Spotted on campus

I'm pretty sure my infamous love of Halloween is well-established at this point. I'm just glad I'm not alone - students and faculty really brought it this year! There were scary, funny, classic, clever and alarmingly realistic costumes, and not a sexy cop in the bunch. Great job - we all celebrated the holiday in style and nobody got detention or had to borrow a sweatshirt. Here are some willing victims who allowed me to share their photos in the name of All Hallows'.

Ms. Goldsby is the sweetest Medusa ever!

Mr. Lemieux celebrates the underdog as Charlie Brown.

Ms. Walsh gives a nod to her profession as Mother Nature herself.

Emma and Josh are very serious about being Minions.

Maria's Captain America will save the world, or at least AP Latin.

Abby's very realistic getup made me want to send her to the nurse's office.

Drew is a brave, brave sailor.

Annabelle is going to a sock hop after school!

And finally, my own dear sweet sixth graders, who took first prize in their category in the pumpkin decorating contest - not easy to do when you're trying to keep your pink mustache on straight.

Cook! (and then eat it somewhere else, of course)

Below is a post that appeared around this time last year, but I'm moved to point out that for the first instance in my life, and for the last time until the year 79,00-something, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah fall at the same time.

I love Thanksgiving, a truly American holiday we can all celebrate. I won't clutter up this post with an explanation of what it's like to be an ethnic minority during a holiday everyone seems to celebrate except you, nor will I detail that the "religious freedom" the Pilgrims were seeking did not really move them to extend it to anyone else once they got here. Rather I will remind myself that the freedom I have to celebrate Hanukkah exists at least in part because of their struggle, and give thanks that I live in a nation where I can say these kinds of things mostly without fear of reprisal. So, Mayflower voyagers, I lift my festive glass of cranberry juice in your honor, and will eat my turkey with *latkes this year.

The library has a surprising collection of cookbooks. We like to have a little bit of everything here, and while the culinary selection is by no means comprehensive, it is delightful in its way. Some of the titles are historical in nature: The Medieval Cookbook; The Seasonal Hearth: The Woman at Home in Early America; something a little older still with Cooking in Ancient Civilizations; and a long-time library favorite - Cooking with Shakespeare.

Others are of regional or ethnic interest: Foods of Peru, Chile and Cuba; The World Religions Cookbook; and Culinaria France, with its gorgeous photographs and informative essays. We also have books for those of you only starting to experiment: Now You're Cooking or How to Boil Water might be just the thing for the kitchen-uninitiated. More experienced? Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the classic by American treasure Julia Child, is waiting quietly on the shelf for you to discover.

If you're more into thinking about it than actually doing it, we've got books for you too. In Defense of Food, an Eater's Manifesto, will make you think carefully about what you're putting in your body; Eat, Pray, Love lets you live vicariously through Elizabeth Gilbert as she ventured around the world and did all three; and - I'm saving the best for last here - M.F.K. Fisher's collected essays The Art of Eating is among my top five favorite books in the library, the first thing I checked out and took home when I got here.

However you spend your Thanksgiving holiday, you're going to eat something at some point. Why not take a moment to reflect on it? Vow to make next year's feast even better by helping to cook it, or at least offer a thoughtful appraisal of where it came from and why it matters.

*You didn't hear this from me, but Manischewitz boxed potato pancake mix makes a very fine latke, with the addition of a little fresh onion, if you don't have time or patience for all the shredding and squeezing.  NOT THAT I WOULD KNOW, OF COURSE.

House of Hades

is here. Get your name on the waiting list for Rick Riordan's latest!

Oh, the shame!

So. here's a trend that's probably long overdue: librarians anonymously confessing their secret library sins. Might surprise you - children's librarians who don't like Harry Potter. Shushing librarians who get caught talking so loud the patrons shush THEM. Otherwise upstanding souls who eat in the stacks. Librarians with books so overdue they're not allowed to check things out anymore. See? We're just like you.

So . . . what's my particular sin? What dark secret lurks in the 200s of my heart? I'LL NEVER TELL, although I will admit a couple of things on my bedside table might be a day or two overdue. Gawk at the infractions of my fellows instead on this Tumblr of library confessionals. (Also, I do have a public library card, for the record. Also one to Ringling College and to the University of South Florida. Maybe my secret is that I'm a library-card addict?)

Popping up just for you!

It's Pop-Up Library Day, and I've already had my first customer. I also already have a wait-list for House of Hades which arrived fresh in the mail this morning. It's on a one-week checkout and there are four people on the list already, so step right up and make your wishes known.

Library to go

The library is experimenting with bringing the books to you - just like an old-fashioned bookmobile, but more hyperlocal - it's Pop-Up Library time! This week during middle school lunch the library will have a cart of hot titles and a barcode scanner ready to go in a corner of the cafeteria. Step right up, choose a favorite, and off you go with your prize.

