Great New Reads

 

Just about every week, a few shelf-fulls of new books come into the Library.  Here are several titles that caught my eye:

Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrific Ninety Days by Judith Viorst.  Do you remember someone reading to you, or maybe you reading to your child, the classic children’s book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day?.  Well, the real Alexander has grown up but has returned home with his wife and children and Mom’s still writing about him with that bemused air.  A funny and lovely read.

Freedom For the Thought That We Hate: a Biography of the First Amendment by Anthony Lewis. Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and First Amendment expert Anthony Lewis writes a nuanced exploration of the First Amendment, the struggle for its fulfillment and the threats it faces today.

The World’s Best Memoir Writing: the Literature of Life From St. Augustine to Gandhi, and From Pablo Picasso to Nelson Mandela, edited by Eve Claxton, is arranged by age from birth (Confessions by St. Augustine) to one hundred (My First Hundred Years by Margaret Murray). Each age consists of one or more short excerpts from a wide range of memoirs, each with a brief introduction to place the excerpt in context. Billie Holiday’s entry for age 40 is heart-breaking. Nelson Mandela writing of freedom at age 71 is awe-inspiring.  This is a great source for finding memoirs you’d like to read in full.  If we don’t have that book in our collection, we’ll be glad to look for a copy in another library we can “InterLibrary Loan” in for you.

Pushcart Prize XXXII Best of the Small Presses 2008, edited by Bill Henderson, is an anthology of American fiction, essays, memoirs and poetry published by small presses.  If you are skeptical of the domination of American literature by the Big Seven Publishers, this book will give you a taste of the very best of the rest. Again, we’ll do everything we can to locate any text you’d like to read in full.

Immigrant Fiction

Our first book group meeting of the new year will take place on Wednesday, January 9th at 1:30 p.m. The theme is Crossing Borders: Immigrant Fiction. You’re invited to choose an appealing book from the collection we’ve set aside at the Reference Desk. Read it and come to the meeting to share it with the rest of the group and discuss the common themes. We’ll have a list of all the titles available so you can note the most interesting ones and leave with more recommended titles.

In a nation of immigrants, we have many stories of what it was to come here, to start over, to assimilate and to remain true to where we have come from. These stories are both very particular to cultures and families and also universal. The group on January 9th will compare stories written by and about immigrants from all over the world. What is unique and what is common. How are the experiences of our own families reflected in these books?

Here are a few of the fascinating books we have available for you to choose from:

Giants in the Earth by O.E. Rolvaag was originally written in Norwegian but is nevertheless a truly American novel of the experience of peasant immigrants settling the Dakota prairie. This book is an old classic.

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez is a beautifully written story about a loving family coming from the very proper upper reaches of Caribbean society into the more free-wheeling streets of the Bronx. Mami and Papi’s expectations of their daughters come into conflict with the temptations of America. Alvarez writes with humor and sensitivity.

The Vision of Emma Blau by Ursula Hegi explores the cultural conflicts and animosity experienced by German-American families through both World Wars. The story follows some of the minor characters from the brilliant Stones From the River. Hegi shines in relating life through a child’s perspective and in her evocative writing.

Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid follows a teenage girl immigrating to America from the West Indies as a au pair. Lucy is angry about almost everything in her life but her honesty leads to grace and wisdom.

The Interpreter of Maladies is a set of short stories penned by Indian-American writer Jhumpa Lahiri (author of The Namesake, which has been made into a movie available, from our library, on DVD). Indian tradition meets American complexity.

Melania Mazzucco’s Vita alternates a fictional story of two Italian children coming through Ellis Island and learning to survive in a brutal New York City with the nonfictional account of her attempts to trace her own Italian ancestors. Mazzucco pulls no punches in describing the squalor, poverty and bigotry experienced by immigrants. Yet her story contains love and inspiration as well.

These are just a few of the books we’ve put aside for the book discussion group. Or perhaps you have another favorite novel of the immigrant experience. New members are welcome throughout the year. Join us.

Cool Green Stuff

This is the title of a fun new book in our collection - a picture book for “green” adults. Subtitled “A Guide to Finding Great Recycled, Sustainable, Renewable Objects You Will Love,” and created by Dave Evans, the book consists of photos of objects repurposed by some very creative people. Purses made from old keyboards or candywrappers, a CD holders made from an old LP,  a bangle bracelet from an old knitting needle (the perfect gift for the knitter in your life!). There are also some more practical and ambitious items, such as a watercone to convert salty sea water to drinkable fresh in use in Yemen or an interior wall made of growing plants.  Each item is pictured on its own page with a website for more information and purchasing information. The book is great fun to look through, a feast of creativity.  Some of the items would make sweet and lovely gifts while others are not anything you’d want to own. I don’t know about you, but there will not be any chairs made from old shopping carts in my living room. I don’t care how soft the cushion or what color the “arms” have been painted. That’s a no go. But it is fun to look at in the book or someone else’s abode.

