Thursday, June 28, 2012

A Carousel of Verse Novels

In celebration of our upcoming 2 part writing workshop and Meet the Author evening with Holly Thompson, the second Young Adult book list of the summer features 22 novels-in-verse.  Stories told in verse format, using fewer words to build a picture than prose novels, quickly bring a cinematic quality to the reading experience. Take one for a spin, --and don't miss these two great programs scheduled here this summer:
TELLING YOUR STORIES IN VERSE: A WRITING WORKSHOP 
for Teens and Adults with HOLLY THOMPSON
Join Holly Thompson, author of the Young Adult verse novel Orchards, for a two part creative writing workshop, for teens(ages 12-19) and adults, on writing your story in verse. She will introduce verse novels and some of the poetry tools used in narrative verse, and will then lead participants to writing a scene in verse.
Holly Thompson was raised in New England (a graduate of Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School), earned a B.A. in Biology from Mount Holyoke College and an M.A. from New York University's Creative Writing Program. Long-time resident of Japan, she is a lecturer at Yokohama City University, where she teaches creative and academic writing.
Workshop dates:
Tuesday, July 10, 6:30 PM to 8 PM
Thursday, July 19, 6:30 PM to 8 PM
Bring a writing notebook/paper, and pen or pencil to the workshop.
Reserve your place in this FREE 2 part workshop. There is a 20 student limit. Sign up at the Reference desk, or call 978-468-5577.

MEET the AUTHOR: HOLLY THOMPSON 
THURSDAY, JULY 12, 6:30 PM to 8 PM
Holly Thompson, is the author of Orchards, the picture book TheWakame Gatherers, and the novel Ash. She is also the editor of Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction—An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories, a Young Adult anthology of Japan related stories to benefit teens in quake/tsunami-hit areas of Japan. Holly's fiction is often set in Japan.
Ms. Thompson's novel-in-verse Orchards, received the 2012 APALA (Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature). In it, Kana, a half Japanese and half Jewish-American girl, is sent to spend the summer with Shizuoka relatives after the death of a classmate.
Ms. Thompson will give a presentation and slide show focusing on her book, Orchards. Following the presentation there will be time for questions, and book signing.

Here is an article from Hamilton-Wenham Patch by Helen Wetherall:
Japan-based local Award Winning Author Holly Thompson to Pay a Visit

Below is a selection of Young Adult verse novels. Descriptions are from EBSCO's NoveList database.  Clicking on a title takes you to the Library's online catalog.

A Bad Boy Can Be Good For a Girl, by Tanya Lee Stone, 2006.  When a handsome senior boy enters their mix, friends Josie, Nicolette, and Aviva soon find themselves in questionable situations where each girl must make the right decision before their personal sacrifices become too great. Awards: Texas Tayshas Reading Lists: 2007; YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers: 2007.
Crank, by Ellen Hopkins, 2004.  Kristina Snow is the perfect daughter, but she meets a boy who introduces her to drugs and becomes a very different person, struggling to control her life and her mind.  Awards: Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award; Gateway Readers Award (Missouri); Soaring Eagle Book Award (Wyoming); YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers: 2005.

CrashBoomLove, by Juan Felipe Herrera, 1999.  After his father leaves home, sixteen-year-old Cesar Garcia lives with his mother and struggles thorugh the painful experiences of growing up as a Mexican American high school student.  Awards:Americas Book Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature; YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers: 2001.

Exposed, by Kimberly Marcus, 2011.  High school senior Liz, a gifted photographer, can no longer see things clearly after her best friend accuses Liz's older brother of a terrible crime.  Awards: YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults: 2012; YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers: 2012.

God Went to Beauty School, by Cynthia Rylant, 2003.  A novel in poems that reveal God's discovery of the wonders and pains in the world He has created.  Awards: YALSA Best Books for Young Adults: 2004;YALSA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults - Religion: Relationship with the Divine (2007);YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers: 2004.

Hard Hit, by Ann Turner, 2006. A rising high school baseball star faces his most difficult challenge when his father is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Hidden, by Helen Frost, 2011. (Crossing Stones, by Helen Frost, published in 2009, is a choice on the 8th grade summer reading list this year.)  When fourteen-year-olds Wren and Darra meet at a Michigan summer camp, both are overwhelmed by memories from six years earlier when Darra's father stole a car, unaware that Wren was hiding in the back.  Awards: ALA Notable Children's Books - Older Readers, 2012.

Jinx, by Margaret Wild, 2002.  With the help of her understanding mother and a close friend, Jen eventually outgrows her nickname, Jinx, and deals with the deaths of two boys with whom she had been involved.
Karma, by Cathy Ostlere, 2011.  In 1984, following her mother's suicide, 15-year-old Maya and her Sikh father travel to New Delhi from Canada to place her mother's ashes in their final resting place. On the night of their arrival, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated, Maya and her father are separated when the city erupts in chaos, and Maya must rely on Sandeep, a boy she has just met, for survival.  Awards: Booklist Editors' Choice-Youth-Older Readers Category: 2011; YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults: 2012

Make Lemonade, by Virginia Euwer Wolff, 1993.  In order to earn money for college, fourteen-year-old LaVaughn babysits for a teenage mother of two. Written in 66 chapters, with text lines that break at natural speaking phrases.  Awards:ALA Notable Children's Books: 1994;Golden Kite Award: Fiction; Josette Frank Award;Oregon Book Awards: Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Readers (1990-2002); Thumbs Up! Award (Michigan); YALSA 100 Best Books (1950-2000).

One Of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies, by Sonya Sones, 2004. Fifteen-year-old Ruby Milliken leaves her best friend, her boyfriend, her aunt, and her mother's grave in Boston and reluctantly flies to Los Angeles to live with her father, a famous movie star who divorced her mother before Ruby was born.  Awards: Iowa Teen Award; Rhode Island Teen Book Award; YALSA Best Books for Young Adults: 2005; YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers: 2005.

Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse, 1997.  In a series of poems, fourteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.  Awards: Winner of the 1998 Newbery Medal, and the 1998 Scott O'Dell Historical Fiction award.

Psyche in a Dress, by Francesca Lia Block, 2006.  A young woman, Psyche, searches for her lost love and questions her true self in a modern retelling of Greek myths.
Purple Daze, by Sherry Shahan, 2011.  Six high school students in Los Angeles cope with everyday life amid the turbulent events of 1965, as one girl gets involved with drugs and a boy gets drafted and sent to Vietnam, in a novel told in historical data, poetic prose, and free verse.

The Realm of Possibility, by David Levithan, 2004. A variety of students at the same high school describe their ideas, experiences, and relationships in a series of interconnected free verse stories.  Award: YALSA Best Books for Young Adults: 2005
Ringside, 1925: Views From the Scopes Trial, by Jen Bryant, 2008. Visitors, spectators, and residents of Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925 describe, in a series of free-verse poems, the Scopes "monkey trial" and its effects on that small town and its citizens.  Award: Oprah's Kids' Reading Lists - 12 Years and Up.

Sold, by Patricia McCormick, 2006. When she is tricked by her stepfather and sold into prostitution, thirteen-year-old Lakshmi becomes submerged in a nightmare where her only comfort is the friendship she forms with the other girls, which helps her survive and eventually escape.  Awards: Booklist Editors' Choice-Books for Youth-Older Readers Category, 2006; California Young Reader Medal: Young Adult; Quill Book Awards (2005-2007); Texas Tayshas Reading Lists: 2007; YALSA Best Books for Young Adults: 2007; YALSA Outstanding Books for the College Bound - Social Sciences: 2009.

Song of the Sparrow, by Lisa Ann Sandell, 2007.  In 5th-century Britain, nine years after the destruction of their home on the island of Shalott brings her to live with her father and brothers in the encampments of Arthur's army, 17-year-old Elaine describes her changing perceptions of war and the people around her as she becomes increasingly involved in the bitter struggle against the invading Saxons.  Award: Texas Tayshas Reading Lists: 2008

Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba, by  Margarita Engle, 2009. Escaping from Nazi Germany to Cuba in 1939, a young Jewish refugee dreams of finding his parents again, befriends a local girl with painful secrets of her own, and discovers that the Nazi darkness is never far away.  Award: Sydney Taylor Book Awards: Teen Readers

The Watch That Ends the Night: Voices From the Titanic, by Allan Wolf, 2011.  Recreates the1912 sinking of the Titanic as observed by millionaire John Jacob Astor, a beautiful young Lebanese refugee finding first love, "Unsinkable" Molly Brown, Captain Smith, and others including the iceberg itself.  Awards: Booklist Editors' Choice-Books for Youth-Older Readers, 2011; YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults: 2012

Wicked Girls: A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials, by Stephanie Hemphill, 2010. A fictionalized account, told in verse, of the Salem witch trials, told from the perspective of three of the real young women living in Salem in 1692--Mercy Lewis, Margaret Walcott, and Ann Putnam, Jr.  Award: School Library Journal Best Books: 2010

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Art Scene: Art Major's Summer Show

Stop by the Young Adult area in the Library and see what our graduates from Hamilton-Wenham have been up to at their respective colleges. Three art majors home from their first year of college have put together a show in the Young Adult area of the Library displaying the variety of work they created during their Freshman year. They are: Natalie Kassirer, majoring in Illustration at Rhode Island School of Design; Emily Klobucher, majoring in Painting and Art History at Massachusetts College of Art and Design; and Zach Massos, majoring in Industrial Design at Rochester Institute of Technology.  "The Foundation year is all about trying new things", said Natalie.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Free Audiobook Downloads from SYNC

Teens and other readers of Young Adult Literature will once again have the opportunity to download and listen to current bestselling titles and classics this summer. Each week from June 14 - August 22, 2012, SYNC will offer two FREE audiobook downloads.

June14 – June 20, 2012
The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch, Read by Dan Bittner
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Frank Galati [Adapt.], Read by Shirley Knight, Jeffrey Donovan, and a Full Cast

June 21 – June 27, 2012
Irises
by Francisco X. Stork, Read by Carrington MacDuffie
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, Read by Wanda McCaddon

June 28 – July 4, 2012
The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud, Read by Simon Jones
Tales from the Arabian Nights by Andrew Lang, Read by Toby Stephens

July 5 – July 11, 2012
Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake, Read by August Ross
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, Read by Ian Holm

July 12 – July 18, 2012
Guys Read: Funny Business by Jon Scieszka [Ed.] et al., Read by Michael Boatman, Kate DiCamillo, John Keating, Jon Scieszka, Bronson Pinchot
The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Stories by Mark Twain, Read by Norman Dietz

July 19 – July 25, 2012
Cleopatra’s Moon by Vicky Alvear Shecter, Read by Kirsten Potter
Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, Read by a Full Cast

July 26 – August 1, 2012
Pinned by Alfred C. Martino, Read by Mark Shanahan
TBA
 
August 2 – August 8, 2012
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor, Read by Khristine Hvam
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Read by Simon Prebble

August 9 – August 15, 2012
Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy, Read by Rupert Degas
Dead Men Kill by L. Ron Hubbard, Read by Jennifer Aspen and a Full Cast
 
August 16 – August 22, 2012
The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera, Read by Jay Laga’aia
The Call of the Wild by Jack London, Read by William Roberts

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

A Fresh Baker's Dozen of New Audiobooks

Enhance your summer vacation with tales adventurous, sometimes humorous, tales of survival, autobiographical and historical, romantic, or gruesome. A dozen-plus new audiobooks are on the shelves in the Young Adult area. The following titles are audio award winners:  Beauty Queens, Dead End in Norvelt, Okay For Now, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Rotters.  (Descriptions below are from the EBSCO database, NoveList Plus.) 

Beauty Queens, by Libba Bray.  When a plane crash strands 13 teen beauty contestants on an island, they struggle to survive, to get along with one another, to combat the island's other diabolical occupants, and to learn their dance numbers in case they are rescued in time for the competition.
Genre: humorous, satire, action/adventure.

The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, & Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins.  In a future N. America, the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition that pits young people from each of twelve districts against one another, 16-year-old Katniss's skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place.
Genre: science fiction, survival.

Dead End in Norvelt, by Jack Gantos.  In the historic town of Norvelt, PA, 12-year-old Jack spends the summer of 1962 grounded for various offenses until he is assigned to help an elderly neighbor with a most unusual chore involving the newly dead, molten wax, twisted promises, Girl Scout cookies, underage driving, lessons from history, typewriting, and countless bloody noses.
Genre: autobiographical, humorous.

The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green.  Sixteen-year-old Hazel, a stage IV thyroid cancer patient, has accepted her terminal diagnosis until a chance meeting with a boy at cancer support group forces her to reexamine her perspective on love, loss, and life.
Genre: witty realism, romance, death/dying.

Rotters, by Daniel Kraus.  Sixteen-year-old Joey's life takes a very strange turn when his mother's tragic death forces him to move from Chicago to rural Iowa with the father he has never known, and who is the town pariah.
Genre: gruesome realism.

A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness, Inspired by an idea from Siobhan Down.  13-year-old Conor awakens one night to find a monster outside his bedroom window, but not the one from the recurring nightmare that began when his mother became ill --an ancient, wild creature that wants him to face truth and loss. (Includes 1 bonus disc with illustrations from the book with accompanying audio excerpts.)
Genre: horror, urban fantasy

Mastiff, by Tamora Pierce.  Book 3 in Beka Cooper series. Beka, having just lost her fiance in a slaver's raid, is able to distract herself by going with her team on an important hunt at the queen's request, unaware that the throne of Tortall depends on their success.
Genre: fantasy, adventure.

Okay For Now, by Gary D. Schmidt.  While Doug struggles to be more than the thug that his teachers and the police think him to be, he finds an unlikely ally in Lil Spicer, as they explore Audubon's art.
Genre: historical fiction, friendship.

The Ring of Solomon, by Jonathan Stroud.  Wise-cracking djinni Bartimaeus finds himself at the court of King Solomon with an unpleasant master, a sinister servant, and King Solomon's magic ring.
Genre: fantasy, adventure, magic.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone, by Laini Taylor.  Seventeen-year-old Karou, a lovely, enigmatic art student in a Prague boarding school, carries a sketchbook of hideous, frightening monsters--the chimaerae who form the only family she has ever known.
Genre: urban fantasy, supernatural, romance.

The Name of the Star, by Maureen Johnson.  Rory, of Boueuxlieu, Louisiana, is spending a year at a London boarding school when she witnesses a murder by a Jack the Ripper copycat and becomes involved with the very unusual investigation.
Genre: mystery, paranormal.

Leviathan, Behemoth, & Goliath, by Scott Westerfeld.  In an alternate 1914 Europe, fifteen-year-old Austrian Prince Alek, on the run from the Clanker Powers who are attempting to take over the globe using mechanical machinery, forms an uneasy alliance with Deryn who, disguised as a boy to join the British Air Service, is learning to fly genetically-engineered beasts.
Genre: science fiction, steampunk, adventure.

Blood Red Road, by Moira Young.  In a distant future, eighteen-year-old Lugh is kidnapped, and while his twin sister Saba and nine-year-old Emmi are trailing him across bleak Sandsea they are captured, too, and taken to brutal Hopetown, where Saba is forced to be a cage fighter until new friends help plan an escape.
Genre: science fiction, dystopia, adventure.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Settlers Game Club

A Settlers of Catan (click on the link to learn how to play) strategy board game club for teens (ages 11-19) is forming at the Hamilton-Wenham Public Library. The first game day will be this Saturday, June 9, 10am to noon. The club plans to meet the 2nd Saturday of the month, 10am to noon, on:
June 9, July 14, August 4(first Saturday of August), and September 8. No registration, just drop in.