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Today was our glorious Mockinjay Party! The Teen Book Club and I celebrated the release of this season's MOST anticipated book with style! Here's what we did: We had an icebreaker of creating new Hunger Games names for ourselves, an idea I borrowed from the foreverya blog. See it here . Then we picked September's title: Lord of the Flies Then we ate: bread and berries of course (well, we went soft pretzels for bread and strawberries and blueberries for berries) Then I set up three stations, borrowing heavily from the post here which led me to my trivia question center, the poison berry identification center, and then I set up the Wii and had them play sword fight Showdown (in which one swings and "kills" a bunch of people who are attacking you) on Wii Resort. Finally, we played the excellent Cornucopia C hallenge. The lucky winner took home a copy of the book (a side note: I stopped at Sam's at 8am this morning and they did not have the book out, then I trie

Ah, yes well I have watched these titles go in and out of the library for months, and I have never had an interest in reading them. I think it was the covers that put me off, I don't know, but then, I read the synopsis of the Clockwork Angel, and boy do I want to read that. I was unaware that these books came before the new title. So, crap, now I had to read these before Clockwork Angel comes out (I already have it on pre -order from my local bookstore). And next week is finals and MOCKINGJAY (and we know I will not do ANYTHING until the 3rd Hunger Games book is complete-including sleep). I managed to read all three in four days! Not too shabby considering I started Thursday night and had to work all day Friday (rotten work, getting in the way of reading, again). Here's the thing about this series: Somethings were really driving me crazy (I almost gave up several chapters into the first book). The overuse of the word "denuded", I mean really. The overuse of the descr

When the girls and I were at the Bookery picking up Clementine, and ordering a bunch of other books I cannot wait to get my paws on, I saw Noelle had these for sale in her store. Considering they were just twigs and bits and bobs (and what crafter does not have tons of bits and bobs laying around?), G and I decided to make our own witchy wands. We used twigs (found at our local playground), scraps of fabric, yarn, charms, and mardi gras beads. I am still getting used to the new camera, and it is a bit fuzzy, but the pink one is my steampunk inspired wand (with corset lacing). G used an old button and the gold paint pen to paint a "G" on one of hers. We had a lot of fun with this. I cannot use it at the library (witchy things are "frowned" upon), but what a fun way to spend an afternoon! I added my goodreads shelf if anyone is interested. It's a lot easier than listing all of the titles I have read so far this year! I noticed that I am reading about 85% YA books,

We are doing Banned Books in my class at library school this week, and one of the titles I had to read was any book from the Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. I chose the Agony of Alice simply because I found one on the sale rack. I can't get over this book. I thought it was great. The book caused contant flashbacks to my sixth grade year (and all of the embarrasing things that I did). The entire time I was reading, a comparison bell was ringing in my head-and then it hit me! Alice is like Junie B. Jones only older. Like Junie, Alice is not perfect, and some of her reactions to situations are less than admirable. Also like Junie, Alice redeems herself. Both have incredible powers of observation and notice the little details in life. Alice has been around a lot longer than Junie, and I wonder if Barbara Park hangs out with Phyllis Naylor. In the story, Alice decides that lacking a mom or an older sister, she will adopt a mother in order to have a "road map" about l

My big craft for August was a Boardwalk theme. My teen volunteers created a 'boardwalk" out of brown paper, we had tables with games similar to the ones down the shore, and I built a giant sandbox (called "the beach") where kids created sandcastles. Looking at these photo makes me realize how much my digital camera stinks. The kids were each given one token when they came in and after they lost that in the game of chance, they had to come to me to earn more. I tortured them for awhile with: Hop on one foot for ten seconds Touch your toes with your nose Sing the Barney song Say "I love chocolate, chocky chocky chocky chocolate" etc. Some kids came back to earn tokens even after they one because they were enjoying the challenges so much. Funny! Because fundage was low (isn't it always?) everything had to be made by hand. No problemo. We had a snack area complete with a cafe for folks to sit down and enjoy their soft pretzels, popcorn, and lemonade. I made

I finally got my hands on Clementine! There was some problem with the small press and ordering and the library's copies have yet to come in. I called my favorite independent book store and the owner got a sweet hardcover copy for me. I actually finished it right away (it was only 200 pages). While I thought it was really great, especially the action air battles, I would have liked a little more Boneshaker references. One can read this novel without reading Boneshaker first, but honestly, why would you want to? Boneshaker rocked! I think Cherie Priest rocks too. I love that she updates her blog on goodreads .com all of the time. While we were at my favorite independent book store, I saw that the owner had these wands for sale that were essentially just sticks dressed up with yarn and charms. They were cooler than I'm making them sound. So, the girls and I are going to craft some tonight-we stopped at the park earlier and found perfect "wands". I always feel good about

Our Teen/Tween Book Club met in July to discuss Killer Pizza by Greg Taylor. We had pizza, a small discussion, and monster combat training in which we shot at monster targets with those guns that shoot pingpong-like balls. Then, we made aprons!!!!So much fun.