National Book Award winners announced

The National Book Award winners were announced yesterdy in New York. The National Book Award is given to the best American book in the categories of fiction, non-fiction, young people's literature and poetry. The winners are:

Fiction: Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country
Nonfiction: Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
Young People's Literature: Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied
Poetry: Mark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems

These books will all be ordered for the library for next year!

Find your dewey number

The Dewey Decimal System is used to classify books in our library by subject. As many of you already know, those numbers on the spine of non-fiction books correspond to the most important subject in the book. Fun, eh?

Try out this quiz to find your Dewey classification number. (It's totally not scientific, just for the fun of it!)

Children's books in the White House?

Milton Terrace South Elementary School in New York set out to find if there are any children's books in the White House library. Research showed them that there probably aren't any (though they couldn't be definitive), and so media specialist Susan Penney decided to see what she could do to fix the situation. She had the students and teachers all vote on their favorite titles, and organized donations of the winning books! Read the whole article here, complements of School Library Journal, and see the complete list here.

We have some of the books in the SCCS library, such as:
Click, Clack, Moo, by Doreen Cronin
The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo
Charlotte’s Web, by EB White
Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Patterson

Were some of the titles your favorites, too? Which ones?

What titles would you recommend for the Obama daughters? (They are aged 7 and 10, I believe.)

November is Native American Heritage month!

November is Native American Heritage month in the United States. Check out this great link from PBS about their upcoming miniseries, We Shall Remain. We probably won't get to see it here in Bolivia, but the site has some great information and interactive media.

If you're interest in Native America, come check out the book display in the library!

The new president's reading list

The Chicago Tribune recommends a list of "required" reading for the new president-elect. We have some in the SCCS library:

An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore
The Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides
A Savage War for Peace, by Alistair Horn
The Trial, by Franz Kafka
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz

I would add a personal favorite:

The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

What books do you think the new president should read?

Oh, and only slightly related, did you know that President-elect Obama likes to read bedtime stories to his daughters, and has all the words to Goodnight Moon memorized?