book previews
Entering tim’s burning car dren learn to recognize and sort things by lead Sheriff Bell color, type, shape and size. With more than to the carnage in 100 picture puzzles and 600 fantastic stickers, new worlds the desert, and he there is a lot of learning to do and fun to be soon realizes how had. Completing the puzzles will give your of adventure desperately Moss child a great sense of achievement; the sticker and his young spaces are numbered and outlined to help wife need protec- kids.—Valerie Ryan and play tion. The pursuit Cormac McCarthy stretches up and down the border, with each participant determined to answer the question: How does a man decide in what
Book contest and giveaway
FICTION order to abandon his life?
The Last Days of Dogtown, by Anita
Diamant. Following the success of The Red COOKBOOKS
Tent, Diamant is back with a novel that evokes The Ethnic Vegetarian; Fresh Choices; a time and place long gone. Set in Lose Weight the Smart Carb Way; Jacques Massachusetts in the early 1800s, the novel is Pepin: Simple Healthy Cooking, from loosely based on accounts of an abandoned Rodale Press. With any of these cookbooks backwater town. Diamant reinvents stories of it’s easy to get serious about eating healthily. a small group of eccentrics and misfits, pur- After reading through these recipes, readers portedly the last residents of the ghost town. will know for sure that food that is good for In this tale, even the dogs have character. you can also be delicious! Ingredients are combined in interesting ways, flavored carefully
No Country for Old Men, by Cormac and easy for every home cook to prepare.
McCarthy. Llewelyn Moss, a feckless
Vietnam vet, finds a load of heroin, two dead CHILDREN men and more than $2 million in cash. Only Giant sticker books from Roger Priddy. after two more men are murdered does a vic- These fabulous sticker books will help chil-
COSTCO HAS an autographed copy of the audio book My Life So Far, written and read by Jane Fonda, to give away. To enter, print your name, membership number, address and daytime phone number on a postcard or letter and send to: Jane Fonda, The Costco Connection, P.O. Box 34088, Seattle, WA 98124-1088, or fax it to (425) 313-6718.
No purchase is necessary. Entries must be received or postmarked by September 1, 2005. Void where prohibited. Employees of Costco and their families are not eligible. Winners will be notified by mail. One entry per household.
J.A. Jance signs Long Time Gone
— August 5, at noon, at the Seattle, Washington, Costco, at 4401 Fourth Ave. S.
— August 5, at 3: 30, at the Aurora Village, Washington, Costco, at 1175 N. 205th St.
— August 6, at 2 p.m., at the Issaquah, Washington, Costco, at 1801 10th Ave. NW.
Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear sign People of the Raven on August 6, at 2: 30 p.m., at the Kennewick, Washington, Costco, at 8505 W. Gage Blvd.
Ted Bill signs Pirate on August 20, at noon, at the Boca Raton, Florida, Costco, at 17800 Congress Ave.
Cynthia Chin-Lee signs Amelia to Zora on August 28, at noon, at the Mountain View, California, Costco, at 1000 N. Rengstorff.
(Click here for maps and
directions to Costco locations.)
Sad decline gram, The Big Read, this fall, some details are
In early July the National Endowment for available. It will be modeled after City Reads
the Arts (NEA) released “Reading at Risk: A programs, like the ones in Seattle and
Survey of Literary Reading in America.” The Chicago, and will involve partnerships with
survey shows that fewer than half of American the private and public sectors.
adults are reading literature. The largest Gioia also envisions a coalition of city
decline, 29 percent, was evident in the officials and industry professionals such as
youngest age groups. The survey also reveals an mayors, librarians, publishers, booksellers
overall decline of 10 percentage points in read- and the media.
ers from 1982 to 2002. That 10 percent repre- Like other NEA programs, The Big Read
sents a loss of 20 million potential readers. will be made possible with seed money that is
In a news conference held at the New matched by private sector. Gioia says, “Our
York Public Library on July 8, Dana Gioia, goal is to figure out the best programs and
chairman of the NEA ( www.nea.gov), said, then find a way to get [them] funded.”
“This report documents a national crisis.
Reading develops a capacity for focused Blogging for kids
attention and imaginative growth that In 2005 the words “blog” and “blogging,”
enriches both private and public life. The referring to an online journal or diary, seem
decline in reading among every segment of to show up everywhere. Now Hyperion
the adult population reflects a general col- Books for Children has jumped on the band-
lapse in advanced literacy. To lose this human wagon and put together a blogging campaign
capacity-and all the diverse benefits it fosters- to support the release of the book Diary of a
impoverishes both cultural and civic life.” Fairy Godmother, by Esmé Raji Codell. The
In response to this decline in literacy, campaign invites young readers to submit
Gioia has vowed to change America’s reading diary entries, which enters them in a contest
habits by launching the biggest federally run where the prize is an HP/Compaq laptop.
literature program in American history. Each new diary entry is another chance to Web sites www.diarofafairygodmother.com or
While the NEA plans to launch the pro- win. Entries can be submitted through the www.kidscom.com until August 31.
References:
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