Schools in the United States are not mandated to meet the needs of advanced learners, as they are for students with learning difficulties. However, gifted classes are classified as special education, and these learners can receive individualized education plans (IEPs). Gifted kids are often bored in academic classes with their age-mates, and they do not share similar interests. Therefore, they can feel lonely and get depressed or angry if their educational and socio-emotional needs are not met.
Luckily, there are some solutions. Acceleration, or grade skipping, can work for some students. Usually, there are positive academic and social outcomes from this step. Kids are happier with other kids who share their interests, and they feel more challenged. They also behave better in this situation. Pull-out programs for gifted kids may not provide enough time to deeply challenge them, but it is better than nothing. Summer institutes can provide a respite for kids from school, and they may be elated to find others like them and experience a sense of belonging, perhaps for the first time.
Homeschooling is another option. The flexibility of this choice allows students to progress at their own pace. However, some kids may not tolerate being away from their peers as well as others can. Taking college classes early can excite students. Some kids are suited to being away from home earlier than age 17 or 18, but others may develop emotional problems due to their unhappiness at being separated from their parents. Schools for the gifted can help, but they are often geared towards moderately gifted students; they may not be willing or able to meet the needs of exceptionally and profoundly gifted kids.
Schools can be resistant to providing services for intellectually advanced students for several reasons. First, they are not mandated to, and they may be overwhelmed by the needs of regular and learning-challenged students. The thinking is that gifted kids have better abilities and consequently do not need assistance. Schools aim to educate the middle 50% of the population at grade level. They often cater to the needs of learning disabled students because they are required by law to do so, and they may ignore gifted students. Teachers and schools may have a negative attitude towards exceptional students. They sometimes punish kids for completing work too quickly or for being creative in a manner that the teacher did not intend them to be. Schools may be resistant to grade skipping or refuse to do that at all. (My own high school refused to grant a diploma to a student who skipped a grade.)
However, there are good schools, teachers and educational options for parents to choose from. It is definitely challenging to advocate for an intellectually precocious child, but parents can find solutions.
Why was that image the most viewed? Here's the story: The image comes from "The Roy Colmer New York City doors photograph collection," which includes 3,122 images related to a set of "photographic prints used in Colmer's conceptual art piece, Doors, NYC (1976)" (from the collection description).
From November 1975 to September 1976, Colmer photographed more than 3,000 doors, inclusive and in sequence, on 120 intersections and streets of Manhattan from Wall Street to Fort Washington. The project, although documentary in nature, was essentially conceptual to Colmer, for whom Doors, NYC was as much an exploration of the serial possibilities of photography as of its ability to capture a place.
Meanwhile, for quite some time David Lowe, a specialist in our photography division, has been working with the division's metadata to create what he calls the Photo Geographies. Colmer's door project was among the first mapping projects of Lowe's geodata work (see map embedded below).
This project in turn attracted the attention of NPR's History Dept. (amongothers). And it was this NPR post that drove the most traffic to our Digital Collections site, and the photo above in particular.
That's the story for this month! Check back in a few weeks for more stories from our Digital Collections.
Gifted kids are characterized by intensity, creativity, precocity, perfectionism, and idealism. They have an ability to hyper focus and have high energy levels. Very intelligent infants display much eye contact within weeks of birth, and they demand much interaction with adults. These kids can show hostility towards authority if their school lessons contain much information that they already know. They may have good social skills, but they can also seem bossy to others.
5 Levels of Giftedness
Level 1
120-129 IQ
90-98% test scores
moderately gifted
faster milestones than normal
Level 2
130-135 IQ
98-99% test scores
gifted
bigger vocabulary at earlier age
Level 3
136-140 IQ
98-99% test scores
eye contact from birth
highly gifted
Level 4
141+ IQ
99% test scores
math in head at young age
exceptionally gifted
Level 5
141+ IQ
99% test scores
read college texts before 10 years of age
profoundly gifted
School Issues and Options
Schools, unfortunately, are not trained to recognize different ability levels. They are mandated by law to provide special services for developmentally slow students, so they focus their energy on learning disabled kids and kids with behavioral problems. They assume that gifted kids do not need any help or special services. Parents are told that their gifted kids need to develop their social skills, rather than academic skills, in the classroom. Therefore, gifted kids are often bored, which ofted causes behavioral issues. These kids feel different, and they are subject to bullying and teasing.
Solutions include the following: early entrance to school, gifted classes, skipping grades, homeschooling, online courses, tutoring, summer programs for the gifted, college courses for high schoolers, etc.
I love the descriptions of gifted kids' behaviors at different levels of giftedness. They really give readers a sense of how kids think and act at different intellectual levels. I learned fascinating things about the geniuses that were described in this book. Most books on high intelligence do not scratch the surface of the very highest intellectual capacity of humankind.
I found it interesting that grade-skipping was common up until the 1950s. It was awesome that Ruf categorized some historical figures into her five levels of giftedness. In this book, 3% of the population is defined as gifted.
On March 19, the Bronx Library Center had the honor to host Jason Reynolds. Jason is the winner of the John Steptoe Award for his book, When I Was the Greatest, and author of the critically acclaimed The Boy In the Black Suit. During his visit Jason spoke about his childhood in Washington D.C., his love for music, poetry, and of course writing!
I had the opportunity to interview Jason after his event at the Bronx Library Center, and got to learn about his writing style, sense of style, and a little more.
A little birdy told me you get off the train, walk four blocks to your house, talking to yourself, repeating character names/plots. Why don’t you just carry a notebook around?!
The honest answer as to why I don't carry a notebook around, is because every time in the past when I've done so, I NEVER have a pen to actually write anything. I'm way too disorganized to keep track of both paper and pen.
Do you think it matters if teenagers think you’re cool, especially teenage boys, the hardest population to get into reading?
It totally matters to me that teenagers think I'm cool. I mean, teens keep their fingers on the pulse of culture. When things shift, it's usually because they shift them. They call the shots. So if teenagers think I'm cool, then hopefully they'll want to get down with whatever I'm doing. My hope is that reading and writing becomes the new "waiting in line to buy Jordans."
#weneeddiversebooks, to me, simple means, we are fighting for inclusivity in terms of the stories that are told. That's all. Inclusivity. Everybody, everywhere, everything.
When its time to write what do you need in your surroundings? Is there a specific time of day you write? Or is it whenever the writing bug hits you?
I definitely can't wait around for some writing bug to hit me. Hahaha! Nothing would ever get written. I treat it like my job, because it technically is. I get up around seven and head to the local coffee shop where I write for about six or seven hours, five days a week. I prefer there to be a little noise in the background, which is why I go to the coffee shop, and I find it really difficult to write at home because everything that I love, is in my apartment. So it's way too easy to get distracted.
Any similarities between Jason the teenager, and Matt in The Boy In The Black Suit?
Matt is totally like me. Not exactly, but we definitely share many characteristics. I love to cook. I hate to take pictures. When I was teenager, I never could "kick game." I was more of the, laid back, get to know you type. I also suck at chess.
The theme for the upcoming summer reading is “Superheroes.” Your favorite Superheroes or a person you consider to be your superhero?
My mom is my superhero. Her superpower — emotional fortitude. The lady is incredible.
Describe your sense of style?
My sense of style is simple and sophisticated and comfortable. I really like shapes and layers and subtlety. I have most of my clothes made, just because I'm so particular about the way things fit. Right now, I'm wearing all black, which has been interesting. I've been doing it for almost a year, just as a form of fasting. It's saved me tons of money, and allowed me to put the mental energy it takes to get dressed, into my work. Plus, whether I'm dressed down, or dressed up, I'm always chic.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stoneby J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is the story of a young orphan named Harry. His aunt and uncle treat him very badly at home. Harry’s life changes when he receives an invitation to the Hogwarts School via owl messenger. In Hogwarts Harry finds new friends and a destiny he never imagined.
The Red Queen byVictoria Aveyard is the story of a seventeen year named Mare Barrow. Mare is a Red girl. The Reds are the poor commoners, living under the rule of the Silvers. The Silvers are elite warriors with god-like abilities. But Mare is not just any Red girl she has powers that can destroy the Silvers.
Just One Year by Gayle Forman is the companion toJust One Day. I really loved Just One Day so I am excited to read the next book. Just One Year is the story of Willem and the transformative journey he embarks on after spending Just One Day with a girl in Paris. Their one day is magical and Willem travels the world to find her once again.
Paper Towns by John Green is the story Quentin "Q" Jacobsen who is about to graduate from Central Florida high school and everything in his life is pretty normal. One day his beautiful classmate Margo Roth Spiegelman recruits him for an unforgettable adventure in the middle of the night then mysteriously disappears.
An Abundance of Katherines by John Green tells the story Colin a guy who has been nineteen times by girls named Katherine. Colin goes on a road trip with his best friend that will ultimately lead to self-discovery.
