Posted by: montclairlibrary | October 1, 2012

Julia Morgan

Oakland almost-native (she was born in San Francisco and moved here when she was 2) Julia Morgan designed over 700 buildings in California, including a dozen or so in Oakland and Piedmont. Julia Morgan's passport photo, from Landmarks CaliforniaMorgan was California’s first licensed female architect, one of the first female civil engineering graduates of UC Berkeley, and the first woman admitted to L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.

The Julia Morgan 2012 Festival kicks off today and runs through November 16th. The festival celebrates Morgan’s interesting life and her “prolific contributions to California’s built landscape.” Organizations from all over the state are offering visual and performing exhibits, seminars, teas, Morgan-designed building tours and garden tours. Here in Oakland, the Oakland Heritage Alliance will host a tour of Julia Morgan-designed buildings on the Mills College campus Saturday, Oct. 13 from 10am-noon. Details and registration at http://ohatour-october2012.eventbrite.com/.

If you’d like to learn more about Julia Morgan, look for one of these books at the Montclair Library:

Julia Morgan, Architect by Sara Holmes Boutelle, with color photography by Richard Barnes (Montclair Library Oversize, 720.924 MORGAN)

Craftsman Style by Robert Winter with photographs by Alexander Vertikoff (Montclair Library Oversize, 720.973 WINTER)

Julia Morgan, Architect of Dreams by Ginger Wadsworth (Montclair Library Children’s, J BIO MORGAN)

Julia Morgan Built a Castle by Celeste Davidson Mannis (Montclair Library Children’s, J BIO MORGAN)

Some of the buildings Morgan designed in Oakland include:

  • Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Avenue (Morgan is buried next door at Mountain View Cemetery)
  • Fred C. Turner Stores, 4001 Piedmont Avenue at 40th Street (now home to A.G. Ferrari and other shops)
  • El Campanil bell tower, Carnegie Hall, Julia Morgan School for Girls, Student Union and Kapiolani Cottage at Mills College
  • First Swedish Baptist Church (now Re:Generation), 219 East 15th Street
  • United Presbyterian Church (now College Avenue Presbyterian Church), 5951 College Avenue
  • YWCA Building, 1515 Webster Street
  • King’s Daughters Home (now part of Kaiser Permanente), 3900 Broadway

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Posted by: montclairlibrary | September 30, 2012

Banned Books Week

AP Photo/The Gadsden Times, Marc Golden

AP Photo/The Gadsden Times, Marc Golden


The 30th annual Banned Books Week, which celebrates our freedom to read, runs September 30-October 6, 2012.

The American Library Association launched Banned Books Week in 1982 to highlight the value of free and open access to information.

Why not celebrate this week by reading a banned book? On the ALA website you can find lists of Banned & Challenged Classics, Banned Books by Decade, Banned Books by Year, and more. (The lists alone are interesting reading!)

The 10 most challenged titles of 2011 were:

ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series) by Lauren Myracle

The Color of Earth (series) by Kim Dong Hwa

The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins

My Mom’s Having A Baby! A Kid’s Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy by Dori Hillestad Butler

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Alice (series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones

Gossip Girl (series) by Cecily Von Ziegesar

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

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Posted by: montclairlibrary | September 27, 2012

Book spine poetry

Book spine poem by Household Opera

Book spine poem by Household Opera via LibraryThing

Love this idea from LibraryThing: Book spine poems. Stack up your books to create a poem, some silly, some surprisingly beautiful. What can you create? If you feel inspired, upload a photo of your poem to Flickr or your favorite photo-sharing site, and send us a link at fomlibrary@gmail.com and we’ll share our favorites in a future post.

If you like this sort of thing, you’ll also want to check out Nina Katchadourian’s Sorted Books Project.

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Posted by: montclairlibrary | September 26, 2012

Thank you!

Book Sale September 22, 2012

Thanks, Montclair! Once again our amazing community came together to donate books, volunteer, and purchase books, making our book sale last Saturday a success. This photo shows the line up the block when we opened the gates at 10:30am – we love eager readers!

Our next big sale will be in May 2013, but stay tuned for details on holiday books and gift-quality books we’ll be featuring for sale in the library as the winter holidays approach.

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Posted by: montclairlibrary | September 25, 2012

Beyond books

Ty Yurgelevic of the Tool Lending Library - photo by Steve Saldivar via Flickr

Ty Yurgelevic of the Tool Lending Library. Photo by Steve Saldivar via Flickr.


This is the final week of Library Card Sign-up Month. The American Library Association put together a fun true-or-false quiz highlighting some of the unique things libraries around the country loan to their cardholders. For example, fishing poles are available at six branches of the Chicago Public Library. Some Midwest libraries offer cooking equipment, like cake pans, for checkout.

