Calling All Mad Scientists!

Our Super Tuesdays and Weekend Adventures are programs planned especially with elementary school kids and busy working families in mind. Once the homework is finished and bellies are full of dinner, come on over to the library for our first Super Tuesday event of the school year:


Mad Science presents Spin, Pop, Boom!
Tuesday, September 16, 7 p.m.
Community Room


If you have a budding scientist in the house, you might also want to check out these fun juvenile fiction and non-fiction titles:

• Lunch Walks Among Us by James K. Benton (from the Franny K. Stein, Mad Scientist series)


• Jake Drake, Know-It-All by Andrew Clements


• Phineas L. MacGuire...Gets Slimed! by Frances O'Roark Dowell


• The Kid Who Named Pluto: And the Stories of Other Extraordinary Young People in Science by Marc McCutcheon


• Cool Chemistry Concoctions : 50 Formulas That Fizz, Foam, Splatter & Ooze by Joe Rhatigan & Veronika Gunter

Life After Fancy Nancy

Got a little one who adores Fancy Nancy and her abundant vocabulary? Have you read through all of them a million times? Check out some of these fun and sassy picture books with an equally appealing female character:

Angelina Ballerina books by Katharine Holabird
Do Princesses Wear Hiking Boots? by Carmela LaVigna Coyle
Eloise books by Kay Thompson
Falling for Rapunzel by Leah Wilcox
Madeline books by Ludwig Bemelmans
Olivia books by Ian Falconer
Priscilla books by Nathaniel Hobbie
Pinkalicious and Purplicious by Victoria Kann

Check Out from Home

If you're an audio book fan, you should definitely check out Library2Go, a downloadable service of your library. With titles for children, teens and adults, this service is too great to pass up. Want something to listen to while you go for walks? How about stories for your kids to listen to while you get dinner ready or they're enjoying free time? Or you teen announces that they need a book for school and all copies are checked out? Download it! You can even transfer it to a MP3 player.

And new...they've added downloadable video. Check out everything from biographies to instructional guitar lessons, right to your computer.

How does it work? You check it out like a book. The libraries of Washington County have purchased so many "copies" or licences. If the title you want is out, put in on hold and get email notification when it's ready to be checked out. To check it out, download a simple piece of software, the audio/video file and a license.

As always, if you need help let your friendly librarians know!

Just for kids book discussion groups

Did you know that the library offers book discussion groups for elementary school students and teens? This is a great opportunity for your child/teen to improve their reading comprehension, improve their vocabulary, build social skills, build creativity, and to develop a love of reading. At each one of these meetings, we do more than just discuss a book. At each session we have snacks, and other fun activities like crafts and games to play too! The Kids' Book Club (for grades 1-4) also votes for their favorite book in March each year!

Kids' Book Club
For Grades 1-4
Meets at 3:45-5 p.m. on Mondays or Tuesdays
Monday September 29, October 27, November 24
Tuesdays, September 30, October 28, November 25

Super Readers Book Club
For Grades 4-6
Meets on Tuesdays 4-5 p.m.
September 16, October 21, November 18 and December 16

Teen Book Group
For grades 6-12
Meets on Thursdays 4:30-6 p.m.
September 11, October 9, November 13, December 11

The youth services librarians are enthusiastic to have your child/teen participate in one of the book groups. Stop by the children's reference desk today to register and to pick up the selected book for the month. Books are generiously provided by the Friends of the Tigard Public Library.

Beethoven's Basketball!

Ten-year-old Zoe believes she will be a concert pianist...if only she knew how to play the piano. Her overworked mom and socially anxious dad decide to help her in this pursuit, except Dad gets nervous and buys a mini-organ instead! Zoe, already on the edge of not-coolness, finds a bit of pep from her weekly lessons and a new friendship.

Linda Urban's A Crooked Kind of Perfect is spunky, heartwarming, with just the right words. I, for one, will continue to use "Chopin's Toaster!" when I am shocked and amazed.

Recommended for ages 8 and up. Also a great family read or listen.

News Just for You!

