Halloween treats

Whether you love Halloween, hate it, or choose to ignore it, it's a great excuse to share a spooky story or two. Here's some of the favourites at my house at the moment.

A Dark, Dark Tale by Ruth Brown
The repetition makes this book extra spooky, as you follow along with the dark, dark journey. With a great, unexpected ending.








Scary Night by Lesley Gibbes and Stephen Michael King
Honour Book in the 2015 CBCA  Book of the Year: Early Childhood
A lovely story about friendship and adversity. Watch Chanelle Sheehan read it in the Story Box Library (you will need to log in with your library card number first).



Emu's Halloween by Anne Mangan, illustrated by David Cornish
An Australian take on Halloween, with a bit of stress from Emu that it might not be scary enough.








My Dead Bunny by Sigi Cohen, illustrated by James Foley
Notable in the 2016 CBCA Picture Book of the Year
This one is for older readers, about a bunny who comes back from the dead. Watch James Foley read it in the Story Box Library (log in with your library card number).


These books, and more, are available at the library. Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website to find them!

What are your favourite spooky stories to share?

EXPECTO PATRONUM!



WARNER BROS. PICTURES/ Album / Universal Images Group

Think of your happiest memory you can. Now... are you a dragon or a dragonfly, a ferret or a falcon? J.K. Rowling's latest addition to Pottermore (the digital heart of the wizarding world) allows members to complete a quiz (written by Rowling herself) which reveals your Patronus!


As Professor Lupin tells Harry in Prisoner of Azkaban, the Patronus is ‘a kind of Anti-Dementor – a guardian which acts as a shield between you and the Dementor.’ It’s also ‘a kind of positive force, a projection of the very things that the Dementor feeds upon – hope, happiness, the desire to survive – but it cannot feel despair, as real humans can, so the Dementors can’t hurt it.’


Rowling's Patronus is a Heron and the Library got a Owl which we thought was very fitting. Have you read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child yet? Place a hold and stay in the wizarding world just a little longer.

Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

Withering-by-Sea: A Stella Montgomery Intrigue by Judith Rossell

Eleven year old Stella Montgomery resides at the Hotel Majestic in Withering-by-Sea with her three terrible Aunts. Set in Victorian times, the Aunts are 'taking the waters' and  partaking of other water treatments designed to increase health and vitality, and attempting to teach Stella correct deportment, manners and other accomplishments suitable for young ladies in between these treatments.

One night, as Stella is sneaking out of her room to recover her Atlas (of which the Aunts definitely would not approve!), she witnesses something terrible, and is plunged head first into an adventure (which includes singing cats, magicians and dancing girls, among other things).

Judith Rossell's fascination with the Victorian era is evident in this extremely well-researched novel. Lots of lovely references to candles, oil lamps, new indoor plumbing...

Be warned - this is the first of a series, the second is in the process of being written, and you WILL want to know what happens next! Don't let that put you off though. The next one, Wormwood Mire, is due out in October!

Winner of the 2015 Indie Book of the Year Children's & YA
Winner of the 2015 ABIA Book of the Year for Older Children
Winner of the 2015 Davitt (Best Children's Crime Novel) Award
Honour Book in the 2015 CBCA Book of the Year: Younger Readers 
Shortlisted for the 2014 Aurealis Award

Category: Junior fiction


Who'll want to read it? Aimed at children aged 9+, fans of Lemony Snicket, the Wildwood Chronicles by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis,  and Tensy Farlow by Jen Storer will really enjoy this.


Publisher: ABC Books

Available as a hardcover book, or as an eBook.
Find it now, at Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

International Women's Day, March 9 2016

We celebrate International Women's Day with a list of women who inspire us with their integrity, courage and creativity.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a social commentator, founding member of Youth Without Borders and young Australian engineer. Read more about about her in Yassmin's Story to be released later this month.

Harper Lee, who sadly passed recently, wrote one of  history's most important books. To Kill a Mockingbird's vivid storytelling exposed decades of readers to the cruelty of racial intolerance.

Malala Yousafzai, the youngest recipient of the Nobel peace prize and author of I am Malala who stood up for education and was shot by the Taliban.

Patti Smith, the singer-songwriter and poet who influenced the punk movement. Revisit her music in Freegal or read her books Just Kids and and M Train.

Iran Awakening describes the the powerful life of Shirin Ebadi, female judge and Nobel Prize winner, before, during and after the revolution in Iran.

Robyn Davidson journeyed alone through the Australian outback with a team of camels in the 1970s. Tracks records the connections she made with the people, landscape and and her own identity.

Lucille Ball - writer, performer and producer was a pioneer of television comedy. You can watch I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show on DVD and via indieflix.

Nellie Bly was one of the world's first investigative journalists. Read her biography, Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist or the digital edition of her work Ten Days in a Mad House

Enjoy these and countless other stories of female achievement in the Library's digital and printed collections.

Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

City of Orphans Series by Catherine Jinks

Catherine  Jinks is a four-time winner of the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year award, and has also won a Victorian Premier’s Literature Award, the Adelaide Festival Award for Literature, the Ena Noel Award for Children’s Literature and an Aurealis Award for Science Fiction. In 2001 she was presented with a Centenary Medal for her contribution to Australian Children’s Literature.

The City of Orphans Series is a truly brilliant read. Described by critics as as possessing Dickensian qualities, this series is part adventure, part sci-fi. Engagingly written, with wry humor and enjoyable characters, the City of Orphans Series is available now at Newcastle libraries. The final two books - A Very Peculiar Plague and A Very Singular Guild are also available as e-books.

A Very Unusual Pursuit

Monsters have been infesting London’s dark places for centuries, eating every child who gets too close. That’s why ten-year-old Birdie McAdam works for Alfred Bunce, the bogler. With her beautiful voice and dainty looks, Birdie is the bait that draws bogles from their lairs so that Alfred can kill them. One life-changing day, Alfred and Birdie are approached by two very different women. Sarah Pickles runs a local gang of pickpockets, three of whom have disappeared. Edith Eames is an educated lady who’s studying the mythical beasts of English folklore. Both of them threaten the only life Birdie’s ever known. But Birdie soon realises she needs Miss Eames’s help to save her master, defeat Sarah Pickles and vanquish an altogether nastier villain.

A Very Peculiar Plague

Eleven-year-old Jem Barbary spent his early life picking pockets for a canny old crook named Sarah Pickles. Now she’s betrayed him, and Jem wants revenge. He also wants to work for Alfred Bunce the bogler, who kills the child-eating monsters that lurk in the city’s cellars and sewers. But Alfred is keen to give up bogling, since he almost lost his last apprentice, Birdie McAdam. When numerous children start disappearing around Newgate Prison, Alfred and Jem do join forces, waging an underground war. They 
even seek help from Birdie, dragging her away from the safe and comfortable home she’s found with Miss Edith Eames. Together they learn that there’s only one thing more terrifying than facing a whole plague of bogles – and that’s facing some of the sinister people from Jem’s past . . .

A Very Singular Guild

Twelve-year-old Ned Roach used to scavenge for scraps along the Thames riverbank. But the recent plague of child-eating bogles in London means that he’s now working as an apprentice to Alfred Bunce, the bogler.

 Alongside Jem Barbary and (sometimes) Birdie McAdam, Ned must lure bogles out of their lairs so that Alfred can kill them. And this means spending a lot of time in the city’s murky underground waterways – especially when Alfred is hired by the London Sewers Office to stamp out a deadly infestation.

But times are changing. As magic and folklore give way to the machine age, Alfred begins to face an uncertain future – while Ned and his friends find themselves threatened by an enemy from their past who’s even more dangerous than the bogles.

Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

Man Booker prize winner for 2015

A Brief History of Seven Killings

Marlon James's novel brings alive the turbulence of gangland Jamaica in the 1970s and 1980s. It describes a fictional assassination attempt on Bob Marley's life and is told from multiple viewpoints including; journalists, ghosts, killers, drug dealers, beauty queens, FBI and CIA agents. The book is a must read for fans of Tarantino, intense action or the music of Kingston.

James is the first Jamaican novelist to win the Man Booker prize.

