An illustration from “Up In the Garden and Down In the Dirt,” a March Staff Pick.
“The mountains are calling and I must go.” -John Muir.
On days we can’t muddy our boots or turn over logs to peer at what’s there, we’re glad we can grab a book or check out a great film to satisfy our curiosity about the great outdoors. In celebration of Maine winging back into warm and light-filled days, these March staff picks focus on favorite spring and nature-related library materials.
One of the most wonderful picture books I have encountered is Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner with art by Christopher Silas Neal. It is the perfect companion to this Real and True Spring we are currently enjoying (none of the usual Mud Season nonsense, thank goodness). It reminds me of some marvelous advice I received while taking the Portland History Docents class a few years ago: when you stop at a corner or a traffic light, look up! The tops of old buildings are beautiful and fascinating but rarely enjoyed by anyone but the birds. This book reminds us to also look down and all around us. The world is so full of beauty and intricacy, awaiting discovery, if only we know where and when to look. Though this book starts in spring, it guides you through the rest of the seasons of the year with gentle words, great sounds and continually gorgeous art. It is also excellent preparation for our upcoming Summer Reading theme: Time of Wonder, all about exploring and observing the natural world around us. The back of the book contains descriptions and illustrations that could easily be used as a guide or textbook about all the participants in the ecosystem of our gardens. Enjoy and don’t forget to look up, down and all around you!
Spring is a time for getting outside, digging in the dirt, watching for butterflies and birds return, and looking forward to Summer! Citizen Scientists not only watch what is happening around them, they also record what they see and share their findings so we can all have a better understanding of our changing world.
Loree Griffin Burns’ book, Citizen Scientists: Be A Part of Scientific Discovery From Your Own Backyard, explains what a Citizen Scientist is and then shows you how you can be one yourself!
Using a seasonal approach, with detailed photography by Ellen Harasimowicz, the book moves you through the year with four Citizen Science projects that families can engage in in their own backyards and neighborhoods. Simple, straightforward, colorful, and accessible, this book is a great primer for any family looking to take their daily adventures and observations a step further.
Spring is here, so get out and explore! And why not share what you see and become a Citizen Scientist?
Absolutely beautiful illustrations go along with a simple story about waiting for spring. A young boy and his dog (and a few animals all around them) decide that they’ve had it with all that brown and decide to plant a garden. Then they wait and wait and wait. They all start off wearing red knit caps and scarfs, including the turtle, and by the end they are barefoot and swinging.
I will read anything that Erin Stead illustrates. In all of her books she adds tiny details in her quiet way that requires several reads to notice (the birds that are drunk on seeds, the milk container that becomes a bird house). I wanted to cut the images from the book and hang them on the wall…alas, it was a library book.
In this new collection of fantasy stories inspired by Shakespeare, we are given a special glimpse at the nature of the world through the eyes of some of the bard’s favorite characters: fairies. One of my personal favorites, the mischievous Puck, makes this observation about the mutable nature of humanity that we often resist: “I see no reason why anyone should define themselves by a single flesh alone, when such seemings are always subject to alteration. As well to say a grown man is unnatural for cultivating the beard he lacked at birth as to call you anything ruder than your name for desiring what you weren’t born with. Why should one change be called natural, and the other not? Crowns and shoes don’t grow on trees, and yet we alter ourselves with the wearing of them.” To believe in our own changeability in this way is an inspiring thought, especially in spring when we can see the rest of the world beginning to change around us.
This is an older book which was forced on me by my mother when I was 17…I would like it, she said… well, she was wrong. I loved it. And I continue to love it, visiting with the Robbins family every couple of years since then. In the words of the author, this is “the story of the founding of a small Maine town, by ordinary people, in what was then an ordinary way.” It is the tale of Sterlingtown, now known as Union, Maine, in the 1700’s. It is the story of the land and its peoples, of births and deaths, of hunger and feasts, of plantings and wars, of love and strength. It is a book that speaks to you and stays with you and lets you know that “We’ll be fine, come spring.”
Film
David Attenborough loves life on Earth.
Patti’s Picks
I would recommend any dvd that features David Attenborough. He’ll go anywhere, do anything to uncover the most interesting facts about life on this planet.
