Hi!  This is Rachel Malay, director at the Port Library in Beloit. This week’s review is from our Youth Services Librarian, Mary Lou Heller.

Have you heard of Pete the Cat?  He is one of the current popular characters in Children’s literature, at least according to children.    All of Pete’s books have life lessons. For example, Pete the Cat’s Got Class tells about how Pete got his friend Tom to like and do well at math. Tom is having trouble adding and subtracting, but Pete is the classiest cat around, so teaching his friend should be no problem, right? As Pete says in one of his most popular books, “Buttons come and buttons go. But do we cry? Goodness NO!  We keep on singing.”

Pete the Cat books are written and illustrated by James Dean.  The illustrations are in bright colors with bold paint strokes.  James and his wife Kim left the corporate world to pursue their art, specifically illustrations of Pete.  They turned the pictures into stories about life that children love to read. 

The latest book just published is Pete the Cat and the Missing Cupcakes.  I can’t wait to read this latest story.  There is also a web site that children can do interactive things with Pete. You can find it at www.petethecatbooks.com

You can get the book reviewed here, which was Pete the Cat’s Got Class and the latest Pete the Cat and the Missing Cupcakes by James Dean, and more great titles to watch, read, listen to, or play with at the Port Library. This is director Rachel Malay, saying “Thanks for checking us out!”

Hi!  This is Rachel Malay, director at the Port Library in Beloit. This week’s review comes to us courtesy of our youth services librarian, Mary Lou Heller.

The library has been a busy place in the last couple of week.  Story Port and Port Tots have started again.  January 16th is a class for all the people who want learn how to download e-books, from 6-8 pm.  Also classic movie night is January 19th at 6 pm. The movie is She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.

I want to tell you about the series of books we just added to the library, Ivy & Bean is the first book. Ivy just moved to the neighborhood but Bean doesn’t want to play with her because she looks like a nice girl and that of course means boring.  Ivy doesn’t want to play with Bean either because Bean looks boring. Then one day Bean needed a place to hide to get out of trouble and ended up in Ivy’s yard. Ivy was pretending to be a witch.  Bean decides she is not so “nice” after all, Ivy decides Bean is not so “nice” either and a great friendship is born.

The next 6 books in the series tell of all the adventures Ivy & Bean have together. This is a delightful book for those who are just starting to read chapter books. The book includes lots of illustrations by Sophie Blackall. Ivy and Bean is written by Annie Barrows. She is a mom to two daughters just like Ivy & Bean.  She published the first Ivy and Bean book in 2006.  It was followed by 9 other books in the series.She has also written a book for adults: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. A novel for older children, The Magic Half, was published by BloomsburyUSA in 2008. Its sequel, Magic in the Mix, came out in 2014.

You can get the book reviewed here, which was Ivy and Bean  by Annie Barrows, and more great titles to watch, read, listen to, or play with at the Port Library. This is director Rachel Malay, saying “Thanks for checking us out!”

Hi!  This is Rachel Malay, director at the Port Library in Beloit. 

Coming up on Monday night (tonight!) January 16th after regular hours the library will be presenting a workshop on how to get free ebooks through the Port Library and the State Library of Kansas for free to your tablet, phone, computer, or e-reader.

Then on Thursday night January 19th from 6-8 PM is the next showing in our Classic Movie Series, this time it’s 1949’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon starring John Wayne. Free refreshments provided.

As the presidential inauguration day looms ever closer later this month it’s a great time to reflect back on the accomplishments of previous presidents. George Washington crossed the icy Delaware River in the dark. Abraham Lincoln saved the Union of the states during the civil war.  And President William Howard Taft got stuck in a bathtub.  Before you turn off your ears it’s true! Although never confirmed by the former president, he had several enormous bathtubs commissioned during and after his presidency to accommodate his larger than normal girth. If you’d like a visual chuckle about the not quite fictional incident be sure to check out President Taft is Stuck in the Bath by Mac Barnett, and illustrated by Chris Van Dussen in the Port Library’s picture book section. After getting stuck the president calls the Vice President, Secretary of State, Agriculture, War, Navy, Treasury, and Interior who all have differing and increasingly absurd ideas on how to get the president out of the bath. It is finally the president’s long-suffering wife who suggests maybe all assembled should put their muscle together and just pull.

​You can get the book reviewed here, which was President Taft is Stuck in the Bath by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Chris Van Dussen, and more great titles to watch, read, listen to, or play with at the Port Library at 1718 N. Hersey in Beloit.  This is director Rachel Malay, saying “Thanks for checking us out!”

Hi!  This is Rachel Malay, director at the Port Library in Beloit. 

Most of the time people think of the library as a quiet place.  Except when it’s not quiet, like story times, meeting old friends, and when noisy monsters come to eat the books.  Wait, that last part may have sounded a bit strange, but in The Not So Quiet Library by Zachariah Ohora that’s exactly what happened. Illustrated in bright paints with bold lines, the pictures in this book are nearly as noisy as the actions described.

Oskar is a small boy who can’t wait to go to the library with his Dad every Saturday.  Oskar brings along his brother, a golden furred teddy bear named Theodore.  But first, everyone stops by a bakery to get breakfast. At the library Oskar and Theodore head straight for the children’s department, while Dad climbs the stairs for the nap department. (The real librarian would like to stress: the nap department is purely fictional!) Oskar and Theodore have just settled down when a 15 foot tall, 5 headed monster comes crashing in trying to eat the books and being very noisy! Our two heroes can’t outrun Bob, Seymour, Winston, Pat, and Chuck (the names of the monster’s heads) so they are forced to feed them their saved breakfast doughnuts.  Everyone settles down for story time with the librarian, even monsters, and before long the monster is feeling much more himself.  Oskar and Theodore head home in the afternoon, and the librarian stays with the monster who has found himself a new job dusting the top of the tallest shelves in the library.

​You can get the book reviewed here, which was The Not So Quiet Library  by Zachariah Ohora, and more great titles to watch, read, listen to, or play with at the Port Library at 1718 N. Hersey in Beloit.  This is director Rachel Malay, saying “Thanks for checking us out!”

Hi!  This is Rachel Malay, director at the Port Library in Beloit. 

Happy New Year’s everyone! The library is closed today for New Year’s Day observed, but will reopen tomorrow at our regular time.

Christian novelist Janette Oke has been publishing inspirational fiction since the late 1970s, a staple on many a bookshelf.  Perhaps one of her most famous series is known by the first book’s title: When Calls the Heart. Set on the Canadian prairie in the heyday of western settlement in the late 19th century, this story follows Elizabeth Thatcher, high society woman turned frontier school teacher in the tiny town of Coal Valley. Life for Elizabeth becomes quite an adjustment, and when most of the men in town are killed in a mining accident the newly widowed women find their faith tested as they go to work themselves just to keep a roof over their head. Elizabeth perseveres, however, charming most everyone except Constable Jack Thornton of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Jack believes Elizabeth’s father has purposefully stationed him in the frontier prairie town just to protect Elizabeth.

The first book in the series was published in 1979, but now has been made into a TV series starring Lori Loughlin, Erin Krakow, and Daniel Lissing.  The library has the first three seasons, originally seen on the Hallmark Channel.  The TV series doesn’t follow the storyline of the books too closely, but fans of the original book series will still like a new take on a familiar setting and characters.
             You can get the DVD reviewed here, which was When Calls the Heart, seasons 1-3 on DVD, and more great titles to watch, read, listen to, or play with at the Port Library at 1718 N. Hersey in Beloit.  This is director Rachel Malay, saying “Thanks for checking us out!”