Dragon's Pages

And the Pulitzer goes to...

The Pulitzer Prize is awarded to individuals showcasing outstanding achievements in online and print journalism, photojournalism, fiction, nonfiction, drama, poetry and biography. The winners were recently announced and you can check out the full list here. The big winners featured in our library are Jennifer Eagan's fictional work A Visit From the Goon Squad, heralded as "an inventive investigation of growing up and growing old in the digital age, displaying a big-hearted curiosity about cultural change at warp speed" (pulitzer.org) and Siddhartha Mukherjee's work The Emperor of All Maladies: A biography of cancer took home the award in nonfiction for its, "elegant inquiry, at once clinical and personal, into the long history of an insidious disease that, despite treatment breakthroughs, still bedevils medical science" (pulitzer.org).  Check out the small display featuring these books as well as a few choice honorable mentions.  

                        

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction                   Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction

Faculty Favorites!

I know we just got back from Thanksgiving break but winter break is just two weeks away which means we'll all  hopefully have some time to relax and read that book thats been sitting on our night stand for the past month. In preparation for the break, I asked all faculty and staff to recommend a book for our students to read over the winter break. I recieved back an impressive list of books that you are sure to love. Take a look in the display case outside the library to see what books your teachers and advisors are excited to share with you. Here are the books the librarians recommend:

Full Dark, No Stars-Ms. Gray's pick

The Neverending Story-Ms. Musher's pick

 Gathering Blue-Ms. Klasson's pick

Blankets- Ms. Lechan's pick

Cutting for Stone-Ms. Kaplan's pick

Check out the display and read the books that have gotten us all talking!

"Celebrity" Needlepoint

This is a book of 1972 celebrities and their needlepoint hobbies. It includes Ann B. Davis (from The Brady Bunch), Princess Grace of Monaco, and "U.S. Cabinet wives." But my favorite is Rosey Grier, a football player and one of the few men in the book:

"From he-man to sissy," is the crack that Rosey Grier reports old friends make about his enthusiasm for needlepoint. But those are close friends. Strangers who might consider stitchery an incongruous pastime for the six-foot five-inch, three-hundred-pound ex-professional football star might very well keep their opinions to themselves.

I guess some things haven't changed since 1972. Subverting gender roles then and now -- you go, Rosey!

 

 

Books: Judge a book by its cover

I'm such a sucker for a beautiful book cover. Whether I have heard of the book or not, if it has an appealing cover I'm probably going to pick it up and buy it or check it out from the library. An enticing book design is a sure fire way to get readers to pick a book up off the shelf and explore the book. What's on the back cover? the inside flap? Sometimes it gets me to read the first paragraph or two and before I know I'm committed to reading this book all because I thought it had a pretty cover. The library is constantly getting new books in and I always take the time to appreciate the cover art. I was perusing some blogs about cover art and came across a site that allows users to create their own young adult book cover. Let's face it, a lot of the time YA books seem to have the same pictures on the cover, usually a cropped close up photo of the teen protagonist- not really super original. Take a second and Create your own book cover! Just follow the steps on the blog and see what you come up with. This is a fun way to waste time when you should be writing that paper or studying for that chem test you have coming up.                                                                                                                                                    
Here's the YA book cover that I made. Looks like a NY Times Bestseller to me!

Some all time favorite book covers of mine:

 

Displays: SUMMER VACATION

Our last display of the year features a theme near and dear to all our hearts: SUMMER VACATION.  Be sure to stop by and look at the books up there for some excellent recommendations of summery books to read while you are having a most excellent adventure this summer vacation!

Just remember: don't forget the sunblock!

Spotlight on: Most popular nonfiction 2009-2010

And now for the most popular nonfiction books in the Helen Temple Cooke library during the 2009-2010 school year.  Drumroll please...

