Camden County Library Teen Zone

VOTE! Help Choose This Year's Teens' Top Ten!!

 

 

Teens can voice their choice for their favorite books by voting in YALSA’s annual Teens’ Top Ten poll! Voting is open now through Sept. 18 at www.ala.org/teenstopten. YALSA extended the voting period this year to four weeks, with more time for teens to fit voting into their busy schedules, particularly at the start of the school year. We’ll announce the winners in a webcast during Teen Read Week, Oct. 18-24.

 

Happy Voting!

 

Good Morning America's Picks for Teens!

Do you love to read and want to find out about some great new books?  Looking for the perfect beach read?  Just need a book for your school's summer reading program?  If yes, check out Good Morning America's list for great Teen Summer Reads!

The list includes books by such authors as Sarah Dessen, James Patterson, and Katie MacAlister.  We just ordered all of the books on GMA's list, so if you don't see it in the catalog yet, don't panic.  It will be here at the library shortly!

Happy reading!

~Christen

Tween & Teen Booktalk (March 2009)

Tween & Teen Booktalk

March 2009

The Compound by S.A. Bodeen

Eli is the son of a millionaire technological geni us, who built an underground compound so that his family could survive the nuclear war raging outside. At fifteen, Eli has been shut inside for nearly seven years -- socked in by a haunting silver door, never quite letting go of the memories of his twin brother and his gram, the two family members who didn't reach the compound before that horrid silver door was closed. Food and supplies are running out, tensions are tight, and Eli is making discoveries that will alter the very world as he knows it, not to mention the people he thought he understood. Everything is masked behind secrets and sabotage, and who Eli chooses to trust could mean the difference between life and death!

Y Bod

What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell

In 1947, with her jovial stepfather Joe back from the war and family life returning to normal, teenage Evie, smitten by the handsome young ex-GI who seems to have a secret hold on Joe, finds herself caught in a complicated web of lies whose devastating outcome change her life and that of her family forever.

Y Blu

Persistence of Memory by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Diagnosed with schizophrenia as a child, sixteen-year-old Erin has spent half of her life in therapy and on drugs, but now must face the possibility of weird things in the real world, including shapeshifting friends and her "alter," a centuries-old vampire.

Y Atw

 

Blissfully Booklish

Hey girls! 

One of our library's teen patrons recently created an online book discussion forum for teen girls called Blissfully Booklish.  The forum's creator is Tara  and she created the website for all girls that enjoy the love of reading.  This online book club offers many girly fun books that she hopes all will enjoy! You can sign up today for the book club by e-mailing Tara at blissfullybooklish@hotmail.com.

~Christen

Summer Reading Lists Now Available

Don't wait till the last minute to get your assigned summer reading done!  The library has the books you need right now.  At the end of the summer there's a rush for the books, and you may find yourself on a waiting list.  So get started soon.  Drop by your local branch, or request the titles you need online through our catalog.  Summer Reading Lists

New Tween Newsletter

Camden County Library will now have a monthly e-mail newsletter for middle-schoolers. Every month, we'll suggest fun and fascinating fiction (and some nonfiction) for the tween crowd.  Subscribe now and receive the first issue in mid-May.   Sign up for a newsletter.

Leaving Dirty Jersey Author To Speak at South Brunswick Public Library

James Salant;  author of Leaving Dirty Jersey

Friday, November 9^th from 6:30pm to 8pm. 

In its first pages, this disturbing memoir sees 18 year-old Salant in a California drug recovery center some 3,000 miles from his upper-middle class Princeton home.

His memoir explores the allure and effects of the least understood drug of our time, crystal meth.  It has been called a compulsively readable, superbly told story that is shocking precisely because it could happen to almost anyone.

Salant’s tale is a detailed and gritty account of a young man from our area spiraling down through the perils of the drug world. 

Dava Sobel, author of the international best seller Longitude, believes “every parent should read this book. And every teenager on the verge of a drug trip should read it. And everyone else, too. It's that good, that important."

Hear Mr. Salant, now 23, speak of his experiences, recovery and the reasons he wrote his book.  Autographs will be available after he speaks for those with copies of his book.  There will be some copies given as door prizes at the event.

This event is open to everyone, but is recommended for adults and those in high school due to the explicit discussion of drugs and drug culture.

 
Snacks and door prizes are provided courtesy of the Friends of the Library.
Author provided courtesy of the South Brunswick Municipal Alliance against Substance Abuse.

Directions may be obtained at www.sbpl.info.

Hope to see some of you there!!!

My Dead Girlfriend = My Favorite New Book

Although I am delighted to host monthly Anime & Manga Club meetings at the Voorhees branch of our fair library system, I'm really a fan of either format.  I watch, and I have tried to read manga, but they're just not really my thing.

So imagine my delight when I found My Dead Girlfriend, a manga-style regular comic of the kind I so love: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back, but with a shocking twist: she's dead! 

Our hero, Finney Bleak, is the youngest member of a family whose sole claim to fame is that every member dies in a spectacularly grim fashion.  There are deaths by cutlass & shark bite, sausage grinder, head injury, and electrocution.  Finney, an outcast at his high school for freaks (he's normal, you see), feels like he's got nothing to look forward to but a memorably gruesome death.  And then he meets Jenny.  They spend a perfect day together at the carnival, agree to meet up later, and then she stands him up.  Heartbroken, Finney obsesses, longs for, and eventually meets up with an undead Jenny at the end of the book (I'm not giving away the best parts, don't worry). 

Written & illustrated by Eric Wight, whose style you may recognize if you were an O.C. watcher (he drew Seth Cohen's Atomic County comics for the show), this first volume in a promising series is funny, bittersweet, and compulsively readable.  I can't wait for the next volumes, which I'll be ordering for the Voorhees branch as they are released.

Persepolis to Close NYC Film Festival

Persepolis and Persepolis 2 are graphic novel memoirs by the Iranian artist Marjane Satrapi.  Fast-paced and eye-opening, the books chronicle Satrapi's childhood under the Islamic Revolution in Iran, her teen years exiled to France, her eventual return to Iran, and her final departure for a life in France as an adult.  The books are also a crash-course in Iranian history and culture: by reading these books, I learned more about Iranian history, Iran's stormy, bloody relationship with Iraq, and the ethnic differences among Iranians and other peoples of the Middle East than I ever did in school. 

Now, these amazing books have been transformed into a great-looking film, which has been selected to close the New York Film Festival in October.  This is a huge honor, particularly for a film based on graphic novels, and bodes well for the film's future release prospects in this area.

• Read Persepolis and Persepolis 2
• Watch the trailer for Persepolis:

Day of the Eclipse

The final volume of Stephenie Meyer's vampire trilogy hits the streets today, and we have a bunch of copies.  To put your copy on hold, click here (remember to choose a branch for pick-up).

While you're waiting for your copy to become available, check out Meyer's Good Morning America appearance today, or read this interview from Entertainment Weekly. 

I'm off to place a hold on the first book in the series, Twilight, because I'm a few years late to the Bella-Edward-Jacob party.  To find books & audiobooks from the series, click here.  And for more vampire romance, try the Vampire Kisses series by Ellen Schreiber, or the now-classic TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (we have all seven seasons on DVD).  Happy reading/viewing!