Events
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Start: 2:00 pm
End: 3:00 pm
Stephen Messer reads from his new middle grade novel Windblowne, from Random House Young Readers
Kirkus Reviews calls Windblowne “an inventive debut fantasy, set in multiple worlds linked by trees and winds….a tale that moves along at a powerful, steady pace to a climactic faceoff.”
Also one of Parent & Child magazine’s top picks for fiction this spring
Windblowne is…
A high-flying fantasy adventure that will blow readers away!
Every kite Oliver touches flies straight into the ground, making him the laughingstock of Windblowne. With the kite-flying festival only days away, Oliver tracks down his reclusive Great-uncle Gilbert, a former champion. With Gilbert’s help, Oliver can picture himself on the crest, launching into the winds to become one of the legendary fliers of Windblowne.
Then his great-uncle vanishes during a battle with mysterious attack kites—kites that seem to fly themselves! All that remains is his prize possession, a simple crimson kite. At least, the kite seems simple. When Oliver tries to fly it, the kite lifts him high above the trees. When he comes down, the town and all its people have disappeared. Suddenly the festival is the last thing on Oliver’s mind as he is catapulted into a mystery that will change everything he understands about himself and his world.
Inspired by the work of Diana Wynne Jones, debut author Stephen Messer delivers a fantasy book for boys and girls in which the distance between realities is equal to the breadth of a kite string.
Blown into this world as a baby, Stephen Messer spent his childhood flying kites on windswept hilltops in Maine and Arizona. He has lived in deserts and in megacities, on alpine mountains and in lowland swamps. Nowadays he lives with his wife in an old house surrounded by oak trees in Durham, North Carolina. Sometimes, on windblown nights, it seems like the house has been transported to another world.
Start: 6:00 pm
End: 7:00 pm
Saturday 7/31 6-7pm
Millennium:
The Story, a
one-hour documentary examining the extraordinary success of the famous Swedish
literary trilogy by Stieg Larsson
This movie is suitable for all ages. Run time is 1 hour.
The Millennium trilogy by Swedish author Stieg Larsson is THE literary phenomenon of the last decade with 15 million books sold worldwide, 25 translations in over 40 countries, and a movie that is blasting box-office records in Scandinavia and several European countries. And the Millennium saga has only just begun…
This portrait of Stieg Larsson reveals the story of an outstanding success – a worldwide phenomenon who at the age of 50, died from a sudden heart attack before his first novel was even published. This planetary triumph is analyzed by close friends and relatives of Stieg Larsson; by his publisher, his journalist colleagues and by various professionals who have worked on the films, including Swedish Producer, Soren Staermose, and the leading actors Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist who play Elisabeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist.
They have all been seduced by this 2000-page-long thriller trilogy that totally revisits the genre with freshly-defined characters and a reversal of sexual roles. It also offers well-documented and believable realism, along with a powerful story set against a political backdrop.
Stieg Larsson’s life gives us an insight into how he became the author we have come to know. The child who grew up in a humble environment, amid hostility and strife, went on to become a dogged and forthright journalist. He published six books on particularly-cherished subjects: democracy, violence against women, racism, and death threats against journalists on account of their beliefs. This latter subject was particularly dear to him after he and a number of his colleagues were personally threatened after creating a magazine determined to combat the rise of the Extreme Right-Wing and racism.
Stieg Larsson stood his ground, refusing to be silenced by fear. The only compromise he made was refraining from marrying his girlfriend in order to protect her. This decision affected her adversely after his death as it led to a highly publicized fratricidal inheritance war. Larsson would have probably looked down on such behavior as he had always advocated respect for others and fought against the corrupting power of money, this becoming the only cloud cast on an otherwise amazing and unexpected Scandinavian success story of colossal proportions.
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