Did you go to the Zombie Feltie program last week at Golden? Or maybe, like me, you were sad you had to miss it! In case you want to try it out on your own here are some of the great "Feltie" books that the library owns:
There's a half day this Wednesday in most Jeffco elementary and middle schools, so we're showing a movie at the Belmar Library at 1 pm! The movie is rated PG-13, so make sure it's okay with your family that you attend. We'll also be building these guys while we watch. I bet you can guess the movie we'll be showing, but if not, just call 303-235-5275 to get the information.
"The bugler steps forward and licks his lips before he lifts his trumpet. It occurs to me that I've never actually heard taps played in real life. As the first notes emerge, I try to be present in the moment, try to press into my mind what this moment means. My brother is dead. And this...this song means it's real. He's playing for Finn."
Honor's brother played high school football and planned to play college ball with his best friend Rusty. At the last minute, and with little explanation, Finn enlisted in the military instead. Now he's dead. And Honor doesn't know what to do.
She decides to drive all the way to California, to use the concert tickets that Finn sent her for her birthday. Rusty shows up, drunk as usual, just as she's starting the engine of Finn's car. So he comes along for the ride.
Okay, Free Application for Federal Student Aid isn’t fun for most people, but there are basic things you can do to make it easier.
Join us Today at the Arvada Library meeting room for some helpful tips to make filling out the FAFSA. 4:30 p.m. Parents are welcome. You might want to bring a barf bag though. It's my first Prezi and it got a little out of hand.
Sundance Film Festival ended yesterday. Here is one of my favorite short films at the festival. Look for the super fantastic moustache on Giovanni Dominice, M.D.
John von Neumann first released the idea of Game Theory in 1928. He looked at mathematics and probability based on board games, like chess. In the 1940's Game Theory gained wider applications for economics and other fields. The concept of game theory is that players start a game, have defined options either by choice or random (like the spin wheel in Twister), and have a conclusion where a winner is declared. There are "perfect information" games where the players have full knowledge of what is happening in the game and "imperfect information" games, like Battleship, where not all the cards are revealed to all players.
Within game theory there are also two different types of games. Zero Sum, where two players compete and the amount won by one player is equal to the amount lost by the other, and Non-Zero Sum, where there are multiple players and the amount won may not be equal to the amount lost by any individual player. In Non-Zero Sum games players can work together or form "coalitions" to win. (Insert evil hand rubbing.)
The theory is all about strategy and looking at the probable outcomes of certain decisions. Game theory has been used in everything from military planning to evaluating schizophrenia.
This book is highly recommended by a Lakewood Library Teen Advisory Board member:
Seven years after the forest seemingly swallowed her brother whole, seventeen-year-old Jenny, whose story about Tom's disappearance has never been believed, sets out to finally say goodbye, but instead she is pulled into a mysterious world of faeries and other creatures where nothing is what it seems.
Jack and Conner are drawn back to Marbury to rescue other friends and attempt to destroy the lens that transports them to the alternate world.
Passenger is the follow up to The Marbury Lens (2010) which is probably one of the weirdest, creepiest books I’ve read in a while. If you are a fan of realities nesting inside realities locked within realities that may or may not be the product of traumatic abductions and near death experiences, than this series is for you!
In Marbury Lens, Jack narrowly escapes imprisonment, torture and rape only to find himself in London with a pair of mysterious glasses which seem to transport him to an alternate reality where something terrible has happened to the earth and society. Both Jack and the reader share uncertainty about what is happening – is this a future reality? Is it a psychotic break? Did Jack fail to escape from his abductor after all and this terrible apocalyptic vision is really his survival fantasy?
Passenger brings us back to Marbury for more: more horror, more insanely dark and demented uncertainty, more graphic and disturbing images (not to mention f-bombs! Yikes!). It is a challenging read, a compelling story and something you will think about a long time after you set the book down.
This year is a particularly bad year for the flu. It is a viral infection so antibiotics don't cure the flu. Each year scientists around the world try to predict what type of flu will be most prevalent. The flu is a trick bug to track down, it thrives on mutation and changes it's genetic structure often. The flu viruses fall into the designation orthomyxoviruses, (Impress your sick friends by sending them a "I hope you recover soon from your orthomyxovirus" card.)
The flu virus contains RNA (ribonucleic acid) that uses your body's healthy cells as it's breeding ground. The virus has two different kinds of spikes all around the exterior of the cell. The hemagglutinin spike allows it to pierce your nice healthy cells for the virus particle to enter for replication. The neuraminidase spike is what the newly replicated flu virus uses to escape your host cell.