The Orphan Queen by Jodi Meadows tells the story of Wilhelmina. “Wilhelmina has a hundred identities. She is a princess. When the Indigo Kingdom conquered her homeland, Wilhelmina and other orphaned children of nobility were taken to Skyvale, the Indigo Kingdom’s capital. Ten years later, they are the Ospreys, experts at stealth and theft. With them, Wilhelmina means to take back her throne. She is a spy. Wil and her best friend, Melanie, infiltrate Skyvale Palace to study their foes. They assume the identities of nobles from a wraith-fallen kingdom, but enemies fill the palace, and Melanie’s behavior grows suspicious. With Osprey missions becoming increasingly dangerous and their leader more unstable, Wil can’t trust anyone. She is a threat. Wraith is the toxic by-product of magic, and for a century using magic has been forbidden. Still the wraith pours across the continent, reshaping the land and animals into fresh horrors. Soon it will reach the Indigo Kingdom. Wilhelmina’s magic might be the key to stopping the wraith, but if the vigilante Black Knife discovers Wil’s magic, she will vanish like all the others.”
Enrollment Now Open! SAGEWorks Boot Camp. This two-week long, intensive training course will provide participants with essential skills to lead them toward job placement. The first session starts on Monday - Friday, from April 27 to May 8, 9 am - 2 pm. Participants must attend every day at the SAGE Center, 305 7th Avenue, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10001.
Clinical Staffing Resources will present a recruitment on Tuesday, April 7, 2015, 10 am - 2 pm for Certified Nursing Assistant - LTC (20 openings), Registered Nurse -LTC (10 openings), Registered Nurse - Hospital (10 openings), Licensed Practical Nurse - LTC (15 openings) at the NYS Department of Labor, 9 Bond Street, 8th Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201.
Customized Recruitment - Clinical Staffing Resources will be at the NYS Department of Labor, Flushing Workforce 1 Career Center, 138 - 60 Barclay Ave. 2nd Floor, Flushing, NY 11355 on Wednesday, April 8th 2015 from 10 am - 3 pm. The company is seeking to interview Registered Nurses, Certified Nursing Assistants and Licensed Practical Nurses.
Municipal Credit Union will present a recruitment on April 8, 2015, 10 am - 2 pm, for Member Service Representative (7 openings), Teller (5 openings), Floating Asst. Branch Manager (ABM II) (1 opening), Business Development Officer (1 opening), Call Center Service Representative (7 openings) at the New York State Department of Labor, 9 Bond Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201.
FDNY information session for career opportunities as EMT, Paramedic, and Firefighter on Thursday, April 9, 2015, 10 am - 2 pm, at Queens Career Center, 168-25 Jamaica Avenue 2nd Floor, Jamaica , New York 11432.
NYC Police Department information session for career opportunities as School Safety Officer, Traffic Enforcement, Police Officer, 911 Operators on Friday, April 10, 2015, 9am - 2pm at NYS Department of Labor, Queens Workforce 1 Career Center, 168-25 Jamaica Avenue, 2nd Floor, Jamaica, NY 11432.
St. Nicks Alliance Workforce Development provides Free Job, Training and Educational Programs in Environmental Response and Remediation Tec (ERRT). Commercial Driver's License, Pest Control Technician Training (PCT), Employment Search and Prep Training and Job Placement, Earn Benefits and Career Path Center. For information and assistance, please visit St. Nicks Alliance Workforce Development, 790 Broadway, 2nd Fl., Brooklyn, NY 11206, 718-302-2057 ext. 202.
Brooklyn Workforce Innovations helps jobless and working poor New Yorkers establish careers in sectors that offer good wages and opportunities for advancement. Currently BWI offers free job training programs in four industries: commercial driving, telecommunications cable installation, TV and film production, and skilled woodworking. BWI is at 621 Degraw Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217. 718-237-5366.
CMP (formerly Chinatown Manpower Project) in lower Manhattan is now recruiting for a free training in Quickbooks, Basic Accounting, and Excel. This training is open to anyone who is receiving food stamps but no cash assistance. Class runs for 8 weeks, followed by one-on-one meetings with a job developer. CMP also provides Free Home Health Aide Training for bilingual English/Cantonese speakers who are receiving food stamps but no cash assistance. Training runs Mondays through Fridays for 6 weeks, and includes test prep then taking the HHA certification exam. Students learn about direct care techniques such as taking vital signs and assisting with personal hygiene and nutrition. For more information for the above two training programs, please Email: info@cmpny.org, call 212-571-1690 or visit 70 Mulberry Street, 3rd Floor, NY, NY 10013. CMP also provides tuition-based healthcare and business trainings for free to students who are entitled to ACCESS funding. Please call CMP for information.
Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW) trains women and places them in careers in the skilled construction, utility, and maintenance trades. It helps women achieve economic independence and a secure future. For information call 212-627-6252 or register online.
Grace Institute provides tuition-free, practical job training in a supportive learning community for underserved New York area women of all ages and from many different background. For information call 212-832-7605.
Please note this blog post will be revised when more recruitment events for the week of April 5 are available.
We are excited about Spring and getting our hands on some promising upcoming titles. Happy reading!
The Odd Woman and the Cityby Vivian Gornick
An amazing title! This promises to be a thought-provoking memoir from a long-time New Yorker with the driest of wits.
The Making of Zombie Warsby Aleksandar Hemon
The premise seems straight-forward, an aspiring screen writer becomes enmeshed with a woman and her violently jealous husband, but if this book is anywhere near the ride The Lazarus Project was, I am first in line.
Academy Street by Mary Costello
The life story of a seemingly unremarkable Irish immigrant, but if she possesses the same urgency in her internal life as the characters in The China Factory, she promises to be extraordinary.
The Children’s Crusadeby Ann Packard
Five generations of a California family with all its secrets and wounds to discover.
The Ghost Networkby Catie Disabato
A pop star is missing and a journalist pieces a trail together using journals, maps and interviews. A message from various mediums.
Before I studied to become a paper conservator, I worked for three different picture framing businesses over about nine years, mainly in the 1990s. I saw first-hand that the experience can be really overwhelming for the customers.There are many decisions to be made about mats, mounting, glass, the frame itself, and where and how to hang it when you get it home. I tried to explain as much as I could, but I knew they were often wondering if they could trust me. I was a salesperson, after all, and framing can be quite expensive.
Now, since I am no longer in the picture framing industry, but in the related field of paper conservation, I feel like I am uniquely qualified to describe the materials and techniques of picture framing, so that you, the consumer, will be familiar with the terminology, know what to ask for, and understand the costs.
My lecture will be on April 29 at 1 pm in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, South Court Classroom A. There will be time for questions at the end.
Like many busy New Yorkers sometimes it’s easy for me to take for granted the existence of the numerous subway, bus and commuter train lines that connect the various nodes of this amazing metropolis. However, similar to its forest of skyscrapers and unique street grid, NYC’s rapid transit system plays a crucial role in the continued success of the nation’s de facto capital of art, design and finance.
We are fortunate that the Map Division’s collection includes scores of antiquarian NYC rapid transit sheet maps which may be used by transit enthusiasts to document the beginning stages of the city’s extensive urban railway network. Yet I would argue that we can gain a deeper understanding of the development of the city’s public transit infrastructure simply by examining nine maps published between 1845 and 1921. These maps document the transformation of a humble mass transit system dependent on slow moving horse drawn omnibuses constrained by traffic into a system that had its own right of way powered by steam engines in Upper Manhattan in the more rural parts of the young city and horse drawn train cars in the densely built-up district of Lower Manhattan.
These maps also show us that most of the railroads that ran at street level beginning in the mid-1800s would eventually be superseded by elevated train lines in the final decades of the 19th century; fortunately many of these elevated trains would be replaced in the first half of the 20th century by electric powered subway cars racing a few feet below the city streets.
By December of that same year N.Y.&H.R.R. Co. would present their plans to the city and would receive authorization from Mayor Walter Bowne and the Common Council to begin construction. Soon after the railroads owners laid tracks along 4th Ave between East 23rd St and the Harlem River, the city’s first surface railroad line would prove to be a success and within a few years it would extend southward to City Hall. Over the next thirty years more than a half dozen railroad companies would receive charters from state and local municipalities of N.Y. or N.J. to build rail lines in the metropolitan area including the New Jersey Railroad (1832), the Long Island Railroad (1834), the Hudson River Railroad (1847), the Sixth Avenue Railroad (1851), the Eighth Avenue Railroad (1852), the Second Avenue Railroad (1852), the Third Avenue Railroad (1858) and the Ninth Avenue Railroad (1858). The region’s urban railroad lines proved to be popular with New Yorkers and Brooklynites alike, Eric Homberger’s Historical Atlas of New York City estimates that by 1860 they carried more than 38,000,000 passengers annually.
