the end of the year!

So, today is the second to last day of the 2007-2008 school year. You all will be happy to know that I finally got my cataloging software to cooperate and I have no lingering books checked out! Thank you to everyone who made this year great for the library and thank you all for checking out books!

One final link to share with you as the year draws to a close. Yesterday I found this great site called Today in Literature. Each day, the site offers a story and a picture about a significant person or work of literature. Today's entry is about the death of Anne Bronte, the sister of those other, slightly more famous authors who wrote Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Enjoy!

And more importantly, enjoy the summer!

Tomorrow is Earth Day!

What can we (you) do? Go here to the Earth Day Network's website to find out what's going on around the world. Around the East Bay there are many things to do. Here's a few:

• Habitat for Humanity's Build-a-thon
• Read about Earth Day happenings in Castro Valley
• UC Berkeley is hosting Earth Week
• watch KQED's Earth Day special on Quest
• Go to the Aquarium of the Bay for special Earth Day events!

Do it!

Poetry prize awesomeness.

I love poetry, but don't usually spend much time reading it. When I do, it usually really connects with something in my heart. There's something about being able to capture a feeling or an experience in so few words and for those words to have the power to evoke similar feelings in the reader. There is great power in that.

Here's a prize winning poem by unpublished poet Polly Atkin. I ran across it today in an article in the Guardian, a British newspaper. How does the description of the surroundings on each day make YOU feel?

Seven Nights of Uncreation

On the first night I woke up deep underwater,
dry as a fish-bone in the belly of a ship,
the heavy silence below the water-line
punctured by crackings like timbers or bones
smashing to splinters on unseen rocks.
I was blind, trapped. Utterly lost.

On the second a glimmer of pinkish light
showed pillars rising from lengthening sides
to meet in the curve of the ceiling like arches.
Something within me could tell without asking
that these were the ribs of a monstrous creature,
the platform I stood on, its lung.

On the third night the taste of the dark was different;
I felt right at once I was deep underground
with the weight of the wet earth driving me down,
the metallic blood-tang of hewn rock in my mouth
and a prescient knowledge I'd never get out.
I was buried, the cave was a tomb.

By the fourth night of this I was wary of dreams,
the days between blinking, plagued by impressions
I did not recall from the nights' haunting visions,
but knew from their otherness they were the same.
I arrived just like home on a wide open plain,
but the wind spoke in alien tongues.

On the fifth night I rose to the ridge of a hill,
my eyes fixed by chance to a passage below,
where a sad slow procession wound its way north
into shadow, hung over the land like a hawk.
I felt it important to watch, but the wind
and the rain relieved me of sight.

On the six night I fell into nothing. Nothing
smothered me, crushing and crowding around,
everywhere, blankness rubbing me out
inch by inch, until I was nothing. I stuttered,
coughed when I tried to speak.
When I tried to scream I was mute.

The seventh night was a night of rest.
I crouched awake til the birds' dawn chorus,
hearing them singing to hours of darkness,
thinking I'm them; I am just like the birds,
tricked into ludicrous song by illusion,
tricked to believe in the false dawn light.

On the dawn of the eighth day I unlocked my limbs,
and stepped into a new life.

Totally rad library video!

urban myths...

In the interest of being a good librarian who asks students and people in general to check their sources before they pass on information, here is a link to a site that helps you do just that. You know those pesky email forwards that have stories about things like missing children or certain politicians and their dirty deeds, well, here's a wealth of information that will help you discern if these are true or not. Thanks to Mrs. Mandujano for passing it on.

Online magazine... by you for you.

Here is a lovely publication by teenage writers, for teenage audiences, specifically young women. It's called Alive. You can either view the features online or you can download the whole thing and read it on the computer like a magazine.

High Schoolers are cool!

According to researchers as reported in the USA Today, high school students in the United States often think of African Americans and women when they think: famous. That's pretty cool and as the article mentions, this indicates an important shift in how people in the United States think. Read all about it!

the HNHS library catalog.

Just a reminder to all of you, you can access our databases and library catalog from home!

