Town School for Boys Library

April 22nd is Earth Day, a day for reflecting on ways we can all help protect our planet. In honor of the holiday, the library is highlighting some of the environment-themed books on our shelves. Take a look at this week’s spotlighted books:

The Down-to Earth Guide to Global Warming, by Laurie David and Cambria Gordon Global warming is having some unexpected and very nasty effects. For instance, poison ivy is growing bigger and itchier. The maple syrup season is shortening, leading to less deliciousness on your breakfast pancakes. Disease-carrying mosquitoes are moving further and further north, bringing Lyme disease, malaria, West Nile Virus, and yellow fever to places where these diseased once did not exist. Read about more scary stuff that happens as the earth warms up, and how you can help prevent further climate change.

Why Are the Ice Caps Melting: The Dangers of Global Warming, by Anne Rockwell The earth is warming up, the ice caps are melting, the polar bears are disappearing. But it’s not too late! There’s still stuff you can do to stop the amount of harmful greenhouse gases in our atmosphere from increasing. This book explains exactly why the earth is warming up and suggests some simple ways kids and adults can help fight this climate change.

You’ll find these books on the “Spotlight On” table, right up front near the entrance to the library.

So, library patrons (and fifth-grade scavenger hunters), what are you doing to save the earth? Leave a comment and let us know!

The 3rd grade students and teachers have been hard at work for weeks on their unit learning about the missions developed along El Camino Real on the California coast during the late 18th century.  Thanks to the 3rd grade for allowing the library to showcase their work!

Alas, Oswald and Esmerelda have both disappeared from the library windows. Their webs remain, slowly unraveling in the chilly December breezes.

Since spiders generally live for only one year at the very most, we probably won’t see either Oswald or Esmerelda again. But keep an eye out for their children and grandchildren this spring, when the weather warms up and the spiders who weave their webs across the Town School windows return.

So while spider activity has temporarily ended, there’s still plenty going on inside the library. The sixth-graders are working on annotating two giant maps of the Middle East, the fifth grade is putting the finishing touches on a wiki about ancient Egypt, and tomorrow morning the third grade will be gathering in the library to celebrate the end of their California Missions unit.

Can you name two inventions by Jacques Cousteau?  What about a book by Esther Hautzig?  Do you know which month Oklahoma City celebrates the Festival of the Horse?  Or which sport Mark Roth excelled in?

If not, don’t worry.  You can still give the library’s Factfinder Challenge a try.  Each month, the library posts four new questions on the bulletin board in our reference section.  Each question also comes with a Dewey Decimal Number clue that will help you figure out where to find its answer.  If you answer all four questions correctly AND cite your sources for each answer, you can be entered to win our monthly grand prize.  For the November/December competition, the prize is an AMC Movie gift certificate, good for movies and snacks at any AMC theater.

This past Monday, the library played host to the sixth grade’s Medieval Fair. To prepare for this occasion, students teamed up and researched a variety of topics relating to the European Middle Ages, including guilds, towns, crusades, plague, cathedrals, manors, weapons, Joan of Arc, and more. Using information gleaned from books, websites, and databases, the boys created colorful and imaginative presentations on their topics and shared them with parents, teachers, and fellow students at Monday’s fair.

Here are a few pictures from the event.

Two cathedral builders:


A battering ram, siege tower, and fortification:


Knighthood poster:


All about the Crusades:


Sir Kyle and Lady Yamada: