Learn about National Day of Mourning

Posted on November 20, 2018November 19, 2018 by Tracy Dimond

The National Day of Mourning is a day of protest started by Native American activists in the 1970s to mourn, recognize, and educate the American people about the erasure of Native American history, culture, and lives that has been ongoing since Europeans settled in North America. It takes place on the same day as Thanksgiving.

To honor this day of mourning, please find resources from the Humanities department below of literature, graphic novels, plays, and poetry by and about Native Americans. Texts written by Native Americans have an asterisk next to the title. Click on the picture to check out the title.

Film

‘Injuns!’: Native Americans In The Movies by Edward Bucombe, Alanis Obomsawin: The Vision Of A Native Filmmaker byRandolph Lewis, Wiping The War Paint Off The Lens: Native American Film And Video by Beverly R. Singer

Graphic Novels

Indeh: A Story Of The Apache Wars by Ethan Hawke

Literature and Culture

*Native American Literature: A Very Short Introduction by Sean Kicummah Teuton (Cherokee), *Voice Of The Turtle: American Indian Literature by Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna Pueblo), Encyclopedia Of American Indian Literature edited by Jennifer McClinton-Temple and Alan Velie, Masterpieces Of American Indian Literature edited by Willis Goth Regier, Native American Fiction: A User’s Manual edited by David Treuer (Ojibwe), Searching For Lost City: On The Trail Of America’s Native Languages by Elizabeth Seay, *Sister Nations: Native American Women Writers On Community edited by Heid E. Erdrich (Ojibwe), Tracks That Speak: The Legacy Of Native American Words In North American Culture by Charles L. Cutler, Feathering Custer by W.S. Penn (Nez Perce), Native American Women’s Writing C.1800-1924: An Anthology by Karen L Kilcup.

Memoir

*Crazy Brave: A Memoir by Joy Harjo (Muscogee), *The Woman Who Watches Over The World: A Native Memoir by Linda Hogan (Chickasaw)

Poetry

*New Poets Of Native Nations edited by Heid E. Erdrich, (Ojibwe), *Combing The Snakes From His Hair: Poems by James Thomas Stevens (Akwesasne Mohawk)

Religion

Dream Catchers: How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality by Philip Jenkins, Gods Of War, Gods Of Peace: How The Meeting Of Native And Colonial Religions Shaped Early America by Russell Bourne

Theater

*American Gypsy : Six Native American Playsby Diane Glancey (Cherokee)

Happenings at the Enoch Pratt Free Library Children’s Stage

Posted on September 25, 2018August 31, 2018 by Tracy Dimond

School has started and the air is crisp, which can mean only one thing…the Baltimore Book Festival is back! Find something interesting for booklovers of all ages September 28-30, 2018, 11:00a.m. to 7:00p.m. at the Inner Harbor in downtown Baltimore. The Pratt has exciting programming all weekend, featuring interactive programs for the whole family, with popular local and nationally known authors of books for children and teens. Staff will be available all weekend for library card sign-ups to start your journey at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. You’re Free to Bmore #atthepratt. Check out the schedule below!

Friday, September 28

12-1pm Zumbini with Miss Kelly

Join Miss Kelly, children’s librarian at Southeast Anchor Library, for a Zumbini® demo! Zumbini® is a music and movement class for children 0 to 3 that will have dancing, singing and instruments. It will feature the theme: “Kalino Finds the Music”! Please register online at Zumbini.com to attend the demo class.

1:30-3pm Paper Magic with Mr. Matt

Learn how to make magical toys out of simple pieces of paper with Central Library children’s librarian Matthew Hickey. Flexagons are paper toys that have the magical quality of changing images as they are flexed or folded. In this program we will learn how a simple piece of paper can be transformed to make flexagons, exquisite corpses, and accordion style booklets.

3-4:30pm Open Works Mobile Workshop

Open Works Mobile (OWM) is Baltimore’s first and only mobile maker-space offering an introduction to “maker” based education. The workshop on wheels travels to schools, community centers, and community event sites to demonstrate basic digital fabrication technology with a desktop 3D printer, CNC machine, and Laser engraver. Join them today for a brief demo and the 3d printing pen activity.

Saturday, September 29

12-1pm Nita’s First Signs Storytime for Families

American Sign Language makes it easy to communicate with your child. Come and discover how with Kathy MacMillan, author of Nita’s First Signs, a lively family story that teaches 10 basic ASL signs! We’ll celebrate with stories, songs, and more. Appropriate for all ages.

1-2pm Whose Book Is It Anyway?: Picture Book Edition

Face off against six wily picture book authors and illustrators and win a signed book! Can you spot which book excerpts are real and which are clever fakes? Don’t miss this lineup: Lulu Delacre (Turning Pages), Patricia Valdez (Joan Proctor, Dragon Doctor), Laura Gehl (I Got a Chicken for My Birthday), Liz and Jimmy Reed (Sweet Success), Rachel Kolar (Mother Goose: Nursery Rhymes for Little Monsters), Moderated by Rebecca Evans (Masterpiece Robot and the Ferocious Valerie Knick-Knack). Co-sponsored by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators MD/DE/WV Region.

