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Wating to Forget by Sheila Kelly Welch

Posted by BJ Neary on September 29, 2014 at 12:52pm

Waiting to Forget by Sheila Kelly Welch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sheila Kelly Welch's realistic fiction book will definitely interest middle schoolers, high school students, and adult readers. Welch does a great job of sinking the reader into the chaotic lives of TJ and his sister, Angela, in the Now/Then format employed in this thin, gripping read. As TJ waits in the emergency room of a hospital, waiting to find out if Angela will live; we visit the Then part of TJ's life which is a horror to say the least. TJ and Angela love their mother but she is not a good mother. She leaves TJ in charge when she goes out and many nights does not return home. TJ and Angela live very tumultuous lives with their mother and later in various foster homes. It is when they are adopted and living with Dan and Marlene that TJ continues to struggle with his life day to day. Still afraid to hope and move on, TJ vacillates between anxiety and his horrendous past as he remembers, while perusing the Life Book he created for his new life with Dan and Marlene. Your heart aches for these two children and you root for this brother and sister to find happiness and peace in their forever home. Compelling, with realistic writing that pulls you in; you will enjoy TJ and Angela's saga.

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The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

Posted by BJ Neary on August 2, 2014 at 2:12am

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Many thanks to my sister-in-law, Donna, for recommending this wonderful, compelling, thought provoking read. There are so many threads and themes in this can’t put it down read (I couldn’t sleep and turned the light on at 4 am and read until I finished at 6am!!!) I loved, loved Tom Sherbourne, the tortured soldier and light house keeper who finds peace and love in life with Isabel Greysmark. As the lighthouse keeper of Janus Rock, Tom knows how important the strict adherence to rules is and it is this honor that is crushed when a dinghy washes ashore with a dead man and a baby. Isabel has suffered 3 miscarriages and persuades her husband they must take care of this little infant. As their life with baby, Lucy provides love, contentment and happiness beyond their wildest dreams, Tom is tortured by his decision not to report this incident. The repercussions are felt later and oh how devastating they are. This is a must read, I loved the author’s words, her characters, and the wild and natural settings in Australia of this tug of war. What happens to these three compelling characters? What would you do? You have to read this book and I assure you, you will not be disappointed. There are so many good discussions to be found in this story of fierce and tragic story of love, sacrifice, and forgiveness; a great book club title to be sure.

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The Office of Mercy by Ariel Djanikian

Posted by BJ Neary on July 26, 2013 at 2:19pm

The Office of Mercy by Ariel Djanikian
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Natasha has grown up in America-Five in a world that does not want anyone to suffer. She lives in a sterile, clean environment. There are many different offices in her world and the Office of Mercy is a coveted promotion Natasha enjoys as well as her relationship with Jeffrey who has been her friend since childhood and shown her special attention. But Natasha has always had tentative thoughts about the people outside the walls of America-Five and questions why those people are targets of the nova(s) that will take away their suffering; in other words, kill them. There are others in America- Five who are opposed to putting these tribes out of their misery (they are reviled) and when on a fact finding expedition outside the dome of America-Five, Natasha makes a mistake and is taken hostage by the clan. It is while she is their captive that she learns they think she will help them continue to live “free” and not be vanquished as “suffering” and to make things more difficult, Natasha sees they love their life and are not hungry, suffering, and in need of America-Five’s novas. Natasha is challenged throughout by her beliefs, her feelings, and her empathy towards these settlers; what will this mean for her future and her happiness? I couldn’t put this dystopian novel down.

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Boxers by Gene Luen Yang

Posted by BJ Neary on April 17, 2014 at 1:08pm

Boxers by Gene Luen Yang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this as part of the 2014 Hub Challenge and what a great graphic novel exploring the China of 1898 when the peasants were besieged by the foreign missionaries and soldiers. It was wonderful to see Bao's love of life, the gods and their involvement in his daily life and culture. My favorite character had to be Red Lantern; he had an impressive air about him that helped Bao mature and lead The Big Sword Society which later becomes The Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fist. But Bao as he succeeds he continues to have doubts and conflicts with his mission. What will his future hold?

