"Be Creative @ Your Library" is the 2009 theme for our Summer Reading & Listening Program which runs June 15 through Aug. 14. Registration begins at 6:30 p.m. Monday at the "Be Creative Carnival," an evening of fun activities, games and refreshments. This year there's a new twist - an adult component to the usual youth-oriented Summer Reading Program. So register, read and enter the prize drawings.

We are celebrating creativity in many guises including storytimes, puppetry, music, wildlife, bookbinding, food, nature crafts, opera, archaeology, drumming, fiber arts, Shakespeare, ventriloquism and our imagination. Special guests include Cinderella, Paul Rintala, Betsy Rutz, the Bergonzi String Quartet, Corinne Rockow, Unkle Ake, PaleoJoe, Barefoot & Mucklucked, Kathryn Norton, Red Bays and Jeff Spenser of Vertigo Theatre, Skippy & Dave, and Gale LaJoye. All programs are free. Create your own ice cream sundae during the prize drawing on Aug. 17.

For information about Peter White Public Library's Summer Reading and Listening Program call 226-4323 (youth) or 226-4318 (adult) or visit www.pwpl. info. Most libraries sponsor summer reading programs, so check out your nearest public library for their program information if you live outside our service area.

Biographies of creative people inspire us to dream bigger plans for our lives than we thought possible. Young Vinnie Ream and her family moved to Washington, D.C., at the start of the Civil War. She studied graveyard statues hoping to someday create sculptures of her own, especially of Lincoln. Interested in a self-taught artist raised in a log cabin, Lincoln sat for Vinnie the last five months of his life. After his death, Congress wanted a memorial statue made. Would Congress vote for a 16-year-old female artist? How did Congress want Lincoln portrayed? As a warrior, a saint, or the kind and gentle man Vinnie knew? Read Vinnie and Abraham by Dawn FitzGerald for the story behind the statue in our Capitol's rotunda.

A sculpture of Hercules inspired a skinny kid named Angelo to create a fitness routine of exercise, stretching and healthy dietary and sleep habits that transformed him into Charlie Atlas, "the World's Most Perfectly Developed Man." Using fun cartoons, Meghan McCarthy illustrates her book, Strong Man: The Story of Charles Atlas.

Robert Burleigh's Napoleon: The Story of the Little Corporal explores the life and career of the man who became emperor of France and ruled over much of Western Europe in the first quarter of the 1800s. For Napoleon, the word impossible did not exist in French, yet it sums up his achievements as a military leader and statesman. Burleigh's book is beautifully illustrated with maps and period artworks.

Friendship and respect grow between people who walk together to create a climate where justice and equality can take root and grow. Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel grew up in loving families but within cultures that did not welcome them because of Martin's skin color and Abraham's religion. Martin organized a march for voting rights in Alabama and called for all God's children to join in. The two religious leaders prayed, stomped their feet and took the first step together in the march toward freedom in Richard Michelson's book As Good As Anybody.

In Coretta Scott, writer Ntozake Shange and illustrator Kadir Nelson create a stunning poem honoring the wife of Martin Luther King Jr. and the faith and fervor she courageously maintained throughout the nonviolent struggle for civil rights in America.

A creative woman who plants seeds of hope today is Wangari Maathai, an environmentalist awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. In spite of ridicule and jail time, Wangari started Green Belt Movement Kenya, which has assisted in planting over 30 million trees, bringing green back to Africa. Two lovely books tell this story, Wangari's Trees of Peace by Jeanette Winter and Planting the Trees of Kenya by Claire Nivola.

One of mankind's most creative efforts has been our journey to the moon. Moon Over Star by Dianna Hutts Aston describes a farm family's excitement as they follow the flight of Apollo 11 one summer Sunday in July 1969. Starting with morning prayers at church, an afternoon spent building a spaceship from scraps, then watching the landing and, that night, the moon walk on TV, a young girl is inspired in her own dreams of becoming an astronaut.

-Cathy Sullivan Seblonka

Youth Services Librarian