Summer Reading 2014

Summer Reading 2014 @ Monroeville Public Library!

Monday, June 9 kicks off our Summer Reading Programs here at MPL -- for kids, teens, and adults alike. Read on to find out more about our programs for you and your family this summertime season!

For Kids:

Fizz, Boom, Read with this year's summer reading theme! Children who have not yet started first grade can sign up for the Read To Me Club, where parents keep a list of at least 20 books that they share with their child. Older students can participate in the Summer Reading Club, where the goal is to read at least 10 books throughout the summer. There will be activities for all ages, contests, and prizes.

For Teens:

On June 9th, Monroeville Public Library will kick off its annual Teen Summer Reading (TSR) program. TSR is open to all students going into grades 6-12. Students read all summer to participate in a Chinese auction of prizes -- as well as getting the chance to attend a variety of summer activities, from movie marathons and stargazing parties to science crafts and Doctor Who events. There are special weekly drawings for extra prizes, and every teen who reads at least 10 books or writes three book reviews will be eligible for a special gift card. We'll wrap up the summer with our annual ending program party.

Stop by the Welcome Desk to get your rating slips and program packet, or register online starting June 9!

Login here starting June 9th to register and track your Summer Reading.

For Adults:

What elements make up a great summer? Check out Monroeville Public Library's "Literary Elements" Adult Summer Reading Program to find out! The Adult program will run concurrently with the children’s and teen’s programs, so get your whole family involved.

For every book read or audiobook listened to, receive a ticket good for this year's prizes. Our Grand Prize is a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 tablet! Be sure to turn in your raffle tickets often -- we're giving away prizes on June 23, July 7, July 21 and August 4. ALL entries will be eligible for the Grand Prize, drawn August 11.

Also, the first 30 people to register will receive a small prize!

The more you read, the more chances you have of winning!

Login here starting June 9th to register and track your Summer Reading.

I Scream, You Scream

Hope you aren't reading this entry right before your lunch break

July has been National Ice Cream Month since Ronald Reagan made it official in 1984. But before you leave for the nearest ice cream parlor to celebrate, check out some fun facts are the history, manufacturing, and flavors of everybody's favorite tasty, summertime treat.

HISTORY:

-- Ice cream has a long and distinguished history. Shaved ice flavored with nectar was said to be a favorite dessert of Alexander the Great. (Snow was shipped in from the mountaintops.) Marco Polo brought back a recipe from the Orient for ice cream. And King Charles I served ice creams at his court in 17th century England (at least until he was executed).

-- George Washington once spent more than $200 on ice cream as a summertime treat.

-- Thomas Jefferson, also a fan of ice cream, introduced the "French" way of making ice cream: with eggs.

-- Modern ice cream as we know it today started showing up in the 1800s -- with the advent of commercial refrigeration.

-- "I scream, you scream: we all scream for ice cream!"  This well-known playground song actually had its roots on a college campus. The song was written originally recorded by Waring's Pennsylvanians, a choral group that was most popular on campuses. FUN FACT: the bandleader of the group was Fred Waring, who would go on to financially back the Waring Blendor -- the first modern electric blender on the market.

-- Multiple people can be credited with the invention of the ice cream cone. At least one of those is Ernest Hamwi, a waffle vendor at the 1904 St. Louis World Fair. The summer was hot and Hamwi was looking for a way to make his product more appealing. He promptly joined forces with the ice cream vendor in the next stall over, wrapping his waffles into a loose cone to hold a scoop of ice cream.

MANUFACTURING:

-- Based on overall sales, America's favorite flavor of ice cream is ... vanilla. (As a chocolate-lover, I don't understand this at all!)

-- How much ice cream do we eat every year?  1.5 gallons are produced in the U.S. alone.

-- Ice cream accounts for two-thirds of all of America's dairy sales.

-- It takes twelve pounds of whole milk to produce a gallon of ice cream.

FLAVORS: 

-- Gilroy, California prides itself on being the garlic-producing capital of the world ... and they serve the garlic-flavored ice cream to prove it!

