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Well, what did happen on Fox Street? Lots of things, it turns out. 10-year- old Mo Wren is out of school for the year, but she is not exactly having a relaxing summer.  She has to deal with a best friend who visits for the summer, but who may have changed more than Mo realized.  She must constantly babysit her 5-year old sister Dottie, the "wild child," while their dad is working long hours at a job he doesn't like.  She still misses her mom, who died a few years before.  In the meantime, one older neighbor is keeping Mo busy with strange errands, and another may be having too many medical problems to stay in her house.

Kids , Audiobooks, Fiction
June 10, 2011
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If you listen to politicians and talking heads speak, you'll instantly recognize that "freedom" is a particularly powerful buzz word in American culture. Franzen achieved notoriety for a famous run-in with Oprah about his book The Corrections being included in her book club. He complained that this might scare men away from reading his book, so Oprah withdrew the nomination. In another bizarre twist, last fall a fan stole the author's eyeglasses and offered them for ransom. In this mega-novel of 562 pages, Franzen tackles the theme of what constitutes freedom in our closest relationships. He writes about a family, the Berglunds, who helped transform an old St. Paul neighborhood into a thriving community.

Reviews, Think Library , Family, Fiction
June 8, 2011

When it comes to focusing on body image and self esteem the media often discusses how this impacts women in negative ways. There's not a whole lot out there that focuses on men and their self image. Bigger, stronger, faster is a documentary that tries to do exactly that. By talking to various body builders, weight lifters and athletes we find that there exists this childhood yearning in some grown men to become the superheroes that they read about and admired when they were children.

Sights and Sounds, Think Library
June 4, 2011


ImageThe Apostle is one of the first of a small genre of films that I sometimes call "Christian Films for non-Christians." I define this genre as films that are well written, well acted and well produced. They are willing to accept a PG-13, or even an R rating, but have at their base a message of faith while showing both the best and worst in people they feature.

Sights and Sounds, Think Library
June 4, 2011
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I enjoy a good mystery - and when it involves a code to decipher - it just doubles the fun with two puzzles to solve in one story!

In the graphic novel mystery Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Dancing Men, master detective Sherlock Holmes receives a picture of stick figures with their arms and legs positioned in different ways so it looks like they are dancing. The stick figures are appearing around the home of Mr. Cubitt who asks Sherlock Holmes if he can determine what the pictures mean. Holmes examines different samples of the drawings and believes they are a code used to communicate messages in secret. When Holmes travels to Mr. Cubitt's home to inform him of what he has learned, Holmes encounters another mystery: Mr. Cubitt has been murdered! Immediately, Holmes begins questioning the servants and looking for other clues that will reveal the identity of the murderer.

Kids , Fiction, Library Events
June 3, 2011
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Tuscaloosa, St. Louis, Joplin, Missouri? Do these names ring a bell? Unfortunately, they've been ground zero for a few of this season's most serious tornadoes. While checking the new shelf, I came across Reed Timmer's new book about his odyssey from a geeky 19 year-old college student to the most famous "storm chaser" around.

Reviews, Think Library , Nonfiction, Environmental
May 24, 2011


What would you do if the leader of your country ordered you to kill your parents? What if you had a talking mask that looked just like your best friend? Imagine finding a village of tiny people who all rode on rabbits. What would you say if they told you that you could live forever?

I just came across Mirra Ginsburg's The Kaha Bird: Tales from the Steppes of Central Asia. If you like your fairy tales to surprise you, check this book out. Although Mirra Ginsburg is best known for her picture book adaptations of such tales as The Clay Boy and Two Greedy Bears, she collected stories from all over the world and retold them for children and adults.

Find her in our stacks, but fasten your seatbelt before reading these stories. They have teeth! The Kaha Bird is recommended for grades four and up.

Kids , Folklore
May 20, 2011
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I thought I knew most of what there was to know about Amelia Earhart and her doomed final flight, but this well-researched account, Amelia Lost by Candace Fleming, is both surprising and fascinating!  Starting with a haunting account of the coast guard cutter Itasca's fruitless wait for Earhart to land on tiny Howland Island the morning of July 2, 1937, this book is hard to put down.  Earhart's early childhood was a happy one, but by the time she was in high school, her father had descended into alcoholism, sending the family into poverty and shame.  Fleming implies that Earhart's desperate wish to fly was at least partly a result of a need to free herself from the unpleasant realities of everyday life.

Kids , History
May 13, 2011
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I am deep in the middle of Adam Hochschild's new book, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 about the anti-war movement before and during World War I (and is thus far excellent). And I recently slogged through British historian Antony Beevor's 500+ page D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, which was a bit too detailed, but very fair in representing Allied incompetence and portrayed some of the major players, including Montgomery, Eisenhower and Patton in a new light for me. Can you tell I was a history major? Standing out so far in this recent WWI/WWII kick was Slinging Doughnuts for the Boys: An American Woman in WWII by Indiana University history professor, James H. Madison.

Think Library, Reviews , Biography & Memoir, History, Local Interest
May 11, 2011
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Wedding planning, ghost vans that mysteriously disappear into the veldt, a perfect pair of heels for a wedding, what's not to like about Alexander McCall Smith's latest in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series? If life has you feeling blue, this is the perfect book to lighten your mood and take you away from your problems. Botswana, is that far enough? A country where they measure wealth in cattle rather than dollars, and people still have the time to chat in a tree's shade.

Reviews, Think Library , Fiction, Mystery
May 11, 2011
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OK, who can resist a title like How I Killed Pluto...? It promises and then delivers a light, interesting take on the Pluto demotion from one of the nine big ones to a dwarf planet at the edge of our solar system. "My very excellent mother just served us nine pizzas." Do you remember that line from science class in grade school? The words helped us remember the planets and their order in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. Alas, now mother is just serving us nine___?

Reviews, Think Library , Nonfiction, Science
May 5, 2011

Our library had a few copies of this on our BSE shelves. In case didn't know, the library now has Best Seller Express or BSE dvds available for checkout for three days and limited to one per person. The BSE dvds are new dvd's that the library purchases to make available to the public for walk-in customers only. They can not be held or transferred. After their newness wears off, the BSE dvds are put into regular circulation with all the other feature films.

Sights and Sounds, Think Library
May 3, 2011

ImageBack in the days of B&W TV, when I was growing up, there were two shows that I remember watching quite a bit. Leave It To Beaver and Lassie. Today I find both laughable, but still entertaining for different reasons.

Sights and Sounds, Think Library , Comedy, Family, Horror
May 2, 2011
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About two years ago in the summer of 2009 I watched the entire television series called "The Shield." Our library had the first three seasons and I rented the other four elsewhere.

Think Library, Sights and Sounds , TV & Movies
April 27, 2011
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How many times have you been distracted while driving and seen a cyclist jut into the road or a child chasing a ball, or even a scampering beagle? You brake and think, thank God. But for Darin Strauss, newly eighteen, setting out with friends for a game of Putt Putt on a warm spring day at the tail end of his senior year, things did not go that smoothly. A cyclist suddenly veered across a lane and a half--and as he braked all he saw was a yellow spoke reflector catch the light and a head crash into his windshield. For him, the worst had happened. The police cleared him, said it was not his fault. The local paper reported this, but Strauss has had to life the rest of his life with the guilt and pain of this accident.

Reviews, Think Library , Biography & Memoir
April 26, 2011