"Healing the broken bond between our young and nature is in our self-interest, not only because aesthetics or justice demand it, but also because our mental, physical, and spiritual health depend upon it." Journalist Richard Louv's most recent book, The Last Child in the Woods is a ringing and spirited defense of one childhood's vanishing delights and necessities: free play outdoors, in the woods, in the yard, or in the street. Today's children are growing up disconnected from the natural world in way that has many short and longterm consequences. Among the effects are obesity, depression, attention deficit disorder, and a diminished ability to bring their imaginations to bear in solving problems. If you have ever felt that your children (or grandchildren) spend too much time indoors, playing on the computer or watching television, this is a book you need to read!

Reading Louv's book brought my own childhood hours of running wild in the woods back to me. As those you who read my column in "The Danville Times" know, this is a book I found to be both moving and important. It is a privilege for us to bring Richard Louv to Danville for short talk followed by a signing on Thursday, 9 June 2005 at 1:00 PM.

Leo Gursky is just about surviving, tapping his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he's still alive. But life wasn't always like this: sixty years ago, in the Polish village where he was born, Leo fell in love and wrote a book. And though Leo doesn't know it, that book survived, inspiring fabulous circumstances, even love. Fourteen-year-old Alma was named after a character in that very book. And although she has her hands full—keeping track of her brother, Bird (who thinks he might be the Messiah), and taking copious notes on How to Survive in the Wild—she undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With consummate, spellbinding skill, Nicole Krauss gradually draws together their stories in her new novel, The History of Love.

Those of you who have been in over that last few weeks know that The History of Love is one of the very best novels I have read recently. I know that many, many of you have already bought the book and from what I have heard back, have loved the characters as much as I did. Whether or not, you've read the book already, please join us for a luncheon with Nicole Krauss on Friday, 10 June 2005 at Noon. Make your reservations now for this special event by calling us at (925) 837-7337.

If you were given thirty minutes to recount your life's most memorable accomplishments, what would you choose to highlight? Would you focus on the small pleasures you've enjoyed or the eccentric pursuits you've explored? Perhaps you'd think of a lifelong ambition fulfilled - would it be the time you got to sing in a band? The chance you had to climb Mount Fuji? The moment you decided to start a family? When you finally learned to swim?

When asked to look back upon their lives so far, these were just a few of the experiences people from across America and around the world chose to write about for 2Do Before I Die by Michael Ogden and Chris Day.

2Do Before I Die is perfect for anyone wondering "what's next?" It's for career changers, for recent graduates, for first-time parents, for soon-to-be retirees. In fact, for anyone whose life is in transition, 2Do Before I Dieis an inventive, inspiring, hands-on guide to identifying life goals, setting personal priorities, and realizing longheld ambitions.

Come meet authors Michael Ogden (nephew of Danville's Susan Foord, Marilyn Gardner, and Melinda Malin, grandson of Margaret May) and Chris Day as we celebrate the publication of 2Do Before I Die with a talk, a pie-eating contest, and book signing on Sunday, 12 June 2005 at 4:00 PM.

In each section of Michael Cunningham's bold new novel, Specimen Days, his first since The Hours (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), we encounter the same group of characters: a young boy, an older man, and a young woman. "In the Machine" is a ghost story that takes place at the height of the industrial revolution, as human beings confront the alienating realities of the new machine age. "The Children's Crusade," set in the early twenty-first century, plays with the conventions of the noir thriller as it tracks the pursuit of a terrorist band that is detonating bombs, seemingly at random, around the city. The third part, "Like Beauty," evokes a New York 150 years into the future, when the city is all but overwhelmed by refugees from the first inhabited planet to be contacted by the people of Earth.

Presiding over each episode of this interrelated whole is the prophetic figure of the poet Walt Whitman, who promised his future readers, "It avails not, neither time or place . . . I am with you, and know how it is." Specimen Days is a genre-bending, haunting, and transformative ode to life in our greatest city and a meditation on the direction and meaning of America's destiny. It is a work of surpassing power and beauty by one of the most original and daring writers at work today.

It is our pleasure and privilege to request the honor of your company at an evening reading and signing with Michael Cunningham on Thursday, 16 June 2005 at 7:00 PM. We request that you make reservations for this event by calling us at (925) 837-7337.

In the mid-1860s, grapevines in southeastern France inexplicably began to wither and die. French botanist Jules-Émile Planchon was sent to investigate. Magnifying glass in hand, he discovered that the vine roots were covered in microscopic yellow insects. The aphids would be named Phylloxera vastatrix —“the dry leaf devastator.”Where they had come from was a mystery.

Soon the noblest vineyards in Europe and California came under biological siege. No one could slow phylloxera’s maddening, destructive pace. The French government offered a prize of three hundred thousand gold francs for a remedy, and increasingly bizarre suggestions flooded in. Planchon believed he had the answer and set out to convince the skeptical wine-making and scientific establishments. Aided by the American entomologist Charles Valentine Riley and a decade of research into the strange life history of the insect, Planchon at long last proved that the remedy rested within the vines themselves.

