Upcoming Programs & New Picture Books

We'll be having a Fairy Tale Ball on Saturday, Oct. 22 at 11 a.m. for children ages 3+! We'll be in the ballroom above Allerton Library and the kids will make crowns or princess hats, decorate & eat gingerbread men, get supplies for growing their own beanstalks, have juice and sandwiches made with the Little Red Hen's bread, and try to answer Rumpelstiltskin's trivia questions. Kids can also dress up as a fairy tale character if they like. Please register by Oct. 20 if you are interested.

I'm also working on improving my regular weekly programs by learning new songs and incorporating puppets and flannelboard components (work in progress!) So please do stop by for a Baby Lap Time on a Tuesday morning or a storytime on a Thursday morning.

Speaking of regular programs, I'm also excited about some new picture books that I'm going to try out with my storytime audience. One of them is a new release by Jan Thomas called Is Everyone Ready for Fun? I'm also going to try Dot by Patricia Intriago and 999 Tadpoles by Ken Kimura. Come check them out!

New Middle Grade Books

I've been reading quite a few books lately that I think of as "middle-grade": on the older side of chapter books, or maybe the younger side of the teen books. A brand-new contribution to that set is Brian Selznick's new book Wonderstruck. I wouldn't be the least surprised if it won as many awards and as much recognition as his first book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Wonderstruck is done in the same arresting visual style, and has a similar feel in terms of the story and characters. It is a bit more complex then Hugo Cabret, but in a way I think kids will enjoy.

I also read a couple of books that aren't quite as new in terms of publication date, but are new to me at least: the first book in the Dork Diaries series by Rachel Russell (titled Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life) and as I mentioned before, the first book in Patrick Carman's Skeleton Creek series (titled Skeleton Creek). I liked the Dork Diaries book fairly well, and I think it's a good choice for female fans of the Wimpy Kid series. I wasn't very impressed with Skeleton Creek, though. It was meant to be spooky but wasn't at all, and I found the videos tedious and badly acted. Maybe this is just my adult cynicism preventing me from enjoying the story. Kids really seem to like these books. Oh well.

New Books This Fall

Some exciting new children's and teen's books will be released this fall. I'm looking forward to several of them, including the new Bloody Jack book in October (titled The Mark of the Golden Dragon) and a new title by picture book genius Mo Willems called Happy Pig Day!. November will be exciting as well, since the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid book (titled Cabin Fever) and Christopher Paolini's long-anticipated final book in the Inheritance cycle are both coming out that month. Fans of the Maze Runner series by James Dashner will be pleased to see the new book The Death Cure out in October, and a new Richard Peck title will be out that month as well.

I have picked out a new batch of chapter books and teen books to read on my lunch breaks, including the first book in Patrick Carman's Skeleton Creek series, which was much-requested when I was doing school visits back in May. I also got the first book in Andrew Clements's new series, Benjamin Pratt and the Keepers of the School, titled We the Children. If you have suggestions or recommendations for me, please do let me know!