The most wonderful time of the year

It's not Christmas - it's Halloween of course! No one loves Halloween more than Miss Mandel. To that end, this year I decorated. This is actually a little out of character for me - I don't usually "decorate" per se as much as I just find books in a certain category and make a nice display: banned books, cookbooks for Thanksgiving, basketball books for March Madness, you get the idea. This is for two reasons - I don't like to spend book money on decorations, and I always feel like people might not want to take the books if it means poking around in my nice tabletop display.

This year I found the perfect solution to both problems: I spent $2 on fake cobwebs and I made displays that are very easy to take apart. Books are arranged by genre: vampires here, ghosts there, witches over yonder, generally scar books down that way. Come in and check them out before I take them all home and read them myself!

Ha! Made you look!

For all of you who are visiting the blog for the first time, since I just pointed it out to you during 9th and 10th grade database training - hi! Thanks for stopping by.

In the weeks to come I'll be sharing a new and improved Reference Question of the Fortnight contest, a completely new contest related to Banned Book Week, advice on our ebook collection, how to create bibliographies and citations in our databases, and other great stuff. So keep coming back - if I know you're reading, I'll be sure and keep the quality coming.

Upcycled

As you know, to fit into our smashingly renovated new interior, I removed, or "weeded," as we say, about 2000 books from the library collection. Many of these were duplicates or were things that I have replaced with electronic versions - if you want the whole story, try this. In any case, I've frequently been asked where old books go when their time is up. Some of them were given to interested faculty and students, some came home with me, many were sent to needy schools in developing parts of the world to help other learners. Some did not find a natural home . . . until now! Mr. Madres' 3-D art class used some of the remaining books in innovative ways, including taking the pages and rolling them into components for sculptures like the one seen here. Come visit these old books in their new guises - maybe you'll be inspired to make your own creations.

Fries with that shake?

I was at a loss for something clever and informative to write about today when this little gift landed right in my lap. I could go on at length about social phenomena, the importance of spontaneity in the education process, suggestibility and peer pressure, or even the benefits of light exercise in the middle of the school day, but I'm just going to let the video speak for itself. Thanks, Andrew!

My funny Valentine

Everyone knows Valentine's Day means love. Or does it? Today we take a moment to consider the real meaning of the word romance, and free it from its customary pink-frosted lace-edged prison. So, dictionary.com defines it as:

1. a novel or other prose narrative depicting heroic or marvelous deeds, pageantry, romantic exploits, etc., usually in a historical or imaginary setting.

2. the colorful world, life, or conditions depicted in such tales.

3. a medieval narrative, originally one in verse and in some Romance dialect, treating of heroic, fantastic, or supernatural events, often in the form of allegory.

4. a baseless, made-up story, usually full of exaggeration or fanciful invention.

5. a romantic spirit, sentiment, emotion, or desire.

Well, we've got that. For example, if you're mathematically inclined, try Flatland: A Romance in Many Dimensions. We've got it on the shelf with a spine, or electronically if you like your romance to be digital. Want something historical? Sit at King Arthur's Round Table. Feel like the distaff side is underrepresented? Try Marion Zimmer Bradley's now-classic Mists of Avalon. Don't know what "the distaff side" means? Go back to dictionary.com! We've also got videos, too: try Cocteau's cinematic masterpiece La Belle et La Bête and see where Disney got his idea for Beauty and the Beast. 

And what about the good saint himself? If you're curious about the legend of St. Valentine, we have Butler's Lives of the Saints. If you're really a history buff, you'll go all the way back to the Roman feast of Lupercalia instead - check the 937's.

Pulling weeds

The future is now, and it's here. Over the last few weeks I have added almost 500 new electronic books to the library catalog, including many important reference titles. Giant stacks of reference books, like the 30-volume Encyclopedia of World Biography, have been converted to electronic titles accessible anytime, anywhere and by unlimited numbers of users, simply by using the library catalog and clicking on the live link.

It's true that I am a little sentimental about taking these old friends off the shelf, and I will miss seeing their colorful covers and comfortingly thick spines each day. But I will not miss dusting them, shifting them, inventorying them, and other aspects of physically managing huge paper books.  I'm enchanted by the prospect of being able to use all the information contained within wherever and whenever I like, and I predict students will be even more charmed by the citation tools that are available - no need to hand-key all that bibliographic info!

Just like weeding a garden is necessary to maintain its health and productivity, we must occasionally weed the library too. These books will go to other needy schools in faraway places and the space on the shelf will be reassigned to a wonderful new collection of CDs and DVDs on everything from philosophy to history to religion to art. So don't be sad! Visit the library catalog instead and see just what kind of terrific, useful things you can find to do your Civil War paper from your bed at 3 a.m. on a Sunday.

It's fun to help in the library!

The library is always happy to have help with things like shelving books, putting stickers on DVDs, making displays - even folding paper to make book sculptures. Community service hours are available, and you'll feel so good that you'll be as happy as this kid (although probably not quite as handsome, if I do say so myself.)