Resources for free ebooks for kids

DOWNLOAD FREE E-BOOKS FOR KIDS FROM THESE SOURCES

The Children’s Library: http://en.childrenslibrary.org/

e-books directory: childrens literature: http://www.e-booksdirectory.com/listing.php?category=158

free children’s ebooks, from picture books through young adult books: http://www.epubbud.com/

Read children’s books online: http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/Reading/

Free downloadable children’s books: http://freekidsbooks.org/

Gizmo’s 192 sites for free children’s ebooks: http://www.techsupportalert.com/free-books-children

Peter Pan resources: this site has them available for reading online:
http://www.classic-literature.co.uk/scottish-authors/james-barrie/

(Peter Pan) This site has some for download in PDF
http://www.freeclassicebooks.com/james_m_barrie.htm

(Peter Pan) For Kindle (PRC)
http://www.freeebooksforkindles.com/james_m_barrie.htm

Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks and the Hidden Powers of the Mind by Alex Stone

Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind, by Alex Stone 

Why would a physics PhD student leave Columbia University to study magic? Why do we enjoy being fooled? What does math have to do with it? Answers to these questions and more can be found in Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind, by Alex Stone.

Stone was enchanted at age six when he received a magic kit. Enthralled, he immediately began showing off his magic “skills” to everyone he could wheedle into watching. It wasn’t until after he was hauled off the stage in disgrace at the World Championships of Magic in 2008 that he became serious about studying and practicing the magic arts.

Stone’s book is part memoir, part investigation into the hidden subculture of magicians (and street-side con men), and part a look into how and why magicians can fools us—a personal journey rather than a textbook. Obfuscation, distraction, and endless hours of practice all have their part in the success of an illusion. Stone explains how inattentional or perceptual blindness, the “failure to notice an unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness), is used by magicians to bamboozle their audiences. He describes how the classic short cons (three card Monte and the shell game), well orchestrated ,multi-casted street theater acts, work to fleece carefully selected suckers; how he can distract a patsy while snatching his watch; and how psychics are able (well, actually not) to read minds.

In addition, Stone reveals some of the math and science behind conjuror’s tricks. For example, shuffling, on the average, must be done seven times to mix the deck--a hypothesis tested out by Perci Diaconis, a Harvard mathematician and magician. Shuffling only one or two times still allows the card magician to see out-of-order cards. This mathematical discovery not only tightened up casino security, it strangely enough also had significant impact on the medicine mixing strategies of pharmaceutical companies.

                                                                                                                 

Being a muggle, I didn’t know that there is a world class magic library, The Conjuring Arts Research Center, in New York City. Like Hermione, serious magicians search here for ancient magical secrets. “‘If you want to fool magicians…you’re not going to fool them with a new move. You’re going to fool them with some hundred-year-old mathematical principle…Go dig up some ancient book. Go to the library’” (emphasis gleefully added).

If you’re a budding magician or a mathematician, request Perci Diaconis’ book, Magical Mathematics, the Mathematical Ideas that Animate Great Magic Tricks (793.85 Diaconis) from our catalog. Stone refers to Diaconis as a “naturally gifted magician [and] an underground legend.” Why not learn from the best?

UPDATE. We’re happy to announce, especially for our magic enthusiasts, that we now have the documentary Make Believe, the Battle to Become the World’s Best Teen Magician, in our library. Make Believe follows the journeys of six young magicians from around the planet as they vie for the title of Teen World Champion of Magic. What's more, the magicians share card trick tutorials in the Bonus Materials.

Reviewed by Anne Shirako, Reference Librarian, Ukiah Branch, Mendocino County Library, 3/2013

Find Mendocino County Library on FaceBook

 We share the best quotations, library literacy, wonderful books, and notices of upcoming library events.

Did you know about jobscout.org? It's a wonderful online resource for improving computer skills, writing a resume, and applying for jobs.

If you haven't discovered goodreads.com yet, it's a great way to share your favorite books with friends, learn about the latest popular books, and join others in genre book clubs. Mendocino County Library is there waiting for you!  

Are you following us on Pinterest?  Find our new books and newly-recommends on adult fiction, adult nonfiction, YA, kids and downloadable "boards. "  We also post great movies, library events, photos and events in Ukiah, and great infographics. Recently recommended reads include:

Visit us on Pinterest soon!

Gone Girl, A Novel by Gillian Flynn

  The sheer number of reviews, the high accolades, and the number of inclusions on “Best of 2012” lists make even thinking about reviewing Gone Girl a daunting challenge. So, just let me say, it’s an exciting psychological thriller and worthy of the praise (and high sales figures) it has received.

I wasn’t intrigued at the beginning, however. Just for starters, I didn’t really like either Nick or Amy, whose marriage dissolves in this book. For that matter, I didn’t like anyone in Gone Girl, except perhaps, Nick’s twin sister, Go. Amy’s parents, psychologists both, made their fortunes writing a series of children’s books, Amazing Amy…based on the exploits of their “perfect” daughter—a fantasy perfect child that the real Amy can’t possibly emulate. Nick has his own demons—for example, his angry misogynistic father, now afflicted with Alzheimer’s, who once told his son, “There are all kinds of men…and you are the wrong kind.”

