WAB Consutling – Page 11 – Cold Spring Harbor Library

Happy Mother’s Day!

Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 13. Read a novel or memoir about motherhood (and grandmotherhood) and have a happy Mother’s Day!

Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg
After the death of her husband, Helen Ames is shocked to discover that he spent their retirement savings before he died, but what he did with their money leads Helen and her 27-year-old daughter Tessa to embark on new adventures.

How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway
Entreated to visit her ancestral family in Japan in place of her ailing mother, Sue uncovers family secrets that influence her life in unforeseen ways, offer insight into her mother’s marriage to an American GI and reveal the role of tradition in shaping personal choice.

29 by Adena Halpern
Ellie Jerome is a 75-year-old who feels she has more in common with her granddaughter, Lucy, than her daughter, Barbara. After a birthday wish to be 29 again for a single day, she and Lucy are sent on an adventure of unexpected twists and turns.

Bloom: A Memoir by Kelle Hampton
Recounts the author’s first year with her newborn daughter, Nella–who has Down syndrome–and her own journey of transformation as she realized that she had been chosen to experience an extraordinary and special gift.

Watermelon by Marian Keyes
When her husband, James, leaves her after she delivers her first child, Claire retires to her family in Dublin, where she slowly recovers from the experience, giving James a big surprise when he shows up again.

The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty.
When her daughter accidentally hits and kills another high school girl with the family’s car, Leigh, a troubled mother, is forced to confront her relationship with her daughter and her long-buried feelings towards her own neglectful mother.

Things I Want My Daughters to Know by Elizabeth Noble
Having received letters and a journal from their mother written at the end of her life, four sisters struggle through their first year without her, a time marked by their bereavement and efforts to achieve joy and passion.

Not Becoming My Mother: And Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way by Ruth Reichl
Reflects on the author’s mother, focusing on her early life as a bookstore owner and housewife and the diaries she kept which had been retrieved by her daughter after her death.

Best Friends, Occasional Enemies: The Lighter Side of Life as a Mother and Daughter by Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Serritella
A mother and daughter present personal essays that explore life through their close bond, in a volume inspired by their weekly column, “Chick Wit,” that discusses such topics as their relationship, their carb counts, and the green jacket that almost caused a catfight.

The Leopard Hat: A Daughter’s Story by Valerie Steiker
The author describes her magical childhood growing up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with her mother, a Belgian Jew hidden as a child from the Nazis during World War II, whose appetite for joy, flamboyance, and protectiveness surrounded her family with love, and the tragic loss of her mother during her junior year at Harvard.

Orange Prize for Fiction

The Orange Prize for Fiction honors the most excellent, accessible, and original work of fiction written in English by a woman. The shortlist for the 2012 award is:

Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright

Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding (available 9/12)

The Song of Achilles Madeline Miller

Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

Letter from the Director

Dear Residents,
Once again, you have confirmed our value to you and your family by supporting next year’s budget. A two-to-one margin is impressive and goes to all the small and large things we do every day to serve your needs. Everything matters, and Cold Spring Harbor is very lucky to have a beautiful library building with technology and books, excellent services, and a staff that understands what the community wants, and is ready to serve the people who walk in the door. The new fiscal year begins July 1, but planning to implement the new programs and services funded by your tax dollars begins immediately. Look for free and faster WiFi, more copies of popular titles and eBooks, and iPads too.

Do you have an unlimited text plan? If so, sign up to get a text message when items are ready for pick-up. To learn how, see page 5 of the May/June newsletter, or ask a librarian for assistance. Each month, we receive hundreds of online hold requests for titles. Why get a voicemail message on your home phone when you can get a text message instead?

Have you downloaded a free eBook yet? Since we joined the eBook program, over 4,000 titles have been downloaded. You may download to a Kindle, iPad, Nook, iPhone, or other devices. Titles may be borrowed for 14 days and may be borrowed again if you need more time. I noticed that my eReader remembered exactly where I left off when I downloaded the title a second time; a little spooky, but very convenient!

With the warm weather here to stay, we begin to fill our calendars with warm weather programs. We are delighted to announce that the Library Foundation will once again sponsor SUMMERFEST on the last day of school. This tradition began during our years in the Community Center on Goose Hill Road, and has become a wonderful last day of school party for our community’s families. Like last year, the event will be held at the library. For the first time, a new group of parents and children called “The Who’s” have volunteered to grow vegetables in the Children’s Garden adjacent to the Children’s Library. The crops will be planted and maintained by “The Who’s” and donated to area service organizations.

Last year, resident college professor from SUNY Farmingdale, Chris Nehlen, asked if I had a project for graphic design students. Previous classes in this design program had created a completely new library newsletter format and produced finding aids for our environmental mural in the Storytime Room, so I said, “Yes.” This time, the assignment was a new logo for the library, a symbol to represent our current and future educational role.

I hope to catch you reading very soon!

Earth Day 2012

Sunday, April 22 is Earth Day! Visit the library’s Environmental Center browse our collection of books and periodicals covering all aspects of our environment.

Changing Planet, Changing Health: How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do About It by Paul R. Epstein & Dan Ferber

The Complete Guide to Eco-Friendly House Cleaning: Everything You Need to Know Explained Simply by Anne B. Kocsis

Cook Food: A Manifesto for Easy, Healthy, Local Eating by Lisa Miya-Jervis

Earth Then and Now: Amazing Images of Our Changing World by Fred Pearce

The Healthy Home : Simple Truths to Protect Your Family from Hidden Household Dangers by Dave Wentz & Myron Wentz

The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv

The Next Eco-Warriors: 22 Young Women and Men Who Are Saving the Planet edited by Emily Hunter

Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis by Sandra Steingraber

The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health–and a Vision for Change by Annie Leonard

Upcycling: Create Beautiful Things with the Stuff You Already Have by Danny Seo

Wildly Affordable Organic: Eat Fabulous Food, Get Healthy, and Save the Planet–All on $5 a Day or Less by Linda Watson

April Is National Poetry Month

Celebrate National Poetry Month!

The 100 Best African American Poems: (*But I Cheated) edited by Nikki Giovanni

100 Essential American Poems edited by Leslie M. Pockell

American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry edited by Cole Swensen & David St. John

The Best American Poetry 2011 edited by Kevin Young

The Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer Through Frost selected and with commentary by Harold Bloom

Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud edited by Robert Pinsky

The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within by Stephen Fry

Poetry Speaks: Hear Great Poets Read Their Work from Tennyson to Plath edited by Elise Paschen & Rebekah Presson Mosby

The Poets Laureate Anthology edited by Elizabeth Hun Schmidt

She Walks in Beauty: A Woman’s Journey Through Poems selected and introduced by Caroline Kennedy

Young Romantics: The Tangled Lives of English Poetry’s Greatest Generation by Daisy Hay

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

Celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day with a movie set in Ireland.

December Bride
A proud Irish servant girl rebels against her strict upbringing by having love affairs with two brothers at the same time.

Kisses
Two Irish children, both seeking to escape their home lives, run away and wander the streets of Dublin.

Leap Year
Hurt by her boyfriend’s lack of a marriage proposal on their anniversary, Anna flies to Ireland to propose to him on Leap Day and meets a man who helps her get across the country.

Michael Collins
The life and struggles of Irish statesman Michael Collins who negotiated Ireland’s break with England.

Ondine
A fisherman pulls up his nets one day to find a woman inside, which his daughter believes to be a selkie, but as they fall in love, a figure from her past threatens to disrupt their happiness.

Ryan’s Daughter
In the wake of the 1916 Easter Rising, a married woman in a small Irish village has an affair with a troubled British officer.

The Eclipse
In a seaside Irish town, romance sparks between a widower, who believes he is seeing the ghost of his not-yet-dead father-in-law, and a horror writer who is in town for a literary festival.

The Guard
A small-town Irish cop with a confrontational personality joins forces with an uptight FBI agent in an effort to take down a gang of drug traffickers.

The Quiet Man
When an American prize-fighter kills a man in the ring, he returns to the Irish village where he was born to find peace and there he meets and falls in love with the sister of the village bully.

The Wind that Shakes the Barley
In 1920s Ireland, two brothers join guerrilla squads fighting British soldiers for Ireland’s independence.

Veronica Guerin
An Irish journalist is assassinated by drug dealers she wrote about in a series of stories.

Visions of Ireland
Explores Ireland’s most scenic views through ground and aerial footage.

Waking Ned Devine
When Ned Devine dies from shock of winning the lottery, two old friends enlist the help of the whole village in defrauding the lottery to claim the prize.

Letter from the Director

Dear Residents,
Everyday hundreds of people visit our Library. We are a source of inspiration and information for all ages. We continually search for resources, services, and knowledge which will enrich your lives and direct our future.

On April 3, you will have an opportunity to vote on your Library’s budget.

On April 3, you will have an opportunity to vote on your Library’s budget. The proposed budget for FY12-13 includes a very modest increase, which complies with the tax cap. A typical home in Laurel Hollow, Lloyd Harbor, and Cold Spring Harbor will pay $20 more for the year, based upon the current tax rates set by the Town of Huntington and Nassau County, subject to minor adjustment in August 2012.

This budget will enable us to expand our print, eBook, audio, and DVD collections, thus decreasing the time residents wait for new or popular items. Attendance at library-sponsored programs for all ages has also been growing, and, if approved, the new budget will enable us to offer more cultural, environmental, and educational programs. We will also purchase eReaders and iPads for hands-on instruction. Next year’s budget also contains a generous donation from the Library Friends Foundation of $25,000, supporting programs for all!

The future of our world, our state, our county, and our community is in our hands. Let’s see challenges as opportunities and create a future to be proud of.