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Ann Arbor Creativity and Making Expo 2024

A banner that includes the AACME event name and call for vendors on an orange background

Sunday, May 5, 2024 | 11 AM - 3 PM at the Downtown Library

The Ann Arbor Creativity and Making Expo (AACME) is back and you're invited! Come celebrate the maker movement with skills from across the last hundred years, from pinhole photography to modern robotics! Enjoy hands-on demos from local maker spaces, learn about ham radio, solder an LED badge, see an upholstery demonstration, use our t-shirt press, and so much more! This year, we're also building our own Maker City live at AACME and you are invited to be your own architect, engineer, and builder. All ages and abilities are welcome.

Mario Day Celebration (Observed)

Celebrate Super Mario Day on Sunday, March 17, from 11 AM – 4 PM at the Downtown Library with a packed day of fun for fans of all ages. Compete in our Mario Kart tournament, enjoy Mario-themed activities, and end the day with a screening of The Super Mario Bros Movie!

A blue background with a large photo of Mario on the left side. To the right of Mario reads, "Mario Day" in the Super Mario Bros font. Under this in bold yellow text continues, "Celebration (Observed". Under this is a white AADL byte accompanied by "aadl.org/marioday" and the event details.

Schedule of Events

11 AM - 1 PM | Downtown Lobby
Mario Day Celebration! (Observed)

Ann Arbor Creativity and Making Expo

AACME Logo

Saturday, May 6, 2023 | 11am - 3pm at the Downtown Library

AACME is back and you're invited! Come celebrate the maker movement with skills from across the last hundred years from pinhole photography to modern robotics! Enjoy hands-on demos from local maker spaces, learn about ham radio, solder an LED badge, try out an interactive sound installation, and so much more! And this year we are building our own Maker City live at AACME and you are invited to be your own architect, engineer, and builder. All ages and abilities are welcome.

AACME Schedule of Events

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Blog Post

Hot Holiday Meals for the Hungry!

by Beth Manuel

St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Ann Arbor will serve its daily hot breakfast on Thanksgiving from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. as it does every day of the year. The Original Cottage Inn will offer its annual Thanksgiving meal for the needy and homeless, a tradition that dates back more than 30 years. The dinner is served on Thanksgiving between 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Vineyard Church is also providing a Thanksgiving Meal, November 23rd from 11:15 AM-5:00 PM. 2275 Platt Road, Ann Arbor. They are also in need of volunteers; email: homelessministries@vineyard.org.

Brown Chapel AME Church,1043 W. Michigan Avenue in Ypsilanti, is serving a Thanksgiving Meal on Wednesday, November 22nd from 12-2 PM, and they also need volunteers: 734-482-7050. Dexter Senior Center will be serving a festive holiday meal on Friday, November 24th from 11:30-2:00 PM, 7720 Ann Arbor Street, Dexter, 48130. They, too, need volunteers, if you're looking for a way to help out this season!

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Blog Post

Thor: Ragnarok!

by PizzaPuppy

Thor: Ragnarok arrives in theaters today, making now the perfect time to revisit your favorite Thor materials! The movie is already generating quite a buzz and has received rave reviews (with a 93% rating, it's currently Rotten Tomatoes' best reviewed comic book film ever!).

A great place to start are the previous Thor movies, including Thor and Thor: The Dark World, as well as his appearances in The Avengers and The Avengers: Age of Ultron. For younger kids who aren't quite ready for the Marvel movies, Thor is featured in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes (there are multiple volumes of this series, including Vol. 5 and Vol. 6).

For adult readers, some of the original Thor comics are included in the anthology series The Essential Thor Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3 and Vol. 4. Many of these original stories also appear in The Mighty Thor: Omnibus collection. More recent additions to the Thor universe include God of Thunder Vol. 1 (Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 are also available), Lord of Asgard, Bringers of the Storm, Godstorm, and Thor Vol. 1 (Vol. 3 is also available). Currently, a woman has taken on the title of Thor in The Mighty Thor: Thunder in her Veins.

There are awesome Thor graphic novels in the Teen section, including Wolves of the North and The Lost Gods. A mysterious female Thor has also taken the lead in The Goddess of Thunder and Who Holds the Hammer?.

Kids have a variety of Thor books to choose from as well. Younger children will like gentler Readers such as The Trouble with Thor and These are the Avengers. Older kids can enjoy comic books like Thor: The Mighty Avenger Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, and Mini Marvels: The Complete Collection. Books for kids about the Avengers include The Avengers: The Ultimate Guide and The Avengers: The Movie Storybook. We also have several comic books based on Norse mythology, such as Thor and the Giants and Thor and Loki (also available in Spanish).

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Blog Post

i carry your heart with me

by PhoebeH

E.E. Cummings, (Edward Estlin, for those wondering) beloved American poet, was born on this day in 1894. Cummings is most well known for his unique style of poetry, recognizable by his sparing use of words, and his experimentation with form, grammar, and spelling. Often he wrote about love, and arguably his most well known poem is i carry your heart with me. Cummings started writing at a young age, and was quite prolific, having written thousands of poems. For a quick intro, here are 100 selected poems to give you a taste of his distinguished work. For a deeper dive, be sure to check out a copy of the Complete Collected poems. In addition to writing poetry, Cummings wrote multiple non-fiction books including The Enormous Room and Fairytales, as well as a handful of plays, which are available for check out here.

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Blog Post

Three brilliant wordsmiths

by Lucy S

As presented in delightfully rendered, craftily composed biographies of wordsmiths for children (of all ages).

