APRIL/MAY LIBRARY NEWSLETTER



APRIL/MAY LIBRARY NEWSLETTER

[pic]

AUTHOR OF THE MONTH: MIKE LUPICA

[pic]

Mike Lupica is one of the most prominent sports writers in America. His longevity at the top of his field is based on his experience and insider's knowledge, coupled with a provocative presentation that takes an uncompromising look at the tumultuous world of professional sports. Today he is a syndicated columnist for the New York Daily News, which includes his popular "Shooting from the Lip" column, which appears every Sunday.

He began his newspaper career covering the New York Knicks for the New York Post at age 23. He became the youngest columnist ever at a New York paper with the New York Daily News, which he joined in 1977. For more than 30 years, Lupica has added magazines, novels, sports biographies, other non-fiction books on sports, as well as television to his professional resume. For the past fifteen years, he has been a TV anchor for ESPN's The Sports Reporters. He also hosted his own program, The Mike Lupica Show on ESPN2.

In 1987, Lupica launched "The Sporting Life" column in Esquire magazine. He has published articles in other magazines, including Sport, World Tennis, Tennis, Golf Digest, Playboy, Sports Illustrated, ESPN: The Magazine, Men's Journal and Parade. He has received numerous honors, including the 2003 Jim Murray Award from the National Football Foundation.

Mike Lupica co-wrote autobiographies with Reggie Jackson and Bill Parcells, collaborated with noted author and screenwriter, William Goldman on Wait 'Till Next Year, and wrote The Summer of '98, Mad as Hell: How Sports Got Away from the Fans and How We Get It Back and Shooting From the Lip, a collection of columns. In addition, he has written a number of novels, including Dead Air, Extra Credits, Limited Partner, Jump, Full Court Press, Red Zone, Too Far and national bestsellers Wild Pitch and Bump and Run. Dead Air was nominated for the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best First Mystery and became a CBS television move, "Money, Power, and Murder" to which Lupica contributed the teleplay. Over the years he has been a regular on the CBS Morning News, Good Morning America and The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour. On the radio, he has made frequent appearances on Imus in the Morning since the early 1980s.

His previous young adult novels, Travel Team, Heat, Miracle on 49th Street, and the summer hit for 2007, Summer Ball, have shot up the New York Times bestseller list. Lupica is also what he describes as a "serial Little League coach," a youth basketball coach, and a soccer coach for his four children, three sons and a daughter. He and his family live in Connecticut.

[pic]In his first novel for young readers, the author of "Wild Pitch" and "Bump and Run" tells the story of a 12-year-old Danny Walker, the smallest kid on the basketball court who's cut from the very travel team his father led to national prominence as a boy.

[pic]Pitching prodigy Michael Arroyo is on the run from social services after being banned from playing Little League baseball because rival coaches doubt he is only twelve years old and he has no parents to offer them proof.

[pic]Miracle on 49th Street

After her mother's death, twelve-year-old Molly learns that her father is a basketball star for the Boston Celtics.

[pic] Summer ball

Thirteen-year-old Danny must prove himself all over again for a disapproving coach and against new rivals at a summer basketball camp.

[pic] The Bat Boy

Even though his mother feels baseball ruined her marriage to his father, she allows fourteen-year-old Brian to become a bat boy for the Detroit Tigers, who have just drafted his favorite player back onto the team.

[pic] Million-Dollar Throw

| |Eighth-grade star quarterback Nate Brodie's family is feeling the stress of the troubled economy, and Nate is frantic because |

| |his best friend Abby is going blind, so when he gets a chance to win a million dollars if he can complete a pass during the |

| |halftime of a New England Patriot's game, he is nearly overwhelmed by the pressure to succeed. |

| | |

| |[pic] Safe at Home |

| |Playing baseball was the one thing that made twelve-year-old Nick Crandall feel at home until he found acceptance with adoptive|

| |parents, but he faces a new struggle to fit in when he becomes the first seventh-grader ever to make the varsity baseball team.|

| | |

| | |

| |[pic] Hero |

| |Fourteen-year-old Zach learns he has the same special abilities as his father, who was the President's globe-trotting |

| |troubleshooter until "the Bads" killed him, and now Zach must decide whether to use his powers in the same way at the risk of |

| |his own life. |

| | |

| |[pic] Hot Hand |

| |In the wake of his parents' separation, ten-year-old Billy seems to have continual conflicts with his father, who is also his |

