Click here to read the May 2024 Library Newsletter in its entirety.
Book Club: The Secret Garden
This month’s book club selection will be “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett. We will meet on Friday, May 17th at 1pm to discuss.
Ten year old Mary finds herself orphaned and sent to live at her estranged uncle’s manor in the Yorkshire moors. A quite unpleasant girl, Mary is forced to learn how to care for herself and how to treat others kindly. She discovers a mysterious hidden garden and as she coaxes life out, she finds her own maturity is also blossoming.
Parents should be aware that there is some references to magic in this book. The children attribute an invalid’s physical healing to “Magic”, and have a little ceremony thanking magic in chapter 23. Skipping that part does not affect the story at all.
May Events
I can’t believe we’re nearing the end of our inaugural year at the library! We hope you enjoy our last storytimes and book clubs of the school year, before we take a break from them this summer.
Friday, May 3rd at 1pm – Storytime with library director Ashley Borrego. What is spring without a good story about baby ducklings?!
Friday, May 10th at 10:30am – Our new morning storytime! This is the second of our trial run, and we hope it’s helpful for those families with napping little ones. Rose Carter will be our guest reader!
Friday, May 17th at 1pm – Monthly Book Club. We will be discussing “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
Clive’s Corner: Celebrating Spring!
Enjoy these monthly recommendations from our library mascot, Clive
It has been so fun to watch the weather change over the past month or two! The plants have come alive, and the flowers have been gorgeous. I picked out a few books to celebrate spring this month.
- The Outdoors Book – The warm weather beckons us outside. This delightful book celebrates the outdoors, bringing children along to explore the world around them.
- And the Tide Comes In… Exploring a Georgia Salt Marsh, by Merryl Alber – Are you headed to the coast of our beautiful state anytime soon? This book will introduce children to the unique ecosystem of the salt marshes, and a great introduction especially if you are going to visit them in person!
- Spring is Here! by Jane Belk Moncure – A little boy celebrates all the delights of the season in this sweet picture book. Encourage your children to notice all the changes around them too!
- The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett – Recently orphaned, ten-year-old Mary comes to live with an estranged uncle in a mysterious manor on the Yorkshire Moors. This book is all about new beginnings, as she tenderly nurtures a hidden garden to bring it back to life. This is also our Book Club book this month!
- Baby Animals, by Rene Cloke – Spring usually means baby animals! We have a number of books on the subject, but this one in particular has big, beautiful pictures and information about a variety of animal babies.
Recent Acquisitions
Recently, we acquired over 300 vintage books from a hobby book collector in Woodstock. We are still going through them, but we have started adding some to our collection! There are a few Happy Hollisters books, as well as a Cherry Ames, and a series new to us – Biggles. This was a popular British adventure series written in first half of the 20th century about a military pilot named James Bigglesworth (“Biggles”). Not pictured – We also got a number of “Classics Illustrated & Notes” – paperbacks of classic literature in graphic novel form, along with notes from another author. While certainly not a replacement for the original, these can be a great way to expose a reluctant reader to classic books.
One of the fun things about going through vintage books is seeing some of the things tucked inside! One find in this most recent lot of vintage books had me smiling – an 1896 publication of a children’s book called “Massasoit”. I found a folded paper inside dated 1960 – a boy’s 5th grade report about the book. He enjoys the book and offers to lend it to the reader if they wish, explaining that it was his dad’s book.
We have a copy of the letter hanging in the library if you’d like to read it.
What is a Living Book?
Have you wondered what makes a book “Living”? It can be a hard thing to define, especially when talking about an entire shift in the publishing industry over the past 40 years or so. Michelle Howard is known as the “Living Books Lady” and one of the early pioneers of private lending libraries determined to preserve these older living books, and she is a fantastic resource for the rest of us. Recently, she was interviewed on the Plumfield & Paideia podcast to answer the question of what makes a living book better. The ladies who interviewed her took a portion of that podcast and created a video to share with the rest of us, which I am sharing below. I hope you find it as helpful as I did!
You can read and listen to more about Michelle at this link.