Oxford English Dictionary

Imagine this. You’re ten years old. You’re a smart, strong-willed Vietnamese girl named Kim Hà living in Saigon during the Vietnam War. Your city is about to fall into the hands of the North Vietnamese, and you flee with your mother and three older brothers. You leave behind your impoverished, yet simple and familiar, life and travel on a perilous journey in a Navy ship crowded with your fellow refugees.

Everyone knows the ship
could sink,
unable to hold
the piles of bodies
that keep crawling on
like raging ants
from a disrupted nest.

In those days, the museum had four keepers: Herro Dan, Olga Ciavolga, Sinew and the boy Toadspit. In ordinary times they would have been enough to keep the museum and its secrets safe. But these were not ordinary times.

Trouble was coming. The signs were unmistakable. The keepers did not know where it was coming from, or when it would strike. But it was clear that it would not be easily stopped.

Jeremiah watched the man play. The swift fingers of his left hand pressed the strings. His right did the complicated picking or strumming or whatever it was, using his fingers and his thumb.

Jeremiah felt something stronger than he’d ever felt in his life. He felt a desire—no, more than a desire, a need—to be able to make music like that.

All that matters is that we’re in this together now…FOREVER…and no matter what trials, what challenges, what evil is thrown at us…they will never tear us apart.

Are you old enough to remember having the measles as a kid? If you are, do you also remember the year when Santa got the measles and Christmas was almost cancelled? What? Impossible! But it could happen. It certainly did in Porkchop Productions’ presentation of their original play “Christmas, the Measles and Me.” Library audiences experienced the dilemma firsthand and enjoyed being involved in the resolution.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good time at the library!

A second goes by pretty quickly. In fact, several have passed since you started reading this sentence. And they just keep going by . . .

But a lot can happen in a second. Some surprising—even amazing—things can take place in a very short time. Other events unfold more slowly…

“Elodie. . . ,” Father said, sounding nasal, “stay clear of the crafty dragons and the shape-shifting ogres.” He took an uneven breath. “Don’t befriend them!”

Mother bent so her face was level with mine. “Worse than ogres or dragons . . . beware the whited sepulcher.”

Guys I'm telling you, Mary Poppins just sits on it and then flies right up. It's gonna happen any second now.

Just about when Oscar was beating it back to Central Park, Duds was holding a meeting with his gang about where to move uptown. And of course, what do they come up with? You guessed it—Central Park.

At the end of the century before last, in the market square of the city of Baltese, there stood a boy with a hat on his head and a coin in his hand. The boy’s name was Peter Augustus Duchene, and the coin that he held did not belong to him but was instead the property of his guardian, an old soldier named Vilna Lutz, who had sent the boy to the market for fish and bread.