| |basketball coach, but his quiet, younger brother Ben, a piano prodigy, is having even more trouble adjusting, and only Billy |

| |seems to notice. |

| | |

| | |

| |NEW BOOKS IN A LIBRARY OR BOOKSTORE NEAR YOU! |

| |[pic] The Beyonders by Brandon Mull |

| |Jason Walker has often wished his life could be a bit less predictable--until a routine day at the zoo ends with Jason suddenly|

| |transporting from the hippo tank to a place unlike anything he's ever seen. In the past, the people of Lyrian welcomed visitors|

| |from the Beyond, but attitudes have changed since the wizard emperor Maldor rose to power. The brave resistors who opposed the |

| |emperor have been bought off or broken, leaving a realm where fear and suspicion prevail. |

| | |

| |[pic] Slog’s Dad by David Almond |

| |The ineffable nature of grieving and belief inspires a tender, gritty, and breathtaking work of graphic storytelling from the |

| |creators of The Savage. |

| | |

| |"Slogger, man," I said. "Your dad’s dead." |

| |"I know that, Davie. But it’s him. He’s come back again, like he said he would." |

| | |

| |Do you believe in life after death? Slog does. He believes that the scruffy man on a bench outside the butcher shop is his dad,|

| |returned to visit him one last time. Slog’s friend Davie isn’t so sure. Can it be that some mysteries are never meant to be |

| |solved? And that belief, at times, is its own reward? The acclaimed creators of The Savage reunite for a feat of graphic |

| |storytelling that defies categorization. Eerie, poignant, and masterful, Slog’s Dad is a tale of astonishing power and |

| |complexity. |

| |[pic] Angel: A Maximum Ride Novel by James Patterson |

| |Heartbroken after her best friend and soul mate, Fang, leaves her flock, Maximum Ride begins to believe the evil scientists |

| |trying to convince her she needs to save the world, and that Dylan, the newest member of her flock, is her perfect mate. |

| | |

| |[pic] How Lamar’s bad prank won a Bubba-sized trophy by Chrystal Allen |

| |Thirteen-year-old Lamar Washington is the maddest, baddest, most spectacular bowler ever at Striker's Bowling Paradise. But |

| |while Lamar's a whiz at rolling strikes, he always strikes out with girls. And Lamar's brother, Xavier the Basketball Savior, |

| |is no help. Xavier earns trophy after trophy on the basketball court and soaks up all of Dad's attention, leaving no room in |

| |the house for Lamar's problems. |

| |So Lamar starts hustling at the local alley with bad boy Billy Jenks. When one of their schemes goes awry, Lamar ends up |

| |ruining his brother's shot at college and wreaking havoc on every relationship in his life. Can Lamar figure out how to mend |

| |his broken ties, no matter what the cost? |

| | |

| |[pic] Tall Story by Candy Gourlay |

| |Andi is short. And she has lots of wishes. She wishes she could play on the school basketball team, she wishes for her own |

| |bedroom, but most of all she wishes that her long-lost half-brother, Bernardo, could come and live in London where he belongs. |

| | |

| |Then Andi's biggest wish comes true and she's minutes away from becoming someone's little sister. As she waits anxiously for |

| |Bernardo to arrive from the Philippines, she hopes he'll turn out to be tall and just as crazy as she is about basketball. When|

| |he finally arrives, he's tall all right. Eight feet tall, in fact—plagued by condition called Gigantism and troubled by secrets|

| |that he believes led to his phenomenal growth. |

| | |

| |[pic] Benjamin Franklinstein by Matthew McElligott |

| |While working on a science fair project, a Philadelphia school boy discovers both a secret laboratory in his basement and |

| |Benjamin Franklin, who has been in suspended animation for more than 200 years, and who comes to life after receiving a jolt of|

| |electricity. |

| | |

| |[pic] Bird Lake Moon by Kevin Henkes |

| |Mitch is spending the summer at Bird Lake after his parents separate, and Spencer and his family have returned to the lake |

| |where Spencer's brother drowned, and as the boys spend time together, each of them begins to heal. |

| | |

| |[pic] The Trouble with May Amelia by Jennifer Holm |

| |May Amelia Jackson captured readers' hearts in the Newbery Honor Book Our Only May Amelia. Now, after over ten years, Jennifer |

| |Holm is bringing this beloved character back in a beautiful way. The Trouble with May Amelia is a gorgeously written story |

