Library News

This month (May) the Library is celebrating:

Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month,

Jewish American Heritage Month,

And Memorial Day on Monday, May 26, on which day all Library branches will be closed. Plan accordingly!

You could find out about these sorts of things in a slightly more timely manner by subscribing to the Library's mailing list. Like us, they send one or two messages per month, more usually one.

You can find out about other things they want you to know from the Palo Alto City Library Blogs page. Or you can subscribe to them with an RSS reader.

-Frank McConnell

 
What's Special for May

Many incredible specials this month including a selection of Easton Press & Franklin Library books as well as a huge FMR art magazine collection. We also have many BBC/UK TV Series DVD box sets as well as a large selection of STEM and Mystery books. Enjoy!

-Sven-Erik Geddes

 
Parking

Due to construction outside of our Main Room you may find it easier to park in the large lot adjacent to the soccer field.

-Sven-Erik Geddes

 
Cubberley Artist Studio Program

On Saturday from 1:00 to 5:00 PM there will be a free Open Studio event of all of the Cubberley artists. There will also be a food truck, a karate demonstration and more! More info here: Cubberley Artists Open Studios - City of Palo Alto, CA

-Sven-Erik Geddes

 
Home & Crafts

In Fashion this month, look for two style guides by Kim Johnson Gross and Jeff Stone: Clothes and Women's Wardrobe to try on. New resources in Home Building including Living Spaces: Ecological Building and Design, as well as The Old-House Journal: Guide to Restoration. Having company for Mother's Day? You won't want to miss Perfect Tables: Tabletop Secrets, Settings, and Centerpieces for Delicious Dining. Home decorating offers several guides for color, lighting, kitchen and bath. You'll find new titles for home maintenance and improvement; organizing, and storage. Here's a suggestion: Making a Home: Housekeeping for Real Life. Home design styles include: Casa Alta: An Andalusian Paradise, as well as English Style, The French Chateau, and the California Home Book.

In the merry, merry month of May, look for an array of knitting styles to create for Mom on Mother's Day, or to give to that 'Knitter Mother' for her to display. Check out French Girl Knits, or The Yarn Whisperer. Or take a gander at the three 52's: 52 weeks of accessories, or scarves, or socks. She's not a knitter? In Fabric Arts, you can peruse other stitching, from sewing and quilting guides, to crocheting, embroidery, and needlepoint for her. In Floral Arts there are spring flowers designs to bring to her tables. Also in Crafts, you'll find the Craft of North America to offer her as a reference. Stuck? Give Mom a coloring book that she can use for meditation.

eShelf photos can be found at https://fopalbooks.com/crafts.html.

-Virginia Perry

 
Antiques & Collections

In May we will feature several titles for stamp collectors including Where in the World: An Atlas for Stamp Collectors, and Treasury of Stamps: 1200 Rare and Beautiful Stamps in Color, as well as The Postal Service Guide to U.S. Stamps. Look for this special title: Japanese Kokeshi Dolls: The Woodcraft and Culture of Japan's Iconic Wooden Dolls. There are several new books on furniture: Shaker: Life, Work, and Art, in addition to Modern Scandinavian Furniture, and Made in Denmark. Look for multiple antique guides and other resources for your collecting reference.

eShelf photo can be found at https://fopalbooks.com/crafts.html.

-Virginia Perry

 
Music Pop Up

Our Pop Up Music Sale is back this month with two-months' worth of newly curated releases. In addition to music there will be several CD cases for sale.

-George Chaltas

 
Poetry

May! queen of blossoms,
  And fulfilling flowers,
With what pretty music
  Shall we charm the hours?
The lives of poets we shall read
To learn how the creative seed
Is planted in their minds' formation
And brings them to their present station.

https://fopalbooks.com/poetry.html

-Mandy MacCalla

 
Children's Room

In our Non-fiction section, on the Teachers shelf, you'll find a dozen or more books, for parents and teachers, that deal with autism--certainly a timely topic. Non-fiction in general has somewhat less inventory than in the past several months, but the many excellent books this month make up for the smaller quantity. Don't miss this section.

We have lots of Giftable Picture Books, including award winners, and don't forget to check out the poetry section!

For families or classrooms we have many sets of Beginning Readers. Want to introduce your reader to religions of the world? Look in our Religion section, where we also have books for the holidays Lag B'Omer and Shavuot. And we have Parenting books for new parents and parents of toddlers through teens--any parent could use a few tips now and then.

