Scores in Standardized Test Drop as Recreational Reading Declines

Recent articles in The Boston Globe and The New York Times report that as students read less for enjoyment, their scores on reading tests also decline. However, this drop in standardized test scores is not confined to reading tests -- performance in other academic disciplines like math and science is also declining. The Globe and Times cite a report from the National Endowment for the Arts -- To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence, a new and comprehensive analysis of reading patterns in the United States published on November 19.

Among the reports findings are these highlights:

• Only 30 percent of 13-year-olds read almost every day.
• The number of 17-year-olds who never read for pleasure increased from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004.
• Almost half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 never read books for pleasure.
• The average person between ages 15 and 24 spends 2 to 2 1/2 hours a day watching TV and 7 minutes reading.

Reading relates to more than educational success as measured by standardized tests. According to NEA chairman Dana Gioia"The habit of regular reading awakens something inside a person that makes him or her take their own life more seriously and at the same time develops the sense that other people's lives are real." Not only are our own lives enriched by reading, but we're more likely to be involved in community/civic service activities: "The poorest Americans who read did twice as much volunteering and charity work as the richest who did not read," Gioia said.

Improve your educational results, enrich your personal experience and life, and make the world a better place by your presence -- READ.

The Globe article is here, the NYT article is here, and a summary of the NEA report is here.

More Recent Acquisitions

Here are summaries of recent acquisitions to the library collection. Some of these have been selected by faculty, some by my assessments of curricular holes, and some because they are recent winners of various literary awards.

Non-fiction:

• The Canon : a Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier / Summary: Award-winning science journalist Angier takes us on a "guided whirligig through the scientific canon." She draws on conversations with hundreds of the world’s top scientists, and her own work as a reporter for the New York Times, to create an entertaining guide to scientific literacy--a joyride through the major scientific disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and astronomy. It’s for anyone who wants to understand the great issues of our time--from stem cells and bird flu to evolution and global warming. It’s also one of those rare books that reignites our childhood delight in figuring out how things work: we learn what’s actually happening when our ice cream melts or our coffee gets cold, what our liver cells do when we eat a caramel, how the horse shows evolution at work, and that we really are all made of stardust.
• In the Beat of a Heart : Life, Energy, and the Unity of Nature by John Whitfield / Summary: Traces the scientific community's efforts to discover an underlying unity to nature that will explain the remarkable similarities and differences between all things on Earth, profiling key figures who are triggering a scientific revolution that will change how people view the world.
• The Storm : What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina : the Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist by Ivor van Heerden and Mike Bryan / Summary: As deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, Ivor van Heerden had for years been warning state and local officials about New Orleans’s vulnerability to flooding. But like Cassandra’s, his predictions were ignored—until Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29, 2005. Suddenly, van Heerden found himself at the center of a media maelstrom. Stepping forward to challenge the official version of events, he revealed the truth about the city’s shoddy levee construction. Now, in The Storm, van Heerden shares up-to-the-minute reporting from his investigations and connects the dots among the Army Corps of Engineers, the bureaucrats, the politicians, and the chain of events—both natural and human—that culminated in catastrophe. An epic of cutting-edge science and systemic bureaucratic failure, The Storm is the first book from a major player in the Katrina disaster and a riveting narrative that brings expertise, passion, and a human viewpoint to America’s greatest natural disaster.
• The View From the Center of the Universe : Discovering our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos by Joel R. Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams / Summary: Draws on scientific research and recent discoveries in the fields of astronomy, physics, and cosmology to argue that humans are central to the universe in profound and important ways that are directly related to science.

Biography:

• I, Rigoberta Menchú : an Indian Woman in Guatemala edited and introduced by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray ; translated by Ann Wright / Summary: Recounts the life of Rigoberta Menchu, a young Guatemalan peasant woman who turned to catechist work as an expression of political revolt and religious commitment after her brother and parents were murdered by the Guatemalan military; and sheds light on everyday life in Latin America's Indian communities.

