Shelf Notes

In his month’s episode of Our Librarian Life we give you all the scoop on Contests and Promos and Sales, Oh My!

🎉 Purple House Press is celebrating 25 years! Don’t miss the anniversary sale.

🏛️ Living Book Press’s New History Shapers Series – Highlighting key figures who shaped history.

Join us for an episode full of ideas, inspiration, and a few laughs along the way! 🎧✨

While you are listening in, if you think of questions you would love to hear us tackle on the podcast, submit your private lending library question to our Mail Pouch here. And don't forget to reach out if you are willing to share your story!

📚 May is Picture Book Preschool Month! 🎉

Declared by Sherry Early—librarian, children’s lit expert, and mom of eight—this month is all about celebrating the joy of reading aloud to little ones, especially picture books.

What is Picture Book Preschool?

It’s a beautifully curated list of 520 classic and modern picture books, organized by week with thoughtful extras:

✅ Weekly themes

✅ Character traits to explore

✅ Simple Bible memory verses

✅ Easy activities and discussion questions

✅ A printable checklist, author/title index, and stickers!

Perfect for parents, teachers, librarians, and grandparents—anyone who loves sharing great stories with kids.

Special May Deals + Giveaway!

To help moms and librarians build their PBP book collections (or find great substitutes), Judy Dudley of the Seize the Book Facebook group is offering special prices on PBP titles all month long. That's a picture of her red Book Barn in Tennessee above, and she has loads of good books to sell at competitive prices, especially picture books for the month of May.

🎁 To make it even more fun, we’re giving away 10 books from the May lists in Picture Book Preschool to three lucky winners! And there will be more goodies (surprise!) for each of the three winners as we continue our celebration of Picture Book Preschool Month throughout the month of May.

👉 To join the celebration, shop the deals, and enter the giveaway, become a member of Seize the Book Facebook group!

Book Review Roundup Issue #20 has so much book review goodness!

Organized by genre (with small publisher links!) to make browsing easy:

Picture Books

• Birds in My Backyard by Lisa Donovan

• Birds at the Beach and Beyond by Lisa Donovan

• Claude: The True Story of a White Alligator by Emma Bland Smith

Coming-of-Age / Literary Fiction for Young People

• The Sin Eater by Gary D. Schmidt

• Little Vic by Doris Gates

Fantasy & Mythic Fiction

• Wormwood Abbey by Christina Baehr

• Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis

Historical Fiction

• Left By Themselves by Charles Paul May

• The Golden Hawks of Genghis Khan by Rita Ritchie (Bethlehem Books)

• The Lost Queen of Egypt by Lucile Morrison (Purple House Press)

Nonfiction History and Biography

• Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown (Adult Nonfiction)

• The Story of Robert Bruce by Jeanie Lang (Living Book Press)

Read Issue #20 of Book Review Roundup here

In the Small Publishers corner of the newsletter each month, we hope to draw your attention to something lovely from one of our beloved small publishers. We are so grateful for the good work these publishers do to revive otherwise lost good, true, and beautiful books!

Plumfield Moms, Biblioguides, and Purple House Press have teamed up to bring you three exciting giveaways in April! Each giveaway includes:

One book from Purple House Press

One Plumfield Moms PDF guide download

A 60-day free membership to Biblioguides

Two of these giveaways have already taken place, but here’s what you could still win!

On April 26th someone will win the book Down Cut Shin Creek by Kathi Appelt plus the Plumfield Moms PDF guide download plus the 60-day free membership to Biblioguides

To Enter

-Follow Purple House Press, Plumfield Moms, and Biblioguides on Facebook or other social media

-Fill out our entry form here

-Sorry, U.S. Shipping Only!

-If you have already filled out the form, you have already entered!

Purple House Press also has select books on sale at 40% and 60% off regular price through the end of April. Get your copies of popular reprinted titles such as The Golden Name Day by Jennie Lindquist, Bright April by Marguerite DeAngeli, Stan the Hot Dog Man by Ethel and Leonard Kessler, and more.

Thanks to Lorinda Newton for sharing her library story for readers of The Card Catalog:

The Newton Family Library began when two bibliophiles, Doug and I, married in 1991. Even though Doug double-majored in mathematics and computer science, he also owned several Christian books, biblical reference works, and a collection of science fiction.

When our son reached school age in 2004, Doug arranged our books using a simplified version of the Library of Congress system. He learned this system when he worked at the Seattle Pacific University library during college.

Both of us have some experience working in church libraries. So, organizing a library came to us naturally.

Our book collection filled one bedroom wall of shelves before we began homeschooling. By the time we moved to Whidbey Island in 2014, we had ten overflowing bookcases in our schoolroom, plus books in our office spaces and bedrooms.

Read the rest of The Newton Family Library story at The Card Catalog

If you have a library story to share, email us at thecardcataloglibrarians@gmail.com. We would love to share your story with other private living books lending librarians.

As private living books librarians, we try to have many of the books that are suggested in the many literature based, living books, homeschool curricula that homeschoolers and others are using. Of course we can't buy them all, but it helps as we go to library book sales and thrift stores and online book dealers to have some of the lists that the popular curricula are using. This month we are featuring Sonlight, a tried and true literature based curriculum that includes many good, living books in its lists. You can find downloadable, printable checklist copies of all of the Sonlight books here. And you can request a free catalog from Sonlight on that same page.

Word is spreading about the incredible work being done by private lending librarians! 🌍✨

We’ve created a special page at The Card Catalog website just for Librarians In The News—a place to find national podcasts, local and national news features, and interviews showcasing the impact of living books libraries.

🔎 Check it out here and see how our librarians are making headlines!

https://thecardcataloglibrarians.com/private-lending-libraries-in-the-news

🎙️ Have you or another librarian been interviewed? Let us know, and we’ll add it to the page!