Favorite Attenborough quote, from The Secret Life of Birds: “I’m standing in a cave in Venezuela…”
Adult Nonfiction
Ellen’s Pick
e.e.cummings’ poem “In Just…” has always been a favorite of mine, evoking as it does the childish delight of splashing in puddles (instead of cursing mud season)! You can read the poem at The Poetry Foundation here or check it out in cummings’ Complete Poems at PPL.
Jerri’s Pick
A book I’ve borrowed time and again from the library is Anna Botsford Comstock’s Handbook of Nature Study. PPL owns the twenty –third edition, published in 1935. It is still in print – the most recent edition being 2010!
Ann Botsford Comstock was a pioneer in nature education. She was the first female professor at Cornell University (1899) and wrote this book in 1911 to promote & inform teachers about the outdoors. An advocate teaching children the skills of observation and making the outdoors fun, her book is certainly of value (and beauty) 105 years later!
Do you remember the episode of Sherlock where Mycroft and Sherlock made deductions about a hat? Sherlock says that alpaca fiber and Icelandic sheep wool are very similar. Guess what? He’s wrong.*
Full of passion for the wide variety of magical creatures who turn grass into fiber, Parkes’ amazing book is both delightful and accessible for artists of all fibrous persuasions. If you’ve ever felt like a kid looking from the outside in to a candy store when terms like “Icelandic,” “BFL,” or “Corregidale” come up, or had the desire to prove Sherlock wrong about the marvelous (but very different) alpaca fiber and Icelandic wool, this is the book for you. Parkes will hold your hand through the hairiest of fiber festivals this Spring, explaining the nuances of kink, microns, and why a particular skein might be perfect for that one pattern you’ve saved and coveted….
And hey, who doesn’t love showing up a megalomaniac before breakfast while also helping protect nature by saving rare artisanal sheep with our discerning purchasing power?
*While your intrepid writer is underwhelmed by his knowledge of fiber, she is quite impressed by Cumberbatch’s learning to play the violin for this role.
A compilation of columns Katherine White wrote during her years as Fiction Editor of the New Yorker. One of the best stories White shares is when she compares the style of different seed catalogs—many of which I still get today.
Sonya’s Pick
Spring and nature obviously bring to mind themes of sustainability. This month I would like to recommend Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities(Urban and Industrial Environments) by Duncan McLaren and Julian Agyeman, a title from the Library’s Choose Civility collection. This title is a deep and thoughtful guide to how the principles of the sharing economy (think AirBnB or Uber) will affect the spaces in which we live, work, and play. It was named one of the “Top 20 for 2015” by Nature magazine’s “Books and Arts” blog: “In Sharing Cities, environmental consultant Duncan McLaren and urban-policy scholar Julian Agyeman lay out, with impressive depth, clarity and wisdom, a comprehensive prescription for a sharing paradigm….bottom-up ventures that are digital or based in communities, rather than commercial.”
Strict science is tough for me. As a student, gently confounded by textbooks, equations, and formulas, I felt at home and happy in the writing of nature’s free-wheeling investigative reporters: Annie Dillard, Gretel Ehrlich, or Terry Tempest Williams. Now I’m apt to pick up any book with any thoughtful human mulling over any bird, bud, bug, beast, or melting ‘berg, and this winter I was glad to get a galley copy of Lab Girl.
Geochemist and geobiologist Hope Jahren’s tales of her work with trees, flowers, seeds, and soil (and her adventures with lab partner and dear friend, Bill Hagopian) cheerily greened up my winter world. Jahren’s writing is frank, humorous, and smart. She’s honest about the challenges that she’s faced as a female scientist, and she continues to write about those challenges in her field in other venues, most recently in The New York Times.
The arc of Jahren’s own story is woven through with brief, meditative chapters that explore specific ideas about plant life. A curiosity-provoker, the book made me search for photographs of a tree at a specific intersection of two roads in Hawaii, reflect on the chemicals that flood our brains, wonder over a millions-of-years-old fossil forest buried in Canada (how did the forest, every year, survive three months of darkness?), and muse on how symbiotic relationships between trees and fungi may be like…my own relationships. Along the way, we also get a proper exploding beaker, the mystery of an opal at the center of a hackberry seed, and a love of science that is honed by years of Hope Jahren’s tenacity, individuality, wisdom, and profound care.
Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire remains THE book on the experience of living in the American Southwestern desert (in my opinion). If I’m suffering the midwinter new England blahs, I can always count on Desert Solitaire to take me virtually there.
I always think Ravens in Winter was the book that got people to take a closer look at this clever, funny bird. All of Bernd Heinrich’s books are wonderfully written; you can have a tendency to forget he’s feeding you science.
Thaddeus’ Pick
My book for Nature month is The Stars, A New Way to See Them by Curious George author H.A. Rey, and, naturally (pun intended) comes with an anecdote. When I was a wee lad, I was obsessed with the stars and constellations. I had a glow-in-the-dark star chart on the ceiling over my bed; I had myriad books and movies about astronomy, and I had this book: a wonderfully illustrated guide to the heavens.
However, the first night I stayed up late enough for my father to take me outside into the winter night to see the stars for real, I fell to my knees terrified. It was all just so big, Orion’s Belt and the other star shapes, when taken off the page, and it was dizzying and horrifying to a boy of barely five. I looked, truly looked, at the stars solely in books for months thereafter.
So here’s to spring, to stars, to Orion, and to H.A. Rey, for reminding us all that, while we all have so much to offer and learn and teach and love and give and lose, we are oh, so very, very small.
The Read to ME Challenge is a public awareness campaign to promote childhood literacy in Maine. The Portland Public Library invites you to take the challenge by reading aloud to a child for at least 15 minutes, capturing a photo or video of the event and then posting it on social media using #ReadtoME or #ReadaloudME. The statewide challenge began in the beginning of February with a kick off at the Blaine House – but you still have time to participate!
Why a campaign about reading aloud to children? Research has shown that the single most important activity for building knowledge for their eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children. Reading aloud is important from infancy through high school and perhaps the greatest benefit is that it associates reading and books with warm and pleasant experiences. Parents, caregivers and teachers who read aloud to children are role modeling enthusiasm for reading and books. The more adults read aloud to children, the larger their children’s vocabularies will grow and will allow them to make sense of printed words when they begin to read independently. Reading aloud also introduces children to the language of books – which is different than the language used in our daily conversations. And yet another important reason to read aloud to a child is that it sparks and lets them use their imaginations.
PPL has a strong commitment to early literacy and is a participant in Every Child Ready to Read @ Your Library ® a project of the Association for Library Service to Children and the Public Library Association (divisions of the American Library Association). It is a parent education initiative that stresses that early literacy begins with the primary adult in a child’s life. Developing early literacy skills has a long-term impact on children’s reading achievement and academic success. Early literacy is what children understand about reading and writing before they can actually read and write. Being interested in and enjoying books is key! Reading, playing, talking, singing, and writing are the five practices that stimulate the growth of a child’s brain and make the connections that will become the foundation for reading.
Do you have questions about the types of books that are best to read to children at various ages and stages? Visit the library and the staff at the Sam L. Cohen Children’s Library at the Main Library or the staff at our branches will be happy to help you in making appropriate selections. For early childhood teachers, the Children’s Library offers over 40 different “totes” – boxes filled with 15-20 books (with many containing puppets and flannel boards children can use to retell the stories) built on common curriculum themes that check out for six weeks.
The Early Literacy Play Room in the Children’s Library provides a great space to explore and play with your young child. It is stocked with quality toys which are developmentally appropriate for children aged birth-6. It also has handouts to take home, with more suggestions for playing, reading and singing with your child!
Check out all the programs we offer for children! https://www.portlandlibrary.com/highlight/september-programs-sam-l-cohen-childrens-library/. We offer regular story times each week for specific age groups – birth through age 5 as well as a weekly story time in French. We have monthly programs such as creative movement and family yoga. And for children who need a furry, non-judgmental reading buddy, Grace our library reading dog, visits the Children’s Library twice a month.
These are just a sampling of the programs we offer, so check out our Kids & Families page as well as the calendars at your local branch library.
