading Room Blog, Home and Garden Subject Guide
08/25/2010 - 9:11am

I’m a fan of the Moosewood Collective and own a lot of their cookbooks. Last year, I was given another entry to their line, Cooking for Health. I was pleased to see their fresh and easy philosophy of the 1970s had been updated for modern tastes. Never heard of Moosewood? Not everyone has, yet they were named one of 13 most influential restaurants of the 20th century by Bon Appétit magazine, and our own Sammy T’s seems to have drawn on them for vegetarian inspiration. 

Moosewood Restaurant began in 1973 in Ithaca, New York, back when vegetarianism was a new idea for most Americans. It was a popular place, and soon enough their dishes were gathered into a bestselling book. The listings in the first editions of the original Moosewood Cookbook drew a lot on established recipes that happened to be vegetarian and were adapted to be prepared easily with nothing fancier than a blender.
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The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Adventurous Escapades, Allegory, Bible stories, Coming of Age, LibraryPoint Blog, Pilgrims and pilgrimages, Virginia Johnson, Shelf Life Blog, Reading Room Blog, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
08/26/2010 - 2:19pm

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, is one of those simple, spiritual tales that captures modern-day imaginations and becomes a best-seller. As I read it on the beach, I felt the brush of Jonathan Livingston Seagull’s wings—or perhaps those were the wings of the laughing gull trying to steal my son’s peanut butter sandwich.

In this extended fable, the teenage shepherd Santiago has chosen his free and lonely life over a more respectable one that would have bound him tightly to his community and family. Content as he is with the wisdom he gained while wandering the Spanish hills, he is nonetheless being drawn to change his path. The dark-eyed daughter of a prosperous merchant awaits his marriage proposal, but Santiago’s prophetic dream in an abandoned and ruined church leads him further away from his homeland than he ever imagined.
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Beyond Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys
Caroline Parr, LibraryPoint Blog, Reading Room Blog, Mystery
08/11/2010 - 1:16pm

     Ask any group of school-age kids what kind of books they like to read, and one response comes up over and over again: “a mystery.” Kids who enjoy puzzling out mysteries have long been fans of Donald Sobol’s “Encyclopedia Brown” series. Ten-year-old Encylopedia’s head full of facts and his talent for noticing details make him a detective good enough to help out his father, the chief of police. Short chapters, a small-town ambiance, and finding the solutions to each mystery at the back of the book make this series a perennial favorite of readers nine and up.

 
          A new twist on the puzzle-solving genre is Michael D. Beil’s “The Red Blazer Girls: the Ring of Rocomadour.” Three seventh-grade girls at a Catholic school in New York City get caught up in a mystery when one of them spots the face of a woman high up in a window in the church opposite their school. 
  
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A Painted House by John Grisham
1950s, Arkansas, Coming of Age, Farm Life, LibraryPoint Blog, Migrant Labor, Southern gothic, Southern Literature, Virginia Johnson, Shelf Life Blog, Reading Room Blog, Historical Fiction
08/12/2010 - 8:19am

Rural 1950s Arkansas is the setting for John Grisham’s Southern thriller, A Painted House. It’s the beginning of a summer full of sweltering days, acres of cotton to pick, dangerous desire, and deadly secrets to keep. 

This season--at its start the same as every other--finds the Chandler family on the road in their dusty pick-up looking for migrant workers to hire. Young Lucas is certain from what he has observed in his short life that once the season’s work is done, his family will go back to its quiet ways, sitting through another winter, readying for another spring planting with Grandpa, “Pappy” Chandler, heading the household.
 
Lucas’ family has worked the land for generations, and this summer’s batches of migrant help—Mexicans and hill people--will work alongside them to bring in the crop before the weather destroys their chance to make a little profit on the farm or at least get further out of debt. Lucas expects the workers to come stay for a few months, do their assigned work, and then go their way—never leaving a lasting impression on his family and their way of life.
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