Days of the Blackbird

The Question: How to keep warm
and happy
when it is 

cold 

and
gray
outside

for days 

and
days

and
days
and
days
and
days?

For those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, near and above the 45 parallel, it is normally cold, dark and snowy. (Although, so far we've had a mild winter here in Michigan.)

The Sisters have a few secrets on how to get through a long winter:  read good books, keep a pot of tea handy, get outside and enjoy the weather (sometimes we forget, but all we need is one good sled run to get us re-focused!)

The BIGGEST secret is find something to celebrate. So we invite you to celebrate Giorni della Merla, or translated: Days of the Blackbird, with us. We found the wonderful legend via a favorite author, and spinner of legends, Tomie DePaola:

"In this elegant tale, Tomie dePaola imagines how the Days of the Blackbird in northern Italy came to be. Gemma and her father, the Duke of Gennaro, live in a house with a courtyard that fills with birds of all colors through the spring and summer. When the Duke falls ill at the end of summer, Gemma begs the birds to stay to raise his spirits with their song. However, as snow and fierce winds begin to swirl down on the village, the birds must fly south to stay warm, and eventually only one loyal bird remains."

Each year during the Days of the Blackbird, January 29, 30, and 31, we feed the birds, cut out and decorate blackbirds* and feel much warmer in general. We think of white birds turning black, trust in the promise of winter ending and spring returning and we watch as our chickadees, who stay here year round, feast at our bird feeder. To find a copy of Days of the Blackbird, click here.

How do you get through the coldest, grayest days of winter? Do you have any wonderful stories and/or legends that help you smile on the coldest days?

Happy Days of the Blackbird!

*To make the Blackbirds we simply trace some of the wonderful illustrations in Tomie's book and use them to cut shapes and create our own blackbirds.

The (S)hero challenge

If you put a "S" at the beginning of the word hero you get the word shero & that's what this challenge is about! Shero isn't a real word, it should be heroine. Still,I love the word SHERO --even though it isn't in the dictionary!!!!!!!!!!

definition of heroine
from the New Oxford
American Dictionary

Take the Shero Challenge... tell us all about your favorite literary heroines or books with a Shero!

Me, The Big Sister, with my favorite "Shero" books, here is a list: (The links lead you to worldcat.org,
don't worry worldcat.org's safe!)

Alanna

Tamora Pierce 

A Wrinkle in Time 

Madeleine L' engle 

The Secret Of the Old Clock 

Carolyn Keene 

The Game of Silence

Louise Erdrich 

Wings

E. D. Baker 

The Edge on the Sword

Rebecca Tingle 

Little Women

Louisa May Alcott  

          
This Challenge is brought to you by The Big Sister, this the first Challenge I've done all by myself --with a little editing help from The Mom. Now I understand why Mom spends so much time working on this, it's so much FUN!

While you're here... do you have a Literary BFF? Take the Literary BFF Challenge and tell me about it! Or take the Herstory Challenge and learn about books that celebrate women in history. I'd also love to hear about books you didn't really like: try the The Calamity Challenge. I'd love to hear from you, feel free to email me, click here and send me your thought on books!

 Happy Reading,

The Big Sister

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Get the Scoop! At Your Library: S.O.P.A and P.I.P.A

Introducing a new feature here at Books for Walls Project: Get the Scoop! At Your Library. We decided to share research we do, at the library, on timely topics. Enjoy. And please let us know if you have ideas for future features!

