If you like fiction and enjoy needlework, Catawba County Library System has a program just for you.

Kim Wetmore, librarian and avid knitter, invites the public to join in a fiction discussion at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 12, at the Southwest Branch Library. Novels in which the characters learn about life while learning or teaching knitting will be discussed: the ever-popular Blossom Street series as well as the Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs. Some nonfiction knitting books will be on display to inspire new projects.

Wetmore will distribute a reading list of knitting-related novels to encourage more reading. Participants will also learn about how they can read and knit at the same time. (It’s not impossible!)

Both knitters and crocheters are welcome to bring their needlework with them. Light refreshments will be served.

Southwest Branch is located on Highway 127 South in Mountain View. For more information, contact Wetmore at 294-2343.

There’s plenty of fun in store for local teens next month as Catawba County Library celebrates Teen Read Week Oct. 12-18.

Teen Read Week is an annual initiative of the Young Adult Library Services Association, a division of the American Library Association. The observance is designed to encourage youth to visit their public and school libraries, choose their own reading material and read for pleasure. The theme this year is “Books with Bite.”

Activities are planned for ages 12-18 at several locations.

Preceding Teen Read Week, Main Library will present author Adam Shepard, who wrote Scratch Beginnings about his year after college starting out with only $25, a sleeping bag and a tarp. He will appear in Newton at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 9, to discuss his book which has special appeal to young men.

Main Library will also host young adult author Karon Luddy at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 21. The free program will include a reading and booksigning of her novel, Spelldown.

The Teen Advisory Board will meet at 4 p.m. Oct. 23 at the Main Library.

Maiden Branch plans to engage youth in literary references to pizza at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 23. Participants will learn more about pizza references in literature, poetry and music while they create and eat their own “pizza-dillas.” Materials will be furnished at no charge.

St. Stephens Branch will host artist Joy McKemy at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 16 to demonstrate the art of anime. The branch will also hold a Vampire Legends night on Oct. 21. Cassie Fox will discuss vampire history beginning at 6:30 p.m., followed by discussion of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books.

Southwest Branch in Mountain View will offer book displays, Bites and Bytes, featuring books with computer information and young adult vampire fiction.  Visitors may pick up a suggested reading list for what to read after the Twilight series.

 Sherrills Ford will offer a similar book display and brochure for teens.

The Battle of Gettysburg will be discussed at a free program Monday, Oct. 6, at Catawba County Library in Newton. Richard Eller, professor of history at Catawba Valley Community College, will explore this key Civil War battle at 5 p.m.

The program, free and open to the public, should be of special interest to students who plan to enter this year’s NSDAR essay contest. The essay topic, “What message did the Gettysburg Address communicate to our war-torn nation in 1863?” is for grades 5-8 with a deadline of mid-November. The contest is sponsored by local chapters of National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution.

Eller, who specializes in American history, joined the CVCC faculty in 2002. He co-authored The Tarheel Lincoln, a book exploring legends about Abraham Lincoln’s birth, and this year published, Piedmont Airlines: A Complete History, 1948-1989. While at Charter, he produced the documentary, The Miracle of Hickory, examining the 1944 polio epidemic.  

The Main Library is located at 115 West C Street in Newton. For more information, contact Youth Services at 465-8668.

While many of us believe that Latinos are relatively new to our area, history proves otherwise.

The Juan Pardo Expedition brought Spanish warriors through what is now Catawba County as early as 1567. Now known as the Berry site, the archaeological dig north of Morganton has already revealed a wealth of information about 16^th century Native Americans and their Spanish visitors.

Dr. David Moore of Warren Wilson College and his cohorts from around the nation have been working the site since 1986. The site was once the native town of Joara, visited by the Spanish expeditions of Hernando de Soto in 1540 and Juan Pardo from 1567-1568. Pardo’s Fort San Juan, constructed at Joara, is the earliest Spanish outpost in the interior of what is now the United States, 40 years before the English founding of Jamestown and 20 years before the ill-fated Lost Colony.