-- Germany and Italy both serve cheese-flavored ice cream, which comes with ground-up spaghetti. (The Philippines also has many fans of cheese ice cream, albeit without the pasta.)

-- Many restaurants in France will flavor their plain ice cream with ... caviar. You can also buy foie gras-flavored at ice cream; the restaurant that serves it starts the price at about $150 a dish.

-- Goat-milk ice cream is very popular in Asia, sometimes complete with tiny pieces of goat meat.

-- In Japan, available flavors include squid ink, chewy octopus, horse meat, crab, sweet potato, curry, ox tongue, and chicken wing.

-- We've got our own unique flavors here in the USA, too. Sweetcorn has become a popular ice cream flavor in America., with people enjoying the crunchy corn kernels as toppings or by blending the corn in with the milk as the ice cream is prepared.

LINKS:

The History of Ice Cream -- from the Old Farmer's Almanac.

Ice Cream Trivia -- courtesy of the Meadows, Ms. B's hometown ice cream joint.

National Ice Cream Month -- headline news from the the International Dairy Foods Association.

Ben & Jerry's List of Flavors -- they've got everything from Cake Batter to Cherry Garcia.

Baskin-Robbins List of Flavors -- from baseball nut to watermelon chip.

-- Post by Ms. B

Summer In The City

Starting Friday, June 7, The Three Rivers Arts Festival will run for 10 days, ending on June 16. This popular, annual event will feature live music, an artist market, gallery exhibitions and films suitable for the whole family.

Make sure to take advantage of this and many other events happening around Western Pennsylvania. We live in a great area, so go out and enjoy!

Fairs and Festivals
Who doesn't love a carnival? Below are just a few of the fairs and festivals that will be happening this summer.

--Big Butler Fair (June 28 - July 6)

--Pittsburgh Pride Fest (June 16)

--Fort Armstrong Folk Festival (August 1 thru August 4)

--The Art Festival on Walnut (August 24 and 25)


Museums
Western PA has many museums to cover almost all interests.

--Carnegie Museums (Art, Natural History, The Andy Warhol, The Science Center)

--Senator John Heinz History Center

--The Fort Pitt Musuem

--The Westmoreland Museum of American Art

--Pennsylvania Trolley Museum

Sports
There is a long history of sports in Pittsburgh and the summer is a great time to take in a game or two.

--Pittsburgh Pirates

--Pittsburgh Passion

--Pittsburgh Riverhounds

Outdoor Music Festivals and Concerts
In addition to the live music at the Three Rivers Arts Festival, there are plenty of other local music events going on this summer.

--Monroeville Summer Concert Series

--First Fridays at the Frick

--Allegheny County Summer Concert Series

--Laurel Highlands Bluegrass Festival

--Summer Sounds (Greensburg)

And Even More Interesting Places and Things to Do!

--Phipps Conservatory

--Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village

--Fort Ligonier

--Farmer's Markets (interactive map from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. And don't forget we have a wonderful farmer's market, right here in Monroeville!)

--Drive Ins (still a great way to spend a summer evening)


May sure you check out VisitPittsburgh for even more events going on around the city.



-- Post by Tracy

Summertime @ the Movies

With summer vacation -- and Summer Reading -- both quickly approaching, that means we're already firmly entrenched in another annual tradition: the blockbuster movie season.

While there's plenty of money-making movies that come to theaters in the "off-seasons" (Avatar and Titanic are the only movies to ever cross the $2 billion box office mark, and they were both December releases), summer remains the season for big action, big special-effects efforts to crowd into theaters and attempt to win over their audiences.  

With the latest entries in the Iron Man, Star Trek, and Fast and the Furious franchises already in theaters, it's shaping up to be a summer filled with superheroes, sci-fi, and high-action blockbuster fun at its best. So while you're waiting for your personally most-hotly-anticipated theater release (or if you've already seen it at the theater), check out our Top Ten list of summer blockbuster classics. (All free and available on DVD @ your library, of course!)

