Tabletop Gaming @Sellers Library!

Last Wednesday we had 17 teens show up to play all manner of tabletop games for a couple hours! Of course the classics were still played plenty, such as Connect 4, Clue and Monopoly, but a lot of people tried new stuff too! Sarah brought her copy of Tsuru again, which is a game I really enjoyed from the last event, plus she brought a card game about the stock market called Pit which was really cool! A group played a few games of King of Tokyo, one of my favorites, where each player is a giant monster and has to get enough power to rule Tokyo! I led a game of Castle Panic, another personal favorite that has all the players working together to defend their castle from orcs, goblins and trolls that are attacking from the forest. Unfortunately, we lost the castle to the monster horde!

The event was a lot of fun, and lots of people asked when we would do this again. Soon! Tabletop gaming is a great way for people to get together, think creatively and have fun, and I'm looking forward to doing another one as soon as possible! This was the last event of the Fall schedule. The Winter schedule of events should be up around mid-January, so please look forward to it!

Playing Castle Panic. "We're about to lose!"

King of Tokyo

Operation (Nightmare Before X-Mas Edition) and Donkey Kong Jenga!

A shot of the game selection before everyone dug in!

Hardware Jewelry craft happened despite the snow!

We've had quite the winter weather these past few days, but even though the library was closed on Tuesday, we were open on Wednesday, where four teens braved the cold to make some jewelry out of hardware items! (Unfortunately Tuesday is when we would have sent out reminder calls, but being closed they were never made!) We had fun making a couple bracelets from rubber o-rings, copper wire, and s-hooks as well as a necklace that used L-brackets as decoration!

Things got much more interesting though as the teens started improvising and doing adding bits from one jewelry piece to another. Every time someone added something, it totally improved upon the instructions that I handed out!

Silver jump rings were added to the o-ring bracelet to make it a bit jangly!

Adding an o-ring and two jump rings to the s-hook bracelet made it fit much better, and made it look more interesting!

Thanks to those that came out in this cold, cold weather to make some hardware jewelry at the library! It was a lot of fun and allowed for some cool creative twists. 

New books! (it's a big one)

This is one big addition to the teen book collection! Everyone come check out some books, help me clear some space! There should be a pretty big list of new arrivals next week too, so keep checking!

FICTION

• Nowhere to Run by Claire J. Griffin
• The Lord of Opium by Nancy Farmer (sequel to The House of the Scorpion)
• Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare (book 3 of The Infernal Devices)
• The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen (replacement copy)
• Ali's Pretty Little Lies by Sara Shepard (A Pretty Little Liars prequel)
• United We Spy by Ally Carter (book 6 of the Gallagher Girls series)
• Perfect Scoundrels  by Ally Carter (A Heist Society book)
• Gorgeous by Paul Rudnick
• In The After by Demitria Lunetta
• Forged By Fire by Sharon M. Draper (book 2 in the Hazelwood trilogy, replacement)
• Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos
• Crap Kingdom by DC Pierson
• Immortal: Love Stories with Bite by P.C. Cast (replacement)
• World After by Susan Ee (sequel to Angelfall)
• Erebos by Ursula Poznanski
• Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas (a Throne of Glass novel)
• Splintered by A.G. Howard
• The Eye of Minds by James Dashner
• Winger by Andrew Smith
• Opal by Jennifer L. Armentrout (A Lux novel)
• The Indigo Spell by Richelle Mead (a Bloodlines novel)
• Just One Year by Gayle Forman (sequel to Just One Day)
• Archenemy by Paul Hoblin (part of the Counterattack series)

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Rust: Visitor in the Field by Royden Lepp
• Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs and Cassandra Jean
• Cardcaptor Sakura vol. 1 by Clamp
• Soul Eater by Atsushi Ohkubo vol. 1
• Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama (vol. 1-3)
• Over the Wall by Peter Wartman

NON FICTION

• How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous by Georgia Bragg and Kevin O'Malley
• The Nazi Hunters by Neal Bascomb

Hunger Games Night at Sellers Library!