An account of Pardo’s exploits is in The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Exploration of the Carolinas and Tennessee 1566-1568 by Charles Hudson (975.01 HUD) is available at the Main Library in Newton. In the book, Hudson literally re-wrote history as he detailed the expedition to seek an inland route to silver mines in Northern Mexico. They mistakenly assumed that the North American continent was much smaller than it actually is.

Hudson gleaned the Pardo documents to find a wealth of information about the explorer’s routes, his encounters with native peoples and delves into the social and political structures of Indians of the time. Joara in Burke County was actually the seat of a Mississippian chiefdom.

In late 1566, Capt. Juan Pardo left Santa Elena, the capital of Spanish Florida (on modern Parris Island, S.C.), with a company of 125 men. Their mission: to explore the interior, to claim the land for Spain while pacifying local Indians, and to forge a route to Mexico. In January 1567, Pardo arrived at Joara, the largest Indian settlement in what is now North Carolina.  He renamed it Cuenca, after his hometown in Spain, and built Fort San Juan de Joara, leaving 30 men to defend the fort and occupy the town. For undetermined reasons, they met a fiery end soon afterward. Only one survivor made it back to Santa Elena.

David Moore co-wrote the afterward of Hudson’s book, describing how he and colleagues were led to the Berry site from writings of Domingo de Leon, who described the route that Pardo’s group traversed along what surely was the watercourse of the Catawba, more specifically Upper Creek. Discovery of 16^th century artifacts such as pieces of olive jar, chain mail and nails reinforce their theory.

This book will give you a leg up on the history of Fort San Juan, which has already woven its way into local consciousness. Pardo’s men were depicted in a tableau during the recent Night at the Museum Catawba County Museum of History. And a group of area ladies have named their provisional chapter of Colonial Dames 17^th Century the “Fort San Juan Chapter.” 

Every summer the Berry Site Field School engages volunteers in the dig. And one Saturday in June, the public is invited to visit. For details, log on to http://www.warren-wilson.edu/~arch/fieldschool

Books about archaeology in general are available on the 930.1 shelves at Catawba County Library.

St. Stephens Branch Library will host “Every Child Ready to Read,” a program for child care providers from 6-8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 14.

The 4-H sponsored program will cover literary prop boxes and other fun activities to enhance story times. “Every Child Ready to Read” will be explained and 4-H will award continuing education credit to attendees.

Light refreshments will be served and pre-registration is required.  For more information, contact Donna Fox at 256-3030 or Susie Devine at 465-8250.

            Catawba County Library System is all about serving patrons, even those who can’t yet read.

            For several years, Outreach and Bookbaggers programs have provided story times and easy library books for preschoolers.

            “It’s one of the most important services we offer,” said Lidia Miller, library services specialist at Main Library in Newton. Every Monday, she heads out to at least a couple of local day care centers to read books to youngsters.

            “This is one way local kids are being introduced to books and getting ready to read,” Miller said.

Library staff members offer story times at a number of preschools, day care centers and home-based centers in the county.  This past year, some 2,500 youngsters attended library story times while at day care.

Day care teachers may borrow materials from the library through the Bookbaggers program. Day care centers pick up library books for children in their care. The books are exchanged for different ones every three weeks.

            Meanwhile librarians continue to offer story times for families each week at all seven library locations. It’s one way to introduce children to books who have an adult to bring them to the library.

            “It’s so important to make books available to young children. Most centers have books, but they don’t have the numbers or the variety we have,” said Richard Griffin, Youth Services librarian. Drawing from the county’s juvenile collection, Book Buddies librarians have several thousand volumes at their disposal.

In some cases, they also offer music time, encouraging children to coordinate movement with sound.

            Weekly story times are also offered at each of seven locations. The current schedule is:

            CLAREMONT – 9 a.m. Wednesdays

            CONOVER—10 a.m. Wednesdays

            NEWTON—10 a.m. Thursdays

            MAIDEN—9:30 a.m. Wednesdays toddlers, 10 a.m. Wednesdays, preschoolers

            ST. STEPHENS—10 a.m. Thursdays and special music times at 10 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Oct. 23

            SHERRILLS FORD—10 a.m. Wednesday story time, 10 a.m. Thursday music time

            SOUTHWEST (Mountain View)—10 a.m. Wednesdays

            For more details about children’s services, contact Lynne Bolick Reed, coordinator of library services, at 465-8292.

