Mandy's Book of the Week (12/19)

I made a New Year's Resolution today.  In 2012, I'm going to ROCK these book of the week segments.

This week, my book of the week wasn't written for teens, but I bought it and stocked it in our section anyway.  The main character is 15 years old, so it fits I think.

This book takes place roughly 30 or so years after the zombie apocalypse.  I'm really into zombie books right now, can you tell?

The main character is Temple, who is 15 years old and a drifter.  Her parents are dead and she was taken in by a stranger after the child care center she was in was "eaten up by meatbags."  She came to regard this stranger as a father and the boy who was also taken in by him as her brother.  Unfortunately, the man is bitten by a zombie eventually and infected, leaving Temple and her "brother" with no place to call home.

Early in the book, Temple stumbles upon a community that is set up in some old skyscrapers and, while she doesn't feel totally comfortable there, she thinks it would be a great place to rest for a bit before getting back on the road.  On her first night there, a drunk man, who had been leering at her for quite some time that evening, comes in her room and attempts to sexually assault her.  He doesn't get anywhere with it, mainly because Temple is a warrior and ends up killing him, although it is completely accidental.  The fact that it was accidental doesn't matter to the man's brother, however, who then sets off after Temple (who gets out of there as fast as she can after the incident) with the purpose of killing her.

This is basically the story of Temple running and the things that happen to her along the way in this really screwed up world.

There is some language and sex (although nothing I'd call explicit at all), so be warned.

This book is written so beautifully and it was a real pleasure to read.  I enjoyed it immensely.

December's Second Saturday

I have to admit that I've not done the greatest job about getting the word out about our newest ongoing program: Second Saturday.  The second Saturday of every month during the school year, we'll be doing some sort of activity from 1-3pm.  In October, we had an origami workshop.  In November, we celebrated National Gaming Day.  And in December, we had an art workshop.

I'm really lucky that one of the kids on the Teen Library Council is a very talented artist.  He volunteered to come and host our Second Saturday this month and I was glad for it.

A cool new thing that I'm seeing pop up on the Internet is melted crayon art.  I actually created one on canvas several months ago for my house.  So when Steven told me that is what he wanted to do for Second Saturday, I was really excited.

A few pieces of foam board, four blow dryers, a bunch of crayons, and one blown out fuse later, we had some really unique pieces of art for our participants to take home.

Clean-up was difficult, to say the least.  Getting melted crayons off those chairs was tough.

We had a really great time and hope to see you at our next Second Saturday in January!

Hello Again!

I'm not exactly sure where November went and here we are, smack in the middle of December.  My sincerest apologies for not blogging last month!  I didn't realize that I'd skipped out on my job until I logged in today and saw that my last post was on Halloween.  I'm so embarassed.

In the spirit of playing catch-up, here is what has been going on in the Teen Library:

Teen Read Week Read-a-Thon

Held at the end of October, the Read-a-Thon was a smashing success.  Teen Library Council members, along with anyone else who wanted to participate, raised money in support of teen programs in 2012.  $204 this year, rock on!  Fueled by a lot of pizza and cokes, they came and read from 7pm-1am.

I gave them time to take a break about every hour and a half.  And what do they do?  Go play tag in the freezing weather!

National Gaming Day

This year was the first year that we celebrated National Gaming Day and it was so much fun.

We had board and card games set up all over the library for free play.

We also had the multipurpose room set up with the Wii and XBox 360 w/Kinect.  I'd never set a system up on our big screen before; I have to say it was really cool.

After watching their kids play, mom and dad had to have a go!

We also participated in a National Gaming Tournament against libraries from all over the United States.  In the whole state of Arkansas, it was just us and the public library in Fayetteville who participated.  Fortunately, there were tons of other libraries involved.  I'll spare you the details of how long it took me to enter in all the friend codes.  We ended up ranking 15th out of about 36 libraries.  Not to shabby for our first year!

Amy and a few of the people who participated in the tournament.

We've been having a blast! 

Be sure you join us for our Ugly Sweater Party coming up December 20th!  Whoever comes wearing the ugliest sweater will leave with a $20 gift card to Hastings.  Hope to see you then.