@ Your Library
May can be a month of rain, puddles and mud and hopefully not that other precipitation. Be outside when you can and soak up any sun. Regardless of the weather, READ! Read to learn, read to escape, read to share love, just read. Every day, every person.
Hopefully begin playing in the dirt outside soon. Borrow one of these books to get ideas. Midwestern Native Garden by Charlotte Adelman and Bernard I. Schwartz provides lots of native alternatives to nonnative flowers and plants and Martyn Cox explores lots of options to Grow Plants in Pots. The Book of Gardening Projects for Kids by Whitney Cohen and John Fisher and Big Ideas for Small Spaces by Kay Maguire and Tony Woods provide lots of ideas for all ages to build, explore, play and get dirty. The gorgeous Gardentopia by Jan Johnsen provides ‘design basics for creating beautiful outdoor spaces.’
Maybe one of these titles will help you create that perfect space for lounging or playing in the outdoors. Simple & Stylish Backyard Projects by Anna and Anders Jeppsson includes ’37 easy-to-build projects for you yard, garden and deck.’ Bigger projects can be found in Treehouses and Other Cool Stuff by David & Jeanie Stiles or Taunton’s Deck Ideas that Work by Peter Jeswald.
And of course, reading fiction or history or whatever is never out of style so check out one of these new books. Melinda Metz has written a three book series (so far) about a small Maine town called Fox Crossing. The Edge of Summer by Viola Shipman seems like a very appropriate book to read in May. Marmee by Sarah Miller is a novel of Little Women focusing on Margaret “Marmee” March.
Try Our Best Intentions by Vibhuti Jain, a single father and his daughter living in an affluent suburb of New York reexamine their bonds and place in the community when a white male from a prominent family is found stabbed and bleeding on a football field.
History is unique to each of us and is one of reasons I love reading about other’s pasts, whether through fiction, biography or a mix. The Three Lives of Alix St. Pierre by Natasha Lester moves between war-torn Europe and glittering fashion halls as one woman searches for truth and justice. Joanna Quinn takes the facts of a whale washing ashore a beach in England in 1928 and creates a wonderful story of Cristabel who created a theater inside the beast’s skeletal rib cage, which led to her and her brother becoming secret agents in WWII in The Whalebone Theatre. Learn ‘the history of the world in one meal’ in Dinner in Rome by Andreas Viestad.
Paper Quilling is a take and create kit from the Duluth Folk School made possible with a grant from Minnesota’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. These kits will be available for teens and adults at the library in May. Stop by and explore this art form and create a beautiful picture.