Grafton Public Library

Library Updates

Trick Or Treat!

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The Library will be open on Thursday evening Oct 31–please stop by in costume to trick or treat! Miss Jennifer puts together a great goodie bag 🙂

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Teen Read Week, Seek the Unknown @ the Grafton Public Library

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Grafton Public Library will celebrate Teen Read Week™ (October 13-19, 2013) with special programs aimed at encouraging teens in Grafton to read for the fun of it. Thousands of libraries, schools and bookstores across the country will hold similar events centered on this year’s theme, Seek the Unknown @ your library, which encourages teens to explore and learn about the unknown through mystery, adventure, sci-fi, and fantasy books.
Going with that theme, the library will be celebrating with four programs over the course of Teen Read Week:

• Tuesday, October 15th, 6:30 p.m. Create Your Own Alien using colorful Perler beads

• Wednesday, October 16th, 3:30 p.m. Create Monster Bookmarks that eat your page

• Thursday, October 17th, 6:30 p.m. Paint a Bookend for our teen section

• Friday, October 18th, 5:30-8:30 p.m. Scavenger Hunt (w/digital camera or smart phone)

Teen Read Week is a time to celebrate reading for fun while encouraging teens to take advantage of reading in all its forms —books, manga, magazines, e-books, audiobooks and more! It is also a great opportunity to encourage teens to become regular library users.
Teen Read Week™ is a national adolescent literacy initiative created by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association. It is held annually during the third week of October. For more information, visit www.ala.org/teenread.
For more information or to register for a program, please contact Allison Cusher, Teen Librarian, at 508-839-4649 or email at acusher@cwmars.org.

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New Book Discussion Group for Adults who love to read Young Adult Literature

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being_henry_david   The Grafton Public Library is pleased to offer a new book discussion group in the library’s Main Reading Room at 35 Grafton Common on Monday, November 4 at 7:30 p.m. The “Not Just for Young Adults” Book Discussion Group is for adults who enjoy reading and talking about young adult literature.

Even though Yong Adult literature is typically about teenage characters dealing with young adult issues, adults now represent a higher percentage of the readership than ever before, accounting for 55 percent, according to Publishers Weekly (2012, Sept. 13. New Study: 55% of YA Books Bought by Adults. PublishersWeekly.com. http://www.publishersweekly.com).

So if you are part of that 55 percent or have a favorite YA novel that you just want to talk about, this group is for you! Stop by the library to sign up and check out a copy of this month’s book: Being Henry David, by Cal Armistead. Synopsis: Seventeen-year-old “Hank”, who can’t remember his identity, finds himself in Penn Station with a copy of Thoreau’s Walden as his only possession and must figure out where he’s from and why he ran away.
For more information, please contact Heidi Fowler, Reference Librarian at 508-839-4649 ext. 1102 or graftonlibrary.ma@gmail.com.

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Congratulations to Alice Munro for winning the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature

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Dear Life bookcoverAlice Munro, 82, is a renowned Canadian short-story writer, widely beloved for her spare and psychologically astute fiction that is deeply revealing of human nature. She has published 14 short story collections, and is considered by many to have revolutionized the architecture of short stories, often beginning a story in an unexpected place then moving backward or forward in time.

Her collection Dear Life, published last year, appears to be her last. Upon learning of the award, Ms Munro said, “I would really hope this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel.”

The Grafton Public Library has many of Alice Munro’s collections, and we’ll be happy to order anything for you that we don’t!

Read some Alice Munro stories online for free

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Review a Book!

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The Grafton Public Library welcomes reviews of books, music, movies, and games for our website. Some things you might include (but you don’t necessarily have to):

What is the story about?
What do you like about it?
Who might like this item?

To send a review, use the Contact Us form. Please include the title and author (if applicable), and an explanation of what you liked or didn’t like about the book and why. We will list only first names unless you provide an alias or tell us you would like to remain anonymous. If you’re a student or under the age of 18, please check with your parents before sending a review.

Reviews can be of varying lengths, but two or three paragraphs, or around 250-300 words, is ideal. Using proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar makes your review easy for others to read.

You don’t have to like a book in order to review it, but please don’t express your disdain with vulgar, slanderous, or defamatory language. Keep your audience in mind–anyone, including children and grandmothers, may read your review. We can’t accept reviews that may be offensive. Focus on the merit of the work, not the author.

