Anime Club! Candy sushi! Anime Jeopardy!

Last Wednesday, 13 teens showed up for our first Anime Club meeting of the fall! We started things off with making some yummy candy sushi, then we broke off into four teams to play a few rounds of Anime Jeopardy! The winning team each got a box of Pocky to enjoy while watching the day's selected anime. The group voted from five choices, and Sword Art Online juuuuust won, making it by one vote! We watched the first two episodes before we ran out of time. It was a fun afternoon that was over much too quickly! Also, I was kicking myself for forgetting my phone, so I don't have any pictures of the event! Boo! For anyone that wants to play the home version of Anime Jeopardy, click the link below! It'll let you enter teams, and keep track of the score. You can even edit it to make your own custom game!
Click here to play!

Anime Jeopardy!

Candy sushi! Fruit Roll-Up "nori" wrapped around Rice Krispy treats and gummy worms!

The next Anime Club meeting isn't until November, and I hope to see everyone there again! We'll have more snacks, more trivia and more anime watching!

Book Club Book Review: The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, reviewed by the Read and Rant book discussion group:

2.67 out of 5

On Goodreads I gave this book a score of 3 out of 5, so the group's reaction is almost in line with mine here. I love Neil Gaiman, and while I still enjoyed this book, I very much preferred say Coraline over Graveyard book.

new books for the week of 9/15/2013!

FICTION

• The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black
• Variant by Robison Wells

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Smile by Raina Telgemeier (replacement)
• Frankenstein by Gris Grimly and Mary Shelley

Book Club Book Reviews

Welcome to a new small feature that will pop up after each of the book clubs I lead, the Book Club Book Review. At the end of each book club, I pass out a voting sheet with options for the next title we'll read. At my last book club, I added a small section to the bottom of the voting sheet where you can rate the book we'd just discussed by circling 1 through 5, 1 being 'I didn't like it', 5 being 'Loved it!' When I gather up the voting sheets, I'll average out the number and put it here!

This past Friday, the high school book club at the Primos branch met to discuss Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve, which scored 4.33 out of 5 stars with the teens!

4.33 out of 5

New Playaway titles available!

We've got some new audiobooks in the teen section this week, in the form of Playaway! Playaways are cool because instead of a box with like, 5 or 8 CDs, you just have this little MP3 player to carry around. Handy!  Here's the new titles:

FICTION

• Playground by 50 Cent, read by 50 Cent and Dwayne Clark
• Football Genius by Tim Green, ready by Tim Green and a full cast
• W.A.R.P. The Reluctant Assassin (Book 1) by Eoin Colfer, read by Maxwell Caulfield
• The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson, read by Michael Kramer
• Icons by Margaret Stohl
• Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor, read by Khristine Hvam
• Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card, performed by Scott Brick, Kirby Heyborne, Don Leslie, Stefan Rudnicki, Kristoffer Tabori
• Ruins by Orson Scott Card, performed by Stefan Rudnicki, Kirby Keyborne and Emily Janice Card
• A Midsummer Night's Scream by R.L. Stine, read by Brittany Pressley
• The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer, read by Raul Esparza

Does anyone have any favorite audiobooks? Comment below with your favs! (my favorite is probably Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, read by Wil Weaton!)

edit: Another six audiobooks came in after I posted this, so I added them to the list.

A tidal wave of new books! "Title Wave"?

FICTION

• Wicked by Sara Shepard (part of the Pretty Little Liars series, replacement copy)
• No Way Out by Peggy Kern (Bluford High series, replacement copy)
• Search for Safety by John Langan (Bluford High series, replacement copy)
• The Test by Peggy Kern (Bluford High series)
• Pretty Ugly by Karyn Langhorne Folan (Bluford High series)
• Beautiful Decay by Sylvia Lewis
• Tenth Grade Kills by Heather Brewer (The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod series, replacement copy)
• California Dreaming by Zoey Dean (A-List series)
• Scorch  by Gina Damico (sequel to Croak)
• Enchanted by Alethea Kontis (The Woodcutter Sisters book 1)
• Nothing But the Truth by AVI (replacement copy)
• Far Far Away by Tom McNeal
• The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
• The Counterfeit Family Tree of Vee Crawford-Wong by L. Tam Holland
• The Program by Suzanne Young
• Necromancing the Stone by Lish McBride (sequel to Hold Me Closer, Necromancer)
• Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
• Born of Illusion by Teri Brown
• Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by April Genevieve Tucholke
• The Watcher in the Shadows by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• Fire and Ash by Jonathan Maberry (book four in the Rot and Ruin series)

NONFICTION

• Branded by the Pink Triangle by Ken Setterington

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World by Bryan Lee O'Malley (Scott Pilgrim book 2, replacement copy)
• Wolverine: Season One by Ben Acker, Ben Blacker, Salva Espin
• Dragonball by Akira Toriyama (3-in-1, books 1-3)
• Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata (vol. 1, 4 and 9, replacement copies)
• Wolverine by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller
• War Brothers The Graphic Novel by Sharon E. McKay and Daniel Lafrance

Nintendo Night ends Summer programming with a bang

Last Friday night we had 23 teens show up to participate in Nintendo Night! Almost everyone partook in the Super Smash Bros Brawl tournament, which was done as single elimination this time to help speed things along. Even then after the first round we were running behind and I had to change the rules from 3 minutes 4 stock to 2 minutes, 2 stock. That brought us up to speed and left us ending only 5 minutes late! Jared took home first prize, a two-sided Smash Bros Brawl poster and a $15 GameStop gift card. Siaka took second place and William took third, both of them receiving $10 GameStop gift cards. The tournament was so exciting that I forgot to take any pictures during the event.  -_-

We had a second Wii hooked up for freeplay, which seemed to mostly gravitate between more Smash Bros and some Naruto. There was also a retro gaming table set up with a Super Nintendo and N64 and a few multiplayer games for each. I was glad to see everyone had a good time. This event marked the end of the Summer schedule, so check back soon for the Fall schedule!

Minecraft Building Competition!

Last Wednesday, 22 teens came to Sellers Library to build in our first Minecraft Building Competition. Players had the option to play the PC edition (by either using a library PC or bringing in their own laptop) or playing the Pocket Edition (by either using an iPad provided by the library or using their own device of tablet of choice). Once everyone was situated, players were given two hours to build a treehouse of their own design. Game modes were set to creative, so players were allowed to use whatever they wanted to build. They were given a choice of either a jungle biome (by using seed "502661284222987106") or a forest biome (using seed "wolfies!"). With no jungle biome option in the Pocket Edition yet, players were given a seed for a forest biome, "Notchisacreeper".

After their two hours of creation time were up (which everyone agreed seemed to go much too fast!) I walked around to see what everyone had made. Creations were judged on three main criteria:

• concept and originality
• adherence to the theme
• technique and execution

Winners William and Billy

I scored each criteria on a scale of 1 to 10, then added the totals for each person's total ranking. I really think I had the hardest task of anyone, as it was REALLY hard to decide who should win, there were a ton of great creations! In the end, Billy won the PC competition prize, a life-size foam iron sword, and William won the Pocket Edition prize, a life-size foam pickaxe. Angela took home second place in the PE, and Sean took home second place in the PC edition, two tickets each to Eastern State Penitentiary. Like I said, it was really hard deciding on winners, there were so many creative creations!

While everything went pretty smoothly, there were some things that I plan to look into for future Minecraft events. Firstly, I would have loved if we could all have been on the same server, playing in the same world. My original plan was for everyone to walk around each other's treehouses during the judging phase, including myself. Then when the competition was over I could back up the world containing everyone's creations and put it online for everyone to see. The other problem was with the library's PC lab, which really strained to play Minecraft. Two people had their games crash while playing. I think next time the PC edition will be limited to those that can bring their own laptops.

I hope to do more Minecraft programs in the future. One of the great things about Minecraft is that there's so different things that can be done with it (although another building competition is certainly a possibility). It seems like everyone had a great time. Thanks to everyone that came!

Billy made a tree with a house inside! (PC)

This was a pretty amazing homemade tree! (PC)

Angela's tree house had trees topped with cakes! (PE)

Water slide! (PE)

Not sure how SAFE a roof of glass with a pool of lava is, but it looked nice! (PE)

Matt made some impressive pixel art! (PE)

New titles for the week of 8/11/2013

FICTION

• This Is What Happy Looks Like by Jennifer E. Smith
• Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo (sequel to Shadow and Bone)
• City of Bones by Cassandra Clare (replacement copy)
• Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg
• Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick
• 45 Pounds (more or less) by K.A.Barson

Tabletop Gaming at the library!

Last Wednesday, 20 teens came to the library for some unplugged gaming fun! We had people bringing their own games, games borrowed from the Primos branch, as well as Sellers' games and a few of my own. In addition to the two copies of Munchkin that were available, someone had brought the deluxe edition (which comes with a board and player pieces) and that version was the favored one. Sarah brought in a game called Tsuro, which I tried out and really enjoyed playing. I'd never heard of that one before, so big thanks to Sarah! Quite a few rounds of Zombie Dice were played, which is a fun, quick and easy game. Classic games such as Checkers and Connect 4 were also popular. Everyone that won a game got a candy prize (although since Connect 4 matches can sometimes last only minutes, you could only win candy the first two times you won). There were a few iPads on hand with Ticket to Ride loaded on them, and a few people gave that a try, sometimes solo and at other times with people. I think they found it less intimidating than the Ticket to Ride physical game that was available.

