Newsletter: July 29th 2022
...is the title of the article featuring The Thinking Spot in Lake Minnetonka Magazine's August issue! Check out your hardcopy or I will link to the digital edition once it comes out! Great pictures!
Can't believe we are getting into the last month before schools start. To that end, August events and book recs are geared towards helping you add a few more fun experiences to your list.
Event Updates:
The Sheet pan event with Liz Heinecke that was originally scheduled for tonight has had to be rescheduled due to covid and printing issues. It is currently scheduled for Sat Sept 17th 3:00p. The RSVPs will carryover, hope you can still make it.
Starting tonight and for the month of August we are pausing Game Night extended evenings. We will be closing at 6 tonight. Games are still available to rent and play at any time during store hours. . Game nights will be back in September with possibly new timings.
We have two fun events planned for August:
A "Grand" Evening at the bookstore: This one is for all you grand parents to create one lasting memory with your grandkid before they head back to school. We will close the store and bring down the house with all kinds of fun. We have multiple dates in August to accommodate camps, classes, cabin, lake or vacation time.
Origami Animal Mania: Several of the kids who've seen the origami in store have asked to learn how to do it. Here's your chance. We'll teach some basics, make a crane to add to a crane chain I'd like to add to the store by World peace day - Sept 21st. And they can make other animals. Again we have multiple dates in August to accommodate all schedules.
July Battle of the Books is this Sunday the 31st at 5:00pm. Looking forward to a fun evening! August books are here. August Battle will be Wednesday, August 31st, 5:00p
Finally, I am excited to announce a partnership with STEM Builders - a local organization offering STEM classes and workshops for all ages - to offer STEM classes at The Spot once a month. The first one will be scheduled in August - stay tuned! If you have a recommendation for topic/age-group, please let me know.
Operational Updates:
To make it easier for you, we have created a Google calendar with all Thinking Spot events on it. You can add it to your account and make it available on your phone just like any other google calendar. Let me know if you need help setting it up.
I am starting to upload these newsletters to our website in the Blog section, so if you ever need to get back to something you saw here, you will be able to find it on our site.
Science News Of The Week: You know all those dead spiders we see around the house? Apparently, now they can be useful! Researchers at Rice University have reincarnated dead spiders as robot grippers. The discipline even has a name: Necrobotics! Biomimicry is one things, but actually using dead animals for their cool capabilities is pretty ingenious, don't you think?
Books: Today's recommendations are new store arrivals this month. As summer winds down, if you are running out of book ideas, you should be able to find something new here. From a new chapter book series for our earliest readers to a intriguing science fiction book - there should be something for everyone.
Enjoy this streak of beautiful weather, keep reading and see you in-store soon!
New Arrivals in July
Journey to the Moon #1
By Cathy Hapka
This is a chapter book series for the 6-9 yr olds. This book is the first in a series of four. Not a new release but new to The Thinking Spot.
Can Astronaut Girl save the day with a little help from science? Find out as she and her space crew make their debut in this chapter book series! Val, aka Astronaut Girl, is just your typical eight-year-old scientist. She has her own laboratory and conducts experiments with her crew--her cat and baby brother. She loves science and knows everything about outer space. That's why she's surprised to learn that her new neighbor Wallace would rather talk about a fake space show than about real missions. But when Astronaut Girl, Wallace, and the Astro crew get lost on their own lunar adventure, they must all work together to find their way back home. Exciting, easy-to-read books are the stepping stone a young reader needs to bridge the gap between being a beginner and being fluent.
Cathy Hapka has written more than one hundred books for children and young adults. She lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Ellen Vandenberg is the author of numerous books for young readers. She lives in New York City. Gillian Reid is a British illustrator, character designer, and teacher. She lives in Ontario, Canada.
The Last Mapmaker
By Christina Soontornvat
For the middle-grades (8-12 yr olds)
From Christina Soontornvat, the visionary and versatile author of two 2021 Newbery Honor Books, comes a high-seas adventure set in a Thai-inspired fantasy world. In a fantasy adventure every bit as compelling and confident in its world building as her Newbery Honor Book A Wish in the Dark, Christina Soontornvat explores a young woman’s struggle to unburden herself of the past and chart her own destiny in a world of secrets. As assistant to Mangkon’s most celebrated mapmaker, twelve-year-old Sai plays the part of a well-bred young lady with a glittering future. In reality, her father is a conman—and in a kingdom where the status of one’s ancestors dictates their social position, the truth could ruin her. Sai seizes the chance to join an expedition to chart the southern seas, but she isn’t the only one aboard with secrets. When Sai learns that the ship might be heading for the fabled Sunderlands—a land of dragons, dangers, and riches beyond imagining—she must weigh the cost of her dreams. Vivid, suspenseful, and thought-provoking, this tale of identity and integrity is as beautiful and intricate as the maps of old.
Christina Soontornvat grew up in a small Texas town, where she spent many childhood days behind the counter of her parents’ Thai restaurant with her nose in a book. She is the author of many books for young readers, including the Newbery Honor Books A Wish in the Dark and All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team, also a Robert F. Sibert Honor Book and a YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults finalist. Christina Soontornvat lives in Austin, Texas.
