Check out this link, it is some of the most beautiful pieces of art you will ever see and all for a love of libraries and books in the community. The sculpter is unknown at this time and I like the person who wrote the article would like to stay that way.
http://community.thisiscentralstation.com/_Mysterious-paper-sculptures/blog/4991767/126249.html
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Life of a Teenage Body Snatcher
From the title you would be expecting another title in the current fad for vampires and werewolves but Life as a Teenage Body Snatcher by Doug MacLeod is a laugh out loud romp through Victorian England with a very likable hero and a cast of fascinating characters.
Kylie took on the job of presenting this book at our recent Children's Book Week Shortlist night and she had raved about the book as soon and she started reading it and I can now see why.
Our young hero Thomas Timewell lives the life a young gentleman in Victorian England, goes to a school with teachers out of a Dicken's book, has a mother who is fashionably drugged on Laudanum and his grandfather has recently passed away. This event leads Thomas on a roller coaster ride through the seamier side of life as he finds himself becoming a 'resurrectionist', someone who removes bodies from coffins to sell to doctors & medical students for the purpose of learning anatomy. Now, you may be thinking how could this be a laugh a minute.
Thomas goes to the graveyard to 'resurrect' his Grandfather's body. Grandfather, who was doctor, wanted his body given to medical students for anatomy practise because he knew how hard it was to for them to got a body to practise on. While at the graveyard exhuming Grandfather, Thomas is discovered by Plenitude, a resurrectionist of dubious background. Thomas doesn't really have any idea about what to do with the body when it is dug up so Plenitude offers him the benefit of his experience and thus begins Thomas's association with the more seamier aspects of life in Victorian England.
Along the way, Thomas falls in love, his haunted by a tattooed gypsy woman, fends of the amorous advances of his mother's friend Mrs Tilly, deals with Mother's laudanum habit and still has to attend school in the morning. I can promise you a lot of laughs with the adventures of Thomas and I hope that Doug MacLeod has plans to resurrect him again.
Kylie took on the job of presenting this book at our recent Children's Book Week Shortlist night and she had raved about the book as soon and she started reading it and I can now see why.
Our young hero Thomas Timewell lives the life a young gentleman in Victorian England, goes to a school with teachers out of a Dicken's book, has a mother who is fashionably drugged on Laudanum and his grandfather has recently passed away. This event leads Thomas on a roller coaster ride through the seamier side of life as he finds himself becoming a 'resurrectionist', someone who removes bodies from coffins to sell to doctors & medical students for the purpose of learning anatomy. Now, you may be thinking how could this be a laugh a minute.
Thomas goes to the graveyard to 'resurrect' his Grandfather's body. Grandfather, who was doctor, wanted his body given to medical students for anatomy practise because he knew how hard it was to for them to got a body to practise on. While at the graveyard exhuming Grandfather, Thomas is discovered by Plenitude, a resurrectionist of dubious background. Thomas doesn't really have any idea about what to do with the body when it is dug up so Plenitude offers him the benefit of his experience and thus begins Thomas's association with the more seamier aspects of life in Victorian England.
Along the way, Thomas falls in love, his haunted by a tattooed gypsy woman, fends of the amorous advances of his mother's friend Mrs Tilly, deals with Mother's laudanum habit and still has to attend school in the morning. I can promise you a lot of laughs with the adventures of Thomas and I hope that Doug MacLeod has plans to resurrect him again.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Children's Book Week - Henry Hoey Hobson
We've just had Children's Book Week, and at Mandurah Library we held our second 'Meet The Shortlist' evening. It was a great night, a range of speakers presented their views on the shortlisted books for this year's awards. The review below is mine, I didn't think I would enjoy it, but it was a very enjoyable read. Check out the other items on the shortlist and see the winners at http://cbca.org.au/awards.htm .
Henry Hoey Hobson by Christine Bongers
Henry Hoey Hobson is starting a new school, in fact this is Henry sixth school in as many years. Henry and his Mum have moved twelve times in Henry’s life. In Henry’s life there has always been, just him and his Mum. His Mum found herself pregnant at 18, and thrown out by her parents, but they have each other and they have a good relationship despite the many upheavals Henry has had throughout his life.
He arrives as a new boy at his new school ‘Our Lady of Perpetual Succour’ to find out that he is the only boy in his year seven class (Mum hasn’t done her research properly again) and because of an accident with his braces, Angelica, the queen of the catty year sevens labels him a ‘Vampire’ before he can even get into his classroom.
