Teen Blog

Let’s face it, people--this vampire craze might just be on its way out. Passé. Gone from undead to dead again. A new kind of hero has been taking their place. A powerful being with brains, creativity, and money on his side.  This is a new kind of hero for the ages: The Super-villain.

It happens all the time. You’re sitting in the movie theater with your friends, waiting for the show to start. The screen goes green with a preview message, then suddenly blasts alive with a trailer for an upcoming movie. It’s all over in less than a minute, but you know by that time that either a)you have to see it and are already mentally marking your calendar for the release date, or b) it looks like another lame romantic comedy/action-thriller/horror flick you’ve seen a hundred times before and you’re not wasting your money on that.

But what if you had the chance to tell the story? Oftentimes, a good trailer can make even a lame movie seem pretty appealing. People across the country, especially teens, are being given the chance to do just that, but for books through book trailer contests. And, because so many books are being turned into movies these days, it’s easy to find creative fodder for the aspiring teen film directors out there.

This is Week 12 of a 12-Week series of blog posts reviewing new young adult books. To see all of the reviews, click here.

In Kathryn Erskine's "Mockingbird," Caitlin’s world is black and white, and she likes it that way, whether it’s her view of life or her meticulous monotone drawings. Since The Day Our Life Fell Apart when her brother Devon was killed in a school shooting, she and her widowed father keep to simple routines. This is important to kids like Caitlin, a fifth grader with Asperger’s Syndrome. Clear boundaries make it easier to cope, especially when she’s trying hard to follow her counselor’s advice to Look At The Person and Mind Your Manners. 

This is Week 11 of a 12-Week series of blog posts reviewing new young adult books. Check back each Monday for a new review.

We want to see your vacation pics! Post a picture on our Facebook wall between August 1-31 of you & your library book (or video, cd, etc.) on your vacation (or staycation). A random winner will be chosen to receive a CRRL t-shirt. The winner will be announced September 1.
Have fun and be creative!

For science fiction aficionados, the premise of WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer initially sounds, well, perhaps a bit contrived (even beyond the normal contrivances of science fiction).  But keep reading: the protagonist, Caitlin Dector, is a young blind millennial who has never known a world without the Internet, a world she can navigate with ease through the use of assistive technologies.  Caitlin becomes the subject of an experimental procedure to restore sight.  However, when her vision is "switched on" she does not see the physical world, but an abstract representation of the World Wide Web.  While exploring her strange new ability, she discovers a growing intelligence emerging from within the Web . . .   see what I mean?  My first thought after hearing this description was, "That sounds like the plot of a bad 90s Outer Limits episode."  After cracking the book open however, I found WWW: Wake tells a fascinating story, blending the best of both science fiction and hard science as well as cyberculture, blind culture, information theory, epidemiology, world politics, family dynamics, pedagogical theory, teenage culture, and probably a few other things I'm not thinking of.  All of that in one book.  And it's really, really good. 

This is Week 10 of a 12-Week series of blog posts reviewing new young adult books. Check back each Monday for a new review.

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl is a page-turning story of star-crossed teenage love with a Southern gothic twist and a side of magic.

In the town of Gatlin, South Carolina, everyone knows everybody's business and nothing exciting ever happens, unless you count the annual re-enactment of a local Civil War battle. Unbeknownst to the residents of Gatlin (at least most residents) beneath the thick Southern accents and Spanish moss lurks a whole other magical world, one of hidden underground libraries, voodoo and deadly family curses.

Lena Duchannes and Ethan Wate bridge the gap between these two worlds - two worlds that were never meant to meet.

This year marks the 65th anniversary of one of the most disastrous and tragic events in the history of humankind. Hiroshima Day is observed in many parts of the world with special vigils and peace marches. It is held to commemorate the dropping of the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Watch this video of a survivor describing the Hiroshima bombing. Three days later a second bomb fell on the city of Nagasaki. "Peace Day" was declared on the first anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima by the Japanese to try to ensure that the horrendous, enduring effects of nuclear warfare would never be repeated.

"Now we see in a glass dimly, but then face to face."