Orem Library

On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, on which survival is a daily struggle, eccentric Mr. Watts, the only white man left after the other teachers flee, spends his day reading to the local children from Charles Dickens's classic "Great Expectations."

Captain Barnacle Black Ear, baddest of the Buccaneer Bunnies, is ashamed of his book-loving son, Henry, until the day a great storm approaches.

Roger Mifflin is part pixie, part sage, part noble savage, and all God's creature. With his traveling book wagon named Parnassus, he moves through the New England countryside of 1915 on an itinerant mission of enlightenment. Mifflin's delight in books and authors is infectious--with his singular philosophy and bright eyes, he comes to represent the heart and soul of the book world. But a certain spirited spinster, disgruntled with her life, may have...

The author shares personal essays on diverse topics ranging from literary pets and cursive writing to book inscriptions and the pleasures of science fiction conventions.

A young bear who is fascinated by the mysterious marks he sees on paper finds a friend when a kind woman reads to him.

Abner the duck and Ian the prairie dog are stuck sideways on the book's pages, and they will need the reader's help to set things right for storytime.--

A delightful collection of essays exploring reading and writing. "In the Margins" contains Elena Ferrante's latest reflections on literature, and the works and authors that have influenced her throughout her career.

Known for her popular blog, "The Book Whisperer," Donalyn Miller says she has yet to meet a child she couldn't turn into a reader. No matter how far behind Miller's students might be when they reach her 6th grade classroom, they end up reading an averageof 40 to 50 books a year. She shares her teaching methods and includes a dynamite list of recommended "kid lit" that helps parents and teachers find the books that students really like to read.

A raccoon and his friends go to great lengths to make sure they will always have a library from which to borrow books.

Perfectly balanced between humor and erudition, Ex Libris establishes Anne Fadiman as one of our finest contemporary essayists. Anne Fadiman is—by her own admission—the sort of person who learned about sex from her father's copy of Fanny Hill, whose husband buys her 19 pounds of dusty books for her birthday, and who once found herself poring over her roommate's 1974 Toyota Corolla manual because it was the only written material in the apartment...