The New York Times Book Review recently profiled three new picture books about bears including Otto the Book Bear and Maudie and Bear. Whether they are of the grizzly, polar, or teddy variety, we love picture books about bears! Here are a few of our very favorite bear stories:
Notice anything different in the picturebook section of the Children's Library?
The F5 Growing and F5 Stories collections have swapped places!
Growing Up - Books with the light blue sticker are stories about first-time events, like the first day of school or losing a tooth. They are now under the windows past the puzzle table.
Stories - Books with the yellow sticker are tales of pirates, dinosaurs playing soccer, and adventures in the library. They are now under the bulletin board.
Check out these new locations and let us know what you think!
After a storytime and even a good dose of magic sleepytime dust, the animals who spent the night in the Children's Library certainly had some interesting adventures. See for yourself....
There were also some noises down in the Library's basement last night. It appears that it was actually a pigeon!!

The world lost a revered author of children's literature when Russell Hoban passed away last Tueday at the age of 86. Although he wrote more than 50 books for children and was the author of several popular adult novels, here in the children's library he is best known for his Frances books. Bread and Jam for Frances remains one of the definitive books about picky eaters, and the entire series is worth revisiting for its gentle, funny look at the life of a young badger. Check out our collection of Hoban titles at the link below.
In a world that is filled with clicks, buzzes, beeps, and angry birds flying over the moon, how is an old-fashioned grandma ever going to sleep?
The answers are in this modern twist on Margaret Wise Brown's classic Goodnight Moon. Readers will chuckle as the little old woman (who whispered "hush" in the orignal story), instead turns off Ipads, Nooks, Facebook, and Wi-Fi enabled HDTV's.
Watch the hilarious trailer here, or come check out the book from the library today!
Oliver Jeffers' new book, Stuck, starts out simply and gets out of hand very quickly, with very funny and unexpected twists.
Poor Floyd's kite gets stuck in a tree behind his house. To get it out, he throws his shoe...which also gets caught in the tree. He throws his other shoe (it gets stuck), then his cat Mitch (he gets stuck), then goes to get a ladder...and hurls it into the tree (yep, it gets stuck, too). By the end of the story, a fire engine (and its firemen), a lighthouse, the house across the street, and a whale are all stuck in the tree. How does it all end? Does Floyd get everything out of the tree? You'll get a kick out of the surprise ending.
Kids with big imaginations, who like big stories and silly ideas, will love this story, and the grown-ups who read it to them will like it, too.

Marisol MacDonald Doesn't Match/Marisol McDonald No Combina is an English/Spanish book about an adventure-loving girl who doesn't match - and doesn't want to!
Check out this fun new title and more at the link below...
The New York Times Book Review just announced it's 10 picks for Best Illustrated Children's
Books of 2011. These books run the gamut from dry humor (I Want My Hat Back) to gorgeous biographies (Me...Jane and A Nation's Hope, which you might remember as a Booktalking title from this past summer!).
The list of books is below, with the exception of two books: Ice by Arthur Geisert and A New Year's Reunion by Yu Li-Qiong.
The Children's Library has even more great books--from picture books to novels, from books about friendly tractors to books about killer koalas! Click on the link below to see what's new!

Every Thing On It by Shel Silverstein
Although I cannot see your face/As you flip these poems awhile
Somewhere from some far-off place/I hear you laughing -- and I smile.
This second posthumous release of 139 never-before-published poems and drawings is just as delightful as the author's previous collections of poetry, Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, and Falling Up. Hand-selected by family members from Silverstein's personal archives, this new collection has been called "as strange and wonderful as his early collections" by School Library Journal, and is already New York Times Bestseller.

The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse by Eric Carle
In this homage to an artist whose work was banned by the Nazi's, Carle invites readers to view more and more fantastical animals, while reassuring young readers that all creativity is worthy, even if the colors are not "right."
"One day, when Eric was 12 or 13 years old, his art teacher, Herr Krauss, secretly showed him some of the forbidden art....At first young Eric was shocked by the art and feared Herr Krauss had gone mad. Now Eric says, 'My green lion, polka-dotted donkey, and otheranimals painted in the 'wrong' color were born that day seventy years ago.' "