The Library Media Center welcomes you back to another school year at Garden Spot High School and Middle School!  The Library is expanding its services this year, by having a Librarian in the Media Center every Tuesday and Thursday.  Be sure to stop in and meet Mrs. Betzner, Mrs. Means, and Ms. Tenenbaum.  They can help you find something fun to read, assist you with research assignments, show you how to cite your sources correctly, and direct you to the best resources for your projects. If you prefer e-books and audio books, we can show you how to use Overdrive to find them. You can access all the e-resources 24/7 online both at school and at home. The Media Center will also be offering special programs and activities for Teen Read Week, Teen Tech Week, and National Library Week. No matter what your information or reading needs, the Library Media Center has you covered!  Hope to see you in the Media Center!

Playaways are self-contained audiobooks.  All you need to use them is a set of headphones – yours or ours.  They’re small – easily fit in a pocket or computer case.  They run on batteries, which the library supplies. And they’re entertaining to listen to – read in an interesting voice.  Check out some of these new Playaway titles.  They are also available as books or eBooks.

Image courtesy of Follett.com

Al Capone Does my Homework continues the stories from Al Capone Does my Shirts.  and  Al Capone Shines My Shoes.  In all of these, the teen writer lives on Alcatrez with his family in the 1930s while his father is a prison guard there and interesting things happen to Moose because of it.  You’ll find reading these books to be a lot more fun than living on Alcatrez surely was!  Find out what it’s like interact with one of the most famous gangsters of the time.

Courtesy of Follett.com

D-Day, the Invasion of Normandy, 1944 is available as a book or a Playaway,   You will find so much information and many interesting stories about this successful, but very costly, invasion.  Packed with facts, dates, times and individual accounts of this eventful day.  This is a non-fiction book.

Also look for these and more:

Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer about a teen law enthusiast and problem solver.

Crossing the Wire about a penniless teen struggling to cross the Mexican border.

Fellowship of the Rings – the first in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Guts – the true stories behind Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet and Brian books.

Explore Science in

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Inside Biosphere 2 by Mary Kay Carson, the story of living life under glass, sealed in a self-contained engineered  ecosystem.  Find out how 8 scientists did this for two years and what they discovered.  Could you?

Image Courtesy of Follett.com

Explore new languages in

How to Speak Dog.  Okay, maybe you won’t really learn a new language, but you will get some clues on what your dog may be trying to tell you when he barks or doesn’t bark, when he’s happy or not at all happy.  And it has lots of great pictures, too.  You can speak Dog!

Explore History through

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Courage and Defiance by Deborah Hopkinson, the story of young people in Denmark who took a stand against Nazi Germany’s occupation of their country by becoming spies and saboteurs and finding ways to hide Jews from the Nazis.

We Fought Back by Allan Zullo – the story of teen resistors who thwarted the German army by blowing up trains, attacking convoys and passing messages.

What would you do?  Could you?

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The Cuckoo’s Egg by Cliff Stoll tells the story of an astronomer  who discovered a slight irregularity in their computer system when he became a systems manager in the 1980s.   Out of curiosity, and maybe boredom, he chose to investigate it and ended up tracking a cyber spy for about a year.   He details the ways he devised to track the spy without being detected and the various creative routes the hacker used to accomplish his goal.    Before it was resolved, the military, FBI,  CIA, and others were all involved and watching his progress.

Fascinating Read!

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I just finished Flight of Passage by Rinker Buck and recommend it to you.  It is the true story of two boys, ages 17 and 15, who totally rebuilt a Piper Cub airplane over the winter of 1966/67and then flew it from New Jersey to California the following summer  – without a radio.  I don’t know if you can even do that now!

Lots of flying information and adventures, and a mention of New Holland airport.  Yes there really was one.  It was where Airport Drive and Runway Avenue are now, not far from New Holland Elementary School.  If your grandparents are from New Holland, they will remember it.

As we look toward Spring with eager anticipation of warmer days, brighter sunshine, and new beginnings, consider brightening your reading with some changes and some different books.

If you’ve always enjoyed:

Mysteries – try reading a book on criminology or true crime.

Realistic fiction – try some biographies

Dystopian – try Science fiction or fantasy

History – try historical fiction

Action/Adventure  – try some real life adventure accounts or epic disasters

Branch out.  Explore. Try something new.

There is no risk in a library book – unless you get hooked on reading!

Images courtesy of Follett.com

And what is romance without Nicholas Sparks?  You loved him in The Notebook and you will also love him in one of his many other books.  Try At First Sight, Message in a Bottle, Safe Haven, and Dear John.

Or try some of these other popular authors:
Melissa Kantor in The Breakup Bible, which is a book about recovering from a romantic breakup.  Always good information to have!

Sarah Dessen in Along for the Ride or one of her other fun books.

Jerry Spinelli in Stargirl, a book about the joys and perils of first love.

Tucker Shaw in Flavor of the Week, which includes yummy recipes along with a mixed up love triangle.

Or read a real life love story with a real princess – William and Kate

Or try a classic like Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, a love story set in the middle of the Russian Revolution.

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How it Went Down by Kekla Magoon tells of the shooting of a young back teen by a white male.  But it is only told through the voices of those who witnessed the event or who knew the main characters and it is amazing how no 2 accounts are exactly the same.  So which one is the truth?  What really happened?

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The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone by Adele Griffin also involves a death – was it suicide or something else?  Addison Stone was a strongly gifted artist who didn’t live by the normal rules and all those whose lives she touched try to figure out her life after her death.  Again, there is more than one side to this remarkable life.

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Want to Go Private? by Sarah Littman is told in parts – first by the main character, Abby, who hooks up with an incredibly wonderful guy named Luke online. Then her voice disappears abruptly and we hear from surrounding voices: her younger sister, best friend, boyfriend, parents and more.  We see there is more to discover about Abby and this situation.

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And then, just for light-hearted entertainment, there is the book, A Little Something Different, by Sandy Hall.  This is a romance, but the two main characters never have a voice.  The whole story is told through other characters, including, but not limited to, a Chinese delivery guy, a professor, a park bench, and a bus driver.  It’s just lots of fun, especially the squirrel who is nuts over nuts and the park bench who rates butts – they’re not all created equal!

Be thankful for …

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Your LIBRARY CARD – school or public.  It opens the doors to so many possibilities and it’s FREE!

It places thousands of books and eBooks, movies and TV shows, magazines, and more  at your fingertips.  It gives you resources and references for your own information or for papers and projects; provides admission to neat programs; gives you computer and internet access; and gives you 24/7 access to online, anytime help from a librarian.

Use it often – The more you use it the smarter you grow!

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October is a great time to catch up on your mystery reading and to meet some new mystery writers! You may already be familiar with Lois Duncan, but have you ever read some of the classic authors like Agatha Christie (British) and Mary Higgins Clark (American)?

Norah McClintock is a newer mystery writer whose main character, Robyn Hunter, is a teenaged girl who finds the answers that adults miss – you’ll love her!

Other mystery writers to try:

John Grisham, who writes legal thrillers and mysteries

James Patterson, author of the Maximum Ride series and more

Carol Plum-Ucci, Jean Lowery Nixon, Anthony Horowitz, Alane Ferguson and many more.