Kids’ Book Corner: Two Trashy Books and Two for St. Pat’s

BY JO PERRY
Many kids love the garbage truck. Mine used to stand outside and wait on the curb for it on trash day. If yours are fans of refuse and the trash collector’s modus operandi, then these two inventive titles are sure to please:

Jonah Winter collaborated with Red Nose Studio to produce the visually-wonderful Here Comes The Garbage Barge!, a retelling (with liberties) of the infamous and true story of the Mobro 4000, a garbage barge that departed in 1987 trash-choked Islip, Long Island, with a haul of almost 3200 tons of trash and, it turned out, nowhere to dump it.

We follow the barge and its tugboat on its over 6000 mile trip from North Carolina to New Orleans, to Mexico, Belize, Texas, Florida and finally to Brooklyn. The 3-D illustrations built from found objects, wire, wood and fabric complement the story. And inside the dust jacket, kids can see how the illustrations were assembled. (4-8 years but artistic, older readers will find the illustrations fascinating.)

Aidan Potts’ witty and percussive Smash! Smash! Truck! begins with trash day from the point of view of some items in the recycling bin, then travels from the bang and clatter of cans and bottles to the loudest bang of all–the Big Bang–to show kids that the universe and our earth recycles itself. It’s a wild, very noisy ride. (5-8 years)

Kids with an Irish heritage, St. Patrick’s Day fans, or followers of the Magic Tree House series will welcome Mary Pope Osborne’s Leprechaun in Late Winter and its nonfiction companion, Leprechauns and Irish Folklore. Set in 1900’s Ireland, Jack and Annie meet and enjoy an life-changing magical adventure with a girl who later grows up to become folklorist Lady Gregory, known for her association with Yeats and the Irish Literary Revival.

The nonfiction companion has many illustrations and covers leprechauns, Irish folklore, fairies, fairy places, and leprechaun gold–all great fun. (7-12 years)

Jo Perry has a Ph.D. in English, taught literature and writing, and worked as a college administrator and as a television writer and producer. She is a reviewer for BookBrowse.com and is an ongoing contributor to kidsLA Magazine for which she writes about the city, children’s books, and conducts interviews. For two years she wrote the Kids’ Book Club column for the L.A. Times’ Kids’ Reading Room page.

Local Heroes: Sherman Oaks residents Lee and Patty Kagan help to save lives in Haiti

BY JO PERRY

For the past two years, Sherman Oaks internist Lee Kagan and his wife Patty, a critical care nurse and nurse educator at Providence Tarzana Medical Center, have visited the Dominican Republic with teams of medical students and faculty from the Mayo Clinic medical school. They haven’t gone to attend a medical convention at one of the Dominican Republic’s spectacular beachfront resorts, but to visit the dusty border town of Jimani and work providing primary medical care to desperately poor Haitian sugar cane workers who live in squalid settlements along the frontier.

As the couple was completing their plans for their return this year, the earthquake devastated Haiti and the injured began pouring across the border, overwhelming the International Medical Alliance supported hospital in Jimani. Calls for help to the I.M.A. brought a vascular surgeon and an orthopedic specialist along with others who began treating the severely injured within two days of the quake. Soon more surgeons, anesthesiologists and RN’s from other groups and countries showed up as well. Eventually there were over 1,800 people at the site of the clinic, 417 patients and their family members.

Dr. Kagan reports that 120 amputations were done that first week, and numerous fractures were stabilized as patients and families members slept on mats and mattresses in the orphanage, an open-air chapel and in a facilities tent.

The Kagans, along with pediatrician Bert Fernandez, E.R. physician Dr. Dick Goldberg, and Ellen Potter, neuroscientist at the Salk Institute, arrived in Jimani on Day Ten and found over 300 patients waiting for them. Working over 14 hour days in stifling 90 degree heat, Patty managed a tent housing 25-30 post-amputation or fracture patients and their families. To check vital signs, administer medications, tend I.V.’s or comfort frightened children, Patty and the other nurses had to squat on their haunches or get on their knees in the stony dirt floor of the stifling tent.

