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Are You Smarter Than . . . . .

Our Fading Heritage: Americans Fail a Basic Test on Their History and Institutions is the third major study conducted by Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).

In 2006 and 2007, ISI published the first surveys of civic learning among college students. Fourteen thousand freshmen and seniors at 50 schools nationwide were given a 60-question, multiple-choice exam on basic knowledge of America’s heritage.

Both years, the students failed.

The average freshman scored 51.7% the first year and 51.4% the next. The average senior scored 53.2%, then 54.2%.

First, a random sampling of 2,508 American adults of all backgrounds was surveyed, allowing comparisons to be made between the college- and non-college educated. They were asked 33 straightforward civics questions, many of which high school graduates and new citizens are expected to know.

Of the 2,508 Americans - 71% failed. The average score on the test is only 49%.

Take the Test !

A: 21 people (8%) answered 90-100% correctly
B: 66 people (2.6%) answered 80-89% correctly
C: 185 people (7.4%) answered 70-79% correctly
D: 445 people (17.8%) answered 60-69% correctly
F: 1,791 people (71.4%) answered below 59% correctly

57%: Bachelor’s degree
49%: General Public
44%: Elected Officials

52%: Republicans
49%: Liberals
48%: Conservatives
45%: Democrats

Americans from all age groups, income brackets,

and political ideologies fail the test of civic literacy!

Only 24% of college graduates know the First Amendment prohibits establishing an official religion for the United States.

Only 49% of Elected Officials and the General Public can name the three branches of government.

Thirty percent of elected officials do not know that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are the inalienable rights referred to in the Declaration of Independence.

The Fool by Raffi

The Fool by Raffi is a historical novel that takes place in Eastern Turkey during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78. 'The Fool' is one of the most widely read Armenian novels of all time. It is an excellent socio-economic and political picture of Ottoman ruled Armenia . Knitting together adventure and analysis, it illuminates the structures of Ottoman oppression and the way the state cultivated Kurdish clans as allies against potential Armenian rebellion. It describes a nation at the edge of destruction that is also in the process of transition, beginning to take up a struggle for survival and independence.

The author breathes life into the main characters by a wonderful imagination and a talent for story-telling so they become effective mediums for the author's message urging national education, political organization and armed self-defense as critical components of national survival and revival.

Teen Urban Fantasies

Samuel Butler said, “The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.” Most people focus on reviewing new books; but my preference is to read (and write) reviews of books that have been around for a little while. Why? Well, first of all, there’s not a lot of competition for them at the library! (BPL owns 32 copies of Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, and it’s still hard to find one to check out!) Secondly, if I find a book that I enjoy, I immediately want more from that author—but if his or her first book just came out, I’m going to have to wait a whole year (or more!) for the next one. So here are a few teen urban fantasies I recently discovered, where there are one or several more already-published books by the author.

First, though, a definition of urban fantasy: A regular fantasy is set in an imaginary mythological world created for the story (think Middle-Earth). Urban fantasy places fantastic elements within contemporary, real-world, urban settings. So the idea is, you’re walking along San Fernando Road and you see a couple of window-shopping goth girls dressed all in black. You glance away, and when you look back, you see two crows flying away. Did the girls turn into crows? Or is it a coincidence? Urban fantasy trades heavily on the fact that city folks tend to be oblivious to odd or unexplainable things happening in their midst, so cities leave space for mysteries to hide in plain sight.

City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare, is a fantasy that trades on the classics: Themes include the union of representatives from different “races” (mundanes, faerie, downworlders, shadowhunters) against a common evil, reminiscent of Lord of the Rings; a villain whose physical description brings to mind the supercilious Lucius Malfoy from the Harry Potter movies; and a secret sibling relationship straight out of Star Wars; not to mention that some of the Shadowhunters bear a striking resemblance to a certain Vampire Slayer. But I didn’t mind the derivative elements; the protagonists, 15-year-old Clary Fray, her best friend, Simon, and her new crush, Jace Wayland, Shadowhunter, are fresh and interesting, and the urban setting (New York City) provides camouflage for the other worlds hidden amongst its cathedrals, cemeteries and industrial districts.

The second book, City of Ashes, continues and expands upon the relationships and the challenges; the third, City of Glass, is due out in March of 2009.

The Blue Girl, by Charles de Lint, is a specifically teen-oriented urban fantasy book—two others by this author are Little (Grrl) Lost and Dingo. De Lint has been writing urban fantasy for a few decades, but mostly for the adult market. Although these three books are not part of a series, they do share a common setting—the city of Newford (which is, in fact, mythical, but was patterned on Canadian and American cityscapes)—and interweave the normal world with extraordinary events and characters drawn from faerie, the supernatural, and various cultural mythologies including Native American and aboriginal Australian.