2-3pm Read to Reef Book Club featuring Ricardo Cortés’s, Sea Creatures from the Sky

New York Times best-selling illustrator author Ricardo Cortés reads from Sea Creatures from the Sky, a touching story of a misunderstood shark. Hear the story before reading it in the National Aquarium and Pratt Library’s Read to Reef Book Club in October. Following the reading, dive deeper into the shark’s watery world with Aquarium educators who will be on hand with real shark artifacts to explore and an interactive presentation about these toothy predators.

3-4pm We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices panel featuring Carole Boston Weatherford and Jeffrey Weatherford, and publishers Wade Hudson & Cheryl Willis Hudson, hosted by Deborah Taylor

We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices publishers, Wade Hudson, inductee into the International Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent, and Cheryl Willis Hudson, inductee into the International Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent, discuss their anthology, We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices, with contributors Carole Boston Weatherford, New York Times best-selling author and NAACP Image Award winner, and Jeffrey Weatherford, illustrator and founder of global hip hop collective known as “TRiiiBE Worldwide”. Hosted by Deborah Taylor, school and student services coordinator at the Pratt Library.

4:30-5:30pm Brigid Kemmerer, More Than We Can Tell, in conversation with Nisha Sharma, My So-Called Bollywood Life, moderated by Matthew Winner of The Children’s Book Podcast

Nisha Sharma grew up immersed in Bollywood movies, eighties pop culture, and romance novels, so it comes as no surprise that her first novel My So-Called Bollywood Life features all three. Brigid Kemmerer is the author of dark, contemporary Young Adult romances like More Than We Can Tell and Letters to the Lost as well as paranormal YA novels like The Elemental Series and Thicker Than Water.

Sunday, September 30

1-2pm Children’s Picture Book Panel hosted by Paula Willey featuring Sarah Jacoby, Forever or a Day, Minh Lê, Drawn Together, and Elizabeth Lilly, Geraldine

Paula Willey, librarian and organizer of the annual KidLitCon conference, interviews three fantastic picture book authors: Sarah Jacoby, award winner from the Society of Illustrators (Gold Medal), Creative Quarterly, and Communication Arts, Minh Lê, author of Drawn Together illustrated by Caldecott Medalist Dan Santat and Let Me Finish! named an NPR Best Book of 2016, and Elizabeth Lilly, whose debut, Geraldine, received a starred review from School Library Journal.

2-3:30pm Dear Martin, Nic Stone in conversation with Letrice Gant of Baltimore Ceasefire

OneBook Baltimore is a new initiative that provides opportunities for Baltimore City 7^th and 8^th graders, their families, and community members to connect through literature by reading the same book. This year’s book is New York Times bestseller Dear Martin by Nic Stone. Growing up with a wide range of cultures, religions, and backgrounds, Stone strives to bring these diverse voices and stories to her work. Baltimore Ceasefire 365 is a self-determination movement started by residents in Baltimore City to reduce murder and celebrate life by calling quarterly Ceasefire weekends.

3:30-4:30pm Kate Reed Petty, Chasma Knights, in conversation with Elissa Brent Weissman, The Length of a String

Kate Reed Petty is a 2018 Rubys Artist grantee in Literary Arts and a 2018 Edith Wharton Writer-in-Residence. Elissa Brent Weissman is an award-winning author of novels for young readers. Best known for the popular Nerd Camp series, she and her books have been featured in Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, NPR’s “Here and Now,” and more.

4:30-5:30pm Tony Medina, I Am Alfonso Jones, in conversation with Matthew Winner of The Children’s Book Podcast

Dr. Medina, Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, professor of creative writing at Howard University, and two-time winner of the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People, discusses his graphic novel, I Am Alfonso Jones with Matthew Winner of The Children’s Book Podcast.

RSVP on the library event page.

Hot Titles Coming this September for Kids and Teens

Posted on September 21, 2018August 27, 2018 by Kiirstn Pagan

As the temperatures cool down this September, stay warm with these hot new titles teens and kids! Click the book cover to reserve your copy today.

New Young Adult Titles

See a full list of new young adult titles here.

Graphic Novels

New Children’s Titles

See a full list of new children’s titles here.

Rockin’ Reads, Part 6: More Reviews from Adult Summer Challenge Participants

Posted on July 30, 2018July 30, 2018 by Tracy Dimond

Here’s another taste of what our Adult Summer Challenge participants have been reading:

Lucie F. on The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware: A chillingly atmospheric modern take on the classic Agatha Christie family-inheritance-murder plot. I loved that I was able to guess some of the mystery but as I puzzled over it, Ware stayed one step ahead of me!

