Find Your Voice this Summer--Programs start June 24 and continue through August 10. To register visit the Library's Calendar of Events and click on the workshop you'd like to attend. This year's summer reading challenge on our Beanstack platform also starts June 24. The challenge runs for 7 weeks with weekly raffle drawings for gift certificates to local businesses. You may enter the challenge at any time during the 7 weeks. Find out more information here. If you earn the reading challenge completion badge, you will be entered into an extra drawing in August for a fun goody bag and surprise gift certificate (there's already been a request for the Lego store...so maybe that will be in the goody bag or maybe something else...). The weekly drawings and winners are posted here.
INFORMED TEENS
~~~~~~~~~~~~ @ the Hamilton-Wenham Public Library, Massachusetts
Wednesday, May 17, 2023
Wednesday, January 25, 2023
Teen Programs Preview
Save the Dates!
Here are teen programs coming up at the Library -
we're already stacking them up for summer!
Click the picture to register.
Craft a cute yeti with air dry clay. Make the body from a pinch pot and hand-build the arms, horns and a toothy smile, then paint it. Glowing from within is a battery-operated candle that illuminates the face. Battery-operated candle included. For teens entering grades 6 to 12 in Fall 2023. Registration opens Saturday, June 3.
Make a wire tree sculpture with Ryan Kelley. Bring your own rock (about the size of an adult sized closed fist) to use for the tree base to the workshop. Open to teens entering grades 6 to 12 in Fall 2023, and to adults. Registration opens Saturday, June 3.
Tuesday, January 24, 2023
Reading Club
Top 12 Fiction Borrowed in 2022
In 2022 speculative fiction (fantasy and science fiction) held the lead for the most checkouts from the Library's teen fiction collection. The favorites in the top 12 also tended to be fast paced and suspenseful. If there's something you'd like to read click the number to go to the record in our catalog and place a hold.
Friday, January 13, 2023
Write the Hook: Meet the Writers
Meet our four 2022 Write the Hook contest winners, Gabe, Gabrielle, Molly, and Shane. It was fun to meet them all and talk with them about their stories.
Six Questions for Molly Degnan ("The Darkest Night of Evermore")1. What was your writing process this year; how did your story idea evolve?
Six Questions for Shane Kiernan ("Crash")
Saturday, January 7, 2023
Write the Hook Contest
The results are in! Our Write the Hook contest judges this year were: Dede Johnson, Sarah Lauderdale, and Viktoria Page. Each judge carefully read all of the stories. The rubric scores were finished and tallied yesterday. Here are the first and second place winning entries. Enjoy!
A white light flickered in front of me through the fire. We were at full throttle hyper speed, the only problem was that the quantum fuel was running out. A quick calculation told me we would be entering the planet's atmosphere at 200 neutrons per second, the maximum speed for a safe landing. I glanced at the Exo-Planet Scanner. The planet was a sector green which meant it could support human life. This planet was in its forming phase which means that we were probably on the rim of space, known as the “Edge”.
The only people who went to the Edge were criminals trying to flee the ROFA Empire, or just crazy. Politics were never really my thing. My job was to find, recover, and research. ROFA calls it FRR. FRR Agents are usually the best in the galaxy. The Captain, yes the unconscious one, is the greatest to ever live; he has found over 100 different precious elements throughout the Edge. Recently, our Supreme Leader was found dead. He was killed by an unknown toxic element. That’s why we were here on the edge, 100 light years away from Cloxar, the ROFA capitol, trying to find the origin of that element.
Unfortunately, our ship was hit by a space crystal as we approached this solar system. Space crystals are thin strips of void or as we called them “no time.” My Captain was struck by it, knocking him unconscious. The thrusters were also hit causing them to go haywire and catapulting us uncontrollably into the gravitational pull of this planet.
As we screeched through the planet's atmosphere I felt death was near. My eyes strained as the fire grew stronger. My face burned in pain. The alarms shrieked and deafened my ears. My face rippled as the G-Force pulled back on it. We entered through the clouds, shooting down from the sky like a wayward meteor. My rocket roared and rumbled, shaking harder and harder every inch closer. Every inch closer to death. Phewfffff. The rocket fired out strains of white gas. My doom approached as the rocks suddenly looked real. The rough and jagged landscape darkened before my eyes. Purple trees showered the planet and blossomed gracefully. In contrast, an enormous mountain erupted with magma and ash, scorching the remaining landscape.The tree in front of me grew bigger and bigger. Its neon purple leaves disintegrated into ash as we grew closer. Crash!
Time suddenly stopped. I looked around the scene of my death. Fire engulfed my body. Rocks and shrapnel in my chest and my Captain, now awake, standing menacingly above me. He was alive and looked happy? That smile, that evil smile. This wasn't an accident. My Captain wanted to be here, which means maybe we were never hit by a no time, but why were we here?
My science project was stolen by inter-dimensional funk ninjas. There is no other way to state it. I had just finished it, and it was perfect, and I knew, without a doubt, that I would get a perfect grade on it, but it was stolen right off the kitchen table. How did they steal it, you ask? They opened a portal.
The portal opened suddenly, in the blink of an eye, above the kitchen table. There was a massive flash of blue light, an unbearably loud staticy noise, and then the very air above the table seemed to unzip into a vaguely oval-shaped portal. I jumped back in surprise. “Dang,” I said. “That’s pretty crazy right there.” I never expected a portal to open in the kitchen. Suddenly, incredibly-groovy funk blasted out of the portal, pounding my eardrums. This, obviously, was an insane situation, but I had to admit that the music did indeed have some stank on it.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, and no, despite the circumstances, I was not terrified. I know it’s very unusual for a portal to open above your kitchen table, but I was too busy grooving to pay much attention to it. Indeed, I was vibing too hard to notice the hand slowly, sneakily reaching through the portal, vibing too hard to notice the hand grabbing my science project.
I was about to start doing The Worm when a voice came out of the portal, muffled by the funk, but still audible. “I’ll take that, Dude!” said the voice. That immediately snapped me out of my groove-induced trance. “What?!” I said. “Who is that?!?” I got up off the floor in a panic, just in time to see the hand grab my science project and deftly yoink it through the portal. It was as if it happened in slow motion, all of my hard work, my hours of toil and my struggle, all disappeared into the portal in just a few seconds, a maliciously minuscule moment of massively momentous melancholy.
It had been a few hours since then, the horrible moment, and by this point I knew it was inter-dimensional funk ninjas that had taken my project. I was also in a UFO full of aliens, cyborg goose warriors, and mildly disgruntled heath-food store employees, but more about that in a second. While still on Earth, I had turned on the TV to distract me from my powerful sorrow, only to hear something that piqued my interest..... It was a news channel, and they were talking about something incredibly relevant to me, although I did not know it at the time.
“-Yes indeed, Monica. Speaking of inter-dimensional funk ninjas, they were recently ranked as the third-most dangerous threat to America after tornadoes and terrorism,” a man remarked. Another person replied, “That’s right, Bill. The infamous three T’s: Tornadoes, Terrorism, and Inter-dimensional funk ninjas.” That had me interested. Inter-dimensional funk ninjas rang a bell. “Victims of the ninjas reported hearing some rather groovin’ music before a portal opened up in the middle of the air and a ninja stole a possession of theirs. As a victim famously stated, “The music slapped. Yeah, it was bangin’. However, the ninjas stole my kidneys, which was not bangin’.” Oh. My. GOSH. I jumped up in shock, my mouth gaping open, and my eyebrows probably somewhere on the top of my head.
This was insane. I could not believe it. I fell to my knees, my clenched fists shaking in apoplectic rage, and thunderously yelled, “DARN YOU FUNK NINJAS!!!!!!!!!!” That was the final thing I said before I was beamed up to the UFO. As all the individual molecules in my body separated and were teleported into the spaceship, all I could feel was a vague tickling sensation across my body, and all I could hear was some dude on the TV peddling his autobiography, Inter-Dimensional Funk Ninjas Stole My Kidneys: The Guy Holt Story. My last thought was: I think I am currently being abducted by aliens.
Then, I woke up in the UFO, as I previously mentioned. “Whoa! What the heck?!” I exclaimed, completely shocked to suddenly find myself inside a large metal chamber adorned with many paintings of both humans and cows being abducted. There were several large, plush armchairs scattered throughout the room containing several inhabitants. “Yoooooo! What’s up, Dude? How’s it goin’?” said a cyborg-looking guy with the head of a goose, while standing up very slowly out of his chair. As he stood, you could distinctly hear the whirr of microprocessors in his metallic, industrial-looking limbs. He had an incredible mess of varicolored tubes and wires weaving in and around his body, and also, as I may have already mentioned, he had the head of a goose. He lopsidedly waddled toward me, metal hand outstretched in, assumedly, an attempt at a handshake. My mind could not keep up with what the heck was going on.
The dock was Ella’s favorite place to be. It was her own quiet sanctuary where she could simply relax with a good book or admire the beauty of the perfectly still lake. The only disturbance of the flat water was from the occasional fish jumping and sending small ripples over the previously flat surface.
As the sun falls below the horizon, the sky is replaced by a glowing full moon and a sea of stars. She sees a vaguely blue light begin to shine behind her. Thinking it was Bob, a resident on the lake who didn’t like non-residents being on the dock, she quickly jumped to her feet bracing herself for Bob’s booming voice to scold her. When the scolding never came and she mustered up the courage to open her eyes, she found that no one was there. She looked around in every direction looking for movement or light of any kind, but saw nothing. After another moment of searching, she sat back down. Seconds later, the light shines again. This time, it was brighter and the breath of someone on Ella’s neck sent goosebumps flying down her arms.