Imagine you are a troubled teen who has just moved to a new school. You’re trying to live down your bad reputation, and you make a good start by finding a friend who’s shy and studious—your polar opposite. Things are going well until you realize that the pale boy you’ve seen wandering around the school is actually the ghost of a deceased student, who accidentally sics a group of practical-joke-playing fairies on you. Things quickly go from complicated to dire as they first turn you blue from head to toe and then bring you to the attention of frightening beings from the Otherworld.


Little (Grrl) Lost unites a shy, awkward 14-year-old teen with her “Little” counterpart—a 16-year-old punk girl who happens to be six inches tall. Dingo is the story of high school senior Miguel and his new friend, Australian transfer student Lainey, who is on the run from an ancient bargain made by her ancestors. If you enjoy these, also try some of De Lint’s adult titles, like Trader, a what-would-happen-if? tale about body-switching.

Breaking News - Actor Robert Wagner to appear at book signing event!

Hello to all...breaking news.....

We’ve just now received a confirmation that actor Robert Wagner will appear at the Buena Vista Branch Library on DECEMBER 17 at 7:00 p.m. to discuss and sign his memoir, Pieces of My Heart. Wagner is the star of numerous films and television programs, ranging from the Austin Powers movies to guest appearances on Two and a Half Men and Boston Legal. Many may remember him from the hit series Hart to Hart with Stephanie Powers, It Takes a Thief with Fred Astaire, or Switch with Eddie Albert. Make your plans to join us for what should be a very popular program...and just in time for your last-minute Christmas shopping, too!

Write On! BPL Offers Creative Writing Workshops for Kids

These past two weeks, young writers from our community gathered over at the Buena Vista Library to meet other kids who like to write, to get inspired, and to create their own works of art.

On Wednesday, November 12th, writers in grades 1-3 came and participated in a group fill-in-the-blank story, listened to Library Mouse by Daniel Kirk, and let their imaginations loose writing and drawing stories in a mini-notebook.

Last night (Wednesday, November 19th), writers in grades 4-6 had fun doing the fill-in-the-blank story together, working on writing prompts selected randomly from a “Jar O' Ideas,” creating original comic strips, trying out different forms of poetry, and decorating their new writing journals.

PICTURES from the events can be found here (in “Programs for Older Kids” photo set): http://www.flickr.com/photos/sillylibrarian/

In the words of one happy participant, "It was coolio!" We all hope to do more writing programs for kids in the near future. In the meantime, enjoy this cinquain poem about our writing workshops written by Jennifer, the Silly Librarian...

Kids write!

Creative minds

Dreaming, etching, scrawling

Excited to share ideas

Great night!

New This Week in AskWiki

From the Dept. of Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: The reference supervisor at Torrance Public Library wrote to say that “our reference staff loves your Wiki!” They want one, too.

We added the Free Meals Around Burbank files and there are yet more city documents available.

I found a site with 100 Ivy League college lectures on a variety of topics-here’s your chance to get the education your mother wishes you had!

Erin added the Huntington Hospital Library , a wonderful resource for medical information.

In case you don’t think you have enough fonts in your computer, you can download more than a thousand more here, most of them unusual and fun.

If you need to know how often the shelves break on that $2500 refrigerator you’re contemplating, wize will stomp all over the web finding reviews of all sorts of products.

What We're Listening to - Live in Gdansk by David Gilmour.

If you think about it, there are many reasons why David Gilmour's new CD shouldn't work. It is a concert recorded in a shipyard; it contains a full recording of his recent CD of new music; it features the use of an orchestra; it has a 25-minute song [mostly instrumental]; and not once, not twice, but three times he digs deep into the Pink Floyd catalog for songs first recorded prior to their commercial breakthrough album, Dark Side of the Moon.

Fortunately, music also requires emotion and sometimes that is more important than thinking things through too much. The concert recorded on Live in Gdansk succeeds memorably, and turns each of those possible concerns into strengths. This was recorded at the end of Gilmour's 2006 tour in support of his "On an Island" album and is set in the Gdansk shipyards to commemorate and honor the Solidarity movement in Poland. The use of an orchestra blends beautifully into the band's music. The second CD, devoted to Pink Floyd selections, is an amazing treat. From the aforementioned 25-minute version of Echoes to more obscure songs like Fat Old Sun, Gilmour is taking risks that actually are treats to fans. How many musicians are confident enough to avoid far better-known songs to dig this deep into their catalog these days? Very, very few would dare; most artists are content to play the hits and nothing but the hits. The final two songs, A Great Day for Freedom and Comfortably Numb, feature two amazing, emotive guitar solos that remind everyone why David Gilmour is on the short list of all-time greatest guitarists. Powerful stuff to listen to and lastly, to hear Pink Floyd keyboardist, Richard Wright's vocal on Comfortably Numb serves as a fitting tribute with his recent death.

