I may have to get someone else to write these articles soon!  Last week I apologized for saying we had no winner when we did and this week I must apologize for putting in my phone number incorrectly.  You would think by now that I would have that number memorized even if I don't call it myself very often!  We had no winner for the week before on the question of name two of the most published children's authors.  I thought that would be easy for those that have children to read to and for those (like me) that have those authors cemented into their memory banks from having read their books aloud so many times, but no.  We all know Dr. Suess.  What about Stan & Jan Berenstain who wrote lots of books on the Berenstain Bears?  Then there is J. K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame and R. L. Stine who wrote all those Goosebumps books.  The other two may be less know, but no less published--Enid Blyton who wrote the Famous Five and Secret Seven series and Gilbert Patten (pseudonym: Burt L. Standish) who wrote dime novels at the turn of the century including the Frank Merriwell series.  The question for this week is this:  What great novel is this the first line of?  "Call me Ishmael."  (Hint:  The answer to this can be found  on the internet.)
 
Things continue to move and shake at Finley Library.  We continue to work on the book inventory and you will get a chance to guess the number of books on the day of the Library Open House.  When you sign our guest book, you will also take a guess at the number of books in certain rooms.  (We won't be completely finished with the entire library by the Open House date.)  Please remember to come by and see YOUR library on Thursday, June 12, from 2-4 P.M.  There will be refreshments, a book sale, a presentation and lots of visiting, so don't miss  it!  We are looking forward to seeing  you there!
 
Here's a few new books we just ordered in large print:  John Sandford's Field of Prey, Fern Michaels's A Family Affair and Tami Hoag's The 9th God.  Come in and check us out!
 
Here's a book review:

The Years of the Locust by Loula Grace Erdman.  (HC/RP) (Classics)  Author Erdman, a native of Missouri (where the novel takes place) became a  transplanted Texan, teaching in Amarillo public schools and West Texas State College.  Some readers may remember her from her stories in Reader's Digest, Ladies Home Journal, Progressive Farmer, Redbook and Ladies Home Journal.  She won the $10,000 Dodd, Mead-Redbook Award for this book in 1947.  As the story of a family who are gathering together to attend the funeral  of the family patriarch, this could be semi-biographical for Erdman (although she did write several other biographies concerning her life).  Dade Kenzie was many things to many people (We meet those people in the narrative.), but he was always a kind man whose generosity affected many including relatives, friends and acquaintances.  We see in this book that his death was just as life-changing as his life had been for these folks.  Such a good book about plain people that were so different  and yet so impacted by the same man... .