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<i>How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?</i> by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague
How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague

New Year’s Resolutions can be great ways to add new things into your life. This year try to find a time each day when you and your children can share books. Try out one of these times and see how it goes.

  • If you and your child are early risers, try reading a story before the rest of the family gets up. Try the Princess and the Pea by Rachel Isadora.
  • Travelling on public transportation can be boring for some kids; try looking at a book with lot of pictures and talking about them. You can also try talking with your children about what you see out the window. Try the Wheels on the Bus by Raffi and Sylvie Wickstrom.
  • Try to bring a book with you wherever you go; when kids get antsy, you can read together. Try The Three Bears by Byron Barton.
  • Bedtime is a traditional time to read and relax together. Try How do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague.
  • Create a time during the day when you and your child can share a story time each day. This can be afterschool, after dinner, a special weekend time, or whenever. A favorite story of kids and families for more than 40 years is The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Another great classic book is A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh.

What’s your favorite book to read with your children?
 

Tags: Children's books, Pre-K

<i>The Three Bears</i> by Byron Barton
The Three Bears by Byron Barton
Reading together is fun!
Reading together is fun!

The New York Times presented a video series called "Fourteen Actors Acting" which simply showcases actors portraying classic screen types you might see in films. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Javier Bardem   

Vincent Cassel

Anthony Mackie

Jesse Eisenberg

Can you guess what films they were portraying?

If you are interested in studying the craft of acting, check out these books from the Free Library:

The Technique of Acting by Stella Adler with a foreword by Marlon Brando.

An Actor Prepares by Constantin Stanislavski

Building a Character by Constantin Stanislavski

A Dream of Passion: The Development of the Method by Lee Strasberg

The Art of Auditioning: Techniques for Television by Rob Decina

An Actor's Work: A Student's Diary by Konstantin Stanislavski

The Theatre: A Concise History by Phyllis Hartnoll

Tags: Recommendations

The National Film Registry Board under the Library of Congress selected 25 films they deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" for the 2010 year. I was happy to see a couple of my favorites made the list, Airplane!, All the President's Men, The Empire Strikes Back, Grey Gardens, Malcolm X and Saturday Night Fever.  

 Check out the full list below (films we currently have in our catalog are linked): 

What do you think of the year's selections?

Remember the National Film Preservation Board allows you to nominate films each year by email or postal mail. Or check out a list of films not yet named to the National Film Registry (you can always re-nominate your favorites) or view all films in the registry from 1989 - 2009.

Tags: Reviews

Grey Gardens movie poster © The Criterion Collection
Grey Gardens movie poster © The Criterion Collection
The Empire Strikes Back movie poster © 20th Century Fox
The Empire Strikes Back movie poster © 20th Century Fox
Malcolm X DVD cover © Warner Bros. Pictures
Malcolm X DVD cover © Warner Bros. Pictures

If you're anything like me, you've read a ton of series books. And then you come to the end, or you've read all the available books and are waiting for the author to write more. So you move on to other things and sometimes forget about checking to see if the series continues or if new books are published. When you do notice there's a new book, you might have forgotten where you left off in the series and have to figure out where to pick up again.

That's where Fictfact comes in. At Fictfact you can select all the series you're reading or have read. You then check off the books you've read, and Fictfact will show you in order the ones you have left to read. It will also tell you about upcoming series books that aren't yet published. Even better, it will tell you about short stories that are part of the series!

Also, if you want to enter a series and there's no record for it, their customer service team is really responsive. I emailed them about a missing series and it was available on the site within the hour.

If you like social media, invite your friends to sign up and you can follow each other's series reading as well.

Fictfact is a great resource to track your series, and once you log in the main page lists your next books and upcoming books, so all it takes is a quick glance to see what you need to read next. This is a great companion site to Goodreads.

Give it a shot at www.fictfact.com

Fictfact homepage
Fictfact homepage

The library continues to expand its collection of ebook titles. We now have close to 4,000 books available for you to download to your new ereader. Compatible ebook reading devices are listed on the OverDrive website.

First, just to be clear, Amazon Kindles do not support borrowing library ebooks. The Kindle is a great device, but you will need to purchase bestsellers for it from Amazon and cannot borrow books from us. 

I have tried out the Nook from Barnes & Noble as well as the Sony Reader (a few different versions) and they work quite well with our collections. Check out some tutorials from an earlier blog post to get started with borrowing from the library. 

If we do not yet have your favorite author or series, please drop us a line using the Ask A Librarian form online.  We do our best to add titles that you request!

If you want to puchase titles instead of wait in line for the library copy, you can check out the "Buy It Now" links under many of our latest titles. Any purchases you make through this service will also partly benefit the library's ebook purchasing program!

Tags: ebooks

Our most popular ebooks this week
Our most popular ebooks this week