Take Part In Bullying Prevention Month with Books

October 19, 2014October 20, 2014 / Sharon Tyler / Leave a comment

October is Bullying Prevention Month, which means it is important to revisit the damage bullying can cause, how we can stop it, and how we can help the people on all sides of the problem. One way to help ourselves understand, and help young adults deal with bullying related issues, is to read about it. Here are some young adult novels that deal with bullying and the aftermath of what pain it can cause on all sides.

If you or someone you know needs help now, or more solace than a great read can offer then please check out the official website StopBulling.gov, StompOutBullying.org, or the Nation Education Association’s Bully Free page for information, resources, and assistance.

The Bully by Paul Langan

A new life. An new school. A new bully. That’s what Darrell Mercer faces when he and his mother move from Philadelphia to California. After spending months living in fear, Darrell is faced with a big decision. He can either keep running from this bully–or find some way to fight back.

Brutal by Michael Harmon

After being left by her mother to live with a father she hardly knows in the middle of suburbia, Poe is happy to have found a few new friends at her new school, but when her new friends become the target of dangerous pranks by the popular jocks, Poe is determined to take down the group’s egomaniacal leader and put an end to his mean games.

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jane Asher

When high school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the

mail containing thirteen cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah, who committed suicide, he spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah’s voice recounting the events leading up to her death.

By The Time You Read This I’ll Be Dead by Julie Annie Peters. High school student Daelyn Rice, who has been bullied throughout her school career and has more than once attempted suicide, again makes plans to kill herself, despite the persistent attempts of an unusual boy named Santana to draw her out.

Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers

Regina Afton, a high school senior in the popular–and feared–crowd, suddenly falls out of favor and becomes the object of the same sort of vicious bullying that she used to inflict on others, until she finds solace through Michael Hayden, one of her former victims.

Hate List by Jennifer Brown

After her boyfriend goes on a shooting rampage at school, Valerie is implicated because of her involvement in writing the list of names and so now must come to terms with what has happened, her feelings for the boy she once loved, and the part she played that resulted in such tragic events.

The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl by Barry Lyga
A fifteen-year-old “geek” who keeps a list of the high school jocks and others who torment him, and pours his energy into creating a great graphic novel, encounters Kyra, Goth Girl, who

helps change his outlook on almost everything, including himself.

As usual, I cannot list all the great books in the post, or I would bored you all. But, I cannot help myself from adding a little bonus list at the end and asking you to comment with any books you would like to recommend. Here are my bonus books; The Misfits by James Howe, The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence, Before, After, and Somebody In Between by Jeannine Garsee, The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes, Indigo’s Star by Hilary McKay, Dear Life, You Suck by Scott Blagden,Diary Of A Witness by Catherine Ryan Hyde, The Fourth Stall by Chris Rylander, Freak by Marcella Fleischman Pixley, Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson,Darius & Twig by Walter Dean Myers,Cornered: 14 Stories of Bullying and Defiance edited by Rhoda Belleza, The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier, Drowning Anna by Sue Mayfield, and Eight Keys by Suzanne LaFleur.

For more books about bullying for all ages, and some non fiction resources, check out some of the books I mentions in these previous posts; 10 Picturebooks that Deal with Bullying, Powerful Fiction Focused on Bullying for Children and Young Adults, and Top 5 Non-Fiction Books about Bullying.

10 Books We’re Looking Forward to in September

September 9, 2014August 20, 2014 / Louise / Leave a comment

As the weather starts to cool and the leaves start to turn, what’s better than curling up with a good book and a cup of tea? Fortunately, there are a lot of great books coming out soon that are perfect companions for the crisp days ahead.

Every month, librarians from around the country pick the top ten new books they’d most like to share with readers. The results are published on LibraryReads.org. One of the goals of LibraryReads is to highlight the important role public libraries play in building buzz for new books and new authors. Click through to read more about what new and upcoming books librarians consider buzzworthy this month. The top ten titles for September are:

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
The Secret Place by Tana French
Rooms by Lauren Oliver
The Children Act by Ian McEwan
The Distance by Helen Giltrow
Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
The Witch with No Name by Kim Harrison
Season of Storms by Susanna Kearsley

Happy Birthday Paperback Books!

July 29, 2014July 29, 2014 / Linda / Leave a comment

On July 30, 1935, a new technology was born that provided knowledge, stories, entertainment (with text and pictures, no less) that was convenient and cheap. It was light enough to carry anywhere and you could tag specific areas to re-read at a later date. An early e-reader? Nope – the paperback book! Penquin Publishers, in England, was the first to successfully publish respectable, quality writing without a hard cover. (There were earlier paperback books called penny dreadfuls, yellow-backs, and dime novels that generally featured lurid stories and were printed on cheap pulp paper.)

Partnering with Simon & Schuster, Robert de Graff introduced the first paperbacks in America on June 19, 1939 called Pocket Books. The first American paperback book to be printed in the United States was The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. The cost to purchase these new books – 25 cents versus $2.75 for a hardcover. In order to make a profit on paperbacks, de Graff had to print 100,000 copies at a time. He couldn’t rely on bookstores to sell that many copies so he began using magazine distributors to place Pocket Books in newsstands, subway stations, drugstores and any other outlet to reach suburban and rural populations. He designed bold, colorful, eye-catching book covers to catch people’s eyes. By September 1944, 100 million books were sold in more than 70,000 outlets across the United States. By the end of the 1940’s, the paperback industry began publishing original stories. Previously, the industry only reprinted hardcover titles. There are now more than 20 major publishers producing high quality, original and reprinted paperbacks.

