10.02.2015
The Fall 2015 schedule!
With Fall in full swing, herre is the Fall 2015 schedule of events for teens at Sellers Library! For this month, we'll be making and decorating DIY speakers next Wednesday. Friday October 23 we'll be doing another Nintendo Night and having a Smash Bros Wii U tournament! Then we'll be doing Halloween crafts on Wednesday October 28th while The Nightmare Before Christmas plays in the background. We'll also have our annual Sellers Library Halloween Party on Friday October 30th! The crafts are drop-ins, but signups are now open for the Halloween Party as well as Nintendo Night! And of course we'll have our regular clubs happening, such as the anime club, gaming club, tabletop and book clubs!
9.21.2015
New titles on the shelves
Click the link below to get the full list!
Seeker by Arwen Elys Dayton
After years of brutal training for what she thinks is the noble purpose of becoming a Seeker, Quin Kincaid, fifteen, learns that she will be using the ancient artifacts and sacred knowledge as an assassin.
FICTION
After years of brutal training for what she thinks is the noble purpose of becoming a Seeker, Quin Kincaid, fifteen, learns that she will be using the ancient artifacts and sacred knowledge as an assassin.
8.28.2015
New books to check out!
FICTION
No Parking at the End of Times by Bryan Bliss
Abigail's parents, believing the end of the world is near, sell their house, give the money to an end-of-times preacher, and drive from North Carolina to San Francisco where they remain homeless and destitute, as Abigail fights to keep her parents, her twin brother, and herself united against all odds.
8.20.2015
Retro Game Day @ Municipal!
Last Tuesday we had 12 teens show up and play some old, old, (very old) video games! I brought in a bunch of stuff from my personal collection, including an Atari 7800, an NES, SNES and N64 with a selection of about 10 games each. I think one of the biggest hits of the event would have to be Duck Hunt on the NES! Something about how easy that game is to pick up and play, and how immediate the game play is, make it really attractive to anybody I think. Just pick up the Zapper, aim and shoot! Next up would probably be Contra (with the 30 guy code of course!).
Two hours went by really quickly! It was so great to see so many teens try out these gaming consoles from before they were even born, and even better, having a good time with their friends! Oh, and below I have some pictures from the event, but in keeping with the spirit of retro gaming, I took all the photos on my Game Boy Camera, which was a device you plugged in to the original black and white Game Boy!
Two hours went by really quickly! It was so great to see so many teens try out these gaming consoles from before they were even born, and even better, having a good time with their friends! Oh, and below I have some pictures from the event, but in keeping with the spirit of retro gaming, I took all the photos on my Game Boy Camera, which was a device you plugged in to the original black and white Game Boy!
7.30.2015
D.I.Y. micro-games with Scratch!
The past two Wednesdays we had a program that I was really excited to finally try out at Sellers Library- making games with the Scratch programming language! Making games on a hobby and indie level has become increasingly popular, and there's more and more free and easy to use tools perfect for starting to try making your own games. For an entry level program, we used Scratch, which makes coding as easy as taking blocks of code and snapping them together.
The first Wednesday we had 11 teens show up. After a brief introduction to the Scratch program, they were each challenged to make a simple game consisting of a maze, a character the player can control and a goal to reach. It should be noted that we had some technical difficulties and some computers were having troubles connecting to the internet, meaning all the graphics had to be drawn with the simple paint program included instead of simply grabbing some graphics from the included library. We pressed on though, and each person made wildly different versions of a maze game! I'm including a lot of them below, and they are as-is, so some have problems with collision detection or movement, but one of the fun aspects of Scratch is that anyone can "remix" a shared project, so anyone is welcome to make a copy and add their own touches to it! It will even show up on the original project's page, by clicking the "tree" icon (to see the other projects branching out).
The second Wednesday session was a little smaller with 7 teens. This time the challenge was to take a project that had already been started, in this case a simple Pong clone, and play it a bit. As they were playing, I asked them to call out impressions about the game, or ideas to improve it. Lots of ideas were put forth, such as adding a second player, adding a scoring system, having the ball speed up as you played or adding background music. We then spent time getting some of these items added in, and then the remainder of the session was spent adding or changing whatever they wanted. Once again some ideas worked more than others, or sometimes just adding in something random did something crazy, and there might not have been enough time left to get things working again, but I'm including these as-is to be tinkered with additionally.
