Meet the Collection Mondays: Parents

Thank you for joining us on our journey over the past few months as we looked at all of the collections that are housed in the children's and young adult rooms at the library.  We hope you found it informative and were able to learn more about what the library offers young patrons.  This week will be our last post in the series as we will be highlighting the Parents Colletion today.  Join us on Fridays as we begin a new series called "Favorite Book Fridays" where youth services staff will post their thoughts and comments regarding their favorite children's and young adult books. 


The Parents Collection is housed in the children's room at the library.  We've decided to keep the collection here so parents can browse books for themselves while allowing their children to puruse their own books and play with puzzles, puppets, and our game computers withouth having to leave the room to go upstairs.


The collection consists of nonfiction materials (books and DVD's) intended for use by parents, teachers, childcare providers and youth advocates on topics geared towards raising children from birth through 12 years of age.  The emphasis is on practical materials on topics such as:

·       Books on “how-to” parenting such as discipline and child rearing (includes secular and religious viewpoints)

·       General works on pregnancy and birth

·       General works on family values, family units, and nurturing

·       Books on child development (physical and educational)

·       Toilet training (resources for parents and juvenile literature)

·       Sexual abuse and prevention (resources for parents and juvenile literature)

·       Children’s safety, health, fitness, and popular works on disabilities

·       Books dealing with the educational needs of children by age/grade level through 6^th grade (enrichment activities, programming, curriculum support)

·       Books offering suggestions for entertaining children (activities, crafts, family outings/travel)

·       Bibliographic reference works and readers' advisory materials

·       Books related to children's literature, early literacy, literacy, and reading

·       Home schooling resources

·       “View and Reflect” resources for child care workers

This is just a sampling of subjects that we carry in the collection.  Other topics of interest that are in the collection includes baby signs, family cooking & cook books, first meals, family travel, gardening with children, and green living.  Stop by the children's desk today as we would love to show you the collection!

Meet the Collection Monday (Tuesday Edition): Young Adult Spanish

Hello and welcome to another (belated) Meet the Collection Monday. Allow me to introduce you to our Young Adult Spanish collection, which lives on the second floor of the library on the shelf with the YA Graphic Novels. The collection consists of, you guessed it, young adult materials in Spanish. Some are non-fiction like Puberman, a comic book set up to inform boys about what they can expect from puberty. There are also other great informative books about subjects ranging from algebra to Che Guevara.

Moving on to fiction, you will find both translations and books written originally in Spanish. When I select titles for the collection, I look especially for translations of popular teen books like Alexandra Adornetto's Halo and classics that will support high school curriculum and reading lists like Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. 

Some of the most popular items in the collection are graphic novels, including translations of Japanese comics like Tokyo Mew Mew and American comics like Hellboy. Come peruse the collection and find the next great book for your Spanish speaking or learning teen!

Meet the Collection Monday: Juvenile World Languges

Did you know that not only do we have English and Spanish books, but we also have a selection of other world languages in the Children's Room? This includes Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Tagalog, Somali, and Vietnamese. The Juvenile World Languages books are located in the last set of shelves parallel with the Picture Books, across from the Early Readers, just behind the Parenting section. We have Board Books, Picture Books, Non-Fiction, Early Readers, and chapter books all shelved within each language area.

Most of the books are geared for younger readers, but there are some longer popular chapter books translated from English such as Harry Potter, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Percy Jackson in some of the languages. Some of the books are bilingual, good for native speakers of the respective languages to learn English, but also good for native English speakers to learn other languages.

I always welcome purchase suggestions for the Juvenile World Languages collection, so if you speak any of these languages and know of any titles you would like us to own, please let me know! I'll do my best to purchase them for our collection.

Meet the Collection Monday- Young Adult Audiobooks

 Is there anything better than kicking back in the car or on a plane or at home and listening to a great reader bring a story to life? Audiobooks can be so vivid and compelling, whether they are read by a full cast complete with sound effects or are more intimate productions with a single, excellent reader. Perhaps you've already discovered our audiobooks for children and adults, but have you found the Young Adult Books on CD collection yet? If not, you're in for a treat, and if so, you know that there are hundreds of fabulous audio versions of incredible YA books, from non-fiction to classics to contemporary. Find them upstairs in the YA section near the magazines.