Map #1: “City of New York” [1845] by T. & E.H. Ensign
Although the focus of NYC booksellers T. & E.H Ensign’s 58 x 112 cm hand colored map is the “City of New York” (meaning Manhattan) it also includes portions of the neighboring cities of Brooklyn, Willamsburgh, Hoboken and Jersey City. Its 1:14,000 scale wonderfully depicts Manhattan’s newly designed street grid system which at the time of the map’s printing was little more than three decades old and was still for the most part a work in progress above 28th St.
It’s worth noting that this map is also a “plan” and is a clever mix of the existing quasi-rural landscape of Midtown and Upper Manhattan characterized by country roads and simple wood framed house and the proposed urban landscape described in the Commissioners Plan of 1811. Yet if we look closely we can see the N.Y.& H. R.R. line that by the mid 1840s originated at City Hall in Lower Manhattan and moved northward along Centre St., Broome St., the Bowery and Fourth Ave before terminating approximately 7.8 miles north at the Harlem River. T. & E.H. Ensign’s map also shows the Long Island Railroad line that originated at the South Ferry dock where Atlantic Ave. meets the East River in Brooklyn.
Across the harbor the New Jersey Railroad & Transportation Co. line may also be observed at left along the waterfront in Jersey City. Note the map’s depiction of various ferry lines that crisscrossed the East River and the Hudson, thirty-eight years before the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 and sixty-three years before the completion of the first Hudson river railroad tunnel in 1908 the city’s two largest rivers (which were major lanes of nautical transportation in their own right) still restrict the movement of its commuter trains.
Map #2: “New map of New York City, Brooklyn, Jersey City, Hoboken, etc.” [1866] by George Woolworth Colton
George Woolworth Colton’s 58 x 42 cm color map depicts NYC and vicinity at an approximate scale of 1:28,800 a year after the end of the American Civil War. We can see that thirty-five years after the region’s first railroad charter the cities of New York, Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Hoboken were home to dozens of small independent railroad companies that traversed their main thoroughfares. By the middle of the 19th century NYC (the boundaries of which were still limited to the island of Manhattan) had gained railroad lines that ran along most of the major avenues and as Colton’s map shows there were also crosstown lines that ran along parts of 42nd St, 59th St, Broadway, Houston and Canal St. The two oldest lines in Manhattan, the New York and Harlem R.R. and the Hudson River R.R., have grown and now connect the city with the suburban villages and towns north of the Harlem River in Westchester County.
“City railroads: Third Avenue railroad depot” [1870]
Across the East River in the city of Brooklyn there are over a dozen street railroads the majority of which terminate at ferry stations that provided Brooklynites and residents in the the suburbs of Kings County a quick commute to places of employment in Manhattan. Similar NYC's surface railway network, Brooklyn’s railroad lines were named after the avenues upon which they served—Fulton Ave., Flatbush Ave., Myrtle Ave., Broadway, etc. or were named after the train’s final destination—Coney Island, Green Point, Fort Hamilton or Newtown in Queens County. Brooklyn’s mid-19th century commuter railroads also connected its residents to the city’s main recreational areas- Greenwood Cemetery, Washington Park (later known as Fort Greene Park) and the city’s grandest public space Olmsted and Vaux’s Prospect Park which would be completed in 1867 one year after Colton’s map was published (A fact that would help explain why the park is drawn with such an odd shape on this map.) Train lines also provided longshoreman and laborers access to work at the Atlantic Basin, the Erie Basin and the Navy Yard.
Similar to Brooklyn, Colton’s map depicts the railroads of Jersey City and Hoboken as having lines that terminated at ferry stations connecting New Jerseyites with employment in NYC. It should come as little surprise that his map shows the Hudson River ferries as having the same names as the railroads that fed them commuters such as the New Jersey Central Railroad Ferry or the Erie Railway Ferry. However, most N.J. railroads were named after the geographic areas they serviced—the Jersey City Railroad, the Weehawken Railroad, the Bergen Hill Railroad and the Hoboken & Hudson City Railroad are a few examples.
Map #3: “Map of New York City, Brooklyn, Jersey City & Westchester County” [1891] by Rand, McNally & Co.
When this map was published by Rand, McNally & Co. in 1891 the famous Chicago based mapmakers had an office at 323 Broadway in Lower Manhattan. Their 108 x 68 cm color map has an approximate scale of 1:25,000 and shows the complex street railway systems that existed in the region thirteen years before the first subway line and seven years before the consolidation of the region into what would eventually be known as “Greater New York.” The map index indicates that most trolley cars were powered by “electric traction”, however a few lines still relied on “animal traction” (horses) to propel them through the streets and avenues most notably along First Avenue on the east side of Manhattan between the Lower East Side and East Harlem.
The index also lists the names (and cabin color!) of ninety-eight streetcar lines—NYC (Manhattan) had forty-one, Brooklyn and Long Island City shared forty-four lines and the Jersey City / Hoboken waterfront area had a total of thirteen train lines. By the time this map was printed NYC’s two oldest lines, the N.Y. & Harlem R.R. and the Hudson River R.R., had been acquired by Cornelius Vanderbilt and consolidated into the New York Central and Hudson Railroad and had large inner city depots that were mainly used by commuters and day trippers living in the villages along the Lower Hudson Valley. Brooklyn’s oldest rail line, the Long Island R.R., still provided limited local service but was increasingly used by commuters living in the suburban towns out on L.I.
“The elevated railways of New York” [1893] by Charles Decaux
Rand, McNally & Co. map also shows us that by the end of the 19th century the metropolitan area was home to almost a dozen elevated railway lines operated by the Manhattan Elevated Railway, the Brooklyn Elevated Railroad and the Kings County Elevated Railroad and provided a faster alternative to the street trolley car system which was commonly subjected to the congestion and chaos of North America’s largest city that by 1900 had an aggregate population of almost 3.5 million.
Next stop, part two of our journey: "The elevated railways of Greater New York" [coming soon]
Did you know that the Department of Education is currently seeking enthusiastic and effective teachers to staff all new pre-K-classrooms for the 2015-2016 school year?
There is a broad consensus that high-quality, full-day pre-K helps children succeed in school and in life. Research shows that pre-K reduces income inequality and increases social mobility and long-term educational gains for children.
Every student in New York City deserves an opportunity to have the foundation of skills, knowledge, and approaches to learning needed to be ready for school and ultimately, college and careers.
Pre-K:
Helps develop critical vocabulary, oral language, and problem-solving skills
Establishes strong partnerships with families from the beginning
Raises academic success across all income and racial groups
Teaching in NYC
The 2015-16 school year will mark the second phase of significant expansion in pre-k student enrollment in New York City. The Department of Education is seeking enthusiastic and effective early childhood educators to become classroom leaders in communities across all five boroughs.
You can teach pre-k if you hold (or are on track to hold) one of the following New York State teaching certificates:
Early Childhood (Birth - Grade 2);
Nursery, kindergarten and Grades 1-6;
Prekindergarten - Grade 6; or
Students with Disabilities (Birth - Grade 2)
An ideal candidate:
possesses genuine joy in leading a classroom that builds on how young children learn and supports children in developing a wide range of language, early literacy and math, social-emotional, and physical skills;
is able to create an enriching classroom environment that fosters learning using a broad spectrum of activities and experiences; and
builds strong relationships with adults, actively engaging parents and caregivers from diverse backgrounds, colleagues, and members of the community.
You can learn more about pre-kindergarten teaching opportunities in New York City from NYC Department of Education.
In early March, I attended the 30th Annual International Conference on Technology and Persons with Disabilities, better known as CSUN. This conference is one of the year’s best opportunities to find out what’s new and interesting in accessible technology, from business to entertainment to emerging technologies and beyond. The Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego, California was packed with thousands for web developers, tech trainers, policy experts and vendors for a week of networking, exhibits and over 400 presentation sessions. Both mainstream technology companies (Yahoo, Google, IBM, Microsoft, to name a few) and companies specializing in assistive technology were in attendance. Blind and low-vision participants made up a sizable portion of the crowd, and white canes, guide dogs and Voiceover-enabled iPhones were ubiquitous. Commentary, logistical information and session reminders kept our Twitter feeds busy throughout the week under the #CSUN15 hashtag, and I’m grateful to those exhibitors and presenters who made their materials available on Twitter so that people not attending the conference can benefit.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be highlighting resources from CSUN that I hope will be of interest to our patrons. One of the most informative sessions I attended focused on resources for workers and entrepreneurs with disabilities.