Fiction:

• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie ; art by Ellen Forney / Summary: In his first book for young adults, bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by acclaimed artist Ellen Forney, that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.
• March by Geraldine Brooks / Summary: As the North reels under a series of unexpected defeats during the dark first year of the war, one man leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. Riveting and elegant as it is meticulously researched, March is an extraordinary novel woven out of the lore of American history. From Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has taken the character of the absent father, March, who has gone off to war, leaving his wife and daughters to make do in mean times. To evoke him, Brooks turned to the journals and letters of Bronson Alcott, Louisa May's father -- a friend and confidant of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. In her telling, March emerges as an idealistic chaplain in the little known backwaters of a war that will test his faith in himself and in the Union cause as he learns that his side, too, is capable of acts of barbarism and racism. As he recovers from a near mortal illness, he must reassemble his shattered mind and body and find a way to reconnect with a wife and daughters who have no idea of the ordeals he has been through. Spanning the vibrant intellectual world of Concord and the sensuous antebellum South, March adds adult resonance to Alcott's optimistic children's tale to portray the moral complexity of war, and a marriage tested by the demands of extreme idealism -- and by a dangerous and illicit attraction. A lushly written, wholly original tale steeped in the details of another time, March secures Geraldine Brooks's place as an internationally renowned author of historical fiction.
• The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories / Summary: Contains over thirty selections of vampire fiction written between 1816 and 1984.
• Slam by Nick Hornby / Summary: Just when everything is coming together for Sam, his girlfriend Alicia drops a bombshell. Make that ex-girlfriend -- because by the time she tells him she's pregnant, they've already called it quits. Sam does not want to be a teenage dad. There's only one person Sam can turn to -- his hero, skating legend Tony Hawk. Sam believes the answers to life's hurdles can be found in Hawk's autobiography. But even Tony Hawk isn’t offering answers this time -- or is he? In this wonderfully witty, poignant story about a teenage boy unexpectedly thrust into fatherhood, it's up to Sam to make the right decisions so the bad things that could happen, well, don't.
• Three Vampire Tales / Summary: Three classic works of vampire literature [The Vampyre / John Polidori -- Carmilla / Sheridan Le Fanu -- Dracula / Bram Stoker] come together for the first time in one volume. Complementing the complete texts are background essays as well as additional selections by the three authors and others. Because the vampire novel has proven so influential in film, an extensive filmography is included.
• The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish by Elise Blackwell / Summary: Louis Proby is an old man now, sitting in his study in New Orleans awaiting what they say is a huge storm, Hurricane Katrina. As he watches the skies darken, he remembers his earlier life, as a watchful, curious young man filled with hunger and desire in Cypress Parish, the life that was washed away when the Mississippi River flooded in 1927. He remembers exactly how the Parish was sacrificed to those waters-because the city fathers said it was expendable. They said that flooding Louis's home was necessary to save New Orleans. He has long known that was never the truth. The Parish could have been spared. And he has always known the part his father played in that decision. But what he thinks on now is the dearest cost extracted from him on the day they dynamited the dikes and let the waters flow. He thinks on his first love, Nanette Lançon.
• Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher / Summary: There's bad news and good news about the Cutter High School swim team. The bad news is that they don't have a pool. The good news is that only one of them can swim anyway. A group of misfits brought together by T. J. Jones (the J is redundant) to find their places in a school that has no place for them, the Cutter All Night Mermen struggle to carve out their own turf. T. J. is convinced that a varsity letter jacket--unattainable for most, exclusive, revered, the symbol (as far as T. J. is concerned) of all that is screwed up at Cutter High--will be an effective carving tool. He's right. He's also wrong. Still, it's always the quest that counts. And the bus on which the Mermen travel to swim meets--piloted by Icko, the permanent resident of All, Night Fitness--soon becomes the cocoon inside which they gradually allow themselves to talk, to fit, to bloom. Chris Crutcher is in top form with a cast of characters--adults, children, and teenagers--fighting for dignity in a world where tragedy and comedy dance side by side, where a moment's inattention can bring lifelong heartache, and where true acceptance is the only prescription for what ails us.
• The Wolf by Steven Herrick / Summary: Sixteen-year-old Lucy, living in the shadow of her violent father, experiences a night of tenderness, danger, and revelation as she and Jake, her fifteen-year-old neighbor, search for a legendary wolf in the Australian outback.

