Archives For Friends of the Library Book Sale

Southport, Connecticut’s Pequot Library Book Sale-Always Has Quality Texts

July 29, 2012 — Leave a comment

Peqout Library in Southport, CT

The 2012 summer tri-athlon  of Fairfield County, Connecticut, Friends of the Public Library book sales is over! Hundreds of book buyers have visited Newtown’s C.H.Booth’s Library, Westport’s Public Library, and finally, Southport’s Pequot Library in search of bargains and great reads. Each book sale has its own distinctive  level of organization and quality of merchandise. Newtown is “uber”-organized, and Westport caters to large crowds of book buyers with an enormous selection. Southport’s claim to fame is the quality of the texts.

Newtown and Westport book sales offer holding areas for book buyers to place filled boxes or bags. Southport has quality texts. Westport and Newtown book sales have well-organized tables and books sorted into correct genres. Southport has quality texts. Westport and Newtown book sales have volunteers  that move with the crowd and refresh tables. Southport has quality texts.

Quality texts are perhaps the only reason to attend the Pequot Library’s book sale. In two hours, I spent $306.00 on four boxes of books for different grade levels. For example:

  • 4 copies of Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood- Grade 10 World Literature
  • 12 copies of The Help- Grade 11-Civil Rights unit
  • 5 copies of Speak-Grade 9
  • 6 copies of All the King’s Men-AP English Language and Literature
  • 6 copies of The Giver-Grade 7
  • 7 copies of Night-Grade 10-Interdisciplinary unit
  • 5 copies of Tuesdays with Morrie-Grade 9 Independent read  or Grade 11 Coming of Age unit
  • 2 copies of The Odessey (Fitzgerald)-Grade 9
  • 4 copies of Beowulf (Heaney)-Grade 10 -World Literature

Each text was in mint condition. More than a few looked “unread” by students who must have purchased the text for class. All copies were free of notes or highlighting. I do suspect that there are students in Southport, like my students in Litchfield, who may be opting for Sparknotes support!

Southport offers a Friday preview day with books at double the cost, but by the following Tuesday, books are $5.00/bag.

2012 Hours and Pricing:
Friday, July 27 – 9am to 8pm – All items double the marked price
Saturday, July 28 – 9am to 5:30pm – All items priced as marked
Sunday, July 29 – 9am to 5:30 pm – All items priced as marked
Monday, July 30 – 9am to 6pm – All items half price
Tuesday, July 31 – 9am to 2pm – $5 per bag day!

The volunteers were gracious, but many seemed to be “in-training” or waiting for an authority to make a decision. That did not take away from the quality of the texts. There were books -particularly fiction-that had been placed on the ends of the tables left partially covered by the large tent. Unfortunately, many of these books did get saturated by the soaking rain the night before. This has happened in years past. One wonders what the volunteers could do in the future to avoid the damage that happens when there are texts uncovered; it is sad to see so many good quality books damaged when they could bring a profit to the library or more literature to a classroom.

There are discounts  offered to teachers in Bridgeport and New Haven, but with education budgets receiving cuts around the state, perhaps consideration can be given to teachers in other towns as well? Most teachers pay out of pocket for school supplies, not the school districts. Teacher discounts would help support literacy in classrooms throughout the state by creating “book floods” in each school.

My tri-athalon of book sales is over for the summer. My classroom libraries grades 7-12 are almost filled in preparation for 2012-2013. I have collected my goal-a class set of The Help, and added a number of new titles for independent reading or literature circles. There is a book flood at Wamogo Middle/High School And, thanks to Southport, many of these books are quality texts.

In Books, Education, Friends of the Library Book Sale, Reading ,
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Great Titles Always Available at the Westport Book Sale

July 21, 2012 — 2 Comments

The Friends of the Westport Public Library book sale never disappoints a reader. In fact, many of the books that I have purchased at this sale in previous summers (2009-2011) now stock our classroom libraries for grades 7-12. Our Grade 10 World Literature class now has entire class sets of The Life of Pi and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. The same can be said for the Grade 12 Memoir Class with The Glass Castle. This means that I have had to become more selective and pluck out only the titles that we need to replace or increase. Now, when I see the covers of these texts, I have to stop my hand from its automatic reach; our shelves are already full! So, if there are schools looking to add these titles, I left many great titles on the tables.

This Westport Public Library book sale is massive and almost professionally run; the volunteers could consider running training classes for other library book sales. There are legions of volunteers who straighten tables of books or count purchases. Be aware, however, there are also legions of shoppers; parking is at a premium.

