Thursday, October 18, 2012

Teen Read Week Book Review: Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan

Percy wakes up at a Roman camp and doesn't know much but his name.  Percy's job:  to go to Alaska the land beyond the gods.  Percy is later going to Rome with his girlfriend Annabeth.  What will happen next?                   
                                                                             Reviewed by - Sarah G.

Teen Read Week Book Review: Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

Book CoverCrash! 13 year old Brian Robeson had crashed a plane into the middle of the Canadian Wilderness.  All he has left is a hatchet given to him by his mother.  He has to survive by killing fish and other woodland creatures.  He also has to excape the wild...alive.  In this action packed, thrilling book, the author keeps the reader on an emotional roller coaster!
                                                           Reviewed by - Erik H.

Teen Read Week Book Review: Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer

Book Cover  This wild and adventurous book is both fist clenching and very unsettling.  The book takes place in a high school, on an NFL field and on a army base in Afghanistan.  This is a great story about Pat Tillman.  You should read it!       
                                                                        Reviewed by - Jack B.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Teens Connect: Fall Project

Wednesday, October 17th from 6:30 - 7:15 PM or 7:30 - 8:15 PM.  Students in grades 7 through 12 are invited to come to the library and decorate fall grapevine wreaths for the seniors of Paumanack Village.  Have fun creating this seasonal craft and earn a volunteer hour at the same time!  Please call the Young Adult Desk to register or register online.

Celebrate Teen Read Week!

It Came from the Library! This year's Teen Read Week™ is October 14th - 20th. You are being dared to read for the fun of it! Teen Read Week is a time to celebrate reading for fun and encourage teens to take advantage of reading in all its forms - books and magazines, eBooks, audiobooks and more - and become regular library users. Write a review of a book you’ve read and earn a raffle to enter in YA Central’s contest to win a basket of Halloween fun!

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Banned Books Week: Whale Talk

There’s bad news and good news about the Cutter High School swim team. The bad news is that they don’t have a pool. The good news is that only one of them can swim anyway. A group of misfits brought together by T. J. Jones (the J is redundant), the Cutter All Night Mermen struggle to find their places in a school that has no place for them. T.J. is convinced that a varsity letter jacket–exclusive, revered, the symbol (as far as T.J. is concerned) of all that is screwed up at Cutter High–will also be an effective tool. He’s right. He’s also wrong. Still, it’s always the quest that counts.
-Goodreads.com

Banned Books Week: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

This is the story of what it's like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie's letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.
-Goodreads.com

Friday, October 5, 2012

Banned Books Week: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

In his first book for young adults, bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by acclaimed artist Ellen Forney, that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.
-Shelfari.com

Banned Books Week: A Wrinkle in Time

It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger. "Wild nights are my glory," the unearthly stranger told them. "I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me be on my way. Speaking of way, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract".
Meg's father had been experimenting with this fifth dimension of time travel when he mysteriously disappeared. Now the time has come for Meg, her friend Calvin, and Charles Wallace to rescue him. But can they outwit the forces of evil they will encounter on their heart-stopping journey through space?

-Goodreads.com

Banned Books Week: Julie of the Wolves

Lost on the Tundra To her small Eskimo village, she is known as Miyax; to her friend in San Francisco, she is Julie. When the village is no longer safe for her, Miyax runs away. But she soon finds herself lost in the Alaskan wilderness, without food, without even a compass to guide her. Slowly she is accepted by a pack of Arctic wolves, and she grows to love them as though they were family. With their help, and drawing on her father's teachings, Miyax struggles day by day to survive. But the time comes when she must leave the wilderness and choose between the old ways and the new. Which will she choose?
-Shelfari.com

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Banned Books Week: Of Mice and Men

They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within their grasp. But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations of a flirtatious woman, nor predict the consequences of Lennie's unswerving obedience to the things George taught him.
-Shelfari.com

Banned Books Week: Harry Potter and the Socerer's Stone

In the non-magical human world--the world of "Muggles"--Harry is a nobody, treated like dirt by the aunt and uncle who begrudgingly inherited him when his parents were killed by the evil Voldemort. But in the world of wizards, small, skinny Harry is renowned as a survivor of the wizard who tried to kill him. He is left only with a lightning-bolt scar on his forehead, curiously refined sensibilities and a host of mysterious powers to remind him that he's quite different from his aunt, uncle, and spoiled, pig-like cousin Dudley.
-Goodreads.com

Banned Books Week: Annie on My Mind


This groundbreaking book is the story of two teenage girls whose friendship blossoms into love and who, despite pressures from family and school that threaten their relationship, promise to be true to each other and their feelings.
-Goodreads.com

Banned Books Week 2012

Banned Books Week is the national book community's annual celebration of the freedom to read. Hundreds of libraries and bookstores around the country draw attention to the problem of censorship by mounting displays of challenged books and hosting a variety of events. The 2012 celebration of Banned Books Week will be held from September 30 through October 6. Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than 11,300 books have been challenged since 1982. For more information on Banned Books Week, click here. According to the American Library Association, there were 326 challenges reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2011, and many more go unreported. The 10 most challenged titles of 2011 were:
  1. ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle
    Reasons: offensive language; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
  2. The Color of Earth (series), by Kim Dong Hwa
    Reasons: nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
  3. The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins
    Reasons: anti-ethnic; anti-family; insensitivity; offensive language; occult/satanic; violence
  4. My Mom's Having A Baby! A Kid's Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy, by Dori Hillestad Butler
    Reasons: nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
  5. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
    Reasons: offensive language; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
  6. Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
    Reasons: nudity; offensive language; religious viewpoint
  7. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
    Reasons: insensitivity; nudity; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit
  8. What My Mother Doesn't Know, by Sonya Sones
    Reasons: nudity; offensive language; sexually explicit
  9. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily Von Ziegesar
    Reasons: drugs; offensive language; sexually explicit
  10. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
    Reasons: offensive language; racism