The Botanist and the Vintner is an astonishing account of one of the earliest and most successful applications of science to an ecological disaster. And even now, the story continues as new strains of phylloxera attack vineyards in France, California, and New Zealand. Please join us for a glass of wine and enjoy an evening talk and signing with author Christy Campbell on Tuesday, 21 June 2005 at 7:00 PM.

Set in the town of Gruel, South Carolina, this first novel by George Singleton, master of the comic short story, is the tale of a young man named Novel (his brother's name is James; his sister's is Joyce), a professional snake handler who stumbles across strange doings while he sits in a motel room writing his autobiography. As he struggles to recount his life story, he uncovers-and finds himself starring in-a decades-old town secret, one that can blow him and his fellow citizens sky-high. Funny as only George Singleton can be, full of Southern mischief and wit, Novel is a crazed and crazy fictional whirlwind of drinking, motel-living, art-forgery-committing, pool-playing redneck charm.

If you treasure your dog-earred copy of A Confederacy of Dunces or just love good, wacky writing, you simply must attend our reading and signing with George Singleton on Thursday, 23 June 2005 at 7:00 PM.

Curtis Sittenfeld’s debut novel, Prep, is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.

Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school’s glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel

As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of–and, ultimately, a participant in–their rituals and mores. As a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider and is both drawn to and repelled by other loners. By the time she’s a senior, Lee has created a hard-won place for herself at Ault. But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her carefully crafted identity within the community is shattered.

Ultimately, Lee’s experiences–complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant, coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.

Join us for an evening reading and signing with Curtis Sittenfeld on Friday, 24 June 2005 on 7:00 PM.

In response to your many requests, we are starting a free weekly storytime for children 3 to 6. For each week, we will be reading a featured story and having a simple craft activity that complements it. Please bring your children and join us for one or more of these special times.

Wednesday, 15 June 2005 at 11:00 AM
Story: Ella Sarah Gets Dressed by Margaret Chodos-Irvine
Activity: We will provide a large basket of fun and festive clothes for the children to play dress-up in for this storytime.

Wednesday, 22 June 2005 at 11:00 AM
Story: Stanley Mows the Lawn by Craig Frazier
Activity: We will be making snake stick puppets using a variety of fun collage materials.

Wednesday, 29 June 2005 at 11:00 AM
Story: I Aint Gonna Paint No More by Karen Beaumont
Activity: We will be making water-color pictures for this storytime.

The news came as the most marvelous of Christmas presents and word travelled around the globe at lightning speed -- J. K. Rowling had finally finished Book Six! In conjunction with Bloomsbury Plc, Scholastic Books has announced that they will publish Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on Saturday, 16 July 2005. As with the last three books, the new book will be available from midnight on July 16th on.

And, even though the on sale date is months away, we are already making plans to celebrate. Because our party always fills up fast, we are making arrangements to have two parties -- one evening and one morning. Both will have entertainment, games, and refreshments. To reserve space at either party, you must pre-pay for your book, $29.99 + tax = $32.46. As a further incentive, we will donate $1 to the school of your choice for each copy purchased in advance.

In the fifth and most recent book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the last chapter, titled “The Second War Begins,” started:

'In a brief statement Friday night, Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge confirmed that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has returned to this country and is active once more.

“It is with great regret that I must confirm that the wizard styling himself Lord - well, you know who I mean - is alive among us again,” said Fudge.'

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince takes up the story of Harry Potter's sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry at this point in the midst of the storm of this battle of good and evil. Reserve your copy today!

Julie's Morning Book Group is reading The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (paper, $13.95) for our meeting on Friday, 24 June at 10:30 AM. From Julie: "We try to read good fiction you might not pick out for yourself. And we talk about it, and talk about it, bringing our own lives and that of the author to bear on the subject at hand. Join us!"

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT! In response to your many requests, we are pleased to annouce that we are at long last re-starting our popular Mother-Daughter Book Club. Designed for girls 9 - 12, this new incarnation of the group will be facilitated by Jennifer Boss. For our meeting on Tuesday, 14 June 2005 at 7:00 PM, we will be reading Chasing Vermeer, an intriguing and intelligent mystery by Blue Balliett. NEW MEMBERS ARE ENCOURAGED TO ATTEND!

Photo credit: San Francisco Chronicle, 1999, from a story about the Mother-Daughter Book Group at Rakestraw Books.

In addition to our wonderful brown paper Rakestraw Books Gift Certificates (available in any amount), we are pleased to be able to offer Booksense Gift Certificates redeemable in more than 1,200 independent bookstores nationwide. If we are unable to help you choose a book for your farway reader, a Booksense Gift Certificate is the way to go.