This year, I found copies of books for the Grade 11 Native American Unit: Larry Watson’s Montana 1948, Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian.  I suspect these books are also taught in the Westport school system because of the number of copies. Montana 1948 is “about a middle-class Montana family torn apart by scandal during the summer of 1948” and was awarded the Milkweed National Fiction Prize. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian was reviewed by School Library Journal as a semi-autobiographical chronicle of Arnold Spirit, aka Junior, a Spokane Indian “whose determination to both improve himself and overcome poverty, despite the handicaps of birth, circumstances, and race, delivers a positive message in a low-key manner.” Both receive high marks from our students.

There were also two copies of A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age by William Manchester which is a new text for our AP European World History course.

The large tents for the Westport book sale provide enough room for patrons and the tables full books. Maps are distributed at the entrance; a mountain of empty boxes is available for shoppers to fill.  Hard to tell if the organizing committee has chosen not to alphabetize because of the number of books titles or because they want to encourage more browsing, I am not sure. I know I visited every table! There were far more book vendors there this year who load up large bags using professional scanners. This sale makes it easy for them to return books they do not want by genre; there are clearly labeled containers; if you cannot find a title, check these containers!

Books are priced at $.50-$3.00 on Saturday, the first day of the sale; there are discount days through Tuesday, June 24.

Saturday & Sunday 9 am to 6 pm
Monday (everything 1/2 price) 9 am to 6 pm
Tuesday (free day: suggested cash donation $5/bag) 9 am to 1 pm

Signs marking each genre were placed on the tables, but the maps were more reliable. I used the map to locate the young adult section which were filled with great choices for independent reading. As a bonus, the children’s section has its own separate tent. Picture books are raised on shelves, smaller chapter books are laid spines up for easier browsing.

I spent $80.50 in total for four bags of carefully selected books.

As I left, the local newspaper photographer was taking candid shots of students in the Children’s section. One young girl, about 11 years old,  had her arms so full of book, the photographer could not see her face.

“Where are you?” she joked with the girl.
“I’m lost in these books,” the girl giggled in response.

I left smiling.

In Friends of the Library Book Sale, Independent Student Reads, Summer Reading, Young Adult YA literature , ,
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Friends of the New Milford Summer Book Sale: Now with Better Browsing Tables!

July 12, 2012 — 2 Comments

This weekend July 13-15, 2012 is the annual Friends of the New Milford Public Library summer book sale (alert to nearby Connecticut/NY residents), and even after I cleaned them out of some great trade paperbacks,there are many bargains to be had. The sale is held in the New Milford High School on Route 7 in a large all-purpose room that has ample room for browsers. The books are very well organized on large spacious tables and very clearly labeled, and, more importantly, the labels are correct-there is no mixing of genres.

I picked up two copies of Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country  (1993) to use with Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. This is a very popular text with many of the girls in Grade 11; The School Library Journal reviewed this text:

“Sam Hughes, whose father was killed in Vietnam, lives in rural Kentucky with her uncle Emmett, a veteran whom she suspects is suffering from exposure to Agent Orange. Sam is a typical teenager, trying to choose a college, anticipating a new job at the local Burger Boy, sharing intimacies with her friend Dawn, breaking up with her high school boyfriend, and dealing with her feelings for Tom, one of Emmett’s buddies….Her father’s diary finally provides the insight she seeks insight she cannot accept until she has visited the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.”

There were also five brand new copies of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Obviously, this was a book assigned for a course at a local high school or read by a local book group. These five copies mean that we can continue the tradition and assign the reading for one of our courses! Publisher’s Weekly reviewed this book in 2001:

Determined to find out how anyone could make ends meet on $7 an hour, Ehrenreich left behind her middle class life as a journalist except for $1000 in start-up funds, a car and her laptop computer to try to sustain herself as a low-skilled worker for a month at a time..Delivering a fast read that’s both sobering and sassy, she gives readers pause about those caught in the economy’s undertow, even in good times.

This book sale always has a great selection of  children’s books. Last year, I met a friend with two small children of her own who was hauling out at least 100 titles; she had barely made a dent in the collection. This year my bargain was a set (3) of The Cat in the Hat books. There is a great lesson on the Read, Write, Think website for the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) that explains Freudian psychology using this children’s text. The lesson is called Id, Ego and Superego and the Cat in the Hat and my students love looking at the pictures to see how the wild “ids” of Thing 1 and Thing 2 almost cause a disaster.

I spent $42.50 for two bags filled with books (38 total). As I checked out, I mentioned to a volunteer that I blogged about this book sale last year.

“Well,” she challenged me, “did you notice the books are all on the tables?”
I looked around. Sure enough there were no books on the floor.
“Last year, you complained about the books on the floor being hard to reach,” she continued, “So we put them all on tables!”
“Oh, I didn’t mean…” my voice trailed.
“When someone criticizes what needs to be fixed, we fix it,” she stated proudly.

So, go to the Friends of the New Milford Public Library Book Sale if you are in the area. This is a good book sale….made even better with better browsing tables!

