More new graphic novels!

Continuing from last week, here's more of the new graphic novels that have been added to the teen collection! You can click the link in the descriptions to go to the library listing of the book if you'd like to put a hold on it!

Kingdom Hearts II by Shiro Amano (vol. 2)

When Roxas disappeared, Sora awakened from his deep slumber along with his allies, Donald and Goofy. Now the trio continues their mission to save the worlds from the forces of darkness and to find King Mickey and Sora's best friend Riku. But this time a new menace to the peace of Kingdom Hearts bears down on Sora and his friends--the Nobodies and Organization XIII.

New titles!!

There are going to be lots of additions in the coming weeks, so let's get started on what's new at the library! Also, I'm changing up the format here to give a little more information on each title. In addition to the title and author, each entry will have a book cover, and a link to the library copy on our website! Let me know what you think of the changes!

Fiction

The Glass Sentence (book 1 of The Mapmaker Trilogy) by S.E. Grove

In 1891, in a world transformed by 1799's Great Disruption--when all of the continents were flung into different time periods--thirteen-year-old Sophia Tims and her friend Theo go in search of Sophia's uncle, Shadrack Elli, Boston's foremost cartologer, who has been kidnapped.

Pics from our Shrinky Dinks art @ Municipal!

Yesterday we had 13 teen show up to make Shrinky Dink art! While Shrinky Dinks seem to be making a comeback, there are still a lot of people who don't know what they are. They're a thin, papery-like plastic that you can draw and color on, that when baked become about 50% smaller and get thicker and harder, like a plastic charm. Some people traced over pictures I'd brought in, others traced over drawings that they had made, and others just drew freehand! Below are some of the results!

It's Computer Science Education Week!

This week is Computer Science Education Week! Challenge yourself at some point this week to write an Hour of Code, even if you've never done it before! I'll be posting some links to stuff for beginners to try their hand at coding, so check back soon! If you do any coding this week, tell us about it!

Code.org has lots of great tutorials for beginners looking to try their hand at coding! The link below lets you create a Flappy Bird clone! This lets you move simple blocks of code around to change how the game plays on the fly over ten different steps. You can eventually change things like speed, sound effects, graphics and the score system, then share it online! A great challenge for beginners! (The site is getting slammed right now though, so you may need to reload a couple times!)

Below is another challenge for the Hour of Code! This one uses the same snap together blocks of code that the Flappy Bird clone does, but in this challenge you made designs in ice by directing Elsa and Anna from Frozen.This is another challenge aimed at beginners. Once again, the code.org site is still getting slammed so loading may take a while right now!

"Gotta Code 'em All" uses a C++ like environment to introduce users to functions, variables and integers as they make changes to a Pokemon-like battle system! Then you run the program in a virtual iPhone!

Some pics of our Perler Bead creations!

We had fun yesterday making stuff out of Perler Beads, and while I didn't get pictures of all of them, I did try to get as many as I could in between ironing other people's creations! Special thanks to everyone that chipped in to help finish my Christmas Mario when I became too busy with the iron to work on it!

new books incoming!

FICTION

• Gabi: A Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero
• Don't Touch by Rachel M. Wilson
• This Is How It Ends by Jen Nadol
• I Have a Bad Feeling About This by Jeff Strand
• A Matter of Souls by Denise Lewis Patrick
• The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau
• Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer
• Monument 14: Sky on Fire by Emmy Laybourne
• A Death-Struck Year  by Makiia Lucier
• I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
• How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon
• Wild Rover No More by L.A. Meyer (final book in the Bloody Jack series)
• Stitching Snow by R.C. Lewis
• The Young Elites by Marie Lu
• The Rules For Breaking by Ashley Elston
• Teen Spirit by Francesca Lia Block

NON-FICTION

• Minecraft: Construction Handbook by Mojang

New books!

A couple new additions this week, with lots more to come soon!

FICTION

• Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld
• The Devil's Intern by Donna Hosie
• Love is the Drug by Alaya Dawn Johnson

AUDIO BOOKS

• Found by Harlan Coben, read by Nick Podehl
• The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey (book 2 of The 5th Wave) read by Phoebe Strole and Ben Yannette

Halloween Party @ Sellers Library!

