New DVDs for you!

Here are just a few of the new DVDs you can find at the library: Michael Jackson’s: This is It, Fame, and Whip-It. There are lots more on the new DVDs page of the library web site, so be sure to check out the list.

Something for Vampire Fans

The second season of  I <3 Vampires, the web series on take180.com, has started. For those of you that are not familiar with the series, it’s about Corbin, a girl who runs a fansite for her favorite book, Confessions of a High School Vampire. Corbin and her best friend, Luci,  soon find out the book may be more than a fictional story. If you haven’t seen any of the series, you can start with season one.

Top 10 Books (that I’ve read recently!)

Another Teen Advisory Top Ten:

1. Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins – In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss’s skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister’s place.
2. Princess Mia, Meg Cabot – While Mia tries to get over breaking up with her boyfriend, she discovers a diary kept by a former princess of Genovia from the 1600s, the contents of which could change the fate of her country forever.
3. Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature, Robin Brande – Following her conscience leads high school freshman Mena to clash with her parents and former friends from their conservative Christian church, but might result in better things when she stands up for a teacher who refuses to include “Intelligent Design” in lessons on evolution.
4. If I Stay, Gayle Forman – While in a coma following an automobile accident that killed her parents and younger brother, seventeen-year-old Mia, a gifted cellist, weights whether to live with her grief or join her family in death.
5. Story of a Girl, Sara Zarr – In the three years since her father caught her in the back seat of a car with an older boy, sixteen-year-old Deanna’s life at home and school has been a nightmare, but while dreaming of escaping with her brother and his family, she discovers the power of forgiveness.
6. A Certain Slant of Light, Laura Whitcomb – After benignly haunting a series of people for 130 years, Helen meets a teenage boy who can see her and together they unlock the mysteries of their pasts.
7. A Cat Among the Pigeons, Agatha Christie – Another term has begun at Meadowbank, a prestigious, well-respected British girls’ school. But the school year suddenly takes a deadly turn when one of the teachers is found shot to death. As the investigation ensues, it becomes clear that the killer was not an outsider—and equally clear that no one at Meadowbank is who he or she seems to be.
8. Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen – In a remote Hertfordshire village, far off the good coach roads of George III’s England, a country squire of no great means must marry off his five vivacious daughters. At the heart of this all-consuming enterprise are his headstrong second daughter Elizabeth Bennet and her aristocratic suitor Fitzwilliam Darcy—two lovers whose pride must be humbled and prejudice dissolved before the novel can come to its splendid conclusion.
9. How They Met and Other Stories, David Levithan – A collection of eighteen stories describing the surprises, sacrifices, doubts, pain, and joy of falling in love.
10. Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison – Presents the humorous journal of a year in the life of a fourteen-year-old British girl who tries to reduce the size of her nose, stop her mad cat from terrorizing the neighborhood animals, and win the love of handsome hunk Robbie.

Looking for a good mystery?

Each year the Mystery Writers of America present the Edgar Awards to honor the best in mysteries. There is a category for teen novels, and this year’s nominees were recently announced. If you’re looking for a good mystery, you may want to start with one of these nominees. (This year’s fifth nominee, Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone by Dene Low, won’t be available until June. As a result, I haven’t listed it here cause, um, you can’t get it at the library yet.) The winner will be announced on April 29th.

Edgar Nominees Available at Monroe County Public Libraries:

If the Witness Lied, Caroline Cooney
Torn apart by tragedies and the publicity they brought, siblings Smithy, Jack, and Madison, aged fourteen to sixteen, tap into their parent’s courage to pull together and protect their brother Tris, nearly three, from further media exploitation and a much more sinister threat.

The Morgue and Me, John C. Ford
Eighteen-year-old Christopher, who plans to be a spy, learns of a murder cover-up through his summer job as a morgue assistant and teams up with Tina, a gorgeous newspaper reporter, to investigate, despite great danger.

Reality Check, Peter Abrahams
After a knee injury destroys sixteen-year-old Cody’s college hopes, he drops out of high school and gets a job in his small Montana town, but when his ex-girlfriend disappears from her Vermont boarding school, Cody travels cross-country to join the search.

Shadowed Summer, Saundra Mitchell
In the small town of Ondine, Louisiana, fourteen-year-old Iris uncovers family secrets when she conjures up the ghost of a boy missing for decades and decides to solve the mystery of his disappearance.

More new books

Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine

A photographic negative and two surprising new friends become the catalyst for healing as fifteen-year-old Rowan struggles to keep her family and her life together after her brother’s death.

