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!