Small Business in a Box: Enabling Entrepreneurship with Accessible Tech: The accelerating pace of technological innovation holds both promise and peril for people with disabilities: we have unprecedented access to all sorts of information and tools for getting work done, but not all new tools are accessible, and it can be exhausting to try several methods for doing the same task until one finds an accessible solution. J.J. Meddaugh of AT Guys, an accessible technology retailer; and Ted Drake of Intuit, makers of Quickbooks; are committed to taking the guesswork out of finding accessible software and hardware for business. They presented their picks for an accessible business toolbox, including points of sale, payroll management and accounting, e-commerce and social networking. The slides from their presentation are accessible and packed with recommendations that entrepreneurs with disabilities can put to work.
IOS Apps for Blind and Low Vision Users in the Workplace: Lyndon Dunbar’s presentation highlighted some of the most popular accessible apps for productivity at work, including Fantastical for calendar management; Voice Dream Reader and Writer for document reading, annotating and composition; and Skype and Dropbox for collaborating with colleagues.
If you’re interested in learning more about government resources, mentorship opportunities and other types of assistance available to current and aspiring workers and entrepreneurs with disabilities, check out these American Foundation for the Blind Career Resources.
April 14 marks the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Upon learning of the president’s death, the nation responded with shock, confusion, outrage, and sorrow. This tumultuous period was captured by the printing and photography of the time: both in immediate ephemera and later, more contemplative works. This material culture is stewarded by many research divisions at NYPL, including the Rare Book Division. Through these objects, we can glimpse how a nation honored and mourned its first assassinated leader.
Close-up of theater program for Our American Friend’s April 14th performance. Rare Book Division.
Street view of Ford’s Theatre. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs.
President Lincoln was fatally shot in 1865, less than one week after the Civil War ended with the surrender of Confederate forces. He was attending a performance of the play Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC. Newspapers immediately reported on the event, even while the fates of Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward, who also suffered an attempt on his life, were unknown. The perpetrators were quickly identified and most were apprehended, but assassin John Wilkes Booth and his accomplice David Herold evaded authorities. To speed their arrest, Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, distributed broadsides calling for their capture with a $100,000 reward—extremely high for the time. Booth and Herold were found six days later in Virginia, in a confrontation during which Booth was shot and killed. The final conspirator, John Surratt, was not caught until 1867, after his mother and co-conspirator Mary had been tried and hanged.
Broadside printed in Philadelphia in the immediate aftermath of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Rare Book Division.
New York printing of the wanted poster for John Wilkes Booth, John Surratt, and David Herold, here incorrectly identified as Daniel Harrold. Rare Book Division.Hand-painted cover of the Abraham Lincoln issue from Beadle & Company’s Lives of Great Americans series. Rare Book Division, Beadle Collection of Dime Novels.
Besides broadsides, another contemporary form of printing that was quickly and cheaply produced was the dime novel. Pioneered by Erastus Beadle, who founded Beadle & Company in New York City in the late 1850s, these short volumes with illustrated paper covers were offered in thematic series; new installments were published usually weekly or monthly. They were an immediate hit, entertaining a wide audience with tales of adventure, mystery, and suspense. During the Civil War, soldiers consumed them voraciously, and even President Lincoln was a confirmed reader. A more educational, serious series of dime novels was Lives of Great Americans, whose number eleven issue narrated the life of Lincoln. Prepared in 1864, the book originally concluded with the events of the previous year. In the wake of the assassination, author and Beadle & Company editor Orville James Victor added a memorial preface eulogizing the president. “Few men realized the magnitude of his task,” Victor wrote, “—it was too mighty for comprehension; few men were dispassionate enough to judge justly; few were wise enough to judge understandingly. Hence, he labored as one whose destiny it was to work without immediate reward—awaiting the future, which would condemn or applaud as his achievements deserved.”
Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession through New York City. In this view, Lincoln’s casket travels up Broadway, surrounded by the Seventh Regiment. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs. GIF made with the NYPL Labs Stereogranimator.
Before being buried in Illinois, Lincoln’s body traveled along a funeral procession that ran from Washington, D.C. to Springfield, with stops in major cities along the way, including New York City. Richard Sloan has carefully pulled together contemporary accounts of the event. Buildings throughout the city were draped in black mourning fabric, and citizens hung portraits of the president and home-made signs from their windows and roofs. Silence enveloped the city, broken only by tolling bells, ceremonial gunfire, and funeral music.
On April 24, Lincoln’s casket was escorted to City Hall, where it lay in state for members of the public to pay their respects, including a group of veterans of the War of 1812. The following day, the casket traveled north on Broadway to the train station, escorted by New York City’s Seventh Regiment in a surrounding square. Two to three hundred African Americans marched in the procession. Initially about 5,000 planned to join, but their participation was banned by the event’s committee for fear of riots in response. Secretary Stanton overrode this decision, and the committee’s fears proved entirely unfounded. The New York Times reported that theirs “was the only portion of the procession which was received with any demonstration of applause. For them a just and kindly enthusiasm overrode the proprieties of the occasion, and handkerchiefs waved and voices cheered all along as they marched.”
Over half a million people—more than half of Manhattan’s total population at that time—gathered along the procession route to pay their respects and observe Lincoln’s body as it lay in state. One of these people was future president Teddy Roosevelt, who was six years old at the time and living on Broadway. Two hours later, the city convened a public memorial service in Union Square. Former Secretary of the Navy and diplomat George Bancroft led the ceremony. Four hours after that, Booth was caught and killed.
Portrait of George Bancroft. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs.
Account of Abraham Lincoln’s obsequies, held in Union Square on April 25, 1865 and led by George Bancroft. Rare Book Division, Stuart Collection.
It is hard to think of a more fitting elegist for Lincoln than Walt Whitman, who was in New York City at the time of Lincoln’s assassination. Whitman had long admired the president, and his death was a great blow to the poet. Whitman memorialized Lincoln with several poems, including one of his most famous, “O Captain! My Captain!,” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” He eventually assembled all of his memorial poems into a section of his Leaves of Grass, beginning in the 1881 edition. A few years earlier, Whitman also began a tradition of presenting public lectures on Lincoln to commemorate the anniversary of his death.
Ticket to Walt Whitman’s 1887 performance commemorating the death of Abraham Lincoln, held in New York City. Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature.
Opening pages of Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” privately printed on vellum and hand-colored by the Essex House Press, 1900. Rare Book Division, Oscar Lion Collection of Walt Whitman.
I leave you with a passage from Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” Here, Whitman describes Lincoln’s funeral procession in specific, evocative language that dovetails with contemporary journalistic accounts. He ends the canto, however, with a simple, personal gesture, mourning the fallen president who was both hero and kindred spirit.
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,
With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black,
With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women standing,
With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,
With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads,
With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn,
With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin,
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs — where amid these you journey,
With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang,
Here, coffin that slowly passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac.
Image Credits: New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, Tilden Foundations.
Teen Author Festival is a week-long series of literary events relating to youth literature that has occurred every March since 2008. David Levithan, teen author, along with Gretchen Kolderup, Manager of Teen Programming at NYPL, organized this splendid event. I look forward to it every year, and this year's programs did not disappoint. The two-day symposium on Friday and Saturday occurred in the venerable Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. This event is a terrific forum for allowing new authors to present about their work. Many authors, teachers, librarians and teens attend this event.
Levithan opined that there are no original stories; there exist only re-crafting of age-old tales. He wanted the panelists to discuss their work in terms of other work.
One author discussed her work, which was based on Wizard of Oz. Winterspell by Claire Legrand is a retelling of the Nutcracker ballet. Sarah Cross writes dark, dystopian fairy tales.
Levithan asked the authors to describe how often they consult their source material during their writing process.
Cross constantly fact-checks since her books are fairy tale mash-ups. Some people know that fairy tales are dark, but many people grew up on Disney cartoons, and they have a sugar-coated version of the tales.
Levithan inquired as to whether the authors saw the fairy tales that their books were based on differently after they wrote the books than they did beforehand. He then asked the authors to communicate which other retellings of fairy tales that they found particularly compelling.
YA Explains It All: the Ultimate Q & A
Levithan asked the authors to ask a deep philosophical question and provide the answer in the form of a story. I loved the creativity of this session.
The authors read from their books, and talked about teens, acting, and having the spotlight shone on characters.
Sales asked why the panelists chose to write about characters who found fame accidentally.
One of the authors expressed an interest in acting. She stated that it is preferable to find a way to get paid to do what you love.
Sales mentioned that some people find fame through reality TV shows, and others become famous for a particular skill that they have.
The authors expressed that they enjoy the attention of presenting on a panel; however, they also love the solitary nature of being alone in a room with a computer and writing a terrific story.
The Thrill is All Mine
David Levithan moderated this panel discussion. The following authors were scheduled to appear: Martina Boone, Laurie Crompton, JJ Howard, Lee Kelly, Nicole Maggi, Diana Renn, VC Stanley, and CL Gaber.
