Q & A with Angie Thomas here.
Check out her website.
Meet Kazuo Ishiguro the 2017 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature!
Author Statement
“I am a writer who wishes to write international novels. What is an ‘international’ novel? I believe it to be one, quite simply, that contains a vision of life that is of importance to people of varied backgrounds around the world. It may concern characters who jet across continents, but may just as easily be set firmly in one small locality.”
Check out his Young Adult novel — Never Let Me Go
From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day comes a devastating new novel of innocence, knowledge, and loss. As children Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.
Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special–and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together. Suspenseful, moving, beautifully atmospheric, Never Let Me Go is another classic by the author of The Remains of the Day.
Check out the movie trailer as the book was made into a movie.
Four Reincarnations : Poems by Max Ritvo
Reverent and profane, entertaining and bruising, Four Reincarnations is a debut collection of poems that introduces an exciting new voice in American letters. When Max Ritvo was diagnosed with cancer at age sixteen, he became the chief war correspondent for his body. These poems are dispatches from chemotherapy beds and hospitals and the loneliest spaces in the home. They are relentlessly embodied, communicating pain, violence, and loss. And yet they are also erotically, electrically attuned to possibility and desire, to “everything living / that won’t come with me / into this sunny afternoon.” Ritvo explores the prospect of death with singular sensitivity, but he is also a poet of life and of love – a cool-eyed assessor of mortality and a fervent champion for his body and its pleasures. Ritvo writes to his wife, ex&#x;-lovers, therapists, fathers, and one mother. He finds something to love and something to lose in everything: Listerine PocketPak breath strips, Indian mythology, wool hats. But in these poems, from the humans that animate him to the inanimate hospital machines that remind him of death, it’s Ritvo’s vulnerable, aching pitch of intimacy that establishes him as one of our finest young poets.
About the Author
Caela Carter is an author who writes contemporary, realistic fiction for teens and middle grade readers.
Her first book, ME, HIM, THEM AND IT was published by Bloomsbury in 2013. She is also the author of MY BEST FRIEND, MAYBE (Bloomsbury, 2014), MY LIFE WITH THE LIARS (Harper 2016) and TUMBLING (Viking 2016).
Check out her website at http://caelacarter.com/.
Healthy Skin Awareness Month
November is Healthy Skin Awareness Month. Check out these informative articles/websites about healthy skin and acne myths.
Favorite Book Video Votes
One of the tasks on our Summer Reading Program Bingo Card was to view the 10 book videos featured on our touchscreen and vote for your favorite one. Well …. according to the tally marks the favorite video was Bad Girls Don’t Die by Katie Alender.
Bad Girls Don’t Die (2009) is actually the first in a 3 part series. It is followed by From Bad to Cursed (2011) and then As Dead as it Gets (2012). All of which are currently available in the Young Adult Department.
Other books by Katie Alender include:
Marie Antoinette, Series Killer
While in Paris, France on a class trip, Colette Iselin enlists the help of her charming French tour guide to help uncover a possible connection between Marie Antoinette, a series of gruesome murders, and perhaps her own family history, and he also gives her insights into herself.
Famous Last Words
High-schooler Willa has just moved to California with her mother and film director stepfather, and she will be attending a private school–but her real problem is that she keeps seeing things that are not really there, like a dead body in the swimming pool, and her visions may be connected to a serial killer that is stalking young girls in Hollywood.
And to be released end of August 2015
The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall
From School Library Journal
Gr 7 Up—When her Great Aunt Cordelia Pevin dies, “little namesake” Delia inherits her home, which was once the Piven Institute for the Care and Correction of Troubled Females. The family heads there once school is out to get the place ready to sell, but Hysteria Hall (as it was nicknamed) has other ideas. And, Delia can’t help but think that her parents might actually want her there because of her failed attempt to run off during Spring Break. Very quickly, the teen senses something is dreadfully wrong with the house, but can she escape in time to save her family? The protagonist’s path is fraught with challenges and her eventual understanding and acceptance is hard-won. Alender has created a chilling tale of forgotten tragedies and family secrets. Strong female characters anchor the story and its suspenseful tone is carried throughout. The author adeptly imbues the atmosphere with hints that something sinister is lurking just beneath the surface. VERDICT A great choice for fans of horror or suspense novels.—Elaine Baran Black, Georgia Public Library Service, Atlanta
Katie Alender (rhymes with “calendar”!) grew up in South Florida. She is the third of four children (three girls and a boy) and the child of three very loving and encouraging parents.
She attended high school at the Palm Beach County School of the Arts, studying Communication Arts. From there, she went on to the Florida State University Film School, which led her to her current hometown, a tiny hamlet on the West Coast known as “Los Angeles.”he is represented by Matthew Elblonk of DeFiore and Company and is a member of SCBWI (the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) and ITW (International Thriller Writers).
She does not like scary books or movies, but apparently the books she writes are considered scary by many people. She is also a huuuuge fan of talking about herself in the third person.
Archie Comics cartoonist Tom Moore died at his Texas home. He was 86. The artist helped create Archie comics and the hilarious stories of the freckled youth and his gang in Riverdale for over 30 years.
Happy “Birth” Day Kathryn Lasky
Born June 24.
Visit the official author site for Kathryn Lasky, author of over 100 books in fiction, nonfiction, fantasy and picture books for children and adults.
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!
Branigan Library Teens 