In 11th grade, Education, Friends of the Library Book Sale , , , , ,
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Why I Blog: The One Year Anniversary of Used Books in Class

July 3, 2012 — 10 Comments

A bit of self-indulgence here. I have been blogging for a year on July 3, which means that the Used Books in Class blog is a one year old “toddler.”

I started this blog for two reasons. The first was a response to Kelly Gallagher’s Readicide, a book I have mentioned numerous times in posts on this blog. I was determined to increase reading in the classroom per his suggestion through “book floods,” and I began purchasing used books for the classroom libraries at Wamogo High School (Region 6 in CT). Fortunately for me, in the Fairfield and Litchfield counties in Connecticut there are numerous sources for excellent quality used books available for $1.00 (or less) through public library book sales held generally in the summer and Goodwill or other thrift stores.  I wanted to share how I had added entire class sets of books ( for example: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The Kite Runner, The Bluest Eye, A Walk in the Woods) or increased books in classroom libraries for independent choice reading in grades 7-12.

The second reason was that this past year I required students to write using blogs. At each grade level (9-12), the Wamogo English Department teachers used blogs in the classroom in order to increase student reading and writing collaboration. Our Lord of the Flies unit included “survival activities” on team blogs for 10 graders. The freshmen classes used a blog in different ways: to record individual book reports and to respond to questions associated with whole class reads.. The journalism class’s newspaper format is a blog, and we have also had students blog responses to Hamlet or record their progress on Capstone projects. If I was requiring that students blog, I needed to know how to blog as well.

I researched the use of blogs in the classroom. According to Trey Martindale and David A Wiley,  in their paper Using Weblogs in Scholarship and Teaching, ”Clearly two keys to effective blogging are knowing who one’s audience is, and knowing that that audience is in fact reading one’s blog. My students were motivated and willing to write regularly and with clarity, knowing that fellow students and the instructor were reading the blogs.”  I recognized that most student writing is read by the teacher, so our students needed to understand how to target an larger audience. I emphasized this question for my students by having them identify the audiences of other blogs, and then consider the question  ”Who am I writing this blog for?” and “Who will be able to read this post?”.  Similarly, I had to apply the same consideration for this blog.

I also researched whether blogging was an effective strategy to increasing reading and writing in the classroom. Would student blogging rather that standard writing (papers, essays) improve comprehension skills? In one study by N.B. Ellison and Yuehua Wu, “Analysis revealed no significant differences in comprehension between blog and paper assignments, although students reported spending less time writing in the blogging condition.” However, in another study by R. MacBride and Lynn Luehmann using blogging in science and math classrooms, “Findings indicate that (1) teachers’ intentions focused on creating additional forms of participation as well as increasing student exposure time with content; (2) blogs were used in a wide variety of ways that likely afforded particular benefits; and (3) both teacher and students perceived the greater investment to be worthwhile. “

I found the same to be true for this blog, Used Books in Class. My first post (7/3/11)  received 8 hits! I was surprised anyone would be interested in this blog about used books, but those first hits motivated me. Now, after a year, the focus of the blog has shifted from “used books” in class to posts discussing “how books are used” in class. I have drifted into other areas of education, namely the English Language Arts Common Core State Standards, but these issues directly or indirectly impact teaching in the classroom.  26,518 hits later, I still am still surprised at the interest this blog has received. Honestly,  it’s not like readers could use yet one more education blog; there is some serious competition for attention!

Yet there is one more reason that I discovered for blogging as I wrote over the course of a year. I found other blogs to be informative on issues in education, and their comment sections were one way to enter into online discussions. I had followed Shelly Blake-Plock who authored Teach Paperless from 2009-May 2012. In his post, Why Teachers Should Blog, he offered one line that stood out:

Because to blog is to teach yourself what you think.

I had no idea how true that statement would be for me this year. Blogging has allowed me to frame an evolving philosophy of education, and I had to think about my own teaching practice every time I sat down to write. Blogging has provided the platform for me to articulate my responses to issues in education, and I had to think about how public my response would be every time I sat down to write. Blogging has let me practice my writing voice, and I had to think about how this voice needed to attract the reader and keep the reader reading every time I sat down to write. In summation, blogging has taught me over the course of this year how to think in order to write about education.

Thank you for reading posts on this blog. I am heading into year two with this “toddler”. When I started, I wondered if I would have enough topics to write about. I do not worry about that any more because this blog has taught me how to write what I think, and I  am thinking all the time. I think, therefore I blog.

In Education, Friends of the Library Book Sale, Independent Student Reads, New Milford Goodwill Store, Writing , , , , , , , , , , ,
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The Summer Book Sale Season Openers: Greenwich, CT and Poughkeepsie, NY

June 16, 2012 — 1 Comment

The book room at Wamogo Middle/High School will need to be reorganized to make room for recent arrivals from sales in two very different locations: Greenwich, CT and Poughkeepsie, NY. Books purchased need to be integrated onto the shelves with their companion sets of titles.