Last week on Black Friday we had 11 teens show up for our Hunger Games Night. There were games, a trivia contest and a Hunger Games related craft. We started things off with the Cornucopia Challenge, where 26 items were scattered around our "cornucopia" and everyone was divided into two teams. Each team sent one person to the cornucopia to grab an item, then slapped the hand of the next person who would run out, until all the items were gone. Afterwards I read out a 3-day scenario and when an item was mentioned the team that had it would hold it up and get points for it. The whole scenario can be found here, where I "borrowed" the idea from. : ) I unfortunately forgot to take any pictures of the relay as it was happening, it was so crazy and fast! The winning team got candy prizes.

Next was the archery contest! Everyone got two practice tries with our bow and arrow, then five shots. While Katniss shot an apple out of a pig's mouth, we instead had some red plastic cups balanced on top of an easel. The middle cup was worth five points, and the two on either side were worth two points. The game was harder than it looked, and we had some good competition! Siaka ended up the winner here, with some Hunger Games magnetic bookmarks!

After that we divided the group into three teams for a trivia contest that covered Hunger Games and Catching Fire. We played a short game afterwards called Poison Berry, in which there's a series of balloons, or berries, that everyone pops. Inside each of them are either slips of paper with skulls, indicating the berry was poisonous, or mockingjays, indicating they lived. Only five of them contained mockinjay pins, so most people will end up dead! Winner got candy prizes.

We played a game of blow darts next, with short lengths of PVC pipe and mini marshmallows! Each person had two minutes to get as many mini marhmallows into the cups as they could. Cynthia and Siaka tied for first on this one! Both took home some Hunger Games pin sets!

Lastly there was a table for crafting some Hunger Games themed magnets! These are easy and fun to make for any occasion, actually, so I made a couple of sheets of Hunger Games images sized for the magnets, which I'll link to below. One sheet has the book cover images, and the other is all the district logos. All in all it was a fun night, and a much better way to spend Black Friday than running around to different stores and standing in long lines!

Upcoming November events

This Wednesday will be our Explosion Box craft at Sellers Library from 3:30 to 5:00! I've started an example box, which you can see below. The outside is blackout poetry, the inside is cut up manga!

Next week on Wednesday from 3:30 to 5:00 will be our Anime Club meeting! We'll have snacks and vote on an anime to watch and play some anime bingo!

Friday the 29th will be our Hunger Games Night! From 6:00 to 8:00 we'll be playing Hunger Games related ...well, games, as well as trivia and crafts! Signups are currently open for the Explosion Boxes and Hunger Games Night. The Anime Club does not require registration. 

Lots of new books to check out!

Lots of new titles added to the teen collection this week! I met the authors of Fair Coin, Tragedy Papers and Empty (who also wrote Cracked) and all thee of the books sound great, but I really want to read Fair Coin! Here’s the full list:

FICTION

• The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door  by Karen Finneyfrock
• Sylo by D.J. MacHale
• Origin by Jennifer L. Armentrout (book 4 of the Lux series)
• Dead River by Cyn Balog
• Champion by Marie Lu (book 3 in the Legend trilogy)
• The Elite by Kiera Cass (part of the Selection series)
• Thousand Words by Jennifer Brown
• Relic by Heather Terrell (book 1 of the Books of Eva series)
• Through the Zombie Glass by Gena Showalter (book 2 of the White Rabbit Chronicles)
• The Bitter Kingdom by Rae Carson (final book in the Girl of Fire and Thorns trilogy)
• Hunt by Andrew Fukuda
• Skinny by Donna Cooner
• Fair Coin by E.C. Myers
• The Tragedy Papers by Elizabeth Laban
• Empty by K.M. Walton

Any you’re looking forward to reading?

Cast your vote on Goodreads

If you've got a Goodreads account, voting is currently underway for their Best Books of 2013 awards! Categories include “graphic novels & comics”, “young adult fiction” and “young adult fantasy” among many others! Cast your vote for your favorite books!