: ROMANCE PAPERBACKS

: ROMANCE PAPERBACKS

: ROMANCE PAPERBACKS

Today, there are many sizes of paperback books and all different prices, but the two major sizes are mass-market and trade. Authors originally wrote stories for publications in magazines, but soon shifted their attention to mass-market paperbacks. They could write longer, more in-depth, entertaining novels that boasted beautiful, bold, color covers and were prominently displayed in all types of venues. They were affordable and easy to carry and proved to be a huge hit. Mass-market paperback readers have a large selection of genres of original stories to choose from, in addition to best-selling hardcovers republished in paperback form. In the beginning, Westerns were the biggest selling genre, followed by Crime and Science Fiction. The most popular genre for mass-market today is Romance. Within this genre you will find many sub-genres including contemporary romance, historical romance, small town romance, and paranormal romance. The Cheshire Library has a separate section dedicated to mass-market Romance Books located towards the front of the library, near the large windows. Another very popular genre for mass-market paperbacks are Cozy Mysteries. The Cheshire Library has a large selection of these interfiled among the hardcovers in the Mystery section of the library. You can also find regular Fiction, Science Fiction and Fantasy paperbacks in the library’s collection.

COZY MYSTERIES

Some literary authors, critics and bookstore owners turned their noses up at mass market paperbacks. When Doubleday’s Jason Epstein was a college student, he lamented the fact that he and his fellow students couldn’t afford hardcover editions and envisioned a line of upscale paperbacks of hardcover bestsellers and classics. By 1953, Trade paperbacks were introduced. These were larger, more durable, with attractive covers illustrated by fine artists with an appeal to a more intellectual market. They sold for 65 cents to $1.25. The library’s selection of Trade paperbacks are filed among the hardcover books. They also come in a variety of genres, with the most popular genres being erotic romance – with Fifty Shades of Grey topping the charts – and Christian-themed books.

: TRADE PAPERBACKS

: ASSORTED PAPERBACK SIZES

There were many who thought paperbacks would kill the publishing industry, but instead, the books proved to be quite the sensation. As recently as 2010, paperbacks outsold hardcover books. Although the ebook has taken some of the market away from paperbacks, they still continue to be a much beloved tool for readers everywhere. The look, feel, texture, smell, size, and portability makes the paperback book very inviting.

Smart Summer Reads for Older Teens and Adults

July 26, 2014August 1, 2014 / Sharon Tyler / Leave a comment

Are you looking for a great read this summer that is not pure fluff, but not so heavy that you wonder why you are reading it for fun? Here are some books with great insights about life, different cultures, history, and society. They also happen to be fantastic reads, although not necessarily fun reads. These books would be good choices for a curious high school student, the college bound, and for adults that are just looking to expand their knowledge and reading while not afraid to cross the threshold of the teen room doors.

1. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. The great-granddaughter of Iran’s last emperor and the daughter of ardent Marxists describes growing up in Tehran in a country plagued by political upheaval and vast contradictions between public and private life.

2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

3. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson. An account of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 relates the stories of two men who shaped the history of the event–architect Daniel H. Burnham, who coordinated its construction, and serial killer Herman Mudgett.

4. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. In an action-packed modern fable about the problems young Chinese Americans face when trying to participate in American popular culture, the lives of three apparently unrelated characters–Jin Wang, Monkey King, and Chin-Kee–come together with an unexpected twist.

5. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan. Presents an oral history of the dust storms that devastated the Great Plains during the Depression, following several families and their communities in their struggle to persevere despite the devastation.

Looking for even more books that are smart and fascinating read? Here are a few more reading suggestions. If I missed one you would like to recommend please leave a comment and let us know so other readers can add it to their list as well! Sammy & Juliana in Hollywood by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Maus and Maus II by Art Spiegelman, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam by Ann Marie Fleming, Walden by Henry David Thoreau, I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala by Rigoberta Menchú, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling, Persepolis 2: the Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi, First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Loung Ung, Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed
Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh, or The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman.

Great Graphic Heavy Books for Reluctant Readers

July 13, 2014July 10, 2014 / Sharon Tyler / 1 Comment

Do you have a reader that is sad to find the majority of their books are missing the illustrations that initially drew them to reading in the first place? Or perhaps you have a reader that is a bit intimidated (but refuses to admit it) by books with so much text, and so few illustrations? Perhaps they just think that reading is boring or not fun. Thankfully, graphic heavy books and graphic novels for this age group are increasing in both quality and quantity. This means that there are books out there with an extra dash or excitement and silliness available for readers of all ages.

Here are some great books that just might capture your reader’s eye with graphics, and keep them reading because of the story. The majority of theses books are the first in a series, so if your reader gets hooked, you should have a few books to go before looking for the next title. I have broken the lists down by age group, and by amount of text, to make finding the perfect book just a little easier.