It’s September and the halls of academia await. You’ve done everything you can to prepare—you have completed mountains of homework, passed exams, worked on becoming a well-rounded student, wrote essays and submitted applications. Now, with graduation and summer vacation behind you, you are about to embark upon your college days. Starting this new chapter in your life can be a little nerve-wracking, especially if you are leaving home for the first time. But if you have some time before college starts, pick up the following books from the Library. They can help prepare you for your first roommate experience, campus life, academic life and more.

The Dorm Room Diet by Daphne Oz

10 Best College Majors for Your Personality by Laurence Shatkin

Getting Ready for College by Polly Berent

If you want to impress your new college friends and professors, try expanding your horizons by reading some books from the list of Outstanding Books for the College Bound, created every year by the American Library Association. Most of these books can be found at your local DeKalb County Public Library.

Dunwoody Library’s summer Teen Digital Photography Contest is over and the results are in! The nearly thirty photos received by teens ages 13-17 years old were judged by staff on creativity and originality. Teens took pictures of a variety of subjects and the results were very impressive, making it a hard contest to judge! In the end, these were the top three photos chosen:

First place goes to 17 year old Lauren Wray’s Where Sky Meets Sky.

Second place goes to 14 year old Caroline Melton’s Through the Hole in the Leaf.

Third place goes to 16 year old Kevin Guebert and his entry, Floating in an Ocean.

Great job to all the teens who participated! You can view all of the entries on DeKalb County Public Library’s Flickr page.

Many thanks to the Friends of the Dunwoody Library for making this contest possible.

The countdown is on with only 10 days left of the Vacation Reading Program! If you haven’t returned your reading logs for your prizes and raffle tickets, don’t fret, you have until closing on July 31st to do so.

Feeling the back to school blues creeping up on you? DeKalb County Public Libraries are still offering plenty of programs for children and teens. There is nothing like attending a Tween Chocolate Party, attending a magic show, or catching a free movie to lift those spirits! You can see a full list of programs offered through July here.

For teens there is still time to enter Express Yourself contests, such as the digital photo contest at the Dunwoody Library, or the Lithonia-Davidson Library art contest. And don’t forget to log your reading hours online.

Enjoy the rest of summer!

I think it’s safe to say that we are in the midst of the dog days of summer, so what better way to escape the heat and wile away the days than with a new book? While I do like to wander the stacks of the library looking for my next read, I have to say that I am more of a list girl. I love finding and perusing various book lists (and there are many out there) for something interesting to read. And yes, I like creating lists as well. If your child is in need of a new book, try checking this list of lists for his/her next great read.

The Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC), put out by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has an extensive list of bibliographies for children and young adults with many different themes, including books to share with babies, recommended mysteries for kids and teens, and books for beginning readers, to name a few.

The American Library Association’s Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) puts out an annual notables list. Check out 2009’s list; there are many great books to be found. They also put out the list of current and past children’s award winners, including the Newbery and Caldecott Awards.

Check out New York Public Library’s list of 100 Picture Books Everyone Should Know. Do you know all of them?

YALSA, the Young Adult Library Services Association has award winners and booklists, including the best in young adult books and books for reluctant readers.

There are only a few more days (17 if you trust my calculations) left to vote for the best book on the list of twenty candidates for the 2008-9 Georgia Peach Book Award for Teen Readers.  If you need to review the candidates, check the Georgia Peach Book Award section on our teen web page.  Be sure to vote at your local library or school media center before March 13th!  And, if you want to participate in an exit poll, please post a comment letting us know what your favorite book on the list is!

A couple of Saturdays ago, the Teen Advisory Board (TAB) conducted a program for fellow teens. This was the first time that the TAB members created the idea for the program, organized it and ran it. For a first time attempt, it was very successful. There were close to twenty-five teens that participated.

What is the Teen Advisory Board, you may ask?  It is an opportunity for teens throughout DeKalb County to get together at the Library and give their opinions about books, movies, the teen portion of our website and programming at the Library for teens. The Board meets once a month on a Saturday. The teens that participate are eligible for volunteer hours.  If you are a teen and interested in joining, check out the information on the teen page.

So what was the program you may ask? It was a book swap.  The teens would bring in books that they no longer wanted to trade for new ones.  You would check in at the registration desk and get a ticket for each book that you were handing in. The books were then sorted by category.  You would then go around the room and select books that you wanted, up to the number that you brought. If you did not find enough books to swap, the teens gave credit for the next Book Swap. They hope to have one every three months or so.

