Still time for young readers to finish their reading contracts!

Newport Library's summer reading shows in Literacy Park are over for another year, but young readers still have time to reach their reading goals and collect a Dig Into Reading t-shirt.

Do you have a young reader in your home who's been working on a summer reading contract and is almost there?  Did your young reader set a goal of 75 books for the summer then became hooked on reading really thick chapter books and is on book #14?  If you answered yes to either question, your child can still collect her Dream Big, Read! t-shirt.

For the reader who is almost finished, perhaps a bit more daily reading time will get do the trick.  It's also just fine if to read a few shorter books or graphic novels to finish off that summer list before the August 31 deadline.

If your child fits the latter profile, please urge him to come in and talk to us. We are quite willing to discuss modifying his reading contract because what is most important is that he has been reading all summer. After all, that is the goal of our summer reading programs, keeping children reading, using their skills and retaining what they learned in school last year.

River Thieves by Michael Crummey

Have you been devastated by a book? Has reading a good story about emotionally complex characters ever left you limp and wrung out like an old sponge? River Thieves by Canadian author Michael Crummey is such a powerful novel that it creates its own emotional momentum. It draws you in and doesn’t let go. And then it devastates you.

It is early 1800’s and the native Beothuk tribe of Newfoundland, Canada is on the verge of extinction. In fact they have become virtual people. They are fleeting shadows glimpsed out of the corner of the eye of John Peyton, a young white settler who lives with his father and their housekeeper, Cassie, at the edge of the Bay of Exploits where the sea and forest meet. 

Things in the Bay are torn and broken. The island is torn between the dying world of the Beothuk and the harsh, new exploitative economy of the white settlers. John is torn between the base existence of his father and the seductive but unreachable world of ideas and culture that Cassie represents. And David Buchan of the Royal Navy is torn between honestly investigating a massacre of settlers and his own role in a similar massacre of Beothuk people eight years earlier.

With a painstaking attention to detail about life in colonial Canada and an unblinking emotional honesty, River Thieves drags you along with the inevitability of a glacier grinding down rock along its path to the sea. Try River Thieves and you might be carried along too, and eventually devastated, as I was.

You can reserve River Thieves here.

The jazz baroness

“He was a good-looking cat,” said Toot Monk. “She was a hotty.”

He was talking about his father, Thelonious Monk, and Pannonica de Koenigswarter. Her nickname was Nica, and her maiden name was Rothschild. She was white, British, Jewish, rich, and married, and she was the great jazzman’s closest companion for the last half of his life.

I learned about the fascinating Nica and her relationship with Monk in The Baroness: The Search for Nica, the Rebellious Rothschild. This biography was written by Nica’s great-niece, Hannah Rothschild, who (like Nica) struggled against the expectations that come along with that illustrious name.

Nica and her sisters, Miriam and Liberty, were raised in surroundings of extraordinary wealth, rigid rules, and emotional neglect.  Their educations were limited and their expectations severely circumscribed. As women, they would never, ever, work at the Rothschild family business. So what would they do? No one really seemed to know or care.

Miriam became a brilliant and influential entomologist, and Liberty suffered from mental illness. Nica, the beautiful youngest, married a European jet-setter, as rich beautiful young ladies did.

But by the mid-1960s, Nica had left her husband and children, and was hanging out in the Five Spot Cafe and the Village Vanguard, listening to live jazz in her fur coat and pearls.  By the mid-1970s, she was living with Thelonius Monk and two hundred cats in Weehawken, New Jersey.

The Baroness is full of amazing characters, from saxophonist Charlie Parker, who died in Nica’s apartment, to Nica’s brilliant and steely sister Miriam. It’s really one of the most interesting biographies I’ve ever read.

A Recycled Fairy Tale

Marissa Meyer’s Cinder is a recycled fairy tale that adds a dash of light science fiction and a whole lot of intrigue to the classic rags-to-riches love story. Most of the time-honored elements are here:

• Wicked stepmother: check. Audrey’s a small-minded, bitter, prejudiced woman who spoils her own daughters while sending Cinder out to support the family. 
• Wicked stepsisters: almost. One wicked stepsister and one who’s Cinder’s only human friend.
• Wicked queen: check. Oh, wait, that’s from another fairy tale—but it’s true nonetheless. The Lunar Queen who rules over the strange mutant population on the moon is truly evil, and she has her sights on charming Prince Kai, who is heir to one of the most powerful empires on Earth. 
• Pumpkin coach: check, seemingly courtesy of Volkswagen.