The Greenwich library sale is a physical challenge; little aisle space!

The first infusion of texts came last weekend (June 8-10, 2012) with The Friends of the Byram Shubert Library book sale in Greenwich, CT.The layout for the Greenwich sale is very challenging. Like last year, there was little room to pass a fellow shopper at the non-fiction tables downstairs in the church basement, but there is less room at the fiction tables in the “garage” area back up at ground level. Books spill out into the driveway, and there are many packed tightly in boxes under the already overflowing tables. Sunday is the “fill a bag for $3.00″ or “fill a box for $5.00″ day, a sales pitch that almost guarantees there will be few books remaining at the close of sale on Sunday evening.  The volunteer staff is very helpful and tries to compete for the negative floor space in order to straighten the tables. Titles were originally well organized for genre shopping: history, psychology, biography, sports, and cookbooks, but by the end of the day, a multitude of children’s books was spilling naughtily out of their contained space. One volunteer repeated the mantra that “every book will be sold”, and apparently this is true. At the conclusion of the sale, a recycling company arrives to take the unsold books for so much a pound. While the thought of some of the texts being used for scrap can be a bit disconcerting for a bibliophile, this wholesale purge of any remaining books assures that every year the used books will not be “leftovers” and shoppers can select from a fresh selection annually.

Texts from the Greenwich Library sale June 2012: above books purchased for $5.00/box

In one short hour, I  left with five boxes filled with texts we use in the high school. There were many  titles  available that we have collected over the past two years, but our shelves are almost filled to overflowing, so I tried to be judicious in my choices. For example, The Life of Pi and The Memory Keeper’s Daughter are both assigned summer reading for the honors/Advanced Placement program, so having extra copies to distribute is helpful. Additionally, we are collecting texts for use in US History as well, and now have a class set of The Killer Angels. We have been able to keep up with the attrition rate for many of our titles, specifically The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. The creative cover suffers the most damage from my curious sophomores who like to trace the dog cut-out.

On the following Friday (6/15/2012) , school had only been officially over for an hour, when I turned west to the first day of the Friends of Poughkeepsie Public Library District in Duchess County, NY. I had never attended this sale, but the advertisement on Book Sale Finder promoted a “BIG sale of 150,000 books and media.” The sale was held in a large warehouse, and true to the advertisement, there were hundreds of rows upon rows of books on tables. The books were well organized,  and there was ample SPACE to shop for books; shopping cart races could be held in the aisles. There were some drawbacks to this location, however. The lighting system emitted a loud buzz that was particularly maddening in the large echoing warehouse; 45 minutes was all I could take of the sound before heading to the cashier’s table. Unlike the Greenwich Library book sale which purges unwanted texts, the Friends of the Poughkeepsie Library appear to have kept every book ever donated. The boxes clearly labelled “fiction”, “sports”, etc. under each table identified the resting area for texts the other 51 weekends of the year.  This commitment to find a home for every text, no matter the condition or the content, means  a shopper must look peruse through piles of yellowing, damaged books in the hopes of finding a particular title. No matter, I filled three bags of books at the usual price of $1.00 trade, $2.00 hardcover, and $.50 for smaller paperbacks. On Sunday, prices are cut in half;  on Monday, one can fill a grocery bag for $5.00;  and  Tuesday, from 8A.M. to 12 Noon, leftovers are free for the taking. In looking at the selection on the “classics” table, I determined that Poughkeepsie area schools must also assign To Kill a Mockingbird; there were five new copies available. The best title “finds” on the tables were In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason for the grade 11 Vietnam War unit and Perfume by David Susskind for a new English IV course being offered this coming fall titled “Heroes and Monsters”. Apparently, the Duchess County area clearly went through its William Kennedy phase, favoring his upstate NY setting because there were no less than 27 copies of Ironweed available on the fiction tables along with his companion books Legs, and Billy Bathgate. Alas, there were no Joyce Carol Oates texts to support a rabid NY author fan base. After the sale, we stopped at the Daily Planet Diner (Route 55 off the Taconic), with all its kitchy thematic elements, to round out the end of the last day of school and the first day of summer vacation.

Funds spent over the two weekends were $25.00 at Greenwich and $49.50 at Poughkeepsie bringing the grand total  to$74.50. Total number of texts purchased? 117 books.

Over the course of the academic year, English teachers have been integrating the numerous used books purchased through library book sales into classroom libraries; some books have been offered as independent choice books while others have been used as whole class reads. Once the school year ended, we stacked the returned texts back into our hidden book room where access, strangely enough, is gained by going through a bathroom. Based on this latest haul, we may have to order another set of book shelves!

