The “I Survived” Series and Related Book Suggestions

February 20, 2014June 18, 2014 / Sharon Tyler / 2 Comments

Is historical fiction or survival fiction something that intrigues you or your child? Then you have probably heard of the I Survived series of children’s chapter books by Lauren Tarshis:

This series consists of historical fiction that is plot driven and faced paced. It grabs the attention of most willing readers with stories about courage and survival. According to Scholastic the books are best suited to those reading and a second grade reading level and up, with Lexile ratings around 600 and higher. For more information on the I Survived series check out the Scholastic’s webpage dedicated to the series. The series includes:

1. The Sinking of the Titanic, 1912
2. The Shark Attacks of 1916
3. Hurricane Katrina, 2005
4. The Bombing of Pearl Harbor, 1941
5. The San Francisco Earthquake, 1906
6. The Attacks of September 11, 2001
7. The Battle of Gettysburg, 1863
8. The Japanese Tsunami, 2011
9. I Survived the Nazi Invasion,1944 will be released in late February but you can place a hold on it now!

If you have read all of the books currently available in this series or are looking for more books about courage, hope, and survival for children then I would recommend also checking out: Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko and its two sequels, Pirate Hannah Pritchard: Pirate of the Revolution! by Bonnie Pryor and its sequels, Will at the Battle of Gettysburg, 1863 by Laurie Calkhoven and the entire Boys of War series, Survival in the Storm: the Dust Bowl Diary of Grace Edwards by Katelan Janke (part of the Dear America series), The Winter of Red Snow: the Revolutionary War Diary of Abigail Jane Stewart by Kristiana Gregory (part of the Dear America series), Rex Zero by Tim Wynne-Jones and its sequels, The Journal of Jesse Smoke: a Cherokee Boy by Joseph Bruchac (part of the My Name is America series), Sophia’s War: a Tale of the Revolution by Avi, and Waiting for Anya by Michael Morpurgo.

I know that I have barely touched the surface of historical fiction that deals with children facing times of war, environmental catastrophe, and other situations with include a struggle to survive. Do you have a favorite, series or stand alone, that you would recommend?

Museum Passes at CPL – The Maritime Aquarium

February 19, 2014July 25, 2014 / cheshirelib / Leave a comment

Cheshire Library has a collection of museum & state park passes that are available for Cheshire residents to check out. CPL Staff member Lisa is writing a series on our blog about the museum passes we offer, along with related reading material. Thanks, Lisa!

Featured Museum Pass: The Maritime Aquarium

This pass is good for $2.00 off for up to 6 people.

The Maritime Aquarium is located at 10 North Water Street,Norwalk, CT 06854.
Visit an aquarium different from all others in that its focus is Long Island Sound. Through exhibits and education, the Maritime Aquarium hopes to bring an awareness and appreciation of Long Island Sound to all who visit.
Their Vision: “The Maritime Aquarium is the only aquarium focused on Long Island Sound. From this core, it explores related animals and conservation issues from around the world. Its exhibits, admired for their quality and dramatic elegance, are carefully designed to give people of all ages entertaining, educational, and emotional experiences with animals in order to instill a sense of wonder in the diversity of nature.
A constantly evolving facility, The Maritime Aquarium offers visitors personal interactions with animals and interpretation by knowledgeable staff and volunteers. With its welcoming atmosphere, focus on service to visitors, and outstanding amenities, The Maritime Aquarium is the premiere family destination in the region, attracting large numbers of return visitors. As it grows, it retains its intimate scale, and remains a beloved institution with deep ties to its community. The Maritime Aquarium’s ultimate goal is to help people recognize that Long Island Sound enriches the quality of their lives, and must be protected.
Anchored by its collection, The Maritime Aquarium offers a preeminent visitor experience and education programs widely admired for their depth and innovation. To add to the experience, he Maritime Aquarium also has the largest IMAX® theater in Connecticut, with a screen as tall as a six-story building!

For additional information, including Hours of Operation, check out their website at http://www.maritimeaquarium.org/ or contact the Aquarium at 203-852-0700.

If you enjoyed your visit to the Maritime Aquarium, you may also enjoy reading:

Beyond the Blue Horizon by Brian Fagan. Archaeologist and historian Fagan tackles his richest topic yet: the enduring quest to master the oceans, the planet’s most mysterious terrain. We know the tales of Columbus and Captain Cook, yet much earlier mariners made equally bold and world-changing voyages. From the moment when ancient Polynesians first dared to sail beyond the horizon, Fagan vividly explains how our mastery of the oceans changed the course of human history.

