Posted in Explore and Discover, kids, Parents and Teachers, Teens on August 21, 2018 at 6:00 am
by Caitlin Wheeler When I was young, I loved C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. I especially loved The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a book that, in my eight-year-old estimation, had everything a book ought to: quests, nightmares, magic spells, enchanted islands, warrior mermaids, anthropomorphized stars, and of course, dragons. Eustace Claren […]
Tags: adults, authors, booklists, books, dragon, dragons, fairy tale, fairy tales, fantastical, fantasy genre, kids, reading, speculative fiction, teens, tweens, YA
Posted in Explore and Discover on July 31, 2018 at 6:00 am
by Abra Cole In a remote vault located halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, nearly one million seed varieties are stored. The purpose of this immense storage facility is to ensure the genetic future of these seed varieties, should any of the gene banks located around the world suffer catastrophic disaster. One hundred […]
Tags: adults, books, DIY, family, food, garden, gardening, health, hobbies, kale, kale seeds, library hacks, onion seeds, onions, parents, saving seeds, seed library, seed saving, seeds, sunflower seeds, sunflowers, teens, tweens, urban farming
Posted in Explore and Discover, kids, Parents and Teachers on July 24, 2018 at 6:00 am
By Rachel Edmondson Even though I’ve lived in the Spokane area for over 15 years now, every once in a while I find out about something and wonder how I’ve never heard about it before. This past fall I learned about the Stonerose Interpretive Center. While it’s a bit of a drive from Spokane (about […]
Tags: adults, archeology, day trip, digging, fossils, kids, life sciences, microadventure, microadventures, parents, science, shale, STEM, Stonerose, teens, tweens
Posted in Explore and Discover on July 10, 2018 at 6:00 am
By Susan Goertz I’m a summer person. Long summer days swimming around the lake and baking dry on the shore, hiking through the woods, picking berries, tending to my ever expanding garden—it doesn’t get much better. After a long, sun-drenched day, I want to grill up something yummy and then collapse on the couch for […]
Tags: adults, booklists, books, cookbook, cookbooks, cooking, food, hobbies, movies, recipes, television, themed cookbooks, TV series
Posted in Explore and Discover on July 3, 2018 at 6:00 am
by Melissa Rhoades Have you heard of Horatio Nelson Jackson? This under-celebrated trailblazer was the first person to drive an automobile across the U.S. In 1903, ten years before Ford Motor Company began mass producing cars, Jackson left San Francisco in a two-cylinder Winton with a mechanic as his travel companion and a $50 bet […]
Tags: adults, advice, automobiles, booklists, books, family, hoopla, National Parks, nonfiction, parks and recreation, reading, road trip, road trip games, road trip tips, themed vacations, travel, travel guides, vacation
Posted in Explore and Discover on June 28, 2018 at 6:00 am
by David Wyatt I grew up out in the country and my school days were defined by early mornings and long bus rides. These long rides were filled with listening to music on the most skip-resistant portable CD player my allowance could buy while working on homework assignments at the last minute, and when I […]
Tags: adults, booklists, books, digital library, fiction, hoopla, instrumental, metal, metal music, music, nonfiction, PBS, post-rock music, prog metal, progressive metal, punk, rock music, science fiction, teens, The Great American Read
Posted in Explore and Discover on June 21, 2018 at 6:00 am
by Caitlin Wheeler June is LGBT Pride Month in the U.S. and the time to spotlight LGBTQ artists and thinkers who might otherwise remain hidden in library stacks. As you may know, the library is an advocate for equitable access and for fundamental values that include equity, diversity, and inclusion and the protection of intellectual […]
Tags: adults, booklists, books, fantasy, fiction, graphic novel, historical fiction, horror, LGBT, LGBTQ, literary, Pride Month, reading, romance, satire, science fiction
Posted in Explore and Discover on June 13, 2018 at 6:00 am
by Dana Mannino Need a great book for a cat lover? You might naturally gravitate towards heartwarming nonfiction works like Dewey and Strays, or others that include fictional cats. But have you considered a picture book? The cat lover in your life may have aged out of the target demographic for picture books years ago, […]
Tags: adults, cats, felines, nonfiction, parents, picture books, reading
Posted in Explore and Discover on May 3, 2018 at 6:00 am
by Nathaniel Youmans Since its inauguration in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets, National Poetry Month has become perhaps the single most-celebrated global literary phenomenon of the year, making April arguably the most literate month. Sorry November, your romantic dreariness and proclivity for wool socks and chai lattes are no match for the e […]
Tags: Academy of American Poets, adults, authors, books, community, Dakota Access Pipeline, Earth Day, Handfor Nuclear Site, Hanford, Kathleen Flenniken, Layli Long Soldier, Manhattan Project, National Poetry Month, poems, poetry, poets, Standing Rock Reservation, T. S. Eliot, teens
Posted in Explore and Discover on April 17, 2018 at 6:00 am
By Melissa Rhoades On January 1, 1818, the debut novel of a 20-year-old woman was anonymously published in London. Within five years, a second edition was released and a play based on the book premiered. The novel and its spin-offs remained a hit, and in 1910, Edison Studios created the first movie based on Mary […]
Tags: adults, books, fiction, Frankenstein, Frankenstein. Frankenstein's monster, Frankenstein's bicentennial, kids, Mary Shelley, medicine, movies, overdrive, reading, science, science fiction, technology, teens, tweens, YA