I was at a BBQ yesterday with a group of friends, and we had a
wonderful time, with great food, good friends and excellent conversation, so I’m
a bit tired and kind of lazy today. And
I think I’m allowed to do nothing but read and drink yummy chai tea, as I go
back to work tomorrow, after eight weeks off.
I’m ready to go back, but it’ll be tough the first few days to adjust to
the schedule again.
Speaking of going back to work, I’ve always been in the mindset
where, at the end of August, I would think of the coming season as a “new start”;
I guess having been a student off and on for so long that I never lost the
association of September with a new school year. Well, now I am an elementary school librarian,
so I can use that as an excuse for this, since it really is a new school year
beginning. I always feel like it’s time
to clean up, get organized and start fresh, much more so than in in January,
which of course really is the beginning of a new year. Some of the things I’ve been doing to get ready
for the start of the school year have been going through closets and dressers
to purge clothing, which has been donated to local charities, and going through
bookshelves to get rid of unwanted or unread titles. These I have distributed in a few different
ways. Yesterday I brought a bag of books
to a small community “free library” near my house. This small enclosed box is associated with
the nearby community garden, and one of the members of the garden said her
husband built the “library”. It is a
place where people can drop off books to share, and take books to read. I’ve seen a few of these little libraries
around town and I think it is an awesome idea.
I also brought some of my books to a second hand book shop to exchange
for credit. I love to browse second hand
bookstores, so I support them by both buying and selling quality books. The one I go to most, both because it is
close to my place and because it has a fabulous selection, is A Second Look Books in
downtown Kitchener (http://www.asecondlookbooks.com/). The staff there are helpful and
knowledgeable, and the ambiance suits me perfectly when I’m in the mood to
browse the shelves for a hidden gem or if I’m on a mission to find a particular
title. Anyway, I still have a box of
books that I think I will just put out on my front lawn on a day when no rain
is expected and hope that there will be enough foot traffic and interested
passers-by to find these books new homes.
Also because school is starting soon, I’ve read a couple of juvenile
fiction titles that are recent additions to my library, as I want to start doing
more “book talks” to the older grades at school. I have found that if I talk about a book,
students will want to take it out and read it.
This is a good thing, as I believe inspiring a love of books and reading
in children is so very important, especially these days, when most kids seem to
be only interested in computers and things they can do online (not including
ebooks!). I guess it’s always been this
way… in my day, it was TV that parents were worried about and kids loved.
Anyway, when I present a book talk, I feel
more confident if I’ve actually read the book, rather than just read reviews,
so I read two children's novels last week. The first was The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian
Selznick. You may be familiar with this title, as it was made into a film in 2011 entitled “Hugo”, directed by
Martin Scorsese, which I believe won some Oscars. I haven’t seen the film, but the book was
amazing. I haven’t read a lot of children’s
fiction, but this one was so interesting and different that it held my
attention through the entire (graphic) novel.
Set in 1930s Paris, it tells the story of orphaned boy Hugo Cabret,
whose father perished in a fire at the museum, forcing Hugo to live with his drunken
uncle Claude, who tends the clocks at the Paris railway station and has an
apartment behind the walls of the station.
When his uncle does not return from a night out, Hugo takes on the task
of tending the clocks in order to conceal this absence from the Station
Master. He returns to the site of the
fire and discovers an automaton, a mechanical figure that appears to have the
ability to draw or write, but it is broken, so Hugo determines to fix it in
order to see if it would write a message from his father. Hugo has been pilfering small parts from the
toy shop in the station to aid him in this project, as well as milk and food
whenever he can find it, but one day the toy store owner, Papa Georges, catches
him in the act. He is punished, but
manages to endear himself to the owner, and begins working for him, repairing toys
and helping out in the shop. Hugo is also befriended by Isabelle, the owner’s god-daughter, and together they have a few adventures in
bookshops, libraries and cinemas. It is during
one of these adventures that Hugo discovers the true identity of the toy store
owner, Georges Méliès, a former filmmaker, who has been thought
dead for many years, the man who directed his father's favourite film. When he discovers
this connection between Georges and his own father, Hugo begins to feel once
again that he belongs somewhere, that he is not completely abandoned. Told in text and illustrations, this novel is
both inspiring and historically interesting, as it was based on the life and experiences of pioneer French filmmaker Georges Méliès, who, despite early fame,
ended up destitute. This was a wonderful
reading experience, and I would recommend it to just about anyone. Note:
Don’t be alarmed at the size of the book, as it is part text and part graphic
novel, so can easily be read and appreciated in a couple of hours. But don’t just skim the illustrations, really
take the time to study them, as if you are “reading” each page. Selznick both wrote and illustrated this book.
Last Wednesday morning I woke
up and decided to go to Toronto for the day, so I grabbed a lightweight
paperback to read on the bus. The book I
chose to take was Last Message by Shane Peacock, part of the “Seven”
series. This series is comprised of
seven books written by seven different Canadian authors to represent the seven
grandsons of adored, heroic, brave grandfather David McLean. When McLean passes away, he leaves instructions
for seven missions, one assigned to each of his grandsons, to be
completed. These missions are tasks McLean
did not undertake while still alive, but which he feels responsible to
accomplish in order to compensate for some of the “less heroic” things he did in his
life. While these assignments reveal a
less-than-flattering side of the grandfather they all adored, each grandson
must learn to accept the man he really was and to prove himself by completing
the tasks. In Last Message, sixteen-year old Adam, the only American grandson, is sent to France to
complete not one, but three missions,each more difficult (and possibly
illegal) than the one before. Can Adam
find the courage and strength to complete even one of these tasks and prove to
his grandfather that he really can “amount to something”? I wasn’t sure whether I would like this book,
but I started it soon after we departed and kept reading until we pulled into
Union Station. It was riveting! There was action, adventure, romance,
history, France, cute French waitresses, Antoine de Saint Exupéry… what more
could an older child, young adult, or this adult reader ask for? Well-written and engaging, this page-turner
was a delight to read, and I look forward to reading other in this series,
although I realize that, since each is written by a different author, they will
all be, well, different, both in tone and writing style. Some of the other authors who have
contributed books to this series are Eric Walters, John Wilson, Norah McClintock
and Ted Staunton. As an aside, I just
discovered that there will be another series released in October of this year, “Seven: the Sequels”;
I’m very excited about putting those on order for my library, too!
That’s all for today. Enjoy the last week of August!
Bye for now…
Julie
Julie
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