Month: April 2019

Posted in Book Talk

Calling All Writers

Posted on by Meinders Library

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Tonight at 7:00pm Meinders Community Library will host Minnesota author Candace Simar. Aspiring writers and literary enthusiasts can learn about Simar’s writing process and her tips and tricks for getting published.

Books About Writers and Writing

Middle Grade Fiction

  • The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani
  • Ava and Pip by Carol Weston
  • Front Desk by Kelly Yang
  • The Way to Bea by Kat Yeh

Young Adult Fiction

  • Nothing by Annie Barrows
  • Between the Lines by Nikki Grimes
  • Final Draft by Riley Redgate
  • Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
  • Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

Adult Fiction

  • Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • Too Many Cooks by Dana Bates
  • A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne
  • The Drowning by Camilla Lackberg
  • Nine Perfect Strangers by Lianne Moriarty
  • Tribute by Nora Roberts
  • The Other Story by Tatian de Rosnay

Nonfiction

  • Writing Radar: Using Your Journal to Snoop Out and Craft Great Stories by Jack Gantos
  • Mary’s Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein by Lita Judge
  • Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
  • Spilling Ink: A Young Writer’s Handbook by Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter
  • Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction by Benjamin Percy

-Emily

Posted in Get Connected

Summer Crafting Made Easy at Meinders

Posted on by Meinders Library

Summer brings oodles of reasons to invite friends over for food, fun, and fellowship or to preserve memories of good times past. Thanks to our State Farm Neighborhood Assist grant, we have added items to our STEAM Room that can help make your special moments pop.

Just in time for our third annual Full STEAM Ahead event on May 18, we’ve purchased more tools and tech for our makerspace at the library.

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Highlighted today are Cricut cartridges for paper crafting, scrapbooking, and personalized gift making. We tried to pick a broad range of cricut cartridges, but we are always open to more suggestions from our crafty patrons. To date, six of our seventeen cartridges have arrived and are awaiting their first foray into the crafting world.

These will be available for in-house use in our makerspace or for checkout to local patrons. We have a Cricut machine for your die-cut needs, and a Cricut steamer for in-house, fabric creations such as t-shirts, bags, and blankets.

The tools are free to use, while sample supplies of paper, vinyl, and fabric are limited. Patrons will need to purchase their own consumable supplies for projects or crafting sessions.

Our STEAM Room is also available for reservation outside of school hours for individuals working on large projects or groups wishing to dabble with all we have to offer. Educators–both homeschool and public–can also contact us to reserve our makerspace or maker tools to enhance their curriculum and connect their students to the broader world.

 

 

Posted in Book Talk

Earth Day Reads

Posted on by Meinders Library

Earth Day

Happy Earth Day! As the days grow longer, the weather warms up, and everything gets greener, it isn’t hard to appreciate Mother Nature. Whether you want to read a book with an ecological theme, a climate fiction dystopia, or a tribute to the great outdoors, Meinders Library has you covered.

Picturebooks

  • Maxwell’s Mountain by Shari Becker
  • On Earth by G. Brian Karas
  • The Earth Book by Todd Parr
  • They Say Blue by Jillian Tamaki

Middle Grade

  • The End of the Wild by Nicole Helget
  • Hoot by Carl Hiaasen
  • Falcon Wild by Terry Lynn Johnson
  • Me and Marvin Gardens by A. S. King

Young Adult

  • Feral Youth by Shaun David Hutchinson
  • The Other Side of Lost by Jessi Kirby
  • Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis
  • Dry by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman

Adult

  • Wolves by Cary Griffith
  • The River by Peter Heller
  • Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
  • Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Nonfiction

  • A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
  • World Without Fish by Mark Kurlansky
  • H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald
  • Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed

-Emily

Posted in Get Connected

When is Easter Anyway?

Posted on by Meinders Library

Bunnies, birds, and Bibles. Easter is celebrated in a variety of ways across the globe. But one thing that troubles most people is the date in which Easter will actually arrive.

Image result for stork cartoon images creative commonsYou see, Easter isn’t one of those “fourth Thursday” kind of holidays. Instead, it’s more of a “due date” holiday that hinges on several factors before arriving each spring. In fact, Easter might grace your calendar anytime between March 22 and April 25.

So, you might ask, how is the date determined? In a nutshell, Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox. There’s also a bit of math that goes into it that might tweak the date by a day or two, but for the most part, the answer hinges on the moon and the big guy who made the night skies possible.

This mash up of science and religion to determine a holiday is fascinating, and makes for good conversation and great real-world connections regardless of your personal beliefs.

Safe travels and happy Easter~ Jody

Posted in Just for Fun

From Baseball to Crime and Back Again

Posted on by Meinders Library

Last night, my middle son played a baseball game in Jackson. I couldn’t resist snapping a picture of him standing on second base with his last name on the scoreboard. This got me thinking about other places I’d been that bear my last name.

tyson at wacker field

  • Skiing down Jackwacker, a black diamond run in Colorado.
  • Walking down Wacker Drive in Chicago.
  • Reading about this iconic Midwestern street in a handful of novels over the years.

This journey down memory lane sparked a rabbit-hole google search, as I am wont to do. There, I found a dark underworld of writing that happens less than ten hours from us. As it turns out, Chicago is a literary hotbed.

Here’s a blurb from Julie Hyzy, a New York Times bestselling and Anthony Award-winning author, as found on Crime Reads, a website that covers all things bookishly criminal.

“Whether the setting is an alley behind a four-star hotel, or a shadowed corner of Lower Wacker Drive; whether our character is a greasy politician, or a newbie teacher in a troubled school, Chicago is the city that never stops giving.”

Just for fun, let’s find out who writes (wrote) from Chicago that you might know:

  • Sara Peretsky: Crime/Mystery author
  • Gillian Flynn: Psychological Thrillers
  • Sandra Cisneros: Poet (books available as a book club kit)
  • Ernest Hemingway: Classics
  • Gwendolyn Brooks: Pulitzer Prize Winner
  • Shel Silverstein: Beloved Children’s Lit
  • Edgar Rice Burroughs: Think Tarzan
  • Scott Turow: Legal Thrillers (many of which have been made into movies)

If you’re in the mood for great nonfiction, give Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson a try. This historical account shows the perfect intersection of America’s alleged first serial killer and the Chicago Word’s Fair of 1893.

Without too  much effort and a quick trip to your local library, you can journey to the slopes of Keystone or amble across a bridge on Wacker Drive. Without any practice time or any talent, you can even play ball at Wrigley Field.

With a good book, nothing is impossible and no place is too far!

happy reading~ Jody

Posted in Book Talk

Delicious Reads to Devour

Posted on by Meinders Library

Cookbook Card Catalog

Two of my favorite hobbies are reading and cooking. So what better way to combine these two pastimes than by reading a book about food—whether it features a character with a passion for cooking or descriptions of feasts that make you salivate. If just reading about food makes you hungry, don’t forget to check out our new electronic resource, A to Z World Food. This online cookbook is free and available to all patrons of Meinders Community Library. Visit A to Z World Food and sign in with your library card number.

Picturebooks

  • Today is Monday by Eric Carle
  • Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola
  • The Bear Ate Your Sandwich by Julie Sarcone-Roach
  • Nanette’s Baguette by Mo Willems

Middle Grade Fiction

  • Close to Famous by Joan Bauer
  • A Tangle of Knots by Lisa Graff
  • Love, Sugar, Magic: A Dash of Trouble by Anna Meriano
  • Pie by Sarah Weeks

Young Adult Fiction

  • North of Happy by Adi Alsaid
  • The Way You Make Me Feel by Maureen Goo
  • Heartless by Marissa Meyer
  • The Summer of Jordi Perez (And the Best Burger in Los Angeles) by Amy Spalding

Adult Fiction

  • Death by Dumpling by Vivien Chien
  • Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
  • Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes) by Lorna Landvik
  • Sourdough by Robin Sloan

Nonfiction

  • In Winter’s Kitchen by Beth Dooley
  • Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way through Great Books by Cara Nicoletti
  • Amazing (Mostly) Edible Science: A Family Guide to Fun Experiments in the Kitchen by Andrew Schloss
  • Give a Girl a Knife by Amy Thielen

Do you have a signature dish you always bring to potlucks? A family favorite you have at every holiday gathering? We’re collecting recipes to turn our card catalog into a community cookbook. Ask at the desk for a recipe card to contribute.

-Emily

Posted in Just for Fun

Happy National Library Week

Posted on by Meinders Library

One of our home-schooled patrons shares her library love in honor of National Library Week. Her mom gives the thumbs up on the savings she received in one visit to the library instead of purchasing books for her three students.

Keeping up with their reading needs is a full-time job. The books checked out today might last a week before the family will be back for more. Then again, they may be returned before the week is done.

At one point, Mom took out her phone and showed me pictures of the family’s already overflowing book shelves. “We literally have no more room for books in our house.”

This is a common experience for many library patrons across the globe. In addition to little physical space, checkbooks often have little room to satisfy literary appetites. Other bills must come first, or a family may have too many readers to keep up with the demand. Still other households are reluctant to spend $30 or more on a book they might not finish.

For all of those reasons and more, libraries are invaluable. They become increasingly so for individuals who need computers, copiers, and the internet to conduct business. Still others utilize library spaces as safe and welcoming “in-between” places to be.

Regardless of your purpose in the library–to gather, to read, to work, or to play–these community hubs connect you to the greater world.

Just for fun, stop by the library and check out your savings today!

happy reading~ jody