Prodigy- Book Review

June and Day arrive in Vegas just as the unthinkable happens: the Elector Primo dies, and his son Anden takes his place. With the Republic edging closer to chaos, the two join a group of Patriot rebels eager to help Day rescue his brother and offer passage to the Colonies. They have only one request—June and Day must assassinate the new Elector.

It’s their chance to change the nation, to give voice to a people silenced for too long.

But as June realizes this Elector is nothing like his father, she’s haunted by the choice ahead. What if Anden is a new beginning? What if revolution must be more than loss and vengeance, anger and blood—what if the Patriots are wrong?

In this highly-anticipated sequel, Lu delivers a breathtaking thriller with high stakes and cinematic action. (Review from Goodreads.com)

I liked this book. It broke my heart as June tired to figure out where she truly belonged. June spent her entire life in the republic training to be one of it's top soldiers, and although she knows that members in the republic are responsible for the death of her family, she can't quite turn away from all she's ever known. When she learns about Anden's plans for the future it should make life easier, the man in charge wants to make big changes, but with Day's intense hatred for the republic and a lack of solid proof in Anden's intentions, life for June just becomes more complicated. I felt so bad for her.

**************spoiler******************




Okay so can we just flash forward to the end. Day's dying! What he heck, I bet that's the only reason he told June to take the electors offer, but I think that was dumb. Day and Eden are all that's left of their family and Eden is mostly blind, if Day really is dying (which I refuse to believe) he's going to need someone to look after Eden. At his point I'm just grasping at straws, I think they make a great couple. they compliment each other very well. They're both tough and independent but they balance each other as well. Together the two of them could really turn the republic around. I can't wait for book three.

New plan

I began a Teen Advisory Group three months ago. Unfortunately we've only met once because I had a major car breakdown the same day as last months meeting. Our next meeting is next Thursday and I wanted to do something that helped to solidify the kids that come to TAG and hopefully attract some new kids as well.

My plan is to have the kids ban together and plan a program. I want to sit back and have them come up with an idea, a day for the programs, and steps to execute their program. I'm going to have them ban together to create a flyer and post those flyers up in the library and around their schools. I can say that I do have an advantage because I've got TAG members from at least three different schools.

The overall plan is to relinquish some of the control, I want them to feel like they have a say and I want them to know that I care about their thoughts and idea (although admittedly some of those ideas may have to be turned down). I don't want to just purpose programs and have the TAG members show up to set up, participate, and clean up, that hardly seems fair or fun.

This is my idea and I hope it works, the biggest issue I run into is getting permission to let kids plan or participate hands on. I know how immature teens can be, and I know that sometimes it take a little bit of extra effort to make them focus, but I think that at the end of the day, something great can be accomplished.

Neglect

I've been neglecting the Hub reading challenge. I wanted tor read every book on the list so I could get that e badge, but I have a good reason. Janet Evanovich has taken over my life. I'm obsessed with the Stephanie Plum series, I'm currently on book ten, Ten Big Ones. I started listening to them because I had to drive an hour to and from work everyday, but one say I couldn't get a hold of the audio book so I checked the book out and I've been speed reading them because I want to catch myself up in the series, and I must know

*****Slight spoiler but not really*******


what's going on with Stephanie and Joe, if they don't get married I'm going to lose it. I love the Stephanie Plum books because she just keeps going. She may lose three cars in one book, but she keeps trudging along. I also relate with Stephanie living on my own, working hard to pay the bills (although I'm not a bounty hunter), and I really want a hamster... or maybe a fish, I haven't decided yet.

Stephanie is funny, and snarky, and resilient, and she can rationalize anything like a pair of purple high heels. What's not to love.

Ahhhh! Grad School

Terror, that's what I feel when I think about my Culmination Experience class. When I first learned of this culminating experience my plan was to do a practicum, I'd spend 150 hours working in a library gaining first hand experience and I'd be able to add a little extra padding to my resume. It was the greatest idea ever, but then I got a full time job. I love my job, and I love that I was lucky enough to find a job in my field that allowed me to support myself, before I was even done with Grad School. it was like a gift from the gods or something, however this does present a problem for this culminating experience class. Most of the libraries in my area have the same hours that my library has (with the exception of one or two that are open for like an extra hour). I have two days off a week, one of which is Sunday, and none of the libraries in my area are open Sunday, therefor according to my calculations, it would take me like five months of working one day a week to gain the amount of hours that I need, not only that I'd be exhausted working six days a week and I also have another class to take that semester (you know with the tests, and papers and such).

 What to do, what to do. I think I'm going to be reintroducing Monster drinks into my life next semester. Let the games begin.

On the hunt

Not too long ago I started a Teen Advisory Group here at the library just to see what kind of turn out I would have, and I was curious to know how many kids would be interested. I had about eight kids come and they were so involved. They had great ideas and seemed really enthusiastic. They participated in Teen Tech Week and I even have them monitoring the family movies that we show twice a month.

All of this is great, however they want to do, I need to find ways to keep them engaged and involved otherwise I'm afraid I'll lose them. I'd love to do something like after school story time and have some of the teens run that (under supervision of course), or some kind of consistent weekly program for them to monitor and brain storm ideas for but I don't know what to do. I've been blog hopping and pinteresting but I'm coming up short. I'm glad that the kids like this program enough to want to meet more often and involve themselves I just don't know how. Another issue is, if I start planning larger more involved programs and none of my TAG members show up, then what do I do? I feel like because the group is still so new, that I'm in a precarious position.

I guess I should get back to the drawing board and try to come up with some ideas.

*Sigh*

Alright, so I'm not sure how to go about expressing my...feelings (yeah we'll go with that word) about how parents view the youth room here so I'll just ramble and hope I feel better when I'm done.

So I'm a Youth Assistant Librarian, the floor that I work on caters to children between the ages of birth (It's always so weird to say that but we do often have newborns up here), to seventeen... because after that technically you're an adult. Because this is the youth floor, also known as the Graham Room, we have materials here for older teens, some how a lot of parents forget that and I'm often challenged on weather or not certain materials should be here.

I recently had a man hand me the Battleship DVD. He looks at it and says that he found it in the wall with the other DVD and asked if it should be up here, I said yes. he paused and asked "it should?" and I again said yes, then he sort of rolled his eyes and proceeded to check it out. I'm to the point where I'm so tired of explaining it. This is the youth room not the children's room. This floor is for people who haven't yet reached voting age. We're going to have materials such as Battleship, Ghost Rider, Sherlock Holmes, and the Social Network. We're going to have books such as Twilight, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, Uglies, Divergent and more. It's always been that way here and will continue to be so.

I think the problem is that there is an unequal ratio of children to YA materials. *Sigh* I'm not sure what to do except get use to it. I think my biggest issue is the reaction to the fact that yes we do have movies rated PG-13, if you don't want your child to watch it, then don't check out the movie. Simple, problem solved.

Oh well, I'll put it behind me and move on I guess, but it is slightly annoying.

Appreciation

So I'm going to take a second to say that I love my job. I love it because of moments like the one I'm having right now.

I'm sitting at work checking in books from C-Car and a girl that comes into the library often grabbes one of the little chairs, scootes it up to the circulation desk (which is very long and mostly storage for our two printers) in a place where she wont be in the way of patrons and pulled out her Geometry book to do homework. When I ask her if she's going to need help, she says "no, I just wanted to sit by you" then smiled and turned to her book.

Again, I repeat, I love my job.