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The Westport “Winter” Used Book Sale-Adding YA Titles to the Classroom Libraries

March 17, 2012 — 3 Comments

Just back from one of my favorite library book sales-the winter book sale in Westport, Connecticut, which is running during the St. Patrick’s Day weekend. The “luck of the Irish” provided sun and spring-like temperatures; the advertised “winter sale” was a misnomer.

Seven bags with an average of 17 books a bag=119 books;
total price? 122.50 or roughly $1.00/book!

The Friends of the Westport Library is responsible for the organization of this winter sale and for the outdoor summer sale as well. While many CT libraries offer quality books at their library book sales, the Westport library book sales always offer quality books in great quantities! This particular sale featured hardcover, paperback and and trade fiction, and many tables dedicated to videotape.

The volunteer Friends of the Library that work the checkout table are polite and accommodating. There are also helpful volunteers who tidy the tables sorting books into their genres. I was particularly fortunate to have one volunteer see my growing bag contents and offer to tally the books in the hold section while I continued to shop. Checkout for this sale, as it was with the summer sale, was fast and efficient, despite the number of books I gathered.

This Saturday morning, the sale was particularly rich with young adult (YA) novels. I averaged 17 books in a bag, and purchased seven bags of books. Most of these books were single copies of books on my “must have” list, for example, I picked up a single copy of Nancy Farmer’s House of the Scorpion and a single copy of James Dasner’s Maze Runner.

Books for high school students grades 10-12

But there were also a number of copies of books we teach in our curriculum. On this trip, I picked up five copies of Laurie Halse Andersen’s Speak, four copies of Avi’s Nothing but the Truth, and a dozen copies of Betty Smith’s classic A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. There were also copies of contemporary novels that are popular with the high school students. These include Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and Curtis Sittenfield’s Prep.

These 17 books can be purchased new for the retail price of $122.98.

I spent a total of $122.50 on used books at this sale for 119 books for grades 7-12. This amount of money represents the retail price ($122.98) of the 17 books in the picture if we had purchased the books brand new. Because of this used book sale, our payment to the Friends of the Westport Library allows us to afford an additional 102 books for our classroom libraries.

The purchase of gently used books continues to be a great resource for our classroom libraries. Our expansion of titles through used book purchases allows our students to independently select a book to read and allows teachers to create literature circles with a variety of reading materials for different reading levels.

The proceeds from these used book sales directly benefit local libraries, while these used books are “recycled” from one reader to another. The Westport Public Library Giant Summer Book Sale, will be held July 21-24, 2012. I will be there, and I encourage you to go as well!

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Danbury, CT Book Sale – 80,000 Books and Two Remarkable Facts

October 16, 2011 — 1 Comment

Danbury, Connecticut, is the closest metropolitan area near me (population 80893), and this past weekend, the Friends of the Danbury Public Library held their annual sale. The first remarkable fact about this event is that the 80,000 books available to the public for sale, transported several miles from the library location to the Danbury PAL building at the other side of town, arrived in alphabetical order! This was a very well-organized sale; browsing the fiction tables was a breeze.

The second remarkable fact about this event would be the surprisingly large number of biographies, auto-biographies, and memoirs donated by Danbury residents. Three long tables laid end to end were laden with all manner of biographical materials, and under these tables, there were boxes filled to overflowing with additional selections. Interestingly enough, most of these books were “solo” copies; duplicates, with the exception of  Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt (an area favorite) and The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, were hard to find. A cultural anthropologist attending the sale could speculate as to what the fascination biographies, auto-biographies, and memoirs have for Danbury readers. Are the residents “people”-people? Is there a strain of  voyeurism running through their veins? Or are they simply curious about the lives of the rich and/or famous? (Did former Danbury resident Robin Leach have anything to do with this trend?)

One of the many titles available to add to Memoir class

The plethora of memoir titles provided the following as selections for independent reading for the 12th grade memoir class:
Madhur Jaffrey- Climbing The Mango Trees: A Memoir Of A Childhood In India.
Gail Caldwell- A Strong West Wind
Ann Patchett- Truth and Beauty
Lucy Grealy- Autobiography of a Face
Meredith Hall -Without a Map: A Memoir
Patrick Moore-Tweaked: A Crystal Meth Memoir
Rory Stewart- The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq
Janice Erlbaum- Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir
Claire Fontaine and Mia Fontaine- Come Back: A Mother and Daughter’s Journey Through Hell and Back (P.S.)
Linda Greenlaw- The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain’s Journey 

For Grade 11, there were multiple copies of  Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine,  Sebastian Junger’s War, and Michael Sharra’s The Killer Angels.

