TitleTales

Audie Awards Finalists 2009: by Trisha Rigsby

A/V post—05/22/09
My first memories are of listening: not only of my mother reading to me, but also an early memory of hearing Peter and the Wolf narrated by Alec Guinness and conducted by Arthur Fiedler on my Fisher Price record player. I can’t deny the power of a good story, but I think narration and production enhance the desire to listen. Audiobooks continue to be one of the strongest and most consistent performers in audiovisual circulation. The industry has come a long way in the last 15 years. With more and more audiobooks releasing every year, it’s not always easy to pick one recording over another. One of the best selection tools is the Audies, a top honor for spoken word recordings given annually by the Audio Publishers Association. Some of my favorite nominees this year are The Art of Racing in the Rain; The Lace Reader; When You Are Engulfed in Flames; The Graveyard Book; The Cricket in Times Square; Hot, Flat, and Crowded; and Amarcord: Marcella Remembers.

Local Has It: by Kathryn Lynip

Nonfiction post—05/22/09
I have been thinking and reading lately about the growing move to localize. There is a growing voice for buying and growing food locally and drawing together as a community in these challenging times. I grew up overseas and moved around a lot as a kid, so I have always thought of myself more as a global citizen rather than someone who lives in one particular place. But I have a growing sense of the importance of local community involvement as well. So this month I gathered up titles that dealt with a particular locale: Its history, cooking, culture, local activities, etc. For instance, you can start your kids young with the Cityscape board book series with titles like Chicago 101 where kids can see the landmarks that make the city famous. For the outdoorsy among us there are titles like Chicago: Day Trips, Weekend Getaways, Easy Planning, Quick Access, Best Places To Visit Within 3 Hours Of Chicago. I even found an Arcadia Publishing title about the history of a small town near me Horicon And Horicon Marsh. Then there is a video about my favorite ballpark, Wrigley Field: Beyond The Ivy (after all I am now a Chicago Northsider).

Don’t Put Your Fruits in One Basket: by Heather Ji

Graphic Novels post—05/22/09
This July we will see the end of an era—Tokyopop is about to publish the last volume of the shojo manga series Fruits Basket, by Natsuki Takaya. Winner of the Kodansha Manga Award for Shojo in 2001 and one of the most popular shojo manga ever, Fruits Basket also helped create the shojo manga craze in the United States. Probably no series will replace Fruits Basket in your patrons’ hearts, but some released and forthcoming shojo series titles may help them move on. A few notable series include Phantom Dream and Tsubasa: Those With Wings, which are both earlier series from Takaya, Kimi ni Todoke, which won the Kodansha Shojo award in 2008, Black Bird, which just won the Shogakukan Manga Award for Shojo in 2009, and the Korean Manhwa series 13th Boy and Sarasah.

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