Posts from Muhlenberg Library

In December, you can always depend on yearly round ups.  The best movies are debated online and in magazines along with favorite albums and the most entertaining celebrity train wrecks.  I love going through these lists and comparing them with my own personal favorites.  While I was putting together a "Best Books of 2010" display here at Muhlenberg (which was inspired by my need to display our TEN copies of Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins) I came across some "Best of 2010" lists with really great suggestions.  Perfect if you have a big reader on this year's holiday shopping list.   

Kelly Link’s Pretty Monsters is a collection of beautiful short stories ranging from fanciful to scary horror. To give you an idea of what the stories are like I'll just tell you about the first one I read.  It’s about a teenage boy who leaves a collection of his poetry in the coffin of his dead girlfriend.  After a few months, he decides that he wants his poetry back and has to dig it up.  The story is called "The Wrong Grave" so you can only imagine what happens next. 

The holidays are on their way, and nothing says holidays like mandatory time with family! 

Sometimes your family is your rock and sometimes your family is the rock that is chained to your leg after you are thrown in the ocean. Usually they are something in between. I put together a booklist about families; the good, the bad, the creepy and the homicidal. Consider it my holiday gift to you. 

Many local branches have been offering special programs relating to NYPL’s major fall exhibition, Three Faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Recently, I was excited to host a calligraphy program for our teens at the Muhlenberg branch.

Muhlenberg's budding jewelers got together at last Thursday's Unplugged event (A bimonthly crafts and games program we have on Thursdays) to make some spooky necklaces and bracelets with local artist Pamela Isaac.  

We were given some twine, metal wire and elastic, along with tiny skulls, chains, tons of cool beads and metal pieces. We spent the next hour making our own wearable art. 

Full disclosure: I’ve always been a Mark Bittman fan. I love the Minimalist column in the New York Times and my copy of How to Cook Everything has been used so much there are sauce splatters and spills all over it.   When I saw his book, Mark Bittman’s Kitchen Express: 404 Inspired Seasonal Dishes You Can Make in 20 Minutes or Less, I checked it out immediately and imagined a week’s worth of delicious, seasonal dishes that I would whip together and have extra time to challange friends to a MarioKart tournament on the Wii… or make graphic t shirts. 

Fellow librarian (and super-blogger) Marie just posted a great interview with the amazing librarians that work at the various sites of Passages Academy, an education program run in NYC's juvenile detention centers.  Please, check out the interview HERE.  The librarians at Passages Academy also have a wonderful book review blog called What's Good in the Library?, definitely worth checking out. 

The New York Public Library is no stranger to incarcerated youth, many librarians do outreach in detention centers and Rikers' Island and books about incarcerated teens and their loved ones are becoming more and more popular in the branches.  Here 

Is there a hobby that you've always wanted to try but you don't know where to start?  Try the library!  We have the information; all you need to do is bring curiosity and the courage to try something new!

I spend way too much time at Sephora.  Are you familiar?  It’s a huge store filled with products that promise to make you shiner, beautiful, and less tired looking.  I'm embarrassed to say how much money I've spent there and that I have no idea what I'm putting on my skin.

Teen Advisory Group meets once a week at Muhlenberg.  There, local teens talk about the things that they like in the library and the things they'd like to change.  Each month, we recognize a TAG member.  The first is a new member to TAG, we'll call Lady C to protect her secret identity.

Last Friday we had our first annual Uno Tournament during Teen Advisory group. There were snacks, prizes, and a lot of competition. I had a really great time and I think our eight participants did as well. As I said before, it was our first tournament that didn't involve the Nintendo Wii, here are some things I wish I knew before:

Muhlenberg's Teen Advisory Group met last Friday to play team Pictionary for both prizes and, of course, the glory on winning. It was boys against girls that day and the boys won by a very narrow margin of 12 to 9. Pictionary is one of our favorite games to play together and I love it because its so easy to put together!

Here's what you need:

The teens of Muhlenberg's Teen Advisory Group have spoken, MORE CRAFTS! And I am more than happy to deliver. Last Friday was our first summer craft day, our topic? Stamps.

Marcelo really wants to spend his last year of high school at Patterson, a school for students a lot like him. Students who need a little extra help learning the rules of the Real World, and who can spend extra time thinking about the things that they are really interested in. But Marcelo’s father gives him an ultimatum; spend the summer in the Real World, working in the mailroom of his law firm, or go to public high school for his senior year.

There are a lot of great books for teens on this year's summer reading list.  One of my favorites is Born to Rock by Gordon Korman.

Heroes, villains, teenagers.  In these book, they are one in the same!  Here are some of my favorite books filled with action, suspense and mystery.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (2009) is Katherine Howe's first novel. Given the plot, comparisons between the author's life and her fictional heroine are inevitable, so they might as well be addressed sooner rather than later.

Howe is herself in a PhD program for American and New England History. Based on various family member's genealogy research, Howe's ancestors are also Elizabeth Howe and Elizabeth Proctor. Anyone familiar with Arthur Miller's classic play The Crucible will likely recognize the Proctor name. If not, let it be said that both Elizabeth Howe and Elizabeth Proctor were accused of practicing witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts during the 

I, Frankie Landau-Banks, hereby confess that I was the sole mastermind behind the mal-doings of the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds. I take full responsibility for the disruptions caused by the Order--including the Library Lady, the Doggies in the Window, the Night of a Thousand Dogs, the Canned Beet Rebellion, and the abduction of the Guppy.

So begins The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (2008) by E. Lockhart. Though, to be perfectly honest, the above confession is not truly the beginning of anything but the realization that Frankie might be a criminal mastermind. The real story in this book is how she got that way.

Remember Jennifer Grey from Dirty Dancing? Back then she was a cute young actress with a rather distinct nose that gave her a unique face. In the 1990s she had a nose job that so altered her appearance that she was unrecognizable with the result that her career was arguably over. I found a site with two of the most unflattering pictures of Grey I have ever seen, but they illustrate my point. The change is so great that it's hard to say what the nose job actually accomplished because the before and after photos look like different people.

While reading My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters (2009) by Sydney Salter, I kept thinking of one thing. That thing was 

Christie isn't sure what to think at her first comic convention in Dramacon Vol. 1 (2005) by Svetlana Chmakova. She's excited for a chance to exhibit the comic that she writes and her boyfriend illustrates. But when they get to the comic-con, it turns out nothing is what Christie expected.

Her boyfriend is a jerk. He says he's flirting so that more girls will buy their comic buy Christie isn't so sure--especially with the way he keeps leaving her alone for long periods at a time. Then there's the mysterious cosplayer who keeps popping up when Christie needs him and seems to understand her better than her boyfriend ever will. Christie tries to make sense of her mixed