Visit the Edenvale Branch Library Community Room to attend our Reading to Furry Friends program for children.   At this program, we will pair children who want to improve their reading skills with literacy assistance dogs (and their trainers) from Furry Friends for one-on-one reading fun.   Children naturally feel comfortable around dogs and other pets.    By making the most of this relationship, parents and teachers can improve literacy skills and encourage reading.  Join the fun!   This program takes place on the second Thursday of each month at 3:00 PM.

Read Emily's Fortune for an exciting story about eight-year-old Emily, who is left all alone, bereft of any family except for Uncle, Victor, of whom she is afraid and with whom she would never live.  This is her story of how she runs away from Uncle Victor to find her Aunt Hilda, who lives in Redbud.  She meets a fellow traveler, Jackson, who is also alone, and together they travel across the U.S on a hair-raising ride of train and stagecoach to her Aunt Hilda.  I highly recommend this title to children who are assigned historical fiction or California or Western fiction.  The book is for children grades 3 and above.

Another favorite historical fiction along the same vein is Barbara Brooks Wallace's Peppermints in the Parlor.  Taking place in San Francisco, Emily, newly orphaned,  finds her aunt and uncle's house on Sugar Hill Hall strangely changed.  All is not well, there is evil lurking around every corner.  This novel will work for either a mystery or a historical fiction novel assignment.  This novel is a little longer than Emily's Fortune and a little more difficult to read, but it is just as suspenseful and fun to read.  Be prepared that the beginning of this story is a little slow as it builds up suspense, but both stories are equally well-written and provide insight to the California West in late 19th century America.  I recommend both.  Peppermints in the Parlor is for children 4th grade and up.

Princess Ka’iulani, starring Q'orianka Kilcher, shows glimpses of the adolescence and early adulthood of Victoria Ka’iulani Kalaninuiahilapalapa Kawēkiu i Lunalilo Cleghorn, the last princess of the Kingdom of Hawaii.   Princess Ka’iulani was daughter of Princess Likelike, from the the House of Kalākaua, and Archibald Scott Cleghorn, a Scottish businessman. 

Iron Jawed Angels, starring Hilary Swank as Alice Stokes Paul, Frances O'Connor as Lucy Burns and Anjelica Huston as Carrie Chapman Catt, is about women’s rights activists who worked hard to influence the United States government to grant women the right to vote.  

Mona Lisa Smile, starring Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst and Julia Stiles, is about a professor (Julia Roberts) who teaches art history at Wellesley College in the 1950’s.   Although the female college students had more rights than their mothers and grandmothers did, they still lived in a world where women were expected to behave a certain way.

San Jose Public Library has many other movies that you may be interested in.   Come on by, and visit!    Any DVD that you check out from one SJPL location may be returned to any other SJPL location.

Do you enjoy reading and discussing what you read? If the answer is yes, the Edenvale Book Club is the club for you!

You are welcome to join us at fireplace area of the Edenvale Branch Library on Wednesday, March 7, 2012 at 6:00 pm. This month, the Edenvale Book Club will discuss The Dancer Upstairs by Nicholas Shakespeare. Everyone is welcome.