How to be both by Ali Smith

Difficult to put my finger on this one. How to Be Both by Ali Smith is a dual narrative; two tales of love and injustice intertwined. Half way through I discovered the publishers has printed two versions of the book, swapping each of the stories to the beginning. Depending which copy of the book you pick up you may be meeting Francescho in 15th-century Ferrara, northern Italy first or teenage girl George in present day Cambridge, England. The two parts of 'How to Be Both' have overlapping themes: the subversive power of art; what Martineau refers to as “sexual and gender ambiguities”; the hold of the dead on the living; and, of course, the figure of Francescho him/herself.
George has a boy's name but is a girl whose sexuality is only just being explored; Francesco is born a girl but binds her chest and lives as a man. When Francesco is taken to a brothel by a male friend, the artist declines to sleep with the prostitute but draws her instead. When, centuries later, George and her mother study del Cossa's frescoes they cannot tell who is male and who is female. In the end, they decide it doesn't matter. And when Francesco sees George for the first time, she assumes George is a boy, only to discover later that she had been mistaken. I read Georges story first, and loved it... although I do wonder what my perception of the book may have been if I started the other first. Great read for book clubs who love a debate!

Category: Adult Fiction

Classic line: 

“And which comes first? her unbearable mother is saying. What we see or how we see it?” 

“Girl : do you hear me?
cause although it seemed to be the end of the world to me -
it wasn't. There was a lot more world : cause roads that look set to take you in one direction will sometimes twist back on themselves without ever seeming anything other than straight, ... many things get forgiven in the course of a life : nothing is finished or unchangeable except death and even death will bend a little if what you tell of it is told right.” 


Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

Celebrating NAIDOC Week with the Library

All across Australia during the month of July, communities are celebrating the history, culture, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Come along and celebrate NAIDOC week with us at Newcastle Library!

We have special NAIDOC storytimes at Mayfield (Tues 7 10:30), Wallsend (Wed 8 10:30), New Lambton (Thurs 9 10:30), and City (Wed 8 & Fri 10 at 10:30) with readings by our lovely librarians as well as special guest Ray Kelly reading on the steps of City branch. If you would like to join in on some free craft, City is also hosting a Wedge-Tail Eagle Totem Weaving class on Wednesday 8th of July at 2 and 3:30pm - Please call the Library on 4974 5300 to reserve a spot.

For the cinema lovers (and popcorn enthusiasts), please join us at the Regal Cinema on Wednesday 8 July at 7pm for the screening of Charlie's Country; all donations going to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.

If you can't make it into a branch this July, use one of the libraries e-Kids resources: Story Box Library at home (just pop your library card in and you're on your way!) Curl up with family and have a listen to master storyteller Boori Monty Pryor read his book Shake a Leg.

When three hungry boys enter a pizza shop in steamy far north Queensland, they are in for a few surprises. The pizza maker might speak Italian but he's also Aboriginal.  What's served up next is a slice of pizza, a milkshake…and the inspiration to get up and dance - Warrima - and shake a leg!

There is a PDF at home activity to download after you have watched the story which gives you instructions to make your own dreamtime meal and discuss thoughts and ideas. 

Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

Eve and the runaway unicorn by Jess Black

Feeling bored, Eve explores her Nan's attic. Here the discovery of an old chest and the crystal figurine of a unicorn, transports her into a new world, where Eve and her unlikely/reluctant friend Oscar, meet people in need of their help. Opening the chest has also unlocked the power of a crystal and Eve finds herself with strange new powers and linked to an ancient prophecy to overthrow the evil king and his rangers. 

 Eve and the Runaway Unicorn  is the first book in Jess Black's new Keeper of the Crystals series. In each book the pair are thrust into different and dangerous worlds where unicorns, tigers, dragons and panthers communicate with people and where native communities and their way of life are under threat. Only Eve, the crystals and her new powers can save them. 

Jess Black is well known for her Bindi Wildlife Adventure series, the RSPCA Animal Tales series and The Kaboom Kid series with David Warner. This new series will expand and delight her fans. 

With a strong resilient female character and an ecology message, this series will be enjoyed by children 7+. 

Published by New Frontier Publishing.

Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

Figgy in the world by Tamsin Janua

Figgy has two problems. One is her name. Nobody in Ghana has such a name. The other is that her grandmother is ill and in need of special medicine. Figgy can’t do much about her name, but she can do something for Grandma Ama. So commence her adventures as she begins to walk to America to bring back precious medicine. Accompanying her is Kwame, her special goat and Nana, a runaway boy who joins her early in her travels. 

With echos of the tone in The number one ladies detective agency, Figgy in the world is an uplifting story of innocence, loyalty and courage. Frequent touches of humour and a rare insight into life in Ghana, carry this beautiful story along. 

