Some one very special had a birthday this past Sunday, January 16th! Thorndyke, Canton Public Library's very own resident bruin celebrated his special day pretty much the same way he spends every day, hanging around at the library. What's a great way to commemorate his special day? By Checking out a bear friendly movie here from Canton Public Library! Here are a few Thorndyke approved suggestions…

Bear in the Big Blue House: Dance party!

Berenstain Bears: Berenstain Bears adventure & fun for everyone

Brother Bear

Little Bear: Little Bear's band

Adam — A romantic character study examining the obstacles to intimacy and the compromises we make in the name of love, Adam stars Hugh Dancy as a man living with Asperger's syndrome who does his best to reach out to his pretty new upstairs neighbor.

Avatar — Jake Sully is a former Marine who uses a wheelchair. But despite his broken body, Jake is still a warrior at heart. He is recruited to travel light years to the human outpost on Pandora, where a corporate consortium is mining a rare mineral that is the key to solving Earth's energy crisis.

The blind side — Taken in by a well-to-do family and offered a second chance at life, a homeless teen grows to become the star athlete projected to be the first pick at the NFL draft in this sports-themed comedy drama.

Saturday, January 15 would have been Martin Luther King Jr.'s 82nd birthday. We celebrate his life, his message, and the spirit of the Civil Rights movement on the third Monday of every January. For some, this means a day off of work or school; for many others it's a day of community service (Find volunteer opportunities on the All for Good site). Whether you choose to serve, attend special community events, or simply reflect, Canton Public Library has useful resources for you:

Martin Luther King — Books

Behind the dream: the making of the speech that transformed a nation by Clarence B. Jones and Stuart Connelly

If you've seen The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in theaters and can't get enough of all things Narnian, here are some other fantasy voyages to check out:

The book of three by Lloyd Alexander — An Assistant Pigkeeper sets out on a quest to make a name for himself in the country of Prydain.

Tuck everlasting by Natalie Babbitt — The Tuck family discovers the source of the fountain of youth, but find that eternal youth isn't all it's cracked up to be.

The door within by Wayne Thomas Batson — Aidan Thomas finds himself pulled into new world that he must rescue.

These five movies are, in my opinion, some of the most overlooked and underrated Christmas movies of all time.  Give them a shot this holiday season, and escape the films you've already seen hundreds and hundreds of times.

The Muppet Christmas carol — There have been plenty of Muppet movies, and even more versions of Dickens' Christmas Carol, but Michael Caine's Scrooge makes this my favorite movie in both categories.

Die hard — An often overlooked fact about Die Hard: it takes place during a Christmas Eve holiday party in Los Angeles. Maybe the lack of snow is what makes people forget this?

Jingle all the way — Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad are the stars of this film. But it's still a fun, mad-cap adventure about the lengths one man will go to get the season's "It" toy.

Santa Claus the movie — John Lithgow chews the scenery as a villainous toy baron in this oft-forgotten film about Santa's origins and a plot against Christmas.

It seems like the holidays are also peak sickness time. After spending my Thanksgiving under the weather, I came up with my favorite holiday movies that I'm never too sick to enjoy.

Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch stole Christmas!

White Christmas

Christmas in Connecticut

Elf

The nightmare before Christmas

The Muppet Christmas carol

A Charlie Brown Christmas

Manhunt : the twelve-day chase for Lincoln's killer by James L. Swanson

Krakatoa : the day the world exploded, August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester

Eiffel's tower and the World's Fair where Buffalo Bill beguiled Paris, the artists quarreled, and Thomas Edison became a count by Jill Jonnes

The devil in the white city : murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed America by Erik Larson

Isaac's storm : a man, a time, and the deadliest hurricane in history by Erik Larson

The New York Public Library posted a list last month with many of the books that appear or are mentioned in the acclaimed TV series Mad Men. If you love the show, or are looking for what people may have read in the 1960s, these are the titles from the NYPL list that CPL has:

The best of everything: a novel by Rona Jaffe

The chrysanthemum and the sword: patterns of Japanese culture by Ruth Benedict; with a foreword by Ezra F. Vogel

Exodus by Leon Uris

Assault on Iwo Jima [videodisc]

Bataan rescue [videodisc] by a Green Umbrella film for American experience ; written and produced by David Axelrod ; directed by Peter Jones

The Battle of the Bulge [videodisc]: the deadliest battle of World War II by produced by Thomas Lennon ; written by Thomas Lennon & Mark Zwonitzer

BBC history of World War II. Part one [videodisc]

Berga [videodisc] : soldiers of another war

Campion [videodisc] : Police at the funeral by a BBC television production in association with Consolidated Productions

Absolute power [videodisc] by Castle Rock Entertainment presents a Malpaso production

The long goodbye [videodisc] by United Artists

Poirot [videodisc]: the mysterious affair at Styles by LWT

The woman in white [videodisc] by a co-production of Carlton Television and WGBH/Boston for the BBC