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Some picture books are not just pictures, oh, no. Picture books can be full of beautiful, wonderful words, sprinkled together in an art form. Please check out these new picture books (with and without words) through our Books-to-Go program!

I remember as a child reading picture books that had no words… I became the storyteller. My words filled the pages with language and sentences that I deemed fit to tell the story to go along with the pictures!

My imagination was being developed through my eyes as they searched the illustrations, taking a thorough glance at each tiny line in the drawing. Let your child have the opportunity to develop their imagination with this next book suggestion.

The first choice this month is “Field Trip to the Ocean Deep” by John Hare. A wordless picture book that brings imagination to life! Let your children embrace their imaginations through storytelling. Let the pictures guide them through the pages of this underwater adventure! There are details that need to be seen and told. I can just about picture their little faces as they turn the page to continue the story, in their own words!

My next recommendation is written by Michael Karg and illustrated by Sophie Diao, entitled “I Am The Wind.” The story is written as a poem; the illustrations add that little bit extra to engage the reader into the book. Wind blows through every country in the world; the wild animals that are included on each page enhance the words to the next level. Well written and illustrated greatly, this book is a must read!

Bringing more nature to our recommendation of new books, the next must-read title is “I Talk Like a River,” written by Jordan Scott and illustrated by Sydney Smith. This is a personal account from the author of his experience as a little boy who had trouble saying words. This story will bring a bit of understanding to children about bullying as well. The illustrations are well done and the story, well, the story is truly amazing. Kudos to the author for sharing his childhood experience with us, to help us understand the difficulty some kids face.  Check out this story today and share it with someone you care about.

“Mr. Brown’s Bad Day,” written by Lou Peacock and illustrated by Alison Friend, is a sweet story about Mr. Brown. He is ‘a very important businessman’ traveling through the pages as he shares his day with the reader. Mr. Brown never leaves his very important briefcase behind; it goes everywhere Mr. Brown goes. What do you suppose Mr. Brown keeps in his very important briefcase, hmmm? Well, check out this book and you will find out what a very important man, er, tiger, keeps in his very important briefcase, at the end of the story!

“I Am One, A Book of Action,” written by Susan Verde and illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds, is a lovely book for children to get up and get going to do something meaningful. Being kind, thoughtful and productive can lead to amazing results. This story is inspirational, a winner indeed!

Pamela Martinez is A.K. Smiley Public Library’s Youth Services Librarian.

“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.” Charles M. Schulz

A 9x13x2” baking dish is the only pan you’ll need to make every sweet recipe in Edd Kimber’s latest book, “One Tin Bakes.” For those of you who may not know, Edd Kimber is a British baker, food writer and the winner of the first Great British Bake Off competition. With this book, home bakers can create Raspberry Cheesecake Streusel Squares, Peanut Butter Brookies, ‘Coffee’ Coffee Cake with an espresso swirl and Apple Fritter Monkey Bread. Chocolate lovers will want to bake Edd’s favorite dessert which is the Milk Chocolate Caramel Sheet Cake sprinkled with nuts and cacao nibs.

On the front cover of this next book is a gorgeous layer cake adorned with multi-colored pastel buttercream flowers. It is the first of many luscious cakes, cupcakes and other confectionery delights in Bobbie Lloyd’s “The Magnolia Bakery Handbook.” Bobbie is very generous with her baking knowledge, instructions and techniques so that home bakers have opportunity to achieve picture-worthy results. Besides dazzling cakes, there are cookies, bars, muffins, scones and a chapter dedicated to banana pudding. This pudding chapter features flavor combinations such as Java Chip Banana, Peanut Butter Banana, Salted Caramel Banana and Pumpkin-Gingersnap Banana Pudding.

Of all desserts, ice cream is the most accommodating and versatile. A scoop dresses up a serving of cake or pie, it can be sandwiched between two cookies, doused in hot fudge or scooped into a waffle cone and eaten before it melts. Rose Levy Beranbaum, who is best known for her baking books, has confessed her love for ice cream. “Rose’s Ice Cream Bliss” contains the secrets for making super creamy frozen desserts without any iciness. Flavors range from the familiar vanilla, strawberry, and cookies ‘n’ cream to the more unique Silken Black Sesame, Turkish Stretchy and Red Wine ice cream.

