Shrinky Dinks at the Asian Culture Club

At our last Asian Culture Club, we colored in some anime style Shrinky Dinks, because hey, Shrinky Dinks are always cool! Below is a picture of the finished, shrunken forms, and they came out really good! We should be getting in the first issue of Otaku USA Magazine soon, we just recently subscribed, and I could see using their huge picture layouts for future art projects.

New Books for the week of 1/13/2013

Here is the new titles in the teen collection this week. What's everybody looking forward to reading? I'm excited to finally get my hands on Shades of Earth, the last book in the Across the Universe trilogy (we read Across the Universe over the Summer in the high school's Book Grub Book Group).

FICTION

• Deadly Little Lessons by Laurie Faria Stolarz (a Touch novel)
• Shades of Earth by Beth Revis (book 3 in the Across the Universe trilogy)
• Auracle by Gina Rosati
• See You at Harry's  by Jo Knowles
• The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin (book 2 of the Mara Dyer trilogy)
• Daylight Saving by Edward Hogan
• Ask the Passengers by A.S. King
• The Infects by Sean Beaudoin
• Personal Effects by E.M. Kokie
• Erebos by Ursula Poznanski 
• The Secrets of the Eternal Rose: Venom by Fiona Paul
• A Certain October by Angela Johnson
• Silence by Becca Fitzpatrick (book 3 in the Hush, Hush series)
• Lexapros and Cons by Aaron Karo
• Almost Home by Joan Bauer

New Year, new books! Week of 1/6/2013

Happy 2013 everyone! I hope you all had a good break! We've got some new books in this week:

FICTION

• What Happens Next by Colleen Clayton
• This Is Not Forgiveness by Celia Rees
• Adaptation by Malinda Lo
• Darkwater by Catherine Fisher
• Breathe by Sarah Crossan
• Pinned by Sharon G. Flake
• Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
• The Dark Unwinding by Sharon Cameron
• My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick
• The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken
• Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan (The Lynburn Legacy Book One)

NONFICTION

• The Brontë Sisters: The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily and Jane by Catherine Reef

Nintendo Night!

Last night 19 teens showed up for the Fall Nintendo Night. It was my first time hosting Nintendo Night, and I had a great time. We did the usual Smash Bros Brawl tournament, with seven teams of two. Since there was an odd number of teams, one of the three losing teams in the first round was picked randomly to get a second chance fighting the seventh team. Good thing for David and Siaka, who were eliminated in the first game of the night, but when they were randomly chosen to come back in, they ended up winning the tournament! Each of them got a $20 Gamestop gift card. The teams to come in second and third place won candy.

People were also invited to try their hands at an old-school competition on my NES I brought in, along with a reproduction cartridge of Nintendo World Championships 1990. Each player is given five minutes to get 50 coins in Super Mario Bros., race one lap in Rad Racer, and run out the clock in Tetris. After the five minutes are up the game ends and displays your score, which I recorded in my notebook. Next to the NES I had a high score board display where I could post the current top five players. We had ten people compete. It was a close battle, but David took the top spot at 103, 390 points, getting another $20 Gamestop gift card. The other high scorers won candy. Here's the top five scores of the night:

David     103,390

John E     99,745

Colin       98,140

Owen      96,630

Morgan   95,050

And just for comparison's sake, the actual champion of Nintendo World Championships 1990, Thor Ackerlund, had a score of 2,800,000. Which is insane.

Finally there was a second Wii set up with another projector for free play. The first half of the night it was dominated by Naruto, but for a while there was some Mario Kart Wii going on as well. There will be more gaming events in the upcoming months, so check back soon for more info!

the new titles continue, week of 12/16/2012

The flood of new titles continues this week! In order to make some extra room, I've added a top row to all the shelves in the teen space with new titles displayed there. And since the graphic novel/manga section was already filled to capacity before adding all of these, I've put a small display up on the windowsill featuring some of the newer titles. And since manga don't really have book trailers, I put in links to the anime counterpart's opening where I could. Just because!

