North York Central Library Blog

My very first TPL post, "Beat The Heat And Enjoy The Summer," provided information on how to stay cool during a summer Heat Alert in Toronto.  Toronto has reached and crossed the summer solstice, and this blog offers useful tips (again). 

In celebration of the summer heat upon us, may I suggest some material to enjoy on the warm patio while sipping a cool drink.

Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

This is a (1975) classic children's novel also worth revisiting.  Natalie Babbitt has a knack for writing in rich and decadent detail.  Here are the first two paragraphs from Chapter 1 to inspire readers to share in this wonderful book:

The road that led to Treegap had been trod out long before by a herd of cows who were, to say the least, relaxed. It wandered along in curves and easy angles, swayed off and up in a pleasant tangent to the top of a small hill, ambled down again between fringes of bee-hung clover, and then cut sidewise across a meadow. Here its edges blurred. It widened and seemed to pause, suggesting tranquil bovine picnics: slow chewing and thoughtful contemplation of the infinite. And then it went on again and came at last to the wood. But on reaching the shadows of the first trees, it veered sharply, swung out in a wide arc as if, for the first time, it had reason to think where it was going, and passed around.

On the other side of the wood, the sense of easiness dissolved. The road no longer belonged to the cows. It became, instead, and rather abruptly, the property of people. And all at once the sun was uncomfortably hot, the dust oppressive, and the meager grass along its edges somewhat ragged and forlorn. On the left stood the first house, a square and solid cottage with a touch-me-not appearance, surrounded by grass cut painfully to the quick and enclosed by a capable iron fence some four feet high which clearly said, “Move on—we don’t want you here.” So the road went humbly by and made its way, past cottages more and more frequent but less and less forbidding, into the village. But the village doesn’t matter, except for the jailhouse and the gallows. The first house only is important; the first house, the road, and the wood.

For those who prefer visual imagery, here is the (2002) movie version on DVD:

As I picked up this this book last January, the cold winter scene outside my window disappeared.  I pictured myself running through the hot sun-soaked woods with flies swirling around my brow while looking for a cool spring to drink from–but would that be a prudent decision to make?  The Tuck Family did drink from the eternal spring and may still be living to regret it. 

The power of colourful imagery that stories such as Tuck Everlasting conjure up in the mind is discussed on a June 19, 2012 podcast article called, Fiction:  Reality's Secret Master :

Don’t underestimate the power of the storyteller. His tale may begin with whimsy, but by the end of it he’ll have changed the world you live in. He might even change who you are. In this episode, Julie and Robert examine fiction’s effect on reality.

HowStuffWorks.com houses several online streaming audio podcasts and one I like in particular is called, Stuff To Blow Your Mind with hosts Robert Lamb and Julie Douglas.  The podcast features intriguing and educational topics.  For me, this particular podcast episode on the mind-altering effects of fiction is particularly mindblowing since I enjoy reading fiction. The podcast audio clip is worth listening to:

Southern Comfort: The Garden Districts of New Orleans, 1800-1900 by S. Frederick Starr

Toronto's warm temperatures also bring to mind our Southern neighbours.  This title combines the beautiful architecture of the Garden Districts of New Orleans with the social history from the 19th century. For those who are considering a visit this summer, New Orleans Online provides some handy travel tips.

Route 66 Still Kicks:  Driving America's Main Street by Rick Antonson

For those who prefer to travel by car and take an adventurous journey to experience some American nostalgia, this book will guide you on a journey through Route 66. Here is an excerpt from Google Books:

"You'll never understand America until you've driven Route 66—that's old Route 66—all the way,” a truck driver in California once said to author Rick Antonson. “It's the most famous highway in the world.”

With some determination, grit, and a good sense of direction, one can still find and drive on 90 percent of the original Route 66 today. This travelogue follows Rick and his travel companion Peter along 2,400 miles through eight states from Chicago to Los Angeles as they discover the old Route 66. With surprising and obscure stories about Route 66 personalities like Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck, Al Capone, Salvador Dali, Dorothea Lange, Cyrus Avery (the Father of Route 66), the Harvey Girls, Mickey Mantle, and Bobby Troup (songwriter of “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66”), Antonson's fresh perspective reads like an easy drive down a forgotten road: winding, stopping now and then to mingle with the locals and reminisce about times gone by, and then getting stuck in the mud, sucked into its charms. Rick mixes hilarious anecdotes of happenstance travel with the route's difficult history, its rise and fall in popularity, and above all, its place in legend.

The author has committed part of his book's proceeds to the preservation work of the National Route 66 Federation.

[Retrieved June 21, 2012 from http://books.google.ca/books/about/Route_66_Still_Kicks.html?id=iwFxuQAACAAJ&redir_esc=y%5D

Next Avenue (PBS) has recently published an (June 14, 2012) article on Route 66 called, Still Getting Kicks on Route 66:  The Mother Road Provides a glimpse of past American Life that is worth reading.  HowStuffWorks.com has more information (audio podcasts, videos, and written journal articles) on Route 66 available through the Route 66 road sign portal below:

My Ruby Slippers:  The Road Back to Kansas by Tracy Seeley

As Route 66 passes through Kansas along its way from Chicago to Los Angeles, a visual journey would not be complete without including an internal journey to reconcile with the past.  Tracy Seeley embarked on the latter to find her way "back to Kansas" in her (2012) book. 

 Sure, there’s no place like home—but what if you can’t really pinpoint where home is? By the time she was nine, Tracy Seeley had lived in seven towns and thirteen different houses.  Her father’s dreams of movie stardom, stoked by a series of affairs, kept the family on edge, and on the move, until he up and left.  Thirty years later, settled in what seems like a charmed life in San Francisco, a diagnosis of cancer and the betrayal of a lover shake Seeley to her roots—roots she is suddenly determined to search out.  My Ruby Slippers tells the story of that search, the tale of a woman with an impassioned if vague sense of mission: to find the meaning of home.

The above excerpt was taken from her own blog based on this title:

We hope you will venture out on some personal journeys of your own and enjoy some cool reads (and podcasts) along the way.