Videos:

• America's Working Poor [DVD] / Summary: Presents an examination of the working poor in the United States. Several families including single mothers as head of households describe their lives as members of the working poor community where one unexpected expense, sudden illness, or a missed payment could mean financial ruin.
• Malcolm X [DVD] / Spike Lee’s film presents the life and times of Malcolm X, who, through his conversion to Islam, overcame his deprived and criminal past to become an influential civil rights leader.
• The Odyssey [DVD] / Summary: Aided by the goddess Athena, warrior-king Odysseus braves the terrors and temptations of a fantastic array of creatures as his return from the Trojan War becomes a decade-long quest to reach his homeland and his faithful wife, Penelope.
• Stress & Relaxation Explained [DVD] / Summary: This DVD explores all aspects of stress reduction, including: how stress is a natural part of our lives; different types of stresses and their symptoms; chronic and acute health risks associated with stress; responding positively to stress and anxiety; real life case study; sample of immersive, nature-based guided imagery relaxation exercise; mind/body medicine overview; benefits of relaxation therapies; choosing the best techniques; physical and cognitive relaxation techniques; demonstration of effective relaxation exercises.

More Recent Acquisitions

Here are summaries of the latest additions to the library collection. Some of these have been selected by faculty, some by my assessments of curricular holes, and some because they are recent winners of various literary awards.

Non-fiction:

• The Age of Lincoln by Orville Vernon Burton / Summary: In a remarkable reappraisal of Lincoln, distinguished historian Burton shows how the Kentucky-born president's Southernness empowered him to conduct a civil war that redefined freedom as a personal right protected by the rule of law. In the violent decades that followed, the extent of that freedom would be contested by racism and unregulated capitalism, but not its central place in what defined the country
• The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A.T. Mahan / Summary: An unabridged republication of the 1894 work which traces the history and strategies of naval warfare throughout the world, and argues that despite changes in weaponry, certain principles of naval strategy remain the same.
• Leviathan : the History of Whaling in America by Eric Jay Dolin / Summary: "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme," Herman Melville proclaimed, and this absorbing history demonstrates that few things can capture the sheer danger and desperation of men on the deep sea as dramatically as whaling. Eric Jay Dolin begins his vivid narrative with Captain John Smith's botched whaling expedition to the New World in 1614. He then chronicles the rise of a burgeoning industry -- from its brutal struggles during the Revolutionary period to its golden age in the mid-1800s when a fleet of more than 700 ships hunted the seas and American whale oil lit the world, to its decline as the twentieth century dawned. This sweeping social and economic history provides rich and often fantastic accounts of the men themselves, who mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, scrimshawed, and recorded their experiences in journals and memoirs. Containing a wealth of naturalistic detail on whales, Leviathan is the most original and stirring history of American whaling in many decades.
• An Ocean of Air : Why the Wind Blows and Other Mysteries of the Atmosphere / Gabrielle Walker / Summary: We spend our lives surrounded by air, hardly even noticing it. It’s the most miraculous substance on earth, yet responsible for our food, our weather, our water, and our ability to hear. In fact, we live at the bottom of an ocean of air. In this exuberant book, gifted science writer Gabrielle Walker peels back the layers of our atmosphere with the stories of the people who uncovered its secrets:
• A flamboyant Renaissance Italian discovers how heavy our air really is: for example, the air filling Carnegie Hall weighs seventy thousand pounds;
• A one-eyed barnstorming pilot finds a set of winds that constantly blow five miles above our heads;
• An impoverished American farmer figures out why hurricanes move in a circle by carving equations with his pitchfork on a barn door;
• A well-meaning inventor nearly destroys the ozone layer;
• A reclusive mathematical genius predicts, thirty years before he’s proved right, that the sky contains a layer of floating metal fed by the glowing tails of shooting stars.
• Sacco and Vanzetti : the Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind by Bruce Watson / Summary: When the Commonwealth of Massachusetts electrocuted Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti on August 23, 1927, it concluded one of the most controversial legal cases in American history. Ever since, debate has raged over what was probably a miscarriage of justice. In the first full-length narrative of the case in thirty years, Bruce Watson unwinds a gripping tale that opens with anarchist bombs going off in a posh Washington, D.C. neighborhood and concludes with worldwide outrage over the execution of the "good shoemaker" and the "poor fish peddler." Watson mines deep archives and new sources, unveiling fresh details about these naïve dreamers and militant revolutionaries. This case still haunts the American imagination. Authoritative and engrossing, Sacco and Vanzetti will capture fans of true crime books and everyone who enjoys riveting American history.
• The Singing Neanderthals : the Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body by Steven Mithen / Summary: The propensity to make music is the most mysterious, wonderful, and neglected feature of humankind: this is where Steven Mithen began, drawing together strands from archaeology, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience -- and, of course, musicology -- to explain why we are so compelled to make and hear music. But music could not be explained without addressing language, and could not be accounted for without understanding the evolution of the human body and mind. Thus Mithen arrived at the wildly ambitious project that unfolds in this book: an exploration of music as a fundamental aspect of the human condition, encoded into the human genome during the evolutionary history of our species. Music is the language of emotion, common wisdom tells us. In The Singing Neanderthals, Mithen introduces us to the science that might support such popular notions. With equal parts scientific rigor and charm, he marshals current evidence about social organization, tool and weapon technologies, hunting and scavenging strategies, habits and brain capacity of all our hominid ancestors, from australopithecines to Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthals to Homo sapiens - and comes up with a scenario for a shared musical and linguistic heritage. Along the way he weaves a tapestry of cognitive and expressive worlds -- alive with vocalized sound, communal mimicry, sexual display, and rhythmic movement -- of various species.
• The War : an Intimate History, 1941-1945 by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns / Summary: Enriched by maps and hundreds of photographs, the companion volume to the PBS series, "The War" is the story of World War II captured in the hearts, minds, words, and deeds of those who made history at its most essential level: on the battlefields and on the home front.

