
Story Port starts 2 weeks from Monday. Story Port is the library’s after school reading and activity time for kids ages 5 through 5th grade on Monday afternoons from 3:45 to 4:15 pm. Call or stop by to sign your kids up. Sign ups also continue throughout the fall.
Although the library is filled with books of varying lengths and reading levels, some of the most fascinating books have hardly any words at all. If you’d like to stretch your brain in a different type of novel, try Here by Richard McGuire. In a series of pictures only very occasionally punctuated with captions, Here tells the story of one static place through most of known time.
Each page or box within a page has a date in the upper left corner, letting the reader know what time period to expect. The title page starts with a very simple scene in very simple drawings and muted colors, showing a living room with a sofa, window, and fireplace in the year 2014. Turning the page shows that a partially filled bookcase has been added, indicating someone is moving in. But the next page is a completely different, a living room from 1957 with busy wallpaper and a crib in the middle. Later on the scene changes to the outdoors in 1623, on the same spot with an overlaid box into the same location in 1957 within the same page. The book continues in this way, overlapping stories from different times on the same page.
In order to follow each storyline, the reader may need to concentrate on one time period at a time and read through the book several times. This is a book meant in length and some content for teenagers and adults.
You can get the book reviewed here 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!”