Teen Blog

Tell us your life in 3 words with photos, no more than 3, or a video, no more than 3 minutes long.

Entries will be accepted online February 3-March 3. Enter here!

Vote online March 4-10.

Me in 3 is in celebration of Teen Tech Week sponsored by the American Library Association.

The winner receives a NOOK Color.

Check out this video to get an idea of what we're looking for. For help getting started, here are some great websites.

When Alex wakes on a Saturday morning, everything seems different. His mom is calling for him to hurry, but she sounds odd. And why does he need to get ready for school when it's the weekend? The last thing he remembers from the night before is leaving his best friend's house and running through the street. Now Alex feels very unusual. His mom calls again.

"Philip! It's five to eight!"

Every year the American Library Association gives awards for the best new books for children and young adults. Probably the oldest and most famous of these prizes are the Randolph Caldecott Medal, given for illustration, and the John Newbery Medal, given for children’s literature. This year, life stories and family stories feature prominently in the prizes.

The 2012 Newbery Award-winning young adult novel, Dead End in Norvelt, is set in the 1960s.  Norvelt, Pennsylvania—named for EleaNOR RooseVELT--was created by the federal government in the 1930s as a place for laid-off coal miners to live. By 1962, Norvelt has become the author’s small-town hometown…a place for spending his 12^th summer getting into trouble in all kinds of interesting and often funny ways. Jack Gantos has written something here that blends fiction with autobiography for a really entertaining and memorable read.

In his book Lawn Boy, Gary Paulsen has done a wonderful job of capturing an everyday job for a tween boy--like mowing the lawn--and expanding it into a hilarious summer experience. 

Lawn Boy is a great book for boys, but I think girls will enjoy it, too. Paulsen elaborates on experiences most all teens can relate to--like not having any money and being bored during summer vacation. They’re too young to drive but not that interested in toys, unless you consider video games toys. And if they want to get new video games to play, they have to come up with the funds to buy them.

In the dark of night, a monster approaches Conor’s bedroom window. The massive, human-like gnarl of branches with its thunderous voice fails to frighten the boy. You see, Conor has already glimpsed the source of his personal terror. It lives in his nightmares.

A Monster Calls was written after Patrick Ness used outlines and ideas from the British writer Siobhan Dowd, a Carnegie Medal-winning author who died of cancer in 2007. The final product is a taut, suspenseful reflection on losing a loved one, accompanied by the message to be honest with one’s self.

Years ago, three-year-old Gerald was left home alone in an apartment where a fire broke out. When authorities discovered that Gerald was home by himself, he was removed from the custody of his substance-addicted mother Monique and sent to live with his aunt. While living with his Aunt, Queen, Gerald is happy. After his aunt dies when he is nine, his mother returns but now she has a new husband, Jordan, and a daughter, Angel. Gerald goes to live with them, but he soon learns that all is not well. Jordan works sporadically and is abusive towards Angel and Monique. Monique does not stand up to Jordan--in fact she spends most of her time trying to please him. Jordan's abusive behavior towards Angel is a constant source of distress for Gerald. Soon the problems escalate to a point that force Gerald's hand in Forged by Fire, by Sharon Draper.

Do you remember Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet? Well, perhaps that storyline is not true, and Juliet did not kill herself. Perhaps Romeo Montague killed Juliet Capulet.  It was he, her soul mate and new husband, who committed a terrible crime. Romeo gave up Juliet to the hands of the Mercenaries, demons who seek to destroy love and separate soul mates. Juliet Immortal, a fantasy by Stacey Jay, retells the story of what happened between Shakespeare’s famous lovers.

Juliet has spent seven hundred years working for the Ambassadors of Light after Nurse, her Ambassador guide, saved her soul on the night Romeo killed her. At that moment, Juliet pledged allegiance to the Ambassadors’ cause, which is to bring soul mates together and make sure that their love blooms. She now spends much of her time in a dark mist, from which she is only taken out by the Ambassadors of Light to return to Earth, shift into a borrowed body, and assist soul mates. However, Romeo is working against her, and his allegiance to the Mercenaries makes Romeo and Juliet immortal enemies.

You are invited to join members of the library's Youth Services Team as they choose the title they think will win this year's Sibert Award.  The youth services staff  will hold a mock awards ceremony prior to the actual announcement.  Please join us at 4 p.m on Thursday, January 19, in the Headquarters Library Theater. 

The Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal is awarded annually to the author and illustrator of a children's informational book published in the United States in the preceding year. The award is named in honor of Robert F. Sibert, the long time President of Bound to Stay Bound Books of Jacksonville, Illinois. The actual award winner for 2011 will be announced  at 7:45 a.m. CT on January 23, 2012.

On January 9th, team members will present and discuss the following titles which they have chosen as finalists:

Can We Save the Tiger? by Martin Jenkins and illustrated by Vicky White

The tiger is just one of thousands of animals -- including the ground iguana, the white-rumped vulture, and the partula snail -- currently in danger of becoming extinct, joining the dodo, the marsupial wolf, the great auk, and countless others we will never see again.

Flesh and Blood so Cheap: The Triangle Fire and its Legacy by Albert Marrin

Provides a detailed account of the disastrous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City, which claimed the lives of 146 garment workers in 1911, and examines the impact of this event on the nation's working conditions and labor laws.

The Girls by Amy Goldman Koss takes a look into the lives of middle-school girls and the cliques that can rule their relationships. This novel uncovers the world of bullying by presenting a first-person view from each of the five girls involved in the lost friendship. Throughout the text Koss digs deep into the workings of bullying and also gives hope to those that might experience bullying themselves.

Maya, Rene, Breanna, Darcy, and Candace have promised to be friends forever. But this all changes one day when Candace decides that Maya is no longer welcome to hang out with the girls. Maya is unaware of the girls’ change of heart. She calls to invite her friends to go to an amusement park with her, but for some reason none of the girls wants to go. She soon finds out that the others are having a party, and no one even thought to invite her. This wouldn't be such a big problem except for the fact that the five of them usually do everything together.

Phineas Gage was truly a man with a hole in his head.  Phineas, a railroad construction foreman, was blasting rock near Cavendish, Vermont, in 1848 when a thirteen-pound iron rod was shot through his brain.  Miraculously, he survived to live another eleven years and become a textbook case in brain science.  

What an amazing story!  The pictures and illustrations add to the narrative, and the cover photograph of his skull is very thought-provoking.  Phineas Gage: A Gruesome But True Story, by John Fleischman, approaches Phineas’s life after the accident from a scientific and psychological viewpoint. Fleischman includes interviews with people who knew Gage before his accident as well as after and observed the changes in his behavior.  The author also presents notes from the doctors who treated him over the eleven years following his accident. It is an amazing story of survival and the resilience of the human brain. Who would have thought that anyone could have survived even a little while--let alone talk, walk and function after such an event?