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.

Mandy's Book of the Week (10/31)

Happy Halloween!  I hope everyone is ready to go out and have some nice Halloween fun tonight.  And I hope you have an awesome costume.

I have been terribly remiss in posting my books of the week.  October has been CRAZY around here and, quite frankly, I just had trouble finding the time.  But I have all kinds of things to post about in the upcoming weeks, so hopefully I'll be able to slide in books as well.

In honor of Halloween, my book of the week this week is a zombie book.

Well, when I say zombie I mean that in the loose sense of the word.  In the sense that the people eat other people.

Anyway, this book takes place in Britain.  A virus has unleashed itself and everyone over the age of about 16 is affected.  When you first get the virus, you get sick. A lot of people simply die, but some get worse and worse: fever, aches, and eventually pus pockets that burst and seep.  Your brain gets infected and you lose the ability to stay focused or speak coherently.  And then you get hungry, but not for food, for flesh.

This book follows a group of young survivors who have holed up in a grocery store called Waitrose.  It has been months since the virus broke out and now they've pretty much run out of food and supplies; they are going to have to relocate.  Of course, this is dangerous with the packs of infected adults roaming about.

At this point, a young man who says that he's from a group that is hiding out in Buckingham Palace comes onto the scene.  He says they have gardens and weapons and that it is safe.  Is it really?  Can he be believed?  And can the Waitrose kids survive the trip?

This book was a great read and it kept my heart pumping, for sure.  We got the prequel, The Dead, in a few months back and the final book in the series will be out soon.

Our New Library Council, Banned Books Week, Olympians Week, and Second Saturday

Be warned!  This is a post FULL of information, pictures, and other good stuff!  I've practically been too busy to blog, so I'm cramming it all here so I can call myself caught up.

First off, last month we took 6 new members onto our Teen Library Council: Megan Rodriguez, Bailey Brown, Jonah White, April Daugherty, LaDonna McNutt, and Nicole Grover.  It has been great working with them so far and I hope they have even more to contribute as the months pass.  I took one of these pictures on the day that they first joined us for a meeting and the second was taken at David's Trail where we participated in the C3 Challenge a few weeks ago.

Four of our six new members: April Daugherty, Jonah White, Bailey Brown, and Megan Rodriguez.

Next up, we have our celebration of Banned Books Week, which is our September Teen Tuesday.  Participants read a passage from a banned or challenged book on stage and each time they did they were entered into a drawing for a "I read banned books" bag.  They also had a little quiz based on the books I had rotating on a screen above the stage and, if they got all of the answers right, they got their name put into a drawing for a $20 Pizza Hut gift card.

Olympians Week was super busy and a total blast.  For four days, we had events leading up to the release of Rick Riordan's new book, The Son of Neptune.  We had a drawing and gave away three signed copies of the book (and we are selling 10 more signed copies with proceeds to go to the Humane Society), we ate Greek food, we did trivia, and watched the Percy Jackson movie.  I was so crazily busy that I didn't even think to pick up the camera until the last day.  I wish I'd have gotten pictures of the Library Council dressed up at our Oct. 1 event.

These pics are all from our Tuesday event, which was our release party.  I had them randomly number off and divide into "cabins."  Then they had to name their cabin and create a flag.  After that, we had some trivia.



This month, we started a new program that, I hope, will end up being permanent.  Second Saturday will be held (guess when?) the second Saturday of each month from 1-3pm and, each month, we'll have a different activity or workshop.  This month, we did origami.  The turn out wasn't great, but that's ok for a first meeting.  Our Children's Librarian snapped a photo of the participants doing their paper folding and me reading a book.

Up next, we have our Teen Read Week Read-a-Thon, which everyone is welcome to come to (Oct. 21, 6pm-1am), a Harry Potter themed Teen Tuesday (Oct. 25, 5-7pm), and a scary movie marathon (Oct. 28, 6pm-1am). 

We're having a blast; come join us!

Mandy's Book of the Week (10/3)

The name of the game is busy.  Whew!  Happy Olympians Week!  We are in the middle of having a GREAT time gearing up for the release of Rick Riordan's new book, The Son of Neptune.  I hope you've gotten the chance to join us for an event or two!

In honor of his new book, it only makes since that its predecessor is my book of the week this week.

It will help if you read the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series first.  I didn't and I was confused.  The book was still great and I still was able to follow it, but there were certainly some references that went over my head.

The book opens amid confusion.  Jason has woken up and he has no clue where he is or who these people are.  He is lost.  Eventually, some monsters come along and who shows up to rescue his little group but Annabeth and another camper from Camp Half-Blood.  Turns out that Jason is a half-blood, but there is a little bit of a twist involved.  It is hard to reveal too much but rest assured, there is TONS of action and lots of mythology not yet seen from the previous books.

Now that book two in this series is out, book one may be a bit harder to come by.  But we've got all of the Percy Jackson books on the shelves right now, so if you need to start the series, we've got you covered!

Mandy's Book of the Week (9/19)

Welcome back to our Book of the Week segment!  I was hoping to start these back up with the start of school, but that was a no-go.  It has taken me this long to get re-organized for the school year!

My selection this week isn't a new release, but it is made of total and complete awesome so I wanted to feature it anyway.

Fun fact: It is also one of the most frequently banned or challenged books in the United States.

This book is about Junior, a Native American growing up on a Spokane, WA Reservation.  For those of you who don't know about life on an Indian Reservation, it isn't pretty.  Statistically, the people are very poor and alcoholism runs rampant.  You see both of those themes prevalently in Junior's story.

Basically, Junior has a lot of aspirations.  He is a budding cartoonist (and you see lots of his drawings in the book) and a fairly decent basketball player.  He's also a pretty good student, but his school leaves a lot to be desired.

He makes the decision, which when you read the story you discover how truly brave he was to make it, to leave the Reservation's school and travel the 20 miles to the nearest public school that is off the Reservation.  This decision has far-reaching ramifications.  For example, how is he going to get to school?  There isn't a bus and his parents don't have the gas money to get him there on a consistent basis.  And what happens when the new school plays his old school during the basketball season?

This story is funny and sad at the same time and I LOVE stories like that.  It is also a book that is great for girls AND guys.

Come and get it!

Image via Little, Brown and Company