Written By: Machelle Lehr



Piano Essentials by Ross Ramsay, will advance your performance skills and build fluency at eh piano, increase your speed and agility on the keyboard, internalize common chord patterns, improve your sight-reading skills, memorize new material in less time, and improve your tone, dynamic range and sense of rhythm.





Hal Leonard's Guitar Method comes with a CD. It's for anyone just learning to play acoustic or electric guitar. It's based on years of teaching guitar students of all ages. This book is for beginners.

New DVDs

Written By: Machelle Lehr










These are two DVD's that go places that under normal circumstances we wouldn't be able to see. David Attenborough shows us the miniature universe in Life in the Undergrowth. Attenborough with the help of new technologies, uncover a whole world and how that world survives. In Wildlife Specials Attenborough give an inside look in the lives and habitat of the polar bear, crocodile, leopard, eagle, humpback whale, and the wolf. This DVD displays the wildest of wild animal behavior.













The Incredible Human Machine takes you through a day in the human body. Also shows us how truly extraordinary we really are. It displays real time views of Steven Tyler's vocal chords and other unique people who push the human body to it's ultimate limits.
In Inside the Living Body teaches us about how our bodies function, grow and mature form infancy through puberty, adulthood, and old age. It's the journey of a human lifetime...from the outside in.

Lots of Great Fiction!

In the continuing parade of new books at the Del Norte Library, may I introduce: Fiction.

A thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is an emotional and well-written novel set in Afghanistan over a thirty year period. If you liked The Kite Runner, you will want to read Hosseini's next book.


Snow Country is anovel by Japanes Writer Yasunari Kawabata that won the Noble Prize for literature. It tells the story of a doomed love in western Japan.


The Stories of Alice Adams contains 53 short stories by the author who died in 1999. They are reminiscent of F. Scott Fitzgerald and should interest any English Major.


Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes is a classic example of escapist literature and this edition is translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman. Our library lacked this story and now we have it. The author died the same year as Shakespeare but like the writings of the Bard, this book becomes more relevant as time goes by.

New non fiction

There are 4 New nonfiction books in the library:
2009 World Almanac, with over 1000 pages of interesting facts and figures from 2008 plus information for 2009 (tide charts, etc.). From Astronomy to Government, International history to
budget statistics, this book is full of information for inquiring minds.

Loving Through Bars in a book about the children of those incarcerated and the effect jail time has on the family. A good read for someone living near a prison like we do.

English Grammar for Students of French by Jacqueline Morton will help those CR students taking French in the upcoming semester.

Finally, The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation by Jonathan Hennessey could be called fiction in some minds, it is mostly based on fact. The Founding Facts. This book is full of comic book style drawings depicting the Revolutionary War and the Founding of the United States Governement. It also describes the amendments to the constitution and includes application of the amendments to actual court cases. Great for students who want to understand the constitutions and its ramifications in their lives but who don't do too well with eighteenth century script.

Saving the Planet

We received two new DVDs for anyone who enjoys having a planet to live on. They are Solar Energy: Saved by the Sun, a NOVA film which investigates solar methods and uses and future potentials.







Also National Geographic's Human Footprint helps us visualize how much garbage, food and just plain stuff a person consumes during their lifetime. Dr. Mize calls it "scary" but says that everyone should watch it.

New DVDs

We received 6 new DVDs pertaining to Native Americans. They are: We Shall Remain: America Through Native Eyes (part of PBS and the American Experience). This three part series tells the long history of Native Americans through their own words, photographs and re-enactments. Heartbreaking and Inspiring.

The Trail of Tears: Cherokee Legacy is a documentary narrated by James Earl Jones and endorsed by the Cherokee Nation. Thousands of Cherokees died on their forced march in 1838. They arrived in "Indian Territory" with few children and fewer elders.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was produced by HBO and tells the story of the Sioux triumph over General Custer and some consequences. Beautifully written and acted.

Finally, Smoke Signals is a modern comedy written by and starring Native Americans . This movie . It is based on several stories by Sherman Alexie.

This Blog was written by: Machelle Lehr

I Fill Your Oil Paintings With Light and Color, teaches you to paint by separating the dark colors and light colors. It shows us that detail is necessary to have a beautiful painting.




The Oil Painting Course You've Always Wanted, is like taking the class you always wanted to take. It was written by Kathleen Lochen Staiger, she has taught art classes for more than 35 years and this book is based on that class.



Fill Your Oil Paintings With Light and Color, teaches you to paint by separating the dark colors and light colors. It shows us that detail is necessary to have a beautiful painting.






Acrylic Revolution, teaches you new ways to use acrylic paint. This book is a guide that shows you everything about acrylics from selection material and cleaning your brushes to finishing and preserving your artwork.

Drawing Perspecitve and People

Our New books keep coming. We receive a lot of new books each summer, but you will have all fall and spring to catch up reading them.

When I asked the art students what kinds of art books they would like the library to order, they all voted for how to books rather than books which showcased a particular artist's work. So today's new books are all about how to draw:

Perspective Made Easy by Ernest Norling is filled with diagrams and descriptions to show and describe techniques to make drawing easier and more accurate.

How to Draw What you See by Rudy De Reyna could be a text for a drawing class because it starts at the beginning of drawing theory and moves on to still lifes and figures. A good place to brush up your drawing.

Drawing Realistic Textures in Pencil by J. D. Hillberry is not about how to draw, but about how to make your drawings look fantastic by adding texture and shadow with pencil.

Drawing the Head and Figure by Jack Hamm has ideas and examples dealing with a wide variety fo face and body shapes.

Figure Drawing for Fashion Design by Elisabetta Drudi and Tiziana Paci offers ideas adn perspectives on drawing thin bodies with clothes on them.

Book of the Year

Each Year the College of the Redwoods and nearby Humboldt State University choose a Book of the year. We arrange lectures about it and each campus may utilize it in other ways as well.

This year's book is called Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.

We recently received a copy here at our library and it is inspiring. Although I have not read it all yet, the parts I have read are awesome. Education is the step stool to a better life, not only here in California, but throughout the world. This book chronicles and celebrates the effort of one man to bring education to hundreds (perhaps more--I am not done with the book yet) that otherwise could not afford to learn.

We've added three new movies to our collection

This Blog was written by: Machelle Lehr


The first new movie is Whale Rider. This is the story of a girl named Pai, who has to battle with her grandfather to prove that she can lead their tribe as well as any man. Having a woman leader goes against all Maori (a New Zealand tribe) traditions.




We also now have Glory. This is the story of the first "black" regiment to fight for the North in the Civil War. It's an excellent story of unity.





Finally, we have Rabbit-Proof Fence. In this movie the Australian government trains aboriginal children as domestic workers and integrate them into white society. This is the story of three girls escaping from their interment camp.