NON-FICTION

• Guinness World Records 2013: Gamer's Edition

FICTION

• Abandon by Meg Cabot (replacement copy)
• This Dark Endeavor by Kenneth Oppel
• Tempest by Julie Cross
• Wither by Lauren DeStefano
• Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen
• All Good Children by Catherine Austen
• Struck By Lightning by Chris Colfer
• Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow
• Article 5 by Kirsten Simmons 

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Page by Paige by Laura Lee Gulledge
• K-On by Kakifly (vol. 1, 2, 4)
• Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa (vol. 1-6)
• Neon Genesis Evangelion by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (vol. 1-3 in one book)
• Maximum Ride by James Patterson and Narae Lee (vol. 1-4)
• Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata (vol. 8)
• Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi (vol. 1-6)
• Skip Beat by Yoshiki Nakamura (vol. 1-3 in one book)

TAB's Barnes and Noble gift wrap fundraiser!

On Saturday, our Teen Advisory Board went to Barnes and Noble to wrap gifts for customers, taking donations. From 12 to 4 the TAB was able to get $51.89 in donations! I occasionally wrapped some gifts as well, and I feel I must apologize to those customers who offered a donation and received my poor poor gift wrapping skills in return!

deluge of new titles for week of 12/9/2012!

Get ready, 'cause we've got a TON of new titles being added to the teen section! (Hopefully we'll get more shelf space soon, otherwise these shelves are gonna be bursting!) Here's what we've got this week, there's more to come next week as well!

FICTION

• No Safety In Numbers by Dayna Lorentz
• Wake by Amanda Hocking (Watersong book 1)
• Lullaby by Amanda Hocking (Watersong book 2)
• I Swear by Lane Davis 
• Hourglass by Myra McEntire
• Endlessly by Kiersten White (book 3 of the Paranormalcy trilogy)
• Quarantine: The Loners by Lex Thomas
• The Paladin Prophecy by Mark Frost
• The Diviners by Libba Bray
• Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card (replacement copy)
• Embrace by Jessica Shirvington
• Dodger by Terry Pratchett
• For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund
• Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers
• Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
• Cinder by Marissa Meyer

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Marmalade Boy by Wataru Yoshizumi (vol. 1-3)
• Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata (vol. 1, 3, 5-7)
• Yotsuba&! by Kiyohiko Azuma (vol. 4, 5, 7, 8)
• Paradise Kiss by Ai Yazawa (vol. 1-2)

New titles for the week of 12/2/2012

FICTION

• The Door Within by Wayne Thomas Batson
• Because It Is My Blood by Gabrielle Zevin
• The Raft by S.A. Bodeen
• London Eye by Tim Lebbon
• A World Away by Nancy Grossman
• What's Left of Me by Kat Zhang
• Breaking Point by Karyn Langhorne Folan & Paul Langan (a Bluford High book)

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Hikaru no Go by Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata (vol 1-10)

The Hikaru no Go books are actually shelved in the juvenile graphic novels, but I'm including them because I think they have a pretty large age range of appeal. Also I think it's actually 1-10, minus 3 and 7? Anyway, lots of new stuff to check out this week!

Borrow, Don't Steal!

This video was  long time coming, but it's finally online! A group of teens here at the Sellers Library made a truly great public service announcement video speaking out against theft at the library! It's great to see the hard work of everyone involved really pay off!

New titles for the week of 11/25

NONFICTION

• The Warrior's Heart by Eric Greitens
• GLBTQ by Kelly Huegel
• Filmmaking for Teens by Clay Nichols
• The Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy & Charles Wibbelsman
• 100 Things Guys Need to Know by Bill Zimmerman
• Be Confident in Who You Are  by Annie Fox
• Real Friends vs. the Other Kind by Annie Fox
• Mad: How to Deal With Your Anger and Get Respect  by James J. Crist
• The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks

FICTION

• Something Like Normal by Trish Doller
• Son by Lois Lowry (conclusion to The Giver)
• The Curiosities by Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton and Brenna Yovanoff
• The Good Braider by Terry Farish

Disney Mashup!

Last Friday, November 23, 13 teens avoided the craziness of Black Friday and opted instead to enjoy some Disney-themed entertainment at the library! The event began with a Disney YouTube playlist screening, which included submissions which were emailed to me. We had a mix of everything from classic Mickey shorts to songs from Disney movies to Pixar's newer shorts. Lots of variety! That was followed up by screening the Disney animated movie Atlantis: The Lost Empire, which was voted on our Facebook page's poll. It beat out 7 other Disney movies.
I will attempt to embed the Disney playlist that was shown below:



There were snacks and hot chocolate to enjoy during the movie, and I brought cupcakes to give to people that could answer my Disney trivia questions! (The trivia questions were also a great chance to pause a YouTube clip and give it a chance to load up!) Probably my biggest surprise on the trivia was when someone answered the one non-multiple choice questions that I asked, which I really didn't think anyone would know. The question was "Why were Donald Duck cartoons almost banned in Finland?" The answer? Because Donald does not wear pants.

