Dan Coleman

Another awards season is underway!  The 2024 Golden Globes and Grammys are in the books, as are the American Library Association Youth Media Awards, which shine the spotlight on so many great children’s and teen authors and illustrators each year.  We’ve listed winners and runners up in print, and on our digital reading platform, Libby.…

When I was a kid my favorite thing about visiting my dad at work was his Pet Rock.  It lived on his desk, a gag gift from a friend, in the original packaging: a box with holes in it, a bed of straw and the whole bit.  I still can’t look at a photo of…

In 1993, legendary riverman Tommy Burns put pen to paper to record his memories of hunting, trapping, and fishing along the Kansas River near Lawrence, Kansas.  Thirty years later, a new copy of the book, entitled 60 Years on the Kaw River, is headed for the Helen Osma Local History Room at the Lawrence Public…

  It’s hard to believe a full two years have passed since we’ve done one of these, but trees around town keep getting more interesting, so it’s time once again to go tree-watching with LPL's arborist-turned-librarian, Jake Vail, and LPL's librarian-turned-tree-hugging-nincompoop, Dan Coleman. We've got five new trees this time along with some new arboreal…

Somehow I ended up with roommates from each of the five main classes of vertebrates.  The best thing animal cohabitants is that unlike spouses and children, you can openly complain about them, and rank them in order of their current annoyingness without fear of emotionally scarring them for life or being kicked out of the…