No, PIPA and SOPA are not children's book characters or soap or soup. We looked to the American Library Association and a few trusted library websites for help. Here is what we learned:


The letters stand for:

Protect

Internet

Property

Act

Stop

Online

Piracy

Act

We like the perspective in this letter written by writers, musicians and artists, including author and library advocate Neil Gaiman and the band OK Go (click here for their super fun Rube Goldberg Machine video):

"We urge Congress to exercise extreme caution and ensure that the free and open Internet, upon which so many artists rely to promote and distribute their work, does not become collateral damage in the process." Read full text here

In her letter, posted on The District Dispatch, Corey Williams, Associate Director of the  Office of Government Relations for the American Library Association Washington Office, explained the American Library Association's position:

  "The ALA is on the record having taken a strong stance in opposition to these bills and we also constructed the PIPA, SOPA and OPEN Act Quick Reference Guide (see below).  In addition, the ALA deplores any legislation that would incentivize and likely increase surveillance of online activity promoted by these bills.  These bills, if passed, would likely blanket Internet activity with an immediate chilling effect – on first amendment free speech rights, intellectual freedom and privacy rights, among others."

The Reference Guide created by the ALA mentioned above, click here to open a PDF with links, click the photo to make them LARGER:

Want more? 

Use your freedom! 

Research and learn... 

head to the library!

The Where are YOU from? Challenge

Part of our project is to learn about people, books, libraries and reading all over the world. Help us learn, tell us about life in your corner of the world --tell us a story, we sure love stories!

Tell The Sisters (and our readers) a little about where you are from, tell us a highlight, a favorite spot, share a little bit of treasure --even just the name of the town!

Get a little JOY! (What books do at night, while we're sleeping!)

Last year they brought us Organizing the Bookcase, now Sean Ohlenkamp and Lisa Blonder Ohlenkamp are back. Forget the bookshelf --this time they have taken organizing to a whole new level... an entire book store! As Lisa explained, "I think the actual photography of (Organizing the Bookcase) took something like 11 hours" --we are dying to know how long The Joy of Books took!!!


Thanks for the inspiration Lisa and Sean (and your amazing team!) Sign us up to help you with the Library of Congress!!

Why Read? Quotes to make it clearer: Wisdom from Robert Peck.

A couple of goodies from "Books to Unite the Digitally Divided Family" by prolific children's author Robert Peck, from the January/February issue of The Horn Book Magazine. 

On Books and Children and Modern Culture: "We gather to ask our annual question: “Can there still be books for the young?” Even now, in these darkening days, while Barnes & Noble eats independent booksellers, and Amazon eats Barnes & Noble. New problems to mask the old ones we never solved, since you can still sit out twelve years of school in the “remedial” program not because you’re “learning disabled” but because you aren’t home at night. Can our books still tell their stories in the age of the “digitally reduced attention span”? Can we still reach a generation whose own parents lost eye contact with them long ago? In the full knowledge that there is no app for eye contact…

Oh, yes. The answer is yes because never have the young needed us more. Never has a young generation on their way to adulthood lived this far from adults. Never has a generation needed an adult voice more, if only on the page and well disguised."

On Writing: "Writing is the most uncentering of experiences, and we really have nothing to say until we get ourselves off the page, off the stage, and let our readers become our characters, try them on for size. And so here is the sacred secret of what we do—and we need to share this with the creative writing teacher: a story is always about something that never happened to the author. E. B. White was never a mouse, or a spider. And Beatrix Potter was never a rabbit. J. K. Rowling did not attend Hogwarts. And Gary Paulsen was never dropped down in the wilderness with nothing in his hand but a hatchet. Stephenie Meyer was never bitten by a you-know-what. We write from observation, not experience. From research, not recollection. All fiction is based on research. We don’t write what we know. We write what we can find out. Every book begins in the library in the hope that it will end there."

Click here to read the full article.

The Mom's favorite magazine: The Horn Book Magazine. 

Thanks to lovely Librarian at 

Benzonia Public Library who 

introduced her last year! 

Want to find the latest wonderful 

children's literature? 

Look no further!

Robert Peck stirs up a little animal fantasy 

with his latest Secrets at Sea,

read the Kirkus review here, or 

click to find it at your library. 

We're reading it this month, 

so we'll let you know 

what we think!

New Year, New Book Challenge

A New Year, A Fresh Challenge --nice and simple!

Click comment and tell the Books for Walls Project 

about your first read in 2012.

Start the year off RIGHT! Enter your email address and receive our posts in your email box!:

Best of BFWP: The Blizzard Challenge

(Another blizzard is heading our way... on New Year's Day!!)