Reference:

• Slavery in the United States : a Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia / Junius P. Rodriguez, editor / Summary: A comprehensive, A to Z resource that covers the social, economical, and political conditions associated with the institution of slavery in America, with over 300 entries, essays, official documents and writings, photographs, and first-person accounts.

Fiction:

• The Road by Cormac McCarthy / Summary: A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food-—and each other. The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.
• A Thousand Splendid Suns / Khaled Hosseini / Summary: A novel set against the three decades of Afghanistan's history shaped by Soviet occupation, civil war, and the Taliban, which tells the stories of two women, Mariam and Laila, who grow close despite their nineteen-year age difference and initial rivalry as they suffer at the hand of a common enemy: their abusive husband.
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte ; with an introduction by Katherine Frank / Summary: "My greatest thought in living is Heathcliff. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be... Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure... but as my own being." Wuthering Heights is the only novel of Emily Bronte, who died a year after its publication, at the age of thirty. A brooding Yorkshire tale of a love that is stronger than death, it is also a fierce vision of metaphysical passion, in which heaven and hell, nature and society, are powerfully juxtaposed. Unique, mystical, with a timeless appeal, it has become a classic of English literature.

Videos (DVD & VHS):

• Amistad [DVD] / A fictionalized retelling of the 1839 Supreme Court case involving fifty-three slaves who were captured in Connecticut after taking over the Spanish slave ship "Amistad."
• Homicide, Life on the Street. Season 6 [six DVDs] / Summary: Day to day, the officers of the Baltimore Police Department Homicide Division face one of the United States worst crime rates, not to mention the pressures of their own personal lives. Some days, justice isn't just blind, it flat-out just doesn't exist.
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest [DVD] / Summary: A nice rest in a state mental hospital beats a stretch in the pen, right? Randle P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), a free-spirited con with lightning in his veins and glib on his tongue, fakes insanity and moves in with what he calls the "nuts." Immediately, his contagious sense of disorder runs up against numbing routine. No way should guys pickled on sedatives shuffle around in bathrobes when the World Series is on. This means war! On one side is McMurphy. On the other is soft-spoken Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), among the most coldly monstrous villains in film history. At stake is the fate of every patient on the ward. Based on Ken Kesey's acclaimed bestseller, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest swept all five major 1975 Academy Awards: Best Picture (produced by Saul Zaentz and Michael Douglas), Actor (Nicholson), Actress (Fletcher), Director (Milos Forman) and Adapted Screenplay (Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman). Raucous, searing and with a superb cast that includes Brad Dourif, Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd in his film debut, this one soars.
• The Perfect Pearl [VHS] / Summary: For centuries, man has risked both life and life savings to possess the pearl's beauty. Pure and perfect, glowing and dazzling, a pearl is actually a mistake formed when an oyster reacts to an irritant lodged in its shell. Go back to the late 18th century to meet Kokichi Mikimoto, who developed a technique for culturing pearls that's still used today. Travel to a Japanese oyster hatchery to see how technology is advancing pearl cultivation. Watch divers search for the immense pearls found in the world's largest oyster, the Pinctada maxima. See a strand of South Sea perfect pearls worth $2.3 million. And discover little-known facts as authors, zoologists, scientists and pearl experts reveal the pearl's wondrous history.
• REDS [DVD] / Summary: The true story of the love affair of John Reed, American Communist, journalist and activist and Louise Bryant, writer and feminist. Woven into the story are America's great playwright, Eugene O'Neill, anarchist and feminist, Emma Goldman, Bolshevik leader, Gregory Zinoviev and other notable figures whose lives were shaken by the Russian Revolution.
• The War [six DVDs] / Summary: The Ken Burns’ documentary THE WAR explores the history and horror of World War II from an American perspective by following the fortunes of so-called ordinary men and women who became caught up in one of the greatest cataclysms in human history. This epic film focuses on the stories of citizens from four American towns taking the viewer through their personal and harrowing journeys, painting vivid portraits of how the war dramatically altered their lives.
• Worried Sick [DVD] / Summary: Stress is the curse of modern living -- but is it actually so new? Does it only affect people? Can you really get sick from stress? Can relaxation make you better? Host Alan Alda meets researchers who are exploring the ill effects of stress on health and aging, and how relaxation can help lessen the damage.

