Come see us at NyanCon this Saturday at Lakeland

See you at NyanCon! We'll be the ones in full costume with the free manga.

Do you love anime? Gaming? Comics? All of the above?

Then you're going to love NyanCon.

NyanCon is Lakeland Community College's annual convention dedicated to anime, manga and all things awesome. It's from 1 to 11 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 3.

Mentor Public Library will be there giving away free manga. (Yes, giving them away for free.) That includes trades of Fullmetal Alchemist, Death Note, Tokyo Mew Mew, Dramacon and more. Get them while our supplies last.

We'll also be making crafts, if you want to join us.

In addition, NyanCon will have special guests like inker Jeremy Freeman, artists Del Borovic and J.M. Dragunas, voice actors Daman Mills and Amber Lee Connors, Love and Capes creator Thom Zahler, and more.

There will be panels, vendors, a cosplay contest and all sorts of other fun.

Hopefully you'll be there too.

Jane Austen Tea Party for kids at Mentor Library

Sienna remembers to keep her pinky up while sipping tea.

Sienna remembers to keep her pinky up while sipping tea.

We're celebrating the life and works of Jane Austen with Austen in Autumn; and, yes, most of our programs are for teens and adults. But not all of them!

We threw a tea party on Saturday where kids could learn about Austen and Britain's Regency Era.

We also made nosegays, silhouette pendants and bilboquets (which you probably know as the ball-in-cup game,) while enjoying cucumber sandwiches and tea.

Katie pours her daughter Amanda another cup of tea.

We still have several Austen in Autumn programs coming up including our Austen film series. This Thursday, we're hosting a free screening of Clueless (which is a remake and modernization of Austen's Emma) at Great Lakes Mall Atlas Cinemas.

Also, the Geauga Lyric Theater will have a special reprise of its rendition of Pride & Prejudice at our Main Branch on Tuesday, Oct. 13.

We also have programs on silhouette art and world history during Austen’s life. All of which will be free and open to the public.

That includes a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies party for teens on Oct. 12. Teens can practice their skulking and celebrate Halloween a little early when they party like the undead.

For more information on Austen in Autumn, visit www.mentorpl.org/austen.

Lucy (wearing an awesome hat) ties the ball on to her bilboquet.

For more photos from our Austen tea party, check our Mentor Library's Facebook page.

Partying like a pirate at Mentor Public Library

All good pirates practice their Arrrrghs.

We pitched a pair of pirate parties as part of International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

The kids dressed as pirates, crafted their own ships and went on treasure hunts!

And, while it may be too late to sail with our crew of ne'er-do-wells, you can always enjoy the pictures.

Luke's not wearing a pirate hat. He's wearing a captain's hat.

Payton's ready to set sail.

Thanks to our entire rapscallion crew. We hope you had fun!

For a few more photos from our Pirate Party, check out Mentor Library's Facebook page.

Young artists get the point (as in pointillism) at Studio MPL

Kaylee recreates La Grande Jatte using the same pointillist technique that Seurat innovated.

Studio MPL—Mentor Public Library’s art club for kids—tried their hand at pointillism and learned about the art style’s founder, George Seurat, on Monday, Sept. 21.

Lisa Layton, the children’s library associate in charge of Studio MPL, also explained how computers and digitally animated films use pointillism.

“The pixels they use to draw those are just another form of dots,” Layton said. “Seurat did that more than 100 years ago, so let’s give it up for George.”

Colin blends different shades of blue to create the water.

The children then tried their own hand at making their own version of Seurat’s masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. They received an outline of the famous park scene and could color it however they wanted, but they had to use Seurat’s pointillist style.

Every month, Studio MPL takes on a new art project. They’ve created imaginary friends, made sun catchers, painted sunsets, weaved and even garnered inspiration from Jackson Pollock.

Circles can be used to make all kinds of art. Remo experiments with making different kinds of eyes, using felt circles.

Studio MPL meets on the third Monday of each month. If your kid likes art—any kind of art—they can join the fun.

Next month’s session will be Oct. 19 at Mentor Public Library’s Main Branch. The kids will learn about Vincent Van Gogh.

Giselle concentrates on her artwork.

For more photos from Studio MPL, visit Mentor Library's Facebook page.

10 Jane Austen Facts for Austen in Autumn

Austen in Autumn has just begun, and we're already having a lot of fun. Here are some fun facts about Jane Austen, the author who inspired us to host Austen in Autumn.