This book, and many others, is currently on our New Non-fiction display (or will be as soon as I return it there). Stop by and take a look. There are lots of books to give you a new take on old things.

Banned Book Month is Over (but We Treasure Your Freedom to Read Everyday at ALPL

We gave away twenty-five of our terrific t-shirts (these do get noticed!). We had lots of fun and hoped we educated lots of folks about some of our most essential freedoms - the freedom of the press and the freedom to read what you choose to read. 

We received entries from 136 individuals, children and adults. Here’s the challenged and banned books our patrons told us they loved:  The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle),  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll),  Anastasia Again (Lois Lowry),  Animal Farm (George Orwell),  Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl,  The Bible,  Black Boy (Richard Wright),  Blubber (Judy Blume),  Born on the Fourth of July (Ron Kovic),  Bridge to Terabithia Katherine Paterson),  Candide (Voltaire),  Catch-22 (Joseph Heller),  The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean Auel),  A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess), The Color Purple (Alice Walker),  Cujo (Stephen King), Dracula (Bram Stoker),  East of Eden (John Steinbeck),  The Face on the Milk Carton (Caroline Cooney),  Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury),  A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway),  Forever (Judy Blume), The Giver (Lois Lowry),  Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell),  Gorillas in the Mist (Dian Fossey),  Goosebumps (series - R.L. Stine),  Gossip Girls (series - Cicely Von Ziegesar),  Halloween ABC (Eve Merriam),  Harry Potter (series - J.K. Rowling),  Headless Cupid (Zilpha Keatley Snyder),  I Am the Cheese (Robert Comier),  It’s Perfectly Normal (Robie Harris),  James and the Giant Peach (Roald Dahl),  Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy),  A Light in the Attic (Shel Silverstein),  Little House on the Prairie (Laura Ingalls Wilder),  The Lorax (Dr. Seuss),  My Brother Has AIDS (Deborah Davis),  My Brother Sam is Dead (James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier),  My Name is Asher Lev (Chaim Potok),  Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens),  On My Honor (Marion Dane Bauer),  On the Origin of the Species (Charles Darwin),  The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chobsky),  The Satanic Verses (Salman Rushdie),  The Scarlett Letter (Nathanial Hawthorne), The Scary Stories (series - Alvin Schwartz),  Sex (Madonna),  Slaughterhouse 5 or the Children’s Crusade ( Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.),  The Slave Dancer (Paula Fox),  The Story of My Life (Helen Keller),  Tiger Eyes (Judy Blume),  To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee),  Ulysses (James Joyce),  Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe),  Where’s Waldo? (Martin Hanford), The Witches (Roald Dahl),  A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleline L’Engle).

I love this cartoon!

from Shelf Check:

http://shelfcheck.blogspot.com/2007/09/shelf-check-97.html

More Staff Picks of Banned Books

Here’s the rest of our staff favorites among books challenged or banned somewhere in the U.S.  There are some great reads here:

Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence

A novel of a love affair between an upper class British woman and her husband’s gamekeeper post World War I, the sex scenes and the language are explicit. The book was declared “obscene” by the U.S. government in 1929.  It was banned from the mails and Customs seized any copies citizens attempted to bring into the country. A Boston bookseller and his clerk were fined and jailed for selling the book. The novel was sold in expurgated form for thirty years before a Federal District Court ruled in 1959 that it now met changing community standards. The Postmaster General continued to ban it from the mails for some period after that.

A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein

A funny and joyful book of poems mostly for children (but much enjoyed by adults as well) challenged and banned in a variety of places by people without much sense of humor!

Like Water for Chocolate: a novel in monthly installments with recipes, romances and home remedies  by Laura Esquivel

A Mexican romantic fantasy with recipes. This book was challenged as a high school elective reading assignment for “sexually explicit and inappropriate material.”

  Naked Lunch by William Burroughs

A story told with shifting points of view and stream-of-consciousness ramblings about a junkie who struggles to free himself from the destructive effects of addictions. Our staff fan says the book is a clever melding of the real and the fantastic.  An essay describing drugs and drug use from the book was published in The British Journal of Addiction. This was the last book declared obscene and brought to trial in the U.S. (1959). In 1966, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared that the book was “grossly offensive” but that it was “not utterly without redeeming social value.” They ruled that the book could be sold within the state though not advertised in a way to “appeal to purient interests.”

Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Green

A Jewish girl in small town Arkansas during World War 2 meets and befriends a German prisoner of war. She must cope with the consequences of her friendship in a petty family and small minded community. The book was challenged as curriculum material in Connecticut because it contains profanity and was said to provide bad examples.

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig

A young donkey goes missing and his parents, the neighbors (cats, dogs, horses, pigs), and concerned police (pigs) try to find him. He eventually turns back from a stone into himself and is reunited with his loving family. This picture book has been challenged and in some cases removed from libraries because of opposition to the portrayal of police as pigs, despite the apparent positive intention of the author.

 Too Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

 

Scout, a twelve year old girl in a small Alabama town, witnesses her father’s defense of a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. Her childhood is shattered by the hostility of the townspeople. The novel has been repeatedly challenged and not-infrequently banned because of objections to its use of the word “nigger” and other swear words and to its handling of racial issues.

 

Where’s Waldo by Martin Hanford

For twenty years small children, their parents and grandparents have been looking for funny-looking Waldo in the midst of complex scenes, developing pre-reading skills and having a ball. Hanford has written and illustrated many new Waldo books as well. However, the book has been challenged for “pictures of dirty things,” and the tiny picture of a woman on a crowded beach with a bikini bottom but no top.

You still have a few days to enter our contest for one of our stunning I Read Banned Books @ Avon Lake Public Library t-shirts.  Just come in and fill out an entry blank with your favorite banned book, your name and local phone number or send us an email at refdeskATavonlake.lib.oh.us with the information before Friday, Oct. 6. We’ll draw entries for twenty adult and five child size t-shirts on Oct. 8. You might be a lucky winner!

More staff recommended Banned Books

As promised here are more Challenged and Banned Books recommended by our staff.  As you can see, I’m doing these in alpha order with more to come.  Happy reading!

Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler

Well-reviewed and much-enjoyed coming of age story of a teenage fat girl who learns to care for and stand up for her self.  It is a story most young women can appreciate. The book has been banned from some school libraries because of profanity and sexual references.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Classic tale of oppression and censorship, ironically Fahrenheit 451 was itself censored for many years. Publishers produced a version, originally sold to schools and school book clubs and for several years as the only version in print, with words such as “damn” and “hell” removed. A mention of a drunk man was changed to a sick man among other such alterations of Bradbury’s work. Bradbury himself was unaware that his text had been altered and was outraged when he found out. Along with Bradbury, protests from the American Library Association and teacher groups forced publishers to at least acknowledge that alterations had been made on the title page of “student editions.”

The Giver by Lois Lowry

 First in a trilogy of science fiction novels set in a utopian future where security is valued above freedom. A twelve year old boy discovers the terrible truth about his society. Challenged at Troy Intermediate School in Avon Lake (1999), and elsewhere, for mature themes.  Follow this book with Gathering Blue and The Messenger. 

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Famous antebellum novel in which Scarlett O’Hare survives the destruction of the Old South by any means necessary. The novel was under attack as soon as it was published in 1936 for Scarlett’s immoral behavior. The attempts at censorship only fueled sales.  Later objections included the negative portrayal of freed slaves and the use of the word “nigger” throughout the text.

Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

After the Joad family loses their farm to the dustbowl and the bank, they follow the promise of jobs to California where they become exploited and despised migrant workers. This passionate and political novel has a long history of censorship, starting with the real life California farmers portrayed so negatively in the novel. It has been challenged and sometimes banned, even literally burned, for its portrayal of farm workers, farm owners and the Kern, California economic order, language, its characterization of a minister as sexually profligate (though otherwise decent), and just about every other objection imaginable. Others view the book as one of the truly great American novels.

  

The Handmaid’s Tale by Alice Walker

A terrifying apocalyptic story of a future America run by religious fundamentalists after an environmental crisis has dramatically lowered the birthrate. The book was challenged in California where a local minister complained that the protagonist was a woman and young men would be unable to relate to her (!). Elsewhere, the book has been challenged for profanity, passages about sex, “themes of despair,” and complaints that the book was defamatory to minorities, women, God and the disabled.

Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling

Magical, engaging series that drew millions of children to the joys of the written word, the first six books are among the most frequently challenged books of recent years. Challengers object to the themes of witchcraft and magic and to characters defying authority in the stories.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

A fictionalized expose of the meat packing industry written in 1906, the book describes the humiliating and impoverishing conditions of workers in the industry and the cruel treatment of animals, and it urges social and economic reforms. The book shocked then President Theodore Roosevelt, and he sent inspectors who reported that conditions were actually worse than described in the novel. The book was banned in Lisbon, Ohio in the 1920s and was later banned from overseas U.S. libraries by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

King and King by Linda de Haan

The Queen has declared that her son, the Prince, must marry. Many beautiful women are brought before him, but he is not attracted to any of them. Then he meets another prince and true love blooms. This sweet picture book has been challenged in libraries throughout the country.