Laura R. on Pachinko by Min Jin Lee: Great family saga dealing with issues of immigration and discrimination is perfect for our times. I didn’t know anything about the Korean/Japanese history so it was interesting history as well. A good read.

Sarah B. on The Thousandth Floor by Katharine McGee: The higher you rise, the farther you fall, and nowhere is this more true than in this book. Set in a vividly imagined 1000-floor skyscraper in the year 2118, it follows the lives of five teens from very different backgrounds and the ways their lives interlock, with exciting, romantic, surprising, and disastrous consequences. With a great prologue and a climax that left me scared about what a girl was wearing (the mark of ingenious writing), the story pulled me in and made me want to live among the well-developed and realistic characters. I look forward to reading the sequel and the release of book three next month!

Aaron B. on The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro and and Daniel Kraus : A novelization of a film should expand on that film’s concepts & themes. Kraus & del Toro achieved that with an equally moving & romantic companion piece to del Toro’s Oscar-winning (& deserving) motion picture. A brilliant piece of romanticism.

Julie J. on The Soul of America by Jon Meacham: Brilliant, historical review of our American history when citizens and presidents have come together, not without struggles, to fight and survive battles of integration, racism, immigration, hate, just as we still do present-day. Yet, just published in spring 2018, brings a timely reminder with calming wisdom, that Americans must keep the faith and hope in our heritage. Author is Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and writes beautifully.

Nayantara B. on Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi: Persepolis is the autobiographical story of the author’s coming of age in Iran after the Islamic Regime amidst the Iran-Iraq War. Though life in this time is very bleak, Satrapi’s use of the graphic novel genre is irreverent and ironic. It provides a window into a very different world while still highlighting the universal heartaches of losing innocence.

Howell B. on Hope Never Dies by Andrew Shaffer: This book with a preposterous premise—that an Amtrak conductor has died and Joe Biden and Barack Obama work together to figure out what happened—is funny and enjoyable. It will provoke many appreciative laughs.

Lucy J. on Death in Ecstasy by Ngaio Marsh: This Roderick Alleyn mystery surprised me a little with its relevance to today’s issues—heroin use in the 1930s? Always interesting to read Kiwi grande dame Ngaio Marsh’s books.

Join the fun! For a chance to win fabulous prizes in the Adult Summer Challenge, create a free Beanstack account and log each book you finish between June 13 and August 15.

Rockin’ Reads, Part 5: More Reviews from Adult Summer Challenge Participants

Posted on July 24, 2018July 24, 2018 by Tracy Dimond

Ready for another great set of reviews from Adult Summer Challenge participants? Here you go!

Himani S. on Exit West by Mohsin Hamid: A great story of war and refugees and immigration. The author uses magical realism to give us the multitude of issues that countries are grappling with when refugees seek safety and life. I want to read more written by this author. Terse compact sentences that were nevertheless poetic in delivery.

Shawna P. on All Summer Long by Hope Larson: Graphic novel + music + finding oneself? Sign me up! I loved All Summer Long! The main character, Bina, was full of spunk and loneliness after her best friend leaves for summer camp. After some misses trying to befriend the older sister, losing the cat of the child she’s babysitting, and feeling left out of her BFF’s life, Bina finally finds that music is the one thing that she has that really makes her shine. Music helps her deal with her sadness and rebuilds the ties with her BFF and the older sister. A great book to read for the summer library reading challenge theme! c:

James K. on The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir by Jennifer Ryan: This delightful novel is perfect for summer reading. Its depiction of life in a village in Kent during World War II is poignant and never dull. The narrative takes the form of journal entries and letters written by the various characters and it works well to show the perspectives and motivations of each character. It is not overly sweet and sentimental—there are plenty of bad actors. All the truly irredeemable characters are men, interestingly. The musical theme of this book centers around the classic English hymns that the ladies’ choir sings in competitions and at special events throughout the book. Anglican hymnody has been an important part of my own spiritual journey, so I identified closely with the healing power of this particular type of music. I highly recommend this book.

Mike K. on The Power by Naomi Alderman: I loved this book which imagines what would happen if women developed the power to electrocute others. The story is engaging enough, but it is also thought-provoking—insinuating a theory of gender disparity. Highly recommend!

Jacki G. on Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout: A whirlwind tale about a small town in Illinois. I think anyone from a small town can relate to something in this tale. Terrific writing.

Theresa C. on The Mother of Black Hollywood by Jenifer Lewis: Can’t help but love Jenifer Lewis. To learn all she endured to get to where she is puts her in the “legends” category. This book is so precise and fast-paced. Couldn’t put it down. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Lauren R. on Situation Momedy by Jenna Von Oy: Fun, frivolous read. I like Jenna’s down-to-earth attitude and silly storytelling style. This book is an antidote to so many parenting books; it’s memoir rather than instructional. Enjoy it as you do mamahood.