Multiple copies of The Bluest Eye were available. This text is under a book challenge by a neighboring community

There were also multiple copies of Nobel prize winning author Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, an indication that the book is on a Danbury school or local book club’s reading list. Currently, this book is being challenged by parents in the neighboring town of Brookfield. According to the local media, the Brookfield challenge to have the book removed (Honors Grade 11 class) is largely led by individuals who have not read the book but who have read, and are circulating, excerpts of some graphic scenes; one complainant does claim to have read the SparkNotes.

For grade 10, there were multiple copies of Ishmael Baeh’s A Long Way Gone, Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and Deborah Rodriguez and Kristin Ohlson’s Kabul Beauty School.  There also multiple copies of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and  Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quite on the Western Front in the same editions we have in our classroom libraries.

For Grade 12 independent reading, usually Creative Writing classes, I found multiple copies of Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain, and enough copies of Melissa Bank’s The Girls‘ Guide to Hunting and Fishing as a “test” to see what students think.

I located some “hard to find” titles of books that are always needed including Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi, Bobbi Ann Mason’s In Country, Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, Joseph Bruchec’s Codetalker, and Laurie Halse Andersen’s Chains. Since we are a vocational-agriculture school, an elective under consideration for seniors is Animals in Literature.  Both of Ken Foster’s books Dogs I Have Met: And the People They Found and his other book Dogs Who Found Me will be added to that bookshelf.

I have noticed that a number of books that currently occupy positions on the NY Times best seller lists have been available at these local library sales. At Danbury’s sale, these titles included Like Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, Little Bee by Chris Cleave, and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hossani. The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo by Stieg Larsson, and its sequels The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest escaped the stigma of being limited to the mystery table; all three were placed for readers of fiction who may want to “cross-over” for a thrilling mystery.

An entire side wall was dedicated to VHS tapes. Given the current state of technology, I wonder how much longer VHS will be featured at these sales; their value must be falling as the popularity of online movie streaming or DVD/Blu-ray grows. There were also two tables of audio books, CDs and DVDs. The organizers of the sale had a rather uncoventional approach to the literary canon; the classic literature section was divided from the poetry section with an expansive section of books devoted to humor. Was this placement a commentary on humor as the offspring of the classics? Or was this partition a statement about the lack of humor in the classics? I am not sure.

Unlike other area sales, there was no admission charge for early arriving buyers, so shopping during the first hours of the sale meant contending with book dealers and their ISBN readers. Fortunately, the aisles were wide enough to accommodate people carrying large bags filled with books. Prices ranged from $.50-$2.00;rare books had their own section and were priced accordingly. Volunteers wearing blue shirts and aprons were plentiful. By noon many were engaged in re-stacking tables and filling in gaps created by eager shoppers. Checkout was a breeze. The bill for five large bags of books, roughly 87 books, came to $101.00. The Friends of the Danbury Public Library will reduce the number of books to pack up by having a “bag sale” on Monday, 10/17.

80,000 books donated by residents in a city of 80893 means at least one donated book for each person. That is also remarkable; make this 80,000 Books and Three Remarkable Facts.


In 10th Grade, 11th grade, Friends of the Library Book Sale, Memoir , ,
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A Tale of Two CT Book Sales: Brookfield and Washington

October 2, 2011 — Leave a comment

This first day of October in Connecticut was not emblematic of classic cool crisp fall days. Instead, a blanket of humidity hung over the rain-soaked state which received another several inches the night before the Saturday book sales in Brookfield and Washington.  Separated by 17 miles but sharing the same weather, the make-up of the two sales could not have been more different.

Brookfield Library

I arrived several minutes early to the Brookfield Public Library and found volunteers poking a rain-saturated tent that was bowed holding several gallons of water and looming precariously over a table. Fortunately, the bulk of the sale was held indoors in the community room.  Tables were filled with books; boxes were stacked below. This year residents donated generously and as a former resident myself, I was also familiar with many of the volunteers who year after year tirelessly support the library. They were very helpful with other patrons, (“Jodi Picoult books? Oh, we have as many as you want…take them, take them all, please!”). They restacked tables and manned the checkout tables very efficiently. Some titles were misplaced (non-fiction slipped into the fiction section and vice versa) which meant that a careful perusing of the titles was necessary.  However, this strategy could also be a clever sales ploy, so I spent time and examined books on every table on the off chance there would be a misplaced book that I could use. Such diligence paid off because I found copies of Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods on five separate tables.

Five additional copies brings the classroom library total to 75 copies for the English II classes

Bargains at this sale included five copies of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, four copies of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and two copies of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. There were also multiple copies of Mark Salzman’s Lost in Place from a town-wide read several years ago. I also turned up a boxful of copies of Khaled Hossani’s The Kite Runner but left them for others; we already have a class set!  The presence of multiple copies means, of course, that Brookfield has many book groups (I am speaking from personal experience). Only book clubs can explain the multiple copies of titles such as Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitterage, and Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees. Other excellent finds in the young adult section included Nancy Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion, M.T. Anderson’s Feed, and Jarry Spinelli’s Stargirl. I filled two bags.