A debut novel by young author Tamsin Janu who has worked with children in Ghana, Figgy in the world is short-listed for the 2015 Children's Book Council of Australia's Children's Book Week awards. 

This is not a difficult read, and will be enjoyed by children 7+. It would also make an excellent family or class read. 

Published by Scholastic.

Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

Although movies rarely live up to the expectations of a good book, listening to story on CD or iPod can actually bring the story to life. Such has been the experience of listening to Skulduggery Pleasant. Although this series has now been out for a few years, the audio edition by Harper Collins is so brilliant that it deserves to be revisited. Read by actor Rupert Degas, the lilting Irish accents plus the 101 other voices are truly astounding.

The story centers around Stephanie, whose Uncle Gordon,a writer of horror fiction dies and leaves her his estate. However, Stephanie learns that while he may have written horror, it certainly wasn’t fiction. Enter Skulduggery Pleasant, a wise cracking detective, powerful magician, master of dirty tricks and burglary,who is also very dead. In the vein of all good fantasy, they are pursued by evil forces intent of controlling their world as they know it.

For lovers of Artemis Fowl, this is the next series for you, with a continuation of the wry humour, fast and improbable action loved by so many. Don't be put off by the cover with its evil looking skulls. Skulduggery Pleasant fits more easily into a fantasy or even adventure genre than it does horror.

The Skulduggery Pleasant series will be enjoyed by 10-13 year old's as well as teens and adults who love a well written fantasy.
  

Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

The Book of Madness and Cures / Regina O'Melveny

Gabriella Mondini lives in 16th Century Venice, a Dottoressa by trade, thanks to the support and tutelage of her father. Together they are writing The Book of Diseases, an encyclopaedia of all known diseases, cures, and uses for medicinals. Dr Mondini leaves Venice to research further diseases and cures, leaving only a trail of letters that become erratic, enigmatic, and troubling, before they dry up completely.

His letters lead Gabriella to suspect her father may suffer some illness, or some form of madness. She sets out to find him, against her mother's wishes, taking her old nursemaid Olmina, and Olmina's husband Lorenzo, as her companions.

It is an arduous journey, with prejudices against women, witches, and Catholics evident along the way. Gabriella has her hope, her stubborn determination, the good nature of Lorenzo, the unfailing support of Olmina (even if she does complain), and her continued work on The Book of Diseases to sustain her.

This book is Regina O'Melveny's first novel, beautiful and lyrical, as you would expect from an award winning poet. Please do go to her website and read her Author's Note, even if you don't read the book. It may convince you, where I fail.

Category: Fiction, Historical Fiction

Who'll want to read it? People who love travel, history, an interest in illnesses of the body and the mind.

Point of no return: page 5
I didn't know then that during those fugitive hours beneath the influence of the damp moon, I was already plotting my future in pursuit of the past. ... It was then I knew I must set my life in motion or I would disappear.

Classic entry:
Page 59

MELANCHOLIA:

When One Is Weighed by a Leaden Sadness

Melancholia seeps into one's life like the metallic sand of an hourglass. Despondency accrues. One suffers from inertia and wan complexion. My friend Messalina grew so disconsolate that no one could find a cure, not even my father. The use of plants with a moist nature, such as watercress, lovage, and water parsley, could not counter her dry, cold humor. It is said that the black bile of melancholia devours even stone with its terrible acid.

Publisher: John Murray

name, date Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

Tree Palace by Craig Sherborne

Shane, Moira and Midge, along with young Zara and Rory, are ‘trants’—itinerants roaming the plains north-west of Melbourne in search of disused houses to sleep in, or to strip of heritage fittings when funds are low. When they find their Tree Palace outside Barleyville, things are looking up. At last, a place in which to settle down.

But Zara, fifteen, is pregnant and doesn’t want a child. She’d rather a normal life with town boys, not trant life with a baby. Moira decides to step in: she’ll look after her grandchild. Then Shane finds himself in trouble with the local cop. Warmly told and witty, Craig Sherborne’s second novel is a revelation—an affecting story of family and rural life. 