Lee Kagan first cared for stable patients at the orphanage, but was asked to co-direct the care of patients in the clinic’s 12-bed makeshift ICU/Recovery room adjacent to the OR’s. These patients were not only injured, but had complications such as kidney failure (a result of crush injury), pneumonia, collapsed lung, fevers, and dehydration. Dr. Kagan also helped supervise the transportation of critically ill patients via helicopter to hospitals either in Santo Domingo or on the USS Comfort anchored offshore Port-au-Prince.

The Kagans will be returning to Jimani in a few days for another week of grueling work under the most difficult conditions with the needy, desperately sick, and often orphaned patients they so generously care for and love.

If you would like to support the efforts of these local heroes and assist in the care and feeding of the ill and injured in Haiti, please make a tax-deductible donation to International Medical Alliance,  http://www.imaonline.org/. IMA is a volunteer organization and has no paid employees. 100% of all donations made at this time will be used to provide medicine, food, and surgical supplies to care for patients injured in the Haitian earthquakes. P.O. Box 20407, Knoxville, TN 37940 865-209-4928.

Jo Perry has a Ph.D. in English, taught literature and writing, and worked as a college administrator and as a television writer and producer. She is a reviewer for BookBrowse.com and is an ongoing contributor to kidsLA Magazine for which she writes about the city, children’s books, and conducts interviews. For two years she wrote the Kids’ Book Club column for the L.A. Times’ Kids’ Reading Room page.  She is also the co-creator of the Silent Bodyguard iPhone app.

Kids’ Book Corner: Celebrating love and animals

BY JO PERRY

Think back to your first love and most likely you’ll remember the profound and generous affection you felt for an animal or a pet, and the love that animal returned to you.  My Valentine’s Day-themed picks, two classics and one new, celebrate this love:

Our Farm by The Animals of Farm Sanctuary, poems by Maya Gottfried, paintings by Robert Rahway Zakanitch is a cheery and loving celebration of the inhabitants of The Farm Sanctuary farms in Orland, California and Watkins Glen, New York, both shelters for neglected and abused farm animals.

Poet Maya Gottfried volunteered at the New York farm and got to know the subjects who speak to the reader in poems illustrated with brilliant watercolors. Children will adore Ramsey the sheep, goat Clarabell, Gabriella the chicken, and the haiku written by rabbits Cece and Barnaby.

The Goat Lady by Jane Bregoli tells the true story of French Canadian Noelie Houle, an elderly Dartmouth, Massachusetts neighbor of the book’s author and illustrator, Jane Bregoli. Houle’s rundown property is full goats, geese and chickens that fascinate Bregoli’s children. Bregoli’s children finally meet Houle, who introduces them to her “kids,” Darcey, Dottie, Elaine, June and Vincent, and teaches them how to feed, care for and milk them.

Houle explains how raising goats and drinking their milk helped her overcome an illness, and explains that she shares her goats with needy people in other countries through the Heifer Project. But neighbors think Houle’s ramshackle property and her animals are a public nuisance.  Bregoli paints a series of portraits of Houle that reveal to her community what a treasure Houle and her kids really are. The paintings in the book are the paintings from Bregoli’s show.

Every Living Thing by Cynthia Rylant collects a dozen short stories about the human-animal connection.  Kids 10 and up (up means adults) will long remember these deep, powerful and elegant stories about animals –a wild boar, a dog, a goldfish named Joshua, a hermit crab, among them—and their indelible effect on the people who know them.

Jo Perry has a Ph.D. in English, taught literature and writing, and worked as a college administrator and as a television writer and producer. She is a reviewer for BookBrowse.com and is an ongoing contributor to kidsLA Magazine for which she writes about the city, children’s books, and conducts interviews. For two years she wrote the Kids’ Book Club column for the L.A. Times’ Kids’ Reading Room page.

Kids’ Book Corner: Books That Will Keep The New Year Bright

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.

­­—Marcel Proust

BY JO PERRY

Two sweet new books celebrate children’s literature one is for adults and one is for girls. A third explores the mysteries of time, space, the history of science and the origins of life itself—heady and funny stuff especially for boys.

Today I Will by Eileen and Jerry Spinelli is a new year’s worth of quotations from children’s books, with commentary by the authors and a daily affirmation for the young but wise reader. Here is December 13:

“Sometimes,” he said, “when you lose a gift, you get another one.” – Up Close: Johnny Cash by Anne E. Neimark

And that’s not so surprising, is it? A gift, by definition, is not something you earn or even deserve—it’s something given to you. It happens to you, and it can just as easily un‐happen to you. And just as easily be replaced by yet another gift, which at first you may not even recognize as such.

