Farewell, E.L. Konigsburg

The children’s literature world has lost a most singular writer. Elaine Lobl (E.L.) Konigsburg passed away April 19, from complications of a stroke: she was 83. Konigsburg is also the only children’s author to have won the prestigious Newbery Award (given for excellence in children’s literature by the American Library Association) AND the Newbery Honor in the same year (1968), for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth, respectively.

Other books Ms. Konigsburg has written include Silent to the Bone, Up From Jericho Tel, A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, Father’s Arcane Daughter and The View From Saturday (for which she won another Newbery in 1997.)  Paul Vitello, in the New York Times (April 22, 2013) had the following quote listed in his obit for Ms. Konigsburg:  “Children’s books, she once said, are ‘the key to the accumulated wisdom, wit, gossip, truth, myth, history, philosophy, and recipes for salting potatoes during the past 6,000 years of civilization.’ “

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler  is a favorite of lots of readers. One of this writer’s colleagues (herself a published writer) stated, “My husband and I were so disappointed when we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC and discovered they’d gotten rid of the fountain where Jamie and Claudia had collected coins.  How dare they!” And this writer has fond memories of Mixed-Up Files because she booktalked it years ago at her interview for her current position! Writer/illustrator Brian Selznick (who himself won the Randolph Caldecott Award—the American Library Association award for excellence in picture book illustration in 2008) references Konigsburg’s Mixed-Up Files several times in his book, Wonderstruck. Selznick said in a Publisher’s Weekly interview (Sue Corbett, August 4, 2011) that it was one of his favorite books, and then added “I mean, it’s one of everybody’s favorite books.”

And it will be for years to come.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

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Greg Heffley Is Coming Back !!

The newest diary of Greg Heffley – Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 8 will go on sale in the United States in November 2013. Following major marketing and social media promotions in the U.S.,  seven international publishers will launch their respective campaigns around the world. The United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Greece, Japan, Korea, and Norway will release the book in their respective territories just after the U.S. debut.

Books in the core Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney include:

1. Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2007),
2. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (2008),
3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw (2009),
4. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (2009),
5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth (2010), and
6. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever (2011).
7. The Third Wheel,  (2012)

Jeff Kinney has also written and illustrated The Wimpy Kid Do-It-Yourself Book (2011) and The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary (2011).

Here are some trivia for the series to share with you:

• On November 13, 2012, book 7 in the series, The Third Wheel, released with a 6.5-million-copy first printing in North America.
• These books are a fixture on the USA Today bestseller list (the first book in the series has remained in the top 150 for more than 200 weeks) and the Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists.
• The series has remained consistently in the top spots on the New York Times lists since the publication of the first book.
• More than 85 million Diary of a Wimpy Kid books are in print around the world.
• The series have been sold in more than 44 territories in 42 languages.
•  Author Jeff Kinney was named one of Time magazine’s most influential people in the world.
• Three movies based on the book series have grossed more than $250 million internationally.
• The book series won Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards in 2010, 2011, and 2012 (and is nominated for one in 2013)
• Jeff Kinney won a Children’s Choice Book Award in 2012.
• These books have won numerous awards voted on by students and teachers around the globe.
• The Wimpy Kid Island on poptropica.com, a virtual world for kids, remains one of the most visited on the site.

Kinney’s work has been widely praised for its ability to turn reluctant readers on to books.  If you are struggling on leading your kids into reading, if you hadn’t heard about this series from your kids, if you wanted to know why you couldn’t always find Jeff Heffley in the library, click here to reserve your copy; and stay tune for the newest development of the Wimpy Kid ….

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Cinco de Mayo

Chiquy Boom saying hi! (Photo credit: San José Library)

We’re celebrating Cinco de Mayo a little bit early this year – on May 3rd, we’re having silly magician Chiquy Boom! put on a bilingual silly children’s magic show with music and movement games!

Come celebrate with us at 4PM and be entertained!

This free program will be in the Children’s Area of the Library.

¡Ven a ver el mago tonto Chiquy Boom! se presenta un show bilingue de magia infantil con juegos de movimientos corporales!

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Turn off those Electronic Screens for a Week (I dare you!)

