Memphis Reads

Ashley Roach celebrates
WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS by Shel Silverstein

Every child loves the silly and hilarious poems Shel Silverstein concocted and sold by the million, but it is not until adulthood that one realizes the dark absurdity and brilliance of short poems about eating your baby sibling, or making a true and serious mess of the kitchen, or the tragic and mysterious disappearance of three men flying in a shoe.

He was a performer as well as a writer and his performances of his own poems are not to be missed, though strange and offsetting - he liked to growl and squeak and sing song rather than simply read. Silverstein, like Maurice Sendak, understood that children are not innocents, but are just as complicated and interested in dark and dreamy things as adults are - and he wrote to that aspect in children and adults. No wonder he was loved mightily, and frequently challenged.

Ashley Roach, Central Library

Labels: Banned Books Week

Laura Salehi celebrates
MY SISTER’S KEEPER by Jodi Picoult

I read My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. It was thought-provoking by raising the question of what you would ask one of your children to sacrifice in order to save the other. I am thankful to not be in that position in real life; it's hard enough to try to treat your children fairly since they either can not or should not be treated exactly the same all the time.

Laura Salehi, Bartlet Library

Labels: Banned Books Week

Twan Jones celebrates
THE COLOR PURPLE by Alice Walker

The Color Purple was a very intense book to read. It dealt with a wide range of topics, from incest to homosexuality, and it showed the resolve and strong will of a young woman who struggles to survive her circumstances. Celie had the ability to rise above the situations in her life, despite all the things that she had gone through.

Twan Jones, South Branch Library

Labels: Banned Books Week

Wang-Ying Glasgow celebrates
LIFE AND DEATH IN SHANGHAI, by Nien Cheng

This was a banned book in China and I am sure this book would never get published in the first place. I read it in 1989, when I first came to America. I couldn’t put it down. I wanted to meet this author. Her story was one of the many sad stories of the injustice and inhumanities done to so many Chinese during the Cultural Revolution!

I remember this was one of the first books I read and truly felt how free it is to be in America and how fortunate I am to be able to read it because I knew English.

Wang-Ying Glasgow, Central Library

Labels: Banned Books Week

Jason Sharp celebrates
LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding

This classic story about children that form their own society after crashing on a desert island has inspired several other forms of media,including the TV show Lost and the popular YA series The Hunger Games. The book has suspense, action and drama with great character development.

Jason Sharp, Whitehaven Library

Labels: Banned Books Week

Memphis Reads had such a great response from staff members who wanted to talk about banned or challenged books that we will finish Banned Books Week with three reviews each day until October 1st.

Labels: Banned Books Week

Robert Bain celebrates
INVISIBLE MAN, by Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man, published in 1952, by Ralph Ellison, became an instant classic as a work of fiction that chronicles a nameless narrator’s journey from a Southern Negro college to the urban center of Harlem, New York. While perhaps one of the best narrative depictions of the ever present racial ambiguities facing black society in both the South and the North it is also both a Southern and Northern unambiguous depiction of the precarious experience for blacks by other blacks.

Robert Bain, Randolph Branch Library

Labels: Banned Books Week

Beth celebrates
BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA by Katherine Paterson

This book is on the top 100 banned books listed by ALA. I remember reading it around the 4th grade and loving it! When Leslie and her family move to rural Virginia, she meets Jesse. Although from different backgrounds, they become friends and together they build an imaginary kingdom, Terabithia, in the woods. The trouble is that they must use a rope swing to get to Terabithia. When Jesse is gone, Leslie tries to go by herself and that is where the sadness for Jesse and the reader begins.

For a youngster like myself in the 4th grade, it was hard to imagine losing such a great friend. I cried for Leslie and for the pain Jesse went through. Amazingly this is NOT why the book is banned--but for using profanity, vulgar language, offensive language, or swear words. People also believe the book “promote[s] witchcraft and violence.” Others “have said that the book would ‘give students negative views of life,’ ‘make reference to witchcraft,’ show ‘disrespect of adults,’ and promote an ‘elaborate fantasy world that they felt might lead to confusion.’” Really? I remember none of that--just the friendship of two kids and the special world they created. As an adult this book has lessons that stuck with me and I encourage others to read it and let their imagination grow.