What drove humans to risk their lives on open water? How did early sailors unlock the secrets of winds, tides, and the stars they steered by? What were the earliest ocean crossings like? With compelling detail, Fagan reveals how seafaring evolved so that the forbidding realms of the sea gods were transformed from barriers into a nexus of commerce and cultural exchange. From bamboo rafts in the Java Sea to triremes in the Aegean, from Norse longboats to sealskin kayaks in Alaska, Fagan crafts a captivating narrative of humanity’s urge to challenge the unknown and seek out distant shores. Beyond the Blue Horizon will enthrall readers who enjoyed Dava Sobel’s Longitude, Simon Winchester’s Atlantic, and Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel.

The Long Island Sound by Marilyn E. Weigold. From the discovery of the Sound in 1614, to the adventures of Captain Kidd, to the sinking of the Lexington in the sound in 1840, the Long Island Sound also holds a unique place in American history. This book traces the growth of fishing and shipbuilding villages along the sound to the development of major industrial ports, resort towns, and suburban communities along the sound. Marilyn Weigold discusses the subsequent overcrowding and pollution that resulted from this prosperity and expansion.

Originally published in 1974 as The American Mediterranean and long out of print, The Long Island Sound has been updated by the author with a new preface and final chapter describing the Sound in the twenty-first century. In this new edition, Weigold particularly focuses on environmental concerns, and describes more current milestones, like the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, who fought and won in 1995 to set aside 100,000 acres as NY State’s first forest preserve.

Through over 40 stunning photographs and many fascinating stories, The Long Island Sound tells the history of a vastly populated, but underdiscussed, part of America.

Book Club Picks – Humor

February 18, 2014August 29, 2014 / Linda / 2 Comments

Is your book club looking for some titles to cheer them up during the dreary winter season? Here are a few titles they might enjoy reading.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion – Meet Don Tillman, a brilliant yet socially challenged professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife. And so, in the orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a sixteen-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers.

Where’d You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple – Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Little Bitty Lies by Mary Kay Andrews – A tantalizing tale about an abandoned Atlanta housewife and mother who tells one tiny white lie that sets her world spiraling outrageously out of control.

Very Valentineby Adriana Trigiani – The adventures of an extraordinary and unforgettable woman as she attempts to rescue her family’s struggling shoe business and find love at the same time.

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boyby Helen Fielding – Bridget Jones stumbles through the challenges of loss, single motherhood, tweeting, texting, technology, and rediscovering her sexuality in—Warning! Bad, outdated phrase approaching!—middle age.

The Good House by Ann Leary – Hildy Good is a lifelong resident of a small community on the rocky coast of Boston’s North Shore, she knows pretty much everything about everyone. A successful real-estate broker, mother, and grandmother, her days are full. But her nights have become lonely ever since her daughters, convinced their mother was drinking too much, sent her off to rehab. Now she’s in recovery—more or less.

Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen – A tale at once fiercely pointed and wickedly funny in which the greedy, the corrupt, and the degraders of what’s left of pristine Florida—now, of the Bahamas as well—get their comeuppance in mordantly ingenious, diabolically entertaining fashion.

Truth In Advertising by John Kennedy – Finbar Dolan is lost and lonely. Except he doesn’t know it. Despite escaping his blue-collar Boston upbringing to carve out a mildly successful career at a Madison Avenue ad agency, he’s a bit of a mess and closing in on forty. He’s recently called off his wedding. Now, a few days before Christmas, he’s forced to cancel a long-postponed vacation in order to write, produce, and edit a Superbowl commercial for his diaper account in record time.

Kind of Kin by Rilla Askew – A funny and poignant novel that explores what happens when upstanding people are pushed too far—and how an ad-hoc family, and ultimately, an entire town, will unite to protect its own.

This Is When I Leave You by Jonathon Tropper – A riotously funny, emotionally raw novel about love, marriage, divorce, family, and the ties that bind-whether we like it or not.

Louise Reads: The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

February 16, 2014July 25, 2014 / Louise / 1 Comment

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Don Tillman, 39 and a professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. His lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not “wired” for romance. Logically, though, he concedes to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner through an exhaustive 16-page survey he has designed to scientifically eliminate all incompatible candidates.

