This Wednesday! Join CMLE and attend the They Them Project Discussion on October 9th at 7pm, Gorecki 204C at the College of St. Ben’s.
Facilitator: Brent Dundore, Creator of the They/Them Project Participants: Rue Ether, Oscar E. Menjivar and Mikko
The They/Them Project interviews individuals who currently use or previously used gender nonconforming pronouns. The project informs individuals about how words and actions affect the Trans+ community. Brent Dundore has taken photographs of the individuals he interviews. Those photographs will be on display at Alcuin Library.
If CMLE members would like to meet early and go to this event together, please RSVP below!
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! 💕😊
Gemstones are a popular theme for book titles and we have a variety of genres for you to choose from! Definitely added a few of these to my own TBR list.
“It is to some extent a science fiction coming-of-age story, focused on a young girl named Nell, and set in a future world in which nanotechnology affects all aspects of life. The novel deals with themes of education, social class, ethnicity, and the nature of artificial intelligence.”
“After Ruby Valentine misses her favorite holiday of the year, her parrot, Lovebird, convinces her that every day is the perfect day to say “I love you.”
“Afghan-American Nadia Hashimi’s literary debut novel, The Pearl that Broke Its Shell is a searing tale of powerlessness, fate, and the freedom to control one’s own fate that combines the cultural flavor and emotional resonance of the works of Khaled Hosseini, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Lisa See. In Kabul, 2007, with a drug-addicted father and no brothers, Rahima and her sisters can only sporadically attend school, and can rarely leave the house. Their only hope lies in the ancient custom of bacha posh, which allows young Rahima to dress and be treated as a boy until she is of marriageable age. As a son, she can attend school, go to the market, and chaperone her older sisters. But Rahima is not the first in her family to adopt this unusual custom. A century earlier, her great-aunt, Shekiba, left orphaned by an epidemic, saved herself and built a new life the same way. Crisscrossing in time, The Pearl the Broke Its Shell interweaves the tales of these two women separated by a century who share similar destinies. But what will happen once Rahima is of marriageable age? Will Shekiba always live as a man? And if Rahima cannot adapt to life as a bride, how will she survive?”
“A round, luminescent pearl is the simplest and most perfect gem. Columbus sought—and found—this precious jewel coveted by his Spanish sovereigns, sparking popularity throughout Europe. Fashion icons Jacqueline Kennedy, Princess Grace, and Michelle Obama cherished them, making them iconic. And designer Coco Chanel raised them to new heights, bringing pearls— fake and real—to women everywhere. In Tears of Mermaids, Stephen G. Bloom travels 30,000 miles in an effort to trace a single pearl—from the moment a diver off the coast of Australia scoops an oyster containing a single luminescent pearl from the ocean floor to the instant a woman fastens the clasp of a strand containing the same orb. Bloom chronicles the never-before-told saga of the global pearl trade by gaining access to clandestine outposts in China, the Philippines, French Polynesia and Australia. He infiltrates high-tech pearl farms guarded by gun-toting sentries, farms for pearls in rural China, and even goes backstage at Christie’s for a fast and furious auction of the most expensive pearl ever sold. Teeming with rogue humor and uncanny intelligence, Tears of Mermaids weaves a nonstop detective story whose main character is the world’s most enduring jewel.”
“The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather’s house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own. Yet this new life seems as distant as the stars, until the day she finds a curious wooden box in her grandfather’s room. She opens it—and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother. Failure will mean Casiopea’s demise, but success could make her dreams come true.”
“When Britain intercepted a French ship and its precious cargo–an unhatched dragon’s egg–Capt. Will Laurence of HMS Reliant unexpectedly became master and commander of the noble dragon he named Temeraire. As new recruits in Britain’s Aerial Corps, man and dragon soon proved their mettle in daring combat against Bonaparte’s invading forces. Now China has discovered that its rare gift, intended for Napoleon, has fallen into British hands–and an angry Chinese delegation vows to reclaim the remarkable beast. But Laurence refuses to cooperate. Facing the gallows for his defiance, Laurence has no choice but to accompany Temeraire back to the Far East–a long voyage fraught with peril, intrigue, and the untold terrors of the deep. Yet once the pair reaches the court of the Chinese emperor, even more shocking discoveries and darker dangers await. “
Silver in the Blood by Jessica Day George “As debutantes in 1890s New York City, cousins Dacia and Lou knew little about their mysterious Romanian relatives, the Florescus. Now, upon turning seventeen, the girls must journey to Romania–a journey that seems to be both reward and punishment–to meet their cousins and their tyrant of a grandmother and to learn the secrets of their family. Secrets spoken of in whispers. Dangerous secrets known as the Claw, the Wing, and the Smoke.”
