Hey Minnesota, let’s read together!

“One Book | One Minnesota is a new statewide book club that invites Minnesotans of all ages to read a common title and come together virtually to enjoy, reflect, and discuss.

Libraries are essential for connection, and through One Book | One Minnesota, libraries across the state will connect their communities through stories. The program aims to bring Minnesotans closer together during this time of distance and adversity.”

One Book | One Minnesota

“You and your library are cordially invited to participate in One Book | One Minnesota, starting Wednesday, April 15, through online book club discussions or other activities that resonate with your community.

The title selected for the first session (plans are underway to continue the book club this summer with additional authors/titles) is Kate DiCamillo’s Because of Winn-Dixie.

The Minnesota Center for the Book has created a One Book | One Minnesota website where you can download materials to help with running a virtual book club. Included are discussion guides and logos. You can also view a welcome and introduction from Ms. DiCamillo herself at the website.

In a special agreement with the publisher, the book is also available for the next eight weeks on Ebooks Minnesota at no charge and with no limits on simultaneous check outs. No library card is required.”

Each week we assemble a collection – a bouquet, if you will – of books you can read for yourself, or use to build into a display in your library. As always, the books we link to have info from Amazon.com. If you click a link and then buy anything at all from Amazon, we get a small percent of their profits from your sale. Yay!!! Thanks!!! We really appreciate the assistance! 💕😊

We are all spending a lot of time at home, staying inside and staying healthy to do our part to reduce the spread of COVID-19. And, probably everyone has some spare time on their hands. And we are living through a pretty historic time – it’s the first global pandemic we’ve had in our lifetimes. So people are increasingly turning to doing some journaling – online or on paper. It can be a form of self-care, it can be a way to get your ideas out of your head and onto paper or a screen, and it can be a way to help preserve your experiences and lessons from this time.

To help inspire you to do some journaling, or to just give you some fun reading, this week’s bouquet will give you some reading opportunities.

I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith

I Capture the Castle tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries. Her journals candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle’s walls, and her own first descent into love. By the time she pens her final entry, she has “captured the castle”– and the heart of the reader– in one of literature’s most enchanting entertainments.

The Princess Diaries, by Meg Cabot

She’s just a New York City girl living with her artist mom…

News Flash: Dad is prince of Genovia. (So that’s why a limo meets her at the airport!)

Downer: Dad can’t have any more kids. (So no heir to the throne.)

Shock of the Century: Like it or not, Mia Thermopolis is prime princess material.

Mia must take princess lessons from her dreaded grandmére, the dowager princess of Genovia, who thinks Mia has a thing or two to learn before she steps up to the throne.

Well, her father can lecture her until he’s royal-blue in the face about her princessly duty — no way is she moving to Genovia and leaving Manhattan behind. But what’s a girl to do when her name is Princess Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo?

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4, by Sue Townsend

Adrian Mole is approaching fourteen, and like all radical intellectuals he must amass his grievances: His acne vulgaris is grotesque; his crush, Pandora, received seventeen Valentine’s Day cards; his PE teacher is a sadist; he fears his parents’ marriage is over since they no longer smoke together; his dog has gone AWOL; no one appreciates his poetry; and Animal Farm has set him off pork for good. If everyone were as appalled as Adrian Mole, it would be a better world.

Journal of a Solitude, by May Sarton

May Sarton’s parrot chatters away as Sarton looks out the window at the rain and contemplates returning to her “real” life – not friends, not even love, but writing. In her bravest and most revealing memoir, Sarton casts her keenly observant eye on both the interior and exterior worlds. She shares insights about everyday life in the quiet New Hampshire village of Nelson, the desire for friends, and need for solitude – both an exhilarating and terrifying state. She likens writing to “cracking open the inner world again”, which sometimes plunges her into depression. She confesses her fears, her disappointments, her unresolved angers. Sarton’s garden is her great, abiding joy, sustaining her through seasons of psychic and emotional pain.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys, by Samuel Pepys

The diary which Samuel Pepys kept from January 1660 to May 1669 …is one of our greatest historical records and… a major work of English literature, writes the renowned historian Paul Johnson. A witness to the coronation of Charles II, the Great Plague of 1665, and the Great Fire of 1666, Pepys chronicled the events of his day. Originally written in a cryptic shorthand, Pepys’s diary provides an astonishingly frank and diverting account of political intrigues and naval, church, and cultural affairs, as well as a quotidian journal of daily life in London during the Restoration.

We are highly in favor of libraries being closed right now, and library people working at home. There is a lot of work that any library can provide that can be done online, to keep sharing good information and resources with our communities!

Whether staff are in the library, or working at home, there are things that need to be done, cleaned, and kept up.

We are sharing some ideas from this article, written by Leah Hoenig, a children’s librarian for the Queens Public Library: Ten Tips for When the Library’s Closed.

• “Book clubs via video. I’ve had the pleasure, personally, of doing a Skype call with author Sarah Prineas of Magic Thief fame during a book club meeting. Many authors are available for a quick call, and many more have videos of read-alouds or Q&As online. It’ll take a little bit of coordinating–hopefully you’ve got the contact information to get all your bookworms on board–but will be worth it if you can pull it off.
• “Speaking of social media…exploit it to its fullest. There is so much you can do to engage your customers online: Post a quote from a favorite book and challenge them to identify it. Dispel rumors and promote authoritative information. Do a Dewey or library trivia quiz. Direct customers to online resources. Challenge patrons to a book spine poetry competition. Post a short classic poem (there are many in the public domain). Post reader’s advisory questions and invite recommendations (and don’t be ashamed to completely invent the question). Short story contests or poetry contests are easy to run. Ask-a-Librarian services can be broadcast for the world to see.
• “Get creative. Think of other ways you can replace regular programs with something virtual, besides book clubs and storytimes. A weekly STEM club on Tuesday afternoons might call for a blog post or video with instructions for a DIY science project, experiment or challenge. Some straightforward ideas that don’t require specialty components: magic milk, purple cabbage indicators, baking soda reactions, cornstarch “oobleck;” Lego engineering challenges (check out the legolibrarian.com for ideas!), marble/matchbox car run challenges, automatons, egg drops, upcycling challenges, and more: whatever you do, invite patrons to post their work.
• “Use the time to brush up on your skills. Whether through your own library’s virtual resources, or sites such as WebJunction, or just bingeing on the ALSC Blog or AL Direct back issues, there’s a lot to read up on and learn about. If you haven’t had the chance to learn coding but have always been eyeing Google’s CS First curriculum, try out Scratch. (Spoiler alert: it’s free, easy, and fun.) Khan Academy is another terrific resource, and…wait, I’m talking to librarians here. You know all this already.”

There are other tips on this page that you can check out!

We are encouraging everyone to stay home/stay safe, and to keep providing service to the communities you are serving! We are all going to be home for a while still – let’s keep working on the best strategies for making this work.

This season we are suggesting books you might enjoy for our Goodreads group: Armchair Travel to Minnesota State Parks. We give you a prompt connected to each state park, and you find a book to fulfill the challenge. You can use one of our suggestions, and you should feel free to read any book!

You can find our show notes page here, with links to the books we are sharing today.

Glacial Lakes park was established in 1963. https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_par… This park is located in an area with a lot of rolling prairie land. Embrace the wide open space by reading a book set on a prairie or with a prairie on the cover. 

We give you links to each of these books on our show notes page, taking you to Amazon.com. If you click on any of them, and buy anything at all – including a nice book – Amazon will send us a small percent of the profits they made on these sales. Thank you for supporting CMLE!