             Catawba County Library System will engage youth in literary references to pizza at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 23, in Maiden.

            “Pizza References” is part of the library’s observance of Teen Read Week and National Pizza Month. Pre-teens and teen-agers will learn more about pizza references in literature, poetry and music while they create and eat their own “pizza-dillas.” Materials will be furnished at no charge.

            Pizzas are featured in a variety of books besides cookbooks, said Betty Jean Stinson, branch manager. Excerpts will be read from A Pizza the size of the Sun by Jack Prelutsky, Pasta & Pizza For Beginners by Fiona Watt, Princess and the Pizza by Mary Jane Auch, and The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza retold by Philemon Sturges.   

The event is a combined observance of Teen Read Week and National Pizza Month, Stinson said.

            Maiden Branch is one of seven location of the Catawba County Library System which offers children’s programming year-round. The system circulates nearly 680,000 items per year, many of them for children and youth.

            In case you haven’t heard, there’s a major exhibit on Pompeii at Discovery Place in Charlotte. The show, “A Day in Pompeii,” runs through Jan. 4.

            It was late August in 79 A.D. when the bustling Roman city was inundated by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, raining ash and pumice down on 20,000 inhabitants. Buried for centuries, the ancient city was forgotten until archaeologists began excavations in 1748. It is now is one of the world’s most famous archaeological sites.

            Catawba County Library has a variety of materials to help you appreciate the exhibit.

            The Modern Scholar Series of university lectures on CD is an excellent way to ground you in the culture and times of ancient Rome. Two lectures series of interest are A History of Ancient Rome by Professor Frances Tichener of Utah State University and The Decline and Fall of Rome by Dr. Thomas Madden of St. Louis University. Both scholars deliver 14 lectures to replicate an actual college course.

            The entire family may wish to view the History Channel video, In Search of History, Pompeii  (VC 4838 SWT EDU) first broadcast in 1996.

            Books abound on the subject of the Roman Empire and Pompeii in particular. The latest nonfiction title is The Complete Pompeii by Joanne Berry (937.7 BER). It’s very readable and well-illustrated. Three juvenile titles were published within the past couple of years:

            Through Time: Pompeii by Richard Platt (Q J 937.7 PLA)

            Pompeii: Lost and Found by Mary Pope Osborne (Q J 937.7 OSB)

Ancient Rome and Pompeii: A Nonfiction Companion to Vacation under the Volcano by Mary Pope Osborne (J 937 OSB)

            Fiction lovers may prefer novels. The Last Girls of Pompeii by Kathryn Lasky is for young readers. Adults may wish to check out Pompeii by best-selling author Robert Harris.

            Tickets to “A Day in Pompeii” may be purchased through the Discovery Place website, https://www.discoveryplace.org. Reservations are recommended.

             Sherrills Ford Branch Library has received several books addressing issues of care for elderly adults.

            According to Sandy Cooke, branch manager, five books were donated by the Family Caregiver Support Program of the Area Agency on Aging which is affiliated with the Western Piedmont Council of Governments.

            The titles include The Sunshine on My Face: A Read-Aloud Book for Memory Challenged Adults by Lydia Burdick, The Emotional Survival Guide for Caregivers by Barry J. Jacobs, Chicken Soup for the Caregiver’s Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and LeAnn Thieman, A Dignified Life: The Best Friends Approach to Alzheimer’s Care by Virginia Bell and David Troxel and The Caregiving Zone by Peggy Flynn.

            “We are grateful to have these welcome additions to our collection,” said Cooke.

The books will be available to patrons throughout the Catawba County Library System which includes libraries in Newton, Conover, Claremont, St. Stephens, Maiden and Southwest (Mountain View).

            Friends of Catawba County Library will meet on Monday, Oct. 13 at the Main Library in Newton. The 11 a.m. meeting will include a pizza lunch.

The group will discuss their sponsorship of the upcoming author visit by Karon Luddy on Oct. 21 as well as the ongoing book sale.

Interested members of the community are welcome. For more information call 465-8292. The Main Library is located at 115 West C Street in Newton.