The Short List

Popular Essex Library staff member Cathy Burgard is retiring as Head of Adult Services on June 27^th, a position she’s held with her trademark creativity and enthusiasm for the last six years. Cathy’s contributions to the cultural life of our community have been tremendous. Her summer Foreign Film Series showcased little-known cinematic gems to ever-growing and appreciative audiences. Parlons Francais, her class in conversational French, ran for three happy years with the same dedicated group of adult students. Cathy helped to develop, and maintains, the Library’s handsome new website. The educational, entertaining programs she’s offered have covered the spectrum from environmental issues to world music, wine tasting, foreign affairs, and literary scholarship, a measure of her own wide-ranging intellectual curiosity. Essex Meadows readers will miss Cathy’s lively book groups, reader’s advisory services, and exemplary patron support. All of our patrons and her fellow staff-members will miss Cathy’s good cheer, ready laugh, and
warm heart. Her grandchildren’s gain is our loss. Have fun at the beach, Cathy!

Please join the Essex Library community in a fond farewell party for Cathy on Friday, June 27^th at 5p.m.

We had a patron request the book My Stroke Of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor a few weeks back (it’s now a part of our collection) and it seems we see her name everywhere we look these days. She’s been on Oprah and is all over the Internet and recently gave a talk at the latest TED conference. She’s an interesting person with a sense of humor about the stroke she suffered and has a few intriguing ideas about exploring the different sides of the brain and perhaps making each work more effectively with the other.

Another successful booksale has added nearly $5,000 to the Friends’ coffers which allows them to support the Library in many ways: by paying for museum passes, books for babies, welcome bags, myriad programs and much else. The engine behind all these successful sales is Dee Grover but Dee would be the first to say she couldn’t manage it well without all the help she gets from many other volunteers. Our hats are off to all who helped with the sale and to all who helped make the sale so successful with donations and purchases.

All booksale items will be half-price through June and there are many wonderful books, hardcover and paperback, still on the sale shelves so come in and browse as they are replenished daily.

The Essex Library Association’s Board of Trustees has named Richard Conroy as the Director of the Library.

Mr. Conroy, who begins work in Essex on June 16th, most recently served as Head of Information Technology Services at the Stratford Public Library. He was previously employed as the Head of Adult Services and Reference Librarian at the Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library in Old Lyme. Mary Fiorelli, Director at Old Lyme, praised Mr. Conroy for his “strong leadership skills, project management experience, excellent librarianship and ability to work with all constituencies in a small town environment.”

Educated in Connecticut, Mr. Conroy holds Master of Library Science degree from Southern Connecticut State University, an M.A. in American Studies from Trinity College and a B.A. in English from Central Connecticut State University. He came to library science later in life after a wide-ranging career that included owning and running a B&B in Maine, managing warehouse operations for a wholesale wine and spirits distributor and managing operations for a trucking company. Mr. Conroy also served as a Board member and Chairperson on the Portland, CT Board of Education from 1995-1999.

The new director was picked from a pool of more than thirty applicants in a nationwide search that lasted nearly four months. “We were impressed by Richard’s enthusiasm for the profession, his tact and his amiability.” said Search Committee co-chair and Board Vice President Stephanie Degen-Monroe. Hans Ullstein, Chair of the Personnel Committee and co-chair of the search committee added that “We think Richard has the right mix of skills to lead the library at this stage in its development.” The Search Committee also included Trustee and President of the Friends of the Essex Library Janice Atkeson, , Trustees Maureen Heher and Casey O’Brien, and former Trustees William Chatman and Edward Castner. Michael Hammond, President of the Board of Trustees, applauded the work of the Search Committee. “They were a very cohesive group and very thorough in their deliberations. They’ve made an excellent choice.”

Please come meet Mr. Conroy at the Library on Wednesday, June 18th from 5:30-8p.m.

Would you like to visit the Wadsworth Atheneum, New Britain Museum of American Art or the Florence Griswold Museum for free? The Essex Library offers passes for free admission for 4 people to those museums - and more, thanks to a generous donation by the Friends of the Essex Library.

Current exhibits at the Florence Griswold include: Impressionist Giverny: Americans Painters in France, 1885–1915, an exhibition of over fifty works organized by the Musée d’Art Américain, Giverny. The exhibition tells the story of the expatriate colony founded by American artists in the village of Impressionist master Claude Monet.

The New Britain Museum of American Art’s current exhibits include: an exhibition featuring 60 works of California Impressionist art, All Things Bright and Beautiful: California Impressionist Paintings, from The Irvine Museum, from April 1-June 29, 2008.

One of the current exhibits at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is: the Faith & Fortune exhibition that has been extended through 2008! It features five centuries of European masterworks. Including sacred art by such great painters as Caravaggio, Fra Angelico and Gentileschi. And decorative art once owned by history’s wealthiest families.

From the study “Reading Aloud To Children: The Evidence” by Elisabeth Duursma EdD, Marilyn Augustyn MD and Barry Zuckerman MD published in May in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood: “Promoting healthy child development lies at the heart of pediatric practice, yet a major challenge facing the field is applying “evidence based standards” to our practice. In one area of this effort though, reading aloud to children, the evidence is clear. There is ample research demonstrating that reading aloud to young children promotes their development of language and other emergent literacy skills (e.g., Adams, 1990; Sénéchal & Levre, 2002; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Storch & Whitehurst, 2001) which in turn helps children getting ready for school (e.g., Ezell & Justice, 2005; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).

