This January, RHPL presents a three-part programming series on caregiving, kicking off on Thursday, January 8, at 7 p.m. with a visit from New York Times bestselling author Catherine Newman.

The ingredients of five-spice reflect the five flavors (sweet, bitter, sour, salty, and savory) and also the five traditional Chinese elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water). In fact, all five ingredients are used in Chinese traditional medicine to promote digestion. Together they have a sweet and earthy taste, which is spicy, yet cooling.

Both nutmeg and mace come from the fragrant nutmeg tree (Myristica fragrans), an evergreen tree native to the Maluku Islands in Indonesia. The tree grows in tropical areas and has been cultivated in South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, the Caribbean, and South America.

DINOvember is a month-long celebration of all things dinosaurs. It’s the perfect time of the year to engage children's imaginations about these big creatures that lived millions of years ago.

"The next morning as Emily unlocked her door to leave for work she glanced over at the To-Do list. There scrawled on the list was “Take the package from under the floor board in the kitchen area. Give it to the man with a black leather cap on the subway A Line."

I was twenty when I bought the car. A pale blue sedan, scratched along the doors, but the price was right. The salesman at the used lot called it “a starter car, nothing fancy, but reliable.” And he was right—it ran smoothly, better than I expected for something that had seen its share of miles. It became my freedom—drives to class, late-night grocery runs, weekend trips out of town. I didn’t think of it as anything more than metal and wheels, until the night the rain

I didn’t know what to do. I looked at Leo, he was looking at his feet and simply standing there. And then she talked, “Do not go to the little red house.”

But the tiger machine, that was a different story. It took an experienced machine attendant to keep it working. The machine growled and rumbled throughout the day, the oven in its belly needing constant stoking with chunks of coal large as a man’s hand.

RHPL youth librarians will be visiting local elementary schools to speak with area fifth graders in October and the Battle of the Books will officially kickoff on Wednesday, November 12