I Was a Teenage Zombie

During the Halloween Party last Friday at the library, there was an iPad set up as a photo booth, allowing people to take their pictures and zombify themselves! Below are a couple of pics that turned out really well!

Halloween Party @ Sellers!

Last Friday we had 16 teens come for a Halloween party at the library from 6 to 8! Most people even came in costume, which was awesome! We started things off with a costume contest, where everyone could vote on who they thought had the best costume. Siaka won for his Grim Reaper costume, earning him a vinyl Godzilla figure and a party bag of candy! After that we broke up into teams of two to play a Minute to Win It game, Dizzy Mummy. Each team is given one roll of toilet paper and one person has to wrap up the other person. The first team to use the entire roll wins! Laurel and Ann-Marie won this one by keeping a nice pace (people that went too fast tended to keep tearing the paper)! After that we played some Halloween-themed Jeopardy, then enjoyed pizza and snacks while watching some clips from various spooky movies. And of course, watching Michael Jackson's Thriller! There was also an iPad set up so you could take a picture and "zombify" yourself! Our last game of the night was zombie target shooting, where each person had to shoot as many zombies as they could using a Nerf dart gun before time ran out. We had a tie for first place on that one between Devon and Husnain, and each got a party bag of candy. The night went by too quickly, and before I knew it we were cleaning up! Big thanks to everyone for coming out and celebrating, I'm already looking forward to next Halloween! Also thanks to Laurel for making an awesome Slenderman that we put by the window!

playing Dizzy Mummy!

snack break!

watching some scary clips!

a selfie with Slendy!

Our zombie targets! One is wearing Mario's mustache for some reason...

Pumpkin Day TAB Bake Sale!

October 19th was Pumpkin Day at the library, and the Teen Advisory Board held a bake sale to raise money for future programming at the library. The TAB turned out with lots of good baked treats and we ended up nearly selling out of everything by the time we were done! Random acts of silliness started happening after a while, and while I can't remember WHY anymore, at one point Yasmine recorded Vincent doing a dance that quickly broke down to him flopping around on the floor...

The bake sale itself was a great success, and the TAB raised $146, which is more than the last two or three bake sales we've had! Congratulations to everyone, and thanks for your hard work and participation in the bake sale!

Check out some new titles!

FICTION

• Crewel by Gennifer Albin
• Awaken by Meg Cabot
• All Our Pretty Songs by Sarah McCarry
• A Bad Day for Voodoo by Jeff Strand
• Reality Boy by A.S. King
• Butter by Erin Jade Lange
• If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan
• 172 Hours on the Moon by Johan Harstad

NON-FICTION

• Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Rust: Secrets of the Cell by Royden Lepp (vol. 2)
• Boxers by Gene Luen Yang
• Saints by Gene Luen Yang

6-second book trailers

This week is Teen Read Week, and Sellers Library is having a contest for teens to make a 6-second book trailer using Vine. I thought I'd share a couple of other book trailers using Vine I've seen that may help to inspire! They're simple, fun, and creative!

The Perks of Being a Wallflower:
https://vine.co/v/hB21nDIJIqw



The Fault In Our Stars:
https://vine.co/v/h1mlxbxxiE1



Wonder:
https://vine.co/v/bDIYtI3LXqK



Mo' Metta Blues:
https://t.co/79KSNzuINs



The Mystery Box:
https://t.co/8WgfPLTn3W



The Choke Artist:
https://vine.co/v/btqliXHHH3W


Which is your favorite here? I think they're all pretty great! With just six seconds, you really have to have a clear idea of what you want to say! Experiment, play around, and tweet your six second book trailer to our Sellers teens account, @SellersYA with the tag #SellersTRW. Have fun!

Book Club Book Review: Hope Was Here by Joan Bauer

The Primos Middle School Book Group met to discuss Hope Was Here. Final Score? 4 out of 5!

4 out of 5

This was my first Joan Bauer book, though I know she's a popular author. It's got a lot of interesting personal and town-wide problems that pop up and some great main characters who are always standing strong for what they believe is right. It also has lots of talk of diners and diner food, can't go wrong with that!