The Read to Me Challenge continues through the beginning of March. Take the challenge today and read to a child. And visit the library to learn and explore the different ways you can promote early literacy with the young children you know.
Plumdog, the internet sensation, joyfully and hilariously expresses the exuberance of loving love in Love Is My Favorite Thing by Emma Chichester Clark. This British author’s style and voice are very easy to love. This lovely book has good repetition, great humor, a sweet and reassuring message and beautiful illustrations that often contrast nicely and hilariously with the text. Embrace love with Plumdog this February!
A labor of love, an ode to unconditional love, a poem for his two daughters, Ed Young uses cut paper, photographs, and calligraphy to accompany his enchanting poem Should You Be A River: A Poem About Love.
Young’s poem speaks to the unpredictable and often heart wrenching nature of unconditional love, while immersing the reader in the power and splendor of nature. While adults will appreciate the craft and creativity of the illustrations, children will respond to the bold colors and simple text.
Looking for a nontraditional picture book to love this year? A poem with heart? A well-crafted work of art? Ed Young hits the mark here and gives us yet another reason to love picture books, no matter our age.
Teen Fiction
Books and Valentines on display in the Teen section of the Main Library.
“He tells me to pick the music. I’m not sure if he knows that handing me his iPod is like handing me the window to his soul…..He talked about the ocean between people. And how the whole point of everything is to find a shore worth swimming to.”
Simon is in love with a boy named Blue, but since they’re both in the closet their relationship starts entirely over email – just real enough to be exciting. Full of complex characters all keeping their own secrets, coming out and growing up is challenging for everyone all around. Sweet, compassionate and thoughtful, this book paints an endearing love-story with soul and heart, following a strong and relatable cast of supporting characters. Sometimes the hardest thing is explaining to people you love that you’re picking up the drums, that you have a boyfriend – that you need to tell them something new about yourself. This book will have you cheering for the Simon and his three closest friends as they take on bullying, crushes, new love and navigate the emotional waters of growing up.
Call me bleak, but when I think “love”, the first book that comes to mind is full of pain, loss, and grief. Oh, and taboo relationships!
This slim volume from YA author Meg Rosoff packs an emotional wallop. Just shy of 200 pages, the story of two teens in wartime manages to be both literary and compelling; a survival book about a war that could very plausibly happen, and a love story as beautiful and evocative as it is troubling. I audibly sobbed through the last two chapters, feeling as if I had been through the wringer with these characters. The well-done film adaptation starring Soairse Ronan is also recommended. It also made me cry.
Online Resources
Start learning a Romance Language with Mango Languages!
Language Learning
If language learning is your love this winter, try PPL’s resources including Mango Languages, Mango Premiere, Ebooks and Eaudiobooks, Muzzy Languages online, and the Learning Express Library’s TOEIC practice tests. Click here for more information.
Two books: one set in the American South, and one on a Scottish Island. I wonder if I’ve always been drawn to love stories where the candle is kindled slowly and the outcome is uncertain or unfulfilled. The struggle for romance is not recognized as the missing component but happens in spite of the characters certainty that it does not, can not exist. The adjective ‘bittersweet’ was invented for stories such as these.
One of the sweetest love stories I’ve read is Carrie Brown’s novel “Lamb in Love” from 1999. It is a quiet story about two middle aged people who for the first time in their lives fall in love. This story is a true celebration of the power of love to transform the ordinary into the magical. The characters and the story develops and comes to life as you turn the pages, perfect for spreading warmth in the middle of winter.
“I gave him the mixtape the morning of his departure…For Kolya, in Case of Emergency!!! Vol. 1.”
I loved Anthony Marr’s first book, A Constellation of Vital Phenomenon, so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on his newest novel, The Tsar of Love and Techno. He did not disappoint with this complicated and beautiful collection of stories. They span decades, starting in Leningrad in 1937 and soaring into outer space, year unknown. I was captivated by the people: Marra isn’t afraid to create complex, meaty characters, both villainous and wonderful. The book’s settings, Siberia and Chechnya, are so vivid that they are like other beloved characters. I feel as if I am always saying I am not a fan of short stories, but then I read something like this and am blown away. Love in Marra’s work can be a fragile thing, subject to betrayal and death, but also something lasting, raw, vibrating through lifetimes, showing up in the strangest places: a mixtape, a face painted into the background of hundreds of pictures, an act of violence that is also an act of mercy. Though each of these stories could stand on their own, they weave together beautifully to tell gorgeous, brutal, engrossing stories of life and loss, love and heartbreak (and humor, too!).
