Setting up my Skype date with Marissa Meyer

So I mentioned a blog or two ago that I was working on trying to set up a Skype chat with Marissa Meyer for the teens in my library and it looks like a go. I met with my kids and we chose a date and I e-mailed it to Marissa, she e-mailed back and it looks like we might have to do it the Monday October 14 instead of the 7th but that's still great, this leaves me enough time to solidify the date and put it in the Fall flyer. She's been so accommodating and I already have kids reading her books. (The Lunar Chronicles, read them if you haven't).

There really isn't much more to say other than I'm so excited!!

Review- Intuition

  As Cole begins to accept her new life as Akhet, someone who can remember flashes of her past lives, every new vision from her past lives helps explain who she is in this life. As her passion for Griffon grows, she learns to identify other Akhet around her, including Drew, the young self-made millionaire who reveals his startling connection to Cole-he was her husband in Elizabethan England and gave her the ankh necklace that has been returned to her after centuries in hiding. Drew's attentions are overwhelming as he insists that their connection in the past signals their future destiny together, but before she can decide who she truly loves, Cole must learn to harness her unique Akhet abilities if she is to ever understand her role in this strange new world. (goodreads.com)

*This is book two in a series, there will be spoilers if you haven't read the first book.*



Intuition picks up right where Transcendence leaves off with Cole continuing to learns what it means to be Akhet and as she remembers more about her past lives. I would give this book about a 3.5, Transcendence was about Cole and discovering and accepting what she was as well as who she had been. There is some controversy over book two, it's been considered... I don't know, I guess you could say a slightly lesser novel because so much of the book revolves around Cole and her relationship with Griffin and her relationship (and past relationship) with Drew. I can see how that could be off putting, but I had a slightly different reaction. 

*Spoilers*



Griffin finds out that Cole and Drew were married in one of there past lives, not only that, but it was the past like that Griffin also share with Cole (you know the one where he cut her head off). He instantly ends their relationship and it's clear where he does that he's encountered an experience such as this before, and he's bailing before it becomes too much to handle. 

When Cole realizes that Griffin's mind wont be changed, she begins to explore what a relationship with Drew could be like, and as sweet as it all is sometimes, I knew it wouldn't work early on. Drew was living in the past, he wanted to revert their relationship back to the way it was when they were Connor and Allison. When Cole was with Drew, she was wearing fancy dresses, going to dinner parties, and making decisions on the purchase of million dollar Yachts. Drew didn't encourage her Cello playing or dreams of going to Julliard. When she was with Drew, the Cole we saw with Griffon in Transcendence, was slowly disappearing.

As cheesy as this is about to sound while reading this book I kept repeating things to myself like "Just because some other girl left you doesn't mean that Cole will too, stop judging her based off of what someone else did" and "Cole is not Allison, they are not the same person, can't you see that!!" There are important messages for teens.

Not to mention that there is a bigger plot in the book.


*Bigger spoilers*




Veronique comes back and has discovered a way to change normal people into Akhet.

I'm excited to see what comes with book three.

Listservs

Listservs are officially the greatest invention ever and there are two reasons why. First this poor patron comes in to the library the other day and is beating herself up trying to remember the title to a book she read last year. She has a random scattering of information that was rather vague. There was a girl and a boy and they both discovered they had powers. The girl could produce light and other random information. The only thing that stood out was that the girl was a cartographer in the beginning of the book and the patron was sure that there were other books in the series. As she's telling me what she knows about this book and what the cover looked like I'm typing it all into an e-mail in as organized a way as possible and then I sent it out to the Speak and YALSA listservs and got a ton of reply's all suggesting the same book so I'm going to assume they're right. It's so amazing how we can all connect like that. I love it!!!!

Second I needed new ideas for my Free Read Teen Book Club, and sent a mass message out about that too. Come to find out that Marissa Meyer, the author of the Lunar Chronicles will do a 20 min. Skype chat for free. So guess what I'm working to set up. I've already ordered the books through ILL. Hopefully it wont take a million years for them to get here, and we can chat with Marissa Meyer.

Haven I mentioned lately that I love my job!!

Gone- Review

  In the blink of an eye. Everyone disappears. GONE.

Except for the young. Teens. Middle schoolers. Toddlers. But not one single adult. No teachers, no cops, no doctors, no parents. Just as suddenly, there are no phones, no internet, no television. No way to get help. And no way to figure out what's happened.

Hunger threatens. Bullies rule. A sinister creature lurks. Animals are mutating. And the teens themselves are changing, developing new talents—unimaginable, dangerous, deadly powers—that grow stronger by the day.

It's a terrifying new world. Sides are being chosen, a fight is shaping up. Townies against rich kids. Bullies against the weak. Powerful against powerless. And time is running out: On your birthday, you disappear just like everyone else... (goodreads.com)




 I am way late in the game and I'm okay with that. I decided to pick up this book when I was flipping through growing magazine and saw the most recently released books in the series. I'd have to give this book three and a half to four stars, and the simple reason, it was incredibly creative. The plot line of this book was so unique that I feel like, even if I didn't like the characters (which I did), I would have finished the book yesterday. Not only is the idea of people dissapearing literally in front of you eyes so fantastical, when you add that to secret super powers one of two things is bound to happen
1) a cheesy book or 
2) and awesome book.
 I can't figure out how much detail to go into, without ruining the book, so I'm just going to type.