Most Popular Nonfiction Books at Dana Hall 2009-2010

Rank	Title	Author	Call #	Checkouts 2009-2010	Lifetime checkouts
1	Searching for Hassan	Ward, Terence	955.05 WAR	6	6
2	Sharon and my mother-in-law	Amiry, Suad	956.9542 AMI	5	5
3	Seize the story	Hanley, Victoria	808.02083 HAN	5	5
4	The cardinal's hat	Hollingsworth, Mary	282.092 HOL	5	5
5	Events that changed Germany	Thackeray, Frank W.	943.08 EVE	5	6
6	The competent woman	Barnett, Rosalind C.	155.633 BAR	4	4
7	Producing fashion	Blaszczyk, Regina Lee	746.92 PRO	4	4
8	911	Cart, Michael	810.8 NIN	4	4
9	Columbine	Cullen, David, 1961-	373.7888 CUL	4	4
10	How to attract the wombat	Cuppy, Will, 1884-1949.	814.52 CUP	4	5
11	Dancing in the dark	Dickstein, Morris.	973.91 DIC	4	4
12	Century of struggle	Flexner, Eleanor, 1908-	305.490973 FLE	4	6
13	The Purposes of pleasure	Hawley, Richard A.	613.8 HAW	4	4
14	Hispanic American struggle for equality	Jensen, Jeffry, 1950-	305.868073 JEN	4	4
15	America's war on drugs	Johnson, Joan (Joan J.)	363.45 JOH	4	5
16	Anastasia	Kurth, Peter.	947.08092 KUR	4	7
17	Drugs in America	Long, Robert Emmet.	363.45 DRU	4	6
18	The Oxford history of the British Empire	Louis, William Roger, 1936-	909.0971241 OXF v.4	4	4
19	Hispanic Americans	McCaffrey, Paul, 1977-	305.8968073 HIS	4	5
20	Contemporary world architecture	Pearman, Hugh	724.6 PEA	4	11

Spotlight: Most popular fiction titles 2009-2010

The following list shows which fiction books were checked out the most in the past year.  Have you read any of them?   If not, being checked out a lot generally means something is a good book (in librarian language!).  

Most Popular Fiction Books at Dana Hall 2009-2010

Rank	Title	Author	Call #	Checkouts 2009-2010	Lifetime Checkouts
1	The help	Stockett, Kathryn	F STO	8	8
2	The sea of monsters	Riordan, Rick	F RIO	6	10
3	When you reach me	Stead, Rebecca	F STE	6	6
4	Elsewhere	Zevin, Gabrielle	F ZEV	6	21
5	The Hunger Games	Collins, Suzanne	F COL	5	9
6	Along for the ride	Dessen, Sarah	F DES	5	5
7	13 little blue envelopes	Johnson, Maureen	F JOH	5	7
8	The evolution of Calpurnia Tate	Kelly, Jacqueline	F KEL	5	5
9	The Titan's curse	Riordan, Rick	F RIO	5	9
10	The Last Song	Sparks, Nicholas	F SPA	5	5
11	A girl made of dust	Abi-Ezzi, Nathalie	F ABI	4	4
12	The lost symbol	Brown, Dan	F BRO	4	4
13	Don't judge a girl by her cover	Carter, Ally	F CAR	4	4
14	Catching fire	Collins, Suzanne	F COL	4	4
15	Lock and key	Dessen, Sarah	F DES	4	9
16	Loving Frank	Horan, Nancy	F HOR	4	8
17	Greetings from planet Earth	Kerley, Barbara	F KER	4	4
18	Dirty little secrets	Omololu, Cynthia Jaynes	F OMO	4	4
19	Half broke horses	Walls, Jeannette	F WAL	4	4
20	Love & lies	Wittlinger, Ellen.	F WIT	4	4

Spotlight: Return your library materials by Friday!

Friday is the last day to return your books, movies, video cameras, Kindles, laptops, CDs, books on tape, etc. etc. etc.

We do it a bit early so we can make sure we've got everything we started with back in September. 

Most importantly, students, you'll want to return your checked out items by Friday to avoid being billed for replacement costs.  (That's a conversation you don't want to have to have with Mom and Dad to start off your summer vacation, trust us!)

Thanks!

Birthday Books 2009-2010

Every year we run a Birthday Book Donation Program.  This program allows parents to donate to the library in honor of their daughters birthday.  This year was a record breaking year.  Thanks to 90 generous donors, we raised $6,350!!!!  With this money, so far we have been able to purchase approximately 260 new books and DVDs to add to our collection.  This is no small thing. On behalf of the Dana Hall community we thank you, donors!

Since we are so excited by new books and other shiny objects (also birthdays) we currently  have a display of some of the titles we were able to purchase with Birthday Book funds in the entry display case. 

Click on the pictures below to check them out (or stop on by and really check them out!).
Sign to the left decorated by Lesley S. '10, and books arranged by Winnie L. '11.

 

Spotlight: Summer reading goes YouTube!

Picture this: you, on summer vacation, with a super book.  Pretty great, right? But yikes!  What to read, what to read?  We have got you covered.  We've recorded some summaries of recommended books that we endorse from both the middle and upper school summer reading list.  These titles are doubly great as they are NOT required titles (even though some of those books are delightful too)!  Huzzah freedom!  They are posted on our YouTube channel, which you can access year round from both our website and our links page on this blog!  Happy reading (and viewing!).