Rosie Jarman would never make it past page one of Don’s survey. A smoking, drinking, disorganized vegetarian, she is completely unsuitable. Yet Don feels somehow compelled to use his expertise in DNA analysis to assist her with a project of her own – identifying her biological father. An unlikely friendship develops between them as they work together on The Father Project.

In The Rosie Project, Don is our narrator, and seeing the story from his point of view is part of the charm of this book. Similar to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night -Time and Silver Linings Playbook, the narrator of this story is wired differently than most people. To say Don has social difficulties is an understatement. In an early scene, Don is discussing a lecture he’d recently given at the university:

“Claudia asked whether I’d enjoyed the Asperger’s lecture… [I] told her I had found the subject fascinating. “Did the symptoms remind you of anyone?” she asked. They certainly did. They were an almost perfect description of Lazlo Hevesi in the Physics department.”

Fans of the television series “The Big Bang Theory” may notice some similarities to the character Sheldon Cooper from that show. For example, in a scene where Don is explaining his scheduled meal system to Rosie after a meeting at a restaurant goes comically awry:

“So you cook this same meal every Tuesday, right?”

“Correct.” I listed the eight major advantages of the Standardized Meal System:

No need to accumulate recipe books.
Standardized shopping list – hence very efficient shopping.
Almost zero waste – nothing in the refrigerator or pantry unless required for one of the recipes.
Diet planned and nutritionally balanced in advance.
No time wasted wondering what to cook.
No mistakes, no unpleasant surprises.
Excellent food, superior to most restaurants at a much lower price (see point 3).
Minimum cognitive load required.

Debut novelist Graeme Simsion has written a warm-hearted, laugh-out-loud funny, and surprisingly poignant story. No huge surprises, The Rosie Project follows many of the tropes that are the stock-in-trade of romantic comedies, but I was still caught up in the story from the first words and it never lagged or disappointed. A feel-good book that delivered! Audiobook listeners will enjoy first-time narrator Dan O’Grady’s performance, his Australian accent (the story is set in Melbourne) added an authentic touch.

If you like The Rosie Project, you may also enjoy:

The Big Bang Theory starring Johnny Galecki, Kaley Cuoco, Jim Parsons, Simon Helberg, and Kunal Nayyar

The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

What to Read After, or While Waiting for, The Fault in Our Stars

February 15, 2014June 6, 2014 / Sharon Tyler / 1 Comment

Are you among the masses that read and loved The Fault in Our Stars by John Green? If not, know that the book is emotionally charged. While considered a young adult novel because of the ages of the two main characters, the book has been read and raved about from teens and adults alike. It is not an easy read, but one that is worth the emotional investment that it seems to require. The book is about sixteen year old Hazel, a stage IV thyroid cancer patient, who has accepted her terminal diagnosis. Then a chance meeting with a boy at cancer support group forces her to reexamine her perspective on love, loss, and life.

Going Bovine by Libba Bray
Cameron Smith, a disaffected sixteen year-old who, after being diagnosed with Creutzfeld Jakob’s (aka mad cow) disease, sets off on a road trip with a death-obsessed video gaming dwarf he meets in the hospital in an attempt to find a cure.

You Have Seven Messages by Stewart Lewis
Teenaged Luna, who lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side with her movie director father, tries to piece together the death of her mother with the seven unheard messages left on her forgotten cell phone.

Me & Earl & the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
Seventeen-year-old Greg has managed to become part of every social group at his Pittsburgh high school without having any friends, but his life changes when his mother forces him to befriend Rachel, a girl he once knew in Hebrew school who has leukemia.

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr
Told from their own viewpoints, seventeen-year-old Jill, in grief over the loss of her father, and Mandy, nearly nineteen, are thrown together when Jill’s mother agrees to adopt Mandy’s unborn child but nothing turns out as they had anticipated.

A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner
As she tries to sort out her feelings of love, seventeen-year-old Cass, a spunky math genius with an introverted streak, finds a way to memorialize her dead best friend.

Before I Die by Jenny Downham
A terminally ill teenaged girl makes and carries out a list of things to do before she dies.

Hate List by Jennifer Brown
Sixteen-year-old Valerie, whose boyfriend Nick committed a school shooting at the end of their junior year, struggles to cope with integrating herself back into high school life, unsure herself whether she was a hero or a villain.