🥇 Library Champion Newsletter #83 | 🗓️ Looking back at 2022
Library Champion,
👋 Welcome to our new subscribers! I am SO GLAD to have you aboard!
Looking back at 2022 at the Juniata County Library
The most checked-out items in 2022:
Regretting you by Colleen Hoover (21 circulations) – new adult fiction. I consider Colleen Hoover to be the 2022 MVP for popular books. Seemingly all of her books have catapulted to the bestseller lists, thanks to Tik Tok and popular culture.
Cry macho (20 circulations) – DVD movie starring Clint Eastwood. A one-time rodeo star and washed-up horse breeder takes a job to bring a man's young son home and away from his alcoholic mom. On their journey, the horseman finds redemption through teaching the boy what it means to be a good man.
Jungle cruise (19 circulations) – DVD movie starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Based on Disneyland's theme park ride where a small riverboat takes a group of travelers through a jungle filled with dangerous animals and reptiles but with a supernatural element.
Invisible by Danielle Steel / Summer at the cape by RaeAnne Thayne (18 circulations each) – new adult fiction books.
Biscuit and the little llamas by Alyssa Capucilli / The story of Peppa Pig (18 circulations each) – kids easy reader books.
Some other fun facts from 2022
A total of 59,876 items were checked out from the library in 2022, up from 43,016 in 2021.
40,667 print books were checked out in 2022, a 47% increase from 2021. Of that total, 17,197 adult books were checked, out as well as 22,007 children’s books and 1,371 young adult books. We added 2,317 new items to the library’s collection in 2022!
There were 10,679 eBooks and eAudio books checked out in 2022. The library offers over 15,000 free digital titles that you can access on a smart phone, tablet, or computer. Find the Libby app in your app store and start getting free digital books today!
There were 30,895 visits to the library in 2022, with over 2,000 participants at our youth programming. Also, 399 new library cards were issued in 2022 (up from 241 in 2021.)
The library was open 1,750 hours in 2022.
The public computers were used 1,498 times in 2022, up from 760 in 2021.
Need tax forms? The library has 'em!
It's tax season and the library carries print copies of the federal (1040) and state tax forms (PA-40 and the rent rebate) as well as their instruction booklets.
➡️ You can also print them off of our website: https://www.juniatalibrary.org/programs-services/tax-forms
Passport Services Are Now at the Library! ✈️
Make an appointment at the Juniata County Library to get or renew your passport!
Visit our website to learn more about this new service and how you can get a passport or renew your passport.
Passport agents: Vince Giordano and Christine May
📖 Book of the week...
Yellow Butterfly: A story from Ukraine by Oleksander Shatokhin
(New kids easy reader fiction: social themes)
The story opens in black and white with a close-up that may be hard to identify at first: a single barbed-wire knot. Things clear up as the view pans to an outline of a child behind the fence, two knots hiding their eyes. The fence transforms into a menacing spider, and the child runs, trips, and falls.
When they peer through their fingers, a single yellow butterfly has appeared. There is much for readers to interpret through conversations and multiple readings in these artfully designed pages. Several yellow butterflies flit above a bombed-out hole, and the child envisions a playground (past or future?) with happy friends; these images are formed with a minimum of lines against the white background.
Shatokhin employs color, scale, perspective, and pattern to great effect in timely—and timeless—scenes that capture the protagonist’s fear, fury, frustration, and, ultimately, hope. Exquisite compositions depict a yellow swarm of butterflies becoming the child’s wings, lifting them to see a blue sky amid the destruction (yellow and blue being the colors of the Ukrainian flag). Useful backmatter includes information on sharing wordless books and discussing war with children.
Bottom line: Responding to the Russia-Ukraine war, Ukrainian artist Shatokhin’s wordless narrative offers a child’s-eye view of military conflict.
Borrow Yellow Butterfly: A story from Ukraine by Oleksander Shatokhin
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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.
P.S.- You don't need to make an account or jump through any hoops to donate to the library and become a library champion. I wouldn't say this if it wasn't true. You can make this happen in less than a minute. Just click here.