If you were to choose a favorite pie, what would it be? Maybe it’s banana cream, chocolate silk, pecan or deep dish apple. Whichever it is, you’ll find it and many more within Ken Haedrich’s book, “Pie Academy.” Creating a pie crust from scratch is easy when you follow Ken’s clear and simple directions provided at the beginning of the book. There are 25 different pie doughs including crumb crusts that don’t involve a rolling pin. For variety, there are 255 delicious fillings to place in those crusts like Blueberry-Peach, Maple Pumpkin, Sour Cream-Blackberry, Snickers Brownie and Coffee Mud Pie with an Oreo Crust. January 23^rd was National Pie Day. However, it’s not too late to make one in honor of Pi Day on March 14^th.

These cookbooks and many more are available now through A.K. Smiley Public Library’s “Books-To-Go” program. For more information, please visit our website at www.akspl.org or call 909-798-7565.

We can very well set a mood of peace out of which a system of peace can be built.

– Martin Luther King Jr.

This week we observe the birthday and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The renowned civil rights leader, who would have been 92 on January 15, was assassinated in 1968, at the height of his mission to further the civil rights cause through nonviolent resistance.

Over half a century later, the legacies of Dr. King, and those of his contemporaries of the civil rights era, continue to inspire us. This recently published scholarship is one example: “The sword and the shield: the revolutionary lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.” It is one of the hundreds of books to be found in the New Book collection at A.K. Smiley Public Library.

Author of the book, Peniel E. Joseph, a professor of history and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the University of Texas at Austin, writes a dual biography of the two leaders. He sets out to prove that Americans’ understanding over the years of the beliefs and actions of the men has become distilled. Joseph asserts that we have come to think of King solely as a pacifist, and of Malcolm X, strictly as a radical revolutionary. He concludes, however, that each man, both of whom were assassinated at the age of 39 within three years of each other, came to learn from the other’s philosophies and incorporated aspects of each other’s beliefs into his own. Joseph asserts, “Martin Luther King Jr.’s promotion of nonviolence as a shield against Jim Crow’s denial of black citizenship sharpened Malcolm’s political sword, placing them in a conversation that would continue beyond death.”

A young contemporary of Dr. King’s, Congressman John Lewis of Georgia’s fifth district, who died last summer after serving 33 years in the House of Representatives, saw King as one of his teachers in the practice of nonviolence in his civil rights work. A biography of Lewis by Jon Meacham, published in 2020, “His truth is marching on: John Lewis and the power of hope,” is also included in Smiley’s New Book collection. Lewis met King at age 18 and eventually became one of the “Big Six” leaders of the groups who organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at which King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, calling for an end to racism.

Both Lewis and King were contemporaries of Rosa Parks who, with her refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala. bus in 1955, has become an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She collaborated with civil rights leaders, including King, and her one act of resistance led to the bus boycott by Montgomery’s Black community. Continuing for over a year, the boycott eventually lead to the federal court decision which deemed bus segregation as unconstitutional. “Rosa Parks: in her own words,” also available in the New Book section of the Library, is a fascinating and intimate look at Parks’ experiences. Until very recently her personal papers, kept by the Library of Congress, were unavailable to the public. Take a look at the small volume and see, in her own handwriting, what she thought and felt about the era in which she lived, as well as one hundred photographs from her collection.

If the subject of the civil rights movement and these titles interest you, you may want to investigate another biography of Malcolm X currently out, “The dead are arising : the life of Malcolm X” by Les Payne, and the DVD documentary, “John Lewis : good trouble,” released last year and directed by Dawn Porter. You’ll find both here at Smiley Library.

If you’d like to check out these or other Library items, you may do with our Books to Go curbside service. For more information please visit our website, www.akspl.org, or call 909-798-7565.

Although we were sorry to have to close our doors to the public once again to help slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus, Smiley Library still has plenty to offer thanks to our electronic library and curbside Books to Go service. We also want you to know that we are taking every precaution when it comes to your health and safety.

Using Books to Go is simple and safe. Just place your holds from the Library’s catalog either online at www.akspl.org, via email at circ@akspl.org, or call us at (909) 798-7565. Once we get your requests, we’ll gather them up and give you a call to schedule a pick-up time. When you arrive, ring the doorbell and one of our friendly employees will bring your books outside and place them on the table by the Vine Street entrance. Please remember to wear a face covering and maintain a six-foot distance when collecting your materials.

When you’re ready to return your items, they can be placed in the book return boxes outside the library. We empty the book drops several times a day, and everything goes directly into a four-day sanitization process.