--Beth, Cordova Branch Library

Labels: Banned Books Week

Mary Seratt celebrates CATCH-22, by Jospeh Heller

This was the first book I read as a teenager that seemed to confirm what I was beginning to suspect, that is, that bureaucratic institutions often behaved in ways that were irrational, but that they could justify as being rational through circular reasoning. I didn’t have the vocabulary for this as a teen, but the concept made a lot of sense to me. It definitely colored my thinking and ideas about morality. It was a relief to find that someone else had noticed that bad people often profited at the expense of others and that doing the right thing was often perceived as wrong--or at least foolish. It made me think about what really is right, and wonder how I would react when I encountered the inevitable moral dilemmas of life.

-- Mary Seratt, Central Library

Labels: Banned Books Week

Wayne Dowdy celebrates
THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, by Mark Twain

I have read this book often during the course of my life and each time I learn something new about the world I live in. As a child I identified with Huck’s outsider status and was thrilled by the adventures he and Jim experienced floating on the river. For years I dreamed of building my own raft and taking it downtown so I could escape down the Mississippi and disappear into the Indian Territory. As a young adult I was shocked at the racist cruelty inflicted on the runaway slave Jim, even by his friends Huckleberry and Tom Sawyer. Like Huck, I ignored the evil embedded in the adventure story the first time around.

When I read it again through an adult’s eyes I realized that Twain was exposing, and even ridiculing, slavery. In many ways Jim is the most intelligent and human of the book's characters and it is through him that we learn how wicked slavery truly was. The reader is not the only one who discovers this fact. Huck eventually comes to the conclusion that his friendship with Jim is far more important than the guilt he feels for undermining slavery by helping Jim to escape. When he decides he’d rather go to hell than betray Jim, Huckleberry Finn not only condemns racism and slavery, he also celebrates the triumph of simple human kindness over a barbarous institution.

-- Wayne Dowdy, Central Library

Labels: Banned Books Week

During Banned Books Week, Memphis Reads will dedicate one post each day to stories from library staff highlighting a banned or challenged book. The feature will be called “Celebrate the Freedom to Read.”


Kay Due celebrates
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, by Harper Lee

The Civil Rights Movement was “coming of age” at the same time I was in the 1960s. Because of the horrors unveiled on the nightly news (children being burned in churches; women and children being hosed down in the streets and demonstrators being dragged off of buses and beaten senseless, or worse), I was just coming to the realization that there was true evil in this world.

I first read “Mockingbird” during those teenage years. It was an eye-opening experience. I was lucky – I had adults around me who were not afraid to let me read books challenging the status quo. What I discovered was: a warm, funny story about growing up in a small Southern town, but also a story of racism and intolerance based on the need to feel “better than” someone else. In that very ugly part of the story, I found a hero: Atticus Finch is a character that every child (and adult) could learn from and aspire to become. Why would anyone ban a story about tolerance and bravery and ethical behavior?

Kay Mills Due, Central Library

Labels: Banned Books Week

A private school student operates a secret library of banned books from a school locker. Click to view full article

A Missouri school board ends a school ban of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. Click to view article

Banned Books Week takes place September 24 - October 1, 2011. The American Library Associations's Banned Books Week webpage is a great resource for events and the history of banned or challenged books.

What's the difference between a banned or challenged book?

According to the American Library Association:
"A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. As such, they are a threat to freedom of speech and choice." -Link

Click here to find Banned Books Week events at the Memphis Public Library.

*image from www.abffe.org*

Labels: News and Notes

Nonfiction/Memphis History

Wayne reviews MEMPHIS AND THE SUPER FLOOD OF 1937: HIGH WATER BLUES by Patrick O’Daniel (History Press, 2010)

In January 1937 the Mississippi River overflowed its extensive system of levees, displacing over 200,000 Mid-Southerners, destroying homes and farms in a 12 state area and causing 137 deaths. The Ohio and Mississippi Valley flood of 1937 was the worst flood ever visited upon the region and one of the most devastating natural disasters in American history. Despite these grim statistics the 1937 flood has receded in popular memory to such a point that virtually no one remembers it ever took place. Fortunately this has been corrected by librarian and historian Patrick O' Daniel in his book Memphis and the Super Flood of 1937.

