Effingham Community Library

Click on the button below to see a wish list that I have set up for the library! If you feel like giving us a present for Christmas, this would be the perfect place to shop!

B-2 Stealth Bomber

Air War In Vietnam

Secret Superpower Aircraft: Spy Planes

Secret Superpower Aircraft: Fighters

Secret Superpower: Bombers

Over the Jungles, Over the Sands

Billy Mitchell & Hap Arnold

Mig Alley

Forward Air Controllers

Curtis Lemay & Russ Dougherty

Wings Across the World

Air Rescue

Jimmy Doolittle & Jimmy Stewart

Joe Tinker, Our own Joe Tinker!!, President Teddy Roosevelt, the Wright Brothers, and Henry Ford—what do they have in common? Their stories can be found in the book, “ America 1908” by Jim Rasenberger.

1908 was a fascinating and exciting year of change and hope. Mr. Rasenberger believes that 1908 maybe the most important year of the 20^th Century due to the new technological advances that changed America and American lives. He writes with excitement of the dawn of flight, the race to the North Pole, the invention of the Model T, and the making of a modern nation.

He is a talented writer that grabs your attention immediately by relating the events that happened New Year’s Day and the intrigue stays with you as he reveals the events of 2008 in chronological order, month by month ending on New Year’s Eve.

1908 was an election year, and the larger than life Teddy Roosevelt occupied the White House. Our current president and Teddy share several similarities and yet there is sharp contrasts between them and their presidencies. Teddy was popular enough to choose his successor, William Howard Taft. Teddy reprimanded him for playing golf as it would make him appear to be an elitist. Sound familiar?

Mr. Rasenberger relates the fierce competition between the Wright brothers and the French in their attempts to prove that their flying machines could stay in the air for a substantial amount of time and land successfully. There were several successes and a few failures before the Wright Brothers won. The stakes were high as the winner would dominate the air and make their country the leader of the modern world.

Even though Joe Tinker and the Chicago Cubs’ attempt to win the World Series was a side show, it was a story that touched the common man’s heart. One of the games of the Chicago Cubs and the New York Giants became very controversial due to a bonehead error committed by Fred Merkel. At the replay of that pennant game, most of the excitement was on the outside of the field because of the unruly and some violent fans and unscrupulous people selling more seats then were available. Despite all the hoopla the Cubs won the pennant and then went on to win the World Series, which was the last time they won it.

1908 was an exciting and hopeful time to be alive, yet the country was recovering from the 1907 panic and there was much unemployment and the times was hard for most people so the year was marked with home grown terrorism. The anarchists’ bombings were causing trouble in New York and Chicago . Night Riders in Tennessee and Kentucky was taking the law in their own hands and dealing out rough justice in their fight against the tobacco trust. In their quest to destroy the tobacco trust and to raise the price of tobacco a few cents a pound they terrorized their neighbors, who signed contracts with the trust. The night riders caused trouble in other regions, too. Often they vented their rage against the blacks by lynching them.

In Abraham Lincoln’s home town, Springfield , Illinois , a race riot raged for several days because a white woman falsely accused a black man of raping her. The riots left destruction, death, and virtually destroyed the thriving black community.

Human nature is much the same as today. There were those who rose to the occasion to make the world a better place and others who took out their frustration out on the innocents. And then there were those who ignorance exceeded their optimism like the organizers of the Greatest Race.

Until then the automobile was just a newfangled contraption for the rich until Henry Ford’s decision in 1908 to build a car that a working man could afford. However, the main focus that year was on the 6 automobiles representing 6 countries competing in the great race of 20,000 miles around the world. Their optimistism was bedeviled by their ignorance. The race started in New York City and it was suppose to cross the continental United States , Alaska , Siberia and Europe ending in Paris . You can guess how that worked out. You have to read the book to learn how the race was completed.

The book jacket describes 2008 as a breathtaking ride through the highs and the lows of one spectacular, pivotal year in American history. It goes on to say “as the earth turned toward the sun on the first morning of 1908, human flight remained, for most Americans, in the realm of myth and dream. Before darkness fell on the New Year’s Eve at the end of that year, the Wright brothers would be worldwide celebrities, heralded at the first people in all of human history to conquer the sky.”

It was the year Teddy Roosevelt sent the Great White Fleet on a voyage around the globe, Robert Peary began his courageous dash to the North Pole, six automobiles left Times Square on the epic twenty-thousand-mile race to Paris and Henry Ford introduced an oddly shaped new Automobile called the Model T.

It was time of boundless innovation—everything was bigger, better, faster and greater than ever before. In New York and Chicago banks of high-speed elevators zipped through vertical shafts in the tallest building on earth. Pneumatic tubes whisked mail between far-flung post offices in minutes. Women cleaned their homes with amazing new device called vacuums. And as American engineers cut a fifty-mile canal through the Isthmus of Panama, the very air buzzed with imagined potential of new technology including a “a portable wireless telephone” that would someday allow people to talk while they walked.

Meanwhile, the New York Giants battled the Chicago Cubs in one of the most thrilling seasons in baseball history, and reluctant William Howard Taft was elected the 27^th president of the United States .”

Check out “ America 1908” at your Effingham Community Library to discover all the exciting details that make 1908 a year of triumphant and failures. This is a fun read and a must read to see how far we have come as a people and a nation.