Banned Books - Staff Picks

Our staff has been asked to name their favorite banned and challenged books.  Here’s the first part of the list (titles in alphabetical order through D) with a brief description of each book and the reason stated by challengers for requesting it to be banned somewhere in the U.S.  Maybe you’ll find your next great read below! All titles are available at Avon Lake Public Library.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Huckleberry Finn narrates the story of his escape from his father and the “sivilised” world on a raft down the Mississippi River with his new-found friend and escaped slave Jim. Called by many the finest American novel of all time, it has also been challenged and at times banned by libraries and schools for the use of the word “nigger,” charges of racism and objections to the characters’ course behavior and ungrammatical language.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

The exploits of the rambunctious Tom Sawyer in 19^th century Hannibal, MO. This beloved book has been banned from a number of schools due to charges of racism and sexism.

Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

The moving diary of an insightful and heartful adolescent hiding with her family from Nazi persecution, the book was censored from the beginning with passages where Frank describes her early sexual feelings and her frustrations with her mother removed.  The German publication removed material offensive to German readers. In the 1980s, the book was challenged in a number of American school districts for “inappropriate and offensive” discussion of sexuality in the diary and charges that the book “undermines adult authority.” In 1983, several members of the Alabama State Textbook Commission wanted to remove the book from school reading lists because it was “a real downer.”

The Bible

The holy scriptures of two of the world religions, The Bible is also one of the most frequently censored books throughout history. In the U.S., many challenges have centered on charges of lewdness, indecency and violence “not suitable for young children”.  Other challenges have arisen from incorrect interpretations of Supreme Court rulings on the separation of church and state.

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Patterson

This Newberry Award-winning book relates the friendship of two ten year olds in rural Virginia and the imaginary realm of Terabithia they create. One of the children dies in an accident and the other must deal with his grief and sense of guilt.  The book has been challenged for several expletives and what a few parents have perceived as a negative view of life.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: an Indian history of the American West  by Dee Brown

A scathing account of the conquest of the American West from the Native American viewpoint, it has been banned from at least one school district as “slanted” and “un-American.”

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Holden Caulfield, a precocious teenager, confronts the dissonance between his own idealism and the hypocrisies of the adult world. The book has been banned in many places for reasons such as profanity, sexual situations, “perversion,” being “anti-white” and “part of a Communist plot.”

Christine by Stephen King

A horror story of a demonic car and the teenage boys who are obsessed with it.  The book has been challenged, and in some cases banned, for the explicit details of the boys’ sexual thoughts.

  

Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel

An orphaned pre-historic girl is taken in by another clan who insist she conform to their social codes, including submitting to a rape. The book has been banned for its depiction of brutish behavior in general and of the rape in particular.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Celie, an impoverished and abused black child, writes letters to God and to her sister as she heals and grows through tremendous odds. This Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award winning novel has been challenged and sometimes banned due to Celie’s occasional use of profanity and the descriptions of sexual situations.

Cujo by Stephen King

A multifaceted story by the King of horror about a rabid St. Bernard on a killing spree, this novel has been challenged and banned at several school libraries due to profanity and explicit sexual scenes. One parent requested that all Stephen King books be banned from her child’s school because “he writes horror fiction, which has no value.”

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Tragic romance set in the misery of the early USSR, this book was banned for years in the Soviet Union. However, in Larchmont, NY in 1964, a bookstore owner was threatened with a boycott from a self-identified member of the John Birch Society if he did not remove this “subversive” book and other Russian-themed books from his store.

Read what we read

One of the main things we hope we can do for you is to help you find things you want to read.  Librarians call this “Readers Advisory“. 

We have been blogging a few titles here we hope are of interest to you.

 We also know that some of you like to read what we like to read.  So, we put this display up and asked everyone here to put their favorites here for you to peruse. 

See this link for a list of staff favorites that is updated monthly.  You can also subscribe to a mailing list and get this list as an e-newsletter.

The Bestiary by Nicholas Christopher

My latest best read, Nicholas Christopher’s The Bestiary, is a coming of age fable featuring a lost young man seeking an ancient illustrated book of animals that didn’t make it onto Noah’s ark and finding himself. Christopher’s writing is luminous, his imagined animals fabulous, his human characters entirely real and his story haunting. As in Louise Erdrich’s stories of the Lakota, such as The Antelope Wife, there is no line between the sensory and the imaginative world and the truths of each world reverberate in the other. Both writers remind us that we are part of a world much larger, more beautiful and more interconnected than we are aware, and they do so not with lecture but with magical story.