Levithan wanted the authors to describe how they bring out the characters in their thriller books. Levithan asked them to describe the genesis of their books. He wondered if the character comes first and the situation second, or vice versa. He wanted to know if the authors read something that gave them an idea or if they got their ideas for stories in other ways.
One author wrote a book with her friend almost entirely during her ten-minute commute to work. It was fun for her to work with someone who likes to play with stories. They had daily phone conversations, and whoever could get to a computer first wrote down their ideas. She had been friends with her co-author for 30 years, and it is an entirely different process to write with someone versus writing solo. She has been told by others that writing together can ruin friendships, but it has been a great experience for her, and it has strengthened her long-term friendship. The two constantly do research during the writing process, and what they discover sometimes changes the plot. She loves developing knowledge of subjects that she was previously quite naive about.
Levithan inquired about the challenging aspects of their writing process.
One author commented that it was quite disturbing and intense to do research for her book on sex trafficking.
Bray wants people to stop assigning gender to books. There are not "girl books" and "boy books;" there are just books, and they are for everyone. Some parents do not want her book, Beauty Queens, for their sons. There is a movement towards wanting more books for boys, since there is a perception that boys do not read fiction. However, she will continue to write books with girl characters. Kid lit professions, including librarians, editors, and agents, are female dominated. In order to demystify how gender influences books and reading, she invited some teens to her house for pizza. She was struck by what the kids said. One teen mentioned that some books contain topics that boys are supposed to read, and the same goes for girls. They stated that the gender of the author does not influence what they read.
Feminist Teen Books
Levithan was glad to moderate this panel since this topic is not discussed in literary circles much. Authors Libba Bray, Gayle Forman, Nova Ren Suma, and Scott Westerfield participated.
Levithan asked the authors how much feminism informs how they choose to write a book.
One author writes characters that she wants to write. She considers all the characters to be feminist because she is a feminist.
Westerfield said that books are machines for becoming other people.
Bray and another author agreed that boy characters are easier to write than female characters. She believes this is the case because it is acceptable in American society for boys to be angry. They are allowed to experience and express that emotion without shame.
One author believes that the genderizing of books begins with the gender of the author.
Westerfield has had boys tell him that they wrap brown paper over the cover of his book Pretties so that they can carry it around without embarrassment.
One author heard of a librarian who tore the covers off of books so that boys would read them.
Bray commented that the kids she interviewed would love to have a conversation about gender and books in school.
Some authors use their first and middle initials, instead of their first names, which makes their gender less apparent.
Representation in Teen Literature
Authors Maria Andreu, Coe Booth, Sona Charaipotra, Dhonielle Clayton, IW Gregorio, Adam Silvera, and Andrew Smith were moderated by David Levithan for this discussion of issues in teen lit. Their professions include teacher, editor, medical professional, and librarian.
Levithan asked the authors why they choose to portray certain identities in their characters and not others.
Smith never chose to exclude anything in his books.
Silvera is a gay Puerto Rican male, and he wrote about such a character. However, going forward, he wants to learn about other cultures and include them in his literature.
Levithan does not believe that authors can only write about characters that are very similar to themselves.
Charaipotra mentioned that it is impossible to write everything about an entire culture in one book.
Smith believes that there are no "gay books" or "bisexual books;" books are pieces of paper bound together or text on a digital platform.
Levithan commented that Booth's books are often thought of as urban fiction, even though they are not, simply because they contain Black characters.
Booth has been told by school staff that they love her book because they have 45% free and reduced lunch students. She eventually figured out that this meant that the school had many Black kids, which meant that the staff determined that primarily Black kids would be reading her books. Her books feature Black characters, but readers of any race can enjoy them. She has also been told that since certain schools do not have Black kids, they do not need her book.
Levithan echoed her sentiment by saying that it is an assumption that people have that if they do not have a certain demographic, they do not need books about that demographic. However, kids greatly benefit from a wide variety of books that are available.
Smith feels as though he is a channel of the story; he does not plan out what he writes ahead of time.
Levithan found it interesting to write about a character and explore how people are defined by body and gender in his book, Every Day. I found this to be a brilliant and enlightening book. That book has spiraled into everything else; it has influenced every book that he has written since then.
Andreu informed us that very few books are written about intersex characters. One of her books was inspired by an actual patient that she cared for and operated on. She gave the manuscript to intersex individuals to ensure that she had accurately reflected their experience.
Levithan wanted the authors to speak of the future of teen lit.
Clayton acknowledged that straight heterosexual people are used as default characters, and she thinks it would be great for that to change.
Booth would like to see books that include diversity where diversity is not the story. Including color in the book changes where it is shelved and how it is read.
Charaipotra's four-year-old daughter cried inconsolably about not having the yellow hair that was included in the fairy tale Rapunzel. Luckily, she and her husband were able to find an African version of the tale. Her daughter was very relieved to find a girl with dark hair; she could see a little bit of herself in that story.
Cornell Capa, photographer and founder of the International Center of Photography, once described photography as “the most vital, effective and universal means of communication of facts and ideas.” That may be one reason why Ask NYPL, the telephone reference service of The New York Public Library, receives so many requests for assistance on how to locate a specific photograph or image. This may seem to be a daunting task—but there are several relatively simple and effective ways to locate an image with great speed and accuracy. A good place to start is with the resources of the NYPL and there are also a number of other non-profit and for profit resources that can enable one to locate royalty free photographs and images as well as museum qualityfine art and iconic ones.
Images at NYPL
Digital Collections
Allie Mae Burroughs, wife of cotton sharecropper. Hale County, Alabama. Image ID: 5164585
You may want to first check the over 800,000 images (a number of which are photographs) in the Digital Collections of the NYPL. An excellent way to search the Digital Collections is either by starting at the search box on the home page or in the upper right hand corner of all other pages. The search results appear on the right and a set of faceting tools on the left then help you to filter to narrow your search by, e.g., Name, Date Range or Genre. One can also use the faceting tool for “Genre” to limit one’s results to: photographs, prints or postcards. And one can also limit results to those with “no known US copyright restrictions” (a concept that bears certain similarities to that of “in the public domain”)
NYPL Digital Collections Platform: An Introduction is an excellent tool for both learning about this Collection and how to browse in it. Every item in the Digital Collection belongs to a parent Division within the NYPL that is responsible for curating the physical materials that are reflected in the Digital Collections. Within the Division an item must belong to a top-level Collection (and there may be additional levels of hierarchy below that) and one can also search or browse the individually digitized Items.
It is quite easy to browse by Division. On each Division’s page (e.g., The Billy Rose Theatre Division) you’ll find a brief description of that Division, a lane of recently digitized Items, Collections of digitized material from within that Division and its contact information.
You can also browse by Collection that is the highest level of arrangement of materials across all the Divisions. If you’re interested in locating a specific item you can filter by Collection title using the filter box at the top of that page. There are also navigational tools that enable you to locate materials within any sub-category of a Collection. Anytime you see a “+” next to an element in this “browse” view that means that there’s at least one other level of hierarchy to explore. Simply click the container with the “+” in the title and more options will expand beneath it. The image set on the right will then automatically filter to show you just those images within that level of hierarchy selected. On the left side of the page if a Collection has a hierarchical element you can also browse them via the “Navigation” tab. And all Collections (and the search results) have a “Filters” tab that enables you to further narrow the results by “Genre” and “no known U.S. copyright restrictions.”
The primary means of searching this Collection is the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog via the photographer’s name (e.g., Abbot, Berenice) but you may also search by title, photographic process and time period.
The Picture Collection located on the third floor of the Mid-Manhattan Library of the NYPL contains over one million original photographs, prints, postcards, posters and illustrations primarily from books, magazines and newspapers and categorized by subject for both reference and circulating use. The Picture Collection has been an unparalleled resource for artists, designers and researchers since 1915.
Searching for Royalty-Free Images Beyond NYPL
Outside NYPL there are many ways to search for images on the internet that are royalty free and often cost free:
Google Images
Google Images - Advanced Search has an option (“Usage Rights”) to limit the search in its vast trove of images to those that are royalty free.
Creative Commmons on Flickr
Flickr/Creative Commons allows one to search or browse for photographs and images. In general, you are permitted to reproduce the image provided that you provide attribution and it is for a non-commercial use. Note the several tools to enhance your Flickr search including Wylio that searches Flickr only for creative commons content; Flickrstorm that retrieves more images than your search terms specify by using related tags and that its “advanced” limit can restrict images to those from creative commons and Behold that uses a form of computer vision to recognize visual content rather than relying on text tags and can limit to images "free to use" or "free to modify.”
Wikimedia Commons holds over 25 million “freely usable” photographs and other media files.
