Caudill Nominees 2011

I have started to read the 2011 Rebecca Caudill nominees and what a great year this will be! While I still predict that The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, and Found, by Margaret Peterson Haddix, will battle it out for the award, there are a number of other great books on the list. For a full list of the nominees, use this link: http://www.rebeccacaudill.org/nominees/2011.htm

The IMC will have multiple copies of all 20 nominated books since the 6th grade will participate in this award program through their LA book reports. Copies are on order and should be shelf-ready in October. This year we will also feature a number of audiobook copies of the nominees in CD and Playaway formats.

Mystery at the Art Institute

In the Art Institute of Chicago there is a special area called the Throne Rooms. Here miniature rooms furnished for different periods of history are displayed, Until Ruthie's class goes to the Art Institute for a field trip, she believes that nothing special will ever happen in her life. Ruthie is fascinated by the Throne Rooms and it is there that her life suddenly becomes very exciting. She and her best friend Jack find a magic key that shrinks them to just the right size to fit in the miniature rooms. When they enter a room the room expands to include a whole world based on the time period of the room. They meet people of those times and they learn of a mystery that can only be solved within the miniature worlds. Marianne Malone, an Illinois author, has created an amazing world full of mystery and adventure in her book The Sixty-Eight Rooms. It is currently available in the New Book Display area.

Finally New Books!

This week Mrs. Wilson and I finally got a chance to finish processing some of the new books that I catalogued over the summer. Among these new items now on display in the New Book Section up front by the windows is Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers. Reese, a young teen in a juvenile corrections facility (prison), is trying to turn his life around and win an early release. His crime was stealing a doctor's prescription drug pad and selling it to a drug dealer. The only bright spot in his home life is his much younger sister who is smart and aiming for strong future. With anger issues of his own, Reese gets help from an unlikely source, a cranky old man at his work release program. Like Monster, Myers's prison story from a few years ago, Myers is able to tell a young man's story as though the teen was talking directly to the reader. You will root for Reese as he tries to prove he has a chance at a normal life.

Also now available is Book 6 of the Ranger's Apprentice series - The Siege of Macindaw and Book 5 of The 39 Clues series - The Black Circle. More books in both of these series will soon be available.