Category: Fiction

Praise: ‘[Tree Palace is] moving, terrifying and wonderfully well observed and, as with all the strange books Sherborne writes, a triumph…The main character [is] one of the great portraits of up-against-it Australian womanhood in our literature, a figure to put with Lawson’s Drover’s Wife and Barbara Baynton’s women.’  Peter Craven, Sydney Morning Herald

Publisher: Text Publishing


Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

The Boundary by Nicole Watson

Long ago, Meston Park in Brisbane's West End marked the city's boundary. A curfew kept its Aboriginal population outside the city limits after dark. A multi-million dollar development threatens the sacred site of one of Australia Aboriginal populations, the Corrowa people file a native claim over the site. Hours after Justice Brosnan rejects the claim, he is dead. Days later, the developer's lawyer is also killed. As the body count rises, it becomes clear that the key to unlocking the murderer's identity is the single red feather left behind at each crime scene. 

Filled with suspense and grisly detail, this book follows detectives Jason Matthews, a young Aboriginal policeman, and Andrew Higgins, a wizened cop possessed by his need for revenge, as they attempt to investigate the murders and stay impartial. A fast-paced crime novel as well as a cutting social commentary, this narrative puts native title and contemporary Australian issues under the microscope, exposing a nation still struggling to come to terms with its bleak past. 

Category: Adult Fiction

Who'll want to read it? Crime novel lovers - this is breaking new ground in Australian fiction.

Point of no return: It may have a body on the first page, but this is no ordinary crime novel. Nicole watson adds generous slices of Brisbane's Indigenous history, and a supernatural being called Red Feathers... you won't put it down.

Classic line: ‘...if you wanted to have a yarn with a blackfellas – you have to fill them up with tucker first.’

Publisher: Penguin Books Australia

Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

Blackout by Connie Willis

Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place, with scores of time-traveling historians being sent into the past. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser into letting her go to VE-Day. 

Polly Churchill’s next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London’s Blitz. But now the time-travel lab is suddenly cancelling assignments and switching around everyone’s schedules. And when Michael, Merope, and Polly finally get to World War II, things just get worse. For there they face air raids, blackouts, and dive-bombing Stukas--to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiralling out of control. Because suddenly the once-reliable mechanisms of time travel are showing significant glitches, and our heroes are beginning to question their most firmly held belief: that no historian can possibly change the past. Look out for the next book 'All Clear' after you devour 'Blackout'!

Category: Science Fiction

Who'll want to read it?  Anyone delighted to see any new book by Connie Willis, but particularly one that returns to the time-travel premise she explored so deftly in classics such as Doomsday Book.

Classic line: “I’m not studying the heroes who lead navies—and armies—and win wars. I’m studying ordinary people who you wouldn’t expect to be heroic, but who, when there’s a crisis, show extraordinary bravery and self-sacrifice. Like Jenna Geidel, who gave her life vaccinating people during the Pandemic. And the fishermen and retired boat owners and weekend sailors who rescued the British Army from Dunkirk. And Wells Crowther, the twenty-four-year-old equities trader who worked in the World Trade Center. When it was hit by terrorists, he could have gotten out, but instead he went back and saved ten people, and died. I’m going to observe six different sets of heroes in six different situations to try to determine what qualities they have in common.” 

Publisher: Spectra

Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

Hades by Candice Fox

Homicide detective Frank Bennett has an intriguing new partner. Dark, beautiful, coldly efficient, Eden Archer is one of the most enigmatic colleagues Frank has ever worked with—that includes her brother Eric, who’s also on the Sydney Metro police force. All of them are tested to the core when a local man discovers a graveyard of large steel toolboxes lying at the bottom of the harbor. Each box contains a grisly trove of human body parts.For Frank, the madman’s clues are a tantalizing puzzle. For Eden and Eric, the case holds chilling links to a scarred childhood—and a murderous mentor named Hades. But the true evil goes beyond the bloody handiwork of a serial killer.

Category: Crime Fiction

Who'll want to read it? Readers of the dark and compelling. A original thriller that will have you spellbound from its atmospheric opening pages to its shocking climax.

Publisher: Random House Books Australia

 Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

The size of this slender book lures you in.. what possible impact could such a story have that can be read cover to cover on one Sunday afternoon. It's been months since I finished it and I still can't stop thinking about it. Extremely funny, often sad - Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill invites you in for a cup of tea and kicks you in the guts. From the point of view of a young writer referred to simply as 'the wife', we are shown short bursts of observation and memory—comic, startling, searing. Daily life, narrative of marriage, parenthood, ageing, introspective questions - how to be the artist. A book I couldn't put down and then forced into the hands of all my friends.