SJSU World Images
The World Images database of 100,000 photographs and images of California State University is especially attuned to the needs of students and educators as it allows searching by subject (e.g., the Continents, Photosynthesis, Dance in India or the Bill of Rights). The database states that: “you are free to use these images for non-profit educational purposes, but we ask that you give credit to the copyright holders who retain rights to the images [under a Creative Commons license.]”
everystockphoto
everystockphoto.com permits you to search “cost-free” photographs from a large number of sources including photographs from Flickr, Wikimedia Commons and many other sources of stock photos. Advanced search allows you to search only those sites that you specify.
There are a number of excellent sources of museum quality art and iconic photographs and images from non-profit sources. However, the fact that an image is available from a non-profit source does not necessarily mean that is free of either royalties or costs:
The George Eastman House (Rochester, NY) holds a permanent collection comprising more than 400,000 photographs and negatives dating from the invention of photography. More than 14,000 photographers are represented including virtually all the major figures in the history of the medium. To make use of digital images in their online collection you must obtain permission from any rights holder.
Search by Image is a facet of Google Images that is an interesting way to “reverse search” a photograph (or other image) to locate related images from around the web, to search for websites that discuss the image or sites that include the same picture. It enables you to upload an image from your computer; to drag and drop an image into the search box [if using Chrome or Firefox]; or to search for an image found on a website. Note that this form of searching is best for images of landmarks or public figures rather than family members and that you must also ascertain if any rights holder exists. A very good way to do this is through imagewiki that is a free online directory of rights holders and ownership information for photographs and images.
Tineye is a reverse search engine that has certain differences from Search by Image. It finds out where an image came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist or if there is a higher resolution version. It does not typically find similar images (e.g., a different image with the same subject matter). It does find exact matches including those that have been cropped, edited or resized.
Identification of Rights Holders
At all times the identification of the existence of any rights holder to an image and the clearance of those rights is the responsibility of the one making use of the image. It is not the responsibility of the institution providing the image. If there is any question as to whether the NYPL holds any rights to an image (and there are very few instances of this) one must contact the Permissions Department. In some cases where a rights holder exists but identification is difficult you may wish to search imagewiki or to employ the Copyright Clearance Center.
Members of our Teen Advisory Group have been reviewing lots of books and movies this year! Here are some highlights of the reviews we've been sharing in our Teen Review Tuesday posts on Tumblr:
This book follows the story of Jam Gallahue who has recently been admitted to the Wooden Barn—a boarding school where “highly intelligent, yet emotionally fragile” students go. Basically, teens who have experienced some sort of trauma are sent here to heal. In Jam’s case, her boyfriend of 41 days died and she still has not recovered even a year after the incident. Jam and four other students are selected to be part of the Special Topics in English class. Why they were chosen is not revealed (until later) but it does force Jam and the others to confront their traumatic experiences and realize the truth of what really happened.
I’m recommending this title due to its unusual yet captivating plot. While reading, you learn a lot about what happened to Jam’s classmates (why they ended up in the Special Topics class), yet you don’t get the full details about what happened to Jam herself despite the fact that she is the main protagonist. It adds to the desire to read more until you discover the truth. Also, since it’s told in first person POV the vocabulary is simple enough that even reluctant readers will enjoy and understand the story.
The main character lost his twin sister and needs to complete her bucket list because that’s the only way he feels peaceful. This book teaches you how you get over the death of a loved one. The thing that makes this book great is that it has a bit of romance in it and most of the people in my school like romance books a lot.
Identity Thief is a movie about a person (Melissa McCarthy) who steals people’s identities to steal their money out of their bank accounts. This movie is funny and it is very interesting.
There is a man (Wade) who is in a relationship with Grace who is the daughter of a rich man. Wade isn’t welcomed until he proves his bravery and love for Grace, and then the father accepts Wade and then they live happily ever after. I would recommend this movie because it’s funny and everybody loves funny things. Also it’s a popular movie, so it’s well known and people will recognize it.
Wren lives in a dystopian society where people are Rebooting. Rebooting means you’ll come back to life as a person who will heal quickly if you get injured, unless the damage is to the brain. Wren Rebooted herself and she is the strongest of all. But her new apprentice, who she has to mentor, is weak with human emotions. If he doesn’t change she will have to kill him, or the government will. This book has thrilling excitement, with great twists. It is sci-fi, dystopian, and romantic, like the Divergent series, which most teens get crazy over. What also makes it great is that it’s very exciting, so it will keep readers involved and curious.
Vanessa, Buzz, Carter and June are brothers and sisters who were supposed to have a great vacation together. But then a storm hit them and they got stranded on an island and every day they face different challenges but the goal is to survive. I recommend this book because most people love the show Survivor and the book is all about surviving and it’s a lot of fun.
In my hefty elf sack, your nightmares now keep. Better think twice before falling asleep. —Nightmare Elf
Welcome to the Dark House masterfully warns: Be careful what you dream. The Nightmare Elf can get you at any moment. As soon as your head hits the pillow and your eyes are closed there’s no escaping what might come next. The Nightmare Elf is not a fun-loving Santa helper. He is an evil doll that stars in all of Justin Blake’s movies. The Nightmare Elf can make your nightmares come to life.
Six contestants entered and won a contest to meet the master of horror, the one and only Justin Blake himself. But this trip turns bad quickly. Things went from delightfully dark to dangerously deadly. Ivy, Parker, Shayla, Natalie, Frankie, and Garth get trapped in an abandoned amusement park. Each of them has their own nightmare. To escape the amusement park, they must face their fears.
Told from six unique perspectives, Laurie Faria Stolarz made an eye-catching horror tale. This book was so awesome. I don’t usually read books like this one. I’m a picky book person. But it was a page-turner. As you get into the book you start to understand each character and their worst nightmares. I believe this book is for everyone who enjoys horror and a good laugh. The only crummy part of the book is that the introduction to the characters takes up half the book. But once the tone of the story is set and you’re uneasy about the ordeal that feels way suspicious is when the horror begins. Dun Dun Duuuuuun!
This book is about a basic brother-sister fight, which they have for idiotic reasons. This book is great for people who don’t like to read, and it has little activities like games.
One night, a mysterious boy (Peter Pan) enters the Darling household in search of his shadow which has been taken from him by their dog, Nana. However, before he can escape the boy awakens the eldest child Wendy Darling. Who, after sewing his shadow back on, agrees to run away with him to tell many stories to the Lost Boys. Once in Neverland, she meets Tiger Lily and the evil Captain Hook, and thus begins her temporary life on the island. If you’ve watched Disney’s Peter Pan or one of the other film versions, it’s only natural that you read the actual novel. Doing so would allow someone to make comparisons which are always fun. For example, while Disney makes the story family-friendly, the actual Peter Pan character is much darker than some might think (e.g. - much more willing to kill). Additionally, the novel appeals to a large age group due to its interesting plot as well as vocabulary advanced enough to be on the SATs.
Every Day is probably my 2nd favorite book. It’s so amazing and descriptive! Each chapter the narrator is in a different body. His/her name is A. A goes into the body of Justin, who’s a jock, and falls in love with Justin’s girlfriend. This is the first time A. has ever fallen in love. A lot of crazy stuff happens. He is so in love with this girl that he breaks the news and shares his biggest secret, how he switches back and forth to different bodies every day. She doesn’t exactly believe him until he proves it. If I would rate this book out of 10, it would be 100, it’s so great. If you’re into romance and a little bit of comedy this book is right for you. It’s told from the same person’s point of view, just different bodies. At first the pace is slow but then it speeds up. That’s when the good stuff happens.
I like this book because it is funny, and I like the part when Greg was mad at Rodrick so he snitched on him but he got beat up. I think everyone would like this book because it is not a long book and it’s funny, and kids like funny books!
This book is about four kids who were left on their own to survive but they have powers which help them. Dol, the main character, has the power to help but she doesn’t know it yet. People love books with action and love and everything else. This book has everything that they love! My favorite part was when Dol met her sister but she didn’t know she was her sister.
There is this cyborg named Cinder who is in a family that doesn’t want her. There is this illness going around that is killing everybody, and her stepsister catches it. The prince of her land falls in love with her, but when he finds out she’s a cyborg he’s shocked. I recomend this title because it has romance and it’s about the struggle of a girl who tries to fit in.
Isabelle Lee has a little sister named April. She saw Isabelle do something many people call nasty -- forcing herself to puke. April told their mother what happened, and now just for that “one time” Isabelle is being forced to attend an eating disorder and body image therapy group. She hates it. Everything at home seems “fine,” but her family is still going through problems with her father’s death. Isabelle throws up to make herself feel better about everything. Then when she goes to the therapy group she’s surprised to see Ashley, the most popular girl in school.
This book is for people who want to read a book from the point of view of an anorexic/bulimic person. This girl goes through many problems. Throwing up to try to fix everything is not the biggest of her worries. I believe this book is for girls because it talks about body image. You should respect yourself no matter what. This book shows you shouldn’t change your body no matter what size. Isabella shows people how to get through that.