The action in this book occurs over a week, and Henry has to deal with a lot of major factors including his Mum’s accident which is the catalyst for Henry finally learning about his Dad. I loved this book, in fact I stayed in bed one Saturday morning because I had to find out what would become of Henry, his mum and the swimming carnival and who was the mysterious guy called Anders from the house next door. The message I took away from this book was that family are not only people related to you by birth but all the people in your life who help take care of you when you need it most. I would recommend this book for middle primary upwards, especially for boys, but this girl really enjoyed it.
Henry Hoey Hobson by Christine Bongers
Henry Hoey Hobson is starting a new school, in fact this is Henry sixth school in as many years. Henry and his Mum have moved twelve times in Henry’s life. In Henry’s life there has always been, just him and his Mum. His Mum found herself pregnant at 18, and thrown out by her parents, but they have each other and they have a good relationship despite the many upheavals Henry has had throughout his life.
He arrives as a new boy at his new school ‘Our Lady of Perpetual Succour’ to find out that he is the only boy in his year seven class (Mum hasn’t done her research properly again) and because of an accident with his braces, Angelica, the queen of the catty year sevens labels him a ‘Vampire’ before he can even get into his classroom.
The action in this book occurs over a week, and Henry has to deal with a lot of major factors including his Mum’s accident which is the catalyst for Henry finally learning about his Dad. I loved this book, in fact I stayed in bed one Saturday morning because I had to find out what would become of Henry, his mum and the swimming carnival and who was the mysterious guy called Anders from the house next door. The message I took away from this book was that family are not only people related to you by birth but all the people in your life who help take care of you when you need it most. I would recommend this book for middle primary upwards, especially for boys, but this girl really enjoyed it.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Do You Rhyme?
This is a piece I put together to add to the course Wiki, so I thought I may as well use it on my blog. I found posting on the Course Wiki confusing - how did everyone else go?
Wednesday mornings are my favourite at work - I take off my shoes, lower myself onto the floor and share rhymes and songs with babies, toddlers and their Mums ( & also Dads, Grandparents & Aunties). We do two sessions at Mandurah Library, one for Babies (Lapsit) @ 10am and Toddlers (Romper) @ 10.30am. This is an hour of fun, laughter, singing and stories.Rhymetime has been at Mandurah now for the last five years and came out of our involvement in the Better Beginnings Early Literacy project and I have had the pleasure of seeing babies grow into Toddlers who are now do their own rhyming and sing out loud, each in their own key. The benefits for these children as they apporach school age is immense in helping with their literacy development.So, Do you Rhyme?This is one library programme which many staff find daunting, citing they can't sing or perform, but these skills come with practice. What you need is a sense of fun, the abililty to get down on the floor (don't laugh, it's not as easy as it seems sometimes) and you can use cheatsheets for the words to the rhymes. The children are not expecting a 'Wiggles' performance. If your library runs Rhymetime sessions, think about becoming involved, go on - have some fun!
Wednesday mornings are my favourite at work - I take off my shoes, lower myself onto the floor and share rhymes and songs with babies, toddlers and their Mums ( & also Dads, Grandparents & Aunties). We do two sessions at Mandurah Library, one for Babies (Lapsit) @ 10am and Toddlers (Romper) @ 10.30am. This is an hour of fun, laughter, singing and stories.Rhymetime has been at Mandurah now for the last five years and came out of our involvement in the Better Beginnings Early Literacy project and I have had the pleasure of seeing babies grow into Toddlers who are now do their own rhyming and sing out loud, each in their own key. The benefits for these children as they apporach school age is immense in helping with their literacy development.So, Do you Rhyme?This is one library programme which many staff find daunting, citing they can't sing or perform, but these skills come with practice. What you need is a sense of fun, the abililty to get down on the floor (don't laugh, it's not as easy as it seems sometimes) and you can use cheatsheets for the words to the rhymes. The children are not expecting a 'Wiggles' performance. If your library runs Rhymetime sessions, think about becoming involved, go on - have some fun!
Wiki's - What's it all about?
I have had experiences of using Wiki through the one set up by the Better Beginnings team from State Library and recieve any updates via my email. Compared with a website I don't find the Wiki format engaging and the layout is quite boring, but after watching the clip on common craft 'Wiki's in Plain English I now understand why - a Wiki is a 'working document'. A common ground for people to share and exchange ideas. Having said that the LGAM knowledge Database (one of the examples shown in this week's exercise) was well laid out with interesting links and covering a wide range of topics on local government.
