Extreme pavement art

One of the many perks of working at a library is that you get to see many of the new books before they hit the shelf. I was perusing the new titles today and came across an amazing book featuring the works pavement artist Julian Beever.

As you can see, he’s a pavement chalk artist. His drawings seem to spring off the sidewalk! I could have spent hours studying the different pictures, trying to figure out how he does what he does. You can always put the book on hold (click on the picture to go to the library catalog) but if you want to see a sneak preview of his work, check out this Squidoo article on him.

Save to my lists

So let’s just say you’re reading the blog when you find a book you just have to read. You’re not sure if you want to put the book on hold, but don’t think you’ll be able to remember it. If you’re like me, you grab a piece of something to write on and jot down the author and title. I sometimes e-mail the title (usually titles, note the plural) to myself.

If you’re like me, you’ll mispace that scrap of something you wrote your note on.  Whenever I’ve e-mailed myself a title, it usually gets buried in my inbox and eventually gets deleted because I can’t remember what those books were for.

If you’re like ME, you’ll love the semi-new feature we have in the library catalog. It’s called My Lists and it will allow you to save library items to lists while you’re searching and/or browsing the catalog.  Just log in to your library account if you want to save anything to a list! Give it a try! If you have any questions, leave us a comment and let us know.

By the way, I was inspired to write this post when I saw 2 brand new books waiting to be processed.  They looked good and creepy but I’m just not ready to read them now. Check them out:

Undead Art Contest

This one is going out to all you artists, zombie fans, and zombie art fans! TeenFire (a site for teens to talk about books and stuff) is having an Undead Art Contest. The winning drawing will be displayed on the TeenFire home page as well as on www.jointheundertakers.com.

The winner will also get an advanced readers copy of the book The Undertakers: Rise of the Corpses. If you ask me, it looks pretty interesting. Check out the book trailer:

The contest lasts until March 31. Learn more about the rules and submission guidelines. If you enter, let us know. We’d love to see your work!



Thawing out after a brain freeze

Hey everyone! I’m baaaack…. I know you’re probably thinking, “I didn’t even know you went anywhere,” right? I know, I know, the posts have slowed to a trickling lately but last week I had a totally good excuse–the library was closed for several days due to the icy, snowy weather.

It was hard to do after playing in the snow AND being off work for almost a week, but I finally got all the descriptions for our SUMMER activities written! We have all sorts of fun and exciting things planned including crafts, Teens Take Over, an Amazing Race, and the invitation only party. I’m exhausted and sweaty just thinking about it!

More details to come as the summer draws closer. What do you think of the teasers so far? Leave a comment and let us know!

Happy New Year!

At the start of a New Year, people will do all kinds of things to ensure a happy, healthy, wealthy, lucky year ahead. Some people use the new year to drive off evil spirits. Others think the New Year is the perfect time to predict what the future holds. There are all kinds of traditions across cultures and countries all over the world. To celebrate the New Year, here’s a slideshow of some New Year’s traditions that I found particularly interesting:

http://www.travelandleisure.com/slideshows/worlds-strangest-new-year-traditions

See you in 2011!