Michael Vey can produce electricity, and his power is increasing. No one knows about his power until he loses control and electrocutes the school bullies. But then things change when he discovers more of his kind. I recommend this book because there’s incredible action and there’s romance. Great for Divergent readers!
This manga is about a girl named Anise who is never allowed to take off a choker her father gave her. But one day it falls off and Anise finds out that she’s the Rose Princess guarded by Rose Knights who she will be with forever to stop a demon’s seal from breaking. This is a more girly type of teen book. I love the plot and it’s a cheerful book, which I believe most teens will love.
Out of My Mind is an amazing book that shows people how disabled people feel. It also teaches others to respect. This book is from Melody’s perspective. She is a disabled girl who tries to manage life being bullied and unable to move anything but her thumbs. When she goes from a disabled room to a “normal” class it changes everything. This is an opportunity for all the “special” kids to know what it’s like to be in a “normal” class.
This book was assigned by my old school for summer reading. At first I thought it was going to be boring and dumb because it was forced on us. But then the minute I opened that book and started to read I got into it. I understood Melody. She was extremely smart, but no one knew because of what she looked like. The fact that she was in a wheelchair and couldn’t move meant she was “dumb.” But it wasn’t true. NEVER JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER. NO MATTER WHAT.
The whole world finds out how smart she is when she gets a medi-talker. It’s a machine that Melody uses. She can use her thumbs to push the buttons and it talks for her. The only friends who stick by her are Rosie, her mom, her babysitter, Katherine, and her dad.
This is a book about a kid named Greg who has a brother who bullies him and a younger brother too, and a mom and a father who are very funny. I recommend this book because many people like comedy and books that are really realistic. This book is very funny and it’s a book that everyone could read, not only kids.
This manga is about a girl named Lucy who is a wizard. She meets Natsu Dragneel who helps her join the wizard guild, Fairy Tail. They become best friends, going on numerous adventures together. I recommend this book because it has a great story and it has magic in it, which I think is what makes it a great book!
Andy got a phone call from a man named Zeke. Zeke says he killed Nina. No one believes Andy about the call, but then he really sees Nina, who matches Zeke’s exact description. Andy tries to warn her, but she presses charges against him. I’m recommending this book because there is a lot of suspense that will keep the reader interested to find “Zeke.” This book is easy to read, but it’s not for kids under 12.
Besides being the cruelest month, April is National Poetry month! What better way to celebrate than by sharing poetry with your friends and family. No matter if they love poetry or not, these poems possess catchy meters and fantastic rhyme schemes, making them perfect for reading aloud to any audience. You may be familiar with some of these, but I hope that most of them will become new additions to your repertoire.
“Casey at the Bat” The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day: / The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play.
Whether you're a baseball fan or not, Ernest Lawrence Thayer's Casey at the Bat is a fantastic poem about America's favorite pastime from 1888 . This piece is sure to give you a serious case of spring fever as you root for Casey and his team. Try reading it in your best sports announcer voice!
“The Bells” Hear the sledges with the bells, / Silver bells! / What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
Did you know that this Edgar Allan Poe invented a word specifically for this poem? “Tintinnabulation” meaning “the sound of bells,” almost sounds like bells when you say the word out loud. There are many other examples of onomatopoeia in this piece. Their presence along with multiple alliterations, make "The Bells" a perfect poem to read aloud. Go on, read it. I dare you not to have fun.
“anyone lived in a pretty how town” anyone lived in a pretty how town / (with up so floating many bells down).
While you might not be able to decipher exactly what e. e. cummings is trying to say in this poem, its beautiful imagery and simple rhyme scheme make it stand out from the rest of his works. Try reading it slowly, letting the abstract images form fully in your mind.
“The Land of Counterpane” When I was sick and lay a-bed, / I had two pillows at my head, / and all my toys beside me lay, / to keep me happy all the day.
This poem is part of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson anthology A Child's Garden of Verses. It tells the story of a young boy using his imagination to play while sick in bed. The incredibly catchy iambic tetrameter and rhyming couplet form, might cause this one to get stuck in your head. You also may find yourself clapping along to the beat.
“Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too” Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too / went for a ride in a flying shoe. / 'Hooray!' / 'What fun!' / 'It's time we flew!'
You're probably familiar with most of Shel Silverstein's poetry for children. You may even know about his work for adults. This particular piece, featured in Where the Sidewalk Ends, is one of his less well known children's poems. With its nonsensical story and silly characters, this verse will inevitably make you laugh out loud as you read.
NYPL's new Locations section was initially created using AngularJS 1.2 as the front-end framework. When the Digital Experience team began working on updating the Research Divisions page, we decided to use the newer AngularJS 1.3 version. Considering the relatively small size of the Research Divisions project, the appropriate code changes that were made for the upgrade were small and did not impact us at the time. But, when we decided to upgrade from the 1.2 version to the 1.3 version for the larger Locations project, the front-end team ran into large code changes, different coding styles, and best practice decisions we had to discuss.
NYPL Locations map page
HTTP Interceptor
We are currently using an HTTP Interceptor by Jim Lavin to display a loading icon. While the page is fetching data the loading icon displays and once it resolves the data the loading icon is hidden. We made updates based on AngularJS' docs for interceptors for use in AngularJS 1.3. Originally, the nyplInterceptor function use to return a Javascript promise. With the 1.3 update, however, the function now returns an object. Another update is how the interceptor is added to the app. The interceptor is no longer pushed to AngularJS $httpProvider's `responseInterceptors` array. Instead, the interceptor function now needs to be added to the $httpProvider's `interceptors` array.
ng-repeat
An interesting change from AngularJS 1.2 to 1.3 is how the ng-if directive handles empty arrays. On individual library pages, we display sections of content based on their availability. On the 115th Street page, the library does not have any Featured content whereas the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building does contain Featured content. We output a library’s Featured content in the view layer with a simple check.
Looking at the Locations API, the location._embedded.features property is an array of featured content objects. If the array is empty, we do not display that section on the front-end. The same is true for the other sections, such as blogs, events, and exhibitions.
In Angular 1.3, our simple check still displayed the Featured content section even if the array was empty. In this particular case, a header with the title “FEATURED” is displayed with no content. This check makes sense since an empty array is considered to be truthy in javascript. We now had to update the section with a check ng-if directive to see if the features array contained at least one item. When the array is empty, we do not display the section.
One-time data binding
This is one of the best features from AngularJS 1.3 that helps add small boosts to performance when rendering data in the view. AngularJS keeps a watchers array of data bindings that it checks on every $digest cycle. If a change is made to a binding, the view updates accordingly. This can cause performance issues when the app has too many bindings that Angular has to process.
If we are binding data to the view and we know that it won't change throughout the app’s life cycle, we can use one-time binding to render it. After AngularJS' first $digest cycle, it will render the binding in the view and then remove it from the watchers array. Now Angular has one less binding to process and performance is improved.
In the Research Divisions page, we compose the filter labels from the data we get when fetching all the terms. The top level categories are Subjects and Media (we get the Locations filter category and terms based on the Divisions data) . Since we know that the labels will not change, we can use one-time data binding to render the category name.
This outputs the three filter buttons we have on the Research Division page.
Research Divisions filters
Strict Dependency Injection
The AngularJS team added the `ng-strict-di` directive in version 1.3 so that an app can be in "strict dependency injection" mode.
`< html id="ng-app" data-ng-app="nypl_locations" data-ng-strict-di>`
This is recommended from the team to promote best coding practices when creating AngularJS apps. The directive ensures that we always define the dependencies for our functions when creating them. For us, this means we can depend less on the ngAnnotate tool that injects dependencies for us. This change also means that we have to be explicit and use $inject for named functions.
Global functions
Always avoid polluting the global scope! Following Todd Motto’s Opinionated AngularJS Styleguide for teams post, we wrapped all our named functions inside closures and then assigned them to the corresponding angular method.
Now, however, AngularJS' migration documentation mentions that the $controller method will no longer look for functions in the global scope. Although this change helps promote better coding practices, it goes against the style we choose for creating and adding functions to the AngularJS app.
When updating to 1.3, we did not run into any conflicts because of the closures we used to wrap our functions in. We are not polluting the global scope and we are using closures, immediately-invoked function expressions (IIFE) to be precise, so we decided to stay with our existing coding style. It also makes adding and removing functions to the AngularJS controller, filter, directive, and service methods much cleaner.
What's next?
The AngularJS team have two more big releases planned, AngularJS 1.4 and AngularJS 2.0. Although updating to AngularJS version 1.4 when it becomes stable won't be too difficult, we expect to encounter difficulty when migrating to version 2.0 because it's a whole rewrite of the AngularJS code base. For now, we are constantly reading about it, experimenting with its preview, and looking forward for its stable release.