Banned Book Week

Its Banned Book Week this week (Sept 29 - Oct 6, 2007), and to mark it I thought you might be interested in seeing a list of the most frequently challenged/banned books from 1990 to 2000 (This list is from the American Library Association):

1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelo
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
15. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna
20. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
30. The Goats by Brock Cole
31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
40. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
61. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
74. Jack by A.M. Homes
75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King
78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

How many of these books have you read? (We have at least 36 of these books in our collection.) What if those who wanted to prevent you from reading these books had gotten their way?

Recent Acquisitions

Here are summaries of recent acquisitions to the library collection. Some of these have been selected by faculty, some by my assessments of curricular holes, and some because they are recent winners of various literary awards.

Non-fiction:

• Collected Poems, Prose & Plays by Robert Frost / Summary: Included are all of the plays, a generous selection of prose, all collected poems, and 94 uncollected poems, as well as 17 poems that were previously unpublished. The 1949 Complete Poems is the principle source for the poetry. In The Clearing (1962), as the only subsequent volume Frost published, is given a separate contents entry. Sources are given for all published and unpublished work. The 45 pages of notes cover the "significant differences" between first editions and the Complete Poems, including deleted dedications, notes and dates, and changes in wording. The notes also include helpful definitions and frequent attribution of quotation. Of the prose we are told that most of what is included "bears directly on [Frost's] work as a poet." Many of these texts are based on significant new editorial work by Richardson.
• The Diary of Petr Ginz 1941-1942 / edited by Chava Pressburger; translated from the Czech by Elena Lappin / Summary: Lost for sixty years in a Prague attic, this secret diary of a teenage prodigy killed at Auschwitz is an extraordinary literary discovery, an intimately candid, deeply affecting account of a childhood compromised by Nazi tyranny. As a fourteen-year old Jewish boy living in Prague in the early 1940s, Petr Ginz dutifully records the increasingly precarious texture of daily life. With a child's keen eye for the absurd and the tragic, he muses on the prank he played on his science class and then just pages later, reveals that his cousins have been called to relinquish all their possessions, having been summoned east in the next transport. The diary ends with Petr's own summons to Thereisenstadt, where he would become the driving force behind the secret newspaper Vedem, and where he would continue to draw, paint, write, and read, furiously educating himself for a future he would never see. Fortunately, Petr's voice lives on in his diary, a fresh, startling, and invaluable historical document and a testament to one remarkable child's insuppressible hunger for life.
• The Last Human : a Guide to Twenty-two Species of Extinct Humans / created by G.J. Sawyer and Viktor Deak ; text by Esteban Sarmiento, G.J. Sawyer and Richard Milner ; with contributions by Donald C. Johanson, Maeve Leakey and Ian Tattersall / Summary: This book tells the story of human evolution, the epic of Homo sapiens and its colorful precursors and relatives. The story begins in Africa, six to seven million years ago, and encompasses twenty known human species, of which Homo sapiens is the sole survivor. Illustrated with spectacular, three-dimensional scientific reconstructions portrayed in their natural habitat developed by a team of physical anthropologists at the American Museum of Natural History and in concert with experts from around the world, the book is both a guide to extinct human species and an astonishing hominid family photo album. The Last Human presents a comprehensive account of each species with information on its emergence, chronology, geographic range, classification, physiology, lifestyle, habitat, environment, cultural achievements, co-existing species, and possible reasons for extinction. Also included are summaries of fossil discoveries, controversies, and publications. What emerges from the fossil story is a new understanding of Homo sapiens. No longer credible is the notion that our species is the end product of a single lineage, improved over generations by natural selection. Rather, the fossil record shows, we are a species with widely varied precursors, and our family tree is characterized by many branchings and repeated extinctions.
• The Writer’s Market / Summary: The classic resource for every writer who wants to be published, this volume features more than 3,500 market listings including 500 new markets for 2007.