1. Jane Austen never finished her basic schooling. She and her sister, Cassandra, stopped going to school during a Typhoid outbreak and never returned.
2. Austen never married. However, she was proposed to by the brother of a friend and even said "yes." But after sleeping on it, she changed her mind and rescinded her acceptance.
3. While several people have gotten rich off of the Jane Austen cottage industry, Austen was not one of them. She received 110 pounds for writing Pride and Prejudice and 150 pounds for Sense and Sensibility. Even taking into account inflation, that's still a paltry sum considering the popularity and influence of her work.
4. Austen wrote anonymously because some still found women writing unseemly during her lifetime. Sense and Sensibility had the byline "by a lady" and Pride and Prejudice was credited "to the author of Sense and Sensibility." Her brother outed her as an author after she passed away at the age of 41 when he posthumously published her novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.
5. Jane Austen died at 41 and her exact cause of death has never been identified. Some think she died from Addison's Disease, a failure of the adrenal glands. Others suggest she may have died from arsenic poisoning. (Before she died, Austen wrote a letter that described some symptoms that fit arsenic poisoning -- specifically, discoloration. Of course, they fit other things, as well.)
6. Not much of Austen's personal life is known from Austen herself. In part because Cassandra, her sister, burned a number of the letters she and Jane wrote to one another before she died.
7. When Austen died, she left behind an unfinished novel called The Waltons. Three Austen family members have since tried their hands at completing it. Catherine Anne Hubback, her niece, used it as the basis for The Younger Sister. Then Hubback's granddaughter, Edith Brown, wrote another version: also called The Watsons. Finally, in 1977 another version of The Watsons was released -- credited to Jane Austen & Another. This "another" was distant relation David Hopkinson.
8. Several famous authors have also tried their hand at revisiting Austen's work. A. A. Milne, the author behind Winnie the Pooh and Tigger too, wrote Miss Elizabeth Bennet: A Play from 'Pride and Prejudice' in 1936. Then, in 1940, Aldous Huxley of Brave New World fame cowrote a Pride and Prejudice movie.
9. This latest Austen revival saw a distinct uptick in 1995: the year of Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility and the BBC's Pride and Prejudice. In the pre-Colin Firth era, publishers released about 10 Jane Austen-centric books (either revisions, unauthorized sequels or books with Austen as a character) per year. In 2012, there were more than 100 published.
10. Austen's prodigious influence essentially stems from six novels -- the aforementioned four, as well as Emma and Mansfield Park -- which were published from 1811 to 1817. These have spawned hundreds, even thousands, of books, articles, films, plays and more. For example, Stephanie Barron has written more novels starring Jane Austen as a detective (11) than Austen wrote in totality.

If you want to know more about Austen, check out all of our Austen in Autumn programs. You could also visit your local library. We have her books, biographies, movies and more.

Jane Austen Tea for kids at Mentor Library

Mentor Library is throwing a special Jane Austen tea party for kids this Saturday.

Not to sound braggy, but we're pretty good at tea parties at Mentor Public Library.

Be they princess, Pinkalicious or Poppins parties, the kids always have a good time. (And we do too!)

As part of Austen in Autumn, we're hosting a special Jane Austen-themed tea at 2 p.m. this Saturday at our Main Branch.

Kids can learn about Jane Austen and the Regency Era while enjoying tea. (We'll provide the tea. Please bring your own tea cup.)

The kids will make their own bilboquet, silhouette hangings and flower cones.

You can register your kid for the tea on Mentor Library's website or by calling MPL at (440) 255-8811 ext. 221.

See you at the tea party!

Free ACT Prep Sessions this October at Mentor Library

Mentor Library is offering free ACT prep courses to teen on Saturday, Oct. 3 and 10.

Stressed out about the ACTs?

Why wouldn’t you be?

It’s one of the cruel truths of young adulthood that you spend four years volunteering, participating in student groups and working hard in class, and then a single standardized test taken on a Saturday morning can completely undermine you.

So standardized test are, in a word, stressful.

But there’s no better remedy for that stress than being well prepared.

The Mentor Public Library is offering two free ACT prep sessions this September. The first session is from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 3. It will focus on general test preparation and the reading courses. The next session is Oct. 10. Its focus will be the science and math sections of the ACT. You can register for them on our website.

These sessions provide practical experience in terms of the types of questions you’ll see on the ACT, and they also offer strategies for test prep (that, by the way, work on tests besides the ACT.)

All sessions will be led by Dr. John Foster, one of our reference librarians at Mentor Public Library. Foster has a doctorate in history from the University of Washington and has taught at both the high school and college level.

And, yes, all of our sessions are free and open to anyone preparing for the ACT.

If you have any questions on our ACT prep sessions, you can call the library at (440) 255-8811 ext. 215.

Students prepare for their upcoming ACT at Mentor Library.