Monday, December 14, 2009

YA through the decades....



Woohoo! Ms. Haverstock is participating her first book challenge! For those of you that don't know librarians and other book-y sorts of people like to dork out about different nerdy things one of which is books. We like to challenge each other to do things like read. Imagine that. Here are the rules for this one:

"Rules:

1. Books should be considered YA or, for older books, should feature a teenaged main character or point of view. Let’s say from roughly ages 12-18.
2. Read at least one book from each decade: 1930s or earlier; 1940s; 1950s; 1960s; 1970s; 1980s; 1990s; 2000s. Re-reads are fine. Check the main challenge page for book ideas for each time period.
3. Sign up either by commenting or signing the Linky at the bottom of the page. You can use the graphic on your blog to promote the challenge if you wish. You can start this challenge at any time during the year.

Optional

Post your reading list on your blog!"


So, over the course of the rest of the calendar year, I will be reading YA books from long ago and from today. If you have any suggestions, let me know and I will see what I can do.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Thankgiving thoughts...

So, I was reading things on the internet as I do and I came across an email from Debbie Reese who writes a blog about Native Americans in Children's Literature. She pointed her readers to the website for the National Museum of the American Indian and their online resources for teachers about Thanksgiving.

We as a school have not really discussed the reason for the season. Maybe some folks have in the classroom and I don't know, but just in case, here's some information from the museum.
  • The first Thanksgiving was in Plymouth in 1621.
  • The Indians in attendance were the Wampanoag.
  • The Wampanoag had lived in the region for thousands of years and had a very sophisticated society with their own government, their own religious and philosophical beliefs and developed culture.
  • The gathering of people on this day was as much to forge political alliances and recognize a day of peace as a gathering of neighbors. It was also a celebration of the success of crops planted by the Europeans with help from the Wampanoag.
  • There is a letter from Edward Winslow wrote that is considered to be the only surviving record of the event.***
A quote from the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address:
We are all thankful to our Mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life. She
supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as
she has from the beginning of time. To our Mother, we send greetings and thanks.

Consider these things as we head to our respective homes for the holiday. Enjoy the time!

*** This material is from: American Indian Perspectives on Thanksgiving and Harvest Ceremony: Beyond the Thanksgiving Myth, documents published by the National Museum of the American Indian Education Office.

Monday, October 19, 2009

November 7th @Barnes & Noble in Emeryville!

Come one come all to the HNHS Library fundraiser @Barnes and Noble!
  • Check out the Evite and invite yourself (if you haven't already been invited!)

Librarians use lots of ACRONYMS!

Hey fellow readers...

Just an FYI from ALA and YALSA (that stands for American Library Association and Young Adult Library Services Association). The Teens Top Ten list is in! That means that teenagers just like you voted on their favorite books. The results include some books that we have here in this very library. Including:
Paper Towns by John Green
Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer
and soon to be cataloged
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.

Stop by the library to check these out or to print your nerdy yet cool 2009 Top Ten bookmark!

Friday, August 21, 2009

Welcome back HNHS!


Hello everyone! It's my fifth year here as the librarian and I am so excited about that. I am a seasoned librarian now. It's official.

To kick off the year, I wanted to share some cool stuff with you all. I spend a lot of my time here in the library researching cool resources for students and teachers. With all of this I find lots of non-library related things too. But for today, I want to share some magazine sources that you may not know about. Some of them are linked in the sidebar over there to the left of the screen under the pictures of book covers.

It's important for you all to be exposed to things other than the popular culture found in things like Seventeen and Teen Vogue. To that end, I try to supply alternatives both in print and online like: Alive Magazine, a magazine written for and by people your age and LaTeen, a magazine specifically for Latina girls. Another that I like is VenusZine, a magazine that profiles all things women, DIY and rock and roll. There are so many ways to be and choices to make about who you are and who you want to be. So, come on over to the library and read all about it.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Would you read this...

So, I read this review of a book on the Reading Rants blog. It's called Jumped by Rita Williams-Garcia. Based on this review from Reading Rants and these from Goodreads (one of my favorite book-review sites), would you read the book? Would you be excited about it?

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Mitali Perkins on literature and race...

Mitali Perkins, author of one of my favorite books, Monsoon Summer (it's set in Berkeley!!!), wrote an article for the School Library Journal about her experiences with reading and her culture growing up. Read it here:
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6647713.html

Enjoy!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Step right up for some new John Green action...

Hot off the presses, the new John Green book, Paper Towns, has hit the HNHS library shelves.

John Green also wrote other fan favorites, Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines. We have all of these in the HNHS library!




Paper Towns Paper Towns by John Green



My review


rating: 4 of 5 stars
Wow. As usual, John Green writes good boy-nerd characters and humanizes the heck out of everyone, jocks and nerds alike. Good job, John. But, I have to agree with other reviews that say "what happened to the end?" I was surely expecting a much more dramatic conclusion to what was a very dramatic mystery and search. All we got was an unshowered girl with a laptop and a little teeny bit of mediocre soul searching. I didn't need a dramatically emotional reunion (ok, maybe I did), but what about a little more something. Overall, enjoyable and entertaining... not bad.


View all my reviews.

Monday, March 02, 2009

after a hiatus of sorts...

Hello. Ms. Haverstock is back. I have been reading a lot, but most of the record of that is on Goodreads. That being said, I wanted to share my latest review here. I read Red: Teenage Girls Write on What Fires Them Up Today. It could be something that one of you HNHS students would like or would identify with... check it out (gosh, I love this library pun).

Red: Teenage Girls Write On What Fires Up Their Lives Today Red: Teenage Girls Write On What Fires Up Their Lives Today by Amy Goldwasser


My review


rating: 3 of 5 stars
This collection was not as mind-blowing as I would have liked it to be. Given that, there were a few really great pieces of writing, some great stories and a lot of sweet (and sad) self-expression. How rad would it be to be 15 and a published author?! Teenagers are thoughtful (duh!). I would have liked to see more diversity of voices especially in light of the author's mention of diversity in the introduction. Overall, it was fine.


View all my reviews.