We're baaaack! Your librarians are rested (mostly!) and ready to start story times again. You can find the full schedule here.

Don't miss the fun of the 4th Annual Family Fest this Thursday through Saturday! See a full schedule of activities here. With fireworks, a clown, and much more, Family Fest promises something for everyone to enjoy.

September is National Library Card Sign-Up Month. Does everyone in your family have a card? It's a great way for kids to learn about sharing, responsibility, and ownership. Plus, I hear there's a chance to win special goodies with a new card. See the staff at the Welcome Desk for more info.

Even with the little break between the Summer Reading Program and the beginning of the school year, the library was hopping. You (library patrons) checked out 104,316 items! That's a 17.74% increase over August of last year and an average of 365 items an hour! Whew, can we take another break?!? Hmmm, I wonder if we can check out even more this month...

Baby's first information technology

Many caregivers are surprised to learn that it is best to start reading with your baby from the very beginning. Those newborns may look like little human grubs, but their brains are developing at an incredible rate, and any stimuli you give them will create new pathways in their baby-brains, and as mentioned in a previous blog post, repetition will help to strengthen connections between those pathways.

For the early months, choose books that have big bright pictures (pictures of faces are great), and hold them about eight inches away from your baby's face, so she can see them with her growing eyes. When we grown-up types pick up a book, we don't really think about how to use it, forgetting that books are an information technology and we all have to learn how to use them. The more you read with your infant, the more you may see them, once they can pick up objects, turning board book pages from right to left, and tracking words and pictures from left to right (if they're reading English books). And remember, the more your baby sees you read, the more likely she will be to be drawn to reading herself.

Athletes, artists, authors, and more...

Nowadays, biographies aren't just boring books about dead people that your kid reads to write a report. Well, some of them are about dead people, but most of them aren't boring! There are books about both historical and contemporary figures including inventors, scientists, athletes, show biz personalities, authors, politicians, important multicultural figures...the list goes on and on. I always like to highlight a few biographies by putting them on display on the shelves directly across from the Juvenile Biography section. Ask your librarian how to find them. And if we don't have a biography about someone you think we should, then by all means let us know and we'll see what we can do.

Here are just a few examples:
Snowflake Bentley, by Jacqueline Briggs Martin (Grades K-3)
Hillary Rodham Clinton: Dreams Taking Flight, by Kathleen Krull (Grades K-5)
Knockin' on Wood: Starring Peg Leg Bates, by Lynne Barasch (Grades 2-3)
Jeff Gordon: Racing's Brightest Star, by Marty Gitlin (Grades 3-6)
Soulja Boy: Tell 'Em, by PeggySue Wells (Grades 3-6)
The Riches of Oseola McCarty, by Evelyn Coleman (Grades 4-6)
Taylor Swift: Country's Sweetheart, by Lexi Ryals (Grades 4-6)
The Tree of Life: A Book Depicting the Life of Charles Darwin, by Peter Sis (Grades 4-7)
Lang Lang: Playing with Flying Keys, by Lang Lang with Michael Frency (Grades 5-9)

What's New?

The Youth Services staff may be taking a break from programming, but that doesn't mean we've slowed down on planning! New this fall...a writing club, Weekend Adventures (yes, programs on Saturdays and Sundays), and a couple of special events. This, of course, is in addition to our regularly scheduled story times, Dogs & Tales, Super Tuesdays, and book clubs. Look to our weekly schedule on the right for a glimpse of the week, or check out a full list of programs on our Kids web page. As always, we have a handy dandy print version for your fridge in the Children's Room.

Don't miss what's the Adult Services staff is planning for the fall -- like September's Guitar Fest, featuring outdoor concerts every Sunday at 6 p.m. behind the library. Sounds like a picnic to me!

Read It Again!

Does your child request the same story over and over again? It's a good thing, we promise. Repetition is one of the ways children improve their early literacy skills, or everything a child learns about reading and writing before being able to do either.

Chances are your child is also memorizing parts of the text, learning about sequence, and most importantly, enjoying the time spent reading!