The Thin Red Line

While I posted an Easy Books roundup just yesterday  I felt this Easy Non-Fiction title I stumbled upon last week rated a post of its own.    The Librarian of Basra is a true story about Alia Muhammad Baker who is the librarian in Basra, Iraq.   When war comes Alia fears that her library and its 30,000 books may be destroyed.   She begins taking the books home and storing them safely and arranges for other library staff members to do the same.    While the library does end up getting burned and destroyed Alia and her colleagues are able to save fully seventy percent of the library’s collection.

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The children’s area of the library can be at times both the most frustrating and most rewarding area to work.   There is nothing like setting off to make closing pick up rounds and finding that every toy and nearly every book has been strewn hither tither and yon and know you are Really going to have to hustle to set things to right in the short time available until closing to remind you of the real challenge of serving patrons who are still learning their ABC’s and can thus be forgiven for putting books back in the wrong order, though I sometimes wonder if the parents who quite fail to teach their toddlers to put things away when they are finished live in surroundings like this all of the time.  

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Having enjoyed a very positive response to my previous post about Poop–A Natural History of the Unmentionable, I knew as soon as I came across it while checking in returns this afternoon that I would have to blog about The Gas We Pass– The Story of Farts.

No polite grown up language like “flatulence” in this Easy Non Fiction book. Shinta Cho writes frankly and tastefully about the how’s and why’s of passing gas in a very cutely illustrated volume that would surely have a classroom of kindergarteners giggling madly in no time at all. I’m certain the kids will love it and refrain from Highly Recommending it only because I don’t want their parents to blame me when the kids won’t stop making fart noises and jokes long after the cute value of it has passed for the adults in the room.

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