| |that's as heartbreaking as it is funny. |

| |May Amelia lives in pioneer Washingon State in 1900, and she just can't act the part of a proper young lady. Working a farm on |

| |the rainy Nasel River isn't easy - especially when you have seven brothers and a Pappa who proclaims that Girls Are Useless. |

| |May Amelia thinks she may have finally earned her father's respect when he asks her to translate for a gentleman who's |

| |interested in buying their land and making them rich. But when the deal turns out to be a scam, Pappa places all the blame on |

| |May. It's going to take a lot of sisu - that's Finnish for guts - to make things right. |

| |[pic] Words in the Dust by Trent Reedy |

| |Zulaikha, a thirteen-year-old girl in Afghanistan, faces a series of frightening but exhilirating changes in her life as she |

| |defies her father and secretly meets with an old woman who teaches her to read, her older sister gets married, and American |

| |troops offer her surgery to fix her disfiguring cleft lip. |

| |[pic] Signal by Cynthia DeFelice |

| |Upon meeting Campion, a girl with cuts all over her body who declares that she is the child of aliens, Owen is taken aback, |

| |especially when she asks for his help in creating a signal in a field that will tell her alien family exactly where she is on |

| |the planet so that she can be picked up. |

| | |

| |TOP TEN BOOKS AT MSN |

| |#1- Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins |

| |#2-Cover-up by John Feinstein |

| |#3-Reaching for the Sun by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer |

| |#4-The hunger games by Suzanne Collins |

| |#5-The crossroads by Chris Grabenstien |

| |#6-The lost boy: a foster child’s search for the love of a family by David Pelzer |

| |#7-Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins |

| |#8-Revenge of the Wannabes by Lisi Harrison |

| |#9-Travel Team by Mike Lupica |

| |#10-The boy who dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti |

| | |

| | |

| | |

| | |

| | |

| | |

| | |

WEBSITES OF THE MONTH:

Mashpedia. com

(From School Library Journal)

[pic]

Joyce Valenza Ph.D

[pic]Mashpedia: A Real-Time Encyclopedia

April 7, 2010 Thanks to ResearchBuzz, I just discovered Mashpedia.

[pic]

The real-time encyclopedia dynamically aggregates and categorizes content from a wide variety of portals and feeds. 

My search, "Haiti earthquake," let to a very useful results page which included:

• definitions

• Wikipedia articles

• YouTube videos

• a live Twitter stream

• news links from a nice variety of sources

• images from a variety of sources

• blog posts

• Google books

• websites

• most recent and most popular Digg links

Reaching beyond a tool like Wikipedia, a Mashpedia search yeilds a mashy, dynamic, social-networky, trending, one-page big picture view of basic content, media and recent developments.

And in true ReadWrite-style, users may comment on and add links to existing content.

The Mashpedia editors explain what the tool is NOT:

It's not a Search Engine: Mashpedia provides articles for specific topics such as concepts, subjects, personalities, events, places, companies, products, etc., but not for more broader, unspecific searches.

Examples of specific topics (that are good for you to look for on Mashpedia)

Cloud Computing   |   Sao Paulo   |   Mark Zuckerberg   |   Rafael Nadal   |   Iphone   |   Greenpeace   |   World War II

Examples of broader searches (that you should better search for on Google, Bing, etc.)

'coldplay lyrics'   |   'apartments in chicago'   |   'download iphone apps'   |   'paris hotels prices'

It's not the old-fashioned type of Encyclopedia: Mashpedia does not maintain large archives (neither phyisical or digital) of information.

And they explain what it aims to be:

Mashpedia aims to serve as an effective medium for acquirement of this newly possible reality knowledge on any given topic, providing a full scope of substantive, factual, fresh and real-time information and content for millions of topics and themes.

Mashpedia aggregates multiple web feeds (streams of content from different sources) into structured articles about specific, encyclopedic terms, historic events and popular individuals, groups, organizations, large companies and so on (actually most terms present in the English version of Wikipedia).

Happy Reading!

Mrs. Shook

[pic]

The images of nebulae, galaxies, the planets and other astrophysical objects in an a. All one needs is a broad-band connection and a guide to the best astronomical photos on the Web. You need to obtain the former, but Jupiter Scientific, through its Virtual Amateur Astronomer® the latter. Explore the Universe virtually through the power of the Internet!

(Because images open in a new window, be aware that they may pop up behind your browser.)

(Most images involve a sizeable amount of memory and require high-speed access to the Internet.)

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download