Held this morning in the Main Lobby of the Central Library, the National Education Association 's Dr. Seuss-themed Read-In was a huge success, featuring a surprise appearance by the Cat in the Hat .

Eamon Grennan was born in Dublin in 1941; however, he has lived in the United States for over thirty years and has taught at Vassar College since 1974. Grennan has won numerous awards--among them the Lenore Marshall Award, several Pushcart Prizes, a PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, as well as honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He publishes regularly in the Nation, the New Yorker, the New Republic, and the Threepenny Review.

Cold Morning

Through an accidental crack in the curtain
I can see the eight o'clock light change from
charcoal to a faint gassy blue, inventing things

in the morning that has a thick skin of ice on it
as the water tank has, so nothing flows, all is bone,
telling its tale of how hard the night had to be

for any heart caught out in it, just flesh and blood
no match for the mindless chill that's settled in,
a great stone bird, its wings stretched stiff

from the tip of Letter Hill to the cobbled bay, its gaze
glacial, its hook-and-scrabble claws fast clamped
on every window, its petrifying breath a cage

in which all the warmth we were is shivering.

The National Education Association is holding its 145^th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia this year, and thousands of NEA members will be enjoying our city in the coming days. This year marks the 10^th anniversary of the NEA’s Read Across America program, and in honor of this--and in partnership with the Free Library--the president and other members of the NEA will be here at the Central Library on Friday, June 29 at 10:00 a.m. to host a Dr. Seuss-themed Read-In. In addition, there will be related events taking place all day throughout the Free Library system. See the listing below, and contact individual Library locations for further information.

North/South Philadelphia Region
Kensington Branch - Summer Reading Game Double Stickers
McPherson Square Branch - Dr. Seuss Read-Aloud, Summer Reading Game Double Stickers
Queen Memorial Branch - Summer Reading Game Double Stickers
South Philadelphia Branch - Summer Reading Game Double Stickers
Thomas F. Donatucci, Sr. Branch - Dr. Seuss Read-Aloud, Summer Reading Game Double Stickers
Whitman Branch - Summer Reading Game Double Stickers

Northeast Philadelphia Region
Bustleton Branch - Dr. Seuss Read-Aloud
Fox Chase Branch - Short Story Read-Aloud for preschool and school-age children, 3:00 p.m.
Frankford Branch - Dr. Seuss Read-Aloud
Holmesburg Branch - Summer Reading Game Double Stickers
Northeast Regional Library - Dr. Seuss Read-Aloud

Northwest Philadelphia Region
Chestnut Hill Branch - Children’s Read-Aloud featuring Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown, 3:00 p.m.
Logan Branch - Children’s Read-Aloud featuring Agent A to Agent Z by Andy Rash, 10:00 a.m.
Roxborough Branch - Children’s Read-Aloud at 10:00 a.m.

West Philadelphia Region
Lucien E. Blackwell West Philadelphia Regional Library - Book Bingo, Summer Reading Game Double Stickers
Blanche Nixon/Cobbs Creek Branch - Summer Reading Game Double Stickers
Charles Durham Branch - Summer Reading Game Double Stickers
Eastwick Branch - Summer Reading Game Double Stickers
Haddington Branch - Summer Reading Game Double Stickers
Haverford Branch - Summer Reading Game Double Stickers
Kingsessing Branch - Summer Reading Game Double Stickers
Overbrook Park Branch - Summer Reading Game Double Stickers
Paschalville Branch - Summer Reading Game Double Stickers
Walnut Street West Branch - Summer Reading Game Double Stickers
Wynnefield Branch - Summer Reading Game Double Stickers

Douglas Wolk--author, blogger , and journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and Rolling Stone, among many other publications--has a new book coming out next week entitled Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean. In an excerpt from the book recently posted on Salon, Wolk considers the phrase "graphic novel" as misnomer, making reference to Alison Bechdel along the way.

"...[The] 'novel' part of 'graphic novel' blots out the idea of short fiction and nonfiction--it's odd to call, say, books of reportage in cartoon form by Joe Sacco and Ted Rall 'novels,' or to suggest that memoirs by Alison Bechdel and Harvey Pekar are fictional, or that a collection of short pieces by Ellen Forney or C. Tyler is actually an extended, unified story," Wolk writes, later stating, "The class implications of 'graphic novel' almost instantly led to the term's thorough debasement. As a ten-dollar phrase, it implies that the graphic novel is serious in a way that the lowly comic book isn't."

Read the entire excerpt here , and don't miss Alison Bechdel tonight at the Central Library's Montgomery Auditorium at 7:00 p.m. (This event is free; no tickets required.)

Libby Rosof of roberta fallon and libby rosof's artblog interviewed Karen Lightner, head of the Print and Pictures Department at the Free Library, for a piece entitled "Treasure trove at the Free Library" that posted on June 3. Chock-full of information about the Library's Print and Picture Collections as well as the photography exhibition currently on view in the West Gallery at the Central Library, you can read the entire post here .

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Carlin Romano interviewed John Updike and wrote an article on the esteemed author's appearance at the Central Library on June 6. Romano describes a charming character who isn't afraid to help himself to an oncology conference's continental breakfast. Read the whole thing here .

Last week the Institute of Museum and Library Services announced $28 million in grants to 43 universities, libraries, and library organizations across the country to recruit and educate librarians. The Free Library is honored to be among them. Read all about these grants here .