All good things eventually come to an end.  Today, Saturday, August 2, 2008 is the very last day you can turn in books for points for the 2008 Indy Adventures Summer Reading Spectacular.  After August 2, you can no longer add points to your point card.  You can, however, spend points for prizes until Saturday, August 16, 2008.  If you have had your eye on a Ginormous Worm, you better get moving!

It’s been fun! 

Have you ever seen a shooting star?  What you are seeing is not a star at all, but a meteor.  Meteors are pieces of rock or metal from space that pass through the earth’s atmosphere and fall toward earth.  As the meteors fall, they push against the air and produce a lot of heat.  Most meteors burn up before they hit the ground.  During some times of year, you can see a lot of meteors in one night, this is called a meteor shower.  Meteor showers happen when the earth moves through a part of space that has a lot of rocks and ice in it.  The earth will be passing through one of these meteorid streams very soon.  The Perseid meteor shower peaks on August 12th.

“The time to look is during the dark hours before dawn on Tuesday, August 12th,” says Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center. “There should be plenty of meteors–perhaps one or two every minute.”  Mark your calendar!

• NASA: the 2008 Perseid Meteor Shower
• Listen to a NASA scientist talk about the Perseid Meteor Shower
• Here’s one meteor that DID make it to earth - look at the Barringer Meteorite Crater in Arizona.  It is 4,000 feet wide and 570 feet deep!

House Jackson, team captain and star pitcher of the Aurora County All-Stars, loves baseball. He’s had a bum year nursing a broken elbow - an elbow broken by his least favorite girl in the world, Frances Shotz.  While sitting out the last season, House’s father ropes home into reading classic books outloud to a bed bound old guy the other kids call “mean man Boyd”.  The thing is, House likes Mr. Norwood Rhinehart Beauregard Boyd.  Embarrassed about how he’s spent his time, House manages to keep his reading aloud secret, until Mr. Boyd dies and leaves House a note that sets in motion the unraveling of several town secrets.  The secrets unravel as Frances and Haouse battle over which event will occur on July fourth, the town’s bicentennial pageant or the annual fourth of July baseball game.

• Read an Interview with the author, Deborah Wiles
• Read Chapter One
• The Aurora County All-Stars on CD

In the folksong “John Henry,” John is a railroad worker who makes a promise to beat a steam powered drill by digging with his own two hands and his hammer.  He says, “A man ain’t nothing but a man, before I let your steam drill beat me down, I’ll die with a hammer in my hand.”  As the story goes, John indeed beats the steam powered drill in a competition just as he promised.  He also drops dead with his hammer in his hand…just like he promised!

Men swinging hammers, and later steam drills, were used in the 1800s to break through rocks to build America’s railroads.  Like the John Henry in the song, thousands of men worked to build our railroads.  Those men also died by the thousands from the tough physical labor and the dust that clogged their lungs. Those men sang songs to help them keep up a steady rhythm of hammering.  One of those songs is “John Henry.”  The song tells their story.

The author of this book set out to find out if there ever really was a man named John Henry.  Was he just a legend, like Paul Bunyan?  Was there any truth in the song?  He traced many different versions of the John Henry song over time.  He compared the lyrics to what was going on in railroad history and he uncovered the amazing and heartbreaking story of the men who made America’s railroads.  The John Henry song tells the story of a man, but it also symbolizes all the men, especially African-American, Chinese-American & Irish-American men who literally worked themselves to death.  It makes you wonder, why didn’t they quit?  Many of the men were prisoners in state prisons loaned out to the railroad to do heavy labor.  The rest were extremely poor and and had little choice but to accept this kind of work if they hoped to feed their families.

Listen to this recording of men singing “John Henry”:

Simthsonian Audio of men working and singing “John Henry” (1947-1948)

Can’t you imagine yourself swinging a hammer to the rhythm?  The work would be hot and back breaking.  It would be hard to breathe.  You can hear some of the hopelessness and sorrow in the voices too.  Look at some pictures from the book:

Photo Slide Show from Ain’t Nothing But a Man

Here is a real picture of a man working in what would become a railroad tunnel big enough for a train to go through.  You can look at more photos like this one from American Memory: History of the American West 1860-1920.  This one is from the Western History/Genealogy Department, Denver Public Library.  It looks like lonely hard work in the tunnel.

I always wanted to be able to juggle and whistle with two fingers.  I should have gone to my library and found a book to show me how to do it!  Here are a couple to get you started astounding your friends and family with your new skills.

This afternoon, you can go to Glendale Library to see a pro do some wacky magic tricks.  I always wanted to be able to do those too!

Magic Program at Glendale Library
Saturday, July 26, 2008 at 3:00pm

Families are invited as Pastor Tim returns as the wacky magician Professor Presto! Highlights will include the world’s largest rabbit, a visit from Chef Prestoni, and a chance for one lucky audience member to “float like a feather.” Questions?  Call Glendale at 275-4410

• How to Juggle from the International Juggler’s Association
• Listen to Fred Newman from Mouthsounds (He’s the guy on the PBS show Between the Lions, maybe you have seen him there.)
• Look at some pages from MouthSounds

The Allstate 400 is just a couple days away at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  The race will be this Sunday, July 27th.  If you can’t actually go, you can still have fun following the race and finding out about the drivers by looking at library books and web sites.  Take a look inside and outside a race car.  How the drivers can pay attention to all of these parts while flying around the track at over 200 miles an hour - without smashing into one another or the wall - is truly amazing!