The event went from 1:00 to 4:30, and it felt like it was over so quickly! I definitely look forward to doing another tabletop game day soon, it was a lot of fun!

Settlers of Catan, with some Yu-Gi-Oh! playing off to the side.

This game of Clue sounded like it was getting pretty heated as they looked for the culprit!

Tsuro was a surprisingly fun game!

New books for the week of 7/21/2013

FICTION

• The Ruining by Anna Collomore
• The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen
• Froi of the Exiles by Melina Marchetta (book 2 of the Lumatere Chronicles)
• Quintana of Charyn by Melina Marchetta (conclusion to the Lumatere Chronicles)
• The Reluctant Assassin by Eoin Colfer (W.A.R.P. book 1)
• Rats Saw God by Rob Thomas
• The Incredible Charlotte Sycamore by Kate Maddison
• Quicksilver by R.J. Anderson
• Golden by Jessi Kirby

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon by Matt Fraction, David Aja and Javier Pulido

New titles for the week of 7/14/2013

In addition to the titles below, we also received the new issue of Otaku USA this week!

FICTION

• The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson
• The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson
• No Crystal Stair by Vaunda Micheaex Nelson and R. Gregory Christie

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Peanut by Ayun Halliday & Paul Hoppe
• K-On (vol. 3) by Kakifly
• Curses! Foiled Again by Jane Yolen and Mike Cavallaro
• A Flight of Angels by Rebecca Guay

Nintendo Night at the Municipal Branch Library!

This past Tuesday, 22 teens showed up to hang out and enjoy some Nintendo gaming at the Municipal branch! We had a Super Smash Bros. tournament on the projector screen, which 18 people signed up to compete in. It was a great tournament, and in the end Devon came in third, Siaka came in second with Jared taking first place in a very exciting final match! First place got a $20 GameStop gift card, second got $15 and third got $10. Congratulations to everyone who competed and made it such a fun night! The final rounds ended up going 15 minutes past the end of the night, even with matches down to 3 minutes! I'll be working to make sure we get more rounds played in less time for the next tournament!

In addition to the tournament, we had three small TVs hooked up with an additional Wii on freeplay as well as some classic Nintendo systems from my collection, a Nintendo 64 and a Super Nintendo for people to play some classic multiplayer on. Big thanks to Toby from Primos for bringing in those TVs! Some people also brought their DS systems in for Pokemon battling and trading. It was a really fun night, and if you missed the Nintendo Night at Primos, there will be one at Sellers August 23. Also make sure to stop by Municipal on Tuesday, July 30th from 6-8 for a screening of Disney's Wreck-It Ralph.

There was lots of gaming going on with 3 gaming stations and people playing DS!

Preliminary rounds were 4 players, while the finals were 1 on 1.

Outdoor Art Drop-In Wednesdays!

The weather hasn't been so cooperative when it comes to Wednesdays this month, but we've been doing crafts nonetheless. On July 3rd we ended up setting up indoors, since while it wasn't raining, it looked like it was planning to (and did eventually). Ten people showed up to make mosaic picture frames with cut up CDs! The end results came out really cool looking!

some of the completed frames!

Then this past Wednesday we got to set up the tent and tables outside while we made glass pebble magnets and cherry blossom paintings using the bottoms of 2-liter soda bottles as stamps. Two hours in it suddenly got dark, rainy and windy, and we ran inside and continued indoors. Of course, by the time we had set up indoors, it was sunny outside and never rained again!

We had magazines and craft paper to decorate the glass pebble magnets.

People got really creative with the cherry blossom paintings!

We have one more outdoor art drop-in coming up this Wednesday, and we'll be doing CD scratch art! Come on by between 11 and 2 for this cool looking and easy craft!

New Titles for the week of July 7

This week saw a ton of new titles hit the teen section of the library!  Come in and pick up something new to read!

