November 7th @Barnes & Noble in Emeryville!

Come one come all to the HNHS Library fundraiser @Barnes and Noble!

• look at our Non-fiction Wishlist
• look at our Fiction Wishlist

• 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!

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.

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?

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!

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 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.

I'm a Shover and Maker... are you?

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 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.

The Inauguration of President Barack Obama - The Big Picture - Boston.com

The Inauguration of President Barack Obama - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Posted using ShareThis

Just in time for exams...

Use it with care... may inspire studying or saving the world.


This was originally posted at: Best Week Ever

Grown-ups and copyright: Emily the Strange...

Today when doing my regular bloggy reading, I came across some information about our dear friend, Emily the Strange. Whether you like her or not, you should know that according to this blog, she was copied from an earlier book, Nate the Great and the Lost List. So, the people who originally created this character have gotten neither credit for their creation nor any of the big bucks that the creator of Emily the Strange has earned from her merchandise sales AND upcoming movie sales.

What do you think about this? What do you think should happen to the creator of Emily the Strange? How should the original author and illustrator be compensated?

My wishes were answered...

This is funny, library-related AND appropriate.

Libraries featured...

I am always on the lookout for library or book related bands, music videos, music lyrics, Youtube videos, etc. So far, I know about Harry and the Potters, the Belle and Sebastian album Books, the band the Books, Green Day's song At the Library and many, many more. Here's the Green Day video.


Help me find some more!

Yellow Jackets

Wednesday night a teeny group of HNHS students and I went to see the play Yellow Jackets at the Berkeley Rep. It was a fabulous experience. The play was thought provoking and definitely great to see a second time. The issues were fairly universal for anyone who works in or attends a school in the Bay Area with incredible diversity. Each of the characters had strong personalities and points about the experiences they were having. The range of topics raised ran from the Holocaust to tracking in schools to institutional racism. Whew. Heavy. It sparked great conversation with the students.

The best part came when we stalked the actors after the show. They were generous with their time and talked with us for at least a half an hour.

If any students out there want to come next time come see me in the library. If we can get 10 students to go, the tickets will only be $15!

This one goes out to the librarians...

Hey BAISL-ers... Here's the link to Hecka Tight Reads with Rachel and Julia.

Review sources mentioned:
Some are librarians, some are young readers, some are less young readers... all are interesting. In my further exploration of this, there are many, many folks out there blogging about YA fiction. Reviewer X has a GIANT list of these folks' blogs on her blogroll. Other folks do as well. These are the ones that I follow regularly in my Google Reader and like. Explore at will!

Favorite Teenage Angstbooks: Book Reviews
Reading Rants! Out of the Ordinary Teen Booklists!
The YA YA YAs
Alternative Teen Services » YA Books
Crazy Quilts
ALAN Online
hiplibrariansbookblog.blog-city.com
YA or STFU
Bookshelves of Doom
The Chick Manifesto
Young Adult Book Bloggers

Here are the two student review blogs:
Reviewer X
And Another Book Read
WORD for teens

The Library of Congress and Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder is one of my favorites. I think because my dad is a fan and the music reminds me of him. So, news of note today is that the Library of Congress has honored Stevie with the Gershwin Prize.
As some of you juniors know, the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world and holds most of the books published in the United States. It also has amazing collections of photographs, maps and manuscripts. Many of the photos from the Library of Congress can be viewed on Flickr.com. The library was established 208 years ago in 1800 by President John Adams. To read more about it go here to the history section of the LOC webpage.

Food for thought... literally.

So, in all my blog reading, I came across this great article about school lunches and trash. Think for a minute about your lunches whether you buy them here or bring them from home. How much do you throw away after each one? What things do you re-use? Then read the article. What can you do to reduce the amount of trash you throw away every day?!

Welcome back, welcome back...welcome back!

Hello all you studious students. Welcome back to school! I hope your summers were fabulous and relaxing. Don't forget to check back here for all kinds of snazzy library or school-related links and fun facts.
Cheers,
Ms. Haverstock

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!