WWII for Young Readers

With my family connection to WWII (my grandparents fled Lithuania during the 2nd Soviet invasion aided by Germans) I’ve always been fascinated with the non-text book accounts of the not-so-great war.  I remember when I was in middle school coming across the Art Spiegelman’s inventive, Maus series, which plays out the Nazi saga with cats and mice and devouring it.

And today, I’ve discovered Alan’s War:  The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope by Emmanuel Guibert sitting on my desk, waiting to be read.  Turns out NPR Books did a great story about the process of creating the book  and the post contains a link to a 7 page preview of the text/illustrations.

People’s Republic of China at 60

NPR will be turning to best-selling Chinese authors this week to gain some insight into the people’s perspectives on the People’s Republic during its controversial 60 years of rule.  Today’s story, the first of the three parts, focuses on Jian Rong’s, Wolf Totem which I happened to pick up not too long ago, fascinated by the subject of Beijing intellectuals electing to go live with the nomadic people of Inner Mongolia and learning from their cultural adoration for the wolf.  Listen to the story and join in the conversation, here.

Anti-Social-Networking

In an effort to keep up with the latest in social-networking technologies (aka Web2.0), you can find libraries represented in a variety of unexpected places, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and in the blogosphere.  As rapid as these technologies evolve, other technologies fall by the wayside.  I caught this commentary by NPR blogger and commentator John Ridley this morning and thought his point was very interesting when we weigh personal privacy with social networking/broadcasting.   Sure, there are a lot of people out there who love to talk about themselves and beef up their web presence which has lately been proven to be an effective personal marketing strategy in the workforce, yet this commentary left me wondering, “At What expense to our personal privacy?”  Have a listen, I think you’ll be surprised at the suggestions of some extinct social networking tools and may inspire a closer look at how you preserve your personal privacy in this increasingly digital world.   Yes, the Juneau Public Library Blog has a Twitter stream, a Facebook page and offers RSS updates.

Audio(book)phile?

Are you an Audiobook junky?  It’s okay, a library forum is a safe place to admit it.  In case you’re running out of library audiobooks be sure to check out the electronic offerings available through 2 downloadable audiobook services, Netlibrary and ListenAlaska.   Check out Audiobooker, a new blog supported by the American Library Association’s Booklist magazine.  Blogger, “Mary Burkey, a teacher, librarian, and audiobook addict, writes about listening, learning, and the joy of headsets.”  Free audiobook downloads, behind the scenes video clips of audiobook production and more.