Halloween fell on a Friday this year, which worked out perfectly since I wanted to have a Halloween party on a Friday night at the library! We had 18 teens show up, many most in costume, to play some Halloween themed games, make some Halloween themed crafts, and of course, eat Halloween themed pizza.
...Okay, the pizza wasn't actually Halloween themed in any way, but it is still an essential for a Halloween party!

We started out the night with a simple Minute to Win It game where each person has one minute to inflate a balloon, then use the air from the balloon to blow a row of 15 plastic cups off the table. Then we played another Minute to Win It game, Dizzy  Mummy, which was a hit at last year's party too. Everyone gets into teams of two, with one person trying to unwrap an entire roll of toilet paper over the other person. The team to use up their roll first wins! I also brought out a Nerf gun and zombie targets for some target shooting.

One of my favorite things about Halloween are the movies, and throughout the party there was a projector playing a YouTube playlist of Halloween-y clips for people to enjoy. Classics like Thriller, Dracula, Frankenstein, and Nightmare Before Christmas were playing while people enjoyed pizza. Overall it was a really fun night, and I'm already looking forward to next Halloween!

Shrinky Dink fun!

Yesterday we had 6 teens show up to make stuff out of Shrinky Dinks! For those that don't know, Shrinky Dinks are this odd material that starts off like a paper-think plastic sheet that you draw and color on, then after being baked they shrink down to about a third of their original size and get much thicker! Everyone was welcome to draw whatever they wanted, though I had some sheets on hand for people to trace over if they needed suggestions. There were lots of different kinds of things made, and everyone was able to make several pieces. There were also things like keychains and necklace cords if people wanted to make them into something. If anyone missed it the first time but wanted to try making some, we'll be doing the Shrinky Dink art again at Municipal Library on Tuesday, December 9!

They shrink fast and curl up before flattening back out!

After baking they are tiny! There's a Mockingjay, pokeball, enderman, creeper, rupee and TNT!

a chest and rupee size comparison before and after being shrunk

Book Hedgehogs!

Last week we had a small group come in to make and decorate hedgehogs out of books! The five of us folded each page of the book to give it a round, spikey appearance. Then we used duct tape, buttons, googly eyes and markers to give the guys some personality! The group may have been small, but we all had a good time hanging out and making something! Our next craft event will be October 22, when we'll be making Shrinky Dink art!

New books! Graphic novel edition.

More new additions this week, almost all graphic novels! Come check out some new books at Sellers!

FICTION

• The Mark of the Dragonfly by Jaleigh Johnson

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Guardians of the Galaxy/All-New X-Men: The Trial of Jean Grey by Brian Michael Bendis
• All-New X-Men vol 3: Out of Their Depth by Brian Michael Bendis
• X-Men: Battle of the Atom by Brian Michael Bendis
• Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories by Shiro Amano
• Kingdom Hearts II  by Shiro Amano (vol 1)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by Kevin Eastman and Tom Waltz (vol 6-7)

What's going on for Fall 2014!

This has been available to pick up at the library for about 2 weeks now, but I wanted to make sure that even if you haven't come in yet, you know what's going on for students in grades 6 to 12 at Sellers Library! Click the pages below to enlarge them!

New books post!

FICTION

• Illusions of Fate by Kiersten White
• Of Metal and Wishes by Sarah Fine
• 100 Sideways Miles
• A New Darkness by Joseph Delaney
• The Opposite of Love by Sarah Lynn Scheerger
• Mortal Danger by Ann Aguirre
• Yolo  by Lauren Myracle (book 4 of TTYL)
• Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas (a Throne of Glass novel)
• Kinda Like Brothers by Coe Booth
• Rumble by Ellen Hopkins
• Some Boys by Patty Blount
• On a Clear Day by Walter Dean Myers
• God Loves Hair by Vivek Shraya
• Tap Out by Eric Devine
• Words and Their Meanings by Kate Bassett
• Reclaimed by Sarah Guillory
• Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (replacement copy)

NON-FICTION

• Minecraft: Combat Handbook by Stephanie Milton

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Ghostbusters: Total Containment by Eric Burnham
• Sword Art Online Aincrad by Tamako Nakamura and Reki Kawahara
• Sisters by Raina Telgemeier (sequel to Smile)
• Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa (3-in-1 of vol 13-15)
• Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa (3-in-1 of vol 16-18)
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time by Akira Himekawa (vol 1)
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time by Akira Himekawa (vol 2)

The complete Sailor Moon manga is now available!