“You can imagine if someone technologically came up with a widget that would stimulate all aspects of a two-year-old’s development, everyone would want to buy it,” said Boston University School of Medicine professor Barry Zuckerman, who led the study. See the full article in the Guardian.

Studies show that children who are read to from an earlier age have better language development and tend to have better language scores later in life. Getting children to grip pages with their thumb and forefinger improves their motor skills.

Most important, though, said Zuckerman, is that reading aloud is a period of shared attention and emotion between parent and child. This reinforces reading as a pleasurable activity.

“Children ultimately learn to love books because they are sharing it with someone they love,” he said.

We add new titles to the Overdrive downloadable audio books every month. here are a few of April’s new titles:

Bad Money by Kevin Phillips

Beautiful Boy by David Sheff

Belong To Me by Marisa de los Santos

The Girl Of His Dreams by Donna Leon

God’s Problem by Bart Ehrman

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

A Voyage Long And Strange by Tony Horwitz

On Wednesday, May 21st at 4 p.m., Amy Forbes from the Treehouse Players in Deep River will present a theater workshop for children ages 6-12. Dress comfortably for fun music and movement activities. Call the Library to register: 767-1560.

This is a popular time of year for book awards and the Agathas, presented by Malice Domestic, announced their winners recently. The Agatha Awards honor the traditional mystery–books best typified by the works of Agatha Christie.The genre is generally characterized by mysteries that contain no explicit sex, excessive gore, or gratuitous violence; usually featuring an amateur detective, they have a confined setting and characters who know one another. Agatha Awards will be given for materials first published in the United States by a living author during the calendar year in hardcover, as paperback originals, or e-published by an e-publishing firm.

Nominees & Winners of Agatha Awards-Malice Domestic XX

BEST NOVEL

(Winner) A FATAL GRACE by Louise Penny

THE PENGUIN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH by Donna Andrews
HER ROYAL SPYNESS by Rhys Bowen
HARD ROW by Margaret Maron
MURDER WITH RESERVATIONS by Elaine Viets

BEST FIRST NOVEL

(Winner) PRIME TIME by Hank Phillippi Ryan

A BEAUTIFUL BLUE DEATH by Charles Finch
A REAL BASKET CASE by Beth Groundwater
SILENT IN THE GRAVE by Deanna Raybourn

BEST NON-FICTION

(Winner) ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE: A LIFE IN LETTERS by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley

BEST CHILDREN’S/YOUNG ADULT

(Winner) A LIGHT IN THE CELLAR by Sarah Masters Buckey

BRAVO ZULU, SAMANTHA! by Kathleen Benner Duble
COVER-UP: MYSTERY AT THE SUPER BOWL by John Feinstein
THE FALCONER’S KNOT by Mary Hoffman
THEODOSIA AND THE SERPENTS OF CHAOS by R.L. LaFevers

New arrivals this week include:

Fiction:

Comfort Food by Kate Jacobs, author of The Friday Night Knitting Club. The lives and loves of a TV chef, her daughters, neighbor and associates all receive a makeover in this lighthearted romantic problem-solver.

Host by Stephenie Meyer, author of the extremely popular young adult series Twilight, turns her skills to an adult book with a clever premise; a gripping story of love and betrayal in a future with the fate of humanity at stake.

Killing Rommel by Steven Pressfield Based on real-life events, this novel concerns the daring British and Commonwealth soldiers who challenged German General Rommel’s desert forces.

House On Fortune Street by Margot Livesey ” The absorbing latest from Livesey (Banishing Verona) opens multiple perspectives on the life of Dara MacLeod, a young London therapist, partly by paying subtle homage to literary figures and works.” Publisher’s Weekly

Non-Fiction:

Craftsman by Richard Sennett Craftsmanship names the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, says the author, and good craftsmanship involves developing skills and focusing on the work rather than ourselves. In this thought-provoking book, Sennett explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values, and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in today’s world.

Gandhi And Churchill: the epic rivalry that destroyed an empire and forged our age by Arthur Herman Each was a late-Victorian political figure who continued to lead into the mid-20th century. Each held an exemplary vision for his country that initially and spectacularly prevailed, but ultimately collided with new modern realities. Each proved great and flawed in different ways.

Post American World by Fareed Zakaria “This is a book not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else.” America’s strength will lie in freedom and diversity—and the post-American era may not last all that long, since America’s population is growing, and growing younger, while the demographics of Asia and Europe are largely pointing to older populations and, in time, fewer workers.

Spies For Hire: the secret world of intelligence outsourcing by Tim Shorrock “The author penetrates the covert worlds of corporations with names like CACI International Inc., Mantech International and Booz Allen Hamilton, as well as government agencies spending tens of billions of taxpayer dollars with no accountability. The author does a remarkable job of learning as much as he can: gaining entry into conventions of defense contractors usually closed to journalists; sitting through the hearings of congressional committees whose members are regularly stonewalled by the government agencies they are supposed to oversee; reading through partially declassified documents to make the case that only members of Congress, ostensibly accountable to the citizens who elected them, can halt the inefficiencies and occasional outright financial corruption emanating from the private contractor/intelligence agency nexus.” Kirkus