The American Library Association has announced the major children's book award winners for 2012.

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos won the Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children's literature, while A Ball for Daisy, illustrated and written by Chris Raschka, received the Caldecott Medal, for most distinguished American picture book for children.

Also, Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley earned the Printz Award, for excellence in literature written for young adults; and author Susan Cooper received the Margaret A. Edwards Award, for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults.

For more information on all the winners and other finalists, visit the Book Awards page on the American Library Association web site.

The Blanchester Public Library Booklovers meets next at 7 p.m., Feb. 2, in the library meeting room.

February title:
Moon Called
by Patricia Briggs

Mercy Thompson's life is not exactly normal, Her next-door neighbor is a werewolf. Her former boss is a gremlin. And she's fixing a VW bus for a vampire. But then, Mercy isn't exactly normal herself.

Chronicling America, an historic newspaper website, now features several Civil War era-newspapers from Ohio.

The Ohio newspapers join a total of over 500 from all over the nation – featuring more than four million pages – that chronicle the United States' history from 1836 to 1922. The newspapers are all keyword searchable.

The newspapers were contributed by the Ohio Historical Society through the National Digital Newspaper Program.

The Association for Library Service to Children recently released Great Early Elementary Reads, which features recommended book titles for beginning readers.

The updated list is organized into two categories: "Starting to Read" and "Reading on My Own." It includes books published between 2009 and 2011. However, many of the titles are part of a larger series that young readers also will enjoy.

Hard copies of the list are available at the library.

Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones, telling the story of a poor family in the days before Hurricane Katrina hits the Gulf Coast, won the National Book Award.

Ward's novel was one of five finalists for the fiction award.

"I understood that I wanted to write about the experiences of the poor and the black and the rural people of the South," Ward has said. "So that the culture that marginalized us for so long would see that our stories were as universal, our lives as fraught and lovely and important as theirs." 

The other 2011 winners are The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt for nonfiction; Head Off & Split by Nikky Finney for poetry; and Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai for young people's literature.

Blanchester Public Library patrons now have access to two new databases: Ancestry Library Edition and Mango Languages.

Ancestry Library Edition, which may be accessed only at the library, delivers billions of records in census data, vital records, family histories, military records, photos and more. Ancestry Library Edition provides access to more than 7,000 databases for anyone interested in genealogy or history.

Mango Languages includes a variety of resources to help users learn practical conversation skills for more than 30 languages spoken all over the world. Users have the option to create a profile, which provides the ability to track progress and time spent learning each language.