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Torn Away by Jennifer Brown

Posted by BJ Neary on April 2, 2014 at 1:02pm

Torn Away by Jennifer Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and LittleBrown Books for Young Readers! What a riveting and engrossing book about family, finding yourself, and daring to believe after a tornado rips your life apart. Jennifer Brown’s description of the tornado as it affects Jersey Cameron’s life is so riveting. Jersey is a teen who unequivocally loves her mom, tolerates her stepfather, and finds her little sister very annoying. But all that changes when a tornado takes away her home, her mother, and little sister. As Jersey tries to understand why her mother is gone and her little sister, Marin, will never bug her to dance the East Coast Swing together ever again, her stepfather sends her to live with her father, Clay’s family, where she is unwelcome, taunted, and lives on the back porch. What crushes her even more is that Jersey is beginning to learn things about her mother; things she never told her, and things she kept from her. When she can no longer tolerate Clay’s family, she runs. Imagine her surprise when she learns her mother’s parents exist and bring Jersey to live with them. How will Jersey make this transition? Jennifer Brown does a great job building the tension, anger, and abandonment that Jersey constantly feels and while you root for Jersey building a lasting relationship with Grandpa Barry and Grandma Patty; it is the way Jersey hangs tough and does not give up on her hopes that will bring tears to your eyes and a warm place in your heart for her wonderful, simple, loving grandparents.

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Keep Holding On by Susane Colasanti

Posted by bj neary on July 6, 2012 at 1:27pm

Keep Holding On by Susane Colasanti
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Susane Colasanti has written a very telling novel about teens and bullying. Noelle's life is bad; bullied by Carly and Ashley and Warner; neglected by her mother and hooking up with Matt behind a secret wall at school. But Noelle struggles to "keep holding on" and hopes to have more food and clothes and friends some day. This is a gripping story because the bullying is very explicit and difficult to read. Even Noelle watches as others are bullied and wants to help them but knows it would spell doom for her. Noelle's life was once better, but after her mother's boyfriend dies; they have no home to live in; her mom does not have a good job and as life gets harder for her mother, Noelle is the one who suffers. Sometimes there is no food, no toiletries, and stopped up toilets and broken showers. Carly calls her "rotten eggs" because they one time Noelle can;t find any clothes to wear, she is forced to wear clothes that stink. All of this daily horror has Noelle so afraid; she can't let anyone know! But she does have a few things that begin to make her life tolerable; her friend, Sherae, who does not abandon her; Simon who offers her a job editing the school newspaper (which gets her out of the torment of 5th period lunch in the cafeteria) and Julian who really likes her. I know my students will love this book and the bullying aspects of this book will create sensitivity on the part of the readers and have students think twice and stop picking on each other and accept them for who they are. Highly recommended

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Columbine by Dave Cullen

Posted by bj neary on August 6, 2009 at 9:59am

This is a searing account of the fateful day in April ten years ago when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 students, 1 teacher and maimed many others. Author Dave Cullen, an investigative reporter, who was there that day and he tells us he was one of the ones who gave false information that day. What he gives us is an absorbing, sickening account with the many truths that were withheld and still leaves us all to ask "why" because other than psycho Eric Harris and follower Dylan Klebold's rants, writings and obsessions, the reader doesn't find out why they did it, just that they planned it for 2 years and their parents never knew. Yes, there were signs, but you have to read this thoroughly researched book to begin to get a sense of what the shootings at Columbine HS have become in the last ten years. Highly recommended, but achingly sad for the many losses still felt today.

Playing Traffic by Gail Giles

Posted by bj neary on January 18, 2009 at 8:01am

Love Gail Giles---Playing in Traffic is aptly titled, about a teen, Matt, who is pretty pathetic when it comes to girls, he has about 2 friends and mostly absentee parents. He is really close to his kid sister, Katy, because of his hands off parents and something he overheard when he was 10 years old. After that, Matt was Kayt's parents, best friend and confidant. Now Matt is being set up and seduced by bad girl, Skye. He knows "she plays in traffic"----and he doesn't, but it feels so exciting to be with her---AND no one knows about this relationship, either....The mind games these two play on each other is unnerving, a quick read that teens won't be able to put down and what an ending!!! I learned that if you can't trust yourself, you shouldn't trust someone else, especially if they are as unbalanced as SKYE!

Dublin: One City, One Book

Posted by Richard Beaudry on March 30, 2009 at 8:14am

Hello everyone, For the 4th year running, the Dublin City Public Libraries is encouraging all Dubliners to read and discuss one book during the month of April. This year: Dracula by Bram Stoker. There will be events throughout the city for the month of April. For more information: http://www.dublinonecityonebook.ie/ Richard Beaudry Librarian Langley Secondary School

How about a place to blog?