As part of this week's exercises I have set up a wiki on Wetpaint to experiment with as I have a project coming up in May where it might be useful.
http://menatarms.wetpaint.com/
I am directing Men at Arms (from the book by Terry Pratchett) for my drama club and the wiki may be useful to post my ideas on sets, costumes and props. By giving the production team access to the Wiki, they can see what I need and add their thoughts. It could save a lot of phone calls & emails, that never really connect everyone.
From a work point of view (after all, that is why we are investigating all these technologies!), Wiki's could be useful for a group project or collecting everyone's ideas about a specific topic, like the camping trip scenario on common craft's explanation on Wikis. All the information would be collected in one place, everyone would have access and could contribute their ideas. Not everyone has to be in the same room at the same time and sometimes people need time to think about what they want to contribute. I think it would worthwhile to try it out.
Addendum: Men at Arms is produced by Murray Music & Drama Club, and will be performed at the Pinjarra Civic Centre in August 2011. For further details, see our website at http://www.mmdc.com.au/index.php
As part of this week's exercises I have set up a wiki on Wetpaint to experiment with as I have a project coming up in May where it might be useful.
http://menatarms.wetpaint.com/
I am directing Men at Arms (from the book by Terry Pratchett) for my drama club and the wiki may be useful to post my ideas on sets, costumes and props. By giving the production team access to the Wiki, they can see what I need and add their thoughts. It could save a lot of phone calls & emails, that never really connect everyone.
From a work point of view (after all, that is why we are investigating all these technologies!), Wiki's could be useful for a group project or collecting everyone's ideas about a specific topic, like the camping trip scenario on common craft's explanation on Wikis. All the information would be collected in one place, everyone would have access and could contribute their ideas. Not everyone has to be in the same room at the same time and sometimes people need time to think about what they want to contribute. I think it would worthwhile to try it out.
Addendum: Men at Arms is produced by Murray Music & Drama Club, and will be performed at the Pinjarra Civic Centre in August 2011. For further details, see our website at http://www.mmdc.com.au/index.php
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Too Many Choices!
Week 4 saw us looking at RSS Aggregators /Feeds, which is probably the one part of the course I was familiar with. I receive RSS feeds for the YPS blog and 'Unshelved' straight to my email address. The RSS feeds are a great idea as they allow you to keep track of new entries on blogs or sites you are interested in but without having to go and check the site constantly. Updates are there in your mail box, you can read and deal with it straight away. It all sounds great doesn't it.
Then came this week's assignment, to go and subscribe to a number of feeds and add them to your google reader account. To help, you could use google blog search to look for blogs on topics you were interested in. I used it to look for blogs about books, and found the Guardian Book Blog http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog, I have looked at books before on the Guardian site, especially for children's books, so my list was started.
I changed track and went looking for the movie show (ABC TV with David & Margaret), I had been on their webpage recently looking at the movies featured on the final program for 2010. I found they didn't have a blog, but found a link for the Australian Screen website, http://aso.gov.au, linked to the National Film & Sound Archive which is located in Canberra. Great place to visit with fascinating exhibits to see. While I was on the ABC website, I looked up Classic FM, maybe they had a blog I could subscribe to. I listen to them daily, no blog, they only 'tweet'. But on further searching I found, http://blogs.radionational.net.au/bookshow/
the Book show blog, so I added that to the list and also found, http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/, it looks interesting, so added that to the list.
Then I thought about the other TV station (in my small universe there are only two TV stations), SBS, and how much I enjoy their food programs, so this time I went to the SBS website and I found their food blog, lots of yummy recipes, http://www.sbs.com.au/food/ - check it out. While I was on SBS, I added World news Australia, as they have a wide range of current affairs, http://www.sbs.com.au/blogindex.
I had also heard about a website which sounded interesting, the Free Word Centre, thought I would check this out also, http://www.freewordonline.com/, and so added it to the list.
I think you can begin to understand my choice of title for this blog, Too Many Choices, and there are still so many sites to visit out there and even though I am now receiving the daily feeds, I still have to find time to read them!!
Maybe this is why, I have tried to keep the internet at a distance, it can become all-consuming.
Then came this week's assignment, to go and subscribe to a number of feeds and add them to your google reader account. To help, you could use google blog search to look for blogs on topics you were interested in. I used it to look for blogs about books, and found the Guardian Book Blog http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog, I have looked at books before on the Guardian site, especially for children's books, so my list was started.