Biography:

• Einstein : His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson / Summary: The first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. Biographer Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk--a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate--became the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe. His success came from questioning conventional wisdom and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. This led him to embrace a morality and politics based on respect for free minds, free spirits, and free individuals. These traits are just as vital for this new century of globalization, in which our success will depend on our creativity, as they were for the beginning of the last century, when Einstein helped usher in the modern age.
• Lighting the Way : Nine Women Who Changed Modern America by Karenna Gore Schiff / Summary: This inspirational look at nine women who changed modern America profiles Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mother Jones, Alice Hamilton, Frances Perkins, Virginia Durr, Septima Clark, Dolores Huerta, Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias, and Gretchen Buchenholz--women who in their own ways tackled inequity and advocated change.

Fiction:

• Dragon’s Keep by Janet Lee Carey / Summary: In 1145 A.D., as foretold by Merlin, fourteen-year-old Rosalind, who will be the twenty-first Pendragon Queen of Wilde Island, has much to accomplish to fulfill her destiny, while hiding from her people the dragon’s claw she was born with that reflects only one of her mother’s dark secrets.
• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand / Summary: When it was first published in 1943, The Fountainhead -- containing Ayn Rand’s daringly original literary vision with the seeds of her groundbreaking philosophy, Objectivism -- won immediate worldwide acclaim. This instant classic is the story of an intransigent young architect, his violent battle against conventional standards, and his explosive love affair with a beautiful woman who struggles to defeat him. This centennial edition of The Fountainhead, celebrating the controversial and enduring legacy of its author, features an afterword by Rand's literary executor, Leonard Peikoff, offering some of Ayn Rand's personal notes on the development of her masterwork
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling / Summary: Burdened with the dark, dangerous, and seemingly impossible task of locating and destroying Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes, Harry, feeling alone and uncertain about his future, struggles to find the inner strength he needs to follow the path set out before him.
• Knife Edge by Malorie Blackman / Summary: Following Callum’s death, the people who loved him relate how their lives have been changed, especially in reference to his girlfriend, Sephy, and their mixed-race child. Persephone Hadley is six months pregnant with a mixed-race baby. In their society this fact alone will threaten the child’s life every day. To make matters worse, the baby’s father, Callum, is dead. He was hanged for terrorism months ago, but his presence still torments Sephy. And she’s not alone. Callum’s brother, Jude, blames Sephy for the death, and thirsts for revenge...in the form of her life. Obviously, Sephy is not fond of Jude, but when his actions take him to the brink of disaster, his life poised on a knife edge, can she stand by and do nothing? Will she be forced -- once again -- to take sides in a chilling racial drama?
• Rucker Park Setup by Paul Volponi / Summary: Best friends Mackey and J.R. have waited their whole lives to win the basketball tournament at Rucker Park, where their favorite pro ballers squared off against street legends. But the day of their big game, J.R. is fatally stabbed and its Mackey’s fault, even though he didn’t wield the knife. Now Mackey has a score to settle, but the killer is watching his every move.
• Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl / Summary: A darkly funny coming-of-age novel and a richly plotted suspense tale told through the distinctive voice of its heroine, Blue van Meer. After a childhood moving from one academic outpost to another with her father (a man prone to aphorisms and meteoric affairs), Blue is clever, deadpan, and possessed of a vast lexicon of literary, political, philosophical, and scientific knowledge--and is quite the cineaste to boot. In her final year of high school at the elite (and unusual) St. Gallway School in Stockton, North Carolina, Blue falls in with a charismatic group of friends and their captivating teacher, Hannah Schneider. But when the drowning of one of Hannah’s friends and the shocking death of Hannah herself lead to a confluence of mysteries, Blue is left to make sense of it all with only her gimlet-eyed instincts and cultural references to guide--or misguide--her.
• Useful Fools by C.A. Schmidt / Summary: Alonso, a dirt-poor teenager living in Peru, helps out at the public health clinic his mother, Magdalena, opened, so that he can see Rosa, the beautiful and wealthy daughter of the clinic's doctor. Alonso and Rosa are both shattered when Magdalena is assassinated by a revolutionary terrorist organization. Left with no hope, Alonso might be seduced into becoming a guerrilla in the same organization that killed his mother. Rosa becomes disgusted with her fathers complacency and leaves wealth and safety behind to somehow help what is left of Alonsos family. In this coming-of-age novel, C. A. Schmidt tells the story of how love can find its way through poverty and war.