Category: Literary Fiction

Who'll want to read it? Lovers of intense and witty meditations on motherhood, infidelity, and identity.

Point of no return: “My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things. Nabokov didn't even fold his own umbrella. Vera licked his stamps for him.” 

Classic line: So many...

“And that phrase - 'sleeping like a baby.' Some blonde said it blithely on the subway the other day. I wanted to lie down next to her and scream for five hours in her ear.” 

“I bought a warmer coat with many ingenious pockets. You put your hands in all of them.”

“Advice for wives circa 1896: The indiscriminate reading of novels is one of the most injurious habits to which a married woman can be subject. Besides the false views of human nature it will impart … it produces an indifference to the performance of domestic duties, and contempt for ordinary realities.” 

“Her neighbor’s husband fell in love with a girl who served coffee to him every morning. She was twenty-three and wanted to be a dancer or a poet or a physical therapist. When he left his family, his wife said, “Does it matter to you how foolish you look? That all our friends find you ridiculous?” He stood in the doorway, his coat in his hand. “No,” he said. The wife watched her neighbor get fat over the next year. The Germans have a word for that. Kummerspeck. Literally, grief bacon.” 

Publisher: Penguin Random House

 Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom

By the author of The Five People You Meet in Heaven (which I loved), and Tuesdays with Morrie (which I haven't read, but must get around to one day), this book is about three main people: Victor, a man who wants more time; Sarah, a teenager who wants time to stop; and Dor, the first person to count and measure time.

Category:
Adult fiction

Who'll want to read it?
People who like the concept of time, and those who enjoy Mitch Albom's writing style.

Point of no return:
page 4, the last three lines of the prologue:
"Soon Father Time will be free.
To return to Earth.
And finish what he started."

Classic lines:
page 18:
Pass time. Waste time. Kill time. Lose time.
In good time. About time. Take your time. Save time.
A long time. Right on time. Out of time. Mind the time. Be on time. Spare time. Keep time. Stall for time.

page 61:
The pool of voices was formed by Dor's tears, but he was only the first to weep. As mankind grew obsessed with its hours, the sorrow of lost time became a permanent hole in the human heart.

Publisher:
Sphere

Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

Sense of home

The home ownership aspiration of Australians has widely been referred to as 'the great Australian dream'. For higher income households, purchase affordability is an issue of choice rather than access. For those with more modest means, affordability is a more significant issue. Housing provides people with shelter, security, and privacy. Having an adequate and appropriate place to live is fundamental to people's wellbeing.

Improvement to the overall accessibility of appropriate housing for Australians is important in determining whether life in Australia is getting better. Home ownership is a widely held aspiration in Australia, providing security of tenure and long term economic benefits to home owners. Owning a home can also bring social and cultural benefits such as a sense of belonging. For some home owners, the dwelling and the land on which it stands is a major asset, and for many it is their main asset.

As house prices skyrocket, many young Australians are being forced to deal with some pretty tough and depressing questions, like: how do you buy a home when the average price of a house is 10 to 11 times the average wage? Or how do you keep a job when the only place with affordable rent is many hours away? Using the resources of our wonderful library, we think we might just have ticket for the D.I.Y generation.

The Small House Book by Jay Shafer is a rare find. A leader in the small house movement that is challenging western standards Shafer breaks down designing a space for your needs and step by step building instructions accompanied with a beautiful collection of photographs.  The consideration of aesthetics is not lost and as you read on a philosophy of simple becomes more and more clear and appealing, "The happiness we really seek cannot be found by purchasing more space or more stuff. Those who do not recognise what is enough will never have enough". 

Until recently, the issue of over-consumption was conspicuously absent from mainstream green discourse. Bigger is better is certainly the favoured by building financiers and the real estate industry.  "If you do one thing to make your new home more environmentally sound, make it small" says Shafer.

With a recent study in Australia showing that Australians value money spent on experiences rather than material possessions The Small House Book shows smaller spaces not only are cost effective and environmentally sustainable, but also give opportunities to explore other things in life.