In the first decades of the 20th Century flooding increased dramatically in the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys which convinced the Army Corps of Engineers that it was only a matter of time before a “super flood” would lay waste to the region and this belief only increased after the Mississippi Valley flood of 1927. The widespread devastation caused by the 1927 flood led to the passage of the Flood Control Act of 1928 which “committed the federal government to a definite program of flood control, including new levees, as well as floodways, channel improvements and stabilization and tributary basin improvements.”(29) The concerns that led to the passage of the 1928 flood control act became real when heavy rains saturated the region in the winter of 1937, causing the super flood many engineers and political leaders feared.

Because of its size and geographical location, Memphis played an integral role both in the relief effort and the development of a comprehensive flood control program for the lower Mississippi Valley. As O’Daniel argues, the “events of 1937 not only mark a turning point in flood control but also illustrate the importance of Memphis regionally and nationally. Memphians played vital roles during and after the superflood by providing the major regional refugee sanctuary and convincing the reluctant federal government to introduce new flood control to the region. Of course other cities played important roles, but a careful examination of sources shows that Memphis was the most influential city in the region during the disaster.”(129) Responsibility for these efforts fell to the powerful Democratic political machine led by E. H. Crump. Governmental resources were quickly overwhelmed by the onslaught of thousands of refugees and the rising flood waters in the north Memphis industrial area. The situation was made much worse when Crump dictatorially snatched control of relief efforts from Mayor Watkins Overton because he doubted his ability to adequately handle the crisis. The ensuing chaos momentarily weakened the city’s response to the disaster but, as the author persuasively argues, “Ed Crump remained politically secure as his machine emerged from the flood and the subsequent fight for flood-control funding.”(130)

Although by necessity O’Daniel focuses on the politics surrounding relief and subsequent flood control, he never ignores the human misery caused by the high waters or the selflessness of many Memphians to relieve that misery. We are indeed fortunate that O’Daniel has rescued from oblivion one of the most significant events in the history of Memphis and the United States with his important book.

Wayne Dowdy, History and Social Sciences Department

Labels: Memphis History, Nonfiction, Reviews by Wayne Dowdy

Fiction/African American

Darletha reviews MAMA RUBY by Mary Monroe (Kensington, 2011)

Ruby Upshaw is the seventh daughter of a preacher who resides in Shreveport, Louisiana in the mid-1930s. Ruby’s parents think she is an obedient, upright child, but like her six older sisters, Ruby has been leading a double life since she was eight years old. By the time she is fifteen, she will have enough street smarts to do whatever it takes to survive.

Ruby lives in a racially-segregated town, but she isn’t afraid of anybody. As a plus-sized girl with a tough demeanor and pocket knife for protection, people are afraid of her! Ruby becomes best friends with Othella, the daughter of a well-known prostitute. Despite her father’s warnings to stay away from “fast” girls, Ruby sneaks out of the house regularly to party at Othella’s house and fool around with several boys.

Ruby’s promiscuity leads to the secret birth of a child she is forced to give away. In subsequent years, Ruby and Othella relocate to New Orleans in hopes of finding good husbands, but what they actually encounter are a series of bad situations involving prostitution and violence. Ruby lives a difficult life that will transform her into a bitter, vengeful woman with a score to settle.

This novel is the prequel to Monroe’s debut novel, The Upper Room, which continues the Ruby/Othella story. What stood out to me the most were Ruby’s endless misfortunes, which I might better understand when I read The Upper Room. Readers who love plenty of drama and a candid writing style will enjoy this book. There are many, many shocking moments, so there is plenty to talk about with friends or in a book club setting. As a bonus, the hardback version contains discussion questions and brief interview with Monroe.

Labels: African-American Fiction, Reviews by Darletha Matthews, Women's Fiction

Join us for Books and Beyond next week.

"Elvis left his indelible stamp on the city he loved. Learn more as the Commercial Appeal’s Michael Lollar and Rosemary Nelms discuss their award-winning new book, Elvis Presley's Memphis."

Labels: Library Events and Programs

Beth wanted to share a "super cool" library featured in the September 6th edition of Shelf Awareness. It's called the "Book Booth: America's Littlest Library," located in Clinton Corners, NY. Click here to view the library


September is National Library Card Sign-up Month, when libraries all over the nation remind families that "the most important school supply of all" is a library card. Visit the flickr group, Show Us Your Library Card, for great photos of people and their library cards.

