Creative Abundance: Current library ideas

October 8, 2013

I was impressed with the originality of these library projects and I think you’ll agree. Take a look at the colorful, imaginative space at the Topeka children’s room (brief video included), where a huge dinosaur is resting his feet on the floor. (Sorry, they just can’t find his head in the ceiling…) A little more tame is […]


John Grisham's "A Time to Kill" Broadway Bound

October 8, 2013

John Grisham’s 1989 legal thriller A Time to Kill, which was made into a film starring Matthew McConaughey, is being adapted for the stage by Rupert Holmes and directed by Ethan McSweeny. The play, revolving around a young white Mississippi lawyer defending a black man for revenge murder, will open on Broadway October 20, two […]


500 elementary school kids aim to set a Guinness record

October 8, 2013

Yesterday’s Chicago Trib featured an article about a group of elementary school students at Henking School in Glenview who participated in a state-wide program to have the largest number of people all reading the same book on the same day. For eight years in a row, kids across Illinois have helped maintain a national Guinness […]


Women and Children First bookstore for sale

October 7, 2013

Ann Christophersen and Linda Bubon opened Women and Children First in Chicago to “promote the work of women writers and to create a place in which all women would find books reflecting their lives and interests.” W&CF has grown to become one of the largest independent feminist bookstores in the country, featuring thousands of books by and about women, children’s books, and […]


Bill Bryson in Winnetka this week!

October 6, 2013

Author Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods, A Really Short History of Nearly Everything, and many others) will be speaking at the Skokie School auditorium in Winnetka October 10, 2013, at 7PM. If he speaks the way he writes, it should be quite entertaining. Shira S.


Really different recycled bookshelves

October 6, 2013

We’ve discussed various types of bookcases before, but I think these are truly different. Question: would you use a Jaguar, even a nonfunctional one, to house books? Or where is the perfect spot to house the extra sarcophagus lying around the basement? Shira S.


A Show That Lives Up To Its Poe-tential

October 3, 2013

“Edgar Allan Poe: Terror of the Soul” is a new exhibit opening Friday at  New York’s  Morgan Library & Museum.  Drawn from holdings of the Morgan, the New York Public Library’s Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, and Susan Jaffe Tane, described as “the world’s foremost private Poe collector,  […]


Can Facebook follow Chicago in bridging the digital divide?

October 3, 2013

Facebook has initiated a project, Internet.org, to help get more people worldwide online. According to this article in ReadWrite, Chicago’s Smart Communities objective has already successfully hooked up 30,000 families in two years and may be able to teach the media giant a thing or two. The increase in computer use was achieved through concentrated […]


Tom Clancy, 1947-2013

October 2, 2013

Best-selling novelist of espionage thrillers Tom Clancy died Tuesday in Baltimore at the age of 66.  A former insurance agent,  he sold his first novel The Hunt for Red October to the Naval Institute Press for only $5,000.  After the book’s publication in 1985, he was propelled to fame and fortune. And when President Ronald […]


No Lie – George Washington Presidential Library Opens

October 1, 2013

The Fred W. Smith National library for the Study of George Washington opened on September 27. The $47 million library in Mount Vernon is dedicated to the study of America’s first president. Ann Bookout, chairman of the board of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, which has maintained George Washington’s home since 1853, said:  “I really […]


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