2012 Teen Summer Reading Club

Summer 2012 has arrived!  This year's theme for Teen Summer Reading Club is Own the Night.  You can sign up for the Summer Reading Club at your local library from now until August.  You can win great prizes, attend cool events and check out good books all summer long!  For more information, call your local library.

The June Teen Library Crew event for Chester County Library is the Brainwash Game Show, hosted by Eric Dasher.  Use your brain power to answer questions about books, pop culture and other trivia.  You can win cool prizes!  This event will be held in the Struble Room at Chester County Library on June 29th from 6:30-8:00 pm.  Registration is required.  To register, you can call 610-280-2632 or email tlc@ccls.org.  Hope you can make it!

LOL Read - Swim the Fly

Are you looking for a laugh-out-loud funny read?  I highly recommend Swim the Fly by screenwriter Don Calame!  I listened to it on audio and fell down laughing many times -- not only does narrator Nick Podehl do the voices of each character perfectly, but he also has spot-on comic timing with the hilarious dialogue.

Here is a brief synopsis:

Fifteen-year-old Matt Groton and his two best friends, Sean and Coop, always set a summertime goal -- this year's is to see a real-live naked girl.  But given the fact that none of them even has the nerve to ask a girl out on a date, this is going to be a challenge.  Plus, Matt gives himself a second, more daunting goal -- to swim the impossible 100-yard butterfly to impress his crush, hottie Kelly West.  The trouble is, Matt can't even do one lap of the fly, let alone four.  His friend Coop points out the flaw in Matt's plan: "I'm sure Kelly finds the sight of a scrawny, pasty white dude flopping around in the water like a spastic salmon very hot." 

Matt and his friends cook up many wacky schemes to catch a girl in the buff, but all they succeed in doing is getting into trouble.  Some plots (like dressing in drag to sneak into the girls' locker room) strain credibility, but the hilarious results more than make up for it.  

All in all, Don Calame's sometimes-raunchy debut novel is worth a look (or a listen)!  Next up: this book's sequel, Beat the Band. 

Lisa U.

CC Library

The Hunger Games Movie

The day is finally here! The Hunger Games movie was released today, and it doesn't disappoint. Click here to see School Library Journal's review, which says the movie stays true to the book but doesn't glamorize the gore of the games.

If you go to see the movie, let me know your opinion! I would love to hear from you.

And if you'd like to read other books like The Hunger Games, click here for Hornbook's list of dystopian readalikes.

Experience Magic at CC Library!

Attention: All teen magic lovers and wanna-be magicians! Ran'D Shine, a Philadelphia-based performer and educator of magic, is coming to Chester County Library on Friday, February 24th, at 6:30 pm. His magic tricks will amaze you, and he'll teach how to do some yourself. Check out his web site at http://www.randyshine.com/.

This is a FREE event for teens in grades 6 and older, and refreshments will be served. You can register for this event by calling 610-280-2632, or by emailing tlc@ccls.org. Hope to see you!

Book Review: Ten Miles Past Normal

Ten Miles Past Normal by Frances O'Roark Dowell is a sweet coming-of-age story about Janie Gorman, a high school freshman who lives on a goat farm with her modern-hippie parents, and who desperately wants to fit in. It doesn't help that her home is on the outskirts of town, far away from her middle school friends and best friend Sarah. Because she and Sarah no longer have the same lunch period, Janie ends up in the school library at lunchtime, where she becomes friends with a funky chatterbox named Verbena.

High school becomes a little more bearable when Janie joins the jam band on Friday afternoons where she meets the cute Jeremy Fitch and the friendly Monster Monroe (yes, that's his real first name), and when Janie and Sarah work on a history project where they meet two elderly civil rights activists who live in their hometown.

Janie learns that, if you want to live large, you have to take a few detours off the beaten path and step in a little goat poop along the way; she also comes to realize that "normal" is vastly overrated. I listened to this audiobook with Jessica Almasy as narrator -- her various character voices are spot-on, making the characters and the story believable. I highly recommend this book!

Lisa U.
Chester County Library