"For most Americans, big houses have come to symbolise the good life; but, all symbolism aside, the life these places actually foster in more typically one of drudgery. Mortgage payments can appropriate thirty to forty per cent of a household's income not counting taxes, insurance, or maintenance expenses. When every spare penny is going towards house payments, there is nothing left over for investments, travel, continued education, more time with the kids, or even so much as a minute to relax and enjoy life. At this rate, an oversized house can start to look more like a debtor's prison than a home. " 

Another title we have in the collection Tiny Houses written by Mimi Zeiger, is a book focused on dwellings under 1,000 square feet. Zeiger's book challenges readers to take a look at their own homes and consider how much space they actively use.

Francesc Zamora Mola's 150 Best Sustainable House Ideas features the latest innovations in environmentally friendly home design. From heating and cooling solutions to wind energy systems, solar panelling, thermal glazing, and even Trombe walls, the ideas featured inside are complemented by photographs and architectural plans of gorgeous, sustainable houses around the world. 

Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.

Moon Maps by Dr H.P Wilkins

La Luna

There is something very human about gazing up at the moon.  For thousands of years we have looked up in wonder and watched as it  silently spins in a locked orbit with us, some 384,000 km above. 

Le voyage dans la lune
1902 French Silent Film George Méliès

We have seen ourselves in its reflection, blamed it for our aliments, amused our children with stories of a rabbit, buffalo, green cheese and a man in the moon (and he drinks claret); and even attested to a full moon inducing lunacy in others. It has played muse to great writers, artists, and musicians , and even  been deified.. We have studied, philosophised, and ultimately space raced each other to walk upon its surface - we are old friends. Just ask James Joyce. 

An upcoming full moon on Friday has sent us to the vaults once more to share another printed treasure.  Moon Maps by Dr Hugh Percy Wilkins  is a detailed map of the moon in form suitable for use at the telescope.

 

Moon Maps by H P Wilkins

Dr Wilkins, an internationally renowned selenographer was elected to the British Astronomical Association in 1918 and was Director of its Lunar Section from 1946 to 1956.
Dr Wilkins 300 inch Moon Map is considered by some as the culmination of the art of selenography prior to the space age, and was purchased by NASA prior to their launch. He founded the International Lunar Society and was its first president.

Map of the Moon by Johannes Hevelius(1647)

Selenography is the study of the surface and physical features of the moon. Historically, the principal concern of selenographists (or moon mappers) was the mapping and naming of the lunar maria, craters, mountain ranges, and other features.

The task of selenography was largely finished once high resolution photographs were obtained. We can now easily research images of the moon (Google moon show satellite photographs of the moon) yet this has not made selenography redundant – these maps are still used for reference by scholars and observatories. 

Wilkins beautiful book contains every named formation arranged in alphabetical order with the map section within which it will be found. The maps, as well as the text are bound on separate ring. As a result, any map and any page of the text can be placed flat next to each other and read together at the same time, as though on the same page. This creates a most useful book for use even in the observatory, in dim light, or in the library. 

Moon Maps by H P Wilkins

The drawn detail in the charts is immense - covering nearly the entire surface of the moon - and it is a wondrous map. Altogether, these charts contain over 85,000 objects with many fine details culled from the photographs taken at the Pic-Du-Midi observatory. Obtaining accurate positional measurements for all of these objects was beyond even the unbounded enthusiasm of a dedicated Wilkins!

Neil Armstrong and Dr H P Wilkins 300 inch Moon Map
 at the Royal Geographical Society, London

Whilst we acknowledge that he remained an amateur throughout his observational career, and he was not a trained cartographer, the contribution Dr H.P Wilkins made throughout his life to our knowledge of the lunar surface is tremendous. According to his daughter, the moon was his "whole life". Fittingly, in 1935 a somewhat inconspicuous 38 mile wide crater in the lunar southeast uplands was named in his honour. 

Published by London’s Faber and Faber this title will appeal to lovers of astronomy, illustration, and history as well as anyone wanting to be inspired by the moon or the man who loved mapping it.

Dr Hugh Percy Wilkins

 

Being such a rare book, it is not for loan but can be viewed by request - just phone 4974 5340, or drop into the Information & Research Centre on the First Floor at Newcastle Library.

“It is not likely that any one of us will again know a man who dared to map the whole Moon primarily on the basis of his personal observations” Walter. H. Haas

Visit Newcastle Region Library's Catalogue and Website.