April 23, 2013
Beloved children’s author E.L. Konigsberg has died at the age of 83 in Virginia, according to her son. She won the Newbery Award in 1968 for “The Mixed-up Files of Basil E. Frankweiler” and again in 1997 for “The View From Saturday.” She constructed her stories by imagining people she knew in different situations. See EPL holdings. […]
April 16, 2013
While browsing through “Baked Elements” by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito something niggled at the back of my mind. The authors’ photo was not set in their bakery or cafe, as one would expect, but rather, at the NY Public Library. The setting adds a distinct quality that is so different from the typical cookbook […]
April 16, 2013
The 2013 Pulitzer Prize winners for letters, drama, and music were announced Monday, April 15. The award for fiction went to Adam Johnson for his novel The Orphan Master’s Son, cited as an “exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most […]
April 11, 2013
Isabel Allende and Michael Lewis have won this year’s prestigious Carl Sandburg Literary Awards, presented by the Chicago Public Library Foundation and the Chicago Public Library. The annual award “honors an author whose significant body of work has enhanced the public’s awareness of the written word.” Evanston-based author Christine Sneed will be also be honored […]
April 11, 2013
Last year I posted about this new project which sounds very exciting in terms of the vast amount of information it should make available to everyone. Well, it is about to launch next week. The Digital Public Library of America‘s stated goal is “… to make the holdings of America’s research libraries, archives, and museums […]
April 9, 2013
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has just created a new website featuring Curious George in several digital formats. You can choose from apps, books, games, all with educational content and on different grade levels. Another new wrinkle is the direct selling to parents and educators instead of booksellers. One can almost imagine […]
April 5, 2013
Popular and Pulitzer-Prize winning film reviewer Roger Ebert died Thursday after a long battle with cancer at the age of 70. Film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, Ebert was well known for his trademark thumbs-up/thumbs-down PBS television show he co-hosted first with the late Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune and then with […]
April 2, 2013
When I’m at the 2nd floor service desk at Evanston Public Library, I can look up to left and see a sign high up on the wall stating that this is the Reader’s Services department. That apostrophe–whether it belongs or not–was seriously debated when the signage for the library was in planning. One could argue […]
March 22, 2013
Chinua Achebe, one of Africa’s most acclaimed authors has died at the age of 82 after a brief illness. His first novel Things Fall Apart published in 1958 sold millions of copies and was translated into 45 languages. Achebe received numerous awards, including the Nigerian National Merit Award (Nigeria’s highest award for intellectual achievement) and […]
March 21, 2013
The Library of Congress has just released a list of 25 sound recordings that will be preserved for the long term. The song Sounds of Silence, by Simon and Garfunkel, written just after the JFK assassination, is included along with such iconic recordings as Chubby Checker’s energetic The Twist, the original cast album of South […]
