Heather the Violet Fairy: Rainbow Magic Rainbow Fairies Book #7:

Heather the Violet Fairy: Rainbow Magic Rainbow Fairies Book #7 by Daisy Meadows

The girls are ending their time on Rainspell island. They see a fairy trapped in a painting, but they are in the middle of a carnival. Luckily people are lured away by clowns. They rescue her and bring her to the pot at the end of the rainbow. It seems they are all together and ready to be brought back to fairy land. Alas, Jack Frost is not going to make it easy. They trap him in a bubble, but then realize they need him to have winter, so they trap him in a snow globe to bring him back with them to fairy land. The fairies make it back home, and the girls end their vacation on the island. This is a bit different than the standard rainbow magic tale as it a wraps things up.

Sorcery of Thorns

Sorcery of Thorns is a fantasy novel that deals primarily with libraries. These libraries, hwoever, are connected to a magical world. Other people in the world have their own personal other-worldly servants. However, they may need to give a portion of their lives to gain their services. The protaganist is a youn girl that grew up from her infancy among the books. This would turn out to give her special abilities. She would gradually find these as she is framed for a crime that ends up being the first step of an attempted bit of world dominion. She meets up with a boy, they fall in love and save the world. It follows the pretty basic teen fantasy novel structure. However, the role of books in the magic makes it a little different.

Santa Clara county library fee

The Santa Clara County libraries have started charging $80 to use the library. It seems to be an interesting divide with some of the wealthiest cities in the county (Los Altos Hills, Saratoga, etc.) charging a fee to some of the poorest areas (San Jose) for the privilege of using the library. Something seems a little wrong here.

To be fair, areas like Los Altos are up in arms about the fee, while it is "poorer" areas such as Campbell that are most in favor of the move. However, that just adds to the irony. The poor "in crowd" gets libraries subsidized by the likes of Los Altos, but doesn't want to subsidize San Jose.

On their homepage, they bragged that over 800 paid library cards (and 500 free student cards) were issued in the first few days. The big question is how it will turn out.

At one end, the library could rake in all sorts of money from the fee, and see a significant decrease in library activity.

On the other end, they could get just the most frequent library users ponying up. Say 2000 people pay the fee, bringing in $160,000. Since they pay the fee, they may increase their library usage to make sure they get their money's worth. Plenty of students get the free student cards, with families using a student card for occasional library usage. The net result is a stabilization or increase in library usage. Los Altos remains very perturbed about the library situation, and decides to leave the county system, taking away their multi-million dollar subsidy to the other libraries. End result: increased demands on the library, with decreased funding. (Not to mention the ill will.)

How will it pan out? It would be nice if Santa Clara county could simply create a unified system like San Mateo county, but that may be dreaming a bit too much...