Picture from ANON: the J. M. Barrie Society   Sir James Mathew Barrie, 1st Baronet, is best known for creating the wonderful character of Peter Pan who first appeared in a play in 1904.  The full title was Peter Pan or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up.  Later titles included The Little White Bird or Adventures in Kensington Gardens (1902), Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), When Wendy Grew Up: An Afterthought (1908), and Peter and...

    The Lantern: A Novel by Deborah Lawrenson   New York : Harper, c2011 ISBN: 9780062049698   I used a library book from the local branch library!   Katherine loved this wonderful gothic suspense based in Provence France.  She gives it four stars.   SYNOPSIS:   Drawn to an older man, Eve embarks on a whirlwind romance that soon offers a new life and a new home–Les Genevriers, an old house...

Maurice Sendak at his Ridgefield, Conn., home with his German Shepherd, Herman, in 2006. Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times   From today’s NEW YORK TIME: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/books/maurice-sendak-childrens-author-dies-at-83.html   Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and...

  Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin   New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2011 ISBN: 9780307593917 Library copy from the local public library branch was used   Katherine just loved this book — a touching and honest look at family relationships.  What a great 5 stars!   SYNOPSIS: Follows the efforts of a Korean family to find the mother who went missing from Seoul Station and their sobering realizations when...

  Below Stairs: The Classic Kitchen Maid’s Memoir That Inspired Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey by Margaret Powell   New York : St. Martin’s Press, c1968 ISBN: 9781250005441 (hardback) Our copy came from the local public library.   Katherine gave it three stars for a book that seems to be a tell-all memoir.   SYNOPSIS: A kitchen-maid’s through-the-key hole memoir of life in the great houses...

  Show Dog: The Charmed Life and Trying Times of a Near-Perfect Purebred by Josh Dean   New York : ItBooks ; Enfield : Publishers Group UK [distributor], 2012 ISBN: 9780062020482 (hbk.) Our copy came from our local public library (nonfiction: 636.708110929)   Katherine gave this a four-star review (especially if you love dogs — but don’t tell her cats).   SYNOPSIS: Capturing the idiosyncratic world of...

  One of the wonderful things about working with a large library system is that we get to meet some wonderful authors.  And sometimes we video the visits for everyone who couldn’t come to the author visit.  So below is a video of Geraldine Brooks visit to one of our branches in the Cuyahoga County Public Library system (Cleveland area).   Geraldine was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2006 for her novel March. Her...