Your Oakland Public Library card may not get you a bundt pan, but did you know about these other things you can check out besides books?

You can use the Format facet on the Encore search sidebar to filter your results by the type of item, such as Books, DVDs, etc. Try searching for “drill” and filtering by Format:Tools to see all the drill and bit options available at the Tool Lending Library, for example. How cool is that?

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Posted by: montclairlibrary | September 24, 2012

This week at Montclair Library

If you have kids who need Halloween costumes, don’t miss the costume swap! Drop off your clean, gently-used costumes at the children’s desk starting Wednesday, September 26th. Then come back Saturday for the swap!
Trick or treat
Thursday, September 27th, 2012
Toddler Storytime – 10:15am
Baby Bounce – 11:30am

Saturday, September 29th, 2012
Halloween Costume Swap ages 0-4 years – 10:30am-noon
Halloween Costume Swap ages 5 years+ – 2:00-3:30pm

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Posted by: montclairlibrary | September 21, 2012

10 things about our book sale

Top 10 Ways to Get the Most Out of the FOML Book Sale tomorrow:

  1. Bring the list of books your book club is reading, or that you’ve been meaning to read, so you can keep an eye out for them.
  2. Check out our famous basket of Little Books You Didn’t Know You Needed, where you’ll find gift-quality books on topics ranging from poetry to dogs. Or sometimes poetry about dogs.
  3. If you have kids in school, ask your child’s teacher if there are any types of books they’d like for their classroom that you could buy as a donation to the class.
  4. Find a travel book to inspire your next vacation (or at least some daydreaming about a vacation).
  5. Keep an eye out for gift-quality picture books for the little ones in your life.
  6. Pick up a new cookbook to try.
  7. If you know someone who’s housebound or in the hospital, ask if there are any types of books you could bring them for entertainment.
  8. Help your kids practice using money by giving them a number of dollars and challenging them to choose books without going over the amount they have to spend.
  9. Stick around for fill-a-bag discounts from 2-3pm.
  10. Ask any of our friendly volunteers how you can sign up to help with future book sales!

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Posted by: montclairlibrary | September 19, 2012

Talk like a pirate

Treasure Island book spine photo by Jenni Douglas

Yar! It be Talk Like a Pirate Day again! If you’re a teen looking for a little inspiration to help you throw some avasts and scurvy dogs into casual conversation today, check out this list of Young Adult Books About Pirates we found on Pinterest.

Some highlights from the list in the OPL collection:
The Giant Rat of Sumatra: or, Pirates Galore by Sid Fleischman
A cabin boy on a pirate ship finds himself in San Diego in 1846 as war breaks out between the United States and Mexico.

Pirates!: The True and Remarkable Adventures of Minerva Sharpe and Nancy Kington, Female Pirates by Celia Rees (at Montclair)
In 1722, after arriving with her brother at the family’s Jamaican plantation where she is to be married off, sixteen-year-old Nancy Kington escapes with her slave friend, Minerva Sharpe, and together they become pirates traveling the world in search of treasure.

The Pirate Captain’s Daughter by Eve Bunting (at Montclair)
Upon her mother’s death, fifteen-year-old Catherine puts her courage and strength to the test by disguising herself as a boy to join her father, a pirate captain, on a ship whose crew includes men who are trying to steal a treasure from him.

Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck by Margarita Engle (elsewhere in OPL)
Quebrado has been a slave on captain Bernadino de Talavera’s pirate ship for years, but when a hurricane sinks the ship and kills most of the crew, Quebrado escapes to safety and finds acceptance and refuge in a nearby village.

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Posted by: montclairlibrary | September 19, 2012

This week at Montclair Library

This week, come to the library for the ever-popular storytimes and our amazing Fall Book Sale!

Thursday, September 20, 2012
Toddler Storytime – 10:15am
Baby Bounce – 11:30am

Saturday, September 22, 2012
Friends of Montclair Library Fall Book Sale
10:30am-3pm (no earlybirds, please)
Great deals all day, and fill-a-bag discounts from 2-3pm!

Fall Book Sale at Montclair Library September 22, 2012

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Posted by: montclairlibrary | September 15, 2012

Fall Book Sale next Saturday 9/22

Book sale photo by Flickr user Phil Roeder

Next Saturday, September 22nd, thousands of book lovers will gather on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for the 12th annual Library of Congress National Book Festival. If you’re looking for some book-love closer to home, come by our big Fall Book Sale at the library from 10:30am (no early birds, please) to 3:00pm. We’ll have tons of delightful books for kids and grownups, including recent fiction, classics, home and garden, picture books, board books and more! Great prices, plus fill-a-bag discounts from 2-3pm. Stock up on reading material and help out your local library – it’s a win-win.

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