Click through the break below to see the embedded games. (I'm putting them below a page break to reduce loading times on the main page!)
The first Wednesday we had 11 teens show up. After a brief introduction to the Scratch program, they were each challenged to make a simple game consisting of a maze, a character the player can control and a goal to reach. It should be noted that we had some technical difficulties and some computers were having troubles connecting to the internet, meaning all the graphics had to be drawn with the simple paint program included instead of simply grabbing some graphics from the included library. We pressed on though, and each person made wildly different versions of a maze game! I'm including a lot of them below, and they are as-is, so some have problems with collision detection or movement, but one of the fun aspects of Scratch is that anyone can "remix" a shared project, so anyone is welcome to make a copy and add their own touches to it! It will even show up on the original project's page, by clicking the "tree" icon (to see the other projects branching out).
The second Wednesday session was a little smaller with 7 teens. This time the challenge was to take a project that had already been started, in this case a simple Pong clone, and play it a bit. As they were playing, I asked them to call out impressions about the game, or ideas to improve it. Lots of ideas were put forth, such as adding a second player, adding a scoring system, having the ball speed up as you played or adding background music. We then spent time getting some of these items added in, and then the remainder of the session was spent adding or changing whatever they wanted. Once again some ideas worked more than others, or sometimes just adding in something random did something crazy, and there might not have been enough time left to get things working again, but I'm including these as-is to be tinkered with additionally.
Click through the break below to see the embedded games. (I'm putting them below a page break to reduce loading times on the main page!)
7.21.2015
New book titles!
More new books for this week! Click through below for the full list, and you can click the titles to be taken right to the book's listing on the library's website to request it or put it on hold!
Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver
Sisters Dara and Nick used to be inseparable, but that was before Dara kissed Parker. That was before the accident that left Dara's face scarred. Now the sisters totally estranged. When Dara vanishes on her birthday, Nick thinks Dara is just playing around. But another girl, Madeline Snow, has vanished, too. Nick becomes increasingly convinced that the two disappearances are linked-- and she has to find her sister, before it's too late.
FICTION
Sisters Dara and Nick used to be inseparable, but that was before Dara kissed Parker. That was before the accident that left Dara's face scarred. Now the sisters totally estranged. When Dara vanishes on her birthday, Nick thinks Dara is just playing around. But another girl, Madeline Snow, has vanished, too. Nick becomes increasingly convinced that the two disappearances are linked-- and she has to find her sister, before it's too late.
6.29.2015
Nintendo Night and Super Smash Bros!
Last Friday night we had 28 teens come to the library for Nintendo Night! Of them, 22 signed up to compete in our first Super Smash Bros for Wii U tournament. It was a noisy, fierce competition, and in the end Sarah came in first with Roy, winning a Hyrule map puzzle and a $25 gift card to Gamestop! Alex was really feeling it with Shulk and came in second place, and Aaron took home third (also with Shulk!).
When people weren't competing, we had multiple TVs set up with older Nintendo systems. Duck Hunt was getting a lot of play on the old NES! One table started just drawing a lot too, which was really cool! It was a really great night and we had a lot of fun! Our next gaming tournament will be for Pokemon at the Municipal Library on July 7.
When people weren't competing, we had multiple TVs set up with older Nintendo systems. Duck Hunt was getting a lot of play on the old NES! One table started just drawing a lot too, which was really cool! It was a really great night and we had a lot of fun! Our next gaming tournament will be for Pokemon at the Municipal Library on July 7.
6.22.2015
Summer Reading Club!
