Magazine Monday!!

We have some new magazines in! Come and take a look!

Teen Vogue

Spin

WWE

and

Latina

Pinata Parties

We've really been into Pinata's lately. I've been dreaming about making a giant pinata, but until then, we've been working on smaller versions. Last week we made the basic shell, and this week during Unplugged, we are painting the pinatas, hopefully they will be all ready for the ultimate Pinata Party at Teen Advisory Group. Oh yes. We'll be smashing the pinatas.

Unplugged: 04/08 at 4PM

Teen Advisory Group: Pinata Party

04/30 at 4PM

Magazine Monday!

No new magazines this week. BUT I do have a little something for all of you magazine fans out there...

I've been doing some spring cleaning and I have a ton of magazines to give away for free! They are mostly from December/January and they are great. So come check it out and grab some magazines!

Pure

Tabitha and her five best friends have something in common. They've promised each other to stay "pure" until marriage. Each girl made this promise when they were in middle school and all of them have the purity rings to prove it. But in high school, things get a little tricky. Tabitha meets a boy who makes her knees weak and one of her friends breaks their vow, causing a major rift in her group. Tabitha is caught in the middle and doesn't know what to do. What do you do when everyone seems to be right?

I really liked Terra Elan McVoy's Pure because it didn't take sides. A lot of books, especially for teens can have a "black or white" approach. Things get over the top and the good guys are very good and the bad guys are horrible. Pure was all about the shades of grey. Just when you decided to side with one character, you get the other view and you are confused all over again. That is a feeling I definitely remember having as a teenager and McVoy really captured it.

The Real Real

MU was fortunate enough to have an author panel come to the library this month. One of the panelists that came to speak was Emma McLaughlin, one have of the writing team that brought us The Nanny Diaries and Citizen Girl. McLaughlin and her writing partner Nicola Kraus released a novel for young adults called The Real Real. It's great.

Jesse is a high school senior in a high school in the Hamptons. Posh right? Not really. Jesse's mom cleans the houses of the Hamptons elite, and her dad manages a restaurant. Jesse has been working her butt off to get enough money for college, and when XTV comes to her school, looking for the next big reality star, Jesse gets swept up in the excitement of becoming the next Lauren Conrad.

But things aren't so great as they seem. XTV decides that her best friend isn't camera ready, so she has to go, neither is her crush. Jesse finds out that this "reality" couldn't be farther from the truth.

The Real Real is funny, fast paced and a sharp look at how reality stars are made.

Bones of Faerie

After the War, Liza has always been afraid of magic. When she was young, she saw her father leave her newborn sister in the fields because she showed signs of a faerie power. Shortly after, her mother didn't come home after dark, so Liza knew she would never return.

To Liza magic is wild and uncontrollable. Nothing good can come from it. So when she starts to have visions, she runs away, fearing her father. Lost in the woods, Liza begins a dangerous journey, trying to make sense of her visions bridge the world between humans and faeries.

Bones of Faerie was a little difficult to follow at times, maybe because I haven't read a lot of fantasy before and didn't know how to keep track of the characters. I had to push through a couple of times, and reread passages, but I was glad I did. It is really great and I think fantasy fans will really like it.

ABBCBGFAG

Woooaaaahhhh!

So there are certain books that are destined to be passed around by girls for years to come. This is one of them.

A Bad Boy can be Good for a Girl by Tonya Lee Stone looks at three very different girls and their relationship with one very bad boy.

Josie is self-confident and very naive. Nicolette already knows how powerful sex can be, and is curious about and Aviva is a smart and funny senior who is surprised to find out that a handsome jock wants her. All of them get in over their head, but all of them come out a whole lot wiser.

I normally don't love books written in verse, but this book grabbed me. I was on the train and I missed my stop while reading it! A sure sign that a book is good.

I would definitely recommend this book to older teens.

Magazine Monday!

(Spin's Cover Artist: My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way)

Just In!

Spin

and

WWE Magazine



We also have some new magazines in the free bin, come and check it out!

The Latent Powers of Dylan Fontaine

Any book that starts in a dingy Brooklyn police station has my attention.

It all started at Century 21. Dylan Fontaine was standing in line, waiting to buy some underwear when he though he saw his mother standing by the front door. His mother had left his family earlier this summer with her painting instructor their last conversation had been less than friendly. Dylan rushes to the door, completely forgetting the underwear in his pocket. When security stops him, he also remembers the bag of weed in his other pocket. The bag of weed that was given to him by a drug dealer who thought he was his burnt out brother.

Then he ends up in jail.

The Latent Powers of Dylan Fontiane by April Lurie is a great great book with a really wonderful main character that you'll root for.

Stitches

David Small's memior Stitches has been getting a lot of buzz lately, most recently as an Alex Award winner. The Alex Awards are books for adults with great teen appeal. Stitches, is an absolutely amazing graphic novel that covers Small's childhood. His mother was a bitter penny pincher who was incapable of giving him any love. His father was a frustrated doctor who tried to cure Small's asthma with radation, which ended up giving him cancer.

I read this book in less than a day, not because of the fact that its a graphic novel, the illustrations actually kept me glued to the page. The story itself was mesmerizing and made me want to learn more and more about the Small family.

Magazine Monday!

Here's some big news:

For the first time in MONTHS we got a copy of Mad Magazine! Welcome back MAD!

Also in:

Teen Vogue: Featuring Miley Cyrus and this years PROM guide

Latina

Game Informer

and of course,

ESPN magazine

New Books

Just finished reading two books that I think you'll really like.

The first is Beautiful by Amy Lynn Reed. Beautiful is the story of thirteen year old Cassie, who has just transferred to a new school in Seattle and desperately wants to shed her good-girl past. And boy does she. I had a hard time reading this book, I kept on wanting to yell "make better choices!!!" when Cassie is spinning out of control, but that is something that comes with age. This is a great book for readers who liked Go Ask Alice or books by Ellen Hopkins.

The second is Sophomore Switch by Abby McDonald, the story of two collage girls from very different worlds, desperate for a change of scene after their romantic lives fall apart. Tasha, a party girl from California was to escape her sudden notoriety after an infamous hot tub scene. Emily, reeling from a break up at Oxford is looking for some fun in the sun. So they switch, and hilarity ensues.

Both of these books are available at the MU branch.

Magazine "Monday"

Oh...we had a LOT of magazines this monday. Here is the list:

Entertainment Weekly (with Johnny Depp on the cover)

ESPN

Latina

Spin (the magazine for people who love rock and roll)

Sports Illustrated

Sports Illustrated Kids

WWE Magazine

and

Wizard

Phew! Come and take a look, you can also check out the back issues for three weeks!

New Series Alert: Moon Boy

Moon Boy's covers are just brilliant. Bold, flashy, and grabbed my eye immediately.

Long ago, rabbits lived peacefully on the moon. That was until the foxes hunted them, drank their blood and ate their liver. Some of these rabbits escaped to earth. And some of the foxes followed them.

Boy crazy Myung-Ee is an earth rabbit, she finds one of her kind when she meets Yu-Da, the only boy in her class that does not pay attention to her, and the only person she knows who's eyes turn red in the sunlight. One day Yu-Da disappears and Myung-Ee doesn't see him again until five years later, at a different school. She is ecstatic that she has found him, but Yu-Da doesn't know who she is.

Crazy right? But it works. This is a great new series for all of you manhwa (Korean Manga) lovers out there.

Magazine Monday

This week we have:

Latina

Sports Illustrated

and Teen Ink

Upcoming Programs!

Tuesday 02/23:
Game On @ the Library at 4PM
Players' Choice! So bring your favorite Wii game or choose from the ones that we have here! (My personal favorite? Guitar Hero five!) Ages 10+

Thursday 02/25:
Unplugged at 4PM
Epic Pictionary Battle.
Bring your friends and your loudest voice for this game! Ages 11+


Friday 02/26
Teen Advisory Group at 4PM
Test out some new card games to decide what will be played during the next Unplugged. And, of course, there will be snacks and Wii playing. Ages 12+

Night Runner

Just when I thought I was done with vampire books, Night Runner by Max Turner comes along and changes my mind.

After I heard about the cancellation of Stephanie Meyers' Midnight Sun, I thought about the fact that I didn't know of many vampire books with the males' perspective. Night Runner's Zack Thompson is a great addition to the vampire world.

