Sharks and Other Fish in the Sea

Read the published version of Library Director Charlotte Canelli's column in the August 30, 2013 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Every year sometime in August, most of become aware of Shark Week.  The Discovery Channel started this sensation over 25 years ago. They started it a way to raise awareness about sharks, the fish that terrified at least one generation of swimmers who viewed the 1975 thriller movie, Jaws.  It’s no surprise that in 1987 marine biologists and the Discovery Channel concluded that the shark needed a more wholesome biography!

Shark Week resumes each year as a television spectacle complete with charming marine biologists, plenty of gimmicks, and loads of awesomeness of close-in shots of the fish we love to hate. Some viewers around the world obsess about the weeklong adventure like tennis fans tune in to Wimbledon. About twice as many as those who watch Wimbledon, to be exact.

Now Read This!

Read the published version of Library Director Charlotte Canelli's column in the August 23, 2013 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

If you are anything like me, as soon as you enter another person’s home or office, your eyes are drawn to their bookshelves. I mentally take note of the books that we have in common – or those titles that I have admired but that I don’t own.  I nearly always notice how they are arranged.  Are they are haphazardly stacked between framed photographs or trophies or are they neatly organized by author?

That is why I loved thumbing through “My Ideal Bookshelf” edited by Thessaly La Force (2012). One hundred writers are featured in the book. James Patterson, Dave Eggers, Stephenie Meyer and Chuck Klosterman are among them. Each two-page spread includes spine art created by Jane Mount; they could be frame able art in itself.

Little Free Library

Read Kelly Unsworth's column in the August 16, 2013 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin. Kelly is a children's librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. 

This summer in the library, the Jr. Friends have been working on one of my favorite volunteer projects of the season, the Morrill Memorial Library’s version of “little free libraries”; those gnome-like creations that have been springing up for years across the country, and more recently in the Boston area.  As far as I know, and I would love to be proven wrong about this, there are none in Norwood.  Or shall I say, none “yet”.

Books: They're for the Birds

Read the published version of Library Director Charlotte Canelli's column in the August 9, 2013 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Time was that I did not know the difference between a grackle and a crow.  Or a crow and a raven, for that matter. However, these days I can spot that crow on a telephone wire or treetop or that grackle underneath our bird feeder.  I don’t profess to ever having seen a raven, yet I know that they are the biggest of the three.

When I married my husband, Gerry, I was annoyed that he would interrupt my conversation in the car, or at the breakfast table, to point out a hawk high above the highway or a bluebird flitting about its house in the backyard.  I thought it quite rude that he was not paying the proper attention to my conversation that it deserved.

Classics: The Whole Story

Read the published version of Library Director Charlotte Canelli's column in the August 2, 2013 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

I’m always sad when I find that one of my favorite children’s books has gone out of print.  Several of some lesser-known children’s authors have published amazing picture books and they've never have published a second. The first edition isn’t reprinted; when supplies dwindle (or when remainder piles are snapped up in discount book stores) the book becomes impossible to find.

Sadly, one of my favorite series of books for children and teens is out of print.  It is the Whole Story series of extraordinary unabridged classics. There are fifteen in the set and they were published by Viking Press between 1994 and 2002.