This is actually a late edition to the previous listing of manga and graphic novels we added to the collection lately. Sailor Moon volumes 7-12 are now in the teen graphic novels section, which means the complete Sailor Moon series is now available!

New graphic novels!

To go along with the tons of new books we got in last week, this week brings us a collection of new manga and graphic novels!

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Dragonball by Akira Toriyama (3-in-1 of vol. 4-6 and vol. 10-12)
• Fullmetal Alchemist  by Hiromu Arakawa (3-in-1 of vol.7-9 and vol. 10-12)
• Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama (vols 4-5)
• All-New X-Men: Yesterday's X-Men by Bendis and Immonen
• All-New X-Men: Here to Stay by Bendis, Marquez and Immonen
• Ghostbusters vol 1. The Man From the Mirror by Burnham, Shoening, Jones and Delgado
• Kingdom Hearts Final Mix by Shiro Amano (vols 1-2)

FICTION

• Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick
• So, So Hood by L. Divine (part of the Drama High series)

lots of new books!

Looking for something new to read during the month of August? We've got some new stuff in this week to check out!

FICTION

• Heartbeat by Elizabeth Scott
• Marvelous by Travis Thrasher
• Let's Get Lost by Adi Alsaid
• A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller
• The Song of the Quarkbeast by Jasper Fforde (book 2 of The Chronicles of Kazam)
• Four: A Divergent Collection by Veronica Roth
• Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis
• Conversion by Katherine Howe
• We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
• Breathe, Annie, Breathe by Miranda Kenneally
• Hungry by H.A. Swain
• Teen Idol by Meg Cabot
• The Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson (book 1 of The Remnant Chronicles)
• Splintered by A.G. Howard (replacement)
• Unhinged by A.G. Howard (sequel to Splintered)
• Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo (book 3 of The Grisha Trilogy)
• Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern
• The One by Kiera Cass (book 3 of The Selection series)

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Shackleton: Antarctic Odyssey by Nick Bertozzi

AUDIO BOOKS

• Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern
• Four by Veronica Roth (a Divergent companion book)
• Four: The Son by Veronica Roth (a Divergent companion book)
• The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater (book 2 of The Raven Cycle)
• Sinner by Maggie Stiefvater

Week 5 and 6 Summer Reading Club Winners!

Week 5 

Shanice Whittock, grade 7
won a $15 Barnes and Noble gift certificate!

Week 6

Abbey Liu, grade 10
won a $15 gift certificate to Effin Comics, our local comic shop!

Congratulations to our winners, and keep participating in the Summer Reading Club for a chance to win a weekly drawing!

Teen Reading Survey!

If you're a teen and have been to Sellers Library this Summer, consider clicking the link below to fill out a short 6-question survey!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/udteens

pics from July programs!

I'm playing a bit of catch-up here, as I was sadly neglecting posting pics of the Summer events as they were happening! But here's some of the stuff that went down in July!

On Wed, July 2, 12 teens came to check out the MaKey MaKey Workshop! I've described MaKey MaKey on the blog previously, but simply put, it allows you to hook up anything to your computer and as long as it conducts electricity, the computer will think it's a keyboard button or a mouse button! This allows for some pretty creative contraptions, and I made sure there were lots of various supplies on demand to use, such as chopsticks, tin foil, pennies, marshmallows, bananas and paper and pencils (pencil graphite is a bit conductive, so your drawings can become buttons)! We had a good time using various inputs to play Flappy Bird, Canabalt, and other simple games, as well as using a simple drumming program to make different items play sounds when touched! We'll be doing this program again in August at the Municipal branch.

Using drawings to operate a Dance Dance Revolution game!

On Wednesday, July 23, we had 16 teens show up to throw things out the second story window!! We had an Egg Drop Contest, where everyone got into five small groups and designed contraptions to protect an egg from a two-story fall. They had one hour to build whatever they wanted from the materials given. I was surprised that all five survived the drop!! That's it, next time I'm giving less stuff to use, I want to see some broken eggs here!

The view out the 2nd story window!

parachutes were a popular theme!