I am a huge fan of Marra’s writing and will read anything he writes. I hope he is working on something now.
My pick for a book about love is about finding the contentedness that can lead to a life of fulfillment and joy by sowing the seeds of love for the most important person in your life: yourself. Turning the Mind into an Ally by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche is a Western look at Buddhist mindfulness practices, the Sakyong himself being the American son and successor of a Buddhist spiritual leader.
Mipham emphasizes the need to love oneself in order to find the mind-state needed to spread love to others, extolling the virtues of mindful living and meditation to help stop us from questioning our goodness and wisdom and recognize the most simple of loving facts: we are all good and wise, we just need to reign in our minds from the anxiety and confusion of our life in order to truly embrace it.
You don’t have to be a Buddhist to be inspired by Mipham’s writing! Everyone can benefit from his teachings about living in and embracing the moment, about recognizing the kindnesses in everything around you (“People work at night so that we can read the news at breakfast. A total stranger grew the potato we ate at lunch. Even someone who irritates us will give us the time of day if we ask”), and about taking a moment, maybe even two moments, every day to love yourself for who you are: a living, breathing person who has so much to teach and so much love to give if you cultivate the mind to do so.
Sonya’s Picks
Love your job!
Each year the average American spends roughly 1,800 hours a year at work. 1,800 hours!
If you are going to spend that much time somewhere wouldn’t it be great to LOVE what you are doing? Here are some titles to get you thinking along those lines:
Roadmap: The Get-it-together Guide for Figuring Out What to Do With your Life (2015) by Nathan Gebhard. This book offers a wealth of exercises, diagrams, quotes, charts, cartoons, and texts geared to help you let go of misaligned self-perceptions, define core personality traits and desires, and become the next new version of you!
Do Over: Rescue Monday, Reinvent your Work, and Never Get Stuck (2015) by Jonathan M. Acuff. This book will give you the power to call a Do Over–whether you’re twenty-two, forty-two, or sixty-two. You’ll have the resources to reinvent your work and get unstuck. You’ll even rescue your Mondays as you discover how to work toward the job you’ve always wanted.
Becoming Nicole is the story of a family’s journey and growth as they work towards supporting the needs of their transgender child. The transformation in this story is not only that of Nicole Maines and her transition from Wyatt to Nicole, but also that of her father Wayne. A man who deeply loved his wife and his children, Wayne struggled at first to understand his child’s true identity.
One of the most touching, pivotal scenes in the book occurs on Valentine’s Day in 2008, when Wayne and 10-year-old Nicole go to a father-daughter dance in Orono. “Wayne was nervous, of course, about whether he might trip over his own feet, but he also worried that others might mistake his nervousness for embarrassment about his being there with his transgender daughter.” His love of his daughter and his wish to be there for her helps him overcome his fear of dancing. It’s a sweet moment in the book when the reader gets to see Wayne as supporting father who is coming to learn more and more about himself, the categories he’s limited himself to in the past, and what he ultimately wants for his relationship with his family.
Nicole states in the book, “Stories move the walls that need to be moved.” This family’s love for each other and the transformation of each of them will move you as well.
“Sonno di continuo a caccia di parole,” Lahiri writes, emphatically, at the opening of a chapter in her new book. In English: “I’m constantly hunting for words.”
