Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Library Notes Week of December 14


The library is hosting its annual Family Fun Day at the Library. Come by the library Tues., Dec. 22nd anytime between 2 and 6 p.m. We will have “make and take” projects for the kids, games, puzzles, and refreshments. It will be our way of wishing you a great holiday season.

KJ Cooper, our Children’s Specialist has been reading some of the books in our Young Adult collection. Here are a few of her reviews.

Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen. Dessen delivers another of her perfectly crafted stories. This one features Auden, an insomniac, who will be going off to college in the fall. Auden has not slept at night since her parents started fighting. They are now divorced and her father has a new family. Auden decides to spend her summer with them and explore some of the teenage pleasures she has missed—most notably, riding a bike and having actual friendships. Then, she meets a fellow insomniac, Eli, a loner with problems of his own.

Maze Runner by James Dashner. Thomas wakes up in the lift remembering only his first name. When the doors open, he is surrounded by boys, Gladers, who also have no memories of how they got there. They live in the Glade—a large, open expanse surrounded by stone walls. Every morning, the stone doors to the surrounding maze are opened. Every night, they are tightly closed. Every 30 days, a new boy arrives in the lift. The pattern is disrupted when a girl with a message is sent up the very next day. In this thrill ride of a story about problem-solving. The ending nicely sets up for the next book in this trilogy, tentatively called, “The Scorch Trials.”

Hollywood is Like High School with Money by Zoey Dean. When twenty-four-year old Ohio native, Taylor Henning lands her dream job as an assistant at a major movie studio, she finds that she hasn’t left the “Mean Girls” contests of high school behind. The stakes are just higher. Taylor wasn’t one of the queen bees in high school and is ill-prepared to play the same tired games. Then, she meets her boss’s popular daughter, Quinn who takes Taylor under her wing, teaching her one lesson a week until Taylor finds herself swimming gracefully with the sharks. Dean delivers a Devil Wears Prada type story in a funny, quirky easy read.

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