Rachel Lloyd has a dual mission:  to empower girls, who, like herself, have been controlled and sold by traffickers, and to challenge misconceptions of popular culture glorifying pimping and teen prostitution.  In Girls Like Us, Lloyd alternates between telling her own story of abuse and sexual exploitation, and describing her work with GEMS (Girls Educational and Mentoring Service), the organization she founded in New York City to work with girls ages 12–24 forced into the sex trade. Here she talks about her work in an interview with  Rachel Lloyd.

Recently the San Jose Public Library featured an interesting web resource called Statistic Brain. This website has statistics on a wide range of topics. Partners in Reading looked at the numbers for people in the U. S. and throughout the world who lack literacy.

Some of the appalling numbers are that almost a quarter of the population in this country reads below the 5th grade level and that almost 20% of high school graduates have troubles reading. Another shocker is that 63% of inmates don't read well. There is a strong connection between limited literacy and poor health, crime, and poverty, among many other problems that our society faces.

Statistic Brain also has data on the difference that a high school graduate will earn annually compared to a high school dropout - $14,117.

We encourage you to take a look and also to join Partners in Reading to help adults in San Jose read and write better. Orientation and training start on September 19th, 2012. Please call Partners in Reading at (408) 808-2361 for more information.

Mary Ann Winkowski is "the real life Ghost Whisperer and consultant on the top 30 CBS show Ghost Whisperer."  She discussed about how she discovered her gift: she can only see the spirits who linger around and don't go to the Light, then she helps them to go into the Light.  She got trained by her grandmother on how to help them.  She cannot see the ones who have crossed over to the Light.  Even if the ghost speaks a foreign language, she is still able to understand what the ghost is saying.

In When Ghosts Speak, the author brought out to light some truths about ghosts to help us understand more about earthbound spirits: 

- The spirit attends its own funeral.

- Ghosts are not ugly or scary as Hollywood movies portrayed; they look normal like the rest of us; they still have desires which they cannot satisfy because they don't have a body anymore.  These desires include going to a movie, going to see a show, and/or drinking alcoholic beverages.

- Why some spirits stay behind:  some are still attached to materials such as a beautiful vacation home they once had, jewelry, or cars; a spirit who once was famous at a work place such as Hollywood and is still attached to that work place; spirits who used to have a fun work place and still want to perform an old job such as singing a romantic song on stage; some spirits want to seek revenge or pursue justice; some spirits are nosy and don't want to leave; and some are jealous lovers and want to follow the love life of the one they left behind.

- Young spirits are different;  spirits of young children rarely come back.  They are not attached.  They don't have greed.

- Ghosts stay after unnatural deaths, such as in cases of murders and suicides.

- Pets are loyal, even after death, they still come back, and hang around their master.

- Evil spirits are rare, but they are real.  Even spirits of "bad" people-murderers, rapists, pedophiles, etc.-are welcome into the Light when they die.

- Dark Spirits are evil, they "are not of the Light", they "do not come from the Light.'  They were never human.   Black magic (dark witchcraft, Ouija board process, satanism) brings back Dark Spirits, if not performed correctly.  The author advises:  do not dabble in black arts, do not play with Ouija boards of any type, do not perform spells intended to summon a spirit to grant you greater power or wealth or fame.

In the last chapter, "Living with Ghosts", Mary Ann Winkowski discussed about how people attract earthbound spirits, how to identify spirits around us, how to deal with eartbound spirits or how to protect ourselves from their influence.

 In addition to being the first American woman in space, Sally Ride was
 an accomplished author of astronomy books for children. You can check out
 the juvenile non-fiction written by Ride and her collaborators in the SJPL catalog.