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)

New titles for the week of 8/11/2013

FICTION

• This Is What Happy Looks Like by Jennifer E. Smith
• Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo (sequel to Shadow and Bone)
• City of Bones by Cassandra Clare (replacement copy)
• Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg
• Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick
• 45 Pounds (more or less) by K.A.Barson

Tabletop Gaming at the library!

Last Wednesday, 20 teens came to the library for some unplugged gaming fun! We had people bringing their own games, games borrowed from the Primos branch, as well as Sellers' games and a few of my own. In addition to the two copies of Munchkin that were available, someone had brought the deluxe edition (which comes with a board and player pieces) and that version was the favored one. Sarah brought in a game called Tsuro, which I tried out and really enjoyed playing. I'd never heard of that one before, so big thanks to Sarah! Quite a few rounds of Zombie Dice were played, which is a fun, quick and easy game. Classic games such as Checkers and Connect 4 were also popular. Everyone that won a game got a candy prize (although since Connect 4 matches can sometimes last only minutes, you could only win candy the first two times you won). There were a few iPads on hand with Ticket to Ride loaded on them, and a few people gave that a try, sometimes solo and at other times with people. I think they found it less intimidating than the Ticket to Ride physical game that was available.

The event went from 1:00 to 4:30, and it felt like it was over so quickly! I definitely look forward to doing another tabletop game day soon, it was a lot of fun!

Settlers of Catan, with some Yu-Gi-Oh! playing off to the side.

This game of Clue sounded like it was getting pretty heated as they looked for the culprit!

Tsuro was a surprisingly fun game!