Celebrating Stanzas- National Poetry Month

Hello Fontana Regional Library patrons, Julia from JCPL here! Happy April! As some of you might know, April is National Poetry Month, a month long celebration of the prose that feeds your soul. Poetry is one of my absolute favorite genres to read, though for a long time I was scared of the genre on …

The Shortest Day

December. Short days, long chilly nights. As we drive to work in the dark, and drive home in the dark, we begin to wonder, will we ever see the sun again? If we feel this way in these modern, enlightened times, imagine how it must have felt millenia ago, when the sun seemed to struggle …

Libraries Rock this summer!

This summer the Summer Learning Program theme for children and teens is "Libraries Rock!" What a great way to think about libraries. They do rock, especially today, when the era of the silent library and the Shushing Librarian is firmly in the past. Mind you, most libraries offer quiet spaces for those who want or …

The Rise of the Verse Novel: Celebrating National Poetry Month

I loved poetry as a child. I read a lot of it, memorized some favorite poems, and tried to write my own (very badly, I must say). As I grew up, I wandered away from poetry for the most part, with a few notable exceptions -- John Donne and W. B. Yeats in particular. In …

Nonfiction for November

I have to admit, I choose fiction over non-fiction writing most of the time.  Since my life is non-fiction, my inclination is to “escape” some of the “fun” of politics, mass shootings, celebrity scandals, and cleaning up cat vomit. HOWEVER…sometimes the non-fiction is good enough to pull me in.  So I’ll share a couple of …

The Other Self-Help Section

The older I get, the less I know for sure. I’ve always prided myself on being a bookworm and looking to literature for all the answers, and the stacks of books at my house get pretty overwhelming sometimes. Being overwhelmed by my ever-growing reading list is a little counter-productive to my search for answers, so …

Picture books!

Occasionally, I have to meet new people. Even more occasionally (thank goodness), I will meet a new person who, upon learning that I work at a library, will say some version of, “I like books – if they have pictures in them!” They will then look at me expectantly with an expression of inane smugness, …

What I don’t know about Carl Sandburg

By MaryAnn What I don't know about Carl Sandburg would fill a whole library. Even though the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site  is within driving distance of my house, and even though I'm a North Carolina native, my knowledge of him is sorely lacking! I've actually been to his historic homesite in Flat Rock …

Anything But Poetry

By Loretta I had determined I would not write about poetry again this year, even though National Poetry Month is coming up April 1st.  People hear it from me all the time, so I thought I would do something different, something fun.  I played around with a few ideas, some subjects I enjoy and hoped others …