Anne Hillerman, author and daughter of late novelist Tony Hillerman, and her husband, photographer Don Strel, will present photographic images of Tony Hillerman’s landscape and discuss the elder Hillerman’s best-selling mysteries and the landscape that shaped his stories.

Tony Hillerman's Landscape: On the Road with Chee and Leaphorn was released Oct. 27, 2009. Anne Hillerman and Don Strel spent three years traveling Indian Country to capture the striking setting of Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn’s adventures. Books will be for sale at the event, courtesy of Tattered Cover Bookstore.

Douglas County Libraries brings you its 2010 Youth Spring Reading Program, Hop to It! Kids ages 12 and under may register at any Douglas County Library location from February 1 to March 15. Participants with reading logs showing 12 hours of reading completed before March 29 will be eligible to receive a free book. As always, pre-readers may participate by listening to books read aloud. Prizes are not guaranteed and are available while supplies last.

To complement its spring reading program, DCL has partnered with the Denver Zoo to bring live amphibians to Douglas County Libraries locations. Children ages five and older are invited to get up close and personal with frogs, toads and salamanders. Registration is required. Call 303-791-7323, or visit any Douglas County Library branch.

Free GED Test Prep

6-8:30 p.m. Monday and Wednesday Nights Parker Library (excluding holidays)

• Instruction, assessments, & practice tests
• In partnership with Colorado Educational Outreach
• Ages 17+, no registration required.

For a long time, scientists believed two things about the brain.

The first was the idea that you're born with a set number of neurons -- "brain cells." Then, you lose them all your life.

The second idea was that there are "hardwired" parts of the brain. Various experiments showed that one region was involved in visual processing, another in movement (controlling the arms or legs, for instance). If you went blind, the part of the brain set up to handle information from the eye just sat there, dark and quiet.

Both of these ideas, we now know, were wrong. And that's very good news.