Summer Reading!

Summer reading is wrapping up with our picnic scheduled for next Thursday, August 2nd at noon. All summer readers are invited to join the party. We'll serve hot dogs, sloppy joes, chips, pickles, kool-aid and banana splits to celebrate our summer of "Go Bananas!" This will be the first chance to pick up you summer reading t-shirt.

If you haven't finished reading 25 hours, don't despair. We will leave the book box available in the junior room until Labor Day. So keep reading, keep track and stop in and pick up your free book.

The teen summer reading program will continue until Friday, August 17th. All bookmarks recording the books you have read this summer need to be in the envelope of the prize you'd like to win by the time the library closes on Friday at 6 p.m. I will be conducting the drawing Monday morning the 20th and will post a list in the library and begin calling winners that afternoon.

Poetry Friday

We have a new book of poetry entitled "To Sing Along the Way" Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-Territorial Days to the Present" edited by Joyce Sutphen, Thom Tammaro and Connie Wanek. I thought I'd give you a taste of what can be found in this volume over the next few weeks.

Black Crows

Crows upon a corn-field, fighting for their own,
Taking in a harvest where they have not sown,
knowing well their hunger, - knowing that alone.

Life at its beginning nothing but a maw!-
Fierce in its insistence on the primal law.
Crows upon a corn field! - More than crows I saw.

by Lily Long (1862 - 1927)

Poetry Friday

It is Friday and that means I should be sharing a poem with you. We are in the lazy, warm days of summer and this seemed to express my feelings well.

Song of the Screen Door

The screen door sings a homey song
Of cozy creaks and crangs

That kids just love to puntuate
With nerve exploding bangs...

They wait until you're nodding off...
(As grownups often do)

Or better, 'til your coffee cup
Is full of scalding brew.

And then, just as if shot from guns
At deadly point blank range...

Wham! They're in!... Or, slam! They're out!
And splash!... You have to change.

by Tom Hegg from "Up to the Lake"

Hope you can all get out and enjoy a lake wherever you may be and enjoy the lazy, warm days of summer.

Poetry Friday Comment

Well, it isn't Friday and it has been nearly a month since I last posted to this blog. In the past month the library has held an open house and a number of summer reading programs. It is a busy time at the library. If you haven't visited in a while stop in and check us out.

And speaking of programming.

Summer Safari storytime continues in Smokey Bear Park on Wednesday evenings at 6:00 p.m. Join us for 30 - 40 minutes of stories, games and more.

This Thursday the library will celebrate the world of Harry Potter. The fifth movie was released last week and the final book comes out on Saturday. If you have kids anticipating the release of the final book bring them on down to the library at 1:00 p.m on Thursday for fun playing jeopardy, library quidditch and making wands, wizards and rings.

This morning I received a call from a gentleman who in the process of search out family history on the Internet ran across the blog posting from May regarding a Poetry Friday. The poem was by his grandfather and he wanted to know if we had any more poems by his grandfather and if we had a biography. I wasn't able to find anymore poems by the grandfather, but one of the sons had two poems published in the same volume and both had brief biographies available in the anthology.

It was fun to be able to help this gentleman and send him the information I could find. Let us know if you have needs for information that we might be able to help with. We love helping answer questions.