Soundings
By Doreen Cunningham
I read this book as an advanced copy and loved it. The depictions of Alaska and the Inupiaq are fascinating. If you have an Alaska trip planned, this will make a great read-along. If not, this will transport you there, regardless :)
“This book is a gorgeous journey…You will be glad you’ve joined her.” —Susan Orlean, author of On Animals and The Library Book In this memoir of motherhood, love, and resilience, a woman and her toddler son follow the grey whale migration from Mexico to northernmost Alaska. In this striking blend of nature writing, whale science, and memoir, Doreen Cunningham interweaves two stories: tracking the extraordinary northward migration of the grey whales with a mischievous toddler in tow and living with an Iñupiaq family in Alaska seven years earlier. Throughout the journey she explores the stories of the whales and their young calves—their history, their habits, and their attempts to survive the changes humans have brought to the ocean. Cunningham’s voice is powerful: sharp, profound, sensitive, and unflinching. A story of courage and resilience, Soundings is about the migrating whales and all we can learn from them as they mother, adapt, and endure, their lives interrupted and threatened by global warming. It is also a riveting journey onto the Arctic Sea ice and into the changing world of Indigenous whale hunters, where Doreen becomes immersed in the ancient values of the Iñupiaq whale hunt and falls in love. For this is Doreen’s story, too—a fierce, feminist tale, touching on her childhood and her time living in a Women’s Refuge with her baby, becoming a mother, just like the whales. Lyrical, brave, and fearlessly honest, Soundings is an unforgettable journey.Doreen Cunningham is an Irish-British writer born in Wales. After studying engineering Doreen worked briefly in climate-related research at the Natural Environment Research Council and in storm modeling at Newcastle University before turning to journalism. She worked for the BBC World Service variously as an international news presenter, reporter, and editor for twenty years. She won the RSL Giles St Aubyn Award 2020 and was shortlisted for the Eccles Centre and Hay Festival Writers Award 2021 for Soundings, her first book.
Two Wheels Good
By Jody Rosen
For anyone who loves bicycling!
A panoramic revisionist portrait of the nineteenth-century invention that is transforming the twenty-first century world. The bicycle is a vestige of the Victorian era, seemingly at odds with our age of smartphones and ridesharing apps and driverless cars. Yet we live on a bicycle planet. Across the world, more people travel by bicycle than by any other form of transportation. Almost anyone can learn to ride a bike—and nearly everyone does. In Two Wheels Good, writer and critic Jody Rosen reshapes our understanding of this ubiquitous machine, an ever-present force in humanity’s life and dreamlife—and a flashpoint in culture wars—for more for than two hundred years. Combining history, reportage, travelogue, and memoir, Rosen's book sweeps across centuries and around the globe, unfolding the bicycle’s saga from its invention in 1817 to its present-day renaissance as a “green machine,” an emblem of sustainability in a world afflicted by pandemic and climate change. Readers meet unforgettable characters: feminist rebels who steered bikes to the barricades in the 1890s, a prospector who pedaled across the frozen Yukon to join the Klondike gold rush, a Bhutanese king who races mountain bikes in the Himalayas, a cycle rickshaw driver who navigates the seething streets of the world’s fastest-growing megacity, astronauts who ride a floating bicycle in zero gravity aboard the International Space Station. Two Wheels Good examines the bicycle’s past and peers into its future, challenging myths and clichés, while uncovering cycling’s connection to colonial conquest and the gentrification of cities. But the book is also a love letter: a reflection on the sensual and spiritual pleasures of bike riding and an ode to an engineering marvel—a wondrous vehicle whose passenger is also its engine.
Jody Rosen is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. His writing has appeared in Slate, New York, The New Yorker, and many other publications. He lives in Brooklyn with his family.
A Half-Built Garden
By Ruthanna Emrys
This is going on my #TBR pile!
They came from distant stars to save us — but will they let us save ourselves? Climate fiction meets first contact in Ruthanna Emrys' A Half-Built Garden
On a warm March night in 2083, Judy Wallach-Stevens wakes to a warning of unknown pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay. She heads out to check what she expects to be a false alarm—and stumbles upon the first alien visitors to Earth. These aliens have crossed the galaxy to save humanity, convinced that the people of Earth must leave their ecologically-ravaged planet behind and join them among the stars. And if humanity doesn't agree, they may need to be saved by force. The watershed networks aren't ready to give up on Earth. Decades ago, they rose up to exile the last corporations to a few artificial islands, escape the dominance of nation-states, and reorganize humanity around the hope of keeping their world liveable. By sharing the burden of decision-making, they've started to heal the wounded planet. But now corporations, nation-states, and networks all vie to represent humanity to these powerful new beings, and if any one accepts the aliens' offer, Earth may be lost. With everyone’s eyes turned skyward, everything hinges on the success of Judy's effort to create understanding, both within and beyond her own species. A literary descendent of Ursula K. Le Guin, Emrys crafts a novel of extraterrestrial diplomacy and urgent climate repair bursting with quiet, tenuous hope and an underlying warmth. A Half-Built Garden depicts a world worth building towards, a humanity worth saving from itself, and an alien community worth entering with open arms. It's not the easiest future to build, but it's one that just might be in reach.
Ruthanna Emrys is the author of the Innsmouth Legacy series, including Winter Tide and Deep Roots, and the Imperfect Commentaries collection. She writes radically hopeful short stories about religion and aliens and psycholinguistics. She lives in a mysterious manor house on the outskirts of Washington, DC, with her wife and their large, strange family. She creates real versions of imaginary foods in her crowded kitchen, gives unsolicited advice, and occasionally attempts to save the world.