Help the Delaware County District Library win $5K

Do you want to help the Delaware County Dis­trict Library win $5,000? All you need is access to the Inter­net (and there are dozens of com­put­ers at the library’s branches with free Inter­net access) and the will­ing­ness to nom­i­nate the library in the LEGO DUPLO “Read! Build! Play!” initiative.

LEGO DUPLO and the Asso­ci­a­tion for Library Ser­vices to Chil­dren (ALSC-a divi­sion of the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion) have joined hands to cel­e­brate and sup­port local libraries. The most nom­i­nated library in the “Read! Build! Play!” project receives $5,000 for books and sup­plies. The top 200 libraries receive a spe­cial LEGO DUPLO Read! Build! Play! toolkit chock full of cut­ting edge, early lit­er­acy pro­gram­ming that com­bines preschool books with a ver­sa­tile col­lec­tion of DUPLO bricks.

The library hosts and spon­sors LEGO Clubs and some of the cre­ations that our tal­ented young­sters design are amaz­ing. In the past, they have cre­ated LEGO bugs, cities, planes, trains, auto­mo­biles, zoo crea­tures and art pieces, and there are sev­eral LEGO pro­grams planned for the upcom­ing months. Kids will be chal­lenged to cre­ate bridges, food, mon­sters and Angry Birds with LEGOs this fall, and I can’t wait to see what fan­tas­tic crea­tures they come up with.

If we win the LEGO DUPLO chal­lenge, we will be able to add hun­dreds of LEGO and DUPLO blocks to our stock so dozens more chil­dren can join in the fun.

To nom­i­nate the library, visit delawarelibrary.org, click on “Sup­port Us,” and then click on “LEGO Give­away Pro­gram.” Fol­low the prompts on the next page to add your vote. You can vote every day, and some­times even more than once a day. The con­test is open until Oct. 1, so please vote early and vote often. Thank you in advance for your support.

Where does the expres­sion “Be there with bells on” come from?

Like many old expres­sions, the exact ori­gin of this phrase is unknown. The first use of it in print was by F. Scott Fitzger­ald in The Beau­ti­ful and the Damned in 1922. The phrase means to not merely arrive some­where; it means to come in with a flour­ish to boost the fes­tive spirit, accord­ing to Facts on File Word and Phrase Ori­gins. One plau­si­ble ori­gin harks back to the days before auto­mo­biles, when it was the cus­tom to deck out the horse that drew the car­riage for spe­cial occa­sions with the fan­ci­est har­ness that of course had bells on it. Another pos­si­bil­ity is that dur­ing the set­tle­ment in Penn­syl­va­nia and other states, the set­tlers pre­ferred means of trans­port were large, sturdy wooden carts, called Con­estoga wag­ons. These were drawn by teams of horses or mules whose col­lars were fit­ted with head­dresses of bells. The wag­oners per­son­al­ized the bells to tun­ings of their lik­ing and took great pride in them. If a wagon became stuck, a team­ster who came to the res­cue often asked for a set of bells as reward. Arriv­ing at a des­ti­na­tion with­out one’s bells hurt a driver’s pro­fes­sional pride, whereas get­ting there with bells on was a source of satisfaction.

What is farro?

World Book Ency­clo­pe­dia notes that farro is an ancient Mediter­ranean grain of the wheat fam­ily. It is sold dried and is pre­pared by cook­ing in water until soft, but still crunchy (many rec­om­mend first soak­ing overnight). It may be eaten plain, though it is often used as an ingre­di­ent in dishes such as sal­ads and soups. It is some­times ground into flour and used to make pasta or bread.

Were the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books writ­ten by the same person?

Yes, they were both writ­ten by Edward Strate­meyer, the founder of the Strate­meyer Syn­di­cate, a book-packaging firm. The books have been writ­ten by many dif­fer­ent ghost­writ­ers over the years. Franklin W. Dixon is the col­lec­tive pseu­do­nym for the Hardy Boys series, fea­tur­ing, Frank and Joe Hardy. The Nancy Drew series was pub­lished under the col­lec­tive pseu­do­nym Car­olyn Keene. Read more about Strate­meyer and these two series in Some­thing About the Author.

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@delaware library.org. No mat­ter how you con­tact us, we’re always glad you asked!

Posted by Mary Santos on Aug 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.