Videos (DVD & VHS):

• Chuck Close : a Portrait in Progress [DVD ] / Summary: Since 1969, when Chuck Close's first series of black-and-white portraits was exhibited, his paintings have fascinated the public and raised critical controversy. Created from Polaroid photographs, Close's huge close-ups (some as tall as 9 feet) are severe, confrontational, and wholly compelling. Featuring interviews with Close, Chuck Close : a Portrait in Progress traces the artist's evolution. Close, who paints in the pointillist style, spends months on one painting. Today, his "mug shots" brim with warm colors. Dubbed the "mayor of Soho," he specializes in portraits of fellow artists, such as Jasper Johns who is interviewed in this program. The affable Close appears throughout, discussing his childhood learning disabilities and how, despite the 1989 illness that left him nearly completely paralyzed, he continues to triumph artistically.
• In Search of Myths & Heroes [DVD] / Summary: Follows Michael Wood as he travels in search of the truth behind four famous legends. Explores not only the historical past and literal truth of these myths, but also the mythic past and archetypal stories behind them. Examines the Biblical myth of the Queen of Sheba, an exotic and mysterious woman of power who, with King Solomon, plays a key role in the founding myths of the modern states of Israel and Ethiopia. Traces the Celtic legend of King Arthur and its role in British literature. Asks whether the legendary Shangri-La as depicted in James Hilton's Lost horizon could have its roots in Indian views of Tibet or in the Tibetan Buddhist stories of the land of Shambhala, a paradise behind the Himalayas. Discusses the Greek hero Jason and his quest for the golden fleece.
• A Streetcar Named Desire [DVD] / Summary: Set in the French Quarter of New Orleans during the restless years following WWII, this is a story of Blanche DuBois, a fragile and neurotic woman on a desperate prowl for someplace in the world to call her own. An uncensored version of the story of a repressed widow who visits her sister in New Orleans and is raped and driven mad by her brother-in-law.

Audio Recordings:

• The Caedmon Poetry Collection : a Century of Poets Reading Their Work [three CDs] / Poems written and read by T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, Louis MacNeice, Robert Graves, Gertrude Stein, E.E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, Stephen Spender, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound and others.
• Langston Hughes [CD] / Contents: Dressed up -- When Sue wears red -- Elevator boy -- My people -- Long trip -- Negro dancers -- Ma Lord -- Merry-go-round -- I, too -- Dream keeper -- Dreams -- Water-front streets -- Aunt Sue's stories -- As I grew older -- The weary blues -- Wide river -- Homesick blues -- Afro-American fragment -- The negro speaks of rivers -- Negro -- American heartbreak -- Dream variations -- Feet o'Jesus -- Prayer -- Fire -- Judgement Day -- Bad morning -- Could be -- Bad luck card -- Life is fine -- Bound no'th blues -- Roland Hayes beaten -- Silhouette -- One way ticket -- Graduation -- Mother to son -- Border line -- Genius child -- Suicide's note -- Midnight raffle -- Miss Blues'es child -- Dream boogie -- Motto -- Flatted fifths -- Harlem -- Words like freedom -- Tomorrow -- No regrets -- Too blue -- Little old letter -- Mississippi levee -- Morning after -- Reverie on the Harlem River – Wake. Read by the author.
• Robert Frost [CD] / Summary: Robert Frost reads from a selection of his own poetry.
• T. S. E. [CD] / T. S. Eliot / Contents: La figlia che piange -- The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock -- Gerontion -- Sweeney among the nightingales -- The waste land -- The hollow men -- The journey of the Magi -- Ash-Wednesday -- East Coker. Read by the author.
• W. H. Auden [CD] / Summary: W H. Auden reads from a selection of his own poetry.