Amy, well, who is Amy anyway? We only know her from her diaries and from Nick’s inner monologue. She says she’s a sweet loving wife, “fat with love! Husky with ardor! Morbidly obsessed with devotion! A happy, busy bumblebee of marital enthusiasms.” Nick however, feels cold toward Amy and acts as though she were made of razor wire.

And Nick? Is he just a corn-fed putz from flyover country and a disaffected trembling husband?  Why then does he see the sun as an “angry eye in the sky.” It’s noon when he says, “My gut twisted and I moved quicker. I needed a drink.” Is he angry enough, motivated enough, devious enough murder his wife, then pretend innocence?

Fair warning: Gone Girl will take you on a journey through dysfunction, through pathology, through an ugliness that will astound you. The language is raw, the characters are malicious, and the relationships are toxic and destructive, twisted beyond understanding. That said, it’s an engrossing read.

As always, we welcome your comments and feedback.

Anne Shirako, Reference Librarian, Ukiah Library

April is Poetry Month

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – EARTH DAY 2013

Posted April 24, 2013

Julia Butterfly Hill

OFFERINGS TO LUNA

A tree

a life so many years gone by

history bound with each new ring and every scar

i lie nestled in Her arms

i listen to all She has to say

She speaks to me through my bare feet…my hands

She speaks to me on the wind…and in the rain

telling me stories born long before my time

Wisdom

as only Ancient Elders know

Truths

passed to me through Nature’s perfect lips

She cries

Her overwhelming grief

sap that clings to me…to my soul

i wrap my arms around Her

offering the only solace that I know

giving myself as the only gift I have to give

a pitiful offering

to a Goddess such as this but of myself

it is all that I have to give

April is National Poetry Month

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 20, 2013

MARY OLIVER (again)

About Angels and About Trees

Where do angels

fly in the firmament,

and how many can dance

on the head of a pin?

Well, I don’t care

about that pin dance,

what I know is that

they rest, sometimes,

in the tops of the trees

and you can see them,

or almost see them,

or, anyway, think:  what a

wonderful idea.

I have lost as you and

others have possibly lost a

beloved one,

and wonder, where are they now?

The trees, anyway, are

miraculous, full of

angels (ideas); even

empty they are a

good place to look to put

the heart at rest – all those

leaves breathing the air, so

peaceful and diligent, and certainly

ready to be

the resting place of

strange, winged creatures

that we, in this world, have loved.

April is National Poetry Month

Willits Library Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 18, 2013

DAVID YOUNG

Walking Home on an Early Spring Evening

Every microcosm needs its crow,

something to hang around and comment,

scavenge,

alight on highest branches.

Who hasn’t seen the gnats,

the pollen grains that coat the windshield –

who hasn’t heard the tree frogs?

In the long march that takes us all our life,

in and out of sleep, sun up, sun gone,

our aging back and forth, smiling and puzzled,

there come these times:  you stop and look,

and fix on something unremarkable,

a parking lot or just a patch of sumac,

but it will flare and resonate

and you’ll feel part of it for once,

you’ll be a goldfinch hanging on a feeder,

you’ll be a river system all in silver

etched on a frosty driveway, you’ll

say “Folks, I think I made it this time,

I think this is my song.”  The crow lifts up,

Its feathers shine and whisper,

Its round black eye surveys indifferently

the world we’ve made

and then the one we haven’t.

April is National Poetry Month

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day April 17, 2013

P. K. Page

Planet Earth

It has to be spread out, the skin of this planet,

has to be ironed, the sea in its whiteness;

and the hands keep on moving,

smoothing the holy surfaces.

                ‘In Praise of Ironing’, PABLO NERUDA

It has to be loved the way a laundress loves her linens,

the way she moves her hands caressing the fine muslins

knowing their warp and woof,

like a lover coaxing, or a mother praising.

It has to be loved as if it were embroidered

with flowers and birds and two joined hearts upon it.

It has to be stretched and stroked.

It has to be celebrated.

O this great beloved world and all the creatures in it.

It has to be spread out, the skin of this planet.

The trees must be washed, and the grasses and mosses.

They have to be polished as if made of green brass.

The rivers and little streams with their hidden cresses

and pale-coloured pebbles

and their fool’s gold

must be washed and starched or shined into brightness,

the sheets of lake water

smoothed with the hand

and the foam of the oceans pressed into neatness.

It has to be ironed, the sea in its whiteness

and pleated and goffered, the flower-blue sea

the protean, wine-dark, grey, green, sea

with its metres of satin and bolts of brocade.

And sky – such an O! overhead – night and day

must be burnished and rubbed

by hands that are loving

so the blue blazons forth

and the stars keep on shining

within and above

and the hands keep on moving.

It has to be made bright, the skin of this planet

till it shines in the sun like gold leaf.

Archangels then will attend to its metals

and polish the rods of its rain.

Seraphim will stop singing hosannas

to shower it with blessings and blisses and praises

and, newly in love,

we must draw it and paint it

our pencils and brushes and loving caresses

smoothing the holy surfaces.