LibraryPoint Blog

Growing up there was one present I looked forward to more than any other--a box of books.  As an adult, it’s still a favorite and I carry on the tradition with my son, nieces and nephews.    Whether you give a box full or a handful, here are a few of my favorite 2012 picture books that are perfect gifts for the holiday season.

As soon as they open the book, readers will recognize “Black Dog” by Levi Pinfold as something special.  The illustration on the end pages is beautiful--snowy woods with tall, bare trees whose height is echoed by a narrow red house.  Turn the page and you see the home’s interior is cluttered, cramped and delightfully cozy.  Although similar in theme to the classic storyline, in this case the “monster’s” not under the bed, but outside the house.  Both parents and older siblings are frightened by the mysterious black dog they see through the windows and who grows in size as each new member discovers it.  It’s not the parents who vanquish the creature, but instead Small Hope, the youngest, tiniest member of the family.  She bundles up, steps outside and bravely confronts it in a remarkable illustration where she is a mere yellow spot, barely an inch tall in front of a dog that covers a 2-page spread.  His large, realistically rendered nose is so lifelike you can almost feel when it “snuffs” at her.  Leading him on a wild goose chase, under a bridge and through a tunnel, the black dog magically shrinks in size until finally, he fits through the home’s doggie door.  The rest of the family who has hidden behind a makeshift fort, wearing various household items to protect their heads, gaze in wonder at their heroic little girl. 

Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” is a short story about Gregor Samsa, a salesman who wakes up one day to find himself turned into a large insect.  It is a grim tale of social alienation that is frequently considered one of the most depressing short stories ever written.  How could any writer possibly expand such a profoundly melancholy text into a novel-length adaptation? Quirk Classics, the specialty publisher behind such “revised” versions of classic texts as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Android Karenina, has attempted this with The Meowmorphosis, an adaptation of “The Metamorphosis” that has Gregor turning into a human-sized kitten rather than a bug.  Although perhaps still too grim for some tastes, The Meowmorphosis does provide an interesting take on social alienation and a clever satire on Kafka’s writing technique.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to help astronomers learn about the Universe. You don't need a degree in biology to help track bird populations.  Interested in what whale songs mean? You guessed it—you don't need to be an oceanographer to help scientists figure it out. All it takes is an interest and computer access and you can join the growing ranks of Citizen Scientists. Most projects provide tutorials or clear instructions on their websites. You don't even have to be an adult!

What Lyra enjoyed most was scrambling across the rooftops of Oxford, committed to the serious fun of war that raged amongst the children of all the colleges and the townies in between. There were pummelings with armfuls of rock-hard plums, mud fights, and even the occasional kidnapping. Yet for all of her wild behavior, Lyra was not an ordinary child. She was a lonely, genius child with aristocratic blood in her veins, and every so often some unfortunate young Scholar would be dispatched by the Master of the College to round her up for a hot bath and tedious lessons at the start of The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman.

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.

Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace

Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult

Serial readers of the Tech Answers blog probably know that I would recommend either an iPad Mini or a Google Nexus 7 for an eReader tablet and that, though they are very pretty (the devices, not the blog readers, who could be pretty, but I wouldn’t know), I would guide most away from retailer-specific hardware like the Kindle Fire or the Barnes & Noble Nook.  But that overlooks one very important buying category: Cheap Tablets.  These are sub-$150 and often sub-$100 devices that you’ll find at convenience and drug stores.

Jan Brett's Mossy is a special turtle because she has a gorgeous garden growing right on her shell. The moss that grows on her carapace is a perfect spot for wildflowers and ferns to take root. When Dr. Carolina sees the magnificent turtle strolling around Lilypad Pond, she takes Mossy back to her museum. Dr. Carolina believes that because Mossy doesn't need to worry about finding food, staying warm, or escaping from danger, she will be happy. But Dr. Carolina doesn't know that Mossy just met someone special—another turtle friend named Scoot—and that Mossy dreams of being back at home with her friend.

The entire town knew that the Vicario twins were planning on murdering Santiago Nasar, and nobody stopped the brutal murder.  Determined to understand how a man liked by the town and his murderers could be killed without anyone stopping it, the narrator sets out 27 years after the event to talk to the townspeople and reconstruct what happened that fateful day in Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold. 

This year the second floor of the Headquarters Library decided to do something a bit different for their holiday decorations. The Youth Services staff made the decision to have all of their decorations made from recycled and repurposed materials, specifically focusing on books weeded from the collection due to extreme damage. Then the system-wide Teen Council and teen volunteers from Headquarters handled the majority of the decoration creation. Over the course of three weeks these groups worked together to create the trees, snowflakes, paper chains and houses that make up the majority of the second floor decorations while staff members created the complementary hedgehogs. One fun twist that came from using old books was creating a game to go with the decorations.

Five trees created from old books are on the Youth Services Research Desk. We encourage all customers to come and try to guess which books were used to make the trees for a chance to win a prize. To go with the theme of recycled and repurposed decorations the Teen Council decided on the slogan “Go Green with the Grinch” to help tie all of the decorations together.

Check out this slideshow and view on Flickr to find out more about how some of the decorations were made.

If you own a Nook, Sony, Kobo, or other non-Amazon e-ink (black and white) eBook reader listed here and you’ve checked out eBooks from CRRL, chances are you’ve had the misfortune of dealing with Adobe Digital Editions, the gateway between most copy-protected eBooks and reading devices.  If you’re planning on giving or receiving one of these toys this holiday season, you’ll want to read on.  Adobe Digital Editions is poorly designed, non-intuitive and relies far, far too heavily on keyboard shortcuts and buried menus.  Even with its recent, underwhelming 2.0 update, be you tech “dummy” or “genius," it’s a pain. Sadly, it’s what we’re all required to use in order to get our eBooks from the Internet to our devices.  Read on to learn its secrets.