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Summer Break is Coming: How to Keep Your Bored Hordes Entertained this Summer

26 Jun

If you are a parent with young children you probably will at some point in the next two months hear the dreaded phrase, “I’m bored.” But the Hoboken Public Library has you covered with great programming all summer long.  The whole family can join in the fun with summer reading for kids, teens, and adults where the pages you read can win you great prizes.  And although we love you to stop by for great books, music, and videos you can also borrow ebooks and stream movies and music so you have an instant answer when boredom hits, especially helpful on those rainy days we have been having in NJ lately when you don’t want to leave the house.  Here are a few recommendations from my son of things he has been enjoying.

Mr. Putter & Tabby Series
mr putter and tabby
My son has been loving the Mr. Putter and Tabby series. Cynthia Rylant’s series for beginning readers about an elderly man and his adventures has charmed my son.  Being a cat fan he loves Mr. Putter’s cat tabby who joins Mr. Putter on his many adventures.  I like that being divided up into short sections, it is easing my son in to chapter books.  Also it is refreshing to see a series for kids about older adults that appeals to a younger audience.  Mr. Putter often reminisces about things he did when he was younger and his neighbor and adventurous friend Mrs. Teaberry often encourages Mr. Putter to try new activities.  I’ve seen my son progress so much over the past year of just beginning to pick up sight words to being a proud reader and it is great to see how excited he is to check out a new book.  Many of the series are available not only in print from BCCLS libraries but also as ebooks from eLibraryNJ, eBCCLS, and Hoopla.

Frog Goes to Dinner
frog goes to dinner
Frog Goes to Dinner is a short (13 minute) adaptation of the classic wordless picture book by Mercer Mayer that is available to view on Kanopy.  A frog escapes from a boy’s pocket in a fancy French restaurant and gets in some hilarious trouble.  My son laughed so much at this one.  Though the book is probably more geared for kindergartners and preschoolers who are just beginning to read and will love a book where they can add their own words and story to the images, he still wanted to check out the original.  That to me is one of the great parts of the video story books that they may make reluctant readers interested in checking out the books the videos are based on.  Also available are adaptations of Mayer’s A Boy, A Dog, and a Frog, and Frog on his Own.  Kanopy has a whole section just for kids that you can select so they only see children friendly content.  Plus your child watching content in Kanopy Kids doesn’t count towards your ten adult selections each month so they can stream all they want and you still have access to great documentaries, indie films, and classics to check out.

Music on Freegal
wham
My son, like a lot of kids, loves dancing to music.  I wish we could all have the lack of self-consciousness young children have when they hear a song they love and can spin and jump about.  Freegal is great since you can create playlists of your favorite songs.  Hoboken Resident Cardholders can download 5 songs per week and/or stream three hours per day.  Two of my son’s favorite songs are Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go by Wham! and Happy by Pharrell Williams.  Besides making your own playlist you can also find plenty of ready-made playlists such as Book It: A Summer Reading Playlist to stream.

Written by:
Aimee Harris
Head of Reference

 

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A History of America in Ten Strikes by Erik Loomis

12 Dec

TenStrikes
Labor history is rarely covered in great detail in high schools, which is a shame because the story of how workers gained the right to unionize, an eight-hour day, and a minimum wage is as riveting as any other piece of American history. Many people think that these labor reforms were gifted to workers by the generosity of progressive presidents like Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, but in A History of America in Ten Strikes, Loomis shows that it was workers who won these gains themselves by striking against abusive employers and the government, often when the odds were not in their favor.

For most of our existence as a country, work for the average person was bleak and brutal. Loomis writes about how starvation wages, gruesome workplace accidents and deaths, and violent repression of pro-union organizers was common. Conditions were so abysmal in the cotton and textile mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts that the life expectancy of a worker in the city was just forty years old. Over 100 garment workers burned to death in the devastating Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City during a time when it was common for factory owners to lock their employees inside the workplace. Mining companies would pay their employees in a type of currency called “scrip” that could only be used at company stores that would greatly inflate their prices.

The only tool workers had to fight back against these inhumane conditions was to go on strike. At the General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan in 1936 – 1937, workers locked themselves inside while police shot tear gas through windows and management tried to freeze them out by turning off the heat. Workers from various industries shut down business in Oakland in 1946 in a city-wide general strike. Air traffic controllers unsuccessfully tried to stop international air travel when they walked off the job under President Ronald Reagan. Labor heroes such as Eugene Debs, Big Bill Haywood, and Lucy Parsons all make appearances in Loomis’s history, but it is the striking workers themselves who take center stage in his history.

Loomis writes in an easily digestible narrative style that is never dull. His retelling of America’s labor history is both inspiring by highlighting the courage of average working people, but also tragic by showing inability of many of these same workers to look past the racism and xenophobia that was so deeply ingrained. Loomis’s book is as much about race as it is about class and how racism in America’s history has contributed to the weaknesses of many working class movements. Anyone who has enjoyed Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States will definitely enjoy Loomis’s book.

You can borrow A History of America in Ten Strikes from Hoopla as an ebook.  A People’s History of the United States is available as abridged and unabridged audiobook on Hoopla and as an ebook from eBCCLS.

You can stream a variety of documentaries about this topic on Kanopy including Triangle Fire: A Deadly Factory Accident in New York (Part of the PBS Series: American Experience). Our long time readers may remember our previous posts about the Alice Hoffman novel, The Museum of Extraordinary Things which involved the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.

Written By:
Karl Schwartz
Young Adult Librarian

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