Sponsored by Starscape.
The Lockwood brothers are supposed to be able to survive anything. Their dad, a hardcore believer in self-reliance, has stockpiled enough food and water at their isolated Nevada home to last for months. But when they are robbed while their dad is out of town, John and Stew must walk 96 miles in the stark desert sun to get help. For fans of Gary Paulsen’s classic Hatchet and Lauren Tarshis’s bestselling I Survived series, J. L. Esplin’s 96 Miles is a story of survival and desperation as two young brothers confront the worst in humanity—and themselves.
Welcome to Check Your Shelf! This is your guide to help librarians like you up your game when it comes to doing your job (& rocking it).
I’m going to PLA in a couple weeks!! I hope some of you are able to make it too!
Libraries & Librarians
News Updates
- The White House budget once again proposes eliminating IMLS.
- Bringing Congress on board with #eBooksForAll.
- PLA preview, for anyone who’s going.
- The Dallas Public Library basement now functions as a temporary emergency overnight shelter.
- Pasco County (FL) Libraries are going fines free.
- The L.A. Library is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of a long-lost statue.
- Native American groups take issue with the Library of Congress posting tribal stories.
Cool Library Updates
- The Pima County (AZ) Library launches an 8 week program called “Ready, Set, School!” that helps prepare 4 and 5 year olds for kindergarten.
- High school students in the Maxwell High School of Technology’s construction program helped build 200 little free libraries, which were decorated by community members and art classes, and will be distributed throughout Gwinnett County (GA), particularly in low income areas. This is such a cool community project!
- The Ohio State library holds the largest manga collection outside of Japan – read more about it here!
Worth Reading
- Libraries and authoritarianism.
- How to help prisoners get books.
- Where did leveled reading go wrong?
- Soft censorship that makes LGBTQIA+ stories disappear.
- A profile of Vivian Harsh, Chicago’s first black librarian, who put in tremendous work to preserve black history and literature.
- 12 teacher tricks that also work in an elementary school library.
- RuPaul does story time at the library on SNL!
Book Adaptations in the News
- Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret may finally get an adaptation.
- The Color Purple returns to theaters for its 35th anniversary.
- Chris Pratt is starring in the adaptation for Jack Carr’s The Terminal List.
- Pedro Almodóvar is adapting A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin.
- Another adaptation of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None is in the works.
Books & Authors in the News
- Kirk Douglas has died at 103.
- This is a seriously badass profile of five of the best black YA authors in the business.
- Author Vikram Chandra created a writing bot called Granthika, which is supposed to help authors keep track of timelines, character attributes, story continuity, etc.
- Patti Smith pitches in after she learns that burglars stole a copy of her complete lyrics from an Oregon bookshop.
American Dirt
- An official statement on the cancellation of the book tour.
- How booksellers are dealing with the controversy.
- “I couldn’t care less if Jeanine Cummins is white, but her book is a failure.”
- Before American Dirt, there was the book described as the “Korean Angela’s Ashes.”
Numbers & Trends
- Love & marriage book sales were on the rise in the US in 2019. Have you seen this trend at your library?
Award News
- Edwidge Danticat wins the $100,000 Vilcek Prize in Literature.
- BAFTA Awards and the Writers Guild Awards are announced.
- The Women’s Prize for Fiction is marking its 25th anniversary with a plan for a “Winner of Winner’s” prize, which will be determined by public vote.
- Here are the 2020 shortlists for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize.
- The new Carol Shields Prize will award $150,000 to a female novelist.
- Check out the 2019 Locus Recommended Reading List.
- We’ve got the Splatterpunk Award nominees here.
- The 2019 nominees for LitHub’s Oscars for books.
Bookish Curiosities & Miscellaneous
- Amazon is tracking your reading in great detail.
- What exactly is bibliotherapy?
- The Strand is opening a new store on the Upper West Side.
- Lord of the Rings may have been the result of some epic procrastination.
- A CONTINUOUS SUPPLY OF BOOKSTORE KITTENS. I WANT TO GO TO THERE!
- The history of Harry Potter book covers.
On the Riot
- How library social workers provide community support.
- Why do some authors choose to publish their books via Kickstarter?
- Why working in an indie bookstore is the bee’s knees.
- Book club questions for The Dutch House.
Thanks for hanging! Enjoy the weekend!
Katie McLain Horner, @kt_librarylady on Twitter. Currently reading Untamed Shore by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia.