Multnomah County Library Podcasts

Countdown by Debora Wiles

Franny Chapman just wants some peace. But that's hard to get when her best friend is feuding with her, her sister has disappeared, and her uncle is fighting an old war in his head. Her saintly younger brother is no help, and the cute boy across the street only complicates things. Worst of all, everyone is walking around just waiting for a bomb to fall. It's 1962, and it seems the whole country is living in fear...

Audience: Kids

Whether you are in your 30s, 40s, or 50s, this class uses a variety of tools (personality inventories, success factor self analysis, etc.) to help you discover the perfect career position for this time of your life. This class was offered in Partnership with PCC Community Education.

“I like to live my life purposefully,” says June Fleming, who at 74 is a poster child for healthy and engaged living and who nonchalantly describes her rigorous snowcamping and hiking trips. For 15 years she has been reading weekly to residents at two local care facilities, as a volunteer for the library’s Visiting Voices program. She has always loved libraries, calling them “the great equalizers” and she has a gift for reading aloud, noting that her husband and children always loved to hear her read. June has spent a lifetime cultivating relationships with elders through conversation, letters and visits and her work with Visiting Voices has deepened her respect for the wisdom of elders. June describes wisdom as the ability to adapt to change and not be diminished by loss, illness and death.  Hear a short recording of one of her reading sessions.

June is an author, too: check out copies of June’s books, The Well-fed Backpacker and Staying Found: The Complete Map and Compass Handbook.

Gift People is a program of  recorded conversations with civically engaged older adults, sponsored by Library Outreach Services, Life by Design NW and the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Library Services and Technology Act, administered by Oregon State Library.

Volunteers with the library’s Visiting Voices program recognize that the joy of reading never diminishes with age. Armed with a stimulating variety of reading material from poems to novels, volunteers read to a group of elders at Portland area assisted care facilities. Reading sessions are weekly and typically range from 30-45 minutes. Hear a short passage from a reading session conducted by June Fleming, a 15-year veteran volunteer.

Gift People is a program of  recorded conversations with civically engaged older adults, sponsored by Library Outreach Services, Life by Design NW and the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Library Services and Technology Act, administered by Oregon State Library.

Yellowstone Moran;painting the American West  By Lita Judge

Tom Moran had never ridden a horse or slept under the stars before, but the paintings he created on his journey from city boy to seasoned explorer would lead to the founding of America's first national park.

Audience: Kids

Trickster Native American tales a Graphic Collection Compiled and Edited by Matt Dembicki

Meet the trickster, a crafty creature or being who disrupts the order of things, often humiliating others and sometimes himself in the process. Whether a coyote or rabbit, raccoon or raven, tricksters use cunning to get food, steal precious possessions, or simply cause mischief.

Audience: Kids and Teens

Nothing by Janne Teller 

When thirteen-year-old Pierre Anthon leaves school to sit in a plum tree and train for becoming part of nothing, his seventh grade classmates set out on a desperate quest for the meaning of life. If you had to sacrifice something meaningful to you to prove life had meaning, what would you give up? Your pet? Your little finger? What might your friends make you sacrifice?

Like The Lord of the Flies or The Lottery, this book questions what happens when control goes out of control.  

Target Audience: Teen

Bad News for Outlaws: the Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshall by Vanda Micheaux Nelson

This biography profiles the life of Bass Reeves, a former slave who was recruited as a deputy United States Marshal in the area that was to become Oklahoma.

Target audience: Children

Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis by Barbara O'Connor

In Fayette, South Carolina, the highlight of Popeye's summer is learning vocabulary words with his grandmother until a motor home gets stuck nearby and Elvis, the oldest boy living inside, joins Popeye in finding the source of strange boats floating down the creek.

Target Audience: Children

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

In the summer of 1968, after travelling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.

Target Audience: Children