There were other activities to keep busy with, such as a few papercrafts:
Maleficent
Mickey Mouse
Alien from Toy Story

and some coloring pages!

In addition at the last minute I grabbed my SNES and a couple of Disney games I have and hooked it up to a TV and put it in the corner. Aladdin, The Lion King and Mickey Mania were all available to play, and I was happy to see them getting used throughout the event!

All in all it was a good time and think next time there's a movie marathon kind of idea, I'd like to make it a bit more like this one was.

Coloring was popular while the videos were playing!

Papercraft table, with a good looking Mickey!

The last of the cupcakes were given to the best coloring page artists!

New titles for the week of 11/18/2012

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Here's just a few new titles we had come in during the week!

FICTION

• Lemonade Mouth Puckers Up by Mark Peter Hughes

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Kimi Ni Todoke by Karuho Shiina (vol. 15)

Election Day TAB Bake Sale!

On Tuesday, November 6, the Teen Advisory Board held a bake sale in the lobby of the library to raise funds for future programs. The library was closed that day, but open as a polling place. Lots of TAB members came bearing awesome baked goods, and Sellers' previous teen librarian Gretchen even dropped off some cupcakes the day before (I had one, and they were great). We ended up raising $125.70 for the Teen Advisory Board, and had fun doing it! All in all a successful day!

New Titles for the week of 11/4/2012

A little late with this post, here's the new titles from the week of 11/4/2012, with a few from the previous week as well (hurricane Sandy kind of messed up shipping and such).

FICTION

• Devil's Kiss by Sarwat Chadda
• The Turning by Francine Prose
• Time to Shine by Nikki Carter (part of the Fab Life series)
• Ruins by Orson Scott Card
• Revived by Cat Patrick

Vocaloid Day at Asian Culture Club!

The Asian Culture Club met Wednesday with a celebration of all things vocaloid! For those that may not know, vocaloids are programs that allow users to make a voice sing in whatever words you want in any pitch you'd like to make music! The voices are each given names and characters to supply them with personality, the most famous of which has to be Hatsune Miku. Below is a video of Hatsune Miku singing a medley of her songs at a live concert in Japan:

For the Asian Culture Club meeting, we compiled YouTube videos into a playlist ahead of time to watch at the meeting. I had my laptop hooked up to a projector and speakers so we could all see and hear it clearly. While the vocaloid songs were playing, I brought a stack of papercraft sheets to construct of various vocaloids and other anime-related characters (and some not so anime-related, but I really really wanted to make a Companion Cube!). In addition, I brought in my PSP with a Japanese import copy of a Hatsune Miku game I happened to own, a music game called Hatsune Miku Project Diva. I had speakers hooked up to it, plus a large pair of headphones if it was too hard to hear (it being a rhythm game, hearing clearly is important!).

The meeting was a lot of fun, papercrafts were made, and Pocky was eaten. At first I was afraid we wouldn't have enough vocaloid clips to fill an entire hour and a half meeting, so I had also invited people to send their favorite anime music videos (AMVs) to append to the list. That turned out to be unnecessary, as we had enough music to last three meetings I think. Perhaps a showing of favorite AMVs can be its own meeting theme another time. The PSP game also got some play time, so that was good (the headphones were used exclusively, as the game couldn't be heard over the music playing).

There were some opportunities for improvement next time however. With such a huge list of vocaloid clips, I was concerned about the fact that not everyone would be able to get their submitted clips shown. Mixing up the playlist to make sure there were submissions from various people throughout could have helped that. The other big problem was the wifi occasionally deciding to quit while playing a clip. I brought in my own laptop hoping it would avoid that problem, as it's done that with the library's laptop before. This wasn't a huge issue, as usually just telling YouTube to go one lower in the video quality would have it reloading just fine. I don't really know what else to do with this issue anyway, so it's most likely one that we'd just have to live with.

