SUMMER OUTDOORS...FUN!!

GEYSER FOOTBALL...
Dunk the Football in water and THOW! Flies wet and wild...
Sprays water like CRAZY in a 10 foot Diameter!! Soft easy spirals...
GET SOACKED have fun and stay cool during the summer!!

HANDLE WITH CARE by JODI PICOULT

Every expectant parent will tell you that they don't want a perfect baby, just a healthy one. Charlotte and Sean O'Keefe would have asked for a healthy baby, too, if they'd been given the choice. Instead, their lives are made up of sleepless nights, mounting bills, the pitying stares of "luckier" parents, and maybe worst of all, the what-ifs. What if their child had been born healthy? But it's all worth it because Willow is, well, funny as it seems, perfect. She's smart as a whip, on her way to being as pretty as her mother, kind, brave, and for a five-year-old an unexpectedly deep source of wisdom. Willow is Willow, in sickness and in health.
Everything changes, though, after a series of events forces Charlotte and her husband to confront the most serious what-ifs of all. What if Charlotte should have known earlier of Willow's illness? What if things could have been different? What if their beloved Willow had never been born? To do Willow justice, Charlotte must ask herself these questions and one more. What constitutes a valuable life?
Emotionally riveting and profoundly moving, Handle with Care brings us into the heart of a family bound by an incredible burden, a desperate will to keep their ties from breaking, and, ultimately, a powerful capacity for love. Written with the grace and wisdom she's become famous for, beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult offers us an unforgettable novel about the fragility of life and the lengths we will go to protect it.

Get Creative with Martha Stewart

For nearly 20 years, home crafters have turned to the pages of Martha Stewart Living for all kinds of crafts projects, each presented in the magazine’s inimitable style. Now, the best of those projects, including step-by-step instructions and full-color photographs, have been collected into a single encyclopedia.

Organized by topic from A to Z, Martha Stewart’s Encyclopedia of Crafts contains complete instructions and brief histories for more than 30 techniques, detailed descriptions of the necessary tools and materials, and easy-to-copy templates. Martha and her team of crafts editors guide readers through each subject, from botanical pressing and decoupage to rubber stamping and wreaths, with characteristic clarity and unparalleled attention to detail.

Crafters of all skill and experience levels will appreciate the many variations presented for each technique. For example, candlemaking presents a comprehensive array of poured, rolled, and cutout candles, including instructions for making your own one-of-a-kind rubber candle molds, floating candles, sand candles, and more. Each craft in the book takes on charming new dimensions with innovations that could come only from the team behind Martha Stewart Living.

Pinkalicious, Purplicious........Goldilicious????

Being Pinkalicious is pinkatastic, especially when she's accompanied by her pet unicorn, Goldilicious. Goldie is a roller-skating, kite-flying, high-jumping unicorn who will protect Pinkalicious from the evil wizardry of her little brother, Peter. Together, Pinkalicious and Goldilicious can conquer anything!

Shanghai Girls

In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia, a city of great wealth and glamour, the home of millionaires and beggars, gangsters and gamblers, patriots and revolutionaries, artists and warlords. Thanks to the financial security and material comforts provided by their father’s prosperous rickshaw business, twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives. Though both sisters wave off authority and tradition, they couldn’t be more different: Pearl is a Dragon sign, strong and stubborn, while May is a true Sheep, adorable and placid. Both are beautiful, modern, and carefree . . . until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth and that in order to repay his debts he must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from California to find Chinese brides.

As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city, Pearl and May set out on the journey of a lifetime, one that will take them through the Chinese countryside, in and out of the clutch of brutal soldiers, and across the Pacific to the shores of America. In Los Angeles they begin a fresh chapter, trying to find love with the strangers they have married, brushing against the seduction of Hollywood, and striving to embrace American life even as they fight against discrimination, brave Communist witch hunts, and find themselves hemmed in by Chinatown’s old ways and rules.

Nancy Drew & the Judge

While introducing his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotamayor, President Barack Obama pointed out the judge's fondness for the Nancy Drew detective series.

That's a ringing endorsement from the U.S. president on the 80th anniversary of the teen sleuth, who now has over 200 titles in print from Grosset & Dunlap, Simon & Schuster, and graphic novel publisher Papercutz. The detective joins a number of other authors on the illustrious Barack Obama Book Club.

"Judge Sotomayor's interest in the law was sparked as a young girl by reading the Nancy Drew series. And that when she was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 8, she was informed that people with diabetes can't grow up to be police officers or private investigators like Nancy Drew. In essence, she was told she'd have to scale back her dreams."