Lĭt / uh / ruh / sē Äw / fĭs

Carol Muske-Dukes appointed California poet laureate LA Times: Nov 14, 2008

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has appointed Carol Muske-Dukes as California's new Poet Laureate.

Muske-Dukes, who has reviewed for the Los Angeles Times, has written seven books of poetry; her most recent, Sparrow, was nominated for a National Book Award. She has also written two collections of essays and four novels, including 2007's Channeling Mark Twain, which was an L.A. Times bestseller (coincidentally, one of its characters is a stuffy former poet laureate).

Muske-Dukes is a professor at USC, where she began teaching more than 20 years ago. She is a founder of USC's PhD program in creative writing, known as one of the country's best. READ MORE

The Invention of Cuisine
by Carol Muske-Dukes

Imagine for a moment
the still life of our meals,
meat followed by yellow cheese,
grapes pale against the blue armor of fish.

. . . more @ The Poetry Foundation

Check Out Carol Muske-Dukes @ Burbank Public Library

Sparrow
Carol Muske-Dukes - Random, 2003
"Sparrow, a new volume of poetry by acclaimed poet, novelist, and critic Carol Muske-Dukes, draws the reader into a world of love and loss.

What We're Reading (so you don't have to) - Alcatraz versus The Scrivener's Bones.

Back in April, I warned all of our readers, particularly delicate and impressionable children in the 4th and 5th grades, that they should not waste their time with Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians.

I am highly disappointed in the good and wise citizens of Burbank that not only was the book read, it was read by these poor children as a selection of the Burbank Library 4th/5th Grade book club. And the author, seeking "good will" and "publicity," actually had the nerve to stop by the Burbank Library [see photographic proof below] to meet these poor misled children, give a "positive, fun and encouraging" talk, and sign copies of the offensive book...shocking! Some would call this nice, but me, I call it shocking...but not nearly as shocking as just how equally terrible to read is the second book in the Alcatraz series by Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz versus the Scrivener's Bones.

IF YOU ARE A SENSIBLE PERSON READ NO FURTHER. ALLOW ME, A TRAINED PROFESSIONAL LIBRARIAN [NOT EVIL, ASK AROUND] TO CLEARLY STATE THIS BOOK IS A WASTE OF TIME TO READ.

Oh sure, this supposedly true story by Alcatraz Smedry [who still breaks things, what a klutz] has danger, adventure, humor, character growth, flying glass dragons, deadly soul-sucking when-you-take-a-book-off-of-the-shelf Evil Librarians, battles, writer's diversions, new Smedry talents, narrow escapes, emotional reunions with long-lost family members and is fun to read. Do you really want children entertained and encouraged to enjoy reading? I mean c'mon, where is the serious ending with a dead dog? Besides, the author states that he is a liar [see pages 44 and 122] and holds readers of series fiction in disdain [see page 23].

I suppose that you'll just go ahead and read the book anyway--go ahead, try to enjoy it if you can find it, and would you like help in finding a book to take off of the shelf?...hehehehe, we can always use more souls....and whatever you do, do not anticipate and look forward to a third Alcatraz adventure and please, stay away from Brandon Sanderson's website. It also is boring and a great waste of your time.

The Forever War

Dexter Filkins served as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in Afghanistan in the 1990s and witnessed the rise of the Taliban, and he worked for the New York Times in Iraq from the beginning of the war and during the worst of the sectarian fighting and anarchy that followed. The Forever War is a compilation of his remarkable and unflinching reporting on the war. It includes a view from the ground as he accompanied U.S. troops into combat in Fallujah and Ramadi, interviews with insurgents and common Iraqis caught in the midst of the struggle, and conversations with major military and political figures on various sides of the conflict in Iraq. This is not a book with a political agenda; there isn’t a theme or point of view that has been imposed in retrospect. Filkins’ object was to report what he saw as a journalist, and rather than producing a book that takes on the character of memoir, he has retained the happenstance character of the reporting in the transfer of his material to book form. His preparation and editing included research to confirm the accuracy of his original reporting and to add any appropriate annotation, something he has done without sacrificing the immediacy or integrity of his original reporting.

