TAG: reading

Great digital reads for the whole family

Posted in Explore and Discover, kids, Parents and Teachers, Teens on November 6, 2018 at 6:00 am

BY SHERI BOGGS November marks the time of year when families start drawing close together for the holidays and you know what that means—lots and lots of family time! The Library District has got you covered with several themed booklists available on our popular OverDrive digital platform. FOR KIDS We Are Family is a handpicked […]

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School’s back in session: Picture books about new challenges and situations

Posted in Parents and Teachers on October 9, 2018 at 6:00 am

By Rachel Edmondson There are lots of wonderful books about first-day school jitters. But reading to our kids about school doesn’t need to end once school is in full swing. There are all sorts of challenges that kids face while at school. Fortunately, there are also a wealth of books that cover situations such as […]

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Banning books silences stories: Reading a banned book celebrates your intellectual freedom

Posted in Explore and Discover, Parents and Teachers on September 18, 2018 at 6:00 am

by Melissa Rhoades Banned Books Week is September 23–29 this year. Did you know that at least 23 of the 100 books on PBS’s 2018 Great American Read book list have been banned or threatened with a ban in the United States? That means almost one-fourth of America’s “most loved” novels (as determined by popular […]

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Five early reader books for fall school jitters

Posted in kids, Parents and Teachers on August 28, 2018 at 6:00 am

By Sheri Boggs Most of us are not strangers to the first-day-of-school jitters—that delightful mix of excitement and mild apprehension as one contemplates what the new school year might bring. Such a feeling has as much to do with our need to connect and to be accepted as it does with our need to discover […]

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How to Identify a Dragon

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 […]

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The Great American Read book list and half-time report

Posted in Explore and Discover on August 7, 2018 at 6:00 am

By Dana Mannino Welcome to August—a great time for a summer reading half-time report! My summer reading looked a lot like this picture of the bulletin board in the staff break room at Spokane Valley Library. Waaaay back in May, PBS launched The Great American Read, a program that highlights 100 of America’s beloved books […]

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Happy birthday! A reading list of authors with July birthdays

Posted in Explore and Discover on July 17, 2018 at 6:00 am

By Nathaniel Youmans This one’s for all you with summer birthdays out there. Remember in grade school when the end of the year drew close and teachers, even more burnt out than their students, had to find some reason (summon the willpower) to celebrate students with summer birthdays? At my elementary school, this took the […]

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Road trip! The quintessential American vacation

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 […]

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Adult reads for Pride Month

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 […]

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The dog days of summer

Posted in kids, Parents and Teachers on June 19, 2018 at 6:00 am

By Sheri Boggs The hot, sticky afternoons of late July through August are typically called “the dog days of summer.” It’s that time when the only thing that sounds good for dinner is gazpacho, and even grownups without kids consider a visit to the neighborhood swimming pool. To the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, the dog […]

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