Inspiration and an explanation

Here's the first blog entry from Mary S., the wonderful Americorps member who worked at Mainely Girls before me and started this blog. Take a gander... - Meredith

An introduction of this blog, to the Mainely Girls in book clubs around the state...

So I started my job here at Mainely Girls several months ago, and a big part of my position is to ship out books to our book clubs around Maine and check them back in when they return. I had noticed over the course of my four months here that a lot of the same titles were going in and out quite a bit, but I didn't realize just how many brand new sets of books were being neglected until yesterday afternoon during some office inventory. Ladies, we have TONS of new titles that are just sitting in our office (slash storage room) literally unopened and simply dying to be read. These books are award-winning, recent stories on a huge variety of topics, and there are a few new ones for each of the three Club age groups. Go on our website right now to look through the list of titles (www.mainelygirls.org), or remember to ask your club facilitators if they have a hard copy lying around anywhere at the next meeting, and pick out something you've never even heard of to suggest to your club this month!

If the enticement of simply being the first person to open a brand new copy of a book (don't you just love the way it smells??) isn't enough for you... this brings me to the real reason that I have started a blog. Although I generally find the word "blog" awkward and unattractive, I wanted a method of communicating more directly with the Girl's Point of View members from around the state, and it seems that this is probably the best way to do that. Through this blog, I will be able to do things like review some of our brand new titles, so that you will be able to choose something that you think you or your club will really have fun with (and have a way to convince the girls at your school to choose that new title you've been eyeing since September!).

In order to do all of this, I obviously have to get reading on those new titles, but I do have two reviews around here somewhere that I wrote about two of our older books a few months ago. I'll try to post those first and start reading the new stuff right away, but for the time being please tell all your friends to keep their eyes peeled for the upcoming reviews! Stay warm and check back soon.

-mary