Yes, I know  it’s difficult to put those electronic gadgets away.  My current addiction is playing Candy Crush Saga on my Ipad!  I also love Words with Friends,  Hanging with Friends, Skee Ball, etc.  You get my drift.  Dare I say, the time I used to devote to reading seems to be taken up by my IPad activities. Then of course, there’s TV.  Now I just have the basic digital package from Comcast, but that means there are still a lot of stations to watch which uses up my free time. I also have Netflix streaming which adds to the goodies I watch.  It is wonderful to be be able to watch whenever I want to. Thank goodness, my cell phone is a dumb one or that would take up even more of my time.  Reading unfortunately, is now pretty much confined to what I can listen to on CD books in my car while I’m driving around the area.

I didn’t grow up with all these digital devices, but I sure can’t live without them now or so I think. My family got our first computer in the 1990′s when my kids were in elementary school.  We also got our first VCR then.  We had a great time with these devices.  Playing games, recording programs, etc.  Then the cell phone became ubiquitous, and now, I panic if I forget my cell phone at home, and I’m driving around without one.  My Ipad usually is with me wherever I go. My, how life has changed!

We are all so attached to our devices that sometimes we forget that there’s a world out there, and so much to do when we turn off all the screens that are demanding our attention.  This coming week, April 29-May 5, Screen Free Week reminds us that there is  life beyond our digital devices. Get outside and experience the beauty of nature.  Play a game. read (a real book!), daydream, enjoy family and friends in person, not just on a screen!  The hope is that this week of turning off the tv, the Ipad, the Kindle, the Blackberry, whatever you use that keeps  you away from real life, will be the beginning of a lifestyle change where you discover or perhaps rediscover that it’s more fun to get out and interact with life than just passively interacting with a screen all the time. Moving and getting out will give you real health benefits too.  You may find that losing those few extra pounds is a little easier when you move more and sit less. There is a place for our digital devices, but we need to realize that we can’t let them take over our lives.

Go to  the website for Screen Free Week and check it out today. There are ideas and resources to get you started.   When Monday comes you can start the challenge!   Are you in ?  Join me!

104/365 screen free week (Photo credit: edan idzerda)

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Wizarding World Of Harry Potter Coming To Southern California

Hogwarts (at Islands of Adventure, Universal Studios, Florida)

 

Hold on to your sorting hats—The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is coming to Universal Studios in Southern California! This is great news for West Coasters and folks who don’t like to fly and so can’t visit the extant WWOHP in Orlando, Florida at Universal’s Islands of Adventure.

According to the collider.com (who made the announcement at the end of 2011) the earliest WWOHP would open is 2015, according to “a previous report” (it would be part of the already existing Universal Studios Hollywood.)

We will look forward to hearing more about this project!

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iFUSD – Newly Developed App for Fremont Unified School District

If your child goes to school in the Fremont Unified School District, and if you owned one of the Apple i-products, you might want to down load this free app from the App store.

iFUSD is the official iOS Application for the Fremont Unified School District.  It has really awesome features such as Push Notifications about important updates for the schools that you choose, emergency status updates,  grades and attendance data access for Junior and high schools, access to District news and calendar, information on the community/Board of Education, schools locations/maps, and function like 1-click calling to your children’s schools.

This app was made in coordination with the FUSD Technology department, an involved parent, a high school student developer, and many other high school students from Mission San Jose High school.

For more information about the app, please click here.

So, just check it out!!  iFUSD will help you stay safe and up to date!

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April is National Poetry Month

April will be here soon, and I want to remind everyone that this is a very special month: National Poetry Month.  In our hurry, scurry, rushed world we are lucky if we have time to read something, anything.  Often it is Facebook or Twitter.  Or maybe we even carve out time to read that hot new bestseller everyone is buzzing about.  Often we don’t think about poetry which has a different way of looking at the world.  Poetry has its own pace and rhythm that invites us to take time to ponder, and think about our feelings, our memories, our values.Growing up, poetry was a big part of my life.  My dad loved poetry, and especially a book called “101 Famous Poems”.  He gave me a copy for my 10th birthday, which I still own.  We would read the poems in that book, and often I would memorize them.  I still remember snatches of them some 50 years later.”Daffodils” by William Wordsworth was one of my favorites:

I wander’d lonely as a cloud

that floats on high o’er vale and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils:

That poem not only evokes for me the thought of a beautiful field of daffodils, but also the wonderful times I spent with my dad when we would go on “adventures” all around the Bay Area to local parks.

That little book also contained the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling:

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

Those are words that mean a lot to me, and I still have the poem displayed in my cubicle at work. It reminds me that I can be strong when I am facing adversity. Poems had a huge influence on me as I grew up, and as I mentioned, those poems I learned as a child, can transport me back to those simpler days of my life.

