Teen Reading - Finding Daddy

I loved Finding Daddy by Louise Plummer. It was everything a good suspense book should be. Murder...mahem...psychotics...and teenage heroes! Finding Daddy is the story of a teenage girl, Mira, who wants to know about the father she has never met. Her mother and grandmother refuse to answer her questions. So being a curious teen, she heads to the internet and searches for him and finds him. Mira wants to contact him but is a little wary. She calls him only to hang up and not talk to him. But hold on...he has caller id and come to find out he has just been waiting for the opportunity to find her and her mother. Turns out, he is truly psychotic and abusive. The mother and grandmother escaped from him years earlier to protect all of them but especially the daughter. When Mira was only 2 yrs old her father deliberately broke her arm as punishment because he thought she should be potty trained and she had had an accident that day. Shortly after making the phone call, the dog is killed, the grandmother is killed, the mother almost killed and hospitalized, the best friend terrorized but becomes a heroine, the boyfriend is terrorized... Ok you get the picture! The story is a slow starter...but quickly gains speed and soon becomes a quick read.

Teen Reading - The Bloodwater Mysteries

I love the Bloodwater Mysteries by Pete Hautman and Mary Logue. Not only are they appropriate for reluctant readers but they also will appeal to those teens crossing over from the Juvenile section to the YA section. So far, the Bloodwater Mysteries include Snatched and Skullduggery. What I really love about the mysteries is their appeal to both sexes. Despite the title of the series, no murders occur but there is mild violence. People do get hit over the head and so on! The name of the series comes from the town of Bloodwater in which the books are set. The two main characters are:

Roni Delicata, a senior and newspaper snoop and
Brian Rain, a brilliant nerdy freshmen.

Brian is smart and often takes classes above his grade level. Roni is your average "let me do as little as possible to get by with her grades" type of student. The two often find themselves in the same class and come together as unlikely partners. They end up making a very good investigative team. The books are good solid mysteries with some fun along the way.

Teen Reading - Vampire Academy

With all the vampire hoopla in teen reading today, I thought I would start with Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead. Vampire Academy is the first novel in a new and well received vampire series. It's not your typical vampire book! Its also not designed for younger teens. The content is written on a more difficult level. A 6th grader may not be able to pull all the content together. It's comprehension that would give them trouble not content like sex and language though there is murder and romance in the novel. There are many types of other worldly beings featured and they all have exotic names. The narrator, Rose, is a Dhampir and her best friend, Lissa, is a Moroi Princess. They have a bond that goes beyond friendship and that's the real story within this book. Your typical vampire knowledge is of no use with this book. There is a very evil type of vampire called Strigoi that does suck blood and likes to kill! The setting is an academy where fighting skills, bodyguard techniques, and weight training are more important than math or art. Rose and Lissa escaped and ran away from the academy. The book begins after they have been away for almost 2 years and are finally captured and returned to the academy for their own protection.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and can't wait for the sequel ... which is on my selection list!

Web Junction

There are many different online communities that I have been invited to be apart of but I was real excited when I registered for Web Junction and immediately saw a resource section that featured ideas and concerns about "teen services". I am looking forward to checking in weekly with this site to see what's available within the library community.

LetterPop and Zamzar

I can think of many uses for LetterPop and as soon as they find the problem in activating my account I will create a newsletter. I'll use it to let my friends and family know that we've moved to Greenwood. I have played around with and like the ease of it as well as the variety of templates. I have to wait until my account is activated before downloading a pic though. I'll try again soon.

Zamzar, I think can be quite useful. I often get emails containing attachments from PowerPoint presentations that I can not open. It will be intersting to see if those can be converted. However, the first file that I tried to convert from my computer was a Kodak pic. It returned with a "filetype conversion is not currently supported" message! I'll continue to press on.

Greenwood21 Wiki

Ok...thanks to Shannon's good eyes, we are linked to the Wiki on our blogs.

New SLE Library 2.1

Ha! A new day...let's see what I remember! I look forward to exploring more as we begin the new Staff Learning Experience 2.1.