Book Bucket List | Academy Award Nominations... for movies based on books

Break out the champagne and $10,000 dresses, the Academy Awards are just around the corner!  The awards this year feature quite a few movies based on books.  Luckily, our libraries carry these titles, so you can find out what the original stories were like before they were made into the year's best films.

The film, Philomena, is based on the book of the same name follows the story of Philomena Lee, who was forced to give up her child for adoption in Ireland because she was unmarried.  Fifty years later, she joins forces with a journalist to find out what happened to her son.  This film is nominated for Best Picture and Best Actress for Judi Dench.  This book is available to our patrons from our Link+ system.

12 Years as a Slave by Solomon Northup was made into a movie this past year featuring some of the best acting, editing, and screenwriting of the year.  It's nominated for numerous awards including Best Picture.  It is the true story of Solomon Northup written by him in 1853.  Northup was living as a free man in New York, but was later kidnapped and sold into slavery in New Orleans.  The book is Northup's memoir of his experiences as a slave and what it took for him to reunite with his family.


Catching the Wolf of Wall Street by Jordan Belfort was made into the Wolf of Wall Street film by Martin Scorsese.  It's up for a ton of awards too, so everything will have some stiff competition.  This second book by Belfort was written after he spent two years in prison for securities fraud.  This book holds Belfort's reflections of what he did including all of the crazy illegal activities he partook in.

Learning | How about that weather?

This certainly has been a strange winter. Here in San Joaquin County, we are used to colder days, with rain and fog. After all, winter is supposed to be our wet season.

"Snow Roller," taken on January 27, 2014.
From Miranda Granche's photostream
 on Flickr.com. Some rights reserved.

While denizens of the San Joaquin Valley are enjoying unseasonably pleasant weather (but wishing for rain, because of the drought,) other parts of the United States are wishing they had a respite from the dreaded Polar Vortex.  So much snow and ice! You have seen it on the news, and in the social media. Even places that normally do not have freezing temperatures in the winter are getting snow.

A few days ago, one of my Facebook friends in Ohio posted pictures of a snow phenomenon I had never heard about: snow rollers. Some people call them snow tumbleweeds. 

If conditions are just right, the wind will make snowballs, all by itself. I found an article called "Mother Nature's snow balls" on one of SSJCPL's databases (EBSCO Host's Academic Search Premiere,) which explains that a combination of above-freezing temperatures and strong winds allow the softened snow to roll into balls.

"Snow rollers, snowballs made by the wind," 

from Duncan Rawlinson's photostream 
on Flickr.com. Some rights reserved.

You can read about snow rollers and other oddities of weather if you request the following title through SSJCPL's Link+ program:

Strange But True Weather, by Stacy B. Davids

You'll find a picture of a tumbleweed in The Cowboy ABC, by Chris Demarest.

Just Life | Your Appearance Matters

I recently read the following article; " When teachers favor attractive kids" on CNN. 

In a nutshell, it mentions that attractive kids have an easier time in school. As soon as I read the article, I forwarded it to my kid's teacher as a precaution.

We all judge people by their looks but my kid doesn't think so. " I am a tomboy mom, I don't care about my look," she tells me.

Do tomboys show up to school disheveled and untidy?

I have my job cut out for me. Let's hope she won't show up to her first job interview in her pajamas.

 

Here are a few books on this topic:

Wear this, toss that! : hundreds of fashion and beauty swaps that save your looks, save your budget & save you time

Oh no she didn't : the top 100 style mistakes women make and how to avoid them

Fashion 101 : a crash course in clothing

Signing off until next Monday- Panteha

Books On Film | Teen in '14 (The Maze Runner/The Book Thief)

The Maze Runner by James Dashner is the first book in a trilogy. A boy named Thomas wakes up in 'The Glade' surrounded by a giant maze with no memory of his past. Thomas, and the other fifty other boys, work to survive and protect themselves from the monsters that roam within it.

The movie adaptation is schedule to be released in September. It stars Dylan O'Brien (Teen Wolf) and Kaya Scodelario (Skins).

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is narrated by Death who tells the tale of a young foster child, her family, neighborhood, and the Jewish man hidden in her home in Nazy Germany during World War II.

The movie adaptation is schedule to be released in November. It stars Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson.

Covers courtesy of LibraryThing.

She's Crafty | Have You Ever Wondered?

