On Sunday night we had one of our video game tournaments at the library and it was a very fun night. We were originally going to have what we were calling an old school video game night. We wanted to have a Nintendo, Atari, Sega, and maybe others in an attempt let the kids see some of the games that we grew up on, as well as some of their parents. Instead once we assessed the systems we had available it turned into more of a history of Nintendo night. We had a Nintendo Gamecube hooked up to our projection screen as well as two TVs using an original Nintendo and a Super Nintendo. All we did was hook these systems up, buy some pizza and let the kids in the door. Once the kids were in there was nothing for us to do but play with them and occasionally make sure the shy kids were getting a chance at the games as well. All the Kids had a blast playing. They all seemed to enjoy all of the games, both new and old.
One of the most interesting things I have noticed each time we do this are the parents’ reactions. When we first started hosting these I thought some of the parents might find them to be a waste of time or useless. However the reaction has been quite the opposite. When told about the tournaments, the parents are often more excited than the kids are. At the events the parents are very interested too. Some parents just use it as a time to get stuff done, either they stay at the library and do some work, or they come back when it is over to pick up the kids. However the majority of the parents like to participate. They will often stand behind the kids watching and laughing while asking all sorts of questions about how the games are played and what is going on. Many of the parents will actually join in on the games. Sunday night we had almost every parent playing one game or another whenever they could. One mother would actually trash talk with the kids she was playing against and would often forget that she should give her controller up at the end of the game to a kid who was waiting. All the parents however when the event is over are usually very thankful and glad that we hosted it.
These experiences just get more fun each time as we get used to hosting them. I would highly recommend trying one at any library because they are fun and they are a great way for the librarians to really get to know some of your teens and tweens as well as their parents.
Here is another one of my book talks. The book is Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. It is, in my opinion, one of the best Young Adult Books that came out in 2004. It was both and Newbery and Printz honor book. The story is interesting, funny, and exciting, but it is also based on a true and quite horrifying history of Malaga Island. This island and its people was the site of a very sad story that happened almost a century ago and this book does a great job capturing the feel of event. While I don’t think this is one of my best book talks, it should give you a good idea for what the book is about.
Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy
By: Gary Schmidt
Just a few hours after moving to Phippsburg, Maine Turner Buckminster has already decided that he hates it there and that he wants to move back to Boston. He doesn’t get along with the children there. He wasted no time getting in trouble with the neighbors. Perhaps worst of all they don’t even play Baseball the right way in Phippsburg. He also hates being the minister’s son in this small town, which requires him to always wear a white shirt with an overly starched collar and to act more like a minister then a boy. Turner hates it more and more every moment until he meets Lizzie Bright when he is hanging out on the shore. She is the most interesting person he has every met and having her as a friend makes this town much more interesting.
However the real problem is this. The year is 1911 and the town is losing a lot of money as its once vital shipping business dies. They decide to start making money through tourism since it is a beautiful, costal city. However tourists won’t want to come if they have to look out at the ocean and see the shanty town which is Malaga Island. Malaga Island is inhabited by a handful of freed slaves and assorted other minorities. The people there have worked hard to create a life for themselves and have received no help from any one. Now the town of Phippsburg is trying to kick them off of their island and force them to leave even though they have nowhere to go.
If you haven’t already guessed, Lizzie Bright lives on that Island, where her grandfather is the preacher, and leader of all the people there. Turner and Lizzie try everything they can to stop this horrible thing from happening but they may not be strong enough to stop it.
Here is one of my favorite book talks on a book I thought was fantastic. Ill let the book talk speak for itself.
Stuck in Neutral.
By: Terry Trueman
Shawn McDaniel is a lot like any other fourteen year old you might know. He likes music, enjoys eating potato chips, and has discovered a new found appreciation for the female anatomy. However there are two very distinctive things about Shawn’s life that lead him to say that his life is like one of those Good News, Bad News Jokes. So which do you guys want first the good news or the bad news.
The good news is that you could probably consider Shawn to be a genius. He has a photographic memory and has been able to learn and teach himself a lot of things because of this. He can remember everything he has ever heard after the age of about four or so and is a pretty smart guy to boot.
The bad news. Well, he has a very severe case of cerebral palsy. When he was born a blood vessel burst in a bad spot within his brain and he lost all muscular control. By all, I do mean all. He can not control his mouth, tongue, eyes, feet, legs, or anything, which means he has no means to communicate. Because of this his family and everyone around him thinks he is a complete vegetable with the mental capacity of baby. However they are wrong, he can understand everything they say and do around him just as you or I could.
Despite this fact he is a relatively happy person. He enjoys his life and loves his family even though he has never been able to talk to them and probably never will. He has never known anything else in life and while he is clearly smart enough to understand his position he has accepted it and has found joy where he can.
However there is just one more important part to the story which Shawn mentions early in the book. (Read the last paragraph of Chp 2 page 12)
The section from the book describes the fact that the worst part about the whole thing is that Shawn is pretty sure his father is trying to kill him.
This book is one of the better young adult books I have ever read. Trueman has a great understanding of the mind of 14 year old boy. The story is both funny and touching. I would recommend it to any child over the age of about 13. What makes it even more touching is that Trueman was inspired to write this by his own son who has CP and is as far as they know brain-dead. For more info about Terry Trueman or Stuck in Neutral check out Terry’s Website .
I am a very big advocate of using video games in libraries and thus I have decided to start discussing that here. For now I just wanted to mention some video game tournaments we have been hosting at my library. Once a month we have been having either a video game tournament or free play night. These are a great opportunity to provide a fun and safe program that appeals to a broad range of audiences but particularly to tweens and teens. It is also a very helpful way to bring them to the library and expose them to the broad range of things we can offer for them.
Hosting a tournament can be very simple or very complicated depending on what you want to make of it. Ann Arbor District Library is an example of a library that has a very complicated and expensive gaming program, which is done exceedingly well. They have a lot of equipment and they make use of it in some interesting ways. These tournaments are well described in an article written by Erin Helmrich and Eli Neiburger, two employees of AADL. The article is entitled “Video Games as a Service: Hosting Tournaments at Your Library” and can be found in the Feb 2005 issue of VOYA.
A smaller library like my own however can easily host a video game night without many resources or finances. We make use of video game consoles owned by our staff. If you have any younger staff at your library, often times this means pages, than you have staff members who likely own videogame systems. Other than a video game system and a game all you would need is a screen to play them on. Our library system owns a projector and a large screen so we use that for our primary game. Often we will also bring in a small TV for more kids to play on. From there we will find a good game to use as the focus of the evening. If the game is competitive then we will make the event a tournament, with some sort of prize, such as a $10 or $20 gift certificate to a game store. Two games that work great for this are Mario Kart Double Dash or Super Smash Brothers Melee. If it is a tournament all that is left is arranging some sort of bracket system to keep track of the winners and losers and you are good to go. If it is not to be a tournament night all you need to do is have the games available for the kids to play. One great game to look into is Dance Dance Revolution, this is a fun and energetic dancing game. The kids will know how to play them, or at least be able to figure it out. You simply need to sit back and make sure everybody is happy. They kids will love it if you play with them, especially if they can beat you at the game, but if you cant or wont play don’t let that stop you from having a game night.
I have just added a book talking category. As I explained in that category description I have written book talks for many of the young adult books that I have read and I hope to continue writing them as I read. I will post them here for any who are curious. I will aslo try to add a little bit about my opinions of the book. If you like them I encourage you to use them, and feel free to adapt them as you see fit. I only ask that you steer anyone who shows interest to this site if you get the opportunity to and that you comment on the book talk telling me how it went. If any of you are writing book talks and you have any which you want to share let me know and I would be glad to post them, with your contact info if desired, so everyone can make use of them.
The Historian is a novel which transcends both time and place. It is the story of 16 year old girl, living in Amsterdam in 1972, who stumbles upon an envelope of her fathers containing some very dangerous information. The envelope holds a mysterious and ancient book which is primarily blank but has a large woodcut of a dragon in the center of it and the word Drakulya. Along with this book she finds a series of letters written in 1930 addressed to ”My dear and unfortunate successor” which detail one mans harrowing experience in trying to get to the bottom of this mysterious book. This discovery is the back bone for a novel which traces the historical account of the burial of Vlad Tepes also known as Vlad the Impaler or Dracula. This historical account is uncovered through a series of mysterious encounters and lots of harrowing adventures involving vampires, secret police, communism and much more. The narrative trades off between three different generations and time periods as we see the story told in part by this young girl, but also in part by her father, and in part by her fathers former professor. These three accounts lead up to a final and dramatic conclusion as they all begin to understand who Dracula really is and perhaps more importantly where he is. This novel is a wonderful mix of history, lore, myth, and storytelling. Kostova paints a very vivid picture of the stunning landscapes and cities of Easter Europe which is the setting for much of the book. In the end this is a thrilling, exciting, and romantic story by an author who has a great sense of storytelling and history.
I really loved this book. The story was incredible and it drew me in from the very first few pages. The story was exciting and suspenseful straight through, but it was also interesting because we get to see how these historians went about there craft, trying to track down these facts needed to solve the mystery. While this book is an adult title I would highly recommend it to teens. Most of the main characters, at the time of their primary narrative, are between the ages of 16 and 25 or so making them accessible characters to a young adult. This book is great for anyone who likes horror, suspense, mystery, fantasy, or history. I can not seem to rave enough about this book.
So I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about both Podcasting and Vodcasting and trying to come up with fun ways of using them in a library setting with teens. I have come up with one idea in particular that I am very excited about and I hope that sometime I will be in a position to make it happen. Although I suppose I need to explain a few things for those of you out there who may have no idea what I am talking about. Podcasting is simply the act of creating audio media, or in the case of Vodcasting, video, and putting it on the internet so it can be downloaded to an MP3 player or some other device so they can be viewed or listened. For more info on that take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting.
Any way, my idea involves the use of a really interesting book called Seek, by Paul Fleischman, which I will describe in more detail in the review section. Pauls website http://www.paulfleischman.net/works.htm gives us a good short description of the book. ” Assigned to write his autobiography, Rob “listens back” over his life. That symphony of words comprises Seek, delivered by a chorus of 52 speakers–from relatives to baseball announcers to Rob’s absent DJ father, a man he’s spent his life pursuing through the labyrinth of the airwaves. A sound portrait both compelling and comic, presented entirely in dialogue.” This book is written in the form of a radio play and at the end Paul gives instructions that would help you read through it as a grouped and create a radio, or audio play of it.
This is where my idea comes in. I loved this book, and especially loved the audio portion of it. It is a book which is meant to be read aloud, and with a group of people. So why not get a group of people, in this case teens, together and record a reading of this book. It is a fun book, and it would be an interesting experiment to try to create our own audio book. Obviously this would require the library to have some sort of recording device and possibly some audio editing equipment on the computer. But with the required equipment this could be a very fun activity. Not only that but depending on what copyright issues are, it is possible we could create this audio book and then include it as part of the collection, which would really help the kids feel like they are a part of the library.
Bone: the complete adventures is a collection of all 9 Bone graphic novels by Jeff Smith. They tell the story of three Bones (Fone Bone, Smiley Bone, and Phoney Bone) who are little white creatures that resemble bones. They get kicked out of boneville because of something Phoney Bone did. While wandering the desert a mysterious cloud of locusts drives them into a hidden valley. The bones are about to be central characters in a story that has been developing in the valley for many years. This mythical and exciting adventure contains dragons, a princess, rat creatures, an evil mage, dark lord, and much more. The bones are forced to pick sides in this escalating battle. This book is full of beautiful illustrations, and is a gripping story. Its innocence and its scope are among its greatest strengths. I would recommend this graphic novel for just about any body old enough to read. Definitely great for reluctant readers or anybody over the age of about 8.
Personally I loved this book, or if you are reading them separately these books. The world that Jeff Smith has created is very original, but it is still familiar. All the characters seem very well thought out and the story just grabs you and pulls you in. These are great graphic novels to recommend to some one who is either a reluctant reader or to some one who does not have much experience with graphic novels. If you happen to be someone who is involved with teen and tween literature, be it as a teacher, or as a librarian, you need to check Bone out. You won’t be disappointed. Originally they were published in black and white; however scholastic has started publishing them now and has added color to the illustrations. While the black and white version is great, the color is nice too so you really can’t go wrong.
So I was talking with one of my coworkers and we decided a really cool idea for our library would be to start a blog book discussion group. We were very excited about this idea and discussed it for a while. I personally think it would be an especially great service idea for young adults. They are for the most part comfortable with the technology and are often more comfortable talking on a discussion board or online forum then they are in person. Also high school students and college students are often so busy they would have trouble coming to a meeting for an actual book discussion group, but the idea that they could check out the blog during some free time to post their opinions to the book and answer some questions might be very appealing. Any way, I think we will be giving this a try sometime soon, Im not sure if it will initially be primarily a teen group, adult group, or a mix, but it should be interesting either way. As I think about this idea more Ill keep posting.
The purpose of this weblog is for me to share my experiences in regards to teen literature and library services. I will share a brief reflection or review of every book I read which falls under the category of teen lit or could be read and enjoyed by a teen. I will also discuss any ideas I have in regards to teen library services. I also hope that this will eventually become a forum where people can discuss issues surounding teen lit and services. Enjoy.