Washington, CT-Gunn Library

In contrast, the book sale at Washington’s Gunn Library was filled with singular copies of books. The basement of this deceptively large library was filled to capacity with books, which was surprising given the steady stream of people leaving with bags filled with books. Titles were displayed along the walls on well-marked shelves and on tables, and the variety of titles was impressive. There was an array of biographies, history, fiction, self-help and cookbooks, but duplicate copies of titles were almost impossible to find.  Performing arts literature was subdivided into music, art and dance on an overflowing table. Romance was relegated to two boxes under the fiction paperback table. A section of the sale at the entrance was dedicated to autographed copies of books. Rare books were provided a separate space. All of these genres contained singletons. Considering the number of solo copies, one wonders about the reading habits of the residents of Washington.  Is breadth of literature a community goal? Do they pass single copies from resident to resident rather than buy in bulk? Is this book sale a giant exchange site?

In any event, there were excellent new choices to add to the memoir class shelves including Ying Ma’s Chinese Girl in the Ghetto and Meredith Hall’s Without a Map: A Memoir. There were also new copies of Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone, Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead and Michael Paterniti’s Driving Mr. Einstein. The young adult’s section included a copy of Suzanne Collins’s Gregor the Overlander. Needed titles located included Bobbie Anne Mason’s In Country, Arthur Miller’s Death of Salesman, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God  and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony. In addition, I located a a copy of Tim O’Brien’s Going after Cacciato and Cormac MacCarthy’s Cities of the Plain to add to English III independent reads. Volunteers at the sale were also efficient re-stacking the tables throughout the morning, while wisely choosing to keep their distance from the heavily trafficked children’s section.

The difference in titles available from each of these communities in the Northwest corner of Connecticut could not have been more different, but I spent the exact same amount at each (about $62.00)  for almost the exact same number of books. In total, I purchased 111 books for $123.50. It was the best of book sale days; it was the worst of weather starts for October.

In Friends of the Library Book Sale, Independent Student Reads, Memoir, Young Adult YA literature ,
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New Fairfield CT Library Book Sale: Challenges Outside and Inside

September 19, 2011 — Leave a comment

The New Fairfield Public Library Book Sale  took place on a lovely fall day; a crisp and cool Connecticut beauty of a day. Unfortunately, the sale also took place in the same locale where the local highway department was painting the parking lot lines at the front of the building,  and where the soccer club practice with team coordinators were handing out team jerseys at the back of the building. The actual book sale was held in a meeting room and a small entry hallway. At 10:00 AM, shopping at the sale was challenging between finding a spot to park outside and negotiating cramped quarters inside.

There were, however, some bargains to be had. Browsing was a shared experience with several other buyers; I would remove a box piled with books to one section, while another person would replace that box with another. Crawling along the front hallway floor which held boxes of trade paperbacks, I was able to locate copies of Codetalkers by Joseph Bruchac and A Yellow Raft in Blue Water-Michael Dorris for the Contemporary Native American unit that is being taught this month in Grade 11. I was also able to add to our curriculum collection:

The Giver- Lois Lowery
Night-Elie Wiesel
The Great Gatsby-F. Scott Fitzgerald
Lord of the Flies-William Golding
Brave New World-Aldous Huxley
The Road-Cormac McCarthy
The Handmaid’s Tale- Margaret Atwood

An independent choice book for Grade 11.

The “score” of the morning was a new copy of Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell.  This is the fourth copy I have found this summer, and the book will be placed in the “Coming of Age” unit in Grade 11 as an independent choice novel. The School Library Journal reviewed this book for high school students saying, “In the poverty-stricken hills of the Ozarks, Rees Dolly, 17, struggles daily to care for her two brothers and an ill mother. When she learns that her absent father, a meth addict, has put up the family home as bond, she embarks on a dangerous search to find him and bring him home for an upcoming court date. Her relatives, many of whom are in the business of cooking crank, thwart her at every turn, but her fight to save the family finally succeeds. Rees is by turns tough and tender. She teaches her brothers how to shoot a shotgun, and even box, the way her father had taught her. Her hope is that these boys would not be dead to wonder by age twelve, dulled to life, empty of kindness, boiling with mean.”  When I read the novel, images of the witches from Macbeth came to mind!

For the independent reading shelves, I also located a copy of Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Book Two The Ruins of Gorlan in The Ranger’s Apprentice Series by John Flanagan , After by Francine Prose, and Ape House by Sara Gruen (surprising since this is a recent release).

New Fairfield’s sale offered far more hardcover fiction texts than trade paperbacks, and the children’s picture books were overflowing the small table to which they had been assigned. This could be an indication of a shift in population to more elementary aged choices….the New Fairfield babies are growing up!