Come to our training event on Tuesday, Nov. 5th and learn how to use the headset devices!
Training will be held from 9-3 at our location: 570 1st St. SE St. Cloud MN 56304. We are inside the cmERDC building and have a large classroom to use.
We’ll have two sessions but feel free to stay for both of them in order to really get a feel for using the headsets. The first session will be from 9am-12pm and the second from 1pm-3pm. CMLE will provide lunch from 12-1pm. (And if you’re here in the morning and have a book you’re reading that you’d like to tell us about, we will happily record a quick Book Bites podcast episode with you!)
If you can’t make it to the training, you can definitely still reserve the headsets for use at your school (provided you are a CMLE member school library) and you should still Apply Here!
At this training session, you will learn how to operate the devices, find lessons that line up with your curriculum, send the VR/AR content to the devices, and use the headsets effectively in your library, media center, or classroom.
Visit our page to find out more information about the VR kit loan program, including instructions and links to additional materials.
And if you apply ahead of time, you can definitely pick up your VR headset kit at this training event! You’ll get to keep the kit (each kit has 8 headsets) until schools close for winter break.
Please RSVP below if you plan to come to this training. Email any questions to vr@cmle.org 🙂
This program is funded in part with a grant from the Minnesota Department of Education using federal funding, CFDA 45.310 – Library Services and Technology Act, Grants to States Program (LS-00-19-0024-19). We would love you to send your thanks to @US_IMLS and with @MnDeptEd for providing this great program we can share with our members!
Reading With Libraries: podcast book group, with new genres, books, and beverages each week
So, yeah – we are big fans of podcasts! They can be such a good way to share ideas with your community.
Each week we are going to share a podcast from a library, or looking
at books, so you can join us in expanding podcast community and
admiring the work others are doing to share cool info!
This week we are admiring the podcast Book & Bitch!
“Remember when your teacher would assign a book to read and drilled into everyone’s heads make sure you read the forward? Raise your hand if you said “Forget that,” and skipped right to page 1.
If you’ve taken the time to read the forward you know it contains a wealth of insightful information that gives context and clarity to a piece. So why do we skip it?
Because we want the juicy parts upfront. We want the action, horror, drama, and romance to begin as soon as we open the book. However, this can mean we overlook key context clues and miss out on the depth of the story. And that’s where Book & Bitch comes in.
Book & Bitch is a bi-monthly podcast that combines all the juicy bits of the book with the insightfulness of the forward. Highlighting author backstories (spoiler alert: it’s often dramatic) with cultural context and writing theory, we’re the book club you’ve always wanted to join.
So grab your favorite book and come bitch with us.”
This is a pretty new podcast, so subscribe to support their work! Here are some recent episodes:
We are always big fans of reading diverse books, and emphatic that it’s not a “nice” thing but instead the best (sometimes only) way to learn about the wider world of people around you. And of course, this includes LGBTQ+ materials appropriate to all ages!
Sadly, these materials are some of the most censored topics in libraries right now. If you include books that are directly challenged AND books that school library people don’t buy because it *might* cause a problem, or controversy, or a hard discussion with a principal or a parent, the numbers are probably even higher.
The very interesting book site, Book Riot, looked at this in a recent article. We give you an excerpt below, and link to the whole thing so you can see everything they shared.
Working in a school library is tough. Buying the best books to serve your community is always a challenge. It really helps to think through issues that may not have come up for you yet. Be sure you have a Collection Development policy, and include a Challenge policy!!! (CMLE members: we will write one for your library! Just contact us.)
“Some authors and educators argue that censoring LGBTQ+ books and their authors does a disservice to the students.
“It’s
important to speak to youth about gender and sexuality because not
speaking about these identities causes a sense of shame,” Kacen
Callender told Book Riot in an email. The author of Hurricane Child and the forthcoming King and the Dragonflies says their decision to write queer characters is deliberate.
“Writing
Black, queer characters [shows] that we’re all just as important as the
white, straight, cis people that I only ever saw and sometimes still
only see in media around me,” the author wrote.
Author and former librarian Jen Petro-Roy, who identifies as straight, tells of a childhood friend who struggled to come out while growing up in their small, religious hometown. Her middle grade novel, P.S. I Miss You, was among those EW identified as facing censorship in middle schools.”
Partnering with libraries for visioning, advocating, and educating