I, personally, cannot wait to see what the next program TAB will be presenting. They have several in the works for the next six to nine months. Check the event calendar and your local branch for future programs. In the meanwhile, enjoy the pictures I took during the event.

We’ve talked about Breaking Dawn before it was released and after we’d had a chance to read it. So now let’s talk about the theatrical release of Twilight.

I will admit to thoroughly enjoying it. The acting, however, was sometimes excruciatingly bad and Carlyle’s make-up was awful. Those minor quibbles aside, I thought it was pretty good. It stayed true to the book, which I think some fans were worried about. And, Robert Pattinson made the perfect Edward in my opinion, although I know some people will disagree with that.

Now it’s your turn. Have you seen it? Did you see the midnight show on November 20 (like I did) or wait for a more reasonable time to see it? Did it meet your expectations? Did you catch author Stephenie Meyer’s cameo?

J’nai’s post on Tuesday about journaling got me thinking about books for children and teens that are written in a diary format.  Its popularity as a format has grown recently due to several factors – they’re easy to read, they bring an immediacy to the characters and setting, etc.  Probably most important is that kids and young adults like them.  One of the most popular books to come out recently is Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Greg Heffly’s Journal and its sequel Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, both by Jeff Kinney.  Both books have waiting lists and are a big hit with middle school age kids, especially boys who enjoy the humor and the cartoons that appear throughout the books.  Listing all the books the library owns would make for a very long list, so I’ll just list a few of my favorites.

Diary of a Worm by Dorren Cronin:  A young worm discovers, day by day, that there are some very good and some not so good things about being a worm in this great big world.

Millicent Min, Girl Genius by Lisa Yee: In a series of journal entries, eleven-year-old child prodigy Millicent Min records her struggles to learn to play volleyball, tutor her enemy, deal with her grandmother’s departure, and make friends over the course of a tumultuous summer.

Catherine Called Birdy by Karen Cushman:  The thirteen-year-old daughter of an English country knight keeps a journal in which she records the events of her life, particularly her longing for adventures beyond the usual role of women and her efforts to avoid being married off.

And here are a couple for teens:

Breathing Underwater by Alex Flynn: Sent to counseling for hitting his girlfriend, Caitlin, and ordered to keep a journal, sixteen-year-old Nick recounts his relationship with Caitlin, examines his controlling behavior and anger, and describes living with his abusive father.

Planet Janet by Dyan Sheldon: Sixteen-year-old Janet Bandry keeps a diary as she deals with an annoying family, school, a quirky best friend, and trying to find herself through vegetarianism, literature, romance, and her “Dark Phase.”

November is National Novel Writing Month (often abbreviated as NaNoWriMo). If you’ve always wanted to write a novel, but didn’t have the courage to do it, here is your chance! Here’s the basics: throughout November, people sign up on the NaNoWriMo webpage to accept this challenge. Then from Nov 1 through Nov 30, their goal is to write a 175 page (50,000 word) novel. This is a national effort, so nobody’s alone.  The NaNoWriMo website acts as a support network, connecting writers through forums, resources, and peptalks (given by acclaimed writers like Philip Pullman!).

One of the main ideas behind the project is this: don’t worry about quality, focus on quantity (the revision and tune-up process comes later, maybe in December?). Their webpage states “The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.”

This year they’ve added a Young Writers Program component to their usual challenge: “our Young Writers Program allows participants who are 17 years old and younger to set reasonable, yet challenging, word-count goals.”

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Halloween is Friday, and the spooky creatures will be creeping out!  Zombies have been spotted at the library lurking on several shelves.  If you want to try and catch sight of one, I have spotted them between the pages of:

·         The boy who couldn’t die by William Sleator

·         The death collector by Justin Richards

·         Generation dead by Daniel Waters

·         World war Z by Max Brooks

·         Zombie Blondes by Brian James

Fandango has created a list of their favorite zombie film stars; the library has a few films from their Countdown to the Dead list, so be on the lookout for: 

·         #7 – Shaun of the Dead (2004)

·         #6 – 28 Days Later (2002)

·         #5 – Dawn of the Dead (2004)

·         #1 – Night of the Living Dead (1968)

I will be watching out for these frightening creatures on Friday as I tiptoe around the library stacks.  What do you most fear finding at the library?  Ghosts?  Ghouls?  Goblins?  Happy Halloween!