We're a week into this year's Summer Reading Club, and I just wanted to take a moment and point out that if you go to our website's teen page, you can fill out an online form instead of doing the paper one that we hand out at the library. Either way you want to do it is up to you, but don't forget that for every five books you read you'll get a prize, a free book off our cart. You'll also be entered into the weekly prize giveaway! The Upper Darby Library teen page is linked below:
http://www.udlibraries.org/teen
Read comics, books, magazines, manga, whatever you want to read! And don't forget that next week we'll have back to back craft programs at Sellers and Municipal Libraries! Next Tueday, the 30th, we'll be doing Perler Beads at Municpal at 3:00. Then on Wednesday we'll be making superhero necklaces from Shrinky Dinks! Both programs are drop-ins, so stop on by!
Rocking Away Fines!
Last Thursday we had 9 teens show up to lower their overdue fines by playing Rock Band! While the attendance is a little lower than usual, 8 out of the 9 patrons had their fines completely erased during the event! In three hours we got rid of $100 of overdue fines, so I think that can still be considered a big success! Thanks to everyone who came in to get their fines done!
5.18.2015
New Book Titles!
FICTION
In an attempt to understand why her best friend committed suicide, eighteen-year-old Cody Reynolds retraces her dead friend's footsteps and makes some startling discoveries.
The Summer Schedule 2015!
Summer will be here before you know it! And we'll have lots of activities going on at the library for everyone! Below you can find the front and back image of the Summer schedule pamphlet that's now available! Click on them for the full-size image.
4.17.2015
New Books!
FICTION
Holidays mean family, friends, presents and extra doses of drama! But for three girls, the one gift they weren't expecting may be everything they ever hoped for.
3.28.2015
DDR Free Play and Tournament 2015
Last Wednesday we had 5 teens participate in our Dance Dance Revolution tournament! We played Dance Dance Revolution II on the Wii in four-player mode for some warmup, then went down to 2-players for the actual tournament. In the end, Sarah got the first place prize, a $10 Gamestop gift card. Hurit came in second and Mary came in third, both winning candy prizes. We also had some music games to play just for fun, such as the strange Donkey Konga games on Gamecube, played with bongo controllers, and Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix, which is exactly what it sounds like, DDR played with remixes of Mario music! There were also several games of Connect 4 played during downtime! Thanks to everyone that came out to play some DDR!
3.27.2015
Teen Tech Week 2015: Meme All the Shirts!
For Teen Tech Week this year, we had Chromebooks set up at Municipal Library with tabs open to a few popular meme making sites such as memegenerator.com and www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk. After teens had made their custom meme, we flipped the image and printed it out on iron transfer paper, then put them on t-shirts! Awesome wearable art! We had 11 teens show up and make stuff to wear home! Someone even came to the library the next day wearing the shirt they made!
New Books
This list of "new books" is actually a couple of weeks old, as I had accidentally left it in draft format instead of publishing it! But anyhow! It's most likely new to you! Click below for the full list of the latest additions to the teen collection!
Fiction
Geek Girl by Holly Smale
When she is accidentally discovered by a modeling agent, fifteen-year-old Harriet jumps at the chance to transform herself from a geek to a fashion model.
1.30.2015
New books!
Lux Opposition by Jennifer L. Armentrout
Katy knows the world changed the night the Luxen came. She can't believe Daemon stood by as his kind threaten to obliterate every last human and hybrid on Earth. But the lines between good and bad have blurred. Daemon will do anything to save those he loves, even if it means betrayal. But when it quickly becomes impossible to tell friend from foe, and the world is crumbling around them, they may lose everything to ensure that survival of their friends--and mankind.
1.23.2015
New Titles
Fiction
In 1959 Virginia, Sarah, a black student who is one of the first to attend a newly integrated school, forces Linda, a white integration opponent's daughter, to confront harsh truths when they work together on a school project.
1.05.2015
The Last Call cart!
Over the fall, about 60 books were placed on a cart in the teen section that were in danger of being withdrawn from the collection due to low circulation. Teen patrons were invited to check out one of the books and write on the slip provided whether or not they were worth keeping around. Half of the titles on the cart ended up staying, with 30 being kept and 31 being withdrawn! Thanks very much to those of you that decided to try out some of the titles on the cart and give your feedback!
Of the responses we got back on why the books should be kept, below are some of the higher recommendations:
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