This month our School-age Fiction section has a terrific selection of popular early chapter book series: Dragon Masters (located at the entrance to the section), Magic Tree House, I Survived, Ivy and Bean, Judy Moody, and Captain Underpants. Summer is just around the corner--keep your children reading their favorite series. We also have gift-quality beautifully illustrated classics: The Wind in the Willows, The Odyssey, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Poems of Childhood, and The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh. Check out award winners for teens: Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give and On the Come Up, and by John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, Looking for Alaska, and Paper Towns. Last but not least, we have an excellent selection of the ever popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.

Once again, our Activities section has graphic novels galore. In the opposite end of the room, on the math and science table, you'll find that math books have multiplied this month--perfect for summer reviews and previews. And on the shelves of the Activities island, look for bags of wooden blocks and a mega-bin of Mega Bloks, for young builders.

Finally, thanks to those who donate gently used children's books to FOPAL. Your donations are what fills our shelves!

-Carolyn Davidson

 
Children's Vintage

June is children's illustrator month in Children's Vintage - the first of what we hope will become a regular monthly feature. This month we're highlighting six well-known illustrators: Chris Van Allsburg, Don and Audrey Wood, Cynthia Rylant, Chris Raschka and Steven Kellogg. Van Allsburg won Caldecott Medals for Jumanji in 1981 and Polar Express in 1985, and the Woods were recipients of an Honors for King Bidgood in the Bathtub in 1985 (plus we have a signed copy of The Napping House for sale this month). Cynthia Rylant was awarded a Medal for two books - When I Was Young in the Mountains (1982) and The Relatives Came (1985) - and Chris Raschka, is a more recent winner with Hello, Goodbye Window (2006) and A Ball for Daisy, a book told exclusively through his art (2011). Steven Kellogg, our last featured illustrator, hasn't won a Caldecott (yet!) but has gotten plenty of other awards and his Jimmy's Boa and Pinkerton series are delightfully silly. We have a sampling of books of all these artists' work.

The other special feature this month is a selection of vintage toys. Think Fisher-Price wooden schoolbus and radio, a German wooden block stacking tower and a Playskool sorting mail box and shoe with tie-able laces. Plus other puzzles, wooden and otherwise. A real treasure trove of nostalgia for either your childhood or your children's!

Shelf pictures are available for all of these items at fopalbooks.com. And you can find even more children's vintage books at our eBay store https://www.ebay.com/str/friendsofthepaloaltolibrary.

-Lisa Heitman

 
Judaica

Browse the Judaica section for books on the Jewish religion and culture including editions of the Torah and other basic texts, Kabbalah, Jewish history, the Holocaust, memoirs, Israel, Jewish Women, the Jewish American Experience and other related subjects.

Special interest this month -

• Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History
• Still Life With Bombers: Israel in the Age of Terrorism
• At Home in Exile: Why Diaspora Is Good for the Jews
• American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise
• Wings of the Sun: Traditional Jewish Healing in Theory and Practice
• Braided: A Journey of a Thousand Challahs
• The Gilded Cage: Queen Esther's untold story

Most fiction with Jewish themes will be found in Modern Literature/Classics or Current Fiction. Books entirely in Hebrew are shelved in the European Languages section.

Shelf photos at https://fopalbooks.com/judaica.html

-Charlotte Epstein, Judaica Section Manager

 
Sociology/Anthropology

Newly donated books comprise the majority of volumes offered by the nineteen subsections of the Sociology/Anthropology section for the May sale, particularly in the Theories and Methods subsection. Of the 392 books that constitute the entire collection, I want to highlight two authors whose works have appeared for the first time in the last year and a half. One of them is the renowned French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. In 2012, The Guardian reprinted an article about Bourdieu, titled "A decade after his death, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu stands tall," which emphasizes the continued significance of his socio-political analysis for our times. The Theories and Methods subsection features his most overtly political work, Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market. Another author is Michael Young, the British sociologist, social activist, and researcher who coined the word "meritocracy" in his book, The Rise of Meritocracy. In 2002, The Guardian published a commentary by Michael Young, in which he bitterly observed that "The book was a satire meant to be a warning.... Much that was predicted has already come about." This work can also be found in the Theories and Methods subsection.

-Natalia Koulinka

 
Nature

Cell phones may have gotten smaller and faster over the years, but out in nature, it's still handy to have analog devices that don't require a software update, a full charge, wifi, or a nebulous licensing agreement. You buy a real book once, and it's yours forever. At the Nature section, we have many pocket-sized guides from Audubon, including trees, the night sky and birds, that never go out of style. And don't overlook the small pamphlets, as low as $1.

The recent weather is also a perfect time to be thinking about taking advantage of the bountiful wildlife we have in our proximity, so don't sleep on the Local Nature subcategory, with guides to our beautiful state's wildlife, as close as Jasper Ridge.

-Serena Bramble

 
Philosophy

For May we have an abundance of premium quality High Value books in Philosophy such that New Arrivals spills over into the next bookcase. On the top shelf we have a mixture of eighteen books by or about Kant as well six books by or about Hannah Arendt and three on Walter Benjamin. We also have selections on Marx and Dewey and unusually, books about Darwin and his influences.

Also check out more of our Philosophy books in our Mitchell Park Store and our Bargain Room.

Shelf photos may be found at https://fopalbooks.com/philosophy.html.

-Nigel Jones

 
Classic and Modern Fiction

Thanks to superb donations this month, the Classic and Modern Fiction section in the Main Room has been replenished and reinvigorated. The shelves are full of pristine copies of novels, particularly from the 1980s and 1990s, many of which are bound uncorrected page proofs or advance reading copies. There are also many less familiar titles by well-known authors such as Nabokov, DeLillo and Kingsley Amis. It's a wonderful opportunity to discover some interesting but forgotten novelists or to add to your collection of a favorite writer.

-Melinda P

 
Mitchell Park Library Store

If you are unable to make it to our monthly sale the FOPAL store in the Mitchell Park library is a very good shopping alternative. The store is open seven days a week during library hours. It is located on your left as you enter the library. Our customers seem very happy with our inventory especially due to the fact that our shelves are restocked every day except Sunday. Our entire stock is rotated regularly so that we always have new items to peruse. Prices are comparable to the Main Room with most books priced at $2 and $3 unless marked otherwise on the front cover of the book. We love to find unique books that surprise our customers.

We stock most of the major sections of the Main Room including Art, Business, History, Politics, Cooking, Mystery and Fiction of all genres i.e. Classic, Historical, Sci Fi, Romance and so on. You will also find the smaller sections represented such as Health, Entertainment, Psychology etc. We also sell DVDs, CDs, Puzzles, Children's books and the FOPAL Book Bags to carry your purchases home.

A FOPAL volunteer staffs the store every day except Sunday for two hours in the mid to late afternoon. Payments are on the Honor System. You can pay with cash in the cashbox (preferred but no change available) or using a QR code for Zelle or PayPal. If you use either of these please add MP for Mitchell Park in the description line along with your items.

If the Mitchell Park Store is not convenient for you the Downtown and Rinconada Libraries each has a kiosk store where you will also find great books at comparable prices to the Main Sale. Of course, they are also available for sales whenever the library is open.

See more information about our in-library stores on our web site.

Happy shopping wherever you choose,

-Suzanne Little, Mitchell Park

 
Curious Books

Curious Books is offering a wide range of reading for the warmer weather. Fiction or non-fiction, improving or frivolous, we have books of interest.

-Donya W.

 
Humor

On the top cartoon shelf we have some regular favorites, The New Yorker Complete Cartoons and the DVD only version, as well as ten other New Yorker titles. We also have the [In] Complete Far Side, Volume Two, and one collection by the incomparable Charles Addams. On our shelf of UK humor we have six very good novels and omnibuses by P. G. Wodehouse. There is something humorous on the shelves for every taste.

Shelf photos may be found at https://fopalbooks.com/humor.html.

-Nigel Jones

 
Specials Bookcases

Several bookcases to your right when you enter the Main Room have great specials for the May sale. One bookcase holds 57 books from the Easton Press and The Franklin Library. These are beautifully bound leather editions, all in pristine condition; most have their ribbons still tucked in and have apparently never been opened. Included are works of classic fiction, drama, poetry, and history.

Another bookcase holds FMR periodicals. These are the beautiful art magazines produced by Franco Maria Ricci, with extraordinary photographs and articles by prominent art historians and critics. We have an almost complete run of the first series (zero to 126, from 1984 to February/March 2004) and then the new series (1 to 22, from June/July 2004 to November/December 2007). These are priced individually.

-Melinda P

 
Art

Click here to view the art books for May book sale

-Fiona

 
Donations

We accept donations on Monday through Saturday from 3-5 pm in the Main Room. But we close to donations in the week before the sale so that we can prepare the Main Room for the sale, which means that we are closed for donations from Sunday May 4 through Sunday May 11. Please hold your donations until Monday May 12.

Construction work near the Main Room is not finished but does again permit access to the Main Room. If you brought donations to the end of the alley where it opens onto Nelson Drive, you can once again bring them directly to the Main Room.

Please read our donation guidelines before you bring materials to us.

 
Suggestions?

We're always eager to hear your suggestions for ways to improve our book sale. Please email us at suggestions@friendspaloaltolib.org.