More new books on YA shelves

 

 

Illusionarium by Heather Dixon

As apprentice to his father, the second-best medical scientist in the empire, Jonathan leads a quiet life in a remote aerial city until the king arrives, calling on them to find the cure to a plague that has struck the capital city and put the queen’s life at risk, but the newly discovered chemical, fantillium, that may help will also put at risk all that Jonathan holds dear.

Made You Up by Francesca Zappia

“Armed with her camera and a Magic 8-Ball and her only ally (her little sister), Alex wages a war against her schizophrenia, determined to stay sane long enough to get into college”– Provided by publisher.

Vanished by E. E. Cooper

Seventeen-year-old Kalah must race to solve the mystery left behind in the wake of one friend’s disappearance and another’s suicide.

The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough

In Seattle in 1937 two seventeen-year-olds, Henry, who is white, and Flora, who is African-American, become the unwitting pawns in a game played by two immortal figures, Love and Death, where they must choose each other at the end, or one of them will die.

A School for Unusual Girls by Kathleen Baldwin

Scientific-minded Georgiana Fitzwilliam is sent to a school for unusual high society girls for the ostensible purpose of being reformed into a respectable lady, but is instead secretly enlisted into the war effort alongside Lord Sebastian Wyatt.

Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen

Sydney’s charismatic older brother, Peyton, has always been the center of attention in the family but when he is sent to jail, Sydney struggles to find her place at home and the world until she meets the Chathams, including gentle, protective Mac, who makes her feel seen for the first time.

Eternity’s Wheel by Neil Gaiman, Michael Reaves and Mallory Reaves

It has been two years since Joseph Harker first Walked between dimensions, met the alternate forms of himself, and formed a team to protect the Altiverse in the struggle between the vicious forces of magic and science–and now, injured, he has returned to his own dimension, bringing danger with him.

The Improbable Theory of Ana & Zak by Brian Katcher

Ana is an honor student obsessed with being successful at everything academic, Clayton is her thirteen-year-old genius brother, the youngest student in their high school and Zak is gamer who is forced to join the quiz team by his teacher–but when Clayton sneaks off to a science fiction convention in Seattle while they are all there for a quiz bowl tournament, Ana is forced to rely on the unreliable Zak to find him.

The Hunted by Matt de la Pena

After surviving the earthquake and tsunami, Shy manages to make it back to land but he is far from safe because a secret his cruise ship co-worker, Addie, shared with him is one that people have killed for, and now that Shy knows, he has become a moving target.

Dangerous Deception by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Some loves are cursed. Others are dangerous. Especially the love between wannabe rocker and quarter Incubus, Wesley ‘Link’ Lincoln, and Dark Caster, Siren, and bonafide bad girl, Ridley Duchannes. But now Ridley is missing, and Link was with her, right up until she vanished. Determined to find her, Link reunites with his New York bandmates and the mysterious Lennox Gates, who wants Rid for himself.

The Rise & Fall of the Gallivanters by M. J. Beaufrand

In 1983, a band led by a David Bowie lookalike prepares to compete in a battle of the bands at a possibly evil brewery, and must also cope with the fact that bass player Evan is getting sicker and sicker, much like his best friend Noah’s abusive father did before his death several years earlier.

 

 

 

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Craftivism is a worldwide movement that operates at the intersection where craft and activism meet; Craftivism the book is full of inspiration for crafters who want to create works that add to the greater good. With interviews and profiles of craftivists who are changing the world with their art, and through examples that range from community embroidery projects, stitching in prisons, revolutionary ceramics, AIDS activism, yarn bombing, and crafts that facilitate personal growth, Craftivism provides imaginative examples of how crafters can be creative and altruistic at the same time.

Artists profiled in the book are from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Asia, and their crafts include knitting, crocheting, sewing, textiles, pottery, and ceramics. There’s the Brooklyn writer who creates large-scale site-specific knitted installations; the British woman who runs sewing and quilting workshops for community building and therapy; the Indonesian book maker and organizer of a DIY craft center; and the Oxford, England, cultural theorist and dress designer. A wonderful sense of optimism and possibility pervades the book: the inspiring notion that being crafty can really make the world a better place.

Betsy Greer is a writer, crafter, researcher, and the author of Knitting for Good!: A Guide to Creating Personal, Social and Political Change Stitch by Stitch. She also runs the blog craftivism.com and believes that creativity and positive activism can save not only the soul, but also the world.

What’s Up?? … in the Young Adult Department this summer

Summer Reading Program

The Teen Summer Reading Program will be “Unmask!”. It will take place from Monday, June 1st to Friday, July 10th. Each participant will receive a Bingo card with library related activities. For every Bingo that is achieved, the participant will earn a prize (up to 5 prizes). If the Bingo card is completely blacked out, the participant will win the grand prize of one free movie pass!

On Saturday, July 11th there will be a party in the Roadrunner Room from 12 to 2 PM to celebrate the end of the program. There will be activities and free food for the teens to enjoy.

Teen Programs

Teen Game Night
Tuesdays from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm
In the Craft Room
Game Guru exclusively every 1st and 3rd Tuesdays

Team Anime
First Thursday of Each Month
4:00 pm to 6:00 pm
In the Craft Room
Watch anime and do a Japanese related activity

Teen Screening
Every Wednesday in June and July
1:00 to 3:00 PM
In the Roadrunner Room
Check with staff for movie titles

Teen Writer Workshop
Thursday, June 11th
1:00 to 2:00 PM
In the Craft Room
Join local YA writers Valerie Day-Sanchez and Casandra Munoz as they discuss their work and lead a creative writing lesson.

Game Design Workshop
Thursday, June 18th
1:00 to 2:00 PM
In the Computer Training Lab
Game Design and Animation Instructor Ian Snyder introduces teens to the video game industry and shows them how to make a simple game prototype.

Unmask! Jeopardy
Thursday, June 25th
1:00 to 2:00 PM
In the Craft Room
Play a game of super hero Jeopardy!

LIBRARY CLOSED

Sunday, May 24 and Monday, May 25, 2015 and Sunday, May 31, 2015 (Closed on Sundays from Memorial Day Weekend through Labor Day).

“Letters to a Young Freshman”

Through a grant provided by the Las Cruces Public Schools Foundation, Arrowhead Park Early College High School establishes its own student publishing house with Letters to a Young Freshman as its first project. The project, “APECHS Pays It Forward: Advice for Life,” grew out of classroom readings of Ranier Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. Using Rilke’s wise words and philosophy as a guide, students developed letters and essays that offer advice to new students coming into APECHS. The advice offered in the enclosed letters and essays apply not only to new Trailblazers entering APECHS, but also apply to personal growth and development as human beings, becoming participants in the examined life.

Read the newspaper article about their experience here.

Need a little direction deciding what to read next??  Check out these websites!

What Should I Read Next?

This simple, user-friendly website provides quick book recommendations. The site allows someone to enter the title of a book they like so that the site can use its large database of readers’ favorite books to make book suggestions related to the topics of the original book title entered. From the results page, one can also browse books by subject.

Whichbook

Whichbook provides a unique, easy-to-use tool that helps readers choose a book to read based upon a wide variety of factors like mood, emotion, plot shape, type of main character, country the book is set in, and more. Books in this database are fiction or poetry, written or translated into English and published in the last ten years. All titles on Whichbook have been read by one of a changing team of seventy people drawn from libraries and literature organizations.

More new books on YA shelves

 

 

The Prom Goers Interstellar Excursion by Chris McCoy

Minutes after eighteen-year-old Bennett Bardo of Gordo, New Mexico, asks Sophie Gilkey, his dream girl, to prom and she says yes, she’s abducted by aliens and Bennett catches a ride across the galaxy with a band of misfit musicians to find her.

Breakout by Kevin Emerson

Fourteen-year-old eighth-grader Anthony Castillo uses “f-bombs” in the angst-ridden song he writes for his rock band, the Rusty Soles, and while it becomes an instant viral hit, he must decide if being a hero is worth the trouble that singing it on Arts Night would cause.

Five Kingdoms – Crystal Keepers by Brandon Mull

Journeying in a magical region where he continues his search for his friends and works to correct magical imbalances in The Outskirts, Cole confronts challenges that threaten to trap him in the world between reality and imagination.

The Fearless by Emma Pass

Seven years after the Fearless army invades England and injects everyone with a serum that strips them of humanity, Cass and her brother, Jori, are living on Hope Island in a community of survivors, but when Jori is taken by the Fearless, she will risk everything to get him back.

Flunked by Jen Calonita

When petty thief Gilly, who lives with five younger brothers and sisters in a run-down boot, gets caught stealing, she is sentenced to three months at Fairy Tale Reform School, where all of the teachers are former villains, including the Big Bad Wolf, the Evil Queen, and Cinderella’s Wicked Stepmother.

Soulprint by Megan Miranda

Alina’s spent her seventeen years imprisoned for the crimes of her past self, as shown by soul-fingerprinting when she was a newborn, but when a group of people with questionable motives helps her escape, she discovers she may not be as innocent as she believes and must wonder if she’s fated to repeat

The Remedy by Suzanne Young

Seventeen-year-old Quinn provides closure to grieving families by taking on the short-term role of a deceased loved one, until huge secrets come to the surface about Quinn’s own past.

Denton Little’s Death Date by Lance Rubin

“In a world where everyone knows the day they will die, a teenage boy is determined to outlive his upcoming expiration date”– Provided by publisher.

Happy “Birth” Day David Almond

Born May 15th.