I confess that I haven’t read In Other Words, my book-love-pick for February, but stubbornly, I’m picking it anyhow. Lahiri’s book is hot off the presses, an ink-and-paper newborn this month. She wrote it in Italian (it is translated in Knopf’s publication by Ann Goldstein), and it is about her love of the Italian language, among other things, a love that actually transported her and her family to Italy, where she settled down to learn, immersed in the teaching that blossomed all around her. Flipping through the dual Italian-and-English text, I’m already noting passages that grip me, including her frank discussion of the frustrations of this love: her husband (who doesn’t speak as well as she) is mistaken for a native Italian and praised, while Lahiri—the one so enamored, the student, the language-lover—realizes that because of her appearance, she is never complimented this way or applauded for speaking so well. Nonetheless, she persists. In the chapter “Gathering Words,” she speaks of words that are obscure to her, satisfying, fascinating. “I would describe the process like this: every day I go into the woods carrying a basket…I gather beautiful words that have no exact equivalents in English (formicolare, chiarore: to move in a confused fashion, like ants, and also to have pins and needles; a shaft of light).”
What will happen to Lahiri’s love, I wonder? I’m glad for the chance to spill out her (and Goldstein’s!) basket of words this February, and to discover all the other wisdom this favorite writer’s been gathering.
Spoiler alert: light falls on the pages of “In Other Words.”
Released in 1986, So was among the first compact discs my parents owned, and it got a lot of air time during my early years. Even with its hallmark ‘80s cheese, when I listen to it I hear the love of home and family in “Sledgehammer” (“all you do is call me / I’ll be anything you need”). I revisited it when I was in junior high and had just seen Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything…, with its iconic boombox-in-the-rain scene featuring “In Your Eyes,” which naturally felt representative of my own awkward adolescent “love life.” Last fall I chanced upon a vinyl copy of So at WMPG’s annual record sale, and discovered the album anew, including some of the slower songs I had dismissed in my youth, and as for my parents before me, it has become a household favorite.
Ah, Love! It embraces pizza and Gene Kelly movies and jeans that fit. In its full glory you can count on it to unhinge you and make you whole. It bewilders and informs, sweeps the way clean, clutters the mind. It floats. It runs aground.
I remember my years-ago first hearing of John Gorka’s CD Land of the Bottom Line. I liked the album very much. It didn’t hurt that Gorka’s voice is what it is: smooth, strong, personal, direct.
More to February Picks’ thematic point, I was blown sideways when the penultimate track “Love Is Our Cross to Bear” tripped through the tympanic membrane straight to my heart.
I often do not understand things poetic. Music making is a mystery to me. But, make no mistake, I felt in Gorka’s delivery all the contradictions, elusive contentment, the crushing emptiness and aching fullness of love at all ages and stages. THAT, my friends, is not an intellectual exercise. It is connection of the finest kind. Like love.
Find these titles and more at PPL! And have a Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.
Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner with art by Christopher Silas Neal
Citizen Scientists: Be A Part of Scientific Discovery From Your Own Backyard, by Loree Griffin Burns
And Then It’s Spring, by Julie Fogliano, illustrated by Erin Stead
Monstrous Little Voices: New Tales from Shakespeare’s Fantasy World
Come Spring by Ben Ames Williams
A book I’ve borrowed time and again from the library is Anna Botsford Comstock’s Handbook of Nature Study. PPL owns the twenty –third edition, published in 1935. It is still in print – the most recent edition being 2010!
The Knitter’s Book of Wool, by Clara Parkes
Spring and nature obviously bring to mind themes of sustainability. This month I would like to recommend Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities(Urban and Industrial Environments) by Duncan McLaren and Julian Agyeman, a title from the Library’s Choose Civility collection. This title is a deep and thoughtful guide to how the principles of the sharing economy (think AirBnB or Uber) will affect the spaces in which we live, work, and play. It was named one of the “Top 20 for 2015” by Nature magazine’s “Books and Arts” blog: “In Sharing Cities, environmental consultant Duncan McLaren and urban-policy scholar Julian Agyeman lay out, with impressive depth, clarity and wisdom, a comprehensive prescription for a sharing paradigm….bottom-up ventures that are digital or based in communities, rather than commercial.”
Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren (out in April 2016)
My book for Nature month is The Stars, A New Way to See Them by Curious George author H.A. Rey, and, naturally (pun intended) comes with an anecdote. When I was a wee lad, I was obsessed with the stars and constellations. I had a glow-in-the-dark star chart on the ceiling over my bed; I had myriad books and movies about astronomy, and I had this book: a wonderfully illustrated guide to the heavens.