Breaking news: there seems to be a blizzard headed toward Northern Michigan and we think it is a perfect occasion for our first challenge that isn't on a Wednesday!

Current Weather Radar of USA.

What do you think? What would you read if you knew you needed to stay home for at least 36 hours? What is the perfect book to read in a blizzard?

Best of BFWP: Your Reading Life in Six Words Challenge

(We're ending the year with our most popular stories and challenges! Tell us your favorite, email us --we love hearing from our readers.)


We often have very memorable interactions with BFWP's readers involving disclosure of our reading life secrets: details about ourselves and our lives as readers. Moments in time like these lead us on a search for a simple and concise way to tell the story about ourselves, as readers.

The Books for Walls Project invites you to share:

Your reading life in six words.

Share with us a six word memoir about your reading life. Need some six word memoir inspiration? Click here for a great gallery of  six word memoirs from NPR or for the full story click here. 

Now, tell us Your Reading Life Story... in six words!!

Best of BFWP: The Favorite Character Challenge

(We're continuing our Best of Books for Walls Project as we get things lined up for the new year!!))


This week's challenge is from me, The Little Sister (Mom is typing for me.) Yesterday while we were swinging on the swings I thought of it! I want to know some of your Favorite Characters from books. 

We thought of so many. Big Sister and I looked for pictures with Mom to show you some of our favorites! Mom always reads Jamie O'Rourke with an Irish Brogue and she never gets tired of reading it.  I wish Tomie dePaola wrote more books about Jamie and Eileen -we didn't like the one about the Pooka as much.

One of my Big Sister's Favorite Characters is Enola Holmes. 

This cover image of "The Left Handed Lady" is from the Portuguese version of "O Caso da Senhorita Canhota", which translates "Miss Left Handed." We thought it was funny how titles don't always translate the same!

Tell us a favorite character. 

Please use the following format for your comment:

Title of Book, Author, the name of your Favorite Character and what you like (or don't like) about them.

**Would you like the Weekly Challenge delivered to your email box every Wednesday? Click here for details!

10 Ways to Give the Library for the Holidays

Need the PERFECT holiday gift? How about a gift that is simple, inexpensive, and local; a gift that literally keeps on giving?

Give 

the

Library. 

No, we're not suggesting the WHOLE thing, would there even be a box that big? We can imagine our library wrapped in a BIG bow. We came up with 10 ways to give friends and relatives The Library as a gift! Enjoy:

Get your new bags at
all branches of Traverse
Area District Library!

1. Give library bags or wrap presents in your local libraries re-usable bags! (This suggestion is inspired by Traverse Area District Library's wonderful move for the environment: reusable bags in a rainbow of colors.)
2. Give a library card! Know someone that doesn't have a library card, a child perhaps? Slip a library card form into their stocking or into a christmas card and explain that you are giving them thousands of books, movies, music and oh, so much more for Christmas.
3. Give a "Friends of the Library" Membership. A great way to support libraries and often the membership is inexpensive --give a lifetime membership, very generous!
4. Shop at library gift shops. Our local library has an amazing gift shop with lovely bookish gifts, cards and treasures. According to Carolyn Moehle, Manager of the TADL gift shop, "we have tons of stocking stuffers!" Contact the library for gift shop hours. Shop online via New York Public Library's extensive gift shop. Call your local library and see if they have a gift shop!
5. Giving someone an eReader? Check to see if their local library has OverDrive. OverDrive is an amazing online resource that many libraries use to give access to ebooks and audio books to patrons. Click here to see if your local library uses OverDrive. Then give the eReader with literally thousands  of books, wow!
6. Giving books for Christmas? Stop by your library and get information on how to donate books. Then in the gift card suggest that when the giftee finishes the book they donate it to the library!
7. Donate books to a library in the name of a friend. Be sure to call you library and ask what books they need. Then put a bookplate with "Donated by: your friend's name", take a photo of the book plate and slip it into a card with an explanation! We always love when we come across books at the library that were given in honor.

8. 

   The lovely Holiday Book Sale at 

   Interlochen Public Library

   Shop Library Book Sales. Many libraries have on going book sales with all sorts of wonderful options. Contact your library to see what they have available.  
9. Have a friend that is notorious for racking up library fines? Stop by their branch and deposit a bit of money into their account. Due to privacy issues the library can't tell you how much they owe --but they can credit an account! Take a photo with the librarian as you pay the fines (with big smiles) and slip it into a gift card!
10. Give a library date. Invite the giftee on a library adventure. Often there are music and special events at the library --spend the day at the library with your friend. Remember the best way to give the library is to USE IT!!

Give the Library a present for Christmas:

• Clear out your bookshelves and donate them to your local branch.
• Give your librarians a present! We like to give a big basket of oranges and chocolate, lots of chocolate... lots and lots of chocolate.
• The simplest gift: Use your library. That is the best way to show you care.

Now get out there
and 
Use 
Your 
Library! 

What are You Reading RIGHT NOW? October/November/December 2011

The Big Sister came up with this challenge way back in May of 2010 and it was so popular that we decided to make it a regular feature. So come by often and share what you are reading! This challenge is a great place to learn about new and old good books to read, so enjoy the comments too!

Happy Autumn, this is the view
in our front yard! Winter is coming!!

Nice and simple: tell The Books for Walls Project what you are reading  --whether a newspaper, a magazine, a book-on-tape, or just a good old fashioned book.

Take a moment check out all of our challenges. Bookmark it and take a challenge whenever you have an urge to find or to share a good book or story: The Books for Walls Project Complete List of Challenges.

So, What are you Reading Right Now? Tell us in the comments below:

Michael Moore: End Wars, Fund Libraries

I am one lucky woman. My mom, The Bean, loves to spring for tickets to literary events --our deal: she gets tickets and I try to get the food --she usually wins the draw and reaches her wallet first. Together we've experienced wonderful authors including Diane Rehm and Maria Doria Russell, click the links to read our adventures. Recently she treated to "An Evening with Michael Moore" at Traverse City's State Theatre.

Before Michael read from his new book Here Comes Trouble he shared a couple of lists. The first brought to light a simple fact: we all have things in common, if we take pause and really give it a chance. Michael and I, we don't tighten lids; Michael and my brother, share a middle name --Francis; Michael and my family work hard to get along with neighbors (he even lived through neighbors spreading manure on his lawn); Michael and myriads love movies, books, libraries, and our moms.  I really whooped and hollered when he shared number six of his second list, Ten Things We Want: A Proposal for Occupy Wall Street: End Wars, Fund Libraries. Could it really be that simple? Well, of course there is much more to it --but that simple thought I am happy to share with The Sisters: fight less, learn more.

Here at Books for Walls Project we are always in the lookout for ideas that help libraries, especially with funding. During his book tour Michael is going the distance for libraries. In his home town of Flint, Michigan (free event, half price books) $10,000 was donated to the Flint Public Library. In fact, on every stop  a portion of book sale royalties are donated to a local library. We're trying to find out which Traverse Area District Library will receive the Traverse City event royalties, we'll let you know! 

Three local booksellers were offered an exclusive opportunity to sell autographed, first edition copies of  Here Comes Trouble. In turn, Brilliant Books, McLean & Eakin Booksellers and Saturn Booksellers donate $5 from each sale to help restore the State Theatre (a local gem in Traverse City). Our only criticism: at www.michaelmoore.com Here Comes Trouble seekers are sent to Amazon.com, where the book costs nearly half as much at the cover price. It's hard for folks, libraries included, to slap down full price when Amazon deals are dangled like cheap carrots in front of us. (Note to Michael Moore: If you're reading this, please consider linking to local bookstores on your website. Remember you told us  that change could be simple, so we're giving it a try! Imagine what your book sales could do for local economies --we can. And THANK YOU.)

Mike and Me
Thank you Mike for posing "Books for Walls Project Style"
and thanks for taking the time to listen!

Following a lively, cheering, laughing, audience involved talk we waited in line to get books signed and chat with Michael Moore; his charisma and ability to speak his truth is what America could be all about. He took a moment to hear our abbreviated stories --that The Bean (my Mom) and The Poet  (my Dad) met on the streets of Detroit during the riots on April 4, 1968 when Martin Luther King, Jr was shot, then married and raised three children just blocks away; we told him about BFWP and our Library Love plans --he listened as he signed his name. The night was about listening. Listening to him talk about his life, running for school board, twenty-somethings, his mother and his love of reading and oh yes, his love of  movies, listening to the audience react, listening to my Mom laugh, wondering how I will do a better job listening to everyone I meet. After our evening with Michael Moore and a theater full of hopeful people there was no way this Mom will ever wonder if the future of the world is all right.


In our perfect world libraries don't have to wonder how to remain open, which books to buy, and what services to provide. In our perfect world the knowledge that gives Americans power would be available 24/7 to every citizen --any age, with or without an address. We are giddy to imagine that world.

“I realized that this was the big secret of democracy 

-- that change can occur by starting off with just a 

few people doing something.” 

Michael Moore, Here Comes Trouble

Now get out there and support your library, 

donate a couple of books, 

join the Friends of the Library... 

use it or loose it!

Now for the FUN part:

We invested in two copies of Here Comes Trouble (that's $10 to help the State Theatre!) one for our personal library and one for YOUR favorite library. 

Would you like us to donate a signed, 1st edition to your library? 

Drop us a line info@booksforwallsproject.org, or post a comment, tell us about your favorite library --we'll collect the entries over the next couple of weeks and then The Sisters will pick one in a random drawing. 

This copy can belong to your library... 

• Interested in reading Here Comes Trouble? May we suggest borrowing a copy from your library, find it www.worldcat.org. 
• Want to invest in your own 1st Edition, autographed copy? Check out one of these bookstores: Brilliant Books in Traverse City and Suttons Bay, Michigan --they offer free shipping! McLean & Eakin Booksellers in Petosky, Michigan and Saturn Booksellers in Gaylord, Michigan
• Send Michael Moore a love letter (we think this is his email address!) or visit his Facebook page ask him to link to local bookstores on his website and tell him the Books for Walls Project send you --and don't forget to thank him for supporting our libraries! 

Stop by again soon! We have all sorts of fun planned for December!

Listening Challenge 2011

We challenge you to listen, to collect stories and to take part in StoryCorps' National Day of Listening!

(WARNING: if you watch the video you will be inspired 

and will learn everything you need to do to get started!)

The Books for Walls Project is pleased to be an official state partner of the acclaimed oral history project StoryCorps in celebrating the fourth annual National Day of Listening on Friday, November 25, 2011. On the day after Thanksgiving every year, The Books for Walls Projectand StoryCorps are asking all Americans to start a new holiday tradition: set aside an hour to interview a friend, a loved one, or someone in their community about his or her life.

To record your own National Day of Listening interview:

1. Find someone you’d like to interview
2. Create your question list
3. Sit down to record your conversation

StoryCorps has created a free Do-It-Yourself (DIY) interview guide with step-by-step interview instructions, equipment recommendations, and sample questions that is available online at www.nationaldayoflistening.org. You can record your interview using equipment that is readily available in most homes—from cell phones to tape recorders to computers or even pen and paper.

The National Day of Listening was started by StoryCorps in 2008 as a way to provide an alternative to "Black Friday" shopping sprees. By participating in this year’s National Day of Listening, we hope you’ll find that taking the time out to interview someone about his or her life is the least expensive but most meaningful gift that we can give.

StoryCorps’ mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, preserve, and share their stories. 

Join the Books for Walls Project and take part in the 

National Day of Listening!

Then please come back to The Listening Challenge 2011 and tell us how your listening and story collecting goes! Feel free to share your thoughts, insights and of course stories!