Once I brought my two baskets to the counter, the volunteers at the checkout were gracious and accommodating. They were prepared with bags for purchases, and at my request  one quickly designed a receipt for me. (“Last year, I had a pile of receipts, but no one need them, wouldn’t you know?”)

Hardcovers were $2.00, trade paperbacks were $1.00, and small paperbacks were $.50. Sunday was ”Bag day”-all books in a bag for $10.00.  I purchased only trade and small paperback on this trip and spent $26.00 for 32 books. These will be added to the school’s “book flood“.

The volunteers picked a perfect weekend for people looking for book bargains. Perhaps next year there will be better coordination of traffic outside the library and inside the sale so the efforts of the Friends of the New Fairfield Public Library are fully supported.

In 10th Grade, 11th grade, Coming of Age, Friends of the Library Book Sale, Independent Student Reads, Young Adult YA literature , , ,
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Mark Twain Library Book Sale-As Unique as Its Namesake!

September 5, 2011 — Leave a comment

Opening day for Mark Twain Public Library Book Sale in Redding, Connecticut, is the stuff of legend. As Christmas is for young children, The Mark Twain Book Sale has sugarplums dancing in the heads of book dealers and book collectors. I have heard tell of book dealers snatching up wonderful finds-rare books, popular books, first editions, and autographed copies. To be honest, I have never been to this on the infamous “opening day”. I have always attended the sale on the Labor Day weekend sale on Sunday (1/2 price books) or Monday ($5/bag). Not to worry, the sale is a treat until the very end!

Mark Twain Library Building in Redding, CT

Mark Twain was a Redding resident; statue on library grounds

The annual sale was held in the Redding Community Center, located off Route 107 in Redding, Connecticut (the library is located at 439 Redding Road). This book sale run by the Friends of the Mark Twain Library is so well established as a Labor Day Weekend event, that publicity is not a factor. There were two main rooms organized for the sale; the top floor houses childrens’ books and media, the bottom floor holds all other genres. There were long tables clearly labeled with genre signs. An army of volunteers wearing green aprons for easy identification busily restocked tables, placing titles sideways for easy identification. Since I attended the on “bag day”, there were piles of doubled brown-paper bags ready for shoppers; checkout tables held staffers willing to help carry books out into the parking lot. The high degree of organization for this sale some 72 hours after the first shopper entered the building was a testament to work the volunteers must have put in preparing the sale.Only the most organized systems could have stood up to the number of shoppers over the weekend.

I was hoping to find copies of Larry Watson’s Montana, 1948.…I found three! I was looking for Sherman Alexis The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian…I found two! There were also the standard five copies of Lois Lowery’s The Giver, two copies of Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl, three copies of Edward Bloor’s Tangerine, and a copy of Marina Budhos’ Ask Me No Questions all for the middle school. I also located two needed copies of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and two copies of Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead.

On “bag day”, all books that can fit into the bag are $5.00, so I was fairly casual in collecting additional copies of books that we may not need immediately or that we will offer as contemporary novels to the Creative Writing class (Grade 12). There were several copies of Khaled Hossani’s The Kite Runner, Billie Letts’ Where the Heart Is, Curtis Sittenfield’s Prep, Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant,  and Kim Edward’s The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. I also located three copies of Thomas Friedman’s Longitudes and Attitudes which will go to the Social Studies Department, and five copies of Deborah Tannen’s You Just Don’t Understand, for the psychology classes. The quantity of Tannen’s book still available on the last day of the sale did give me pause, however. I do hope that relations between the sexes in Redding are better than the title indicates.

Which brings me to a quick cultural study of Redding’s reading habits. Unlike other sales in the area, the tables of mystery and romance novels were far smaller than those in neighboring town book sales. Here, a multitude of cookbooks were organized by subject with diet cookbooks  separated across the aisle from their fattening counterparts. History tables delineated clean boundaries by wars; political books were separated from military memoirs. Books about nature were clearly separated several tables away from gardening books which were also clearly separated from animal books; here, nature was subdivided. The tables holding humor books were still full, an indication that either few books in the genre humor sold over the weekend or that the residents of Redding have an amazing appreciation for comedy. And where else but Redding could one find a table with a genre labelled “Ephemera”????

I paid $20.00 and collected 87 books. Amazing.

Maybe next year, I will go to opening day of the Mark Twain Book Sale and see the excitement of book dealers racing up and down the aisles with books stacked high to the ceiling….or maybe I will just continue to attend on the reduced price days. There were wonderful books available even after several days of shoppers plowed through the stacks on the tables, and the price was certainly right! The volunteers kept thanking me for attending the sale. No, thank you,.

In Friends of the Library Book Sale
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