You may recognize this famous author's name if you read the goosebumps series when you were younger. Or perhaps when you were a little older and a little braver you read something from his Fear Street series. He's been entertaining readers for over 20 years.

Today the man who has spent his career making others lose sleep at night is celebrating his 64th birthday.

In researching Stine for this entry I learned he began his career not trying to scare young adults but instead make them laugh. At Scholastic he started working in magazines then eventually made into books. To find out more fun facts about popular author read a few entries in our Biography Resource Database. You can get to it by going to the library's website and clicking IBrowse Databases. From there you'll want to select Literature from the pull down menu.

For a complete list of his fiction books check out Novelist, our reader's advisory database.

Quick! Whose brainchild was Shrek?

Betcha said Mike Meyers, didn't you?

Actually, the man who conceived of Shrek was William Steig, who would have been 100 years old today. Mike Meyers's blockbuster movie was adapted from Steig's 1990 book, Shrek!

For many years, William Steig was a cartoonist for the New Yorker. You'll find samples of his work in The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker in the oversized books in the Music, Art and Media Department at MAM q741.5973 C. (This will also be a treat for fans of Charles Addams, another New Yorker cartoonist and the man behind the Addams Family.) For more of Steig's cartoons for adults, check out Ruminations at MAM 741.5 S.

Later in life, Steig turned to writing and illustrating children's books. He was quite successful, and garnered many awards for his efforts. Here is just a sampling:

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble won the Caldecott Medal, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and won other honors. "A rock-hunting expedition has surprising results when Sylvester Duncan, a young donkey, finds a magic pebble that grants one wish too many and seems to doom him to a stony future."

Dominic was a National Book Award finalist. "Dominic the dog finds many exciting adventures and great danger fighting the Doomsday Gang after he decides to see the world."

The Amazing Bone was a Caldecott Honor Book. "On her way home from school, Pearl finds an unusual bone that has unexpected powers."

Abel's Island was a Newbery Honor Book. "Castaway on an uninhabited island, Abel, a very civilized mouse, finds his resourcefulness and endurance tested to the limit as he struggles to survive and return to his home."

Amos and Boris: was a finalist for the National Book Award. "Amos the mouse and Boris the whale have little in common except that they are both mammals and save each other's lives."

So whatever the age of your inner child, stop by and take a look at this talented author/illustrator's works!

William F.Buckley, Jr., who died this week at the age of 82, was an American author and conservative commentator. Whether or not one agrees with his political thoughts, I think one has to acknowledge the talent and complexity of the man. Buckley founded the political magazine National Review (at our library or online) in 1955, hosted over 1,000 editions of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist writing "On the Right," which was syndicated to more than 300 newspapers. His writing style was known for its profound scholarly knowledge, wit and use of uncommon words.

Buckley authored more than 50 books including spy novels, satire, sailing memoirs and collections of his own pithy (precisely meaningful) comments. He received a B.A. with honors (political science, economics, and history) from Yale University in 1950. In 1951 he burst onto the national scene with God and Man at Yale, a controversial book that attacked his alma mater for fostering atheism and stifling the academic freedom of conservative students. In 1965 he was a candidate for mayor of New York City on the Conservative party ticket, receiving13.4% of the vote. Asked what he would do if he won, he famously replies, "I'd demand a recount". He received numerous and diverse awards, including Best Columnist of the Year, 1967; Television Emmy for Outstanding Achievement, 1969; The American Book Award for Best Mystery (paperback) for Stained Glass, 1980; the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award, 1989; the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1991; the Adam Smith Award, Hillsdale College, 1996; and the Heritage Foundation's Clare Boothe Luce Award, 1999.

Buckley's primary intellectual achievement was to fuse traditional American political conservatism with libertarianism (the freedom to do as you choose with your own life and property, as long as you don't harm the person and property of others), laying the groundwork for the modern American conservatism of US Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and US President Ronald Reagan. His personal memoir of Senator Barry M. Goldwater is scheduled to be published this spring, and at his death he was working on a similar work about President Ronald Reagan. Upon Buckley's death, President George W. Bush said that Mr. Buckley “brought conservative thought into the political mainstream, and helped lay the intellectual foundation for America’s victory in the Cold War.”

You may wish to take a look at some of our library's non-fiction holdings by William Buckley including:

The lexicon - per Library Journal, "certainly more useful, and more fun, than those word-a-day calendars"

WindFall : the end of the affair - conclusion to Buckley's sextet concerning his love of the sea with an intimate and sometimes painful introspective examination of his life.