The issue of getting more members was brought up, and that's certainly something we need to consider. Our group of regular members is reliable, yet very small, and it would be great to get more people involved. Obviously this is something we'll need to discuss in the near future. Overall the meeting was a lot of fun, and I'm already looking forward to the next one!

New titles for the week of 10/21/12

FICTION

• Beta by Rachel Cohn
• Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier
• Dead is the New Black by Marlene Perez
• The Scorch Trials by James Dashner (additional copy, Maze Runner book 2)
• The Death Cure by James Dashner (Maze Runner book 3)
• The Kill Order by James Dashner (prequel to the Maze Runner trilogy)
• Bar Code Tattoo by Suzanne Weyn
• Identical by Ellen Hopkins
• Glass by Ellen Hopkins
• Burned by Ellen Hopkins
• My Life & Other Stuff I Made Up by Tristan Bancks
• Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen
• Untouchable by Kate Brian (part of the Private series)
• Confessions of a Murder Suspect by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
• Eve & Adam by Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate
• The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde
• The Other Normals by Ned Vizzini
• Beautiful Redemption by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl (book 4 of the Beautiful Creatures books)
• Speechless by Hannah Harrington
• Finale by Becca Fitzpatrick (final book in the Hush Hush series)

New titles for the week of 10/14/2012

FICTION

• Evil Star by Anthony Horowitz (book 2 of The Gatekeepers)
• Revelation by Kate Brian (A Private novel)
• Hidden by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Manga Man by Barry Lyga, illustrated by Colleen Doran

New books for the week of 10/7/2012!

Just a couple of titles added this week. And whereas last week pretty much everything had book trailers, this week it's the exact opposite, with neither having them!

FICTION

• Something Like Normal by Trish Doller
• On The Day I Died by Candace Fleming

Banned Books Week discussion group!

On Wednesday, October 3, I invited people to the library and discuss the books they've read that have been banned or challenged at some point in the past. We began by talking about which books we'd read, then why we think they might have been challenged, and finally looking up the actual reasons. Some of the reasons people give are pretty bizarre, and so I thought it would be fun to match up 10 of the weirdest reasons with the respective books. The teens that participated were really sharp and matched them up in no time flat!

Below is the list of books and the reasons people gave for their removal:

1. “Encourages children to break dishes so they won’t have to dry them.” ( A Light in the Attic, by Shel Silverstien)
2. “The book contains topless sunbathing and 'on some pages there are dirty things'” ( Where's Waldo, Martin Hanford)
3. “If there is a possibility that something might be controversial, then why not eliminate it?” ( Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown)
4. “Tarzan was ‘living in sin’ with Jane.” ( Tarzan, by Edgar Rice Burroughs)
5. “It is a real ‘downer.’” ( Diary of Anne Frank, by Anne Frank)
6. “The basket carried by Little Red Riding Hood contained a bottle of wine, which condones the use of alcohol.” ( Little Red Riding Hood, by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm K. Grimm)
7. “One bunny is white and the other is black and this ‘brainwashes’ readers into accepting miscegenation.” ( The Rabbit’s Wedding, by Garth Williams)
8. “It is a religious book and public funds should not be used to purchase religious books.” ( Evangelical Commentary on the Bible, by Walter A. Elwell, ed.)
9. “A female dog is called a bitch.” ( My Friend Flicka, by Mary O’Hara)
10. “An unofficial version of the story of Noah’s Ark will confuse children.” ( Many Waters, by Madeleine C. L’Engle)

Afterwards I invited anyone who was interested to record themselves reading a passage from a banned or challenged book for the Banned Books Week Virtual Read Out. One person along with myself sat down in front of a Flip camera to read a short passage. Both videos are embedded below in a playlist:

The turnout might have been small, but the group was still fun!

new teen books for the week of 9/30/2012

Not sure if it's coincidence or book trailers are getting more mainstream, but out of the 8 new books, 7 have trailers. Pretty cool!

FICTION

• Ten by Gretchen McNeil
• So Close to You by Rachel Carter
• Confessions of an Angry Girl by Louise Rozett
• Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter
• Origin by Jessica Khoury
• The Crown of Embers by Rae Carson (sequel to The Girl of Fire and Thorns)
• Erasing Time by C.J. Hill
• Carnival of Souls by Melissa Mar