"Porcupine" Book Talk by Lori

Porcupine, by Meg Tilly

Here is a moving story about a girl who tries her best to keep her family together after tragedy.
Jack, also known as Jacqueline, is 12, and the oldest of three children. Dad is her hero, and she loves doing things with him as she has a tom-boy streak. Dad is a member of a Canadian armed forces unit, and is sent to Afghanistan at the beginning of the story. He dies from friendly fire.
Jack's family life spirals down to the pits of despair. They reach a point where there is no food in the house, the heat has been turned off, and something has to be done because Mom’s grief is such that she can't bring herself out of her bedroom. When things have totally reached bottom, Mom pulls it together enough to drive the kids to "visit" their "sick" great-grandma. Grandma and Mom do not get along at all, and the reunion starts off badly. The kids end up being left at Grandma's farm, and Mom leaves. The kids are devastated and feel abandoned, and Jack is left to take care of the younger ones. Grandma is a mean ol' gal, but as things go, Jack begins to see the true side of her grandma, and her mother's selfishness, and is able to keep things together for everyone.
You'll learn about the title of the story at the end, and you may need a tissue…
Grades 6 & up due to lots of strong language!


Meg Tilly has been in several movies, such as "The Big Chill" and is now an author. This is her first young adult novel.

And by the way, SHE IS COMING TO THREE RIVERS IN MARCH!!
The owners of the Sunriver Book store met her this fall, and mentioned the school out here, and she said she would love to come and talk about her book, just like that. She will be at our school March 21st, and signing books at the book store on March 22.

Laser Projection Technology Coming

Microvision has developed technology to minimize projection technology. The technology utilizes lasers to project an image. The laser passes through a chip small than the tip of a pencil to display the image. No word yet on projection specs such as dimension, quality, etc. Current projectors utilize LED technology. Microvision is developing two prototypes simultaneously: accessory displays and embedded displays.

Accessory displays would be a stand-alone projector with the ability to connect to a number of different accessories, such as DVD players, video game consoles, iPods, laptops, etc. The advantage of this technology is that it allows for a portable, compact projector with the ability to connect to a number of different devices.

Embedded displays would install Microvision’s technology inside of electronic devices such as cell phones (they currently have a deal with Motorola) as well as potentially laptops, PDAs, and digital multimedia players. This would be ideal if you frequently needed to project images or video from the same device multiple times.

I believe this technology makes projection media much easier to attain, and even more portable than before. While I still see an immediate need for mounted projectors with high-definition capabilities, I think laser projection technology should evolve and eventually replace the LED projector.

Librarians are Good at Everything

A research librarian won first place in a couch potato contest held in New York City New Years Day. Stan Friedman endured over 29 hours of TV watching, including unlimited food and drink.

The limited AP report can be found here. While it does prove librarians have interests outside of the confines of a library, it might not do much for the professional furthering of our field. I like to think of Mr. Friedman as dedicated to his task.

How does one go about entering such a contest, I ask you?

Vernonia Flood Book Drive

I'm puting together a book drive to help Vernonia High School and Middle School libraries. They lost pretty much everything in a recent flood. If you feel so inclined, please join me. I'm not going to worry about how to transport the books until we have them. I'm advertising to the school and plan to collect books until December 21.
Eila

Library Calendar and other stuff

I promised Mark I'd post something, so here it is. A reminder about the library use calendar: www.calendar.net
It is easy enough that even I can use. The library web page has a link to it, so teachers can check it at any time.

Also, I created a blog of my own to link to the library web page--I think i'm just going to do brief posts about new things going on. Ideally i'll post daily, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Paint the Wind, Pam Munoz Ryan

A good 5th grade through middle school adventure. Maya has only a box of toy horses left to remember her mother by. After her overprotective grandmother dies, Maya goes to stay with her uncles and aunt on her mother's side of the family. They live in Wyoming, out in the rugged wilderness, where her aunt teachers painting classes. Maya learns to love horses and discovers a band of wild mustangs. Maya's life intertwines with the horses and together they hold the key to each other's survival.

Office 2007 Compatibility

Ever have those kids who come into your library, unable to print out the document they saved on their home computer from last night because they created it in Microsoft Office 2007?

All is not lost.

If you try to open the file in Office 2003, you may get a pop-up window offering you a compatibility pack. You will need administrative access on the machine to be able to download this compatibility pack.

Another option, which would not require downloading/installing, would be if you had either the program Open Office on your PC, or NeoOffice on your Mac. Both of these applications have converters for Office 2007 built-in.