Halloween Party @ Sellers!

Last Friday we had 16 teens come for a Halloween party at the library from 6 to 8! Most people even came in costume, which was awesome! We started things off with a costume contest, where everyone could vote on who they thought had the best costume. Siaka won for his Grim Reaper costume, earning him a vinyl Godzilla figure and a party bag of candy! After that we broke up into teams of two to play a Minute to Win It game, Dizzy Mummy. Each team is given one roll of toilet paper and one person has to wrap up the other person. The first team to use the entire roll wins! Laurel and Ann-Marie won this one by keeping a nice pace (people that went too fast tended to keep tearing the paper)! After that we played some Halloween-themed Jeopardy, then enjoyed pizza and snacks while watching some clips from various spooky movies. And of course, watching Michael Jackson's Thriller! There was also an iPad set up so you could take a picture and "zombify" yourself! Our last game of the night was zombie target shooting, where each person had to shoot as many zombies as they could using a Nerf dart gun before time ran out. We had a tie for first place on that one between Devon and Husnain, and each got a party bag of candy. The night went by too quickly, and before I knew it we were cleaning up! Big thanks to everyone for coming out and celebrating, I'm already looking forward to next Halloween! Also thanks to Laurel for making an awesome Slenderman that we put by the window!

playing Dizzy Mummy!

snack break!

watching some scary clips!

a selfie with Slendy!

Our zombie targets! One is wearing Mario's mustache for some reason...

Pumpkin Day TAB Bake Sale!

October 19th was Pumpkin Day at the library, and the Teen Advisory Board held a bake sale to raise money for future programming at the library. The TAB turned out with lots of good baked treats and we ended up nearly selling out of everything by the time we were done! Random acts of silliness started happening after a while, and while I can't remember WHY anymore, at one point Yasmine recorded Vincent doing a dance that quickly broke down to him flopping around on the floor...

The bake sale itself was a great success, and the TAB raised $146, which is more than the last two or three bake sales we've had! Congratulations to everyone, and thanks for your hard work and participation in the bake sale!

Check out some new titles!

FICTION

• Crewel by Gennifer Albin
• Awaken by Meg Cabot
• All Our Pretty Songs by Sarah McCarry
• A Bad Day for Voodoo by Jeff Strand
• Reality Boy by A.S. King
• Butter by Erin Jade Lange
• If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan
• 172 Hours on the Moon by Johan Harstad

NON-FICTION

• Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Rust: Secrets of the Cell by Royden Lepp (vol. 2)
• Boxers by Gene Luen Yang
• Saints by Gene Luen Yang

6-second book trailers

This week is Teen Read Week, and Sellers Library is having a contest for teens to make a 6-second book trailer using Vine. I thought I'd share a couple of other book trailers using Vine I've seen that may help to inspire! They're simple, fun, and creative!

The Perks of Being a Wallflower:
https://vine.co/v/hB21nDIJIqw



The Fault In Our Stars:
https://vine.co/v/h1mlxbxxiE1



Wonder:
https://vine.co/v/bDIYtI3LXqK



Mo' Metta Blues:
https://t.co/79KSNzuINs



The Mystery Box:
https://t.co/8WgfPLTn3W



The Choke Artist:
https://vine.co/v/btqliXHHH3W


Which is your favorite here? I think they're all pretty great! With just six seconds, you really have to have a clear idea of what you want to say! Experiment, play around, and tweet your six second book trailer to our Sellers teens account, @SellersYA with the tag #SellersTRW. Have fun!

Book Club Book Review: Hope Was Here by Joan Bauer

The Primos Middle School Book Group met to discuss Hope Was Here. Final Score? 4 out of 5!

4 out of 5

This was my first Joan Bauer book, though I know she's a popular author. It's got a lot of interesting personal and town-wide problems that pop up and some great main characters who are always standing strong for what they believe is right. It also has lots of talk of diners and diner food, can't go wrong with that!

Pokemon Night! Celebrating the end of Gen V!

Last Wednesday, we held a Pokemon Night at the library to properly send off Generation V! With Pokemon X and Pokemon Y coming out the Saturday after, we held one final tournament for Black/White/Black 2 and White 2. We had 16 teens show up, and 4 of them came in costume! We had Brock, Pikachu, Meloetta and Gothitelle! You can see Brock and Meloetta below, along with me in my James costume from Team Rocket:

We started off the event with a costume contest, and each of the four teens walked down a runway and lined up while the rest of the teens voted. Mary, dressed as Meloetta won, beating Brock by just one vote! She took home a Charizard model kit. All the costumes looked great! After that we had our tournament, which consisted of four rounds of Swiss Pairing followed by single elimination of the top four players. James took home first place winning a $15 GameStop gift card and a Fennekin plush (one of the 3 new starters from X and Y). In addition to the DS tournament we also had Pokemon Stadium playing on an N64 hooked up to a TV, and the Wii had the four player Pokemon Rumble playing on the projector screen. Thanks to everyone that came out to Pokemon Night. We'll be sure to do another one soon! (Who will come dressed as Sylveon, huh?)

focused on the tournament

Pokemon gaming on the N64 and Wii

Great books with terrible covers!

The Oxford Public Library teen blog has a great display up featuring great books that have horrible covers. What a great idea! Here's a look at their display from their blog:

Just looking at their display, I will totally agree that the cover for Going Bovine is probably not helping it fly off the shelves, though I've read enough about the book to know that it's supposed to be a really good title! I know that I totally judge a book by its cover, so this is a pretty important topic! Those in my book clubs know that I like to look at covers from other editions and compare. What titles have you read that you thought were great but had really bad covers? Off the top of my head, I can think of Across the Universe, which when I first picked it up for book club I was not sure what to expect, but it pulled me in almost immediately!

It's more exciting than two people kissing in space, I swear!!

Teen Read Week Vine Book Trailer Contest!

Teen Read Week is October 13-19, and I'm excited to announce that we're holding a contest during the week! If you have Vine for iOS or Android, make a 6-second book trailer and tweet it to @SellersYA with the tag "#SellersTRW". We'll post the submissions to the blog here and have a vote on the winner. The submission with the most votes will get a $20 Barnes and Noble gift card! Be as creative as you want, and make those 6 seconds count! The contest is open to any Sellers Library teen patrons in grades 6 to 12.

Book Club Book Review: Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen

Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen, as scored by my Book Grub Book Group, which is the Sellers high school book club:

1.92 out of 5 stars

The majority of my knowledge of the story of Robin Hood looks something like this:

So I was interested in reading more about this tale, especially with the catch being that Will Scarlet was actually a girl in disguise. The majority of readers, myself included, felt the love triangle ended up being the main focus far too often throughout the story.

New Titles for the week of 9/29/2013!

FICTION

• Somebody Up There Hates You by Hollis Seamon
• Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
• Angelfall by Susan Ee
• Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

NON-FICTION

• D.I.Y. Design It Yourself 

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Prince of Persia by Jordan Mechner, A.B. Sina,LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland
• Twin Spica by Kou Yaginuma (vol. 1-2)

Happy October!

It's October! It's Fall! This is my favorite time of the year! So what better way to celebrate than with zombies?
First, my zombified profile, which is my new Facebook profile for the month:

This was actually less grotesque than my first try...

While one of my displays will be reserved for Teen Read Week, I'm putting up a windowsill display for zombie books!

Does anyone have any favorite books they like to read this time of the year, zombie or otherwise? Write about it in the comments! I like to break out an H.P. Lovecraft collection myself!

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