The story starts in a mental ward. Zack lives there because his allergies are so severe and it is the only place that can take care of him. He is pretty content living there, he stays up all night, drinks strawberry smoothies for all of his meals, he can watch all the tv he wants. Then one night, a mysterious man comes to him and tells him that what he thought were allergies were actually a great supernatural power. And that this power has something to do with his parents' death. Then he tells him to run.

I really liked this book, every chapter ended with some kind of cliffhanger that made you want to keep on reading. Zack was funny, charming and you couldn't help but root for him. I'm looking forward to more books by Mr. Turner.

Love is in the Air!

I just finished a new booklist called "Be My Valentine" and guess what its about?



That's right! Romance! This list covers falling in and out of love and everything in between. True Love, Tainted Love, Old-Timey Love (historical romance), LGBT romance and a list of really great authors! Come by the library and check out the display.

Magazine Monday

This week we have:

Nylon (the the cast of the Vampire Diaries on the cover)

Teen Vogue (featuring the star of the new Alice in Wonderland)

ESPN (as usual)

and

Wizard!

Come Check them out!

Sunrise over Fallujah

When I was in high school, I had to read The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien during the summer. I was surprised by how much I liked it since it was a war story and I was mainly reading girl drama books at the time. Since then I've always been interested in books about war, we forget that there are teenagers fighting in wars all over the world, and they should have a voice. Walter Dean Myers covers our generation's war in Iraq in his book Sunrise over Fallujah. He shows us the fear and uncertainty along with the bravery and friendship. The book follows Robin "Birdy" Perry from his station in Kuwait to the battlefields in Iraq.

The novel was exciting and had a really good pace, it moved along nicely, but didn't go so fast that the characters didn't get to develop. My only compliant is that there were a lot of characters, and I quickly lost track of who was who unless it was the main three soldiers. If you read this book and liked it, you should also try Fallen Angels, which is Myers' novel about the Vietnam War.

Stargazer

Evernight's sequel is here!

Stargazer picks up when the students of Evernight come back from their summer breaks. They are still haunted by last year's events and have new problems as well. Star-crossed lovers Bianca and Lucas try to find ways to see each other. Balthazar finds a new way to be a part of Bianca's life. Raquel comes back only to be haunted by a new supernatural being. And mysterious ghosts start of appear on campus.

Talk about problems!

This is a great followup to Evernight, I'm looking forward to seeing how the series pans out.

Pretty Dead

Charlotte has been living the glamorous life for the past 100 years. She's rich, beautiful, and living on her own in a beautiful villa in Beverly Hills. Charlotte is also very lonely, until she meets Emily and they become best friends. Then Emily dies, and Charlotte starts to change, back into a human.

Francesca Lia Block has been writing dark and beautiful tales for many years and Pretty Dead is no different. It is a quick read with great characters and a lot of twists and turns. It has all the elements that you look for in a great supernatural story, a powerful characters, Block's take on vampire lore, romance, and back stabbing best friends. Its also a small book so it can easily fit into your purse to read on the train!

Magazine Monday!

Bad news: We only got one magazine this week.

But the good news is that it features

Jennifer Lopez!!

Well that's good news for me...I love her!

Latina magazine is here and ready to be checked out!

Splendor

Splendor is the fourth and final installment of Anna Godbersen's Luxe series. If you like teen dramas like 90210 and Gossip Girl but you want something with a little substance AND you are interested in New York City at the turn of the 20th century, then this is the series for you. The saga is very exciting and dramatic with interesting characters, both pure hearted and scheming. Its historical, but not dry. And its just long enough to keep you entertained inside, away from New York's bitter cold!

Splendor is now available in the Muhlenberg Branch, but make sure you star with The Luxe, the story of a wealthy family, secret romances, reluctant betrothal and a fake death.

Ellen Hopkins

Just a quick announcement that the amazing author Ellen Hopkins is giving a talk at the Jefferson Market Branch. If I had the day off, I would make a special trip to meet the author of great books like Crank, Identical and Burned. Her new book, Tricks, is available at the library. If you are free Thursday afternoon, definitely make the trip! We also have a special Ellen Hopkins display here at the Muhlenberg library, so you can check out her books, and books with similar themes.

Thursday, January 28th at 4:30PM
Jefferson Market Branch
425 Ave of Americas, NY, NY
212-243-4334