Pokemon Night! Celebrating the end of Gen V!

Last Wednesday, we held a Pokemon Night at the library to properly send off Generation V! With Pokemon X and Pokemon Y coming out the Saturday after, we held one final tournament for Black/White/Black 2 and White 2. We had 16 teens show up, and 4 of them came in costume! We had Brock, Pikachu, Meloetta and Gothitelle! You can see Brock and Meloetta below, along with me in my James costume from Team Rocket:

We started off the event with a costume contest, and each of the four teens walked down a runway and lined up while the rest of the teens voted. Mary, dressed as Meloetta won, beating Brock by just one vote! She took home a Charizard model kit. All the costumes looked great! After that we had our tournament, which consisted of four rounds of Swiss Pairing followed by single elimination of the top four players. James took home first place winning a $15 GameStop gift card and a Fennekin plush (one of the 3 new starters from X and Y). In addition to the DS tournament we also had Pokemon Stadium playing on an N64 hooked up to a TV, and the Wii had the four player Pokemon Rumble playing on the projector screen. Thanks to everyone that came out to Pokemon Night. We'll be sure to do another one soon! (Who will come dressed as Sylveon, huh?)

focused on the tournament

Pokemon gaming on the N64 and Wii

Great books with terrible covers!

The Oxford Public Library teen blog has a great display up featuring great books that have horrible covers. What a great idea! Here's a look at their display from their blog:

Just looking at their display, I will totally agree that the cover for Going Bovine is probably not helping it fly off the shelves, though I've read enough about the book to know that it's supposed to be a really good title! I know that I totally judge a book by its cover, so this is a pretty important topic! Those in my book clubs know that I like to look at covers from other editions and compare. What titles have you read that you thought were great but had really bad covers? Off the top of my head, I can think of Across the Universe, which when I first picked it up for book club I was not sure what to expect, but it pulled me in almost immediately!

It's more exciting than two people kissing in space, I swear!!

Teen Read Week Vine Book Trailer Contest!

Teen Read Week is October 13-19, and I'm excited to announce that we're holding a contest during the week! If you have Vine for iOS or Android, make a 6-second book trailer and tweet it to @SellersYA with the tag "#SellersTRW". We'll post the submissions to the blog here and have a vote on the winner. The submission with the most votes will get a $20 Barnes and Noble gift card! Be as creative as you want, and make those 6 seconds count! The contest is open to any Sellers Library teen patrons in grades 6 to 12.

Book Club Book Review: Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen

Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen, as scored by my Book Grub Book Group, which is the Sellers high school book club:

1.92 out of 5 stars

The majority of my knowledge of the story of Robin Hood looks something like this:

So I was interested in reading more about this tale, especially with the catch being that Will Scarlet was actually a girl in disguise. The majority of readers, myself included, felt the love triangle ended up being the main focus far too often throughout the story.

New Titles for the week of 9/29/2013!

FICTION

• Somebody Up There Hates You by Hollis Seamon
• Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
• Angelfall by Susan Ee
• Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

NON-FICTION

• D.I.Y. Design It Yourself 

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Prince of Persia by Jordan Mechner, A.B. Sina,LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland
• Twin Spica by Kou Yaginuma (vol. 1-2)

Happy October!

It's October! It's Fall! This is my favorite time of the year! So what better way to celebrate than with zombies?
First, my zombified profile, which is my new Facebook profile for the month:

This was actually less grotesque than my first try...

While one of my displays will be reserved for Teen Read Week, I'm putting up a windowsill display for zombie books!

Does anyone have any favorite books they like to read this time of the year, zombie or otherwise? Write about it in the comments! I like to break out an H.P. Lovecraft collection myself!

Anime Club! Candy sushi! Anime Jeopardy!