If you're a fan of irreverent comedy/social commentary, you will love Libba Bray's Beauty Queens, and the audiobook (read by the author) is especially fun. Usually, authors simply cannot compete with the professional actors who bring characters to life in audiobooks, but a few know how to get just the right tone to tell their stories. Bray's reading of her own book is hilarious. In this Lord of the Flies/pop-culture parody, a plane caring contestants for the Miss Teen Dream pageant crashes on the way to the final competition. The survivors learn to work together as they build structures, hunt for food, accessorize jungle-style, and uncover a corporate conspiracy.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian is, in my humble opinion, the best book ever, and the author's reading of it is divinity. Sherman Alexie's pitch-perfect reading will carry you laughing, weeping and hooting triumphantly through the hilarity, tragedy, irony and injustice that is Junior's life.

If Chuck Norris challenged Neil Gaiman to a fight, he would be so stunned by the author's rapier wit that his beard hairs would start to fall out. Then he would beg Neil to let him join one of his dinner parties and Neil would graciously agree, stunning Chuck yet again with his gentility. Then Neil would knock him out with a perfectly executed roundhouse kick to the face. In other words, Gaiman's a genius and his reading of The Graveyard Book is further proof of his brilliance. OK, Neil, we get it.

You may also love Terry Pratchett's magically hilarious Wee Free Men, read by Stephen Briggs, Patrick Ness' terrifying Knife of Never Letting Go, read by Nick Podehl, and Holly Black's fantastical White Cat read by Jesse Eisenberg. Yes, that Jesse Eisenberg.

And, as you'll notice from the pictures above, all the cutest author's write teen books. Look at them; they're so adorable!

Meet the Collection Monday: Juvenile CD-ROMs

We often get asked for video games at our library, and though we don't carry the games that go with video game consoles, we do have a collection of CD-ROMs for your PC or Macintosh. The Juvenile Multimedia CD-ROM collection is located between the Juvenile CDs and the Picture Book Kits right in front of the story time room. It consists of materials to meet the recreational, developmental, and informational needs of children from ages 0 to 11 with an emphasis on pre-school age. This collection includes but is not limited to educational materials supporting reading, math, science, languages, and typing; literature-based games; and interactive story books.

Often I will be sitting at the Children's Desk and kids go running straight past me. Even if their parents don't know where they're going, the kids know: directly to the game computers! The bank of computers next to the window, in case you don't know, are Early Literacy Stations; they are loaded with fun, educational games. I have done the best I could to buy the same games for the CD-ROM collection. Here is just a small selection:

• Arthur's Teacher Trouble
• JumpStart Advanced
• Math Blaster
• My Amazing Human Body
• My First Amazing History Explorer
• Reader Rabbit
• Stellaluna
• World Explorer

 

Meet the Collection Monday: Young Adult Graphic Novels

 Welcome to another Meet the Collection Monday! Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to our fabulous Young Adult Graphic Novel collection. YA Graphics live on the second floor of the library in, you guessed it, theYA section. This is a vibrant and popular collection with so much character you can almost feel it breathing as you walk near it. Though the collection is smaller than YA fiction, it circulates just as much. These books literally fly of the shelf! Peruse the collection and you will find a wide variety of formats, topics and styles. You will see wonderful stand alone biographies like the Printz award winning American Born Chinese, captivating and creative stories like the incredible Anya's Ghost, super hero comic characters like Batman and Runaways, adaptations of classics both new and old like Coraline and Merchant of Venice, and, of course, lots of manga (Japanese comics) like Bleach.

If you are new to the wonderful world of graphic novels, we are happy to offer recommendations. Besides the titles I mention above, I also enjoyed the hauntingly strange Salem Brownstone, the achingly true Skim, the genre-defying Watchmen, the bittersweet Twin Spica, and the ridiculously fun and revolutionary Plain Janes.

