The Moon at Your Fingertips

Fly me to the moon
Let me sing among those stars
Let me see what spring is like
On Jupiter and Mars......
(F.Sinatra)

Don't you just enjoy those moments when the full moon lies so close to the night sky's horizon? There are times when I foolishly believe that if I walk in the direction of the moon that I would someday 'touch' it while it hangs so low in the sky during the summer months. If you've ever felt that way as a child or even as an adult, here's your opportunity to 'touch' the moon.

On Friday, April 24th, you are invited to participate in the training for the handling of Lunar Rock samples from the Apollo space mission era. Member librarians and even science teachers who are accompanied with their school's media specialist will have an opportunity to revisit the successful (and harrowing) stories and photos of manned spaceflight missions that took place between 1961-1975. Rick Varner, Aerospace Education Specialist with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland will be on hand to prepare you for the proper handing of these primary artifacts of history for use in your public or school library program. Workshop participants will be able to request these lunar samples throughout the year from the Space Flight Center upon completion of training. If you want to be a part of the 'first public librarian crew' in the statewide training workshops, please click here to register.

In the meantime, we want you to enjoy the rest of Sinatra's classic song--compliments of Jason Mraz.

About as rare as a Blue Moon...

...when I offer my recommendation of a performer or artist but I wanted to mention an artist that I did find while searching the net. There's a painter and amateur astronomer in Manchester, Connecticut who replicates scenes from our galaxy. If there's 25,000 stars in a captured photo, then he recreates 25,000 stars in his artwork. Wouldn't that be a cool exhibit to tie into your summer reading program? Check out his artwork on his website. If any of you should host Mr. Rick Costello's exhibit in your library, please let me know. I'd love to come down (or up) to see his artwork.

Space is Cold & Edible!

How often do you use space, ice and food in a sentence? Hopefully more often than not after Tuesday's NASA inspired workshop. Shelley Quezada, a Simmons Library School Professor & MBLC's Consultant for Library Services to the Underserved offered a WONDERFUL workshop FULL of web resources that you can use, promote and borrow in support of your program. Explore! To the Moon and Beyond is one of many NASA inspired shelf-ready programs that educators and parents can use. Whether you are in the classroom or in the library this program features the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter(LRO) & Lunar Crater Observation & Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) missions. LRO/LCROSS what? Yeah, I know. It's a mouth full but if I could explain it in a nutshell--an unmanned spacecraft that will orbit the moon for a year to collect data primarily of the moon and of the sun's radiation for future space flight and scientific research. NASA with the help of teachers and NASA scientists has created very informal and traditionally low-cost projects that you can recreate at your library. While Shelley was kind enough to provide information on different books, links and exercises, we also took the time out to try out another shelf-ready program for kids aged 8 and up. Explore! Ice Worlds! a ready made program that can be found on The Lunar & Planetary Institute's (LPI) website provides a hands-on-lesson that will forever be ingrained into the left (& right) brained emerging scientist. See below the results of an All About Ice experiment that reiterates the freezing temperature of ice. It's amazing what a little ice, salt, sugar, milk and vanilla extract will do in a ziploc bag.



And once again, we ask that you do try this Ice Cream in a Ziploc Bag activity at your library.