Last Wednesday, 13 teens showed up for our first Anime Club meeting of the fall! We started things off with making some yummy candy sushi, then we broke off into four teams to play a few rounds of Anime Jeopardy! The winning team each got a box of Pocky to enjoy while watching the day's selected anime. The group voted from five choices, and Sword Art Online juuuuust won, making it by one vote! We watched the first two episodes before we ran out of time. It was a fun afternoon that was over much too quickly! Also, I was kicking myself for forgetting my phone, so I don't have any pictures of the event! Boo! For anyone that wants to play the home version of Anime Jeopardy, click the link below! It'll let you enter teams, and keep track of the score. You can even edit it to make your own custom game!
Click here to play!

Anime Jeopardy!

Candy sushi! Fruit Roll-Up "nori" wrapped around Rice Krispy treats and gummy worms!

The next Anime Club meeting isn't until November, and I hope to see everyone there again! We'll have more snacks, more trivia and more anime watching!

Book Club Book Review: The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, reviewed by the Read and Rant book discussion group:

2.67 out of 5

On Goodreads I gave this book a score of 3 out of 5, so the group's reaction is almost in line with mine here. I love Neil Gaiman, and while I still enjoyed this book, I very much preferred say Coraline over Graveyard book.

new books for the week of 9/15/2013!

FICTION

• The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black
• Variant by Robison Wells

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Smile by Raina Telgemeier (replacement)
• Frankenstein by Gris Grimly and Mary Shelley

Book Club Book Reviews

Welcome to a new small feature that will pop up after each of the book clubs I lead, the Book Club Book Review. At the end of each book club, I pass out a voting sheet with options for the next title we'll read. At my last book club, I added a small section to the bottom of the voting sheet where you can rate the book we'd just discussed by circling 1 through 5, 1 being 'I didn't like it', 5 being 'Loved it!' When I gather up the voting sheets, I'll average out the number and put it here!

This past Friday, the high school book club at the Primos branch met to discuss Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve, which scored 4.33 out of 5 stars with the teens!

4.33 out of 5

New Playaway titles available!

We've got some new audiobooks in the teen section this week, in the form of Playaway! Playaways are cool because instead of a box with like, 5 or 8 CDs, you just have this little MP3 player to carry around. Handy!  Here's the new titles:

FICTION

• Playground by 50 Cent, read by 50 Cent and Dwayne Clark
• Football Genius by Tim Green, ready by Tim Green and a full cast
• W.A.R.P. The Reluctant Assassin (Book 1) by Eoin Colfer, read by Maxwell Caulfield
• The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson, read by Michael Kramer
• Icons by Margaret Stohl
• Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor, read by Khristine Hvam
• Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card, performed by Scott Brick, Kirby Heyborne, Don Leslie, Stefan Rudnicki, Kristoffer Tabori
• Ruins by Orson Scott Card, performed by Stefan Rudnicki, Kirby Keyborne and Emily Janice Card
• A Midsummer Night's Scream by R.L. Stine, read by Brittany Pressley
• The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer, read by Raul Esparza

Does anyone have any favorite audiobooks? Comment below with your favs! (my favorite is probably Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, read by Wil Weaton!)

edit: Another six audiobooks came in after I posted this, so I added them to the list.

A tidal wave of new books! "Title Wave"?

FICTION

• Wicked by Sara Shepard (part of the Pretty Little Liars series, replacement copy)
• No Way Out by Peggy Kern (Bluford High series, replacement copy)
• Search for Safety by John Langan (Bluford High series, replacement copy)
• The Test by Peggy Kern (Bluford High series)
• Pretty Ugly by Karyn Langhorne Folan (Bluford High series)
• Beautiful Decay by Sylvia Lewis
• Tenth Grade Kills by Heather Brewer (The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod series, replacement copy)
• California Dreaming by Zoey Dean (A-List series)
• Scorch  by Gina Damico (sequel to Croak)
• Enchanted by Alethea Kontis (The Woodcutter Sisters book 1)
• Nothing But the Truth by AVI (replacement copy)
• Far Far Away by Tom McNeal
• The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
• The Counterfeit Family Tree of Vee Crawford-Wong by L. Tam Holland
• The Program by Suzanne Young
• Necromancing the Stone by Lish McBride (sequel to Hold Me Closer, Necromancer)
• Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
• Born of Illusion by Teri Brown
• Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by April Genevieve Tucholke
• The Watcher in the Shadows by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• Fire and Ash by Jonathan Maberry (book four in the Rot and Ruin series)