Meet the Collection Mondays: Juvenile DVDs

Our very popular Juvenile DVD collection contains educational, informational and feature titles for children up to age twelve. The collection consists of a varied selection of feature films including current movies and family classics, as well as collections of children’s programs such as Scooby-Doo, Dora the Explorer, Sesame Street and other popular offerings. Non-fiction titles include well-loved subjects such as animals, trucks and other vehicles, languages, music, sports and dance. One important difference between books and DVDs is that DVDs only check out for ONE week instead of three. So come on in and borrow some movies for FREE...but don't forget to bring them back on time!

Meet the Collection Mondays: Juvenile Graphic Novels

It seems that many people are confused by the term "graphic novel" and think it is something risqué.  Nothing can be farther from the truth.  A graphic novel is a book format in which a narrative is conveyed using sequential art.  Others may describe graphic novels as a book written and illustrated in the style of a comic book, where frames and speech bubbles tell a story.  

This format holds great appeal for reluctant and struggling readers as much as it does for avid readers because the illustrations match the text in each frame.  This format also helps improve language and literacy development because the illustrations provide valuable contextual clues to the meaning of the written word.  For example: I had a hard time understanding Shakespeare when I was in high school.  Today, a new series of graphic novels based on his plays have made it so incredibly easy for me to finally understand them now thanks to the clearer text and visual clues.  Plus, many professional articles have been published within the last few years that support the use of graphic novels to increase children's literacy and vocabulary.
 

While graphic novels have been in existence for many decades, its acceptance in the United States as an important and popular format has only recently been recognized.  These novels have primarily been published for adults and teens, now publishers are creating more and more graphic novels that are appropriate for children.

The term “graphic novel” here at the library is used to describe any book in a comic-like format that resembles a novel in length and narrative development.  It covers a wide variety of genres and subjects such as adaptations of classic novels, science fiction, realistic fiction, fantasy, horror, or superheroes.  We even have titles in the collection that are published by popular religious publishers.  In addition to graphic novels, other formats kept in the collection are:

Bound Comic Books: These are bound comic book compilations that contain a collection of previous daily comics such as The Peanuts, Garfield, and Calvin and Hobbes.

Manga: A Japanese “graphic novel”.  It consists of highly stylized black and white drawings and is read in a manner opposite of traditional Western comics.  Series examples include: Kingdom Hearts, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Peach Fuzz.

Cine-manga: A Japanese-style graphic novel that includes film/screen shots from an actual children’s television show or movie.  Examples: Kim Possible, Lizzie McGuire, and Disney movie tie-ins.  Unfortunately these have become out of print and I've been unable to replace them.

While a majority of juvenile graphic novels are written as works of fiction, publishers are now producing graphic novels with a non-fiction approach.  We feel that many of these books do not contain enough content for the reader to acquire enough facts to assist them with homework assignments, so we keep them in the juvenile graphic novel collection and treated as though it is a work of fiction.

Be sure to check back later this week as I will reveal my Top 10 Children's Graphic Novel Choices for 2011!!

Meet the Collection Mondays: Big Books

The key feature of most Big Books is that they are in a patterned and predictable language format. These kid-favorite titles are packed with everything from rhyme & repetition to rhythmic language and more! Our Big Book collection is nestled lying down on the shelves at the end of the Parenting collection and contains a wide choice of charming stories filled with marvelous illustrations that everyone is sure to enjoy.

The very size of the Big Book makes it a novelty which attracts young children's curiosity as well as sustains their enthusiasm. Children are easily able to track and differentiate the printed word in this format individually or in a group.  In the classroom setting, the enlarged text in a Big Book allows students to focus on the text much the same way they do when experiencing one-on-one reading with their individual caregivers. This is significant in light of the attention span of young children and the challenges of large classrooms. The reading process is a visual task as well as a hearing task and by using a Big Book instead of a traditional sized book in a group setting, young readers are readily able to follow their teachers lead in modeling various reading skills.  Positive shared reading experiences focus on the enjoyment of the story. Pre-readers and readers alike readily model reading behaviors in socially rewarding and risk-free environment. Reading a favorite book over and over again, no matter what format, helps build experience with handling books and the reading process itself long before children actually learn to read.

Don't forget to extend the fun of your Big Book choices with our wonderful collection of Puppets!!!