“I, like everyone, was born with gifts. Others have happened to me along the way. Some gifts may stay with me for a lifetime; some may have already gone. So it is with gifts: They come and go. I will remember this and not feel so bad next time a gift un-happens to me.”

Did you ever wonder what was Jack Prelutsky’s, Roger Ebert’s, or Anna Quindlen’s favorite books were when they were kids? Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book: Life Lessons from Notable People from All Walks of Life, Anita Silvey, editor, is a collection of literary recollections of beloved children’s books by one hundred accomplished people including Ebert (his favorite: The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright), Quindlen ( The Diary of a Young Girl by Ann Frank) and Prelutsky (Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton). What’s great is that the children’s books are also profiled so the reader can revisit his or her own favorites and discover new titles to share with your children and grandchildren.

Bill Bryson’s A Really Short History of Nearly Everything is a kids’ version of his adult bestseller. Full of witty illustrations, Bryson takes the reader on a romp through the cosmos, the earth, the big bang, and bacteria—nearly everything!

These books are full of joy, good cheer and a sense of possibility—just what young readers and the young at heart need when facing a bright new year.

Jo Perry has a Ph.D. in English, taught literature and writing, and worked as a college administrator and as a television writer and producer. She is a reviewer for BookBrowse.com and is an ongoing contributor to kidsLA Magazine for which she writes about the city, children’s books, and conducts interviews. For two years she wrote the Kids’ Book Club column for the L.A. Times’ Kids’ Reading Room page.

Silent Bodyguard: A “must have” iPhone app that can save lives

BY KAREN YOUNG

While working on creating and writing television show concepts, San Fernando Valley residents Jo Perry and Justin Leader started talking about iPhone apps. Leader, who is also an iPhone app developer, asked Perry what app she would like to have that doesn’t exist.

In recent months, Perry said she had been thinking a great deal about safety. A classmate of her youngest daughter had been abducted and murdered while on an errand. Shortly thereafter, her oldest daughter returned to Yale, where a female graduate student was murdered in her lab.

“I realized that both young women had a device with them that might have helped them — their cell phones,” said Perry. “The app I wanted would turn an iPhone into a survival tool.”

And so the idea for Silent Bodyguard was born.

The Silent Bodyguard iPhone app sends an SOS without alerting onlookers or an attacker. The app’s icon does not indicate that it is a panic button, and when activated, the app’s screen looks like a photo viewer, not an emergency communicator. Therefore, the app can be easily activated without being noticed.

When Silent Bodyguard is activated, it automatically sends a text message and emails to emergency contacts that the iPhone owner has chosen from their iPhone contact list. The messages sent contain the owner’s current location with a link to an online map, as determined by the iPhone GPS locator.

Silent Bodyguard will continue to send emails with updated locations every 60 seconds until the owner quits the application. It will not make any sound or signal that it is sending out these messages.

Silent Bodyguard works on the iPhone and iPod Touch, but does require an internet signal to work.

Silent Bodyguard went on sale at the iTunes store right before Christmas and so far the response has been an enthusiastic 5-star ratings from its users.

It sells for $3.99 — at that price you can’t afford not to have it.

Silent Bodyguard is available for $3.99 through the iTunes Store: http://bit.ly/silentbodyguard and through a link on the Silent Bodyguard website: www.silentbodyguard.com.  Perry and Leader are donating 5% of the profits to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Karen Young is the Publisher/Editor of My Daily Find

Kid’s Book Corner: A Snowy Season

BY JO PERRY

Though it doesn’t snow in southern California, you and your kids can enjoy the delicate and mysterious symmetry of snowflakes with these frosty and very cool books:

Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin, illustrated by Mary Azarian.  This Caldecott medal-winner tells the true story of snow-scientist Wilson Bentley, the first person to photograph snowflakes. Bentley grew up on a farm in snowy Vermont, and as a child was a lover of nature, particularly rain, raindrops, snowstorms, and snowflakes: “…snow was as beautiful as butterflies or apple blossoms.” An old microscope, a gift from his mother, allowed him to discover snowflakes’ dazzling beauty, masterful design, and unending uniqueness: Bentley realized that no snowflake repeated the design of another.

