FPPL celebrates Banned Books Week

This week (September 26 - October 3) libraries across the country celebrate Banned Books Week, an annual awareness campaign celebrating the freedom to read. Banned Book Week started in 1982 and promotes intellectual freedom in libraries, schools, and bookstores, while illustrating the power of literature.

The books featured during Banned Books Week are titles that have been targets of attempted bannings or challenges at various points in time. You may be shocked to note how many books of classic literature have been targets! The American Library Association has a list of the most commonly challenged books of the 20th century. For more recent challenged titles, check out the ALA's 2008-09 Banned Books Guide.

Banned Books Week is also celebrated by Amnesty International and focuses on the plight of people who have been persecuted because of works they have produced, circulated, or read.



Don't forget to drop by the library to check out FPPL's Banned Books Week display and celebrate your freedom to read!

Calling all Oprah fans!

Attention Oprah fans: the queen of day-time talk has announced a new selection for her Book Club! This time it's a collection of short stories by Uwem Akpan entitled Say You're One of Them. Akpan's sophmore book is a stunning collection of stories about survival, strife, and hope in present day Africa.


Beat the mad rush and request a copy today! For more information, including links to reading questions and an author bio, visit Oprah's Book Club online or read what others are saying about the book. Happy reading!

October Book Discussion

In October, the library's Monday evening Book Discussion group will be reading The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdich. We will be meeting to discuss the book on Monday, October 12 at 7:30pm in the first floor Conference Room. Copies are now available for checkout at the Circulation Desk. Remember, you can keep up with future book club happenings on our Ning site.

Happy birthday, Stephen King!

Happy birthday to best-selling horror novelist Stephen King! In honor of the legendary Mr. King, revisit out some of these classic movies adapted from King's best-selling books or stop by the Reference Department to check out our newest display featuring the works of Stephen King.


Carrie (1976)
A King classic that went on to become a cult-classic on the big screen. Carrie is a mousy teenage girl who suffers daily ridicule at the hands of her teenage peers... until one day she's pushed too far and Carrie exacts her revenge with her telekinetic powers. Perhaps one of Kings best known stories.





The Shining (1980)
Directed by the epic Stanley Kubrick, the film stars legendary actor Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance as he and his family move to the Overlook Hotel after he accepts a job as the hotel's winter caretaker. Jack's son, Danny Torrance, develops psychic powers (a power known as "the shining") and begins seeing the ghosts of murdered hotel guests. Meanwhile, Jack grows increasingly evil and Danny and his mother must fight for their survival. Another cult-classic!



Pet Sematary (1989)
The Creeds family moves next door to a pet cemetery that was built over old Indian burial grounds. Creepy things start happening after the death of the Creeds' cat. Shortly after the Creeds bury their deceased cat, the once docile feline returns, only now it is destructive and vicious. The cemetery in the woods mysteriously has the ability to reanimate the bodies interned on its grounds. Later followed by a sequel.



The Stand (1994)
The 1994 television miniseries based on King's post-apocalyptic novel of the same name. The program stars Molly Ringwald, Gary Sinese, and Rob Lowe. Stephen King also wrote the teleplay for the miniseries.

The Big Read commemorates Edgar Allen Poe

In the month of October, Forest Park Public Library joins other area libraries and universities in presenting a variety of Poe-themed programming in celebration of The National Endowment for the Art's "The Big Read." At the Forest Park Public Library, we're hosting a discussion of Poe's story "Fall of the House of Usher" on Wednesday, October 7th. On October 15th, we will screen a film adaptation of Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum." Finally, on October 31st there will be a discussion of the short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" at the Forest Home Cemetery.

Stop by the Reference Desk for a free copy of the NEA's Poe Reader's Guide and CD Audio Guide. Prepare for the Poe discussions by visiting the University of Texas at Austin's Edgar Allan Poe Digital Collection. Visit the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virgina... online! You can also learn more about the life Poe at the Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore's website.

Download audiobooks, eBooks, and music...to your phone!

In May, we announced the unveiling of Overdrive's MediaOnDemand, a service providing free downloadable for Forest Park Library patrons. More exciting news! Now, patrons with phones that have the Windows Mobile operating system can now download Overdrive content using their Forest Park library card and cell phone. For more information, or to download Windows Mobile, visit the Overdrive website.

International Literacy Day

If you're reading this, take a moment and appreciate the value of that skill. It's not available to everyone. Seven million American adults, or about 3% of the adult population, could not complete even the most basic literacy tasks in the main assessment of the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL). This doesn't merely reflect a lack of education; nearly 1 in 5 adults in the nonliterate in English group had a high school diploma or GED.

The social costs of illiteracy are obvious: imagine the struggle of being unable to read well enough to understand a job application, a newspaper, a medicine label or a telephone directory. But illiteracy has an economic impact as well. According to ProLiteracy Worldwide, American business currently spends more than $60 billion each year on employee training, much of that for remedial reading, writing, and mathematics. Annual health care costs in the U.S. are four times higher for individuals with low literacy skills than they are for individuals with high level literacy skills.

Illiteracy is a global issue. September 8 was proclaimed International Literacy Day by UNESCO on November 17, 1965. It was first celebrated in 1966. Its aim is to highlight the importance of literacy to individuals, communities and societies.

To mark this day, why not read to someone? According to researchers Hart and Risley (Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children), children in professional families hear an average of 2,153 words per hour, in working class families 1,251 words per hour, and in welfare families only 616 words per hour. Exposing children to more words can increase their working vocabulary, and vocabulary size has been directly linked to reading comprehension.

While close to four billion people in the world are now literate, much remains to be done in order to achieve literacy for all.

H1N1 Prevention at the Library!

As summer draws to a close and many kids and adults return to school/work, concern about the H1N1 virus has resurfaced in the media. We at the Forest Park Public Library are taking steps to maintain healthy and clean facilities, including sanitizing our Internet stations and headphones and providing hand sanitizer at our service desks.

Where can you go for more information...
There are several government agencies that maintain up-to-date and reliable online resources about H1N1. The Illinois Department of Public Health maintains a helpful Question & Answer website on the virus.

There's also Flu.gov, updated by the federal government complete with general information, educational webcasts, statistics, and up-to-date information about the virus. Finally, if you're looking for nearby flu shot clinics, try FindAFluShot.com.

How you can help...
You can help prevent the spread of H1N1 at the library by following a few simple steps including washing your hands, covering your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough/sneeze, and avoiding public places when you are sick to reduce the risk of infecting others.