FICTION

• The Milk of Birds by Sylvia Whitman
• Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass  by Meg Medina
• Obsidian Mirror by Catherine Fisher
• Furious by Jill Wolfson
• After the Snow by S.D. Crockett
• Scarlet by Marissa Meyer (sequel to Cinder, book 2 in the Lunar Chronicles)
• Mojo by Tim Tharp
• The Madness Underneath by Maureen Johnson
• The Silver Dream by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves (sequel to Interworld)
• A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty
• Being Henry David by Cal Armistead
• Wonder Show by Hannah Barnaby
• Sparks by S.J. Adams
• Boy Nobody by Allen Zadoff
• Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am by Harry Mazer and Peter Lerangis
• Gone, Gone, Gone by Hannah Moskowitz
• Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz
• My Family for the War by Anne C. Voorhoeve

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks

Pokemon Night was awesome!

Last Friday we had 18 Pokemon fans show up to enjoy all things Pokemon! 16 teens signed up for the DS tournament, where anyone with Black/White/Black 2 or White 2 could compete to be the Pokemon champion in a doubles tournament! This was my first time hosting a Pokemon tournament, and I didn't plan on how long each round could last! I ended up having to cut down the number of preliminary matches, as well as the number of people participating in the final single elimination rounds. In the end, David took home first and John second, and Devin got third place. My favorite part of the tournament would have to be the good sportsmanship between trainers; after each match, I frequently saw people shake hands on a good game! In addition to the tournament, we had the Pokemon Black and White movie playing on a projector screen, Pokemon Battle Revolution for Wii, and an N64 with Pokemon Snap and Pokemon Stadium. I also invited people to design their own Pokeballs, and one winner would be randomly chosen to win a Zekrom Deluxe figure, which went to Elijah. I invited people to come dressed in costume, and two people were brave enough to dress up! Abbey came dressed as Jolteon, and Mary came as Gardevoir! Both were awesome, and we voted to see which would win the Pikachu plush I was giving away for best costume. They tied, and we had to decided on a coin toss, which Mary won! I dressed up as well, choosing to go as Professor Oak! Thanks to everyone that came out, I had a great time and look forward to doing it again, perhaps in October when the new game comes out!

The Pokemon tournament!

Jolteon and Gardevoir!

some of the Pokeball entries!

My Professor Oak costume

New Teen Reads

Here's some new reads to check out just in time for Summer vacation!

FICTION
Tilt by Ellen Hopkins
Dear Life, You suck by Scott Blagden
Earth Girl by Janet Edwards
Prodigy by Marie Lu (sequel to Legend)
Fox Forever by Mary E. Pearson (book 3 of the Jenna Fox Chronicles)
Midwinter Blood by Marcus Sedgwick
The Twelve-Fingered Boy by John Hornor Jacobs
Cinders & Saphires by Leila Rasheed (book 1 in the At Sumerton series)
Dark Triumph by Robin LaFevers (book 2 in the His Fair Assassin series)

NONFICTION
Rapture Practice: My One-Way Ticket To Salvation  by Aaron Hartzler
Super Smash Bros. Brawl Prima Official Game Guide by Bryan Dawson

GRAPHIC NOVELS
Bleach  by Tite Kubo (volumes 48-56)
Paradise Kiss by Ai Yazawa (vol. 3)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz & Dan Duncan (vol. 2-3)
Kare Kano by Masumi Tsuda (vol. 1)

Rocking Away Fines!

Yesterday from 1 to 5 was our "Rock Away Your Fines" event, where teens were invited to drop in and play some Rock Band to get rid of their library card fines. For every song they played, we deducted $1 of fines from their card! A total of 24 teens showed up, and we got rid of $141 in fines! Hopefully this will help a lot of them to get started on checking out books again for the Summer! I was asked by quite a few people when I would be doing this again, so I'll look for ways to possibly fit another one in before the fall. Rock Band worked pretty well for this type of event, but maybe for the next one we could try something new. Big thanks to everyone that came in and participated!

New Reads!

Some new books have recently been added to the shelves! Be the first to read them!

FICTION

• Heir Apparent by Vivian Vande Velde
• Croak by Gina Damico
• Before we were Free by Julia Alvarez
• What the Moon Saw by Laura Resau
• The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

TAB graduation party!

On Sunday June 9th, the Teen Advisory Board met for the last meeting of the school year, the TAB graduation party. We had two graduates that will be leaving TAB as they head off to college, Elena and Genni. They will be missed from the TAB! While I think voting for the next members normally happens at the graduation party, we'd done the voting at the previous meeting, so the new TAB members were invited as well, Vincent, Jessica and Tasnim. The TAB gave each of our graduates a small gift, and we had pizza and ice cream cake! We ended the day with a kind of "get to know you" game to welcome the new members. We also got a special guest appearance by Gretchen, the previous teen librarian! It was a great day, and I'm glad so many people were able to attend!

the graduates pose with Edward

serious(ish?) group shot...

and a silly group shot!