Kimball Library News 10/5/10

Do you like to cook? Do you like to eat? If you are in grades 3-5, we are anxious to work with you so can do both. ‘Kids Cooking’ is a three part series being offered on the second Wednesdays from October through December. We’ll be using simple seasonal recipes and working together. Each session requires individual registration so you can sign up for one or more of the classes. One session is not contingent on the rest, but do realize space is limited and may not be left if you don’t register in a timely fashion. Have some fun cooking with us on October 13th, November 10th, or December 8th from 4-5pm. Part of the fun is in the eating so maybe it will make it home, or maybe it will not. You create and you decide.

Get into the ‘spirit’ and bring your kids ages 4-9 for a little Halloween celebration in the Children’s Room on Friday, October 22, at 6:30pm. KIDS: Wear your costume for our Halloween parade! Join us in a mummy wrap! Then, there's an eyeball relay, apples, treats, and plenty of 'strange' things to keep you busy at our Halloween night -- even a scary story or two! Do you DARE come? Register NOW!

‘Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails, that’s what boys are made of!’ ‘Lively Boys! Lively Boys!: The Origin of Bad Boy Books’ is the topic for Thursday, November 4, from 6:30-8pm. Mark Twain's ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ (1876) and ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ (1884) represent the best of the 'bad boy' genre in American literature, but the theory of 'The Human Boy' that started it all was the brainchild of two Portsmouth, NH authors. It all began with 'Plaguey Ike Partington' (1850's) invented by B.P. Shillaber and ‘A Story of a Bad Boy’ (1869) by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Boys are born to be bad, the theory goes, and must fight and fail their way to manhood. Parents who overprotect and direct their sons endanger their futures. Historian J. Dennis Robinson tracks the NH origins of the genre that gave us Dennis the Menace and Bart Simpson. Come and hear for yourself to decide if boys are born to be bad and if we are stunting them with overprotection. This is a New Hampshire Humanities Council 'Humanities to Go' program and it is sponsored by the Friends of the Kimball Library.