Edward Estlin Cummings was born on October 14, 1894 and was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts by two supportive and creative parents, who introduced Estlin to the wonderful world of words and provided him with the space to use them magically. Estlin’s love of words was illuminated by his passion for drawing and painting, so that the poems he created used words for language and illustration. This very unique style of poetry is well known to any who are familiar with the works of e.e. cummings. In enormous smallness : a story of e.e. cummings, Matthew Burgess details cummings’ childhood and his journey to becoming a poetry pioneer. Kris Di Giamomo’s illustrations are the perfect match to both Burgess’s and cummings’ words. Words appear as pictorial representations of leaves on trees, clouds, the night sky.

cummings was greatly inspired by the outside world that he noticed as a child. So was William Carlos Williams, born in 1883 in Rutherford, New Jersey. Jen Bryant gives us Williams’ story in A river of words: the story of William Carlos Williams. As Williams grew older and had less time for outdoor pursuits, he realized that poetry instilled in him the same feeling as the sounds of the natural world. Unlike cummings, Williams did not find the poetry bursting out of him. He first tried his hand at writing like the famous English poets he had read in school, but found that this style could not convey the images he was seeing in his mind. He put aside rhyme and rhythm and “let each poem find its own special shape on the page.” Williams became a doctor to pay the bills, but often used his prescription pads for jotting down the lines in his head. After each day of work, he wrote to create the poems that are so well known and well loved today, poems about plums and wheelbarrows. Like Di Giamomo, illustrator Melissa Sweet demonstrates that pictures can be made with words.

Bryant and Sweet team up again in The right word : Roget and his thesaurus to give us the story of another great wordsmith. Born in London in 1779, Peter Mark Roget was a collector of words, and because of his accumulation, we have one of the most amazing, breathtaking books there is. The Greek translation of thesaurus is “treasure house,” and there is not a better word within it to describe it. As a child, Roget didn’t have many friends, but he had books, and reading them inspired him to make his own. He organized his words differently from cummings and Williams: he created lists. As he grew older he realized that there was always an ideal word to describe anything and that if those perfect words could all be found in one place, a book sure to provide the best word, than the world would be improved for it. Like Williams, Roget also became a doctor, but it was ultimately his wondrous compendium of words, the “Collections of English Synonyms Classified and Arranged,” that created his legacy. Bryant tells Roget's story in way that exhibits her own admiration for the thesaurus, and Sweet has once again used words as active, cheerful illustrations to show how letters can convey meaning on many levels.

The stories of these three scribes will appeal to word-lovers of any age, even help to create some new ones. And yes, I used a thesaurus to write this. I always do, regularly, repeatedly, and evermore.

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Blog Post

It's almost Halloween!

by MelCat6

It’s that most wonderful time of the year: Halloween! As an avid lover of all things fall and Halloween, this is by far my favorite time of the year. I love costumes and being able to dress up as some of my favorite characters. This year I’m planning to cosplay as Roadhog, from Overwatch. If you’re as into costumes as me, come check out some of our books to help you take your costume to the next level!

New this year, The hero's closet : sewing for cosplay and costuming, is a great intro book to cosplay and costume making. It has a lot of helpful beginner steps if you’ve never tried to make your costume before.

Epic cosplay costumes is another great reference for all of the parts of costume making. With cute advice notes from the author, this book is a great start to becoming your favorite character.

For a more basic guide that you can use with items around your house, check out: Halloween. This book centers more on simple designs and standard Halloween costumes. It also includes some tips for spooky home décor!

Here's a cute costuming book for the younger costumers among us: Creating Halloween crafts. It has fun craft ideas for decoration and costumes that might be fun for the whole family!

These next two books are probably the best for my costume. If you’re into characters with fancy and elaborate weapons, these two will help you learn how to design your own, much lighter, versions.

Make : props and costume armor is written by a master prop maker, and goes into details for both armor and weaponry. It is a very in-depth collection of ideas using everything from simple foam to 3D printing.

In another recent release, The costume making guide : creating armor & props for cosplay, you’ll find all of the steps to take your idea and turn it into a full costume. The author guides you through each part of costume making whether you need armor, weaponry, or other outfit parts.

Looking forward to seeing all of the ideas everyone reading this comes up with! Hopefully I’ve given you a bit of inspiration. Now to get back to making my hook…

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Blog Post

Drop off your gently used Halloween costumes for the 3rd annual Halloween Costume Swap!

by eapearce

Starting now through October 22, drop off your clean, gently used Halloween costumes to any AADL branch! Then, on Sunday, October 22 from 3:00-4:30pm at the Downtown Library, come pick out a new costume for this year! We're looking for costumes for people of all ages. This is a great way to save money, clear your closet, and pick out something snazzy for all your Halloween needs!

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Blog Post

Happy Birthday Mark Rothko!

by PhoebeH

Mark Rothko (1903-1970) was an Abstract Expressionist painter, famously known for his color field paintings: six or seven foot canvases painted with large rectangle swaths of color. The subjects of his paintings appear simple, and often people view them with the thought “well, I could do that.” However, Rothko’s paintings are not necessarily about the technical skill involved, they are about the way the painting makes the viewer feel, the emotions that the work elicits in the observer, and about creating the illusion of spatial infinity. Abstract Expressionism as a movement came about in New York in the 1940s, and focused on the "sublime," defined as working to capture and portray the unspeakable, be it emotion, the divine, or the cosmic. For some abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock, the art of their work is in the emotion expressed during the act of painting. For Rothko, the art is in the relationship between his painting and the viewer, in being overwhelmed by the sensation of the colors, and becoming emerged in the painting. The artist is known for saying the viewer should ideally experience his work from 18 inches away, as to become one with the painting. While our art prints are not to scale, they still do an excellent job of eliciting emotion and are available for check out here. (For the full viewing experience, be sure to check out Orange, Brown which is on display at the Detroit Institute of Arts!) To read more about the artist, check out this book written by his son, or this biography. You can also find books about Abstract Expressionism here.