Meet the Collection Mondays: Juvenile Music CDs

One of my favorite collections to buy for is the Juvenile Music CDs. This collection is located right next to the story time room across from the Juvenile Non-Fiction.

The Juvenile Music collection includes but is not limited to folk songs, rock, pop, classical, holiday, educational, and popular children’s entertainers, characters, television shows and movies. Children's folk songs are very popular, along with certain established children's music such as Disney, Kidz Bop, Raffi, and the Wiggles. In addition, music by popular and independent artists enjoyed by adults and children alike is highly circulated. We also have a lot of soundtracks from kids' movies.

I read a couple of different blogs to help me keep up with the "Kindie" (Kids Indpendent) music, and I find myself checking out a lot of them to share with my kids. Here are some of my favorite artists:

• Frances England
• Milkshake
• Recess Monkey
• Brady Rymer
• They Might Be Giants

Meet The Collection Mondays: Young Adult Non-Fiction

Welcome to the world of Young Adult non-fiction!

To find your next favorite Young Adult non-fiction book, you first get to go on a treasure hunt through the adult non-fiction stacks. Shelved among adult materials, you can find excellent teen-oriented reads on many subjects.

DNA: Do you like your science with a lot of pictures? The Stuff of Life is a graphic non-fiction guide to genetics and DNA. Usually an overwhelmingly complicated subject to delve into, The Stuff of Life almost makes genetics seem simple.

DIY: Get inspired to sew your own plush dolls with Plush You, profiling artists who make everything from socktopusses (octopus sock monkeys) to felt eggs and bacon. Or crochet your own pepperoni pizza scarf following step-by-step instructions in Twinkie Chan’s Crochet Goodies for Fashion Foodies.

SPY: Perhaps you’ve always imagined having a life as an undercover operative. The Real Spy’s Guide to Becoming a Spy will prepare you for your ultimate career.

In addition to these gems, you will also find many other materials to support the educational, recreational, developmental, and informational needs of young adults from 6th through 12th grade. Whether you are writing a school paper, looking for some fashion tips, or interested in finding more information about your favorite skateboarder, the Young Adult non-fiction collection has something to offer. Come visit at the Young Adult reference desk, and we will help you navigate the non-fiction stacks to find the materials that best suit your needs.

Meet the Collection Mondays: Juvenile Magazines

Our collection of 30+ magazines for children and parents, housed together to the right of the Alphabet Chair in the Juvenile Fiction area, includes titles to support the recreational, developmental, and informational needs of children 0-11 years of age and their parents/caregivers. One of our selections, American Girl, has been the most popular magazine in the whole library for the past several years! Other great titles include Discovery Kids, Babybug, and Sports Illustrated for Kids. Magazines for parents and teachers include Familyfun, Working Mother, and Book Links. Current issues are displayed in protective covers and don't circulate until the next month’s issue is received and processed.  Back issues of the current and previous years circulate for three weeks, just like books. Mosey back to the corner marked "Periodicals" and check out some magazines today!

Meet the Collection Mondays: Juvenile Audiobooks

As a huge fan of audiobooks, I love telling our patrons about all the wonderful titles we have at the library.  I am pleased to tell you about our Juvenile Audiobook collection which consists of Fiction Books on CD, Non-Fiction Books on CD, Fiction Book Kits with CD's and Non-Fiction Book Kits with CD's. The book with CD's kits are also referred to as "kits". We no longer carry cassettes as CD's have become more popular.

Kits: Our kits are mainly geared towards Preschool children through second grade.  The collection is mainly comprised of picture book and early reader read-alongs. The collection also includes non-fiction titles, such as books that help children learn a foreign language. It also contains publications such as Wee Sing that includes a CD with an accompanying music booklet.  A majority of all these titles have a track or separate CD with page-turn signals, making it easy for children to listen to the book on their own and to know when to turn the page without adult assistance.  Children who listen to a read-along kit are receiving the same benefit as though they are listening to a parent or another adult read them a book, as they are still picking up and learning new vocabulary and other early literacy skills.  Kits are a valuable resource for pre-readers because it helps them develop early literacy skills such as print awareness. We have numerous kits that contain wonderful sound effects.  I highly recommend Hondo and Fabian, The Librarian from the Black Lagoon, and Dooby Dooby Moo.  For elementary school ages, try The Composer is Dead, and Jazz.

