Read…Remember…

At the age of 14, Carlotta Walls was one of the first black students to integrate Little Rock Central High School.  Carlotta and her comrades, the “Little Rock Nine”, were barred from the school by angry mobs and the Arkansas National Guard.  Eventually, President Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne to restore order.  A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School is her brave story about this tumultuous time in American history.  Pair her story with Sharon Draper’s Fire from the Rock, a fictional account of Sylvia Patterson.  Sylvia, a young black teenager, is torn between being one of the first black students to integrate Central High School or attending an all black high school.

Birmingham Sunday, by Larry Dane Brimer, uses FBI files, police surveillance records and other primary source documents to tell the story of the fatal bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.  Pair this with The Watsons Go To Birmingham  by Christopher Paul Curtis.  Byron Watson is driving his family crazy with his behavior.  His family, afraid he might become a “juvenile delinquent” travel from the city of Flint to Birmingham to see if his strict grandma can straighten him out.  While in Birmingham the family witnesses brutal acts of racial violence.

Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary details a five day protest march from Selma to Montgomery lead by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to help win black Americans the right to vote.  Pair this with the novel Yankee Girl by Mary Ann Rodman.  Eleven-year-old Alice Ann Moxley moves from Chicago to Jackson, Mississippi, when her FBI agent father is reassigned by President Johnson to protect black people who are registering to vote.

Liberty or Death: The Surprising Story of Runaway Slaves Who Sided With the British During the American Revolution is the story of 20,000 runaway slaves who joined the British when Lord Dunmore issued a proclamation in Virginia in 1775 that any slave who left his mater to fight for the British would be emancipated.  Pair this with  M.T. Anderson’s New York Times Bestseller, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Traitor to the Nation: Vol. I The Pox Party and The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Traitor to the Nation: Vol. II Kingdom.  These powerful novels explore the issues of slavery and human rights, racism, free will, and the causes of war.

The Forbidden Schoolhouse: The True and Dramatic Story of Prudence Crandall and Her Students tells the story of a young Quaker woman who defies the mores of society and opens a school for African American girls in Canterbury, Connecticut, in the early eighteen hundreds despite constant hostility and threats.  Pair this with Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color, a collection of emotional sonnets from the students point of view.

Read the inspiring story of Annie Sullivan, the teacher that worked a miracles teaching Helen Keller.  The Miracle Worker is a play based on letters Annie Sullivan wrote during her first months with Helen Keller. Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller is a fictional account of their story.  Helen’s Eyes: A Photobiography of Annie Sullivan: Helen Keller’s Teacher is a beautifully designed biography of Annie’s life filled with period photographs. 

Read the beautifully illustrated book The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen and revisit some of the magical fairy tales of childhood.  Pair this with Hans Christian Andersen: His Fairy Tale Life.  This book, published to celebrate the bicentennial of his birth,  expresses the true spirit of the famous storyteller and includes many of Andersen’s own paper cutouts and drawings.

Boston born Edgar Allan Poe’s short life was marked by loss and poverty.  Yet his chilling works have inspired countless artists since his death over 150 years ago.  Read Nevermore: A Photobiography of Edgar Allan Poe by Karen E. Lange.

Pair this biography with four of Poe’s macabre tales gruesomely illustrated by Gris Grimly in Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Madness.

Also check out, Are You Afraid Yet? The Science of Scary Stuff.  Author Stephen James O’Meara shines light on the dark and dangerous! 

Alcatraz the infamous maximum-security prison off the coast of San Francisco housed notorious criminals and children. Children of Native-Americans, lighthouse keepers, military soldiers, and prison guards.  What was it like to grow up on Alcatraz?  Read Children of Alcatraz: Growing up on the Rock by Claire Rudolf Murphy.

Pair this with Newbery honor book, Al Capone Does My Shirts and sequel  Al Capone Shines My Shoes, by Gennifer Choldenko.  These books are fictional stories about 12 year-old Moose and his autistic sister who are living on Alcatraz where their Dad is an electrician.

2009 marked the Bicentennial birthday of revolutionary thinker Charles Darwin.  Read about the young naturalist’s five-year adventure around the world on the Beagle in What Darwin Saw: the Journey That Changed the World.  Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith tells the story of Darwin’s complicated marriage with his deeply religious wife Emma.  Newbery Honor book, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate is a fictional account of a young girl growing up in Texas at the turn of the century.  She aspires to be a naturalist.  Ringside 1925 is a collection of free verse poems that give a fictional account of town life in Dayton, Tennessee after high school science teacher J.T. Scopes is arrested for having taught Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Read Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! The Beatles, Beatlemania and the Music That Changed the World  paired with  the award winning biography John Lennon: All I Want is the Truth.  Join the journey from the housing projects of Liverpool to the meteoric explosion of Beatlemania.

Liberty or Death: The Surprising Story of Runaway Slaves Who Sided With the British During the American Revolution is the story of 20,000 runaway slaves who joined the British when Lord Dunmore issued a proclamation in Virginia in 1775 that any slave who left his mater to fight for the British would be emancipated.  Pair this with  M.T. Anderson’s New York Times Bestseller The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Traitor to the Nation: Vol. I The Pox Party and The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Traitor to the Nation: Vol. II Kingdom.  These powerful novels explore the issues of slavery and human rights, racism, free will, and the causes of war.

The Forbidden Schoolhouse: The True and Dramatic Story of Prudence Crandall and Her Students tells the story of a young Quaker woman who defies the mores of society and opens a school for African American girls in Canterbury, Connecticut, in the early eighteen hundreds despite constant hostility and threats.  Pair this with Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color, a collection of emotional sonnets from the students point of view.

Celebrate poetry by visiting poets.org

Read these brand new poetry books from our library:

Learn how to write and understand poetry with these books from our library:

Locate these and other poetery books in our library.

Check out these two new titles from the Images of America Series:

Around Randolph Township and Guys Mills, by Cheryl Seber Weiderspahn and

Meadville, by Anne W. Stewart and William B. Moore

and from the Postcard History Series:

Western Pennsylvania’s Oil Heritage by Charles E. Williams

Check out our science book display:

Cool Web Sites:

Secret Worlds: The Universe Within

View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.

Scientific American

Feature articles, online exhibits, bookmarks, interviews, special topic explorations, and ask the expert are features on this companion site to Scientific American magazine. Many of the magazines articles from past issues are archived here.

Bubbles

Amaze your friends! Most bubbles pop instantly when you puncture them, but not super bubbles. With a funnel, string and super bubble solution, you can create a bubble that can be pierced with a pencil.

Casey, Susan. The Devil’s Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America’s Great White Sharks. 2006. Henry Holt/Owl Books.
While studying migratory birds on the remote Farallones Islands, 30 miles off the coast of San Francisco, biologists noticed red blotches in the surrounding waters. These sightings evolve into a full blown scientific study of great white sharks revealing unknown secrets of this prehistoric beast.

Blumenthal, Karen. Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX: The Law That Changed the Future of Girls in America. 2005. Simon & Schuster/Atheneum.
This nonfiction work looks at Title IX, the 1972 legislation mandating that schools receiving federal funds could not discriminate on the basis of gender, ensuring equal treatment and opportunity for girls in sports and education. Included are period photos, a time line, “then and now” commentary, extensive source notes, and suggested resources for further reading.

View the complete 2009 list of Outstanding Books for the College Bound.

Check out the history of Valentine’s Day.