Men face certain societal expectations, such as the need to be always strong, not display emotion, not be too smart and be active physically. However, gifted males can face social isolation from their peers due to their intellectual differences. They often feel pressured to choose between excellence and normality. These men want to fit in, but their interests differ from the age-mates. The men in this study sought contentment, not eminence.
The United States can be somewhat anti-intellectual in that intellectual pursuits and behaviors are not valued. Also, IQ (intelligence quotient) is more a measure of academic success and potential, not sheer intellectual ability. There are other ways to measure intellect. Characteristics of gifted individuals include the following:
large vocabulary
early reading
long attention span
fast learning speed with fewer repetitions necessary
unusual sense of humor
good memory
Gifted men often benefit from having mentors who help guide them and develop their skills. Sometimes, proteges choose their own mentors, and sometimes mentors choose their mentees. When mentors are too controlling, mentees must break free. The split can be difficult and upsetting for both parties.
I have not read much about male psychology, so it was interesting to learn more about that topic. However, the sample used in the research study was not representative of the United States population; the data was from one school.
We asked our staff about their favorite female characters. Here are some they highly recommend for kids, teens and adults alike.
Hands down my favorite female character of all time is Jo March from Little Women. She wasn't always comfortable in her own skin but she owned it, she sent mixed signals to poor Teddy, she could be petty and mean but she was always true to herself. She was fierce and ready to take on the 19th century world. 150 years later, the girl that Louisa May Alcott created is still someone that can inspire 21st century girls. —Ann Rouyer, Mulberry Street
In children's books, you have to honor the pantheon: my favorite female characters were Harriet the Spy and Sheila the Great. You have to get in a little trouble and be maybe just a little obnoxious to be fun. But for a contemporary addition, I adore the bravery, chutzpah, cleverness, and ralateable faults of Princess Solveig in Icefall and Mirka in Hereville: How Mirka Got her Sword. These both have an element of introducing you to another culture as well: Ancient Vikings (with an element of myth) and Orthodox Judaism (with trolls), respectively.
For adult books, the female character I'm enjoying at the moment is Mary Russell from the series that begins The Beekeepers Apprentice. Young, smart (and smart-mouthed), bumping up against gender and class stereotypes of her time, and learning from the venerable older Sherlock Holmes, you can't always trust her to tell you everything... which makes for fun reading. —Jill Rothstein, Andrew Heiskell
I will go with two girls from YA novels, Celaena Sardothien from Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas for her cunning and willingness to fight for what she believes. The second is June from Marie Lu's YA series Legend. June is a brilliant young military prodigy with a sensitive side. —Lillian Calix, Hamilton Grange
My all time favorite female character is Margaret, from Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume. I read it at age 11 and it really surprised me that perhaps I wasn't the only girl on the planet who was totally confused by not only growing up, but by the idea of a God and if he or she would lend me a hand if I asked fervently enough. —Maura Muller, Volunteer’s Office
"Dear God, I am fourteen years old. I am I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me." I deeply admire Celie from Walker's The Color Purple for her strong instinct for survival, unwavering faith and unconditional ability to love. —Miriam Tuliao, Selection Team
My vote goes to Bellis Coldwine from China Miéville's The Scar, a cunning librarian in the private city of Aramada. —Judd Karlman, City Island
I love Mrs. Madrigal in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series! I admire her wisdom, tolerance, and ability to nurture people and relationships, qualities that make her everyone's favorite San Francisco landlady. —Elizabeth Waters, Mid-Manhattan
Growing up, I loved Laura Ingalls of the Little House series. Laura inspired me to be adventurous, to go outside, and to experience the world! She also just happens to live in nostalgia for me —my mom read the series to me twice, and Laura always represents youth and innocence (mine and hers!).
In adult fiction, one of my favorite characters is Agnes DeWitt/Sister Cecilia/Father Damien Modeste, a woman-turned-nun-turned-priest from Louise Erdrich's The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. Her struggle to find her true self within her many personas and her place in the Ojibwe community, as well as her dedication to that very community, is more than admirable...perhaps awe-inspiring. The dedication, sweetness, sincerity, and compassion I found in her character sticks with me as a constant reminder of grace and purpose. —Alexandria Abenshon, Countee Cullen
Jehane bet Ishak from Guy Gavriel Kay's The Lions of Al-Rassan is as fresh in my mind as the day I read the book. Warring religious factions, father issues, and a love triangle involving the two most powerful men in the Al-Rassan peninsula. A great heroine/villainess combination can be found in Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart, first in a trilogy and a doorstop book with plenty of political intrigue, bloodshed and erotica. —Joshua Soule, Spuyten Duyvil
I remember enjoying the character of Cayce Pollard in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. She transverses the worlds of marketing, political intrigue, digital, and real world influence with relative ease. —Jenny Baum, Jefferson Market
Modesta, in Goliarda Sapienza's The Art of Joy is a favorite female character of mine because she is shocking and captivating. Her life begins on January 1, 1900 and is bright, violent and sensual through family relations and the heavy politics of 20th century Italy. There is an autobiographical flow to the fiction, which means the author must have been a pretty amazing woman herself. —Jessica Cline, Mid-Manhattan
Some of my favorite female characters are the ones in the margins who get second chances at a rich literary life. For example, I am fascinated by the mysterious figure of Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre—the archetypal madwoman in the attic. I like her best in Jean Rhys' re-imagination of Bertha (nee Antoinette) in Wide Sargasso Sea. This story, set primarily in the Caribbean, tells the reader all about how she got locked up in that dreary British attic, and paints a vivid (and tragic) portrait of a romantic, passionate young woman. In the same vein, check out Maryse Conde's I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. Tituba, the early American slave of Salem Witch Trial fame, finally gets to tell her story—it's another one filled with enough magic, vigor, and vivaciousness to outweigh the hardship she encounters. —Nancy Aravecz, Mid-Manhattan
With her national bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi became one of our most prominent champions of literature. A professor and author, Nafisi was born in Iran and moved to the United States in 1997. Her most recent book, The Republic of Imagination: American in Three Books, was published in 2014. This week in the New York Public Library podcast, we're sharing Nafisi's recent appearance at LIVE from the NYPL in which she discussed reading, freedom, and entertainment.
Azar Nafisi with Paul Holdengräber
A Visiting Professor and the executive director of Cultural Conversations at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, Nafisi is uniquely positioned to consider the way that education shapes dialogues between and within cultures. She warned of the consequences associated with the deprioritization of reading in the American education system:
“Literacy is only the first step toward really reading. Brodsky talks about how individuals and nations do not read. They face death. And Ray Bradbury, one of my favorite authors, he says you do not need to burn books, as we did in Iran or as they did in fascist Germany or as Isis is doing right now. He says you don't need to burn books to destroy culture, only get the people not to read. And that is what is happening today, in this country: public education is going down.”
What, then, is the solution? To Nafisi, education needs to begin with freedom:
“I think an ideal teacher is a person who—you know, as a teacher you both have to be there with the things that you're really passionate about but you have to also, it's like writing—you have to fade away in order to let others breathe. I think the most important task of a teacher is to teach students how to breathe, to breathe freely, and how to connect to the books themselves. I never, ever start with theory. I never start with my own theories about a book. I want my students to first connect to the texts on their own, to create their own relationships, and then you demand that they go into everything else about a book… You need to have the alternative eye to see a white rabbit, and a great reader has the courage to run after that white rabbit without asking a question, and you have to have the courage to jump down that hole without imposing your own presuppositions.”
Like many thinkers before her, Nafisi has thought about how we might distinguish art and entertainment, and she argued that literature cannot simply be comforting:
“Comfort today, entertainment—Beyonce, Bill O'Reilly—ideology, and entertainment have become so dominant, and literature does not comfort you. You don't write because you need an ice cream for the soul. And you don't read because of that. Literature teaches you to understand and confront and resist, and it teaches you to understand and confront and resist not only the tyranny of man but the tyranny of time because it is the only thing we have—art and literature—against the absolutism of death… so literature takes its revenge against both the tyrants and the tyrant time.”
You can subscribe to the New York Public Library Podcast to hear more conversations with wonderful artists, writers, and intellectuals. Join the conversation today!
Schools in the United States are not mandated to meet the needs of advanced learners, as they are for students with learning difficulties. However, gifted classes are classified as special education, and these learners can receive individualized education plans (IEPs). Gifted kids are often bored in academic classes with their age-mates, and they do not share similar interests. Therefore, they can feel lonely and get depressed or angry if their educational and socio-emotional needs are not met. 
What Gifted Kids Are Like
Men face certain societal expectations, such as the need to be always strong, not display emotion, not be too smart and be active physically. However, gifted males can face social isolation from their peers due to their intellectual differences. They often feel pressured to choose between excellence and normality. These men want to fit in, but their interests differ from the age-mates. The men in this study sought contentment, not eminence.