Books on CD: For all of the books on CD, every effort is made to

make sure there is a print edition of that title located somewhere in the overall children’s collection. This is helpful when a child would like to read along with the print book.  This option is especially important to children who struggle with reading as it will  help aid and assist them in their reading comprehension and is an excellent way to extend the story beyond their imagination as many audiobook narrators use a wide range of expressions and characterizations to make the plot more realistic than what's just printed in the book.  A good narrator can really bring a book to life.  As I've listened to probably 80% of the titles in our audiobook collection and have served three years on a national audiobook award committee (going on four), I can assure you that a good match between the narrator and the text makes all the difference in the world for a phenomenal audiobook experience.  To the novice listener, this may be hard to justify, so here are some great fiction examples to try: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and The Alvin Ho Collection: Books 1 & 2.  And for an exceptional non-fiction audiobook experience, try We are the Ship, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! (with a full cast) and Marley: A Dog Like No Other.

Why should children listen to audiobooks?
Some may think that listening to a book on CD is a way to cheat on reading the print book. However, this is not the case, as they provide many benefits for children such as:

• Improving listening and comprehension skills
• Increasing vocabulary
• Learning the proper pronunciation of words
• Learning to "see" a story by using imagination instead of illustrations
• Getting motivated to read more by an author they've been introduced to through an audiobook
• Engaging a child's interest in a way that a parent reading aloud may not
• Supplements print book reading
• Another way to experience literature besides through printed books
• Providing an enjoyable family activity to share literature together

For more detailed information on the benefits of listening to audiobooks, read this article from Reading Rockets: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/64/. 

I also encourage you to come to the library and check out an audiobook today!

Meet the Collection Mondays: Puppets

The Library maintains a circulating collection of puppets for the purpose of encouraging creative play and enhancing the home storytelling experience. Juvenile Puppets circulate for three weeks and are kept in open bins next to the Board Book collection in the Children’s Room.

Puppet play and child development tips
A child's natural approach to learning is through play and the development of imagination plays a critical role in life long problem solving and learning. When children act out stories or life events through dramatic play a variety of senses are used. Through play, your child is learning to identify and internalize a story or an event in an immediate way. Something as simple as playing with puppets helps build your child's vocabulary, self expression, relationships with others and an understanding of their world.

Stop by the Children's Reference desk for some fun book suggestions to go along with your child's puppet playing experience!

Meet the Collection Monday: Juvenile Spanish

I also get to take care of the Juvenile Spanish collection. There are 6 sub-collections within Juvenile Spanish: Board Books, Picture Books, Early Readers, Non-Fiction, Fiction, and Graphic Novels. The Juvenile Spanish collection is housed between the Picture Books and Early Readers in the Children's Room. All of our Spanish books have orange labels on them.

The collection is used by native Spanish speakers as well as native English speakers who want to learn Spanish. We have some books written entirely in Spanish, and some in both English and Spanish. The bilingual books are good for Spanish speakers trying to improve their English, and English speakers trying to improve their Spanish.

Board Books are specifically for babies and toddlers learning how books work. The Picture Books have a broad range of levels, anywhere from just a few words per page to several paragraphs per page. There are even a few Picture Books that include CDs along with them. Early Readers are great for native Spanish and native English speakers to learn how to read Spanish. The Non-Fiction section has a broad range of topics that can support kids in homework and is particularly good for parents whose primary language is Spanish who want to help their kids with their homework. Non-Fiction also has some high interest topics (vehicles, animals, biographies, fairy tales, etc). Fiction is made up of chapter books anywhere between 1st grade and 5th grade reading levels. Almost all of the chapter books are written in Spanish only. We have a very small, but hopefully growing section of graphic novels, or comics, shelved with the Fiction.

Many of the Spanish books are translations of popular books originally written in English (Harry Potter, Mo Willems, Dr. Seuss), but I also work hard on finding books that were originally written in Spanish. It is often hard to get Spanish translations, and they are often published way after the originals in English. Once in awhile, though, I can actually get a book in Spanish before it is published in English, like the Tunnels series, by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams.