The Effingham Community Library is calling all teddy bears and their lovers to participate in the teddy bear display in honor of Teddy Roosevelt’s 150^th birthday, October 27^th. Patrons young and young at heart are invited to bring their teddy bears to the library so that everyone can enjoy them. If you want to bring an antique teddy bear, don’t worry that it will be manhandled. The library promises to protect all the bears from being mauled. You can bring them any time that the library is open, which is Monday and Thurs.12:00 to 4:00 p.m., Wed. 9 to 12-1:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. and Sat. 9:00 to 1:00 p.m.

The International Loving Touch Foundation is one of the first established training programs of infant massage in the world. ILTF is an independent organization that provides training’s, resources and classes in the field of infant massage. Loving Touch® educates individuals and groups in a 3-day evidence-based hands-on certification training, known as the CIMI® (Certified Infant Massage Instructor) Training Program.

It is never too late to begin massage… Whether your baby is a newborn or several years old, massage can bring immediate and lasting results. Expectant parents who take infant massage instruction in advance are ready to begin this wonderful loving touch right from the start. Infant Massage is a very old parenting practice that has been modernized and is in active use today supported by evidence-based research. There is recorded history of the use and practice of infant massage amongst many different cultures around the globe. It is only in the past 30 years that infant massage has begun to appear in the western world.

Mark your calender for October 14, 16, 21 and 23 for the classes. They are FREE and will be 6-7 PM. Please call Mikki Scott 913-426-1710 or 913-367-1442 for more information or to register. If no one answers, please leave your name, the age of your child and your telephone number. You must commit to attending all four one hour sessions in order to register.

This is not just for parents, this is for the whole community! Bring your grandchild, niece, nephew or baby doll to see how it is done! Also you may come and just watch also!

We have some real exciting events that are going to be coming to the library! Don’t forgot the Effingham Reading Cub Club. If you are 12 and under sign up now and receive your card. For every visit that you CHECK out books, you can get a punch on your card and after 5 visits you get to a trip to the treasure box! After 10 you get a bigger prize! Sign up soon and start collecting your punches!

And real quick we are actually going to be doing what we have talked about for a long time: AUTOMATE!!! The library will be a quick hive of activity while this process is going on, but it will be worth it!

And don’t forget the Halloween party on the 29th. Adults are more than welcome to come and see the kids, listen to the stories and just socialize!

Amy

Beginning Monday September 8, we will have an afternoon story time. The  time is 2:00 PM. This is a trial time, so we will move time and dates around as needed to best serve the community.

The story time will also be told on Saturdays mornings! So starting September 13th at 10:00 AM, come and join us for a story and small craft project. All Ages are welcomed, but parents must be in attendance if the child is 8 and under, unless there is a sibling of 14 years and above.

The Children’s non-fiction collection recently recieved a HUGE boost thanks to certain individuals in the community!

Steve Caplinger heard the call of the books and talked with people in the community and they donated to the cause! As soon I recieve the picture I will place it on the web site. Here is the list of donors and we appreciate them so much. If you see them around, give them all a big thanks!

Becker-Dyer-Stanton Funeral Home

Caplingers, LLC

DJ’s Food and Fuel

Exchange Bank

Brian and Sabrina Handke

Eugene Hegarty

With their help we bought 54 non-fiction books for the kids of our community! I am sure we have a book that will fit your child’s taste in reading. We have books from puppies to bugs, and we have some on the extreme sports!

Take a moment to stop and see them as they are now displayed in our library at the table for a short time before they aer placed on the shelf! BUT you can still check them out!!!!

Amy Parton - Director

We are getting new books on the shelves of your library at a record pace!

We have the Kim Vogul Sawyer Blessings.

Trina Muller has always had a passion for healing abandoned and injured animals. Her parents encourage this tenderness towards God’s creatures until Trina confesses her dream of going to veterinary college. Why can’t she accept that God’s will is for her to be a wife and mother? Graham Ortmann loves Trina, but how can he possibly marry someone who is determined to go against the dictates of the Old Order Mennonite fellowship? Trina can never be happy if she is outside of God’s will for her life. But which life will she choose-one with Graham or one in pursuit of her heart’s calling?

Also new on the shelf is Northpointe Chalet by Debra White Smith:

Debra White Smith (more than 1 million books in print) presents book #4 in her popular Austen series. Based on Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Northpointe Chalet focuses on the scatterbrained but independent Kathy Moore who opens a coffee shop in a small town in Colorado.

When Ron and his sister, Liza, come by, Ron is attracted to Kathy. Oblivious to romance, Kathy enjoys their friendship. Kathy’s brother, Sam, and Liza start dating, and naturally the four of them socialize. Then Ben arrives, and there’s instant rapport with Kathy…to Ron’s chagrin and Liza and Sam’s ire.

In Kathy’s life, the line between the mysteries she reads and reality sometimes blurs. Discovering that Ben’s mother died mysteriously, Kathy investigates. Tension mounts as suspicion interferes with her relationship with Ben.

Set in a world where books are more fun than television, more serious than the CIA, and more important than proper diet and exercise, the Thursday Next novels continue to grow in popularity-which is a good sign. In the fifth novel of the series (after Something Rotten, ***1/2 Nov/Dec 2004), Jasper Fforde again shows off his delicious British wit (and occasionally heavy-handed use of puns) in another zany romp. If you’re already a fan, First Among Sequels is sure to thrill. If you’re new to the series, you might as well dive right in. Either way, you’ll soon have a new appreciation of Henry Longfellow.