Sign up and receive your reading log at the Circulation Desk. Record books you read over the summer and have a parent sign next to each title. The top five readers will receive prizes such as gift cards, magazine subscriptions, and movie tickets.

Look to the Teen Zone’s “Ready Reference” comer for all the help you need to locate information on the Internet. Ms. Frye, the librarian, will share tips on keyword searches to find interesting information about certain books. You must have a signed parent permission slip before using the computers. Access is limited to 30 minutes and is on a first-come, first-served basis.

Teen poets can be literary celebrities for a night by reading their original work at this special event. Friends and family members are encouraged to attend and show their support. A few original poems may be selected for publication in the next library newsletter. Food and drinks will be provided

This class provides books and instruction in the ancient Japanese art of folding colourful squares of paper into shapes, such as birds, insects, or flowers.

Make earth-friendly crafts from recyclable materials. With guidance from a talented teacher and books, you will make new creations from everyday items. Start recycling today, and bring items to share with the group.

The library needs to beautify the walls of the Teen Zone. We will be transforming artwork from old books and magazines into unique masterpieces to frame and hang on the walls. Put your creative spin on some photographs, and help ensure that the Teen Zone remains the highlight of the library.

Note: Registration is required for all the events. Register at the Circulation Desk or by calling 1-800-290-5992. Space is limited, so reserve your spot soon!

I Was the Doughnut Lady

In university I had a part-time job at a shop that sold doughnuts and coffee. Situated on a block where several buses stopped, it served the people who had a few minutes to wait for their bus.

Every afternoon around four o’clock, a group of schoolchildren would burst into the shop, and business would come to a stop. Adults would glance in, see the crowd and pass on. But I didn’t mind if the children waited for their bus inside. Sometimes I would hand out a bus fare when a ticket went missing—always repaid the next day. On snowy days I would give away some doughnuts. I would lock the door at closing time, and we waited in the warm shop until their bus finally arrived.

I enjoyed my young friends, but it never occurred to me that I played an important role in their lives—until one afternoon when a man came and asked if I was the girl working on weekdays around four o’clock. He identified himself as the father of two of my favorites.

“I want you to know I appreciate what you do for my children. I worry about them taking two buses to get home. It means a lot that they can wait here and you keep an eye on them. When they are with the doughnut lady, I know they are safe.” I told him it wasn’t a big deal, and that I enjoyed the kids.

So I was the Doughnut Lady. I not only received a title, but became a landmark.

Now I think about all the people who keep an eye on my own children. They become, well, Doughnut Ladies. Like the men at the skating rink (滑冰场), who let my boys ring home; Or the bus driver who drove my daughter to her stop at the end of the route at night but wouldn’t leave until I arrived to pick her up; Or that nice police officer who took pity on my boys walking home in the rain when I was at work—even though the phone rang all the next day with calls from curious neighbors. “Was that a police car I saw at your house last night?”

That wasn’t a police car. That was a Doughnut Lady.

Fear is a fact of life everyone faces from time to time. In most cases fear is a healthy reaction to a dangerous situation. But sometimes fear can be so extreme that it interferes with normal living. That is what happened to me driving cross-country last summer.

I’d agreed to help my brother, Mac, move from the East Coast to California. He would drive a rental truck loaded with his belongings and I would follow him in his car, then fly back. We figured it would be a simple trip, with four or five motel (motorists’ hotel) stops along the way.

Living and working in coastal Georgia for most of my life, I did not have a great deal of long-distance driving experience. Looking back on it today, I can see that I’d always felt a sudden, sharp pain of fear when driving over small bridges and along hilly highways. And as I was getting ready for the trip I had an unclear concern about the steep mountain roads that lay ahead. But I thought I would get used to them.

As we crossed some high bridges near the Blue Ridge Mountains on the first leg of our trip, a kind of breathlessness gripped me, a sinking, rolling feeling in the pit of my stomach. I tended to move slightly away from the edge of the roadway and the drop-off beyond. My knuckles (指关节) whitened from my tense grip on the steering wheel. At the end of each bridge, a great rush of relief would come over me, only to be replaced in short order by fear of the next obstacle.

When we stopped in Nashville the first night, I mentioned my feelings to Mac, who is the practical sort. “Oh, that’s nothing.” he said cheerfully. “Lots of people hate driving on mountain roads and high bridges. Just turn up the music on your radio and focus on that. Keep your mind occupied.”

Language learning begins with listening. Children are greatly different in the amount of listening they do before they start speaking, and later starters are often long listeners. Most children will “obey” spoken instructions some time before they can speak, though the word “obey” is hardly accurate as a description of the eager and delighted cooperation usually shown by the child. Before they can speak, many children will also ask questions by gesture and by making questioning noises.

Any attempt to study the development from the noises babies make to their first spoken words leads to considerable difficulties. It is agreed that they enjoy making noises, and that during the first few months one or two noises sort themselves as particularly expressive as delight, pain, friendliness, and so on. But since these can’t be said to show the baby’s intention to communicate, they can hardly be regarded as early forms of language. It is agreed, too, that from about three months they play with sounds for enjoyment, and that by six months they are able to add new words to their store. This self-imitation leads on to deliberate imitation of sounds made or words spoken to them by other people. The problem then arises as to the point at which one can say that these imitations can be considered as speech.

It is a problem we need to get our teeth into. The meaning of a word depends on what a particular person means by it in a particular situation and it is clear that what a child means by a word will change as he gains more experience of the world. Thus the use at seven months of “mama” as a greeting for his mother cannot be dismissed as a meaningless sound simply because he also uses it at other times for his father, his dog, or anything else he likes. Playful and meaningless imitation of what other people say continues after the child has begun to speak for himself. I doubt, however, whether anything is gained when parents take advantage of this ability in an attempt to teach new sounds.