Among the major stories Filkins has interspersed some personal accounts of his life as a reporter in Iraq, but the object of these accounts is not to provide an opening for introspection or point of view but to give us a sense of what life was like in Iraq during his time there. If there is a tension of a personal nature in the book, it comes in circumstances that threaten to cloud his role as a journalist with that of a participant. The difference is a role he accepts, not being “one” of any group he observes, and the reproach for that from soldiers and citizens he can accept as part of the territory that comes with his job. But there are times when the pressure to cross that distance is strong, as when he is asked to compromise his sources by the CIA to assist in finding the kidnapped reporter Jill Carroll. In what is perhaps the most poignant story in the book, Filkins witnesses the death of a soldier who had tried to help him and a photographer out by leading them to a site where they could get a picture of a dead Iraqi insurgent. It produces a rush of guilt, a violent and instant conflation of his distance, and Filkins relates it with vivid and unforgiving detail. He doesn’t have to say much about his feelings. We know from the way the story is told that this is the singular experience of the war that has permanently altered him. When he gets back to the United States he visits the parents and the grave of the soldier. The book is dedicated to him.

It seems an odd thing that the visceral truth about the nature of war and chaos in Iraq is something we must get from the written word and not from the broadcast media. Perhaps it is more than just a tacit agreement between government and broadcast media however and we, the consumers of broadcast news, are complicit as well. We don’t really want to be shown what the scene looks like after a suicide bombing, we don’t want to see our soldiers beheaded, we don’t have the stomach for anything too disagreeable over dinner. It would give emotion and revulsion sway over more sober and considered opinion, or so the argument goes. But it means too that we lose a sense of what war is really about, that we can’t understand or appreciate the horrors faced by our soldiers or by the population of a country torn apart, and that there is no room at the table for the hard and gruesome truth in our councils of war and peace. We are happy to hear from children that they read for their personal enjoyment, and we tell them reading should be a pleasure. But literacy also carries with it as we grow older a moral responsibility, an imperative that we also read what is unpleasant if we wish to understand and attempt to change the way things are. It seems that there really are some things you must read. Such a book is The Forever War.

Are You Prepared?

I happen to know that a massive earthquake will hit Southern California at 10 AM sharp on November 13, 2008. Here in the Burbank Public Library, patrons and librarians will be promptly evacuated after it hits.

While you'd be correct in thinking that I can't possibly know the future, I do know that we will experience the largest earthquake drill in US history. Millions of people and hundreds of schools, businesses, government offices and more will all come together when the "shaking" begins in order to prepare for the real thing. If you would like to register for this event, you can do so at The Great Southern California Shake Out website. There will be many events at numerous SoCal locations throughout the day.

To keep up-to-date on Shake Out related topics, do also visit their blog.

What We're Reading: Eat This Not That

Zinczenko has given the world an utterly fascinating little eating guide in Eat This, Not That! With the book open, the left page offers you advice on which meals to choose while the right page tells you what to avoid. Many of your favorite restaurants are covered here, as are popular grocery store brands. Alongside the colorful photographs of savory food are boxes with statistics (calories/fat/carbs) and interesting factoids for you to mull over as you make your selection. Perhaps my only real complaint is the lack of these for certain items. There is no mention of WHY Reduced Fat Wheat Thins belongs in the "Not That" pile...which is of some concern because I usually grab the original full fat recipe. Of a common freezer staple in my house, Stouffer's Lean Cuisine Butternut Squash Ravioli, it simply says that it's "one of the worst choices of all the 'healthy' frozen entree labels." Occasional vagueness aside, this is a fun little "read" with lots of pictures and helpful info.

Parents, there's also a book to help you find the best options for your children: Eat This, Not That! For Kids!

Author Michael Crichton dies.

It has been announced that best selling author, director and TV show creator Michael Crichton has died.

Besides his many popular books that frequently explored science and medicine, I find two facts about Crichton interesting.

1. At 6' 9" in height, he certainly must be among the tallest authors around.


2. Crichton was one of the few popular authors who successfully wrote in a variety of genres. During his career he wrote mysteries, science fiction, historical novels and books that explored contempory issues. A rare talent to have the ability to do that.

Click to check the library's holdings of Michael Crichton.

Click to visit his website.

Goodbye Opus!

Sunday sadly saw the last appearance of Opus the Penguin in the Sunday comics section. I shall miss seeing him and all of his friends.

For anyone who would like to revisit Opus' career [we have some of the comic strip collections] and other books by the talented Berkeley Breathed click here. Goodnight moon, Goodnight Opus, sleep well.