🥇 Library Champion Newsletter #100 | 👀 Don't miss the summer reading updates!
Library Champion,
👋 Welcome to our new subscribers! I am SO GLAD to have you aboard!
What's inside this issue ⤵️
Youth summer reading
Adult summer reading
📆 June book sale
🎓 Dissertation scholar events
☀️📚 Summer reading for all ages
Oh, hey - it's that time! Summer Reading 2024 is here and we have some fun programs being offered from June 10 - August 2.
For youth
First, register your child age birth - age 18 for the reading/prize part of the program here: https://forms.gle/owzovne4qT7NAtp26
Then, visit the Summer Reading page of our website (https://www.juniatalibrary.org/youth/sr2) for more info and to register for some of the other programs we have offered this summer.
Finally, plan to attend our fun STEM-filled Kick-Off program on Friday, June 7 @ 10 am presented by Science Heroes!
Questions for the youth programming? Contact Jocinda at the library or jrhinier@juniatalibrary.org
For adults (ages 18 and over)
Earn 1 entry for a prize pack by doing any of the following activities:
1. Read any adult book*
2. Read any young adult book*
3. Read a kid’s fiction or nonfiction book*
4. Attend a dissertation scholar event
5. Update your library card
*digital and audio books can be included
You may complete as many of the above as you’d like. Each one gets you an entry for the prize pack!
Record the books you read and activities you complete on the attached log sheet.
Submit your activity log sheet by 11:59 PM on Monday, August 19th to enter to win prizes (see below.) You can complete as many sheets as you’d like! Each activity earns you an entry towards winning a prize pack
Fill out a Personalized Reading Profile online or in person and get book recommendations from a librarian tailored to your reading tastes.
You can download a copy of the summer reading sheet at https://www.juniatalibrary.org/programs-services/adult-summer-reading
DID SOMEONE SAY PRIZES!?!
We will be giving away 3 prize packs. Each will contain one of the following:
1. Tote bag
2. Book journal
3. Tumbler mug
4. A pair of “love my library” socks
Each activity you complete earns you an entry into a prize drawing for a prize pack. The drawing will be held on Friday, August 23rd.
Next book sale: June 25-27 📆
The next book sale will be held Tuesday June 25 (9a-5p), Wednesday June 26 (9a-5p) and Thursday June 27 (9a-7p)
Fill a bag for $7 (bags provided at the door.) Choose from books for all ages, DVDs, music CDs, magazines and puzzles.
Only cash or check is accepted.
The book sale is located in the book sale room (lower level of the library), which is handicap accessible. Access is available from the main entrance of the library via steps or lower level parking (no steps.) Click here for directions to the library.
If you can’t make this sale, stop in any Monday morning from 9a-12 noon. The Friends sell items individually at that time
About the book sales
The Friends of the Library book and media sales occur 3-4 times a year. The Friends of the Juniata County Library appreciate the wonderful donations of books and media from the public. Donations may be brought to the front desk of the library during regular business hours. Your book/media donations are instrumental in funding many of the Juniata County Library's programs and services each year. These programs include but are not limited to summer reading for kids and adults, programs for babies and children, current technological devices, furniture, and much more.
🎓 Dissertation scholar events
Saturday, June 15 at 2:00 PM - Dr. Molly S. Kinney. The event is titled “How do parents create an environment that values reading, writing, and language activity?”
Saturday, July 13 at 2:00 PM - Dr. Bill Galbraith. The event is titled “Developing communication and improving behavior for children with autism.”
Saturday, August 17 at 2:00 PM - Dr. Sara (Wagner) Keefer. The event is titled “Learning to eat: understanding the role of the environment and the brain mechanisms that drive us to eat.”
Thursday, September 12 at 2:00 PM - Dr. MeeCee Baker. The event is titled “Want to know the secret to recruitment and retention? MeeCee Baker will highlight the importance of mentoring.”
What is a PhD? It is an academic degree, also known as the Doctor of Philosophy. It is for generating new knowledge through scientific research. According to the University of Arizona, examples of the work completed when obtaining a PhD are “setting up experiments, collecting data, applying statistical and analytical techniques and/or gaining teaching experience.” It usually takes several years to complete the coursework and research for a PhD. Once complete, the student must present and defend their work before an academic panel. If successful, they are then referred to as “doctor.”
Part of the PhD program is creating a lengthy document known as a dissertation. According to Purdue University, it is “constructed into 4 to 6 chapters, including an introduction, abstract model of what the dissertation will prove, validation of the model or proof of theorems, measurements and data, additional results, and conclusions and future work.” Dissertations are usually a couple hundred pages in length and can be turned into a book.
The Juniata County Library values lifelong learning. We want to recognize those in our community who have reached the pinnacle of academic experience!
At each dissertation scholar event the individual would share a 30-minute synopsis of their PhD, join in a question-and-answer session, and receive a commemorative certificate from the Juniata County Library.
📖 Book of the week! – if you are going to read one book, give this one a try…
Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips (winner of the Pulitzer Prize)
(New adult fiction: historical fiction, Civil War era) ~ 304 pages
Borrow this book
In a nutshell: Set in West Virginia during and after the Civil War, Phillips’ book takes as given that slavery was evil and the war a necessity, focusing instead on lives torn apart by the conflict and on the period’s surprisingly enlightened approach toward care of the mentally ill.
The novel’s pitch-perfect voice belongs to ConaLee, observant and loving but also a scrappy survivor. Initially, ConaLee knows only that she was born in 1861 after her father “went away” and that her mother loves books. When a frightening man shows up years later calling himself “Papa,” ConaLee assumes he’s her father. He is not, but he stays and tyrannizes ConaLee’s mother until she suffers mental and physical collapse. Then he dumps now 12-year-old ConaLee and her mother at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum and disappears.
Here readers’ assumptions about 19th-century psychiatric care are tested. The asylum’s founder follows the real-life Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride’s theory of “moral treatment,” which included empathetic compassion on the part of the staff along with activity and fresh air for the patients. His humane approach was accepted, even prevalent in its day. Here, the asylum becomes the catalyst for characters to uncover identities lost, hidden, or unknown.
ConaLee’s lineage, revealed piecemeal, exemplifies a complex world in which names change, sometimes more than once. Her mother grew up the daughter of a plantation owner. He disapproved of the boy she loved because he was supposedly “shack Irish,” the nephew of the girl’s Irish nursemaid. The nursemaid kept secret that he was not her relation but a slave’s half-Black orphan.
Fleeing to Appalachia in 1861, the young lovers married under an assumed name before ConaLee’s father joined the Union Army. After surviving a head wound in battle, he lost all memory of his past and started a new life with a new name.
Expect coincidences and convolutions, but Phillips pulls them off with gorgeous prose, attention to detail, and masterful characters.
Bottom line: Haunting storytelling and a refreshing look at history.
Borrow the book: Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips
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Thank you for being a library champion. You make a difference each day
--Vince Giordano
Librarian and Director of the Juniata County Library.
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