It is. I've never been in, though.

Jilli, don't give into the Twilight and its sequels hype! I read Twilight and really disliked how the author changed the vampire mythology. It was just...wrong.

I'm also very excited because in my 48 hours in Seattle, I saw not one but TWO awesome looking libraries (the main one downtown, and the Ballard one), whereas DC has the suckiest library system EVAH.

Well, IMHO the Seattle system spends too much money on buildings and not enough on books--the King Co. system, which covers everywhere in the county BUT Seattle, tends to have more copies of new releases, for example. (And yes, fellow Seattleites, I'm aware of how the Seattle system's funding set-up ties their hands and it's not like they can just shift construction/renovation money into collection development.) Still, it is a good library system on the whole--well-organized, friendly staff, lots of branch locations, etc.

We are getting rid of books, as we will have two less bookcases in our new place. We have ten of these [link] plus built-in bookshelves, and we are losing the built-ins so we have to prune. I am actually finding quite a few books which we don't need to keep. For example, "Middlsex" We both read it, neither of us wants to read it again, no reason for it to languish on our shelves when it could be out there making some other reader happy. I look at getting rid of books as giving a gift to that mysterious other reader, which makes it a lot easier.

I need the hive mind!

Mom works as the media specialist for her school, which is for special needs students. They are really working on encouraging reading with the students and are always looking for new books and the encouraging has really worked, one parent told Mom that her son loves books, even though he can't read he always is looking at the pictures and wants to be read to which is a big change from the beginning of last year.

But there are challenges, these are kids who may be preteen or teenagers but read on a very low level and some kids have a much higher comprehesion level when books are read to them than when they read, if that makes sense.

She wants to add books to their collection that are easy to read but aren't "babyish" . Does anyone have any recommendations?

Also, she's trying to figure out if a book exists, she thinks she's seen it before. It's a picture book with dark pages and animals eyes and might have a description of the eyes, and you turn the page and it shows the animal.

Roald Dahl books, maybe? Although I assume they probably already have quite a selection.

That might work for some of them, but a lot of the students can only read at preschool or kindergarten level (4 or 5 year old) and some of them can read at 1st or 2nd grade level.

So she's looking for more picture books. The school wants kids to have books that are more "age appropriate" instead of somethign that's seen as being "babyish" like Barney.

The problem is the books that a lot of the kids can read are stuff like Barney or Seseame Street, but since the kids are teenagers the school is trying to move them away from that.

The Wolves in the Walls? That book that Tony Kushner and Maurice Sendak did a few years ago, based on the opera, whose name I can't recall right now? I've seen a really nice illustrated version of Casey at the Bat.

Are there such things as foreign language books for elementary/middle school kids? That would get simple vocabulary but slightly more grown-up topics, maybe.

This list looks like it could be useful: [link]