At this late date in life, on the other side of a half century, it is really rare for me to stay up late reading a book, especially a children's book. Even rarer to find out it is very late after putting down the book!  But that is exactly what happened with Okay for now by Gary D.

    For this column, part two of the staff picks, I sent out a message to JDL staff, asking about their favorite children's chapter books.  I was delighted to receive so many replies! This column morphed into two installments, one from the older generation and one from the younger--with some others mixed in and around. This week, it's time for youth--and some new stories.
    Kate Burns of the Parma branch recommends The wonderful flight to the mushroom planet, an early science fiction book by Eleanor Cameron which has a whole series.

    For this column, I sent out a message to JDL staff, asking about their favorite children's chapter books.  I was delighted to receive more than a dozen replies! As the emails streamed in, I began to notice a trend.  The librarians of my age (40+) often selected certain series, while the younger generation chose different titles.  Quite naturally, the series reflect the popular authors of the times.

    Reluctance probably describes my attitude toward the movie We were soldiers as my family began watching it.  I dislike violence in movies, especially gratuitous, meaningless violence.  But gratuitous couldn't ever describe this movie, even though it is rated R and contains a large amount of very graphic death and dismemberment.

   The new Crossley ID Guide by Richard Crossley is a unique new bird guide.  This book uses new digital photography techniques to create a montage for each bird species.