Sam is our main character, he's a beach loving 14 year old who's kind of famous because a few year prior he saved a school bus full of kids when the driver had a heart attack. Being the good guy that he is though he's pretty modet about the whole situation and would rath hang out with his friend Quinn in the water, than be the leader of the pack. 

After the big "poof", as they're calling it, Sam, Quinn (his best friend), Astrid (the girl of his dreams), Little Pete (Astrid's autistic brother), and Edilio (the new kid in town) become the unlikely leaders of a town filled with kids no older than 14. The town is surrounded by a dome that seems to go in a complete circle and burns anyone who touches it, coyotes are talking, kids are mutating, and the kids from the Academy have moved into town and plan on taking over.

This is getting long so I'll try to be quick. A big part of my love for this story was not only the uniqueness of the situation created here, but also the character. I liked Sam, but I really wasn't too caught up on him, he was the typical modest kid who would rather remain indifferent that become responsible for all that was left of his town. My favorite characters were Quinn and Astrid. I loved the fact that Quinn turned out not to be the type of character that I was expecting. He made some... rather questionable decisions in this book and I was unprepared, I thought he would be more like Sam, and I was dead wrong. I liked Astrid because it's very rare to see a nerdy smart girl as the love interest in a book unless the book is being told from her perspective and she's trying to figure out how to make a guy like her. It was refreshing to read the hidden message that a girl can be exactly who she is, Astrid didn't dumb herself down, she never lost focus, and she was very strong in her own way. I loved it.

So those are my thoughts, I can't wait to get around to the next book!

The Programs

So since I've fallen off the wagon and it's been a million years since I've blogged I figured I'd fix that. Summer is winding down to a close and low and behold my Assistant Director is like, make sure you have all your programs and dates to me in two weeks for the Fall flyer, and I'm like... crap. So I've decide to list for you here the current ideas, some of which have been solidified.

1. Murder Mystery (I'm so pumped for this, we're also doing on in like two weeks, my first)
2. Campfire Nights
3. Extreme haunted house building
4. Banded books reading (where you read and talk about a passage from a banned book)
5. Genre roulete (the teen book club will roll giant genre dice to pick a new genre to read for book club)
6. Fort Time Story Time (building blanket forts will the little guys and going under it for story time)
7. Or course there will be two anime clubs *sigh* still stressed about that one.
8. I'm thinking on improv nights where we play all the improv games I learned as a Theatre major in college.
9. We did History jeopardy and that well well so I have more of those.
10. Anime bingo was a big hit some I'm thinking Harry Potter bingo, and maybe bingo based off other popular books
11. Lets not forget our annual holiday party, always a big event

I'm sure the list will grow in the next two weeks but here's what I'm working with so far. So excited!!

No Time

There doesn't seem to be time for anything this summer. At first I though, alright things have calmed down after the Summer Read Kickoff I'll have plenty of time to blog, now my co-worker is moving so I'm alone for a bit (although my boss does come out to help). Now I've just learned how to set up carts to place orders in Baker and Taylor and transfer the information in those carts to excel spreadsheets for tech services (so that's on my plate), not to mention trying to figure out what to do about anime club for August and the months that follow, although I'm pretty sure I'm just going to have to split it into two different clubs (Anime Club for older teens, and Jr. Anime Drawing Club). I have to begin getting my brain together because starting in September I'll be in charge of Monday morning story times, so I have to go back to researching that, not to mention that's when classes begin again.

So there's my rant about life, I'm going to go scan in some book now. Toodles :)

And the learning continues

So back in October I held an anime program called read it, watch it, draw it, and we did exactly those thee things. I had three girls in attendance. That was suppose to be the end of the program. I never had any intentions of continuing, but the three girls that I had continued to ask so I figured what the heck. I was so nervous about creating this new club, and I had just been offered the position that I'm in now so I was terrified of what I'd do if I had low or no attendance. I decided that even though I really wanted anime club to be a teen program, I'd take whoever would show up, so I'd have good numbers.

Fast forward from October to now, and at the last anime club there were like sixteen kids. It was out of control. I was trying to do candy sushi, but there were some parents who were annoyed because they thought that the kids were going to be drawing. The older kids were annoyed by the younger kids, and it just wasn't my best night ever. I decided that the only way to fix this was to go back to my original plan and make anime club 14 and up. There are so many activities that the older kids in the club want to do (like anime jeopardy, and anime charades, and cosplay) but we can't because the younger kids wouldn't be able to participate. The younger kid sin my group (between the ages of 9 and 12) see the anime drawings that I have posted around the room and they also like to draw and watch cartoons so it seems like anime club is the perfect place for them to be, or they've decided that they really love Pokemon so they should join anime club (apparently Pokemon is taboo now, who knew).

The issue that I've run into is that, with summer there are going to be more kids who want to attend programs and be at the library. If I restrict the age of Anime Club to 14 and up, then I have kids from ages 9 to 13 who now need something to do, and I have no idea what that something should be. I guess I could do like an anime junior, and they could watch tv and draw (which bored my older hard core anime loves to death), or I could do some times of drawing club because they all seem to love that. I don't know what I'm going to do yet.

However I have learned the importance to choosing appropriate ages for programs, it's a bigger deal than I realized. I initially assumed that if everyone wanted to be there, then it would be okay, but I was wrong. Within the perimeters of the program everyone has to be on the same mental level or you'll always have kids who are "too advanced" to be there or "not at the level of others" and someone will always feel left out which is my worst fear.

At the end of the day this is almost a good problem to have. I have more kids attending a program than I can handle, now I just have to make sure I can find things for them to do that is mentally stimulating and fun for everyone.