Try The Dave Robicheaux Series This Summer

James Lee Burke was born in Houston, Texas, in 1936 and grew up on the Texas-Louisiana gulf coast.  Burke's work has been awarded an Edgar twice for Best Crime Novel of the Year. He has also been a recipient of a Breadloaf and Guggenheim Fellowship and an NEA grant. His novel The Lost Get-Back Boogie was rejected 111 times over a period of nine years, and upon publication by Louisiana State University press was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

His best known reoccurring character is Iberia Parish detective, Dave Robicheaux.  It’s a miracle Robicheaux is still a cop.  He doesn’t follow the rules, takes the law into his own hands, and always becomes personally involved in his cases.  Robicheaux sees the depravity in the world but he also sees beauty and grace.

Burke’s novels have been read by millions all over the world and he is often on the top of the New York Times’ bestseller list.  The most recent Robicheaux title, The Glass Rainbow had great reviews.  Library Journal stated, “It takes an incredible writer to keep fresh an 18th novel featuring a character that refuses to change, but Burke does so with what may be one of the best in his Robicheaux series.”  This title along with many of Burke’s others are available in the library’s adult fiction section.

Two of the Robicheaux novels are also movies.  Heaven’s Prisoners with Alex Baldwin as Dave Robicheaux and In The Electric Mist with Tommy Lee Jones playing Dave can both be found on DVD.

The Heart and the Fist: the education of a humanitarian, the making of a Navy SEAL by Eric Greitens

Men who want to become Navy SEALs must survive Hellweek where "a man enters a new world with the aim of becoming something greater than he once was. He is tested once, twice, three, four, five times, each test harder than the last. Then comes the most difficult test of his life. At the end of the week, he emerges a different man. He has met the hardest test of his life, and he has passed or he has failed."
Eric Greitens became a Navy SEAL after time spent in college and extensive travel to countries where he worked in refugee camps and helped the poor.
359.9 GREITENS can be found in the new book section.

Real Simple - the magazine that tries to make life easier

Check out these two websites brought to you by Real Simple Magazine:
www.realsimple.com/lastminutetravel for last minute travel help. It's not too late to book a summer vacation.

www.realsimple.com/kidactivities Try one of these 29 fun ideas to keep kids entertained during those long summer days.

Browse our magazine collection  and check out back issues of Real Simple Magazine for 14 days or read the current issue at the library and enjoy our air conditioning.

Dennis Warner

Musician Dennis Warner returns to the library on Tuesday, June 28 at 10:00am.  Dennis is a favorite with kids and families, combining well-known songs with his recorded songs from "Beads on One String."

This program is free and open to the public.

NOTE: Pre-school Storytime will not be held on June 28 in order for the library to present Dennis' performance.

Water for Elephants

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen was a 2006 bestseller and since, a favorite read for book clubs.  It is the story of Jacob Janowski’s life with the circus.  It is billed as a romance but Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the crude, poor, and dirty circumstances in which Jacob finds himself. The animals are underfed and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the "menagerie" and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, creep who slaps people around because he enjoys it. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into unreality and brutality often have Jacob as their object.   Jacob spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hung-over. But he is the self-appointed “Protector of the Downtrodden”, and... he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August's wife. Not your usual romance.

The book was a page turner and now it is a movie starring Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon.  If you have read the book and have also seen the movie let us know how you think they compare.  The library has the book in the adult fiction section.

Dad's Eye View: 52 family adventures in the Twin Cities by Michael Hartford

In the Introduction, 'a good outing should include surprises not only for the kids but also for the dad.'
Next time you are in the Twin Cities, pick up this book and select a few attractions that you have never seen before. Como Park Zoo, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota History Center and the Science Museum of Minnesota are just a few places where families can enjoy a fun weekend south of the Iron Range.
Find the book in the new book section under: 977.65790454 HARTF

Today at 5 pm, The Science Museum of Minnesota will be visiting the library with science experiments. Everyone is invited!

Relaxing Summer Reads

We suggest the books by Jennifer Weiner as great summer reads.  According to her website, Jennifer was born in 1970 on an army base in Louisiana. She grew up in Connecticut and graduated with a degree in English literature from Princeton University in 1991. She worked as a newspaper reporter in central Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Philadelphia until the publication of her first novel in 2001, and has been a full-time fiction writer ever since.

