How’s your Summer Reading going? If you need some inspiration for new books to try, check these out. There’s some really excellent stuff coming out this summer!
Picture Books
“The Red Jacket” by Bob Holt
Bob the seagull is feeling glum and disconnected from the other beach residents. So when a cheerful songbird gives him a swanky red jacket (with french fries in the pockets!) Bob is confused but delighted. Suddenly Bob is feeling confident and outgoing in his fancy red jacket and is making connections with all the animals around him. After a wave sweeps his jacket away, Bob’s new friends rally to find it and he realizes that he no longer needs the jacket to feel confident and valued. Parents will enjoy the opportunity to discuss self-worth, kindness and generosity, and kids will enjoy the snappy speech balloon dialogue and cartoon-inspired illustrations. Continue reading “Brianna’s Books: July Favorites 2023”
Did you know the ancient peoples of modern-day United Kingdom moved giant stones (some as long as a school bus and weighing 50 tons!) across hundreds of miles and for over 1,500 years to create a monument to honor the sun? That’s according to some historians.
Stonehenge photographed by Sofía Rabassa
June 21 marked the summer solstice, a day when the sun shines longer than any other day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. Celebrate the solstice — and the 4.6 billion-year-old star we call the Sun — with a low-mess, process-based art project!
Continue reading “Summer Sun Squish Painting”
Happy Pride Month! We celebrate Pride all year long, so when I read “Me & My Dysphoria Monster: An Empowering Story to Help Children Cope With Gender Dysphoria” by Laura Kate Dale and illustrated by Ang Hui Qing I knew, I had to highlight it this month.
Our story begins with Nisha, a young trans girl and her monster. She is nervous when taking pictures, going to the bathroom and even when she is invited to play with her friends. Each time she is misgendered or called by a boy’s name, her monster grows and grows. Her monster gets so big that it stops her from doing the thing that she loves. Her dad eventually introduces her to Jack, and he also has a monster. After talking to him, she realizes that there are ways to make her monster smaller like using she/her pronouns and going by Nisha. By the end of the book, Nisha is able to do her favorite activities again, and while the monster is still around, it is very small and not all-consuming. This book is awesome for trans kids and their caregivers or allies. The message of this book is great for anyone to hear — if you are struggling, ask for help! The book also has a list of terms and questions at the end for those wanting more information. Lastly, the illustrations are bubbly and cute. Well except for the monster, but don’t worry, it’s not too scary. There are parts when it takes up the whole page, which is a great visualization of anxiety. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did! Happy reading!
Summer Reading 2023 is finally here! As we’ve been prepping for the most exciting time of the year here at the library, we’ve been brainstorming plenty of creative ways to connect with others in keeping with the theme “All Together Now.” If you’ve got your summer reading sheet for ages 5-12 or teens, you’ll notice that one of the suggested activities is to create a collaborative piece of art with a friend. Today, I’d like to share a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing!
These simple art projects are perfect for summer school classes, family get-togethers, sleepovers, birthday parties and summer camp. If you’re a fan of family game nights or movie nights, you might even consider giving family art night a try. As you introduce these projects to your young artists, encourage unity as everyone contributes their own sense of creativity. There’s beauty in letting go and giving in to the creative process. Wherever you meet with others this summer, break out the art supplies and look for opportunities to create something new!
Exquisite Corpse
What began as a Victorian parlor game called “consequences” took to new, absurd heights thanks to the Surrealist movement of the 1920s. To play Exquisite Corpse, you’ll need at least three players. Each person folds a piece of paper in thirds and draws the head of the drawing in the top third. Fold down the top third to hide it from the next player, then pass along your drawing. The next player draws the torso, folds it down and passes it along to the final player, who draws the legs. Channel your inner surrealist and play with the definition of “head,” “torso” and “legs!” My sister, husband and I capped off our recent dinner plans with a round of exquisite corpse. I guess two of us were inspired by the pile of crayons spread across the table!
Continue reading “Creating Collaborative Art”
Did you know that altruism, defined as the “behavior of an animal that benefits another at its own expense,” has been observed in bat populations, especially the iconic vampire bat? Vampire bats display what scientists call “reciprocity,” which is a fancy term for friendship. For example, vampire bats don’t just take care of other vampire bats by grooming one another and sharing food (which, sidebar, they do by regurgitating blood and spitting it on their fellow bat’s face to lick up — sweet and gross!): vampire bats actually make social bonds with other specific vampire bats, forming relationships beyond kin or direct familial connection. In other words, vampire bats make and take care of friends outside of their biological family, a behavior that, until it was first documented in the 1980s, scientists thought was more exclusive to humans and other primates. It seems to me that we humans have much to learn from our bat friends, especially in the spirit of this year’s Summer Reading theme, “All Together Now.” So, to celebrate friendship, community and care, let’s make like a bat with an adorable headband craft!