Wash your hands often and try to avoid other sick people! A word of advice from the Center for Disease Control (CDC): "Practice proper cough and sneeze etiquette to prevent the spread of germs."
Want to know more? Check out our online database Science in Context or the CDC website for information on the current flu season.
In a Manhattan where the streets are under water and outcasts called mystics have paranormal powers, Aria Rose is engaged to Thomas Foster and the powerful Rose and Foster families--longtime enemies--are uniting politically; the only trouble is that Aria cannot remember ever meeting Thomas, much less falling in love with him.
WARNING: This book kept me up until 4:30am! (I was not a pretty sight the next day… Yikes!) The story has a lot of familiar features… feuding families, mob politics, gorgeous young rich people, drugs, romance, mysteries… Very Romeo and Juliet -- except with mystical powers and global warming!
Humans and dragons engineered a fragile peace nearly forty years ago, but as the anniversary of the treaty nears, tensions escalate with covert factions on both sides instigating war. Seraphina, an unusually gifted musician, hides not only the extent of her talent but her heritage. Dragons can assume human form and a few live among the people of Goerdd as ambassadors and scholars; they are mathematical, rational and precise musicians, but they disdain emotion. Seraphina is half-dragon and half-human, something that everyone else presumes impossible. She must hide her true nature at risk of death for herself and her father, but her knowledge of dragons is uncanny. When the Crown Prince is murdered, Princess Glisselda and her betrothed, Prince Lucien rely on Seraphina’s courage and knowledge, drawing her deeper into an intrigue rooted in treason.
Vivid world-building at its best, Seraphina, is an adventure that tests the boundaries of love, loyalty and what it means to be human.
Beautiful Creatures, based on the teen best seller by Kami Garcia, is set to release Feb. 13th. It’s a dreamy, southern gothic romance. The story is set in Gaitlin, South Carolina. Gaitlin is a typical small southern town where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Ethan, 16, and still reeling from the loss of his mother the previous year, begins having nightmares. Every night he wakes sweating and terrified from a dream of a girl who mysteriously slips from his hand and drowns in a pool of water. Can you guess what happens next? Yes, the girl from his dreams, Lena, moves to town. She is mysterious and lives with her reclusive uncle. She’s also a caster, aka witch, whose path will be chosen for her when she turns 16 - a path toward darkness or a path toward the light.
Here's a fun Pretty Little Liars quiz for you: Could you be A? The quiz asks: "Are you conniving, back-stabbing, and completely untrustworthy?" if so, you just might be the villain, A, from Pretty Little Liars!
Want to pass notes in school and avoid detention? Here's the perfect solution, invisible ink! You can make invisible ink out of a surprising number of common household ingredients. Write on paper with these substances and then expose them to heat, like an iron. Just be careful not to set the paper on fire! You should see the words magically appear. I tested a few and here are my results:
Milk - This one worked pretty well. The message doesn't come in very dark but it is legible.
Lemon Juice - This was the least successful. I couldn't see it on the paper when it was dry but it took a long time of heating before it started to appear.
Sugar water solution - This one didn't work as well because the sugar water became shiny on the paper so someone could read it without heating.
Baking Soda and water solution - This one worked great. It was the first to show up and had a nice brown color.
Why does this work? Both milk and lemon juice contain proteins and sugars that undergo a series of chemical reactions called Mailliard reactions. This is when sugar molecules attach to protein molecules. This creates the browning on the message. For sugar when the molecules are heated they form longer chains that then tangle with each other. These chains absorb more blue light than the paper which then appears as brown.
A nice side effect is that my laundry room now smells like caramel.
Try your own invisible ink and post your discoveries in the comments below.
And we’ve got you covered with our extensive Info links covering…well, pretty much everything under the sun. The sun, too!
Working on a paper about your favorite Teen Librarian? Check out Biography.com – a great website with lots of interesting people and facts about the really cool people who live on this planet. (Full disclosure: there are no Teen Librarians profiled on the website. Yet…)
Need to be able discern between Percy Jackson and the real Perseus from Greek mythology? Check out Encyclopedia Mythica. This is an award winning online encyclopedia that covers folklore, mythology, and religion. It’s suitable for the serious researcher or the casual reader.
Desperately need to know how much a stamp cost the year you were born? Or what the U.S. GDP was or who won the Super Bowl? Or maybe you just want to test your knowledge in the Decade Quiz section? Year-by-Year: 1900 – 2012 by Infoplease is an online almanac of pretty much everything you might want to know about a given year. Stamps were .06 cents when I was born. Egads!