Posted by rnlivingsto on September 8, 2007 at 8:50am

Fine, this really doesn't count as a blog where people have commented, but it is a place to set up blogging for your school. Check out Learnerblogs (http://www.learnerblogs.org/). It is a place created specifically for edublogs. I wonder how my school district would feel about starting a blogging place for my students? I personally think this site should count as two blogs found for my college assignment. :)

Footnote

Posted by C on July 10, 2007 at 4:31am

I found a great website called Footnote. It is created and run in conjunction with the National Archives and is all pirmary source documents. It is worth checking out. The website is Footnote.com

Links of Interest

Posted by Richard Beaudry on July 9, 2007 at 10:31am

Hello everyone, I am always on the lookout for resources for my students at university. Here are some links that may be of interest to this group. Library Outreach Wiki - From the Information Literacy Weblog This wiki has been designed by Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe and Lisa Sloniowski to serve as a collaborative tool for instruction librarians to share ideas on best practices in outreach activities for libraries and instruction programs. http://libraryoutreach.pbwiki.com/ The Information Literacy Weblog Stuart Boon & Sheila Webber bring you news and reports about information literacy around the world http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/ Librarian.Net Jessamyn West is a rural Librarian blogging since 1999 http://www.librarian.net/ Librarians Matter Kathryn Greenhill. Works at Murdoch University Library as a Reference Librarian and Philosophy Subject Librarian. She facilitates the Emerging Technology Group and is paid to look at how librarians can use emerging technologies in our libraries. Library link of the Day The Library Link of the Day provides you a daily link for keeping up to date with the library profession. Destinations include the latest library news, good reads on the web, and other valuable resources that a library knowledge worker should know about. The link is presented without commentary. Links always lead to free content, but sometimes require registration (also free) Alternative Teen services http://www.yalibrarian.com/wordpress/2007/06/assorted-discoveries/ Library Anecdotes, Facetiae, Satire, Etc. http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/libafse.html Busy Teachers' Website K-12 - Teachers reference Section http://www.ceismc.gatech.edu/busyt/refs.shtml Sites2Good2Passup4Librarians http://www.librarysupportstaff.com/4schools.html Richard Beaudry

PowerSearching in a Web 2.0 World

Posted by Dennis O'Connor on September 7, 2007 at 3:45pm

The 21st Century Information Project is offering a Moodle based online class: PowerSearching in a Web 2.0 World.

The course starts on September 24. The class is 4 weeks long. Each week we take on a new topic. We will look at searching, evaluating, and ethically using digital information. Along the way participants create a del.icio.us social bookmarking account to track websites of interest. The culminating project is to create a personal search engine on a topic of interest.

We take a game based approach, using learning games and simulations created by Carl Heine to practice some of the essentials of searching & evaluating.

The class earns 2.5 CEUs issued by the Illinois Science and Mathematics Academy.

I'll be facilitating the course & hope to see some TeacherLibrary members later this month!

~Dennis

Library planning...

Posted by guybrarian on May 1, 2007 at 9:30am

I'm getting ready to sit down with my advisory board to do some planning for next year. I've invited very smart teachers and administrators in my school to help. We are going to use the FUTURE protocol developed by Critical Friends Groups. It should be a way of looking "back" from the end of next year to see how things went. I'm really looking forward to some good planning conversations!

Welcome!

Posted by Connie Masson on August 2, 2007 at 4:28am

There is always so much new to learn! How exciting and how overwhelming at the same time. At least I have accepted the fact that I will never catch up and I am learning to be adept at "treading water" :) And we are all "in the same boat".

What at time we live in today and how wonderful are the opportunities to communicate on whatever level of depth we choose and/or can handle.

The world is ours for the taking. I feel powerful and weak all at the same time.

My first blog post

Posted by Lisa Snyder on July 31, 2007 at 6:31am

Having attended the Building Learning Communities conference two weeks ago, I've determined that, while I'm nominally in charge of technology at my school, I am terribly naive about social networking and what it means to my students. My experience with MySpace has been mostly attempts to see what our students are doing/saying on their pages. At the same time, our school blocks MySpace. I'm beginning to see a disconnect between what we (the school) teach, allow, and encourage and what our kids are experiencing every day.