• Instructions about how to use the catalog are on the Library FAQs web page here.
• Instructions for the databases and our all new exciting e-books are to follow.

Fiction of interest...

Hello my fair students and personnel. Here's an interesting article from the Guardian about a fabulous new Dominican writer, Junot Diaz. We have a copy of his work in the library as we speak. Come check it out.

And thus begins the Spring semester at HNHS...

Welcome back one and all. I hope you all had copious time to read many, wonderful books over the break. I certainly did. Here are the highlights:

• The Golden Compass (If you liked the movie, you'll love the book!)
• The Subtle Knife (The sequel!)
• The Amber Spyglass (The third and last book...)

• Reservation Blues (a book by Sherman Alexie... Native American story about a band...so fabulous!)
  
• The Green Glass Sea (a novel told from the perspective of a girl living in Los Alamos as the atomic bomb is being developed)

See you all on Tuesday, ready or not!

i love Maurice Sendak!!!

So, in library school, I read one of Maurice Sendak's books, In the Night Kitchen. I remember loving the slightly bizarre story and the amazing illustrations. There is an exhibit all about him and his works. Read about it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Sendak-Exhibit.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Visit the museum here:
http://www.rosenbach.org/

Test your vocabulary and feed the world at the same time!!!

So, this website is totally rad.... If you are looking for a way to:
#1 entertain yourself
#2 make your English teacher happy by practicing really hard vocabulary words
#3 save the world!
then go to this site:
http://www.freerice.com/index.php and have at it. This website claims to donate 10 grains of rice through the United Nations for each question you answer correctly. I am up to 150 grains of rice donated and I haven't missed a word yet. Beat that!

One week until Thanksgiving...

Hello again girls and guys(?)...
The librarian has uncovered some very valuable information. There are some really cool reading resources out there just for girls and also African American teenagers. Who knew? This is the article that talks about it:
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6500194.html?rssid=190
and here are the actual sites... look and see how fabulous they are!

Two things...

So, there are two things I want to mention today.

#1... It's Teen Read Week, this week, October 14-20th. Read all about it on their website... ha ha, get it..."read all about it"... Teen Read Week?

#2... Have you heard of the Gratitude Dance? Watch it here:

Attention all students!

Good news...! The Oakland Public library has lifted bans on all library cards. That means that if you owe fines or books or anything else to the library, you can still use your library card.

"The campaign will encourage patrons to return overdue materials or admit that they’re lost—with no penalty. Under library rules, anyone with more than $12.50 in late fines is automatically blocked from checking out materials." By SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 10/4/2007

freaky, funky library!

Hey kids! Check out the design for this weird, crazy national library in Prague. It looks a little like something that would be on the Teletubbies. Basically, it looks like an alien space ship. Look at it here. Read about it here.
Thanks to Jessamyn West's awesome librarian blog for pointing it out to me.

coffee!

So, this posting is not strictly library related, but it is definitely school related and teenager related.
Coffee is delicious and maybe not SO nutritious, but did you know that there is a science associated with it? If you can't survive your day without coffee, you should check out this site.
http://www.cosic.org/

In addition, there is this really cool site like myspace, but for books. You can go on the site and make a list of all the books you have read and write reviews for them (or comments, really). As a librarian I fully endorse it. Add me!

Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back...!

Hello my lovely students! It is close to the end of the first week of school. I hope things are going well for the start of a new year. There are a couple of things for you to check out.

HNHS library has a myspace page. It's so hip and cool. Add me! www.myspace.com/holylibrary

There is an opportunity for students to submit writing to a student-run publication that we feature in the library (usually) called Teen Voices

AND here's another one called Teen Ink

Please come visit the library in your spare time and as soon as things are cataloged (in the next week or so) new books will be available including the new Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer.

Bring them back!

In case any of you missed the announcements, the library needs your books back. Please return all books before exams.

This just in...

New at the HNHS library. Come check it out... and then check out the author, Courtney Macavinta's website!
http://www.respectrx.com/