Bentley wanted to figure out a way to save snowflakes, so he could share their beauty. He tried drawing them, but they melted before he could finish his drawings. At 16, he learned of a camera equipped with a microscope. His parents used their savings to purchase the camera for him, and after a year of frustration and failure, Bentley figured out a way to capture the fragile crystals on glass negatives. The triumphant and beautiful book ends with a photograph of Bentley and three of his photographs of snowflakes (6 years and up).

Snowflakes by Kenneth Libbrecht. This is a gorgeous collection of modern snowflake photographs taken by a physicist who continues Wilson Bentley’s study of snow crystals at Caltech. Libbrecht has also published The Art of the Snowflake; The Magic of Snowflakes; Ken Libbrecht’s Field Guide to Snowflakes; The Little Book of Snowflakes; and The Snowflake: Winter’s Secret Beauty. All ages will enjoy Libbrecht’s crystalline images and his descriptions of the creation of and structures of snowflakes.

Kids will enjoy visiting Dr. Libbrecht’s snowflake website at http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/ to learn about his work, his books, snowflake physics, structure, snowflake hotspots, and to see more of his snowflake photographs.

For kids who want to learn more, The Snowflake by Neil Waldman follows a drop of water from snowflake, to droplet, to a pond, to the sea, and into the clouds once again throughout one year, while Thomas Locke’s sumptuous Water Dance presents water in all its forms through haunting landscape paintings.

Jo Perry has a Ph.D. in English, taught literature and writing, and worked as a college administrator and as a television writer and producer. She is a reviewer for BookBrowse.com and is an ongoing contributor to kidsLA Magazine for which she writes about the city, children’s books, and conducts interviews. For two years she wrote the Kids’ Book Club column for the L.A. Times’ Kids’ Reading Room page.

Kid’s Book Corner: Books to be Thankful For In November

BY JO PERRY

November is a time for the things children cherish most: family, food, affection and tradition. It means preparing the Thanksgiving green-bean casserole that no one really likes exactly the same way it’s always been made, and Aunt Betty’s alien-green Jell-O mold in its place of honor on the table.  What follows are three of my favorites, still deliciously fun after all these years, for your kids and you enjoy together:

Daniel Pinkwater’s hilarious and sly The Hoboken Chicken Emergency begins when Arthur Bobwicz is told to bring home a turkey for his family’s Thanksgiving dinner. After Arthur searches every shop in Hoboken for a holiday gobbler, he sees a sign posted in an apartment window:

Even though he doesn’t have an appointment, Arthur is desperate for fowl. He buzzes the buzzer and asks if the bathrobe-clad Professor might have a chicken to sell. In exchange for sixteen dollars, the Professor gives Arthur “‘… the best poultry bargain on earth,” a 266 pound super chicken wearing a leash and dog collar. Arthur names her Henrietta and walks her home:

“That night the family had meatloaf, and mashed potatoes, and vegetables for Thanksgiving dinner: Everybody thought it was a good meal. Henrietta especially liked the mashed potatoes, although Poppa warned everybody not to feed her from the table. “I don’t want this chicken to get into the habit of begging,” he said, “and the first time the children forget to feed or walk her out she goes.”

Poppa had decided to let Arthur keep Henrietta. “Every boy should have a chicken,” he said.

Polly Horvath’s The Trolls is a smart and bittersweet story of what happens when Aunt Sally comes to stay with her two nieces and young nephew while their parents are out of town. The kids soon discover that Sally is fun — she serves fiddlehead ferns, wears lots of makeup, plays games tirelessly, and tells fantastic stories about growing up with their father and their on Vancouver Island. The kids learn about Maud, the killer of eighty cougars, Great Uncle Louis, who urges everyone to chew on sticks for fiber, Mrs. Gunderson, and the Fat Little Mean Girl. But the darkest and most important story concerns Aunt Sally, their father, and the evil Trolls.

I warn you now, Mud Pies and Other Recipes: A Cookbook for Dolls by Marjorie Winslow is out of print, but used copies are available from online booksellers. It’s worth hunting down and cherishing.  With Erik Blegvad’s beautiful illustrations, Winslow offers girls and boys serious irresistible recipes for  “Wood Chip Dip,” “Mud Puddle Soup,”  “Roast Rocks” and “Pine Needle Upside-Down Cake” and other delectable soups, sandwiches, and cakes — all made with leaves, mud, sticks, and other materials found outdoors.