Summer Reading for Kids

Random House has a very interesting summer reading list this year full of titles I wouldn't have thought of. Take a look.

http://www.randomhouse.com/highschool/summerreading09.html?ref=unshelved_may

Poetry Thursday

Poetry, like the moon, does not advertise anything… The success of the poem is determined, not by how much the poet felt in writing it, but by how much the reader feels in reading it.
-- John Ciardi --

Getting Ready for Graduation

Defining a compelling new product category, ThemeNaps™ are an innovative collection of napkins folded into a patented shape to distinctively celebrate holidays, life events, everyday occasions, and more.

Uniquely, these smartly designed napkins can stand to serve as
table decor!

ThemeNaps are proudly made in the U.S.A. from eco-friendly 100% recycled tissue and FDA-approved food grade inks.

I'm always looking for something new and easy to add uniqueness to my entertaining. These definately fit the bill.
Kathi

Food of a Younger Land

In the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt offered work and self-respect to millions of people through his New Deal Program. The Federal Writers Project was part of this initiative and “America Eats” was chosen as the topic to chronicle the eating habits, traditions and struggles of local people. The country was divided into five sections and anyone who could write was offered pay for manuscripts. Zora Neale Huston, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, and others who were not writers, but could type, were encouraged to participate. Unfortunately, World War II began before the project could be finished, so incomplete and unedited manuscripts were stored in the Library of Congress, forgotten for decades. Kurlansky has taken these essays, recipes, anecdotes and photographs and has completed the project as intended. A remarkable piece of Americana; a must for historians and foodies. – Sue Fleming, Riverhead, $27.95

Shred It Day

Fig Garden Village will be the host site for the Central Valley Community Bank "Shred" Day. This is the perfect opportunity for the community to clean out their files and shred confidential documents they no longer need. We are happy to be able to provide the community with this convenient service while building traffic and exposure to all of the tenants at Fig Garden Village.

The Shred It truck will be located in the back northeast parking lot between Belana and Whole Foods on Tuesday, May 26. The first 3 file-sized boxes are free, all additional boxes are $3.00 each.

If you have documents that you would like to have shredded, here are some important details you will need to consider:

Acceptable items: Paper, cardstock, file folders, Window envelopes, transparencies, plastic cards, staples, and paperclips.

Items to avoid: Binders, binder clips, hanging folders, food items, or any product that is non-bending.

If you have additional questions, please call the Shred-it company directly at (559) 256-2303.

There Are Cats In This Book

There are cats in this book, by Viviane Schwarz, ages 3-6

A book for cat lovers everywhere and their children. This fun, new, interactive lift-the-flap book will keep you entertained for hours. Three little cats spend the story doing what cats do: napping under a blanket, playing with yarn and wanting some fish. The difference in this book is you as the reader get to interact with them. The cats ask you to turn the pages, throw some yarn to them, and pillow fight as well. Each flap that you lift changes the scene and brings a new reaction from the cats. Praise to Viviane Schwarz for bringing something new to a familiar genre.

The Book Thief

David Rosenfelt

David Rosenfelt is one of our favorite mystery writers. Enjoy this video meet the author and hear about his books.

Lucky Girl by Mei-Ling Hopgood

In a true story of family ties, journalist Mei-Ling Hopgood, one of the first wave of Asian adoptees to arrive in America, comes face to face with her past when her Chinese birth family suddenly requests a reunion after more than two decades.

In 1974, a baby girl from Taiwan arrived in America, the newly adopted child of a loving couple in Michigan. Mei-Ling Hopgood had an all-American upbringing, never really identifying with her Asian roots or harboring a desire to uncover her ancestry. She believed that she was lucky to have escaped a life that was surely one of poverty and misery, to grow up comfortable with her doting parents and brothers.

Then, when she's in her twenties, her birth family comes calling. Not the rural peasants she expected, they are a boisterous, loving, bossy, complicated middle-class family who hound her daily by phone, fax, and letter, in a language she doesn't understand, until she returns to Taiwan to meet them. As her sisters and parents pull her into their lives, claiming her as one of their own, the devastating secrets that still haunt this family begin to emerge. Spanning cultures and continents, Lucky Girl brings home a tale of joy and regret, hilarity, deep sadness, and great discovery as the author untangles the unlikely strands that formed her destiny.

Review from Algonquin Books

A interesting memoir written with a journalists eye. Full of family and history and culture.

Kathi

Buy Indie Day

BUY INDIE DAY

May 1st has been declared Buy Indie Day.

The idea: buy one book—paperback, hardcover, audiobook, whatever you want!—at an independent bookstore near you.

I think writer Kevin Guilfoile said it well when he posted: "There's an opportunity here to make something very cool happen—near simultaneous, informal meet-ups of readers and writers in independent bookstores all over the country—and it can happen with practically no effort at all."

You can RSVP, invite friends and discuss with other indie shoppers on Buy Indie Day's Facebook page, and find an indie bookstore near you on the Indie Store Finder map.

Where you will be buying indie on May 1st?