Once we receive your review, we will check the online catalog and create a link in your review to your book so others can place requests. You should see your review posted on the website in a day or two after you submit it.

Happy reading, and have fun writing!

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When One Book Leads to Another…

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Every once in a while, a new book leads to an old book. Or vice versa (which, in this case, means an old book leads to a new one.)

The Children’s Room has quite a few books that have links to others. If any of these are a book you enjoy, why not take a look at the one it inspired, mentioned or was visited by another book’s character?
Here are a few examples:
Our new edition of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women has an introduction written by Georgia Nicholson. Georgia is a character from her own set of great books written by Louise Rennison. They include Dancing in my Nuddy-PantsAngus, Thongs and Full-frontal Snogging and Stop in the Name of Pants! (You’ll find the Georgia Nicholson books upstairs in the Teen Area).
  
We also have a new book about an old character, Ruby Redfort. Ruby is the spy that Clarice Bean is always reading about in her books. It seems the author, Lauren Child, had so many requests for the stories that Clarice was reading that she had to go ahead and write them down. Now you can ask yourself, “What would Ruby Redfort do?”
   
 A terrific book on the list of nominees for the Massachusetts Children’s Book Award is Because of Mr. Terupt by Rob Buyea. The sequel, Mr. Terupt Falls Again, has his now sixth-graders reading lots of classic books including The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman and Wringer by Jerry Spinelli. It’s also pretty cool how the students talk about The Westing Game without giving away the mystery!
    westinggamewhippingboy wringer


If you’re still reading from the Picture Book and Easy Reader sections, do not despair! There are plenty of authors waiting to help you find old friends in new books.
  Hooray for Amanda and Her Alligator book coverNaked Mole Rat Gets Dressed
Knuffle Bunny
Mo Willems, a Massachusetts native and reader favorite hides characters in his books as well. Look for Knuffle Bunny in the Pigeon books, Pigeon in the Elephant and Piggie books and examine Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed and Hooray for Amanda and Her Alligator closely!
Who will YOU find?
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Reminders for the Winter Season

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Now that winter weather is here, programs may be cancelled or rescheduled for everyone’s safety.

The Children’s Room follows these guidelines:

If Grafton Public Schools are CLOSED, then all Children’s Room Activities are CANCELLED.

If Grafton Public Scools are DELAYED, then morning activities in the Children’s Room are CANCELLED.
As winter is also the season of sniffles and colds, we thank you for washing your hands frequently, and for keeping sick children at home.
If you are registered for a program and unable to attend due to illness, please give us a call so that someone else may have your place for the day.
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Review: The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

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The Paris Wife book coverWhen it comes to learning about famous literary or historic figures, it pays to listen to the spouses’ point of view. Such was the case in The Aviator’s Wife  about Ann Morrow Lindbergh and so it is about Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway’s first wife in The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain.

Hadley and Hemingway (H & H) met in Chicago in 1920 when she was 28 and he was 21. An aspiring writer, Hemingway worked at low-paying newspaper jobs before it occurred to him that given time and space, he could write about his own experiences, of which he would have plenty.

He was encouraged by Sherwood Anderson to go to Paris where all the action was. It was the Jazz Age in Paris, and Hemingway lived a bohemian lifestyle with the likes of Gertrude Stein, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce to name a few. It was a fast-living, hard-drinking crowd with no apparent family values. When H & H had a son, Hadley could no longer keep up, and her husband’s interest and eyes wandered.

As much as she disliked bull-fighting, Hadley would accompany her husband to Pamplona, where he actually participated in amateur bullfighting. In addition, beside the fact that Hadley could no longer hold her husband’s interest, she seemed unaware that other women were flirting openly with him and in active pursuit mode.

As Hemingway’s work goes, I was never a big fan of The Old Man and the Sea with its simple declarative sentences, but I am curious to read The Sun Also Rises, which was written when he was married to Hadley.

Although this may not be the most stylistically perfect book, it provides insight into an American icon and what drove him. It also is a further reminder that often the most famous, intelligent, talented and handsome of men do not make the best husbands or fathers–Charles Lindbergh and Ernest Hemingway being prime examples.

In any case, Papa Hemingway, Hadley and Paris make for a good literary experience.

I give the book 3 9/10 picadors.

Happy reading from Beverly!

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