What's Up Books In Brief

CHILDREN’S POET LAUREATE COMES TO CKHS

The nation’s first-ever Children’s Poet Laureate — also one of the great poetic chroniclers of the creatures of Halloween — Jack Prelutsky is coming to Silverdale.

It’s not that big of a trip since he lives in Seattle but, still, pretty cool.

He’ll be reading his humor-laden poems and verse for kids — and for the kids at heart — at 3 p.m., Oct. 25 at Central Kitsap High School on Anderson Hill in Silverdale. It’s a free event co-sponsored by Barnes and Noble and the Kitsap Regional Library.

On a jaunt through Prelutsky’s stretch of the American Poetry section at the library, of the volumes and volumes of outrageously quirky rhymes and lyric, what struck me most were his darker verses.

Check out his collection on the creatures of nightmare — “Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep” from 1976 — it starts at “The Haunted House.”

“Tortured spirits whine and wail/they grope and grasp, they wildly flail/their hollow voices rasp and rail/beneath the smoldering floor,” it reads. There’s “shadows from the dim hereafter,” “disembodied laughter” and “shades of evanescent matter.”

Info: www.jackprelutsky.com, www.krl.org

THE MEMOIR OF A CANCER SURVIVOR

Kelly Corrigan is a journalist and New York Times Bestselling author, as well as an essayist for O Magazine, Glamour and Good Housekeeping.And she’s also a cancer survivor.

Following a speaking gig at Maria Shriver’s 2008 Women’s Conference this weekend, Corrigan will be coming to Bremerton for an American Cancer Society fundraiser, reading from her memoir “The Middle Place,” at 7 p.m. Oct. 23 at the Bremerton High School Performing Arts Center, 1500 13th St. in Bremerton.

Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door which includes coffee and dessert and a classical guitar trio that will provide music on the evening.

Info: Call (360) 377-6168 or (360) 307-0115.

GUTERSON ON ‘TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD’

If you haven’t already gotten enough “Mockingbird” during the Kitsap Regional Library’s community read this month, Bainbridge-based bestselling author David Guterson — whose 1996 book “Snow Falling On Cedars” drew comparisons to Harper Lee’s classic — will be giving a lecture on “Why do we still read ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’?” to close out The Month of the Book, at 7 p.m. Oct. 30 at the Bainbridge library, 1270 Madison Ave. in Bainbridge.

Info: www.krl.org or call (206) 842-4162

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