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 discussing today!

In this week’s discussion, we are exploring the Upper Sioux Agency State Park, established in 1963. “The park covers 1,280 acres and offers diversity: open prairie knolls, bluffs, and cool, wooded slopes. From the vistas, visitors enjoy the trails which are ideal for horseback riding, hiking, skiing, and snowmobiling. The park also offers a huge sliding hill for winter fun.”

For this prompt, enjoy a book about sledding, skiing, bobsledding, or other strategies for getting down a snow-covered hill.

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!

We are all going to be home for a few more weeks, and things are going to start to get a little harder.

CMLE is here to help support libraries, to create resources, and to help you to keep providing service to your community members.

Take any of these things. Add them to your website. Send them out in newsletters or emails. Tell people about them in Zoom sessions. Share them on social media. And if you need more individual assistance, email us at admin@cmle.org.

We are here to support our libraries!

This is your chance to show your community how valuable you are to them. There are a lot of services you can continue to provide to people who are at home, bored, and in need of the work a library can do.

We may be in a social isolation period for weeks – you do not want to let your library community members go without you for that long.

Here are a few things you can use and share right now:

• Special CMLE Postcards: We will be sending out special postcards to ANYONE who signs up. (They should be here to send out in the next few days.) Do you want a cheerful postcard? Sign up! Sign up your kids, parents, neighbors, friends, students – anyone who could use a little burst of happiness in their day.
• What Are We Doing Today?: we are setting up a new page every day with activities kids (and others!) can do at home
• Library Life Online page: we are posting information about working at home here, as well as a lot of suggestions for library services and links to material you can share
• Reading With Libraries: this is our book group podcast. We look at a new genre each week, have genre-related beverages, and chat about books. You can link to our website to stream episodes, and people can subscribe in any podcast app
• Armchair Travel to Minnesota State Parks: this is our Goodreads book challenge game. We look at every state park in Minnesota, and give a related book prompt. People find a book to read that meets the prompt, and can record it on our page. We are also recording a quick weekly podcast to share book ideas for each park: Browsing Books.
• Linking Our Libraries podcast: This is of more interest to our library staff members, and other library staffers. Each episode we look at a new library skill, and chat with a Guest Host who shares their experience with the skill.
• CMLE Training: We have some training classes here, available FREE to all while schools are closed; go through the short classes and get an hour of PD/CE credit.
• Weekly newsletter: We will continue sharing our content and resources for you daily, and will collect all the articles into a Friday newsletter as usual. Subscribe here, and it will drop in your email every week!

What else do you need? What would be helpful? What are you missing in your library work to share online?

We have several years worth of content on the site, so search for material you might need on topics important to you. And let us know what else we can do to help you to provide great service to your community!

Our vendor for the VR kits we loan to school libraries ClassVR. And they are offering some short Q&A sessions you can join! Here is their information:

Every working day in March we will be holding live Q&A sessions at 10am and 12pm (EST). These will include:

1) A brief overview of the ClassVR device and an opportunity for any hardware related questions

2) A summary of the ClassVR portal, our resources, integrations and classroom management tools

3) And, of course, a lively and interactive Q&A at the end.

In addition, attendees also get access to one of our demonstration accounts throughout March and April. You will be able to browse all of our resources including our CoSpaces and ThingLink integrations.

Should further information about ClassVR be required, please do feel free to reach out or browse the downloads section of our website here: https://www.classvr.com/virtual-reality-downloads/

Many thanks,

Hannah

Hannah Gwynne Education Specialist   Book a webinar here: https://calendly.com/classvrhannah/30min

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 working at home right now, and you probably are too! We are encouraging everyone to stay home/stay healthy. So, let’s read some books about home this week! You can read paper versions while you are at home, and listen to audio versions while you are out doing some walking/running/enjoying fresh air time – still safely isolated!

At Home: A Short History of Private Life, by Bill Bryson

In these pages, the beloved Bill Bryson gives us a fascinating history of the modern home, taking us on a room-by-room tour through his own house and using each room to explore the vast history of the domestic artifacts we take for granted. As he takes us through the history of our modern comforts, Bryson demonstrates that whatever happens in the world eventually ends up in our home, in the paint, the pipes, the pillows, and every item of furniture. Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and his sheer prose fluency makes At Home one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life.

My House: A Book in Two Languages / Mi casa: Un libro en dos lenguas (English and Spanish Edition)

Captioned illustrations and Spanish and English text describe things found in a house.

Homebody: A Guide to Creating Spaces You Never Want to Leave , by Joanna Gaines

In Homebody: A Guide to Creating Spaces You Never Want to Leave, Joanna Gaines walks you through how to create a home that reflects the personalities and stories of the people who live there. Using examples from her own farmhouse as well as a range of other homes, this comprehensive guide will help you assess your priorities and instincts, as well as your likes and dislikes, with practical steps for navigating and embracing your authentic design style. Room by room, Homebody gives you an in-depth look at how these styles are implemented as well as how to blend the looks you’re drawn to in order to create spaces that feel distinctly yours. A removable design template at the back of the book offers a step-by-step guide to planning and sketching out your own design plans. The insight shared in Homebody will instill in you the confidence to thoughtfully create spaces you never want to leave.

Welcome Home, Bear: A Book of Animal Habitats, by Il Sung Na

Bear is tired of waking up every morning in the same green forest, so he decides to search for a new place to live. He visits the birds in the trees, a mole underground, a camel in the hot desert sand, puffins in the cold arctic snow . . . only to realize his own home is the perfect place for him after all. Welcome Home, Bear offers rich illustrations, bright colors, and a simple, spare text—all wrapped up in a beautiful, kid-friendly package. Readers meet animals in their habitats around the world—and return with Bear to the one place he is truly happy.

Cozy Minimalist Home: More Style, Less Stuff, by Myquillyn Smith

Cozy Minimalism isn’t about going without or achieving a particular new, modern style. Nope. It’s simply a mindset that helps you get whatever style YOU LOVE with the fewest possible items.

You want a warm, cozy, inviting home, without using more resources, money, and stuff than needed. Why use more if you don’t have to?

In Cozy Minimalist Home, accidental stylist and bestselling author Myquillyn Smith guides you step by step on making purposeful design decisions for your home. You’ll have the tools to transform your home starting with what you already have, and using just enough of the right furniture and decor to create a home you’re proud of in a way that honors your personal priorities, budget, and style. No more fretting when it comes to decorating your house! 

Thank you for joining us on Reading With Libraries! We are so glad you are here to join our book group podcast!

This week we’re discussing environmental books for kids and are so excited to welcome a new Guest Host to the podcast: Beth Russell from the Rockford Middle School-Center for Environmental Studies. Thanks for joining us, Beth!

We will be talking about environmental books that are both fiction and nonfiction, with a specific focus on titles for young readers.

Check out our full show notes page. We have links to the books we discuss this week, and the beverages we shared!