Jo Perry has a Ph.D. in English, taught literature and writing, and worked as a college administrator and as a television writer and producer. She is a reviewer for BookBrowse.com and is an ongoing contributor to kidsLA Magazine for which she writes about the city, children’s books, and conducts interviews. For two years she wrote the Kids’ Book Club column for the L.A. Times’ Kids’ Reading Room page.

The Friendship of Geometry in Shelley Pearsall’s “All of the Above”

BY JO PERRY

The return to school in September is always bittersweet for kids and parents, especially when students are beginning middle school.  Shelley Pearsall’s ALA award-winning novel, All of the Above will inspire even daunted and overwhelmed middle schoolers:  It tells (with the addition of mouth-watering barbecue recipes) the suspenseful story of a group of seventh graders who attempt to build the world’s largest tetrahedron. 

 Seventh grade math teacher Mr. Collins explains that tetrahedrons are pyramids with triangular bases that can be connected to make larger pyramids, and tells his class that a group of California students has already constructed a seven-foot tall tetrahedron made of 4,096 small tetrahedrons. Then Mr. Collins challenges his students to build an even bigger tetrahedron that will break the world record.

Four students, each with difficult personal problems, form the tetrahedron team: James, whose brother hangs out with a dangerous crowd; Marcel, whose father wants him to work at his barbecue restaurant after school instead of spending time on the math project; Sharice, whose foster parent  is neglecting her; and quiet Rhondell, who hopes to someday attend college.

Day after day, month after month, the students fold and join together thousands of paper triangles in a rainbow patter of James’s design. The disconnected students become proud friends as the colorful pyramid slowly rises higher and higher. Their world record-breaking structure is almost complete when someone destroys their giant tetrahedron and scatters its thousands of pieces on the floor. Mr. Collins and the stunned students wonder if they have the determination to start over.

Pearsall based her book on real Cleveland, Ohio middle-schoolers, who in 2002, worked after school and through the summer to construct the 16, 384 paper triangles necessary to complete their model. (You can see their rainbow tetrahedron at Shelley Pearsall’s website http://www.shelleypearsall.com/picAlbumAll1.htm ).  In an interview, Pearsall  explains how their work inspired her novel,

Picture a run-down urban school, a gloomy gray November morning…  

During my visit, the school’s principal kept talking about his school’s record-breaking tetrahedron project. To be honest, I didn’t have a clue what he meant–what in the world was a “tetrahedron?” But when I had a free moment, he took me to one of the math classrooms to show me. I can still remember the jaw-dropping sight when he opened the door: the entire room was filled with giant rainbow-colored pyramids. They were suspended from the lights and lined up along the windowsills and bookshelves. It was a magical, almost gravity-defying sight.*

 All of the Above is a fine book for you to share with your kids this fall.   The students’ voices are real and compelling, the math is fascinating, and the recipes invite you to test them in your kitchen. But what’s best is that it reminds us that teachers can inspire us, friends can give us courage, and that the stories kids tell in their own voices are powerful and important.  

 You can help your kids build their own tetrahedron after visiting:  http://www.public.asu.edu/~starlite/sierpinskibuild.html

 *http://cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com/2006/11/author-interview-shelley-pearsall-on.html

Jo Perry has a Ph.D. in English, taught literature and writing, and worked as a college administrator and as a television writer and producer. She is a reviewer for BookBrowse.com and is an ongoing contributor to kidsLA Magazine for which she writes about the city, children’s books, and conducts interviews. For two years she wrote the Kids’ Book Club column for the L.A. Times’ Kids’ Reading Room page.

Kids’ Book Corner: The Valley’s Own Aviator Amelia Earhart

BY JO PERRY

Harry Pottered out? Sometimes a good biography is in order, especially when it’s about the life of a heroic figure with local connections. Amelia Earhart broke world speed and distance aviation records and was the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic. Your young explorers will be uplifted when they read about her life and its local connections in Corrine Szabo’s “Sky Pioneer: A Photobiography of Amelia Earhart.”

Earhart was eleven when she saw her first airplane at the 1908 Iowa State Fair, five years after the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight. But it wasn’t until she was an adult and visiting her parents here in L.A. that she took her first ride in an airplane. Earhart loved the experience so much that she took flying lessons, purchased her own plane, and earned her pilot’s license.

Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. On June 17, 1928, she and copilot Lou Gordon took off in a plane called Friendship from Trepassey, Newfoundland. They landed in Wales 20 hours and 40 minutes later. The flight made Earhart famous, but she wanted to pilot a plane by herself.

Earhart became the first woman to make a solo round-trip flight across the United States and in 1932, she embarked on a solo Atlantic flight. She piloted her Lockheed Vega from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland to a pasture in Londonderry, Ireland. Earhart succeeded despite a storm, faulty equipment, and ice on the plane’s wings. This flight earned her a heroine’s welcome in New York, complete with a ticker-tape parade.

Earhart went on to complete other record-breaking flights, received many awards and spoke on behalf of women’s rights. In 1937 Earhart and navigator Freed Noonan began an around-the-world flight along the Equator and flew 22,000 miles in about six weeks. On July 2, they took off from New Guinea for a 2,556 mile trip to Howland Island. No one knows exactly what went wrong, but Earhart and Noonan never reached the tiny island and the plane was never found.

Earhart lived in North Hollywood from 1928 – 1937, and her Vega was built in Burbank. Visit Amelia Earhart’s statue in North Hollywood Park at the corner of Tujunga and Magnolia on August 19, National Aviation Day.

Jo Perry has a Ph.D. in English, taught literature and writing, and worked as a college administrator and as a television writer and producer. She is a reviewer for BookBrowse.com and is an ongoing contributor to kidsLA Magazine for which she writes about the city, children’s books, and conducts interviews. For two years she wrote the Kids’ Book Club column for the L.A. Times’ Kids’ Reading Room page.

Sense of Place: Kids’ Books that Celebrate the USA and L.A.

BY JO PERRY

A brilliant new book about America will be published this August: If America Were a Village: A Book about the People of the United States by David J. Smith and illustrated by Shelagh Armstrong. In this colorful “statistical snapshot” of the USA, Armstrong’ shrinks our vast nation of over 300 million people to a village of 100, then invites kids 9-12 to explore the ethnic origins, family structure, religions, jobs, wealth and poverty, and material possessions of residents of this American “village”of 100.

In the village of America:

• 20 families have two parents, while seven are single-parent families. About half of these 27 families have children under the age of 18, for a total of 29 children.
• Ten households are made up of oneperson who lives alone.
• The remaining 14 people live in households of two or more unrelated people sharing living quarters…

How do American families compare with those of other nations? There are big differences. When young people in various countries were asked, ‘What’s your ideal family? How many children do you want?’ here’s how they answered:
In the United States, young people, on average, wanted two children; in India and Morocco, five, in Yemen, Sudan and Kenya, six; and in Mauritania, nine.

Smith ends his interesting survey with a section for adults, “Helping our children understand America” in which he suggests ways parents can enlarge their children’s understanding of our nation: keeping maps and globes around the house; exploring one’s community with an eye on history; encouraging kids to understand the vastness of the USA by discussion time zones, or checking the weather across the nation; and celebrating your own family’s heritage.

If America Were a Village will connect children America’s people and history, and will help them imagine their place in global village. L.A.’s own Angel City Press’s City of Angels: In and Around Los Angeles by Julie Jaskol and Brian Lewis, with Elisa Kleven’s lively and gorgeous illustrations, will help kids feel that they’re a part of our diverse city and connected to its people. This beautiful book includes sections on Olvera Street, The San Fernando Mission, the Getty Center, The Museum of Tolerance, Watts Towers, Plaza de Los Angeles, Chinatown, and other L.A. places and neighborhoods. City of Angels will inspire kids to rejoice in their city and to celebrate their own unique neighborhoods.

Visit the library often this summer and to make sure each member of your family has his or her own library card. For more information visit www.lapl.org.

Jo Perry has a Ph.D. in English, taught literature and writing, and worked as a college administrator and as a television writer Jo Perryand producer. She is a reviewer for BookBrowse.com and is an ongoing contributor to kidsLA Magazine for which she writes about the city, children’s books, and conducts interviews. For two years she wrote the Kids’ Book Club column for the L.A. Times’ Kids’ Reading Room page. She wrote about summer reading for kids in the June issue of Costco Connection.

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