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New Non-Fiction

Much as I am fond of novels and post about them often on this blog, our library has plenty of other kinds of books. Factual books, poetry books, and sometimes just plain ridiculous amusing books. Like this:

That’s right, Zombie Haiku. New as of today, available in the Young Adult Non-Fiction section. Look for this and other amusing, informative, poetic, historical or hysterical titles around the corner from the main floor copier. Some other recent additions to this collection include:

Click on any book cover to look it up in the catalog.

Teens’ Top Ten

Teens’ Top Ten “where teens voice their choice for their favorite books” is sponsored by the Young Adult Library Services Association. Teens nominate and choose their favorite books of the previous year! Books are nominated by members of teen book groups in fifteen school and public libraries around the country. Nominations are posted on Support Teen Literature Day during National Library Week, and teens across the country vote on their favorite titles each year from the end of August to Mid-September. Voting opens on August 22 this year at www.ala.org/teenstopten The winners are announced during Teen Read Week in October.

The list of nominations can be found here, with links to their availability here at the Chicopee Public Library. In the young adult section, you’ll see bookmarks with instructions for voting and the full list of nominations sticking out of our copies of the nominated books. These same bookmarks are also available near the circulation desk.

This year’s nominees include:

click a book cover above to check the book’s availability in the library catalog.

You Are Here Teen Video Challenge 2011

Summer Reading is coming up in June. This year’s theme is “You Are Here.” If you start in Massachusetts, you can travel anywhere in books. The Massachusetts winner of the You Are Here Teen Video Challenge was just announced. Remi Lamothe of Palmer won $250, and $100 for his library for this video promoting summer reading:

And here’s another video made by Pembroke, MA resident Zach Johnston.

Next year’s summer reading video challenge will begin in the fall. Will you make a winning video for 2012?

Erin’s Pick of the Week: The Realm of Possibility

David Levithan takes you inside the secret thoughts of various characters who all attend the same high school in this series of interconnected stories in free verse. In a short 210 pages we meet teens in love, teens trying to figure out how to relate and how to connect with each other. We meet “the girl who is in love with Holden Caulfield. The boy who wants to be strong who falls for the girl who’s convinced she needs to be weak. The girl who writes love songs for a girl she can’t have. The two boys teetering on the brink of their first anniversary. And everyone in between.” We meet Jed, the kind of magic boy who connects with everyone by showing up on the fringes of so many stories. These poems are lovely secrets.

Celebrate National Poetry Month!

April is National Poetry Month!

To celebrate, we’re having two poetry programs for teens:

Newspaper Blackout Poems
inspired by the work of Austin Kleon
Wednesday April 13 @ 3:00
Check out Austin Kleon’s website to get inspired!
http://www.austinkleon.com/blog/

Book Spine Poetry
Wednesday April 27 @ 3:00
Check out this gallery of book spine poems by 100 Scope Notes:
http://100scopenotes.com/2011/04/01/2011-book-spine-poem-gallery/

Here’s a book spine poem I made.

In addition to these two programs, I will be linking poems and other poetry related things all month here on the website and on our Facebook Page. If you love poetry, stop by and say so, or friend the Facebook page and post on the wall!

Poetically Yours,
Teen Librarian, Erin Daly

Erin’s Pick of the Week: Foiled

Aliera Carstairs is a fencer. She trains every day after school and on weekends, too, hoping to go to Nationals. Her Saturday afternoons are reserved for table top role playing with her cousin. Between school, fencing, and spending time with her cousin, Aliera is pretty busy. She doesn’t really fit in with any particular group at school, and until recently she’s liked that just fine. Until recently, when she met Avery Castle, the beautiful new boy who gets assigned as her lab partner in biology. Avery asks Aliera on a date, and she rearranges her schedule to meet him at Grand Central Station. Then, things start getting weird. With her fencing mask on, Aliera can see all kinds of strange people, and creatures… are these, faeries? What she thought was a fake plastic gem on the end of her fencing foil might be a ruby from the Seellie Court? And what’s really going on with Avery?

Find out in Foiled.

After School Movie: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Wednesday March 30 @ 3:00

Come watch this laugh-out-loud funny special effects spectacle from last summer. Jay Baruchel plays Dave, a geeky guy who loves science and never gave much thought to magic. Nicholas Cage plays Balthazar a hundreds of years old sorcerer who shows up to train Dave as his apprentice. This movie has action, humor, explosions, old man shoes, Tesla coils, and even a little romance.

Balthazar: “This is the Merlin Circle. It focuses your energy. Helps you master new spells. It is where you will learn the Art. Step inside, you leave everything else behind. Once you enter, there is no going back. ”
Dave: “So I should probably pee first?”

Check out a trailer on The Internet Movie Database:
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi780142105/

Erin’s Pick of the Week: Flash Burnout

“Click.
Telephoto lens. Zoom. In a shutter release millisecond Blake’s world turns upside down. The nameless woman with the snake tattoo is not just another assignment. “That’s my mom!,” gasps Marissa.

Click.
Saturated self-portrait: Blake, nice guy, class clown, always trying to get a laugh, not sure where to focus.

Click.
Contrast. Shannon, Blake’s GF. Total Babe. Marissa, just a friend and fellow photographer. Shannon loves him; Marissa needs him. How is he supposed to frame them in one shot?
Click.
Chiaroscuro. Lightdark. Marissa again, overexposed. Crash and burn.

Talk about negative space.

Click.”

– from the inside front flap of Flash Burnout.

Blake is a photographer. Blake is a guy caught between two girls. Blake is a comedian. Blake is someone you’re going to want to meet.

Flash Burnout won the William C. Morris Young Adult Fiction Debut Award last year. Author L.K. Madigan passed away last month, leaving behind this and only one other novel. She was very talented and the book world will miss her. Honor her by picking up this book.

Erin’s Pick of the Week: Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour

A few months ago Amy lost her Dad in a car accident. Now she is losing her home because she is moving with her Mom from California to Connecticut. Her mom needs Amy to get their car across the country, but since the accident, Amy hasn’t been driving. Enter Roger, the son of a family friend, who agrees to drive the car, and Amy to her mother’s new house.

Amy expects a boring trip, with an unknown boy, sticking to her mother’s detailed travel itinerary. But Roger turns out to be cute, and good at playing twenty questions. Soon enough, the detailed travel itinerary is replaced by a road trip connecting the dots across the country: where Amy remembers going with her Dad, where Roger remembers being in love with a girl, where Amy always meant to go with her Dad, and where Roger seeks closure from his failed romance. Along the way are playlists, fast food receipts, lonely roads and a bit of romance. It turns out this road trip was just thing thing both Amy and Roger needed. Makes me want to load up my iPod with music, get in the car and drive.

Mortal Instruments Trivia Quiz

Do you love the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare? The fourth book in this action-packed, romantic, and often hilarious paranormal fantasy series, City of Fallen Angels, is coming out on April 5. Try your hand at our trivia quiz to win a copy of the new book.

Instructions:

1. Contest is open to teens and adults.

2. Grab a copy of the paper quiz at the display in the teen section at the library, or fill it out online here:
http://tiny.cc/cplmortalinstrumentsquiz

3. Return paper quizzes to the Help Desk.

4. A winner will be selected from the quizzes. Correct answers and creative responses to why you love this series will improve your chances!

5. The winner will be notified by phone or email on April 5, the book’s release date. If you win, come to the library to claim your prize.