Want to know if Dr. Who’s Tardis is really a form of a Tipler machine or what the deal with Schroedinger’s Cat is -- is it DEAD or NOT? Try out The Laws List – You can feel your brain growing in your skull when you look through the list of scientific laws.
To access our super cool awesome brain growing info links just go our Homework Help page.
Popcorn is provided courtesy of the Landmark Olde Town Theatre. Can you guess the name of the movie? It’s a three word title – here’s a hint for each word.
1. It was a ____ and stormy night. Fill in the blank.
2.
3. Synonym for ascends.
Too easy! Call us at 303-235-5275 if you have any questions.
Join us at 6:00 on Friday, January 11 for a movie just for teens. Let's see if you can guess the film:
1. First in a planned series of four movies (the next will be out later this year) 2. Based on a wildly-popular YA novel of the same name 3. Inspired by Roman gladiatorial games and reality television
Snacks and soda will be provided!
Teen Movie Night 6:00 - 8:30 p.m. Friday, January 11 Evergreen Library
Anya doesn’t fit in a school or home.Her mom wants her to respect her Russian immigrant roots but she wants to be a normal American teen.When she falls down the well in the park she finally gains a best friend, one that has been dead since 1918. Emily may have been dead for a century but she is determined to help Anya transform into a popular girl at school.As the saying goes, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence and sinister secrets follow Emily from the grave.This is a well drawn story with images that perfectly capture what it is to feel like an awkward teen trying to fit in.I loved this story from start to finish.
How much do you love reading? Do you love it enough to spread the joy to others?
Check out World Book Night. It's a non-profit, one night event that happens all across the country. Givers, who volunteer to participate, pick up a box of 20 copies of their chosen book and give them away to people who are not regular readers. That might be people at a bus stop, people at a football game, wherever you can think of!
Sound amazing? It totally is, I did it last year and gave away 20 copies of Ender's Game on the 16th Street Mall in Denver.
YOU can apply to be a giver! Check out the details and apply here.
Many Jeffco Library locations will be pickup locations, complete with a party for givers!
It may be a mouthful to say but it is also one of the most beautiful natural phenomenon on this planet. A librarian at Lakewood just got back from Greenland where she spent 4 days (or nights in her case) watching the northern lights.
What creates these amazing light shows in the sky? When electrically charged particles from solar flares enter the earth's atmosphere they collide with oxygen, nitrogen and other gasses to turn into light. Think of it like a giant neon lamp in the sky. These auroras are typically seen at the poles because the magnetic field of the earth generally repels these particles. South auroras are called Aurora Australis. These light shows take place at 60 to 200 miles above the earth and may sometimes go even higher. The color is generally green but may appear in other shades as well.
Want to know more? Check out our online database Science in Context. You can also find videos in this database.
There have been a lot of advances in robotic design in the last few years. Here are some teen titles that take a look into what robots of the future might look like:
Girl Parts by John M. Cusick Do you have a hard time talking to girls? Ever feel lonely? David's parents buy him a companion bot to "encourage healthy human interaction."
Cinder by Melissa Marr Cinder, a gifted mechanic and cyborg, becomes involved with handsome Prince Kai and must uncover secrets about her past in order to save the world.
Eager by Helen Fox The Bell family's new robot, Eager, is programmed to not merely obey but to question, reason, and exercise free will. When the ultra high-tech, eerily human BDC4 robots begin to behave suspiciously, Eager and the Bells are drawn into a great adventure that is sometimes dark and often humorous.
The Robot by Paul E Watson Gabe and his best friend Dover crack the code to the forbidden laboratory of Gabe's father, unwittingly unleashing T.R.I.N.A., a beautiful blonderobotprogrammed with a mission that the two boys must put to a stop.
I Robot by Issac Asimov This is the ultimate classic robot book. Asimov explores the idea of robots becoming an intrinsic part of our society. What happens when they try to take over the world?
Have a Happy New Year! Have you made your resolutions yet? If not, let the library help! Here are some ideas:
Volunteer! Set a resolution to give back to your community. Look for opportunities with the Metro Volunteers organization. Volunteer at the Library! Join a library Teen Advisory Board. Ask your local teen librarian about this. Read up on becoming a volunteer. Check out this teen book:
Get in shape! Start moving and get your blood flowing. Check out some exercise DVDs from the library. Take a walk in one of the Jefferson County Open Space Parks. Read this inspirational story abut a teen who invented a video game to loose weight: