Posted in Explore and Discover on October 24, 2017 at 6:00 am
by Susan Goertz As a chill grips the autumn air and the chlorophyll leaches from the leaves, my mind turns toward the spooky. Nothing to get your heart racing and the cold sweat pouring on a crisp night like a good scary story. Horror is a very broad genre. There are a lot of options […]
Tags: adults, authors, booklists, books, digital library, family, Frankenstein, frightening, ghosts, Halloween, holidays, hoopla, horror, kids, monsters, movies, music, parents, reading, scary books, scarymovies, spooktacular, spooky, spooky stories, spooky tales, tweens, witches, YA, young learners
Posted in Explore and Discover on October 5, 2017 at 6:00 am
by Rachel Edmondson Spokane County Library District is commemorating its 75th anniversary this year. We’re celebrating this fall! We’ve collected stories and poems from local writers to create a community anthology, coming out in November. We have two musical celebrations at our libraries: in October, Unstrung featuring cellist Karen Hawkins an […]
Tags: 1942, adults, books, bookslist, kids, reading, teens, tweens, YA, young learners
Posted in Explore and Discover on September 28, 2017 at 6:00 am
By Stefani Miller Three years ago, organizing consultant Mari Kondo released her mega-best seller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Many a home and closet were whipped into shape, but no one I knew had taken on Kondo’s challenge. Certainly not me, with my infamous bin full of winter clothes that may or may not […]
Tags: ARC of Spokane, authors, books, clutter, declutter, DIY, donating, downsize, downsizing, Dress for Success, KonMari Method, Mari Kondo, q&a, reading, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, tidy
Posted in kids on September 21, 2017 at 6:00 am
by Sheri Boggs My favorite childhood books were often the scariest. If it had a ghost or a witch or a cover with a wind-tossed old tree on it, I was IN. I loved The Ghost Belonged to Me, by Richard Peck, (in which a 13-year-old boy not only learns he can see ghosts but […]
Tags: booklists, books, ghost stories, ghosts, Halloween, haunted, kids, reading, scary, scary reads, spooky, spooky tales, tweens
Posted in Explore and Discover on August 17, 2017 at 6:00 am
by Nathaniel Youmans Shortly after 10am on Monday, August 21, 2017, a terrific spectacle of light and darkness will leave millions of people suspended in awe. It has happened before (most recently through the Pacific Northwest states back in 1979), but on this morning many will witness the first total solar eclipse since 1918 to […]
Tags: adults, astronomy, books, events, family, kids, math, mathematics, moon, mythology, myths, parents, partial solar eclipse, science, sky, solar eclipse, stars, STEM, Sun, technology, teens, total solar eclipse, tweens
Posted in Explore and Discover on August 15, 2017 at 6:00 am
by Debbie Rhodes I woke up wandering into my living room thinking why wasn’t I at work? My husband looked at me strangely and in a very uneasy tone asked, “How many children do you have?” I replied, “Why are you asking me such a stupid question?” It turned out he had a very good […]
Tags: adults, books, education, Fast, health, health concerns, heart disease, hoopla, parents, recovery, spot a stroke, stroke, stroke recovery, stroke victim, TIA, Transient Global Amnesia, Transient Ischemic Attack
Posted in Explore and Discover on August 1, 2017 at 6:00 am
By David Wyatt “Lesson 9: Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.” For obvious reasons, this may have been one […]
Tags: adults, Aldous Huxley, booklists, books, J. K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, On Tyranny, Philip Roth, Ray Bradbury, reading, Timothy Snyder, tyranny
Posted in kids on July 11, 2017 at 6:00 am
by Melanie Boerner Grab your spy glass and let’s dust for prints! Here are some great mystery reads for tweens to investigate this summer. The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman Nobody “Bod” Owens is the only living resident of a graveyard and has been reared by the ghostly inhabitants since infancy, after his parents […]
Tags: 59:Escape Room Adeventures, books, escape room, investigative, late night at the library, mysteries, mystery, mystery books, summer programs, tween
Posted in kids on July 6, 2017 at 6:00 am
By Sheri Boggs If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being responsible for stocking the sections for “Kids Books to Go” at the Library District, it’s the perennial popularity of comic book heroes and their antics. “Kids Books to Go” is a bookstore-style display of multiple copies of high interest titles. Since its launch, year […]
Tags: Babymouse, booklists, books, CatStronauts, Dog Man, Dork Diaries, graphic novel hybrids, graphic novels, kids, Kids Books to Go, Narwhal and Jelly, parents, reading, tweens, Wimpy Kid
Posted in Explore and Discover on June 27, 2017 at 6:00 am
by Susan Goertz For me, there is no question that dystopian author Philip K. Dick was a visionary. And interestingly, the physical appearance of his female characters tends to have a direct correlation to their level of intelligence (I’ll let you discover which way the correlation falls out). Reading his novels and stories for a […]
Tags: adults, booklists, books, dystopian, female protagonist, graphic novels, hoopla, movies, overdrive, reading, women