Her books include GOOD IN BED (2001); IN HER SHOES (2002), which was turned into a major motion picture starring Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette and Shirley MacLaine; LITTLE EARTHQUAKES, (2004); GOODNIGHT NOBODY (2005); the short story collection THE GUY NOT TAKEN (2006); CERTAIN GIRLS (2008), the sequel to GOOD IN BED, BEST FRIENDS FOREVER (2009); FLY AWAY HOME (2010), and THEN CAME YOU, which will be published in July, 2011. She is also the co-creator and executive producer of the ABC Family show State of Georgia, premiering June 29th, 2011.

THEN CAME YOU is the tale of four women and a baby and how they form a very modern family.  Her publicity states “With her laugh-out-loud humor, startling tenderness, and spot-on characterizations, Jennifer once again takes readers into the hearts and minds of women everywhere in a timely story that intertwines themes of class and entitlement, surrogacy and donorship, parental rights and the definition of motherhood.”

You will find Jennifer’s books in the adult fiction section.  There are also some titles on compact disc for those that prefer to listen.

Website: Museum of Science, Boston

Brought to you by the Best of the Scout Report, The Museum of Science has many podcasts on a variety of topics including: Emerging technologies of 2011, billion dollar bats, addicted to chocolate and more. You may want to check out their videocasts as well: Comparing recent quakes, spitting cobras take aim as well as building a better light bulb.

Exploring Bright Ideas

The Minnesota Science Museum will be at the library on Thursday, June 23 from 5-6:30pm.  Kids get the opportunity to explore the physical world with great hands-on experiments with fun objects (think slinky!).

The program will also look at some famous inventors and how their creations helped the world.  The program starts with a 30-minute presentation, then the kids will break out into groups for 30 minutes of science fun.

As always, this program is free and open to all.

The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen

Detectives Jane Rizzoli and Barry Frost investigate a near decapitation and murder of a woman on a rooftop in Chinatown. When the victim’s GPS is found with addresses of a retired detective and a martial arts academy in Chinatown, the death is soon connected to the Red Phoenix Restaurant murders nineteen years before where the cook kills a waiter, diners, and then himself.

The Red Phoenix murders soon become a curse when the disappearance of two daughters of the victims happens before and after the attack. Whether the cook committed suicide or was murdered is the question as Rizzoli and Frost reexamine the evidence from 19 years ago. Quick images of a dark thing not quite human are glimpsed first by Detective Frost moving across the roof out of the Red Phoenix building; then by Rizzoli, as she stumbles across an assassin in a nearby alley. Ancient Chinese legends, an ancestral sword, and missing girls lead to an electrifying conclusion.

Ninth in the Rizzoli and Isles series, The Silent Girl, delivers a satisfying mystery with plenty of action and suspense.  The television series Rizzoli and Isles starts season 2 on July 11 on TNT.
Website: http://www.tessgerritsen.com/

SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an elite Navy SEAL sniper by Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin

Howard E. Wasdin says: "When the U.S. Navy sends their elite, they send the SEALs. When the SEALs send their elite, they send SEAL Team Six, the navy's equivalent to the army's Delta Force - tasked with counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, occasionally working with the CIA. This is the first time a SEAL Team Six sniper's story has been exposed. My story."
Read all about the Navy SEALs from the selection process of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training, the Marines' Scout Sniper School and some of the missions of SEAL Team Six.

All the way from Africa!

African Drums

Wednesday, June 15th at 10 a.m.

The theme of this program is "Mi na mi fe" or "Children let's play." Come dance and drum with the Titambe West African Dance Ensemble! African dance and drumming helps bring people together, and is a lot of fun!

They will teach specific dances (including rhythms and live music), dancing and drumming techniques, related dress and cultural protocols of West Africa, and the interrelationship of drum rhythms and dance.

Please note that the performers will be in West African costume. This Kids' Stuff program is sponsored by the Arrowhead Library System and the Hibbing Public Library.

