Misadventures of the Monster Librarian

I am going to see the final movie installment of Harry Potter in about 24 hours; five friends and I are making the trek out late at night, to sit spellbound (pun intended) and watch (and judge) to see if the final film does justice to J.K. Rowling's final chapter in the Harry Potter saga. I feel like years from now I will be telling my kids how cool it was to see these movies in the theater (just like how some older friends relive the moments they spent in awe of the Star Wars Trilogy). And yet, I wasn't always a Harry fan. When Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone hit the U.S. I was in high school, delving into classic English literature, and becoming a literary snob, poo pooing the HP books as "crap fiction" for kids. It was about  eight years ago that TSO got me to watch the first movie, assuring me I'd like it. I didn't. I convinced myself that I would hate it. And I think I did...probably because I couldn't remember most of the movie, having fallen...

This is such an interesting and nostalgic article, I had to post it in full, though it can also be found here . Books of the New World and the Old An immigrant comes to America--through the library . BY LUCETTE LAGNADO Friday, December 7, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST As a little girl newly arrived in America, I couldn't wait for the Saturday afternoons when my mother and I would board the subway near our home in Brooklyn for our weekly outing to the Donnell branch of the New York Public Library in midtown Manhattan. It was our favorite corner of New York. So I was sad when it was announced last month that the building housing the Donnell was being sold to a developer. Paul LeClerc, who heads the New York Public Library system, said that the property didn't measure up to its neighbors on tony West 53rd Street, a stone's throw from Fifth Avenue, on a block that houses one of the city's greatest attractions--the sleek, renovated Museum of Modern Art. Donnell--or some semblance of ...