Festive family fun at the library

Dur­ing the next few weeks with the hol­i­days and all that they entail crowd­ing in on us, the children’s staff at the Delaware County Dis­trict Library has put together a ter­rific line-up of pro­grams for kids and fam­i­lies, to pro­vide you with a bit of respite and your chil­dren a sat­is­fy­ing library expe­ri­ence. The library’s reg­u­lar story time sched­ule is sus­pended in the last two weeks of Decem­ber, but these pro­grams are a great alternative.

At the Delaware (Main) Library, “Princess and Brave Knight Cel­e­bra­tion Fam­ily Pro­gram” will be held at 6:30 p.m. Tues­day. Local author Rick Daley will read from his book, The Man in the Cin­der Clouds, at 6:30 p.m. Thurs­day, and his book will be avail­able for pur­chase and auto­graph­ing, too.

At the Orange Branch, the “Super Mario Broth­ers Party” will be Mon­day; the child-parent book club will meet on Tues­day to dis­cuss Beezus and Romona by Bev­erly Cleary; the “Hol­i­day Hop Fes­ti­val” will be Wednes­day; the LEGO Club “Hol­i­day Bonanza!” will be Thurs­day; the cup­cake dec­o­rat­ing work­shop for teens will be on Mon­day, Dec. 19; and the DCDL Cin­e­math­eque will screen “Home Alone” on Mon­day, Dec. 19. All these pro­grams begin at 6:30 p.m.

The Ostran­der Branch will offer a “Pajama Party Fam­ily Night” at 6:30 p.m. Tues­day; the screen­ing of “Mars Needs Moms” at “Movies @ the Ost” will be at 1 p.m. Wednes­day, Dec. 21; “Game Away Day” will begin at 3 p.m. Wednes­day, Dec. 28; and “Teen Gam­ing Night” will be at 6 p.m. Thurs­day, Dec. 29.

All pro­grams are free. There is a com­plete list­ing of them on the library’s web­site, delawarelibrary.org, and they are also listed in the quar­terly cal­en­dar, “Check It Out,” avail­able at all library locations.

Who was Sadie Hawkins?

As noted in World Book Ency­clo­pe­dia, Al Capp (1909–1979) was an Amer­i­can car­toon­ist who cre­ated the comic strip “Li’l Abner.” The strip, which ran from 1934 to 1977, made Capp one of the best-known car­toon­ists of his era. “Li’l Abner” cen­tered on the antics of Li’l Abner Yokum, his fam­ily, and other inhab­i­tants of a fic­tional hill­billy town called “Dog­patch U.S.A.” The comic strip was one of the first to treat mod­ern soci­ety and pol­i­tics satir­i­cally. “Li’l Abner” con­tributed sev­eral ideas to Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture, most notably Sadie Hawkins Day, named after one of the char­ac­ters in the strip. On this day, girls asked boys out on dates, typ­i­cally to a dance, revers­ing the tra­di­tional gen­der roles.

Is Alice Cooper the name of the singer or the band?

Actu­ally, both. The band was first called the Ear­wigs, then Nazz, before set­tling on Alice Cop­per. The name is said to have been inspired by their Ouija Board, which put them in con­tact with a spirit named Alice Cooper. When lead singer, Vin­cent Furnier, went solo, he took the name for him­self. I found this infor­ma­tion in Rolling Stone Ency­clo­pe­dia of Rock and Roll.

What is the Semi Colon Club?

The Semi-Colon Club, accord­ing to Ohio Trivia, was an infor­mal orga­ni­za­tion of tal­ented writ­ers in Cincin­nati dur­ing the mid-19th cen­tury. Har­riet Beecher Stowe was a mem­ber of the club while liv­ing in the city from 1832 until 1850. Stowe’s expe­ri­ences in Cincin­nati and her time in the club were major fac­tors in her work Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

If you have a ques­tion that you would like to see answered in this col­umn, mail it to Mary Jane San­tos, Delaware County Dis­trict Library, 84 E. Win­ter St., Delaware, OH 43015, or call 740–362-3861. You can also email your ques­tions by vis­it­ing delawarelibrary.org or directly to Mary Jane at mjsantos@delawarelibrary.org. No mat­ter how you con­tact us, we’re always glad you asked!

Posted by Mary Santos on Dec 10 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.