Book Lover's Tea

Thursday, June 30, 2011
2:00 - 3:30 p.m.
Hibbing Public Library Dylan Room

The Friends of the Library wish to invite everyone to this book lovers event.  Tea and cookies will be served at 2:00 p.m. and there will be a book review from 2:30 until 3:30 p.m.

The participants will be discussing The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Borrows.  In 1946, writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a stranger, a founding member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. And so begins a remarkable tale of the island of Guernsey during the German occupation, and of a society as extraordinary as its name.

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of  Eat, Pray, Love said, "I can't remember the last time I discovered a novel as smart and delightful as this one, a world so vivid that I kept forgetting this was a work of fiction populated with characters so utterly wonderful that I kept forgetting they weren't my actual friends and neighbors. Treat yourself to this book please — I can't recommend it highly enough."

Pick up a copy of the book at the library, Wildwood Books, or Howard Street Booksellers and join the Friends for tea and conversation.

Buried Prey by John Sandford

Workers, demolishing an old house close to downtown Minneapolis, find the bodies of two girls wrapped in plastic under a concrete basement floor. Lucas Davenport goes back in time to one of his first cases in this book about two girls missing since the mid 1980s.

Lucas describes his first contact with the job: “In his first year as a cop, working patrol and then briefly, as a dope guy, he’d felt that he was learning things at a ferocious rate: about the street, life, death, sex, love, hate, fear, stupidity, jealousy, and accident, and all the other things that brought citizens in contact with the cops.”

John Sandford has a website: http://www.johnsandford.org/

Great Summer Reading!

Travis Chase is the hero in Patrick Lee’s first two paperbacks.  “The Breach” published in 2009 introduces Chase, Paige Campbell and the secret organization she works for called Tangent, and some radically advanced technology not created by human hands.  Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review and stated, “It's all here: brilliantly devious enemies; nifty, innovative gadgets and weaponry; hang-on-to-your-hat action; and razor-sharp plot twists aplenty."

The main characters appear again in the recently published, “Ghost Country”.  Someone is about to commit murder on a global scale and one of the alien gadgets shows Travis and Paige the future, featuring a desolate, dead world.  Lee’s second novel has betrayals and assassination wrapped up with time travel in a science fiction thriller. 

Great summer reading!  Find both titles in the paperback section at the library.

National Air and Space Museum

According to the website: "The Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum maintains the largest collection of historic air and spacecraft in the world. It is also a vital center for research into the history, science, and technology of aviation and space flight, as well as planetary science and terrestrial geology and geophysics."
"The Museum has two display facilities. The National Mall building in Washington, D.C. has hundreds of artifacts on display including the original Wright 1903 Flyer, the Spirit of St. Louis, the Apollo 11 command module, and a lunar rock sample that visitors can touch. The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center displays many more artifacts including the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay and Space Shuttle Enterprise."

Visit the various Smithsonian Museums online, take a trip to Washington D. C. and enjoy an experience of a lifetime.

Native American Legends

Lori Pickell-Stangel of the McLeod County Historical Society, will bring stories and artifacts that bring out key themes about Native American legends, as well as the beliefs of native peoples.  This program is for children grades 4-7, but all are welcome.

The program will be in the children's room on Friday, June 10 at 3:00pm.  It is free.

Lost in Shangri-La: a true story of survival, adventure, and the most incredible rescue mission of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff

In Note to the Reader: “Near the end of World War II, a U. S. Army plane flying over the island of New Guinea crashed in an uncharted region inhabited by a prehistoric tribe.” A true adventure story: Three people survive the crash and must find their way through cannibals, the Japanese and down a mountainside. Badly injured, dehydrated and hungry, they travel through dense jungle to find help.

Well researched by Mitchell Zuckoff with interviews from the sole surviving American, find this book in the new nonfiction section under: 940.548 ZUCKO

Visit the Tweed Museum of Art

The Tweed Museum of Art located on the UMD campus has art for every age.  It houses a permanent collection of over five thousand objects that represent a wide range of cultures and histories.  It also hosts special exhibits.

Museum hours:
Tuesday - 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Wednesday thru Friday - 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday - 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Closed on Mondays and University Holidays

See their web site for more information:
www.d.umn.edu/tma