Hold Still by Nina LaCour

Ingrid didn’t leave a note. Three months after her best friend’s suicide, Caitlin finds what she left instead: a journal, hidden under Caitlin’s bed.

 

The Secret Year by Jennifer Hubbard

Reading the journal of the high-society girl he was secretly involved with for a year helps high school senior Colt cope with her death and come closer to understanding why she needed him while continuing to be the girlfriend of a wealthy classmate.

 

Little Black Lies by Tish Cohen

Starting her junior year at an ultra-elite Boston school, sixteen-year-old Sara, hoping to join the popular crowd, hides that her father not only is the school janitor, but also has obsessive-compulsive disorder.

 

Chasing Brooklyn by Lisa Schroeder

As teenagers Brooklyn and Nico work to help each other recover from the deaths of Brooklyn’s boyfriend–Nico’s brother Lucca–and their friend Gabe, the two begin to rediscover their passion for life, and a newly blossoming passion for one another.

 

 

Hate List by Jennifer Brown

Sixteen-year-old Valerie, whose boyfriend Nick committed a school shooting at the end of their junior year, struggles to cope with integrating herself back into high school life, unsure herself whether she was a hero or a villain.

 

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

To free herself from an upcoming arranged marriage, Claudia, the daughter of the Warden of Incarceron, a futuristic prison with a mind of its own, decides to help a young prisoner escape.

 

 

They Never Came Back by Caroline Cooney

When fifteen-year-old Cathy decides to carpool from Norwalk to  Greenwich, Connecticut, to study Latin in summer school, she does not expect the shocking events that occurred five years earlier to suddenly come flooding back into her relatively settled life.

Duplikate by Cherry Cheva

When she wakes up one morning to find her double in her room, seventeen-year-old Kate, already at wit’s end with college applications, finals, and extracurricular activities, decides to put her to work.

 

 

Captivate by Carrie Jones

High school junior Zara and her friends continue to try to contain the pixies that threaten their small Maine town, but when a Valkyrie takes Zara’s boyfriend, Nick, to Valhalla, the only way to save him is to trust a pixie king, Astley.

Top Ten Books (that I’ve read recently)

Here’s another top 10 from one of our Teen Advisory Board members.

1. The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom – Weaves three stories about 83-year-old Eddie, the head maintenance person at Ruby Point Amusement park. Eddie meets 5 individuals in heaven each with a story to share, a secret to reveal and a lesson. The have profound meanings for Eddie on the real purpose of his life.
2. Life As We Knew It, Susan Beth Pfeffer – Through journal entries sixteen-year-old Miranda describes her family’s struggle to survive after a meteor hits the moon, causing worldwide tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions.
3. One for the Money, Janet Evanovich – Out-of-work Stephanie Plum blackmails her bail bondsman cousin into giving her a try as an apprehension agent.  Her first case involves tracking down a former vice cop on the run from a charge of murder one, a man who also happens to be her former boyfriend.
4. Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins – In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss’s skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister’s place.
5. Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins – By winning the annual Hunger Games, District 12 tributes Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark have secured a life of safety and plenty for themselves and their families, but because they won by defying the rules, they unwittingly become the faces of an impending rebellion.
6. Twilight, Stephenie Meyer – When seventeen-year-old Bella leaves Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exquisitely handsome boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming attraction and who she comes to realize is not wholly human.
7. Love Story, Erich Segal – Opposites in nearly every way, Oliver and Jenny immediately attract, sharing a love that defies everything … yet will end too soon.
8. The Giver, Lois Lowry – Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.
9. The Land, Mildred Taylor – After the Civil War Paul, the son of a white father and a black mother, finds himself caught between the two worlds of colored folks and white folks as he pursues his dream of owning land of his own.
10. The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck – Wang Lung joyfully sets out for the city to retrieve his bride, a slave girl from the great House of Hwang. Together they build a good life: laboring in the fields, frugally running a household, and raising two healthy sons. But when drought brings hunger and starvation, Wang Lung is forced to remove his family from the land he loves and journey to the city in search of work.

Award Winning Books

Every year the Young Adult Library Association gives out the Michael L. Printz Award. Similar to the Newbery, the Printz is awarded to a book that exemplifies excellence in teen literature from the current year. This year’s award was given to Going Bovine, by Libba Bray. Honor books included Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman, The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey, Punkzilla by Adam Rapp, and Tales of the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance, 1973 by John Barnes. You can find past winners on the Michael L. Printz Award website.

More info on this year’s winners:

Going Bovine, by Libba Bray
Cameron Smith, a disaffected sixteen year-old who, after being diagnosed with Creutzfeld Jakob’s (aka mad cow) disease, sets off on a road trip with a death-obsessed video gaming dwarf he meets in the hospital in an attempt to find a cure.

Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith, by Deborah Heiligman
Once Charles Darwin sets his rational mind to marry the religious Emma Wedgeworth, they both must take a leap of faith in order to build a life together.

The Monstrumologist, by Rick Yancey
Will Henry, orphan and assistant to a monstrumologist, races against time to save his town (and himself) from the anthropophagi, a pod of monstrous creatures who prey on humans.

Punkzilla, by Adam Rapp
“Punkzilla” is on a mission to see his older brother “P”, before “P” dies of cancer. Still buzzing from his last hit of meth, he embarks on a days-long trip from Portland, Ore. to Memphis, Tenn., writing letters to his family and friends. Along the way, he sees a sketchier side of America and worries if he will make it to see his brother in time.

Tales of the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance, 1973, by John Barnes
Karl Shoemaker wants to begin his senior year with a new identity separate from his counseling group, his alcoholic mother and the legacy of his dead father.

Teen Author Podcasts

Are you a fan of teen authors like Melissa Marr, Sara Shepard, Elizabeth Scott, Gordon Korman, and Meg Cabot? If so, you may want to check out the HarperTeen Podcast. The podcast gives you an opportunity to hear about books directly from the author. It looks like new podcasts are produced each June, as the summer approaches. You can listen to 2008 and 2009 right now!

New Books

Two new books came in today. Here they are:

Remote Control, Jack Heath (Sequel to The Lab)
Teenage agent Six of Hearts is suspected of being a double agent, which has him on the run from his fellow agents at the Deck while also trying to track down his brother’s kidnappers.

Heartless: A Pretty Little Liars Novel, Sara Shepard
After high school juniors Spencer, Emily, Hanna, and Aria think they have seen Ali, their missing and presumed dead friend, they pursue clues from a mysterious stalker, trying to find out if she is still alive.

Top Ten Books (that I’ve read recently)

Yet another list from one of our Teen Advisory Board members.

1. Inkheart, Cornelia Funke – Twelve-year-old Meggie learns that her father, who repairs and binds books for a living, can “read” fictional characters to life when one of those characters abducts them and tries to force him into service.
2. Ironhand, Charlie Fletcher – Having upset the balance between the warring statues of London, twelve-year-old George is confronted with new challenges as he tries to free his captured friends Edie and The Gunner from the formidable Walker and deal with the three strange veins of marble, bronze, and stone that have begun to grow out of his hand.
3. Monster Blood Tattoo: Foundling, D.M. Cornish – Having grown up in a home for foundlings and possessing a girl’s name, Rossamünd sets out to report to his new job as a lamplighter and has several adventures along the way as he meets people and monsters who are more complicated that he previously thought. Includes glossaries and maps.
4. It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Ned Vizzini – A humorous account of a New York City teenager’s battle with depression and his time spent in a psychiatric hospital.
5. Marked: A House of Night Novel, P.C. Cast & Kristin Cast – Sixteen-year-old Zoey Redbird has just been Marked as a fledgling vampyre and joins the House of Night, a school where she will train to become an adult vampire. That is, if she makes it through the Change–and not all of those who are Marked do.
6. Glass Houses: Morganville Vampires, Rachel Caine – In Morganville, Texas, a small college town where evil terrorizes the streets under the cover of darkness, Claire Danvers discovers that her new roommates are vampires and all hell breaks loose as the living party with the dead.
7. Skin, Adrienne Vrettos – When his parents decide to separate, eighth-grader Donnie watches with horror as the physical condition of his sixteen-year old sister, Karen, deteriorates due to an eating disorder.
8. The Amulet of Samarkand, Jonathan Stroud – Nathaniel, a magician’s apprentice, summons up the djinni Bartimaeus and instructs him to steal the Amulet of Samarkand from the powerful magician Simon Lovelace.
9. Tricks, Ellen Hopkins – Five troubled teenagers fall into prostitution as they search for freedom, safety, community, family, and love.
10. The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer – In a future where humans despise clones, Matt enjoys special status as the young clone of El Patrón, the 142-year-old leader of a corrupt drug empire nestled between Mexico and the United States.