Adventures in Library Land

My daughter Amanda, a recent graduate of Grinnell College, now works in our town's library, the Cedar Falls Public Library. This gig as a Children's Librarian has been something of a dream job for Amanda. Below are a couple of pictures of her reading a book to some gathered tykes and parents. Note also the puppet theatre behind Amanda's storytelling throne . . . that she would be giving puppet shows was the deciding factor between this job and another that would have paid more. Puppet shows are a very important — no, crucial — part of life, as we all know. Or at least as we all learned when we were kids, though perhaps many of us may have forgotten that by now. Not so, Amanda. Another part of Amanda's job is creating book displays to entice children (and those other taller children: parents, grandparents, sundry adults) to read. To rediscover the joy and magic of reading. Below are some views of Amanda's first book display. Books on time travel, with the centerpiece nothing less than a time machine: that steampunk-y TARDIS-looking affair. (Google TARDIS if you're a little lost.) Notice the clock and gears embedded in the side of said time machine. And the sassy gold Jetson antenna on the roof contrasting with the Victorian frou-frou detailing. And the lazy wave-like frieze of moon phases. Lovely, isn't it? I spent a couple of dreamy hours browsing through the time travel books, then settling on a graphic-novel rendition of Wells's Time Machine, which I read from cover to cover. I traveled in time back to childhood when I had read Wells's story as a comic book in the Classics Illustrated series. Thanks, Amanda. Shortly after she started as a children's librarian, the print and online magazine Rattle: Poetry for the 21st Century put up one of Amanda's poems: Mitosis When things have bloomed, my mother teaches me to hunt out the dead             Read more . . . A little reminder: you can click on the pics above to see larger versions. Well worth it to inspect Amanda's time machine up close. Oh, also, if you didn't get around to googling TARDIS, it's an acronym that stands for "Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space": the moniker of The Doctor's time/space ship that looks like a London police box (in the British science fiction show Dr. Who). On a meta-front, sorry again that I have been neglecting the blog. I'll try to be better about it. Keeping up the blog, I've just decided, is a new New Year's resolution. Added just now. So . . . see you tomorrow?