Did you ever see a dream walking? American conservative thought in the twentieth century
- edited by Buckley.

On the firing line : the public life of our public figures - scrapbook of talks on Buckley's Firing Line television show.

You may also wish to read a selection from our library's fiction holdings by William Buckley. Of special interest are:

Last call for Blackford Oakes - the final book of the Blackford Oakes series, about a dashing CIA agent-brainy, bold, and complex.

Nuremberg : the reckoning - a riveting thriller, taking the reader through unforgettable scenes of treachery and vengeance, love and hatred, and the struggle for justice found in a hangman's noose.

Elvis in the morning - a novel about friendship, celebrity, social change, and and Elvis Presley set in the turbulent '60s.

Who's on first - story of the race between the United States and the Soviet Union to be the first to place a satellite in orbit. Per Kirkus Reviews, "anyone who can make conferences between Dulles and Acheson sound like vaudeville routines deserves the audience he is bound to get".

And some of our books about William F. Buckley include:

William F. Buckley, Jr., patron saint of the conservatives by John B. Judis.

The Buckleys: a family examined by Markmann, Charles Lam.

When I first heard about audiobooks, I'll admit, I was very skeptical. Why would you want to listen to a book when you could just immerse yourself in the paper pages, hearing the words in your head? Once I became a librarian, though, I thought that I should give it a try, if only for professional research purposes. So, one day I stopped by the display of new audiobooks on CD and picked out a title. It was Iris Johansen's "The Search" (another case of trying something new--Johansen--in order to be informed). And while I wish I could say that I fell in love with audiobooks on the spot, that didn't happen until a few books later.

The narrator of "The Search" was Barbara Rosenblat. She may be a fine narrator, but I was listening to her in the car--and the car was drowning her out. This was my first lesson in audiobooks--the way the narrator reads can be very frustrating if you have to keep adjusting the volume. What might be dramatic on the CD player at home can be just unintelligible when played in the car.

Fortunately, I tried again. The next narrator was much easier to hear in the car, so I kept trying new books. I soon learned lesson #2: the narrator's rendition of the book might not match up with what your brain expects to hear. This can be a good thing, or a bad thing. For example: Alan Alda's "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed" was narrated by someone other than Alda. While I listened, the narrator's style kept clashing with how I expected the narrative to sound. It was so distracting that eventually I gave up and took out the paper copy.

On the other hand, the narrator can give the story that little extra something that makes the story come to life. I had tried to read Janet Evanovich's "One for the Money" twice, in print, and hadn't managed to finish it. I couldn't see why anyone thought she was funny. Then I tried the audio, read by C.J. Critt. Critt's wry performance gave the text nuances that made it much more fun for me. The same thing happened with Alexander McCall Smith's "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency." A book that I hadn't been able to finish in paper was much more palatable in audio, thanks to the narrator's interpretation.

Naturally, all this is very subjective. One person may love a narrator, while another may not. As a fan of Christopher Moore's books, I was disappointed by Fisher Stevens's reading of "A Dirty Job," but a coworker found it brilliant. I like C.J. Critt's work, but my friend can't stand her. Luckily, narrators are listed in our catalog. You can do an author search for the narrator you like, and get a list of titles that they've read. You can also search for the book first, and then just check the record to see who the narrator is before you head down to the Music, Art and Media Department to grab the book.

So, don't give up if you don't like the first audiobook you try. A good narrator can make or break an audiobook. If it doesn't sound right to you, there's always the paper copy to fall back on. But a great narrator can enhance the experience and even uncover meanings that you might have missed in paper.

One of the titans of science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke, died yesterday in Sri Lanka. He was 90. Many of you will recognize him as the author of the classic 2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequels. You might be surprised to learn that he also wrote extensively on nonfiction topics such as space and the sea.

If you search for Arthur C. Clarke in the Literature Resource Center database, you'll find an extensive list of honors and awards. He won the Hugo and Nebula awards for Rendezvous with Rama and The Fountains of Paradise, among others, and the Grand Master Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth and had an asteroid named in his honor.

More significantly, he won the Stuart Ballantine Gold Medal in 1963, for originating the concept of communications satellites (Contemporary Authors Online, Thompson Gale, 2007). He was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Price in 1994.

Though he was 90 years old, he was still publishing. His latest fiction title was Firstborn, which he cowrote with Stephen Baxter. Published just this year, it's the third book in the Time Odyssey series. When it's not checked out, you'll find it in the library's New Arrivals display.

Those of you who read and loved his work, please drop us a comment about his contributions.