Budget Vote 2019
Thank you to everyone who voted! Our library budget was passed!
For more information on the budget, click here.
Librarian’s Pick: The Stranger Diaries – Elly Griffiths
“English teacher Clare Cassidy is deeply troubled after the murder of fellow teacher and friend Ella Elphick. Ella’s death eerily mimics the plot of Clare’s favorite Victorian ghost story, “The Stranger,” by author R.M. Holland, whose historic home remains a landmark on the school’s campus. When Clare seeks solace in her daily diary, she finds a chilling message written by another hand: “Hallo, Clare. You don’t know me.” When another teacher is found slain, this time inside the notorious Holland House, Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur believes Clare is the link between the two deaths, prompting the teacher and her teenage daughter, Georgia, to flee Sussex on a sleeper train to Scotland.”
Librarian’s Pick: I.M. – Isaac Mizrahi
“The youngest of three children in a conservative Brooklyn family, Mizrahi was an outlier from the get-go. “The Syrian-Jewish community had never seen anything like me before,” he writes. “I stuck out like a chubby gay thumb.” While his peers were playing ball, Mizrahi was sewing costumes for his puppet shows and belting out Liza Minnelli tunes. He was perhaps destined to be a designer: His mother subscribed religiously to Women’s Wear Daily, and his father manufactured children’s clothing. But while his parents could tolerate—even nurture—his creativity, their hearts were not open to the possibility of a gay son. He thrived at Parsons, an elite Manhattan design school, but essentially lived a double life for years throughout the late 1970s and early ’80s: dutiful Jewish son at home, openly gay man in the city.
Even as he struggled with his personal identity, Mizrahi’s star rose as he worked at Perry Ellis and Calvin Klein and opened his own atelier. He gained a reputation as the rare male designer who really understood women and their bodies, in part because of conversations with his mother about fashion.”
Librarian’s Pick: Little Faith – Nickolas Butler
“Lyle Hovde and his wife welcome home their adopted daughter, Shiloh, and her 5-year-old son, Isaac, who need help getting back on their feet. Lyle dotes on Isaac, taking him to neighbor Hoot’s house for ice cream or to the apple orchard where Lyle works in retirement. But when Shiloh joins a radical church in nearby La Crosse, Wisconsin, she pushes her parents away. Lyle, with the help of his mates, must decide how to act when his beloved grandson’s health is in danger.
Little Faith is filled with biblical elements, starting with its bucolic, Eden-like setting, where the Hovde family enjoys togetherness after a long estrangement. Lyle is tempted to savor this fairy-tale scene, but like the apples he tends, the moment doesn’t keep well. Salvation is an open-ended question in this story. Is Lyle saved? Or is it Lyle who saves Isaac? Like a good parable, the novel’s message is worth patient interpretation.”
Library Budget Vote
April 2, 2019, 9:00 – 9:00 at the Library!
For more details, check out our Budget Information!
Librarian’s Pick: The Lady From The Black Lagoon – Mallory O’Meara
“When horror superfan and film producer Mallory O’Meara watched The Creature from the Black Lagoon at age 17, her life changed forever. She found a lifelong heroine when she discovered that the movie’s titular creature had been created by a female artist named Milicent Patrick. “For all of my adult life and film career, Milicent Patrick has been a guiding light, a silent friend, a beacon reminding me that I belonged,” O’Meara writes.
Patrick was a footnote long lost to film history, but O’Meara has decided to change all that with her fascinating biography, The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick. Patrick’s story is enthralling: She spent part of her childhood on the grounds of Hearst Castle, where her megalomaniac father was an architect. A talented artist, she became one of Disney’s first animators and, later, the only woman to create a classic Hollywood monster―only to be fired because her boss was jealous of the attention she was receiving. Nonetheless, her legacy continues to inspire, as her creature was the impetus behind the Oscar-winning film The Shape of Water. Patrick was also an actress (albeit not a great one) and a glamorous personality who embodied the allure of Hollywood.”