MySpace provides a community for our kids that offers something we just haven't tried to understand. Well, my school is in for a surprise. We are going to try to understand the value of MySpace to our students and, perhaps, harness their enthusiasm for online communities by creating our own. Wish me luck!

Library Guidebook

Posted by Susan Myers on May 19, 2007 at 1:52am

Irene and I decided to work on a library guidebook. It is now available on the common drive. We are having our LAG committee look and make suggestions. Actually, since it is the end of the school year, I don't think they are looking right now.

Anyway, I wanted to make a PDF file because you can have chapters on the left. That way, people could click and jump from section to section. I explained to one of our tech teachers what I wanted, and he suggested using Word, saving the document as a html, and setting bookmarks and hyperlinks. Now, I have done something similar when I was handcoding webpaged. It is funny how I never thought of doing it in Word. If anyone wants to know how, leave a comment, and I will post the gory details. It is not hard.

So, now I have a document with a Table of Contents at the top. Click on each name (like Copyright), and you will be taken down to that section. We put information about study halls, classroom use of the library, lab (lab is part of the library), circulation, copyright, textbook room (yes, we deal with that, too), and equipment. We probably have more sections, but I can't think of them right now.

We have permission from the principal to speak at the regular teacher meeting for five minutes and the new teacher for ten. We will mention the handbook and go briefly over copyright. For the new teachers, we will print out a copy of the handbook. They get so much information in that one meeting, we thought it was best not just to mention the common drive version but to also give them a hardcopy version.

Breaking the Rules by Katie McGarry

Posted by BJ Neary on January 7, 2015 at 4:11am

Breaking the Rules (Pushing the Limits, #1.5)

Breaking the Rules by Katie McGarry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have only read Crash Into You by Katie McGarry (recommended on Simone Elkeles website) and I am hopelessly hooked! Teens will love her books and reluctant readers will love her books- there is definitely drama (foster kids), romance, and even an urban edge (you will see what I mean)! I met characters, Echo and Noah in Crash Into You and when I saw there was a follow-up story including Isaiah's "family" - Noah and Echo- I couldn't wait for the book to come out. Both characters have experienced grave losses, found each other and love each other tremendously. After they graduate, Noah and Echo, set out for a summer of travel, peddling Echo's art work while Noah works and tries to find out more about his mother's family. I just loved how much both of these characters truly cared about one another- how much they were willing to give up and how much they were willing to grow for one another. As the summer ends, both characters have life altering decisions to make- will this impact their romance and end their relationship? Very edgy, teens and reluctant readers will enjoy- since they are on their way to college- there is some sex going on- so more mature readers for the edgier topics. Highly recommended.

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The Boy in the Black Suit by Jason Reynolds

Posted by BJ Neary on April 28, 2015 at 1:10pm

The Boy in the Black Suit by Jason Reynolds
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am definitely going to be reading anything Jason Reynolds writes!!! His diverse books speak to readers about life, love, and circumstances of teens in Bed-Stuy but Reynolds' words, characters, setting, and plot are all very special. Matt Miller is grieving the death of his mother and while he does not really have many friends; he has a very real sense of who he is. Working for Mr. Ray's funeral parlor helps him deal with the loss of his mother with each funeral he attend/works. I loved seeing the character of Matt Miller evolve with each turn of the page, a must read! We need more diverse books from Jason Reynolds!

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Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

Posted by BJ Neary on November 15, 2015 at 1:08pm

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7896527-throne-of-glass" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1)" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1335819760m/7896527.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7896527-throne-of-glass">Throne of Glass</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3433047.Sarah_J_Maas">Sarah J. Maas</a> 
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1430934908">5 of 5 stars</a> 
OMG!!! Loved this first book by Sarah J. Maas! I was rooted to my kindle and the drama that ensued as assassin Celaena Sardothien fights to win her freedom as the King's CHampion Assassin is gripping. I hated the King, loved Chaol, Prince Dorian, and the visiting Princess Nehemia. There is magic, supernatural beings, evil, lying, romance---all the elements put together PERFECTLY by Sarah J. Maas. Celaena is a strong female protagonist who is confident of her assassin abilities but she also must hide her true identity from all but a few in the castle. Her few meetings with the king were torture for me because Celaena is truly terrified of the King and when she is around him, she is not the hero we know she is. The king has evil intentions and I can't wait to see his demise...hopefully in Book 2! I would definitely call this a crossover book/series- adults will love the action, suspense and adventure, just like teens.
 
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