The Readers Advisory Committee is pleased to announce that Kayla Wiltfong has won our Build a Better World poetry contest. We enjoy Politics for both Wiltfong’s skill and confidence. She employs double-meanings to great effect, referencing multiple news items seen and heard in both social and mainstream media. On the surface, it’s a very short and simple poem, that evolves with each reading and teases our understanding.
Let's get all the obvious jokes out of the way first. It's not just one song over and over. It's not just Sonny and Cher's "I Got You, Babe" on repeat. It's the original Broadway cast recording of Groundhog Day: The Musical, and I love it.
Dr. Maya Angelou was an author, poet, historian, songwriter, playwright, dancer, stage, and screen producer. In this documentary, filmmakers Bob Hercules and Rita Coburn Whack do a remarkable job of detailing her extraordinary life. The DVD includes details about her childhood in the Depression-era South, interviews with Dr. Angelou during different periods of her life, and video footage of her early performing career. It also contains interviews with her family and friends to reveal even more about her life and impact on others.
Raven Girl is the story of a girl-raven child produced by a lonely postman and the raven he fell in love with. It's a uniquely illustrated, dark, short novel—similar to Niffenegger's The Three Incestuous Sisters. The story opens with a postman rescuing a young raven who has fallen from her nest.
Hello and welcome to our monthly look at the new releases that will be hitting your library’s shelves – and hopefully, hitting your holds list. Summer is here, and we love it when we see library books by the pool, or at the lake, or even on the porch. (The kiddos have Summer Reading to do – why should THEY have all the fun?)
Ann Ingalls first started making appearances at Johnson County Library in 2009 with the release of her picture book The Little Piano Girl, a biography about the childhood of jazz prodigy Mary Lou Williams.
The In Death murder mystery series is based on Lieutenant Eve Dallas solving homicides in 2058 New York City. Eve, with her troubled past and guarded demeanor, works tirelessly to give the dead the justice they deserve. Coupled with Roarke, Eve's billionaire and tech savvy husband, she often finds herself digging through cases with his help.
Deep in debt and seeking a major change in her life, author Elizabeth Greenwood becomes infatuated with the idea of faking her own death. Couldn't she just "die," and walk away from her student loans, her life, and her problems? Instead of actually committing pseudocide, as it's known, she delves into researching the idea instead, and the result is Playing Dead: A Journey through the World of Death Fraud.
There's a long tradition of stories about children who stumble into another world, a fantastic world that works in completely different ways from our world. The children follow a talking rabbit down a rabbit hole or walk through the back of an old wardrobe or are swept up by a tornado and dropped onto an evil witch. At the end of the story, the child returns to our world a little wiser, but none the worse for wear.