Have you ever wondered how "they" make some of the common things we use every day? Or, have you ever wondered what you would do if "they" ever stopped making them? I know, my kids think I'm weird on that point, too. But, you never know when the apocalypse is coming and, I've learned how to make and do some interesting things by wondering about this. For instance, I can bake my own bread using sourdough as the leavening. I can, in theory, make my own cheese (well, I've made yogurt cheese before--and the yogurt!) And, I can make children's clothing that looks pretty good, if I do say so myself. I can even knit things that sort of fit, as long as it's a scarf (don't ask how my first sweater fit.) Well, along these lines, our blog about making books last week got me to thinking of paper.

Now that we'd kind of know how to make our own books, I thought, what about the paper? How would we make our own paper? The first thing I did was look up papermaking (make sure it's one word) in our library catalog.

There were some interesting titles:
Trash to treasure papermaking, by Arnold E. Grummer
Book making and papermaking, by Deborah Hufford (there's even one for kids!)
Papermaking techniques book, by John Plowman
Step by step papermaking, by David Watson 
The paper maker's companion, by Helen Hiebert


This list took us back to a publication date of 2000, and there were several older titles as well. A pretty respectable list for our library system, I thought. These will keep me busy for a while. I'll start with Trash to treasure paper making because that one will show me how to make recycled paper. That way, if the apocalypse never comes, I can at least be green. And, maybe being green will actually help with the apocalypse thing too...

Then, I expanded my search to Link + and hit the mother-lode of papermaking books! There were 174 "most relevant" titles! Some of the first few of these were:
Arnold Grummer's complete book of papermaking, by Arnold E. Grummer
300 papermaking recipes, by Mary Reimer
The encyclopedia of papermaking & bookbinding, by Heidi Reimer-Epp
The ergonomics of hand papermaking, by Peter Thomas
Papermaking for the first time, by Rhonda Rainey

Wow! Imagine recipes for paper--three hundred of them. I had thought some of the instructions I had seen in Trash to treasure papermaking looked kind of like recipes, and now here are so many I probably won't ever use them all!  I'm also intrigued by The ergonomics of hand papermaking. I'm not sure how this will affect my papermaking, but I'd better find out before I hurt something by not doing it properly!

Now that I have all this great information from the libraries to draw from, I think I need to figure out what kind of paper to make first. I mean, there seem to be many kinds of papers to make, and I have seen some of them. Some are so beautiful, you'd want to hang them somewhere, like art. Then, there are the papers in which you would wrap a very special gift. But, I think I'd like to start with some paper I can write on, preferably in as light a color as I can make it if I can't actually get white...you just never know about that apocalypse and when it might be coming.

If you have ever wondered whether it would be a good idea to make some common everyday thing like paper, leave us a comment and let us know about it. As you can see, we kind of like to be prepared.

Until next time, stay crafty, apocalypse or not ~ Kaye & Malia

Just Life | Too Tired To Read

Sometimes I have a hard time getting my child to read. Some nights she says, "Mom I am too tired to read."

So, we try to compromise and take turns reading. Although, I think I am still doing the majority of the nightly reading.

Last month, I came across these children books that are life savors. They are the perfect books for those nights that you don't have any energy to read a long book. 

They are full of funny, but grotesque facts. These books are published by the National Geographic Kids. Here are a few of these books:

That's gross!

Weird but true! 5 : 300 outrageous facts

Just joking 4 : 300 hilarious jokes about everything...

Kids really dig reading about yucky stuff. Here is an example of what you find in these books:

My daughter and I laugh uncontrollably reading funny factoids from these books.

I wonder if I look this like this Batfish when I use too much lipstick in the morning.
 

So, check out these great books on your next visit to your local library. Here is a link to other books by the National Geographic Kids:

National Geographic Kids

Signing off until next Monday- Panteha 

Books On Film | Teen In '14 (The Fault in Our Stars/The Giver)

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is a book about two teenager, both with a different form of cancer, who meet and fall in love while attending a weekly support group.
 

The movie adaption is schedule to be released in June. It stars Shailene Woodley, who will play Triss in Divergent.

The movie poster (right) was recently released to the public.

The Giver by Lois Lowry is about a twelve year old boy named Jonas who is chosen to be trained as the next "Receiver of Memory" of his perfect utopia society. The Reciever of Memory is responsible for holding all knowledge of the society before their conversion to "Sameness." 

The knowledge Jonas receives from "The Giver" (his predecessor) causes him to question whether the rules of "the Community" are the best way for people to live.

The movie adaptation is scheduled to be released in August. It stars Jeff Bridges, Alexander Skarsgard (True Blood), Meryl Streep, and Taylor Swift.

 

Covers courtesy of LibraryThing.