• Allstate 400 at the Brickyard
• Photo of the Offical Pace Car
• NASCAR 101: Facts, Rules & History
• NASCAR Glossary
• Hotwheels Car Games
• IMCPL Kids’ Info Guide: Brickyard 400
• The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis: NASCAR Artifacts

Take Note! The Eagle Branch will be closed on Sunday, July 27 due to the Brickyard 400 race. Sunday library service will be available at Central Library, as well as at the Glendale, Lawrence, Nora, Pike, Southport, Warren and Wayne branches.

Emmy is trying so hard to be good.  Her parents are busy jet-setting all over the world in search of money and status while Emmy is left home alone with her cold and distant nanny Miss Barmy.  Still, Emmy tries to be good.  No one at school seems to like or care about Emmy either - not one person in the classroom seems to notice she exists at all.  And yet Emmy STILL tries to be good.  “She did her homework without being told. She ate all her vegetables, even the slimy ones. And she never talked back to her nanny, Miss Barmy, although it was almost impossible to keep quiet, some days.  She really was a little too good. Which is why she liked to sit by the Rat.  The Rat was not good at all . . .”   The rat is Emmy’s classroom pet. He isn’t cute or cuddly, in fact, he’s a nasty little beast!  Emmy can sometimes relate to the rat, because some days, she’d like to be a nasty little beast too!

One day, when the rat bites Emmy, she finds that she can actually hear what he is saying.  As if the rat’s poor behavior isn’t bad enough, now she has to listen to his crabby complaining, pouting, bragging, and whining.  His rotten attitude is hardly worth having this startling new power!  Then the rat bites Joe, the class cool guy, who can now hear him speak too..and then he bites Joe again and shrinks him to the size of an action figure!  What’s a good friend like Emmy to do but offer to get bitten a second time and shrink too?  Now a few inches high, Joe and Emmy free the rat and begin an adventure to find out the source of the rat’s power and how to reverse it.  Along the way, they get help from some new four legged friends and get on the trail of Emmy’s own Miss Barmy, who isn’t just cold and distant, she’s evil too!

The rat is definately the star in this one.  His biting comments and sarcastic one-liners kept me laughing through the whole book.  Emmy reminds me of Molly Moon from Molly Moon’s Incredible Book of Hypnotism.  Both girls feel isolated, alone and unloved, yet they don’t give up on their search for friendship and happiness.

Read Chapter One

Like you, the four Penderwick sisters are on summer vacation.  Their Dad has rented a house in the Berkshire Mountains where he lets the girls roam on their own to seek out adventure.  Rosalind (the boss), Jane (the dreamer, novelist), Skye (the temperamental competitor) & Batty (the shy animal lover) find adventure next door when one of the girls spots a figure looking out the window of the fancy mansion next door.  The girls set out to investigate the mountain, the mansion & the figure in the window and find an unlikely kindred spirit. 

• Jeanne Birdsall’s Homepage
• Read an Excerpt from The Penderwicks
• Download The Penderwicks to an MP3 Player
• The Penderwicks on CD

A year ago we finally could start reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  I miss waiting for the next Harry Potter book to come out!  (Can’t wait for the Half Blood Prince movie - Nov. 21, 2008!)  I have read the books several times and I have watched the movies several times.  One thing I had never done was listen to one of the books on CD.  On a vacation driving from Indiana to Montana and back again, I listened to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  The guy who read the book was great!  He made the book fun again, even though I had already read it more than once.

The reader’s name is Jim Dale and he is the voice on all seven Harry Potter books.   He creates a new voice for each character.  In fact, Jim is the Guiness World Record Holder for a record 134 voices for a single audiobook, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.  If you don’t believe one person could make that many different voices, just try one of these CDs.  He is really amazing!  There is a hold line for each of these CDs, so you’ll have to use your library card to put yourself in line by making a request.  These are worth the wait.

• Listen to audio clips of Jim reading the Harry Potter Books
• Jim Dale Homepage
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone CD
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets CD
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban CD 
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire CD
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix CD
• Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince CD
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows CD
• IMCPL Kids’ Reading Guide: If You Like Harry Potter

Not to put you in a panic or anything, but you do realize, don’t you, that these long summer days are starting to slip by you?  Before you know it, August will be here and you will be setting your alarm and dealing with homework again.  Do you ever get really frustrated with your homework, especially when there is no one at home that knows how to help?  If you do, I have some really good news for you!

The library has internet tutoring you can get to from your home computer.   You can get help seven days a week from 2:00 pm to 10:00 pm.  It’s free, it’s safe and it’s easy.  From your home computer go to Live Homework Help.  Use your library card number and PIN to get connected with a tutor who will talk to you in controlled chat about Math, Science, English, or Social Studies.  Tutors can help with homework from grades 4-12.  If you don’t have a library card, talk to your mom or dad about getting a library card.  If you need homework help before you have a library card, just go to your library branch - you can use Live Homework Help on the computers at your library branch without your own library card.  You might have to wait in line to get a computer though, so don’t wait until the last minute!

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