Meet The Collection Monday: Young Adult Fiction

Welcome to another Meet the Collection Monday! I'm delighted to introduce you to my favorite collection. Our collections are like our kids, and I know they say you're not supposed to have favorites, but...you know. (Kidding).

The Young Adult Fiction collection is located on the second floor of the library with other Young Adult (YA) collections. Items are alphabetized by the authors' last names, with the exception of short story compilations which are shelved under "Y STORIES" and alphabetized by the book titles.

When I select books for YA fiction, I am looking for titles that meet the wide range of needs and interest of teens in grades 6-12. Of course, adults love perusing the collection as well, as I discuss in this post. Some items in the collection have crossover appeal and can also be found in the Juvenile or adult collections. The collection includes classics and books often found on high school reading lists. It also includes Printz Award winners like Going Bovine, a wild, bittersweet, fantastical adventure story in which a teen with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and a talking garden gnome head to Florida for Spring Break and to save the universe.

While I make sure to keep a core collection of classics, contemporary classics, and award winners, I enjoy the challenge of trying to keep up with the fast pace of YA publishing and the demand resulting from teens' shifting interests. Chime is a new book with lasting impact. This atmoshperic story of a young woman growing up in haunted swamp is one of the best books of the year, and has great apppeal to today's readers of the supernatural.

And of course, the collection wouldn't be complete without huge hits like Suzanne Collins' magnificent Hunger Games series. These books are so popular that you probably won't find them on the shelf in the YA Room, but if you're lucky you may find a copy (along with other popular YA books) on the Bestseller Shelf on the first floor of the library.

Meet the Collection Monday: Juvenile Fiction

Welcome to the Juvenile Fiction collection!  I order all of the chapter books that keep 2nd through 5th graders happily reading!

The Juvenile Fiction collection (also referred to as chapter books) is designed to meet the recreational and educational needs of children with a second to fifth grade reading level. The collection includes modern selections in genres such as mystery, fantasy, science fiction, sports, adventure, humor, historical fiction, plus many others.  It includes lots of series books, and novels about contemporary boys and girls (also known as realistic fiction).  Plus it also includes a lot of classics, in various editions, from authors Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain. Award winners and honor books of awards such as the Newbery Award are included in the collection. Current year Children’s Choice Award Nominees are included in the collection such as the Oregon Reader’s Choice Award and the Beverly Cleary Children’s Choice Award. Current year Oregon Battle of the Books are included in the collection, as well as local school Battle of the Books lists.

The level of the juvenile fiction collection begins a step above early readers in difficulty and length. The books may or may not have illustrations, but the concepts, styles, and treatment of the text are the significant parts. These books cover a wide range of subjects, themes, life situations, and developmental tasks. A variety of characters, settings, and writing styles are represented with difficulty ranging from simple stories for readers who are making the transition from early readers to chapter books to books for sophisticated readers with a large vocabulary, wide literary knowledge, and high reading skills.

So if your upper elementary school student needs to read a fiction book for a school assignment, or just something for fun, please stop by the children's desk as we have a wide variety of books that the librarian can assist your child in locating.  We also have a bunch of suggested reading lists that contain a whole bunch of good books to read too!

Meet the Collection Monday: Juvenile Non-Fiction

The next collection I want to share is Juvenile Non-Fiction. It's shelved right next to the Juvenile Biographies in the back of the Children's Room, right by the story time room and family restroom.

The Juvenile Non-Fiction is catalogued according to the Dewey Decimal System. Each subject has its own unique call number. But don't worry, you don't need to know the call numbers to find what you want; just look it up in the catalog or ask your librarian and we will be happy to take you out to where you need to be.

You name it, we hopefully have it! Kids use this collection heavily for school assignments like state and country reports, animal reports, and science projects. They also use it just to satisfy their own interests. We have huge dinosaur, bug, and animal sections. Fairy tales and folk tales are also a part of non-fiction under 398.2. Just beyond that, we have books all about dragons, vampires, mythological monsters, etc. Kids who want to know about the Bermuda Triangle or Bigfoot will be happy to find the section devoted to the Unexplained. World records are a common request we get, and we have plenty to satisfy a kids' curiosity. Cookbooks, art books, magic, sports, history, big movie books (there is a huge book all about Vader, for the Star Wars lovers), Legos, I could go on and on.

