New Movies!

Chance spent the morning today putting new movies on the shelf!

There are new Christmas movies for the whole family, new Captain America and X-Men movies, and several new releases such as Jersey Boys, 22 Jump Street, Planes : Fire & Rescue and If I Stay.

 

I plan on taking a couple home myself!  Come on in and see what we have.  We are now checking out movies for 7 days.  

Brain Teasers

I recently put a brain teaser on the desk above my computer for patrons to work on. 

It is simply a spiky ball in a cage and the object is to remove the ball from the cage.  Friday afternoon, the Minter family came in after school and got to competing over who could be the youngest person to complete the puzzle.

First, Erik (13) finished the puzzle.  Then Ben (11) was able to complete it.

Since they finished the first puzzle, I gave them a second one.  The object of this one is to get the wooden square inside the hollow square by sliding the pieces around without lifting anything up.  While the boys were trying to figure it out, I noticed that their little sister Alea (8) was watching everything intently.  (I'm sorry if I spelled your name wrong!)  I asked her if she wanted to try the spiky ball puzzle and she nodded.  Everyone was astounded when she finished it in record time, officially becoming the youngest person to complete it!  So, we let her try the wooden puzzle, and again she beat her older brothers all to pieces, finishing in record time! 


Erik



Ben

  

Alea



I had a third puzzle, a cube with a maze on all sides, but none of the kids were able to figure it out. 

The puzzles were given to me by my mom, who buys them for us at Christmas time to figure out on Christmas day.  Since we had so much fun with the puzzles, over the weekend I asked her if she had any more.  Well, of course she did!  So now I have 5 more puzzles that I know how to do, and 6 that I don't.  There are a variety of difficulty levels 

If you are looking for a challenge, come on by.  You can be the first person to solve all the brain teasers! 
 

I Opened a Book

I Opened a Book

I opened a book and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I've left my chair, my house, my road,
My town and my world behind me.
I'm wearing the cloak, I've slipped on the ring,
I've swallowed the magic potion.
I've fought with a dragon, dined with a king
And dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a book and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
And followed their road with its bumps and bends
To the happily ever after.
I finished my book and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
But I have a book inside me.

--Julia Donaldson

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/507739-i-opened-a-book-and-in-i-strode-now-nobody

Julie's Journal : The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

In the weeks leading up to Halloween, I saw several recommendations for good ghost stories.  Now, I'm not normally a big reader of ghost stories, but I kept seeing The Haunting of Hill House come up as a must read - a classic of the genre.  After reading several reviews and discovering that it has been adapted for film twice since its publication in 1959, I decided to give it a try. 

The story centers around Eleanor Vance.  A woman of 32, she has spent the last eleven years of her life caring for her mother.  After her mother passes away, she is at loose ends and jumps at an invitation to spend a few days at Hill House seeking out psychic phenomena.  After an idyllic drive, Eleanor arrives at the house and is immediately repulsed.  She feels an overwhelming urge to flee, but decides she is simply being a scaredy-cat and makes herself stay.  When she meets the other female guest, Theodora, she feels more comfortable.  With the arrival of the doctor researching the house, and Luke, a member of the family that owns the house, their party is complete. 

The horror of the story is that the reader never really knows the nature of the evil in the house.  There is no question that there is something evil there, but whether the evil is the house itself or something residing inside is a mystery.  The house itself becomes a malevolent character in the story.  Told from Eleanor's point of view, the reader is forced to follow along as the house (or its supernatural resident) drives her, rather quickly, into madness.  Maybe her years of isolation with her mother made her more susceptible than the others?  Maybe she was already precariously close to madness, and the house just helped her along?  I think both factors contributed to her inability to resist the forces of Hill House.

I enjoyed The Haunting of Hill House.  It was not what I was expecting from a book labeled "horror".  There was an overriding sense of doom, but it wasn't so dark as to give me nightmares.  I found myself thinking about Eleanor long after I had finished the book.  Her motivations are never completely clear, which fuels in part the speculation about why she descended into insanity so easily. 

Jackson wrote several novels and short stories.  Her other well-known story is the short story The Lottery.  It is commonly read by high school students and I remember reading it myself.  Both The Haunting of Hill House and The Lottery are worth taking the time to read. 

Just for fun!

This morning as I was getting ready for work, I had the news on in the background and they were talking about a bus that has been fitted with a jet engine and can reach speeds up to 350 miles per hour.  Then they showed the bus racing an airplane!  Paul Stender of Indy Boys, Inc. is the builder and driver of the bus.  He said that he wanted to encourage kids to get out and tinker with machines and experiment and see what worked and what didn't.  He also has a "Jets are Hot, Drugs are Not!" slogan painted on his bus.  The video below is the airplane vs. bus race.

Marvelous Mondays! : Sand Art

Yesterday was another Marvelous Monday here at the library.  My mom, Ellen Eggleston, donated colored sand and bottles for sand art.  The kids had fun making different patterns of colored sand in their bottles.

 

 

 

The finished products turned out really well.

Hailey Kirkman and Trinity Bogue

 

Max Lester

 

Seth Smithey

 

Hannah Smithey's bottle in progress.

Even the table was pretty after everybody was done!