Tracy's Picks:

-- Star Wars (1977)

As you know from earlier posts, this is one of my favorite films of all time. And, for me, it defined the summer of 1977. This swashbuckler disguised as a space opera had it all -- adventure, comedy, heartbreak, and even a hint of romance. 

-- Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Harrison Ford created another iconic character in archeologist Indiana Jones. This adventure takes us all over the world in the 1930s, as Indy tries to stop the Nazis from discovering the Ark of the Covenant. Along the way, Indy meets old friends -- and an old flame.



-- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Who wouldn’t identify with this adorable little alien who only wants to go home? With help from Elliot and his friends, E.T. manages to be reunited with his ship after some (slightly) scary encounters with the government.

-- Blade Runner (1982)

The dystopian future of Blade Runners is a very dark and scary place to live. Androids have been created to work off-planet, but now some of them are rebelling. A former police officer (Harrison Ford again) must find, and kill, these replicants.



-- Ghostbusters (1984)

Who you gonna call? Three parapsychologists hope that you call them when you encounter a ghost, that’s who! They are hired to remove a ghost from a New York penthouse. The ghost takes the physical shape of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and leaves a lasting impression on the citizens of New York City.



Ms. B's Picks:

-- Batman (1989)

Look, let me be honest: I don't really like this movie. (Quite a hard thing for a die-hard Batman fan like myself to admit!) Michael Keaton's Batman suit makes him move like he's wearing a snowsuit, Jack Nicholson forgoes the roll of the Joker in order to simply play Jack Nicholson, and Tim Burton's Gotham City is more Alice in Wonderland than gothic New York. Yet I appreciate this quirky, box-office-smashing flick for putting Batman back squarely in the public's eye. Without Michael Keaton, there would have been no Christian Bale.

-- Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Okay, so there's some kid in this movie, alongside some "Governator" or some such. But let's be honest: the real star of the Terminator movies is Sarah Connor, action heroine extraordinaire. Alongside Sigourney Weaver's kick-butt Ellen Ripley (from Ridley Scott's Alien movies), Sarah Connor is the female action hero done right. She was an ordinary young waitress until the events of the first Terminator movie swept her up into a world of killer androids, time travel, and an A.I. intelligence bent on wiping out the future of the human race ... once it's been invented. (Time travel complicates everything.)



-- Independence Day (1996)

There are two types of aliens in sci-fi stories: the good ones and the bad ones. The aliens of Independence Day definitely fall into the latter category. Showing up one July 2nd, an attack force of visiting aliens promptly begin their attack on Earth, bent on wiping out the humans to take the planet's resources for themselves. Serious subject matter, when you put it that way -- but the summary belies the high-action, high-humor fun that is really what the movie is all about. Watch it for the third act, when Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum band together to save the day with a recovered alien ship and Jeff's trusty Macbook. (It's exactly as much goofy fun as it sounds.)

-- Men in Black (1997)

Independence Day may be fun, but I generally prefer my sci-fi movies to have a little more finesse than that. "Finesse" may not be a word that would most obviously apply to a film like Men in Black, but it's important to take a look at what the movie actually does. Poking fun at sci-fi tropes, conspiracy lore, and life in a big city, Men in Black was, at its premiere, that wholly unusual phenomenon: a truly original Hollywood film. The MIB is the government organization in charge of all the aliens currently living out their lives on planet Earth. Just one hitch: none of the Earthings can know they're there. The bizarrely-awesome comedy that plays out in this story is absolutely not to be missed.

-- The Mummy (1999)

If not for this movie, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. This Indiana Jones-style throwback adventure/horror flick became such a favorite of mine that it inspired my interest in two very different areas. This fun, 1920s-set film is technically a rebooted remake of the Boris Karloff classic, but with its tongue set very firmly in cheek. When a group of adventurers inadvertently disturb the tomb of a cursed Egyptian mummy ... well, you know the rest. Aside from piquing my interest in Egyptian mythology, my admiration for the story's main character inspired me in a different way. The true heroine of the story?  Evelyn Carnahan ... a librarian. Who wouldn't want a job like Evy's?