Labels: News and Notes

Mark your calendars and visit the Central Library on September 28, 2011. There will be a special screening and discussion of the award-winning documentary,Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women.
(Click the image to visit the film's website.)

There is still time to read the book :

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women, by Harriet Reisen.

Browse the catalog for copies the classic novel and more.

Labels: Library Events and Programs

Fiction/Gay and Lesbian

On July 21st, "What's Your Flavor?" session participants learned the history of Gay and Lesbian fiction.

Andrea reviews BASKETBALL JONES by E. Lynn Harris (Doubleday, 2009)

Aldridge (A.J.) Richardson and Drayton Jones have been together for seven years. Unfortunately, since Dray is a married, big-name NBA player with a child on the way, his relationship with interior designer, A.J., must stay quiet. When AJ starts getting blackmailing phone calls and letters, threatening to expose his and Dray’s secrets, he panics. Who is close enough to AJ to know all his secrets and his personal life?

Readers will find out friends can be enemies and wonder, which secrets should be exposed or which need to be left quiet?

Andrea King, Poplar-White Station Library

Labels: Gay and Lesbian Fiction, Reviews by Andrea King

The tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is Sunday. In tribute to those who lost their lives and those who survived, we recommend our newest books listed below:

Labels: News and Notes

Fiction

Christina reviews CONFESSIONS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT by Laurie Viera Rigler (Dutton, 2007)

Modern woman Courtney Stone ends up time traveling into the world of Jane Austen. She becomes Jane Mansfield, a single 30-year-old who must cope with “unwashed bodies” and sewing. She also must get married or become the bane of her mother. A suitable suitor and best friend come along for the ride.

This was a really good book. Simple to read and not really graphic, it provided a lot of humor and description. It was interesting to learn how Courtney’s thoughts began to merge with Jane’s. The description of life during that time period was also very intriguing. I really enjoyed the book and it was a fast read overall.

Recommended websites:
http://janeaustenaddict.com/
http://bloomsbury.com/Laurie-Viera-Rigler/authors/10189
http://janeaustenaddict.com/videos - If you get a chance to look at these snippet videos – they are really cute!

Christina Barnes, Business/Sciences Department

Labels: Chick Lit, Fiction, Reviews by Christina Barnes

Fiction not your cup of tea? Do you enjoy narrative non-fiction but you're not sure what to read next? Join us for What's Your Flavor? in September.

Labels: Library Events and Programs, What's Your Flavor Series

Fiction/Young Adult

Becky reviews THE CHRISTOPHER KILLER: A FORENSIC MYSTERY by Alane Ferguson (Sleuth/Viking, 2006)

Cameryn Mahoney is seventeen and lives with her dad and grandmother (Mammaw) in the small town of Silverton, Colorado. Her mom? Well, her mom's another story and Cameryn isn't sure it's one she's ready for. One thing she is ready for is her future. She knows she wants a career in forensic pathology. Her dad, Patrick Mahoney, just happens to be the County Coroner and when he hires her to be his assistant, it's a dream come true --until her second case.

A famous psychic, Dr. Jewel, has predicted that the "Christopher Killer" has struck again, and that the body of a girl will be found on a path leading to water. Cameryn doesn't believe in psychics -- she believes in science, but when a body is found just as Dr. Jewel predicted and it turns out to be Cameryn's friend Rachel, murder becomes personal.

Cameryn vows to let Rachel's body speak and to follow the clues to her killer. Who can she trust and who will believe a young and inexperienced girl? Will the new deputy in town be on her side in finding the guilty? What does he know about her mother and why don’t her dad and Mammaw want her talking to him?

Becky Graham, Central Circulation Department

Labels: Mystery, Reviews by Becky Graham, Young Adult

This one-day event is sure to be music to the ears of book lovers across the Mid-South: Bookstock


At Bookstock you can meet Memphis-area authors, attend morning or afternoon workshops designed to help get your book published, or watch a live taping of WYPL's Book Talk program.

Registration is required for workshops. Visit the official Bookstock webpage for details.