I changed track and went looking for the movie show (ABC TV with David & Margaret), I had been on their webpage recently looking at the movies featured on the final program for 2010. I found they didn't have a blog, but found a link for the Australian Screen website, http://aso.gov.au, linked to the National Film & Sound Archive which is located in Canberra. Great place to visit with fascinating exhibits to see. While I was on the ABC website, I looked up Classic FM, maybe they had a blog I could subscribe to. I listen to them daily, no blog, they only 'tweet'. But on further searching I found, http://blogs.radionational.net.au/bookshow/
the Book show blog, so I added that to the list and also found, http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/, it looks interesting, so added that to the list.
Then I thought about the other TV station (in my small universe there are only two TV stations), SBS, and how much I enjoy their food programs, so this time I went to the SBS website and I found their food blog, lots of yummy recipes, http://www.sbs.com.au/food/ - check it out. While I was on SBS, I added World news Australia, as they have a wide range of current affairs, http://www.sbs.com.au/blogindex.
I had also heard about a website which sounded interesting, the Free Word Centre, thought I would check this out also, http://www.freewordonline.com/, and so added it to the list.
I think you can begin to understand my choice of title for this blog, Too Many Choices, and there are still so many sites to visit out there and even though I am now receiving the daily feeds, I still have to find time to read them!!
Maybe this is why, I have tried to keep the internet at a distance, it can become all-consuming.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
The First Library
This blog is in response to Week #3 - Sharing Images. This was my first hands-on experience of Flickr and it was interesting looking at the array of images that people have made available. I was surprised to find a wonderful photo of one of our previous head librarians, Mary King, taken by her grandson when looking for photos with the tag of Mandurah.
I liked the concept discussed in 'Online Photo Sharing in Plain English' of using sites like Flickr as a way of keeping your photos safe and also sharing your images with family, friends and the world if you allow it.
When it came to this week's exercise, I thought of searching for photos of libraries, and then thought about the 'first' library from history, the Alexandria Library. I did a search for the Alexandria Library, and then refined it with the library's correct name, Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
There are number of great photos of this stunning building - the problem was finding images that were not labelled 'all rights reserved', because as we learnt this week, one has to be careful when using images from the web, that you are not breaking copyright laws. The video on 'Creative Commons' was interesting to watch and this has made it easier to use other people's images, even thought they may still set some restrictions. I found an image labelled with 'some rights reserved' and then clicked directly into the photographer's site and found other images of the library I could share with you, to show you the new Bibliotheca Alexandria. The outside of the building is quite stunning, I'm not as impressed with the inside, let me know what you think.
If you would like to find out more about the original Alexandria Library or the new Bibliotheca Alexandria, I have also attached links to Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Alexandrina
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria
Addendum:
After numerous attempts to upload photos of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, with technical support (many thanks Bruce for all your efforts) I have to include the links rather than the photos, looks like its back to the drawing board for this lesson!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkannenberg/4668322359/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkannenberg/4668323029/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/keatl/2428820562/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/keatl/2428819018/in/photostream/
I liked the concept discussed in 'Online Photo Sharing in Plain English' of using sites like Flickr as a way of keeping your photos safe and also sharing your images with family, friends and the world if you allow it.
When it came to this week's exercise, I thought of searching for photos of libraries, and then thought about the 'first' library from history, the Alexandria Library. I did a search for the Alexandria Library, and then refined it with the library's correct name, Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
There are number of great photos of this stunning building - the problem was finding images that were not labelled 'all rights reserved', because as we learnt this week, one has to be careful when using images from the web, that you are not breaking copyright laws. The video on 'Creative Commons' was interesting to watch and this has made it easier to use other people's images, even thought they may still set some restrictions. I found an image labelled with 'some rights reserved' and then clicked directly into the photographer's site and found other images of the library I could share with you, to show you the new Bibliotheca Alexandria. The outside of the building is quite stunning, I'm not as impressed with the inside, let me know what you think.
If you would like to find out more about the original Alexandria Library or the new Bibliotheca Alexandria, I have also attached links to Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Alexandrina
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria
Addendum:
After numerous attempts to upload photos of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, with technical support (many thanks Bruce for all your efforts) I have to include the links rather than the photos, looks like its back to the drawing board for this lesson!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkannenberg/4668322359/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkannenberg/4668323029/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/keatl/2428820562/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/keatl/2428819018/in/photostream/
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