On Tuesday, July 29 at the Municipal branch we had a Minecraft Craft day! There were four stations of different Minecraft-related crafts of various difficulty. There were Perler Beads out to make Minecraft-themed necklaces, duct tape, markers and Velcro to make creeper bracelets, papercrafts of various monsters and items from the game, and Minecraft coloring sheets! In addition we had some iPads running the Pocket Edition and my PS3 was running Minecraft projected onto a screen for anyone that wanted to play. Almost everyone made a Perler Bead necklace and papercraft and we all hung out and talked about Minecraft with each other, which was cool.

Finally on Wednesday, July 30th we had 16 teens show up for the Build a Brush Bot program! Using a small motor, a AAA battery, some wire and a glue gun, we made little vibrating bots. (They're close to Hex Bugs, actually). This was a fun program and everyone's bots came out looking a little different!

Here's my example Brush Bot that I made

Summer programming is winding down a little bit for August, but we've still got some cool stuff coming up! As I mentioned, we'll be doing the MaKey MaKey again at Municipal. And we'll also be doing the Minecraft Craft event that took place at Municipal at Sellers on Tuesday! I'm even planning to add one more special papercraft to the event, if you give your Minecraft username, I'll print out a papercraft of your character! We've been doing teen movies every month for the past couple months, and at the end of August we'll have a special screening of Minecraft: The Story of Mojang, a Minecraft documentary by 2 Player Productions. The movie is drop-in, but the other events do require registration, so if you think you'd like to come, be sure to sign up, it may be waiting list only pretty soon!

Week 4 Summer Reading Club winner!

Tony Faijue, grade 7
won a $15 gift card to Effin Comics, a local comic shop on Burmont Rd in Drexel Hill!

Congratulations and keep reading for a chance to win more prizes!

Week 2 and 3 winners of Summer Reading Club 2014!

So I've been announcing winners on Fridays, and last Friday we were closed for the 4th of July and it threw me off! So here's the winners for both week 2 and week 3 of the Summer Reading Club random drawings!

Jaspinder Singh, grade 8
won a movie pack of Despicable Me 2 and The Croods on DVD, plus candy!

Shanique Clarke, grade 7
won a $15 gift card to AMC Theaters and candy!

congratulations to our winners for weeks 2 and 3!

It's slime time!

On Friday, June 27th we had 25 teens show up to make slime! This was a fun (and messy) craft, with some really great results! We used a recipe that involved Borax, glue, food coloring and water. It's simple, it's easy, and it's pretty fast! There were a couple of different kinds of glue on hand, and each had different results: clear Elmer's, regular white Elmer's, and a transparent colored Elmer's that had glitter in it! Oddly enough every time I tried to make slime, mine came out pretty awful! But there were some really impressive ones here! I took some pictures of the various kinds of slime we turned out!

The slime lasted from 5 to 6. At 6 we brought out the projector and watched Ghostbusters, which is celebrating it's 30th anniversary this Summer! It also felt an appropriate title to match with slime!

Week 1 winner for the Summer Reading Club 2014!

Last week was the first week of the Summer Reading Club, and each week we'll be giving random prizes to students that handed in Summer Reading Club slips for that week. I'm happy to announce our first winner!

Mallory Perry, grade 10
won a $15 gift card to Amazon!

Congratulations to our first winner and keep recording everything you read this Summer!

Rock Away Your Fines

With Summer starting, it was a great time to come in to the library and get rid of some fines by playing Rock Band! For every song you played, the library would deduct $1 from your overdue fines! We had a great turn out of 22 teens, and over the course of three hours we played enough to take off $126 worth of fines! Way to go! Of the 22, 16 had their fines paid off completely! Thanks to everyone that came out, and congratulations on getting down your fines! Now go check out some books!

Skoyz!

Last Monday we had 19 people show up to try out some skill toys! These are various toys that require a bit of patience and practice to pull off, but it's really rewarding when you finally get it! We had diabolos, flower sticks, chatter rings, kendama, spinning plates and juggling balls. Luckily the weather was on our side, because between the crowd and the skoyz there was not enough room in our usual meeting place and we ended up taking it outside. Every got 5 to 10 minutes to practice at a station, then we rotated. After everyone had tried each one, they were free to go to whichever ones they wanted and play around with them. I'm usually pretty bad at spinning plates, and the outdoor breeze was not helping that! Everyone found at least one that they liked, and the time went by surprisingly fast!

juggling!

spinning plates!

flower sticks!