Board games are here!

Not hungry?  Stop by the media center during lunch to play one of our new board games: Monopoly, Clue, Lord of the Rings, New Moon, Life, Storming the Castle, and last but definitely not least, Citadels.

I highly recommend Citadels.  It’s a quick, exciting game, in which you can plot, steal, build, and destroy, all in one fast-paced turn.

Spend one lunch to learn the rules, then come back the next day and trounce your friends.

This one’s for the ladies

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray takes place in Victorian times, in which both corsets and manners were very important for “well-bred” girls.  Gemma, a young woman raised in India and then shipped off to England after the mysterious death of her mother, finds that she has the power to enter the Realms, a secret world of magic run by women (the “Order”) and policed by men (the “Rakshana”).  Her newfound power makes her the target of dark forces who wish to use the Realms and its power for their own evil plans.  Like a slumber party’s “Bloody Mary” game gone horribly wrong, Gemma and her friends learn what it means to dabble in powers beyond their control.  If you like candlelight, elegant dresses, and delicious chills of fear up your spine, you’ll enjoy this book–and its two sequels, Rebel Angels and The Sweet Far Thing.

Last chance for the book fair

Wednesday is the last day of the book fair.  It may also be your last chance to get a FREE public library card during lunch!  Don’t miss out!

Don’t forget that Book Character Dress-up Day is also on Wednesday.  Wear a costume to represent your favorite literary character.  Click the photo to see (left to right) Mrs. DiMuro as Huck Finn, Ms. Nice as the Wicked Witch of the West, Mrs. Moseman as Scheherazade from the Arabian Nights, and Mrs. Opisso as Professor McGonagall from the Harry Potter series.

The BOOK FAIR is coming!

The Media Center will host a book fair from Monday, January 25th, through Wednesday, January 27th.  Get ready to shop for the newest books by the hottest authors!

Are you bored?

Get yourself down to the public library.  Check out some books, CDs, and DVDs.  It’s instant entertainment!  Did you know they have a Young Adult section just for you?  What are you waiting for?  Stop staring at your computer and GO!

Hours of operation can be found here.

Here are the directions to the DeLand Public Library.  If you live over in Lake Helen, here’s the directions to the Lake Helen Public Library.  And last but not least, here are the directions to the Orange City Public Library.

Get your game on!

We’re thinking about buying some board games so that you can play them in the media center at lunch.  PLEASE TAKE OUR VERY SHORT SURVEY and give us your opinion!

The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behavior, Plus Techniques for Taming Them

A book review by Alicja Duda

Has the social web of drama ever ensnared you in its tangles?

Were you able to find your way out?

Through lists, letters, e-mails, footnotes, and therapist appointments; E. Lockhart spins Ruby Oliver, an apparently troubled adolescent, and the reader into the crudely enticing and messy world of drama in The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them.

Entering her junior year with the reputation of a promiscuous “leper” after a summer fling, Ruby endures the silent treatment of her friends, the hollow absence of her ex-boyfriend and adapts to her socially deprived status at her private high school. Although the reader may be able to empathize with Ruby, it becomes clear that she is more than applicable for her frisky “leper” status. Ruby juggles boys as if they were rentable relationships, lacks a secure foundation of priorities and decides to childishly channel her hormonal anger and confusion out on her therapist. It seems that despite her countless efforts to redeem herself from the bottom of the social totem pole, Ruby succumbs to even the slightest temptation that boys offer.

Despite the predictable plot that Lockhart creates, The Boy Book is essentially the publishing of social drama of teenagers alike in which both the characters and the reader are able to learn and mature from. 

New Moon Review

Have you read the local newspaper’s review of The Twilight Saga: New Moon?  Or, as a matter of fact, anyone’s review of New Moon?

Seems like everybody’s favorite vampire-teenage girl-werewolf love triangle is getting trashed by the critics.

So, let’s hear from the Twilighters out there.  Do you agree that New Moon stinks?  Do you think it could have been better?  Is the movie faithful to the book?  Click “Comments” and let your voice be heard.

LISTEN to the NEW BOOKS!

If you haven’t visited the fiction section lately, you should.  You can listen to samples from some of the hottest teen fiction on the market, and then check out those books right off the table.

Stop, listen, check out, return.  Repeat.  Got it?

Copper Sun

A book review by Alicja Duda

Do you know what it feels like to be completely torn from freedom?  Would you have the hope and courage to fight back?

The story begins through the young and innocent eyes of Amari, a fifteen-year-old girl living in the village of Ziavi in Africa. Her life, though lived in a place that existed 300 years ago, is not unlike the lives of teenagers today. Amari has chores to be completed around the village, she has a younger brother with whom she playfully argues with, and her heart is set on a boy whom she will marry when she comes of age. However, when Amari witnesses the slaughter of her people and is brutally taken to a foreign land as a slave, both the reader and Amari are introduced to the dehumanized life of a slave.

A more entertaining read than a history textbook, Sharon Draper’s book, Copper Sun, won the Coretta Scot King Award. Also, by alternating through the eyes of Amari and her white indentured companion, Polly, Draper provides insight regarding the significance of friendship among the horrors of slave trade.