NONFICTION

• Branded by the Pink Triangle by Ken Setterington

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World by Bryan Lee O'Malley (Scott Pilgrim book 2, replacement copy)
• Wolverine: Season One by Ben Acker, Ben Blacker, Salva Espin
• Dragonball by Akira Toriyama (3-in-1, books 1-3)
• Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata (vol. 1, 4 and 9, replacement copies)
• Wolverine by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller
• War Brothers The Graphic Novel by Sharon E. McKay and Daniel Lafrance

Nintendo Night ends Summer programming with a bang

Last Friday night we had 23 teens show up to participate in Nintendo Night! Almost everyone partook in the Super Smash Bros Brawl tournament, which was done as single elimination this time to help speed things along. Even then after the first round we were running behind and I had to change the rules from 3 minutes 4 stock to 2 minutes, 2 stock. That brought us up to speed and left us ending only 5 minutes late! Jared took home first prize, a two-sided Smash Bros Brawl poster and a $15 GameStop gift card. Siaka took second place and William took third, both of them receiving $10 GameStop gift cards. The tournament was so exciting that I forgot to take any pictures during the event.  -_-

We had a second Wii hooked up for freeplay, which seemed to mostly gravitate between more Smash Bros and some Naruto. There was also a retro gaming table set up with a Super Nintendo and N64 and a few multiplayer games for each. I was glad to see everyone had a good time. This event marked the end of the Summer schedule, so check back soon for the Fall schedule!

Minecraft Building Competition!

Last Wednesday, 22 teens came to Sellers Library to build in our first Minecraft Building Competition. Players had the option to play the PC edition (by either using a library PC or bringing in their own laptop) or playing the Pocket Edition (by either using an iPad provided by the library or using their own device of tablet of choice). Once everyone was situated, players were given two hours to build a treehouse of their own design. Game modes were set to creative, so players were allowed to use whatever they wanted to build. They were given a choice of either a jungle biome (by using seed "502661284222987106") or a forest biome (using seed "wolfies!"). With no jungle biome option in the Pocket Edition yet, players were given a seed for a forest biome, "Notchisacreeper".

After their two hours of creation time were up (which everyone agreed seemed to go much too fast!) I walked around to see what everyone had made. Creations were judged on three main criteria:

• concept and originality
• adherence to the theme
• technique and execution

Winners William and Billy

I scored each criteria on a scale of 1 to 10, then added the totals for each person's total ranking. I really think I had the hardest task of anyone, as it was REALLY hard to decide who should win, there were a ton of great creations! In the end, Billy won the PC competition prize, a life-size foam iron sword, and William won the Pocket Edition prize, a life-size foam pickaxe. Angela took home second place in the PE, and Sean took home second place in the PC edition, two tickets each to Eastern State Penitentiary. Like I said, it was really hard deciding on winners, there were so many creative creations!

While everything went pretty smoothly, there were some things that I plan to look into for future Minecraft events. Firstly, I would have loved if we could all have been on the same server, playing in the same world. My original plan was for everyone to walk around each other's treehouses during the judging phase, including myself. Then when the competition was over I could back up the world containing everyone's creations and put it online for everyone to see. The other problem was with the library's PC lab, which really strained to play Minecraft. Two people had their games crash while playing. I think next time the PC edition will be limited to those that can bring their own laptops.

I hope to do more Minecraft programs in the future. One of the great things about Minecraft is that there's so different things that can be done with it (although another building competition is certainly a possibility). It seems like everyone had a great time. Thanks to everyone that came!

Billy made a tree with a house inside! (PC)

This was a pretty amazing homemade tree! (PC)

Angela's tree house had trees topped with cakes! (PE)

Water slide! (PE)

Not sure how SAFE a roof of glass with a pool of lava is, but it looked nice! (PE)

Matt made some impressive pixel art! (PE)