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The Abington Community Library will be closed Saturday, May 28; Sunday, May 29 and Monday, May 30, in observance of the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Regular hours will resume May 31 at 9 a.m. Area residents of all ages are encouraged to join in the line of march in the Clarks Summit parade on Memorial Day. Participants will meet at the flag pole at Clarks Summit Elementary at 10:30 a.m. and finish the walk at the VFW on Winola Road. Registration is required, either in person or by phone (570.587.3440). The library is also currently taking orders for royal blue T-shirts with the library logo on them if marchers are interested or if anyone else would like one. Please check with a staff member at the library to order a shirt. Orders will be taken until May 23.
The library has entry forms available for students who would like to participate in the second annual poetry contest organized in conjunction with the Pages & Places Book Festival, Scranton. Any student in third to 11th grade residing in Northeastern Pennsylvania is eligible to submit one poem on any theme. Poems must be received by or postmarked June 24. Go to www.pagesandplaces.org for further information.
New Additions for Adults
“Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth” by Frederick Kempe. For the first time in history, American and Soviet fighting men and tanks stood arrayed against each other, only yards apart, at the Berlin Wall. Neither leader really understood the motives of the other and both tried cynically to manipulate events. The author, a former editor for The Wall Street Journal and Berlin bureau chief, bases his insights on a wealth of new documents and interviews.
“The Boy from Baby House 10” by Alan Philips and John Lahutsky. At the age of 18 months, a boy named Vanya, afflicted with cerebral palsy, was abandoned by his mother and sent to a bleak, state-run Russian orphanage called Baby House 10 and from there to a mental asylum. Two women, a young Russian named Vika and Sarah, the wife of British journalist Alan Philps, knew that Vanya was no ordinary child and had been cruelly misdiagnosed. After a lot of red tape, Vanya was adopted and brought to the United States by his new mother, a single woman named Paula Lahutsky. He is now a high school student living in Bethlehem. He collaborated with Philps to tell his story.
“The North Country Murder of Irene Izak” by Dave Shampine. Irene Izak, a young French teacher from Scranton, headed toward a new job and the promise of a new life in Quebec in June of 1968. She never reached the border. Her body was discovered in a ravine by a state trooper patrolling Route 81 in New York’s North Country. Here is the true story of a vicious and confounding killing that has remained unsolved for 40 years.