One of the questions we get asked most often is “How can books be sanitized?” After all, we can’t dunk them into a bucket of boiling water and hang them in the sun to dry. We’ve done our research and learned that a combination of cleaning, sanitizing, and quarantining is the best way to go. Every time we collect items from the book drops, the covers are sprayed and wiped down with a hospital-grade disinfectant. They then go into plastic bags and get a blast of Lysol spray before being sealed up for two days.

After two days, we open the bags and set the books upright on sterile tables in a closed room with the pages fanned out, where they remain for another two days. Finally, they get wiped down to remove any residue from the disinfectant. It’s a laborious process, but we’re committed to doing what we can to help stop the spread of COVID-19.

We encourage you to make use of Books to Go, and also to check out our eLibrary at www.akspl.org/elibrary/. Here, you will find downloadable eBooks and audio books, access to popular magazines, the New York Times Online, the Redlands Daily Facts, streaming movies, resources to help with job searching, databases for students’ projects, and much more – all from the comfort and safety of your own home. Just make sure to have your library card barcode number on hand.

All of us at Smiley wish you a happy and healthy 2021. These are difficult times, but we’ll get through this together as a community.

Jennifer Downey

Principal Librarian, Adult Services

Teens, it’s 2021!

I’m not sure if this calls for exclamation points or just an extra-large sigh of relief, but either way, I’d like to start by flinging on you a fistful of the glittery hope that automatically accompanies the start of a brand new year.

Nice! You look…shiny. Please, take a moment to glow in the light (fingers crossed) of 2021.

Now that we have that out of the way, I must make a confession: I’m not a fan of New Year’s resolutions. But I WILL take any excuse for a little ol’ fashioned introspection and self-improvement, and the following books are great for that kind of thing. Since you’re already covered in hope/glitter, it seems like a good time to tell you about them, but I’d also totally understand if you’d rather comfort-read Harry Potter for the tenth time instead. If 2021 has you feeling ambitious, here are some new-year, new-you YA books to consider.

Teens, look me in the eye. Do you dread public speaking? When your teacher announces an oral presentation do you grow a pit in your stomach the size of…well, a podium? “Thank You for Coming to My TED Talk: A Teen Guide to Great Public Speaking” by Chris Anderson, one of the brains behind the TED idea-sharing series, may be just what you need to transform your speech-making cold feet into confidence. Anderson provides readers a blueprint for how to deliver effective and engaging communication, whether you’re on stage or in an interview chair. In order to be a slicker speaker in 2021, you have to start somewhere…and I humbly suggest chapter one of this book.

I think it’s safe to say that all beings who experienced 2020 could benefit from reading my next recommendation: “Rewire Your Anxious Brain for Teens: Using CBT [Cognitive Behavior Therapy], Neuroscience and Mindfulness to Help You End Anxiety, Panic and Worry” by Debra Kissen. Not only does this book provide actionable strategies and exercises for understanding and reducing anxiety, but its tone feels genuinely supportive. It’s almost like your best friend—who knows and adores you inside and out—is secretly a psychology prodigy and wrote a book just for you. I especially love how the book explains the biology of anxiety, demystifying it in a way that takes away some of its power.

If you’re itching to reclaim your life and allow anxiety to move through you rather than define you (I LEARNED THAT FROM THE BOOK!), “Rewire Your Anxious Brain for Teens” is ready to help.

This next title goes out to the tweens. Written by Matthew Syed, England’s former number-one table-tennis player, “You Are Awesome: Find Your Confidence and Dare to be Brilliant at (Almost) Anything” is a book that breaks down the process of, well, becoming awesome at stuff. Because of his own experience being an average-kid-turned-ping-pong-wiz, Syed doesn’t buy into the “natural talent” hype. Instead, he shares his strategies for training your mind and self for greatness. While this includes practice, resilience, grit, and exploiting your neuroplasticity (wait…I’m giving away too much…read the book!), Syed maintains the results are worth it, even if you don’t “succeed” in the ways you originally imagined.

So there you have it, a trio of YA titles to help you ring in the New Year, self-actualization style…you party animal! And sorry about the glitter. Even if you don’t check out any of these books in 2021, I am wishing you fistfuls of optimism and silver linings (of the non-glitter variety), and happy reading in the days ahead.

All three of these YA titles are available using A.K. Smiley Public Library’s Books to Go Program. Details for placing your requests are available at www.akspl.org, or call 909-798-7565.