Bishop McNamara is a Catholic, college-prep high school in Kankakee, IL. The library blog introduces new books, book reviews, book trailers, fun and interesting articles, original writing, and school and community news.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Happy Halloween
The Raven (excerpts) / Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
" 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more." . . . .
Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word,
Lenore?, This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word,
"Lenore!" Merely this, and nothing more.
(from Complete stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe, p. 756)
(from The Historian / Elizabeth Kostova)
“My dear and unfortunate successor:
It is with regret that I imagine you, whoever you are, reading the account I must put down here. The regret is partly for myself – because I will surely be at least in trouble, maybe dead, or perhaps worse, if this is in your hands. . . . (p. 5)
[And so began a young scholar’s acquaintance with the legend of Dracula. It was a legend that would haunt him – and stalk him -- for life.]
The painting was a richly hued watercolor. . . . [The artist] had caught a splotch of color that I recognized as the back of my red straw hat, with my father in blurry tan and blue just beyond. . . .But my glance at [the painting] had shown me a lone figure sitting beyond my father, a broad-shouldered, dark-headed figure, a crisp black silhouette among the cheerful colors of awning and tablecloths. That table, I recalled clearly, had been vacant all afternoon.” (p.88)
“When I was five, I would not go to bed willingly because something came into my room. This was a private matter between me and it. If I spoke of it, it would kill me.
It entered the room by flattening itself against the open door and sliding in. It was a transparent, luminous oblong. I could see the door whiten at its touch; I could see the blue wall turn pale where it raced over it, and see the maple headboard of [my sister’s] bed glow. It had two joined parts, a head and a tail, like a Chinese dragon. It found the door, wall, and headboard; and it swiped them, charging them with its luminous glance. . . .
I dared not blink or breathe; I tried to hush my whooping blood.
Every night before it got to me it gave up. . . . I heard the rising roar it made when it died or left. I still couldn’t breathe. I knew. . . it could return again alive that same night.
It was a passing car. . . . When the low roar drew nigh and the oblong slid in the door, I threw my own switches for pleasure. It’s coming after me; it’s a car. . . .”
Friday, October 28, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Young Adult Books - National Book Award Finalists
(Dial Books, an imprint of Penguin Group USA, Inc. )
Protecting family secrets can be dangerous. A book about guilt and redemption.
(Marshall Cavendish)
A young man's struggle for equality in Alaska.
(Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
A young refugee struggles to learn about American culture and fit in at school.
(Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books)
The true story of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in which 146 people died.
Okay for Now / Gary D. Schmidt
(Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
A teenage boy in a new town finds refuge in the local library and in a mission to restore a rare Audubon book.
Young People’s Literature Judges: Marc Aronson (Panel Chair), Ann Brashares, Matt de la Peña, Nikki Grimes, Will Weaver.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Philip Levine -- America's 18th Poet Laureate
"Detroit is perfect for me," Levine said in his gravelly, urban-Midwestern voice. "It's not dinky. It's just big enough. I know it. I'm a Detroit-sized poet. It took me a long time to be able to write about it without snarling and snapping. I had to temper the violence I felt toward those who'd maimed and cheated me with a tenderness toward those who had touched and blessed me." 1
Philip Levine has been selected by the Library of Congress to serve as 18th Poet Laureate of the United States. Levine was born in Detroit, Michigan, on January 10, 1928. He attended Detroit public schools and Wayne University (now Wayne State). In 1953, he earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa where he studied with Robert Lowell and John Berryman.
Levine held a number of factory jobs, including one at Chevrolet Gear and Axle factory, and was inspired by the workers he met.2
“I saw that the people that I was working with…were voiceless in a way,” he explained in Detroit Magazine. “In terms of the literature of the United States they weren’t being heard. Nobody was speaking for them. And as young people will, you know, I took this foolish vow that I would speak for them and that’s what my life would be. And sure enough I’ve gone and done it. Or I’ve tried anyway…”3
For a black man whose name I have forgotten
who danced all night at Chevy Gear & Axle,
for that great stunned Pole who laughed when he called me Jew Boy,
for the ugly who had no chance,
the beautiful in body, the used and the unused,
those who had courage and those who quit.
~From "Silent in America"4
Levine has taught at University of Iowa, California State University at Fresno, and Tufts University and has served as visiting professor at a number of Ivy League schools. He has won the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. “For all his acclaim and awards, Levine “goes out of his way to tell us that he is essentially a peasant, . . . he returns again and again to his pre-academic life as a manual laborer…on presenting himself as a common man, more at home with the workers than with the professors.”5
Click here for more poems and articles.
Works Cited
1.“The Poet of the Night Shift.” Russell Frank. Dec. 28, 1994. 8 Aug. 2011.
2.“Philip Levine.” Poets.org : from the Academy of American Poets. 30 Sept. 2011.
< http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/19>.
3.“Philip Levine : biography.” Poetry Foundation. 30 Sept. 2011 < http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/philip-levine>.
4.Frank, Dec. 28, 1994.
5.Ibid.
Philip Levine has been selected by the Library of Congress to serve as 18th Poet Laureate of the United States. Levine was born in Detroit, Michigan, on January 10, 1928. He attended Detroit public schools and Wayne University (now Wayne State). In 1953, he earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa where he studied with Robert Lowell and John Berryman.
Levine held a number of factory jobs, including one at Chevrolet Gear and Axle factory, and was inspired by the workers he met.2
“I saw that the people that I was working with…were voiceless in a way,” he explained in Detroit Magazine. “In terms of the literature of the United States they weren’t being heard. Nobody was speaking for them. And as young people will, you know, I took this foolish vow that I would speak for them and that’s what my life would be. And sure enough I’ve gone and done it. Or I’ve tried anyway…”3
For a black man whose name I have forgotten
who danced all night at Chevy Gear & Axle,
for that great stunned Pole who laughed when he called me Jew Boy,
for the ugly who had no chance,
the beautiful in body, the used and the unused,
those who had courage and those who quit.
~From "Silent in America"4
Levine has taught at University of Iowa, California State University at Fresno, and Tufts University and has served as visiting professor at a number of Ivy League schools. He has won the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. “For all his acclaim and awards, Levine “goes out of his way to tell us that he is essentially a peasant, . . . he returns again and again to his pre-academic life as a manual laborer…on presenting himself as a common man, more at home with the workers than with the professors.”5
Click here for more poems and articles.
Works Cited
1.“The Poet of the Night Shift.” Russell Frank. Dec. 28, 1994. 8 Aug. 2011
2.“Philip Levine.” Poets.org : from the Academy of American Poets. 30 Sept. 2011.
< http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/19>.
3.“Philip Levine : biography.” Poetry Foundation. 30 Sept. 2011 < http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/philip-levine>.
4.Frank, Dec. 28, 1994.
5.Ibid.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Highlights from Read for a Lifetime Books
Stories of opulence and wealth; poverty, despair, and hope; and resistance that spat in the eye of evil.
Truth and Treason, a film based on Hübener’s life and starring Haley Joel Osment, will be released in 2012.
Video of Hubener.
Video of Author.
Book Trailer
Video of Author
Clip of the production starring Katharine Hepburn and Sam Waterston.
Video of Hubener.
Video of Author.
Book Trailer
Video of Author
Clip of the production starring Katharine Hepburn and Sam Waterston.
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