Some of my favorites to recommend are the Eyewitness books. They have great pictures with a lot of accompanying text, and come in pretty much any subject area you can think of.A lot of the books are shared in an informational format like the Eyewitness books, but a lot of them also read like stories, especially in the history section.

Meet the Collection Mondays: Picture Books & Board Books

Welcome to Meet the Collection Monday.  We're sorry we missed last Monday October 3rd.  We've been so usy her at the library.  Today we will highlight the Picture Book and Board Book collections with blurbs from Molly and Terri.

About the Picture Books from Molly:
This collection lives on the six shelving units that greet you right when you walk into our Children's Room. This large and lovely collection holds over 15,000 books in which the illustrations and text work together to tell a story. It is one of the library's most popular collections, with 98% of titles having been checked out at least once in the past year.


While most picture books are written to be shared with children from birth through six years of age, there are also picture books appropriate for and appealing to children in upper elementary school. If you've already graduated to "chapter books" (Juvenile Fiction) but would like to enjoy an illustrated story every now and then, ask us for some recommendations. Some of the most sophisticated picture books are actually wordless, the story being told completely via the artwork. Picture books can be different heights and widths, but are generally 32 pages in length. At the end of the shelving for the regular Picture Book collection, there is an aisle reserved for Holiday Picture Books. These titles are grouped together by holiday, then by author’s last name. Even though we add new books every year, we can never seem to have enough. For example, as I write this, there is only one Halloween book on the shelf. So stop by and spend some time exploring our colorful, fantastic Picture Book collection, and be sure to check out some holiday books nice and early!

About the Board Books from Terri:
The juvenile board book collection consists of materials to meet the educational and recreational needs of children from birth to three years.  The board book format plays an important function for children who are learning what books are and how to handle them as the develop motor skills and print knowledge.  The sturdy pages are able to stand up to chewing and fingers that are just leaning how to turn pages.

The collection is comprised of multiple copies of individual titles in board book format.  Some books include special features of interest to this age group, such as lift-the-flap, varied textures and shapes, mirrored surfaces and the like.  The board book collection is housed in bins placed on the floor so that they are easily accessible to babies and toddlers.  Because these books are not placed in any particular order and are frequently withdrawn, this is a non-holdable collection. 

The strongest influencing factor in the board book collection is the age group that it is intended for and primarily used by: children from birth through two years and their caregivers.  Children in this age group are most interested in simple stories, repetitive and rhyming text, artwork that is clear, bold and realistic, and books that feature animals, human faces, other babies, and objects and activities familiar to them such as bath time, food and bedtime.

Meet the Collection Mondays: Juvenile & Young Adult Reference

Welcome to another Meet the Collection Monday! Today I'm highlighting the Juvenile and Young Adult Reference collections. The juvenile reference collection is located on the shelves to the right and left of the Children's Reference Desk, and the young adult collection is behind and to the left of the Young Adult Desk on the second floor of the library. These are books you can use while in the library, but you cannot check them out and take them home. You get to browse through them, photocopy them, and leave them for someone else to peruse. The books in the reference collection are often the starting point of research projects for kids of all ages, therefore we stock the most current and relevant books possible.

Some of the most popular books in the collections include the World Book Encyclopedias and Guinness World Records. Kids love to browse these books! There are also some fantastic resources in the juvenile collection for local and state reports, including The Portland Bridge Book and Tigardville: A History of Tigard.

Students working on science fair projects will find our Junior Science Experiments On File endlessly useful, as well as our other science-related encyclopedias. And there's always Experiment Central in the young adult collection for the more advanced scientist.

Explore the reference collections to learn about eras in history from the middle ages to the beatniks. Look up words in dictionaries or expand your vocabulary with thesauruses (Thesaurusi? Thesaurus Rex?) From world culture to literary movements, the potential for learning is endless!