What bad book bloggers we are for letting two weeks pass before telling you that September is Library Card Sign-up Month:

Library Card Sign-up Month is a celebration held at the beginning of the new school year during which librarians across the country remind parents and caregivers that a library card is the most important school supply of all.

Not sure what your library card is good for? Check out the slideshow below for 60 ways to use your library card:



Visit the Library Card Sign-up Month page on atyourlibrary.org for more fun with library cards, including a photo album of people and their library cards (some in strange places — the people, not the library cards [well, also the library cards]) and learn how you can add your own photos.

Be sure to check out @ your library for more information on Library Card Sign-up Month, what you can do at the library and why you should go to the library.

-- Cheryl Sadler | CSadler@News-Herald.com | @nhcheryl

I almost let the week pass without writing the most important book blog entry of the year: It's Banned Books Week!

According to bannedbooksweek.org:

During the last week of September every year, hundreds of libraries and bookstores around the country draw attention to the problem of censorship by mounting displays of challenged books and hosting a variety of events. The 2011 celebration of Banned Books Week will be held from September 24 through October 1. Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read. It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than 11,000 books have been challenged since 1982.

Read more on Banned Books Week from the American Library Association.

To celebrated Banned Books Week, readers can "proclaim the virtues of their favorite banned books by posting videos of themselves reading excerpts" on YouTube. Find out more about participating in the Virtual Read-Out.

How are you celebrating Banned Books Week? What banned books have you been reading this week?

To mark the occasion, I'm going to revisit one of my favorites: "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain (which is available for free download at Project Gutenberg, along with other works in the public domain [some of which are banned books]). But, I will not be reading anything on video to post to YouTube. No one wants to see that anyway.

You can follow Banned Books Week on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and YouTube.


-- Cheryl Sadler | CSadler@News-Herald.com | @nhcheryl