YALSA Creates App for Finding Teen Books

Just read about a great new app in the Summer 2012 YALSA magazine.  It is called the Teen Book Finder and it is available for free from iTunes.

Screenshot of the Teen Book Finder

Screenshot of the Teen Book Finder

Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Bitterblue is a sequel to Graceling, but not to Fire . It does take place about 8 years later in the Graceling timeline. You really need to read the one before the other. There are just too many relationships and interconnections that begin in the first one and continue in the second that for you not to have read the first you will have missed out on quite a lot.

Now, having said all of that, and being a school librarian, let me state that this book is definitely for grades 9 and up. It is a fantasy book, but it is a dark fantasy and there are some very serious subjects covered (rape, murder, cutting, mind control) and while these are not graphically detailed, it does make for some   creepy diary entries. There is a love scene between the main character and one of her male interests (I won't spoil it by saying who), but it is off the page and circumspect.[ creepy diary entries. There is a love scene between the main character and one of her male interests (I won't spoil it by saying who), but it is off the page and circumspect.

I found myself carrying the book from room to room and really being fascinated by the plot. However, I just couldn't see how it was all going to tie up. It does, but it seems to take an inordinately long time for it to happen. And Bitterblue seems to take a long time coming to realize that the mountains of paperwork are delaying tactics and she should be suspicious. So, while I loved the characterization of Bitterblue and her new friends she finds in the city and the returning friends from Graceling, I was frustrated by the convoluted nature of the plot. Some characters were lovely: Giddon and I love Death (pronounced like teeth) and Lovejoy. The setting of the town was great and you get a real sense of the castle and how Leck has really destroyed this city and her people.

It's a fascinating book. Really and truly. I enjoyed reading it. But I was also a bit let down at the ending. I'm not sure what happens next and that left me with an unresolved feeling.

I thought Graceling was tied up more neatly. This one meandered a bit. As my review is doing.... (hide spoiler)]

I found myself carrying the book from room to room and really being fascinated by the plot. However, I just couldn't see how it was all going to tie up. It does, but it seems to take an inordinately long time for it to happen. And Bitterblue seems to take a long time coming to realize that the mountains of paperwork are delaying tactics and she should be suspicious. So, while I loved the characterization of Bitterblue and her new friends she finds in the city and the returning friends from Graceling, I was frustrated by the convoluted nature of the plot. Some characters were lovely: Giddon and I love Death (pronounced like teeth) and Lovejoy. The setting of the town was great and you get a real sense of the castle and how Leck has really destroyed this city and her people.

It's a fascinating book. Really and truly. I enjoyed reading it. But I was also a bit let down at the ending. I'm not sure what happens next and that left me with an unresolved feeling.

I thought Graceling was tied up more neatly. This one meandered a bit. As my review is doing....

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Awesome Day, Awesome Keyword Worksheet

We have recently redesigned our keyword search sheets and have found that we are getting better results from the kids than we were before.  It is fascinating how the whole design process works.  We will be having Grant Wiggins come in and teach us about backward design and can possibly make it even more successful, but I have been delighted in the response to this new worksheet.  


Our history teachers are amazingly collaborative and give up time to us to have the kids do the worksheets and have them as homework in order to get a better research question as a result.  Too often students would start with a broad topic and the keyword worksheet would give them lots of keywords, but they weren't relevant or weren't specific in a way that helped them to derive a narrow research question.  


So, we thought about what our intention was: to have the worksheet funnel them down to a narrowed topic that would then bring them to create a narrowed research question.  We hand out the a double sided worksheet to the kids the night before with instructions to fill it out on the topic of censorship on the front.  We will go over that topic as a class.  


They are to find keywords relating to who, what, where, when and why (causes and outcomes) and then come up with a narrowed question.  As they read their encyclopedia article on censorship (whatever kind they choose), they will begin to narrow down the type of censorship they are looking for, say, book censorship

• Who:  Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Joseph Stalin, Native American Indians 
• What: book censorship,textbook censorship, government censorship
• Where: High School
• When: 3rd century BC to present
• Why: Teens are given fewer choices to read; subject matter may not reflect the reality of a historical event, based on the perceived feelings of the governing community (Native Americans, for example)
• Narrowed Topic: 

  Is our history education being adversely affected by textbook censorship?

I watched a girl go from doing a paper on Jerusalem, to doing research on how Islam, Christianity and Judaism portrayed Jerusalem in their sacred texts and what that could mean. 


It was working!


Then came the moment that they had to find primary sources, and secondary sources.  We had told them all where to go.  They had their keyword worksheets.  But would they use them?

Some did.  Most promptly forgot them and had to be reminded repeatedly to get them out and look at them. Sigh.

It's a process.

However, I did have an awesome librarian moment. I taught a freshman boy how to search the Hathi Digital Trust, how to search within his text and find relevant pages and how to use the google site:edu command. About 5 minutes later, he was helping his neighbor find info and taught his neighbor how to use the Hathi Digital Trust and the site:edu command and said, "I learned everything I know from her." Meaning me and searching techniques! 

Woot! 

I was so proud of him.  Another kid in the class turned around and said, "Hey, you better apply to be a library proctor."

Jam, our library guide dog in training, checking a book out to a student.

Yes.  He better.  He's on our list of awesome kids.

Great book for those hard to please boys

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Awesome, fun read!  Give to those high schoolers who don't like to read and I guarantee they will like this.  Should appeal to both guys and girls.  The pace is high octane fast!  Essentially, Perry Stormaire is a senior, with a lawyer father who runs his life (read: Tiger Dad) and he is trying to get into Columbia.  The family has invited a foreign exchange student into their house for the year and instead of a gorgeous co-ed, they get Gobi.  Plain, banal, and needing much help, Gobi, whom good guy Perry looks out for at school.


But when his parents pressure him into taking Gobi to the prom as his date, the train comes off the track and that's when it all starts to go completely nuts!  So if you have teens who like action, assassins, mysteries, underdog heroes, a touch of romance, and some very close calls with death, the police and general mayhem, give them this book.


I can't tell you any more than to say that it kept me at the edge of my seat, so much that I finished reading it in two nights.  The characters are great.  The writing is funny, touching and really draws you into the moment. Two of my favorite lines from the book are: "I couldn't remember the theme of the prom but it seemed to be something along the lines of Social Darwinism Under the Stars.  Lights and shimmering tinsel had transformed the gymnasium into a pulsating soup of glandular hostility." I mean reallY!  How can you not love it?


I will say that having read some of the complaints about this book, you need to think of this book as a fantasy book, not a reality book.  It's like a die-hard movie.  Clearly, you will have to suspend belief. But if you can do that, it will be a fun ride.


A nice touch was having each chapter open with a college application question which the chapter then proceeded to answer in a roundabout way, which all plays into the climatic ending.


A must read for this year!


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