In August and September of 2024, Sara Masarik gave three talks on the importance of good and great living books. She was invited by a local classical school to aid in the faculty and staff in-service in August, and then came back to give a parent version of the talk in September. There was significant interest in the talk from lending librarians and others, so Sara gave the talk a third time in her library. By popular request, the talk was recorded and is now available for purchase! Divided into two videos, the first part is the talk itself with the slides Sara used. The second part is the Q&A from her library event. Purchase of the talk includes both videos as well as a PDF of the handout she used. 100% of the proceeds will go to support The Card Catalog and all of the work we are doing to support living books lending librarians.

Over 25 years of homeschooling and nearly 50 years of collecting books, historical fiction emerged as Sandy Hall's go-to choice for read-alouds and leisure reading. As her collection grew, she organized these books chronologically, making it easy to find engaging stories for any historical period they studied. Whether you run a lending library or simply cherish historical fiction, this curated list of nearly 1,800 titles can assist you in organizing your collection or finding a book for a specific era.

NEW LIBRARY: Unite Homeschool Good and Virtuous Library in Woodstock, GA (Jessica Reiche, Librarian): "Unite's Good & Virtuous Library is a private collection consisting of over 3,000 living books pre-vetted by conservative Christian families. Many of the stories and classic books have taught life's lessons for decades and are sadly being removed from our public libraries. The goal for our library is not to replace the public system, but to supplement what is currently missing, especially for our homeschooling community. Membership and circulation are managed by Unite’s Library Team, a small groups of home educators from the Unite Homeschool Network."

Angela Bergeron, Convivial Culture Living Books Library, El Dorado, AR: Not officially open yet, but the "Bergeron Book Barn has arrived! We need to finish shoring it up underneath, get electricity hooked up, get it insulated and some flooring and walls. Then we can move the library into it. I'm one step closer to opening up a living books library!" (See the photo of Angela's new

Book Barn above)

Amanda Shirley from Beautiful Books Library in Prattville, AL: "We are still very small, with only four patron families and one pending. And we have just over 2,000 books. We have a weekly drop-off/pick up on our front porch and a local homeschool co-op. For now, everyone orders online through TinyCat.

We have gathered details about our patrons and offer to pick books out for them. They just tell us, 'Surprise me,' and we pick out the rest. That has been fun, and the patrons who take part in it tell us they have discovered really great books that they might have otherwise overlooked. Since August of '24 we have written a monthly newsletter that comes out on the first of each month. It is our goal in each newsletter to share an educational article written by one of us, recent library news (like new library totes with our logo on them, yay!), links to new additions to the library that month, and some spotlights on our favorites. We've also put more love into our website recently, and it's looking better these days: www.beautifulbookslibrary.com. Personally, it has been such a wonderful creative outlet for me that I don't mind the extra work. It feels great to produce something. And we love sharing good books with other families!"

Elizabeth Jones from Covenant Family Library in Martinsburg, WV: The library is hosting a DIY Curriculum Sale and Homeschool Expo on Saturday morning, May 3, 2025 . All are invited to come sell your used curriculum or market your homeschool opportunity! Contact Elizabeth (biblioholic1228@yahoo.com) for more information.

Since this newsletter is called Shelf Notes, we thought we'd share a Shelf Notes Photo from one of the private lending libraries in our directory each month. Click or hover on the photograph to see whose library this lovely shelf belongs in. Can you guess without looking? If you look closely at the book titles, you may get an idea about the part of the world where this library shelf is located. Send us a picture of one of your shelves, and we'll feature your library in Shelf Notes!

At The Card Catalog website, and here in Shelf Notes, we Card Catalog Librarians are working to encourage and support private lending libraries. Our goal is to see private living books libraries spread across the United States and around the world. If you run a private living books lending library or are considering starting one in the future, here are some ways you can help us achieve that goal:

1. Add your library to our Private Lending Library Directory
   If you have an operating private lending library anywhere in the world, please add it to our Private Lending Library Directory at Biblioguides. It's quick, easy, and free. Listing your library helps encourage others on the same journey and can also attract new patrons to your library. Find a step-by-step guide here.

2. Update your listing
   If your library is already listed in the directory, take a moment to check your listing and make sure the information is up to date. We want this directory to be a current, reliable resource for anyone searching for these special kinds of libraries in their area.

3. Share our resources
   Explore the many helpful and informative pages at The Card Catalog—including librarian Q&A, library stories, past Shelf Notes issues, our library resources page, and more—and share them with others who may be interested in starting their own private lending library or learning how they work.

4. Share your library story
   If we’ve already published your library story on The Card Catalog, please help spread the word by sharing it with others. If your story is still in progress, why not share it with us? We’d love to publish the story of how your library came to be, how it operates day-to-day, and how it’s growing and evolving. Send your story to thecardcataloglibrarians@gmail.com, or reach out if you’d like help organizing and publishing it online at The Card Catalog.

5. Submit pictures for our Shelf Notes Photo Feature
   We’re also looking for more photos for our Shelf Notes photo feature. If you have a favorite library shelf or a set of books you'd like to show off, please send us a picture. (We take photos of messy, non-perfect shelves, too.) You can email your photos to thecardcataloglibrarians@gmail.com.

6. Pray for us and our libraries
   Please keep us and the libraries and librarians listed in the Private Lending Library Directory in your prayers. There are now 102 private lending libraries listed in the directory from all across the English-speaking world. If you know of any other private lending libraries that aren’t listed, please encourage them to share their information so families can find the books that will speak to their minds and hearts at a library near them. And, whenever possible, share the directory on social media when people ask where they can find "Good Books."