David Almond’s website is having a facelift right now – so check it out later.  In the meantime:

His first book, Sleepless Nights, a collection of short stories for adults, was published in 1985 and was followed in 1997 by a second volume, A Kind of Heaven. His first children’s novel, Skellig, the story of a strange, part-human ‘creature’ who transforms the lives of two young children forever, was published to immediate acclaim in 1998. The book won both the Carnegie Medal (1998) and the Whitbread Children’s Book Award (1998). In 2007, it was shortlisted for the Carnegie of Carnegies. He was given an Arts Council Writers’ Award to work on Kit’s Wilderness (1999), a teenage novel inspired by the author’s childhood memories of disused mines. It was awarded a Nestlé Smarties Book Prize (Silver Award) and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal (2000) and for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize.

Counting Stars (2000) is a collection of children’s stories, again inspired by the author’s memories of his own childhood and family, and a selection of stories from this volume was published separately in March 2002 under the title Where Your Wings Were, as one of five World Book Day publications. A play, Wild Girl, Wild Boy, was published in March 2002, and a stage version of Skellig was published in April 2002 to coincide with the National Theatre’s production of the play. The Fire-Eaters (2003), centres on the fortunes of Bobby Burns and his encounters with a fire-eating devil called McNulty. It was awarded the Gold medal in the Age 9-11 category at the 2003 Nestlé Smarties awards and won the 2003 Whitbread Children’s Book Award. It also won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award (USA). Clay (2005), was shortlisted for the 2006 Costa Children’s Book Award, and the 2006 Carnegie Medal.

David Almond’s work is translated into more than 20 languages. He lives in Northumberland and was the recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2010. His latest children’s novel is My Name is Mina (2010), a prequel to Skellig, and nominated for a 2012 Carnegie Medal. In 2011 his first adult novel was published – The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean.

Book since 2011 include:

The Boy Who Swam with Piranhas (2012), The Tightrope Walkers (2014) and A Song for Ella Grey (2014).

 

Claire and Ella and their friends are bound by ties so strong they seem unbreakable. Then the strange and handsome Orpheus strolls onto the beach, and he sings them all into an astonishing new understanding of themselves. Ella is caught the hardest, fastest, deepest—and Claire is left with the pain of looking on.

Raw, emotional, lyrical, funny, and true, A Song for Ella Grey is a tale of the joys, troubles, and desires of modern teens. It takes place in the ordinary streets of Tyneside and on the beautiful beaches of Northumberland. It’s a story of first love, a love song that draws on ancient mythical forces. A love that leads Ella, Orpheus, and Claire to the gates of Death and beyond.

 

 

New Books on YA Shelves

The Mermaid’s Sister by Carrie Anne Noble

Clara discovers that her sister is becoming a mermaid, and realizes that no mermaid can survive on land.  Desperate to save her, she and her friend load the girl in a gypsy wagon and begin a journey to the sea.  But no road is straight, and the trio encounters trouble around every bend.  And always, Clara wonders if she herself will become a mermaid.

My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger

Three teenagers in Boston narrate their experiences of a year of new friendships, first loves, and coming into their own.

One of the Guys by Lisa Aldin

Tomboy to the core, Toni Valentine understands guys. She’ll take horror movies, monster hunts and burping contests over manicures. So Toni is horrified when she’s sent to the Winston Academy for Girls, where she has to wear a skirt and learn to be a “lady” while the guys move on without her. Then Toni meets Emma Elizabeth, a girl at school with boy troubles, and she volunteers one of her friends as a pretend date. Word spreads of Toni’s connections with boys, and she discovers that her new wealthy female classmates will pay big money for fake dates. Looking for a way to connect her old best friends with her new life at school, Toni and Emma start up Toni Valentine’s Rent-A-Gent Service. But the business meets a scandal when Toni falls for one of her friends–the same guy who happens to be the most sought-after date. With everything she’s built on the line, Toni has to decide if she wants to save the business and her old life, or let go of being one of the guys for a chance at love.

The Lazarus Game by Stephen J. Valentine

When fifteen-year-old genius Carter Chance agrees to help create the “most advanced video games ever imagined”–something he hopes will impress the hottest girl in town –Carter gets himself involved in a dangerous adventure.

The Hunted by C. J. Hart

Seb, leader of a pack of shapeshifting skinwalkers, begins to question the cruel acts of his kind, and must choose between his loyalty to the pack and his love for a human girl.

Jumpstart the World by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Sixteen-year-old Elle falls in love with Frank, the neighbor who helps her adjust to being on her own in a big city, but learning that he is transgendered turns her world upside-down.

Gone Too Far by Natalie D. Richards

When high school senior Piper Woods finds a notebook with mutilated photographs and a list of student sins, she is sure the book is too gruesome to be true, but when a student from the list dies, and although everyone thinks it is a suicide, she suspectssomething much worse, and her fears are confirmed when she receives an anonymous text daring her to make things right.

Recording and Promoting Your Music by Matt Anniss

Explains how to record and promote original music, detailing how to use the Internet and local DJs to spread the word.

Chaos Theory by M. Evonne Dobson

Seventeen year-old Kami assembles a team of amateur sleuths intent on helping their friend Daniel discover who supplied the drugs that killed his sister.

Game Guru

Join our special guest – Zia Comic’s “Game Guru” on Teen Game Night – Tuesdays from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm In the Craft Room.