Half the fun of this read lies in identifying the fairytale elements—the other half is in finding the twists. The most obvious twist is Cinder herself: not just an unloved orphan with undersized feet, she’s also a cyborg. And only one of her feet is undersized—the child-sized prosthetic one that her wicked stepmother was too cheap to replace. Cinder’s not just a cleaning wench, either—she’s a mechanic, skilled in fixing everything from portscreens to magbelts to medbots. And fortunately, she’s not insufferably perfect-- Cinder’s got completely justifiable anger issues, and she’s not afraid to share.

Full of snappy dialogue and inter-satellite intrigue, Cinder is an amusing rehash of the old tale. It’s the first book of Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles:

•  Cinder, based on Cinderella 
•  Scarlet, based on Little Red Riding Hood
•  Cress, based on Rapunzel (not yet published)
•  Winter, based on Snow White (not yet published)

I enjoyed Cinder a lot, and recommend it to readers who like recycled fairy tales, and readers of young adult fiction. It did leave me with some questions—most notably, why does the populace dislike cyborgs so much? In Cinder’s world, so-called cyborgs are such second class citizens that they’re used for medical experiments, and it’s hard to imagine any society condoning such a thing when all it takes to be a cyborg is an accidental loss of limb. I hope there’s more background on this in the later books.

Looking for more recycled fairy tales? One of my favorites is Deerskin by Robin McKinley.  Or anything by Charles de Lint, (some based on fairy tales, all excellent.)  Or try Alex Flinn's Towering, a new take on Rapunzel.

W. Somerset Maugham--Through a Veil Darkly

August's Literary Flick is The Painted Veil, starring Naomi Watts, Ed Norton, and Liev Schreiber. Filmed in 2006, the movie is based on W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel.

British socialite Kitty (Watts) marries Walter Fane (Norton), a bacteriologist. They move to Shanghai where they soon learn they have nothing in common; Kitty is vain, vivacious, and fond of parties, while Walter is shy and studious. Kitty begins an affair with Charles Townsend (Schreiber), a married British vice consul.

Learning of his wife’s infidelity, Walter volunteers to work in a Chinese village stricken with a major cholera epidemic. As a backdrop to the story, revolution is brewing in China. While Walter's actions are meant to punish Kitty rather than reflect his own benevolence, the daily trials of living in a community in crisis have a striking impact on the couple, giving them a new and deeper perspective on their relationship.

The Painted Veil moves slowly, lyrically, luxuriantly along, its breathtaking scenery juxtaposing vividly with the misery of illness and war.



The movie will be shown on Tuesday, August 13, at 6:30 p.m.  For more information, call the library at 541-265-2153 or go to the Literary Flicks website.

Puppet Show at Newport Library

Dragon Theater Puppets perform at Newport Public Library's Literacy Park 1:00 pm Wednesday, August 7th. This is the last Dig Into Reading show for the summer but young readers have until August 31st to finish their reading contracts and receive their T-shirt. All children and families are invited to attend this free program. 

“Jason Ropp and his company of puppets are a staple of our summer reading shows,” says Rebecca Cohen of Newport Library. “This summer they are once again performing an original show written specifically for libraries, I Dig Dinosaurs. Jason is a very talented performer who writes the scripts, makes all his puppets and performs all the roles. Something all the librarians appreciate about him is that he takes time after his shows to talk with the children and show them how things work behind the scenes. If folks have young visitors in town, this is a great show to bring them to.” 

To see more about the puppets, check out their website, http://www.dragontheaterpuppets.com/ .  This is a Youtube promo for one of their previous shows:

  

Wednesday, August 7th, the puppets will also be visiting Waldport Public Library (10 a.m.) and Driftwood Public Library in Lincoln City (6:30 p.m.). On Thursday, August 8th, they will be at Toledo Public Library (11 a.m.) and Siletz Public Library (1:00 p.m.).

For more information about the puppet performances or other library programs, please call (541) 265-2153.

Little House Nostalgia

I was studying in Canada when I checked this book out from the public library. Canada is great and all that, but I was really needing some Americana, and what, after all, is more American than the Little House franchise? Wendy McClure is a woman after my own heart, one who completely delves into a topic and is not afraid of going the distance, including driving across Minnesota in search of the Ingalls’ mud house, churning her own butter just like Ma did, and, on one memorable occasion, finding herself making jam with homesteaders in anticipation of the apocalypse.

McClure has a great sense of humor, but never goes so far as to alienate her fellow Laura-Lovers. Her affection for Laura Ingalls Wilder is deep, as is her analysis of the enduring impact the Little House books has had on her life. This is a fun read, perfect for a plane trip or a rainy day. Little House forever! (Oh, and no one will judge you if you just want to go back to the source material.)