Continue reading “All Together Now . . . With Bats! 
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The April rain, the April rain
Comes slanting down in fitful showers,
Then from the furrow shoots the grain,
And banks are fledged with nestling flowers.
— from “April Rain” by Mathilde Blind
Although we didn’t receive the deluge of rain we might have hoped for last month, here’s a charming craft to celebrate the saying, “April showers bring May flowers.” (Thanks to this blog for the craft idea!) Continue reading “Chenille Stem Flowers”
“The Depth of the Lake and the Height of the Sky” by Kim Jihyun is one of my new favorite books! This wordless picture book is illustrated in grayscale with hints of blue. Even though it is wordless, it is no less impactful than a book with one thousand words. (There might even be a saying about that.) Jihyun tells the story of a boy leaving his home in the city for a summer vacation in the countryside with his parents and grandparents. The story follows the boy and his grandparents’ dog as they have adventures through the woods and by the lake. At the end of the book, Jihyun explains that she spent a few days in another country and was inspired by how the “soft sunlight warmed my skin, a gentle breeze rippled across the deep lake, countless stars sparkled high in the night sky.” Even though the book is all in black and white, you can feel the summer sun shining through the pages. This is a must-read (or a must-look-at, since there are no words to read) to get you in the mood for those summer vibes.
This year I’ve been surprised when the flowers are blooming, and never quite sure how long they will last. So I thought it would be fun to share a craft where you can play with the wind, and also have something bright and cheerful. Pinwheels! Once you’ve made one of these pinwheels, you’ll find yourself wanting to create more and more till you have a whole bouquet of them!
First, gather your supplies. There are two patterns per page, and it’s a good idea to print extra-these are so much fun it’s easy to make a bouquet of pinwheels.
- Pencils with an eraser
- Small beads
- Pins (Mine are small and silver, but almost any sewing pin will work.)
- Coloring supplies (I prefer colored pencils and crayons.)
- Scissors
- Printed templates (Regular copy paper works best.)
Continue reading “Pinwheel Flowers”
With the end of the school year upon us, you might be wondering how you’d like to spend your time this summer. Have you ever wanted to try your hand at drawing, painting, designing, sculpting, sewing or taking photographs? Maybe you’d like to glean some inspiration from some of the world’s greatest and most influential artists, finding out how they got their start and made their most famous works? Well, the library has some wonderful books to help you get started on your creative journey — full of fascinating facts, beautiful illustrations and amazing stories of extraordinary people whose art touched the world.
Starting with the 19th century, we’ve got books on two members of the hugely influential Impressionist movement — “Edgar Degas and “Mary Cassatt.” Degas was
a French artist best known for his paintings of ballet dancers and scenes from everyday Parisian life, and Mary Cassatt was an American painter who was befriended and championed by Degas and who found worldwide fame for her scenes of family and domestic life. Continue reading “Get Inspired by Visual Artists”
As the evenings lengthen through late spring into early summer, I’ve been reflecting on the magical, calming qualities of twilight and/or dusk. Technically, there are three stages of twilight that slowly yet surely submerge us into dusk, that final blanketing of the sun as it seeps below the horizon each and every evening before nightfall. It’s not just that this gradual slipping away of the sun has marked health benefits, signaling to our bodies that it’s time to rest, unwind and restore (which is one reason why the modern blue light of various screen technologies can be so harmful at night); there’s also just the delightful softening of light that is commonly referred to as “the golden hour,” when the sun’s piercing heat diffuses into a smearing of orange, yellow, pink, even lilac pastels, calling forth a warm, fuzzy glow that, for me at least, begins to blur and collapse boundaries between what is ordinary and extraordinary — begins to name what is ordinary and what is extraordinary as overlapping experiences, if not one and the same.
Sometimes it seems like I’m always chasing after this daily moment, which I will acknowledge is more than a bit silly since by definition and by experience this light shifting is just that: a shift, fleeting and transitional. Still, it would be nice in some small way to maybe catch or hold onto or re-create this mystical, blending light-level, to suspend myself in the extraordinary ordinary for a couple of moments longer. This brings me, slowly yet surely like the setting sun itself, to the subject of this blog, a simple yet transformative craft that takes some of the most ordinary objects around, such as waxed paper, adhesive tape and an iron, to create absolutely stunning luminaria or candle shades, which diffuse the soft flicker of flame into a table-top golden hour you can extend as long as your wick will burn.
Continue reading “DIY Luminaria / Candle Shades 
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