12.23.2013

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!


12.13.2013

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

12.02.2013

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!