Are there poems that influenced you as a child or teen or perhaps now influence you?  Think about them and why they were or are important to you. What feelings or images do they evoke?

And remember, there is a world of poetry at your local library.  Stop by a branch this April and  pick up a poetry book. Many poems are short, and don’t require the time commitment of a novel, yet contain thoughts, images and ideas that may challenge you, thrill you or widen your horizons.   Read poetry for your own enjoyment or share it with someone.  After all, poetry invites us to read it aloud. Discover or re-discover the joys of poetry!

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Reverend W. Awdry

Today is the anniversary of the Reverend Wilbert V. Awdry’s death (March 21, 1997). Reverence Awdry was the creator of the beloved Railway Series, featuring Thomas the Tank engine and his friends. In his youth, Awdry lived near train tracks and could hear the trains at night, chugging up a steep grade. The first of the Railway Stories was created in 1943 when his son was sick at home. Awdry created the story to entertain his son, and continued writing new stories afterwards (a total of 26 stories, before Awdry stopped writing in 1972). For more information about Awdry, please check out the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilbert_Vere_Awdry

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Parenting Workshop in Chinese #1

Fremont Library is hosting a series of Parenting workshops conducted in Mandarin Chinese in 2013.  These free workshops are held quarterly on Saturdays at 3:30 pm.  Topics includes:

• March 23 – Early Childhood Development
• June 15 – Positive Discipline
• Sept 7 – School Aged Children Development
• Dec 7 – Homework/Chores and Responsibility

Lectures will be offered by speakers who are licensed teachers from Herald Family Rebuilding Center located at the Fremont Family Resource Center followed by a Q and A session.  No registration is required.  Please call (510) 745-1421 for more information.

Fremont圖書館將於2003年舉辦一系列的親子教育中文講座.  講座將於每三個月舉辦一次, 時間為週六下午三點半至五點 此講座由持有加州教師執照, 現任角聲護家中心主任的周紅主講, 周紅有多年教授情緒管理以及親子關係的經驗, 她並將帶來護家親子講師團隊與大家一起研討親子教育的各種議題 講座結束後並有問題解答及分享時間.

第一次講座訂於三月二十三日星期六下午三點半至五點. 歡迎為人父母或對教養孩子有興趣的朋友們來參加.

講題包括:

• 3/23/13 – 嬰幼兒(0-5 歲)的身心發展
• 6/15/13 – 正面的管教方法
• 9/7/13 – 學齡兒童 (6-12 歲) 的身心發展
• 12/7/13 – 學校作業及家事分擔?

講座無需報名,免費參加,詳情請電(510) 745-1414 鄒小姐 或電郵 jtsou@aclibrary.org 查詢

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March is Art IS Education Month!

In honor of the Art IS Education month, all the Alameda County Library branches are offering more than 100 free art events for youths of all ages and their family to explore their creativity and to learn how art can bring positive changes to ourselves, our community and our world.  At Centerville Library, we have planned a busy month full of fun activities and here is the listing of them:

	Tuesdays, March 5, 12, 19, 26, during open Hours Thursday, March 7, 16, 23, during open hours Seasons Kirigami Art Project Kids and teens of all ages are invited to participate in making scenes of the seasons with kirigami paper cutting art. From flowers and butterflies to pine trees and snowflakes, there are countless patterns you can create. All materials are provided, so just bring your creativity and imagination and stop by anytime during library open hours. The project will be put on display in the Children’s Area after completion.
	Thursday, March 7, 3:30-5:30 P.M. Mandala Paper Quilt Workshop This fun workshop for families will be led by Teaching Artist Lilli Lanier. This project uses basic traditional kirigami paper cutting techniques to create colorful, layered, mandala paper quilt squares. All ages welcome, and all materials will be provided.
	Tuesdays, March 5, 12, 19, 26, 2:00-2:30 P.M. Bollywood Babies Join instructor Sunita Raj in this fun Bollywood dance learning program for children 18 to 48 months old and their parent. Space is limited, so a ticket is required to attend. Free tickets will be handed out 30 minutes prior to the program.
	Thursday, March 28, 4:00-4:30 P.M. Read-To-Me Storytime Special Session In this special story time session, children aged 2 to 6 years old will enjoy art-themed stories and receive a coloring or activity sheet. No registration is required..

For more information, please call (510) 795-2629 or email Chien-Chun Chang at cchang@aclibrary.org.
Centerville Library is located at 3801 Nicolet Ave.,Fremont, CA 94536 MAP

For a complete listing of all the events at Alameda County Libraries, please click HERE

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