Happy Holidays! Happy New Year!
We're writing this latest missive as the last week before Winter Break draws to a close. It's been a tumultuous month, what with the crazy weather and the stream of protests that have been going on. As we head into the holidays and the end of the year, we're thinking a lot about social justice and the ways that we effect change in this country.
If Ferguson and #blacklivesmatter is something that you're thinking about too, take a look at some of the resources and continue the conversation. We're always interested in hearing what you think.
Additionally, Teen Services is making a New Year's resolution to do a better job serving YOU. To be fair, that's something that's always on our mind! Is there something we can do for you? Something the library should have? Something that you'd like to see more of at the library? Drop us a line and let us know!
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Sharpie Tie-Dye
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Teens making t-shirts @ South Branch.
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All this rainy weather makes us wish for sunshine and summery projects. That's why we did tie-dye projects at Make Some Thing events at Claremont and South branches this month. How do you tie-dye in this wintery weather you wonder? With Sharpies! Using permanent markers and rubbing alcohol, you can tie-dye anywhere at any time. No messy dyes or buckets required, just a little table space and you are ready to go. You can learn how to do this using tutorials or videos that show the steps.
But you might wonder "How does it work?" Easy...it's science! The ink in permanent markers dissolve in alcohol so when you put drops of rubbing alcohol into the middle of a design drawn with Sharpies the colors spread and run making tie-dye patterns.
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Here are examples of coasters teens made @ Claremont Branch.
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Come to a Make Some Thing event at your neighborhood branch and maybe you will get to tie-dye or make some other cool project instead.
Upcoming Crafts: Calendar Day!
We want to help you ring in the New Year right! Our libraries will be offering special Calendar Day editions of our TEEN MAKE SOME THING craft program. We'll give you a blank, two-year pocket calendar and you can go nuts decorating it and making it your own. Talk to the teen librarian at your branch to find out when it's happening!
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Social Justice Reading List
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While thinking about the protests happening in Berkeley and around the country, we decided to dive back into our own library collection to see what books we have that might tell us something about protests and the fight for social justice historically. Here's some of what we found:  March
by John Lewis Chronicles Lewis' lifelong struggle -- from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington to the halls of Congress -- for civil rights and justice. Book 2 comes out inJanuary 2015.  Race to Incarcerate: a graphic retelling by Sabrina Jones & Marc Mauer An indictment of the United States justice system first published in 1999 by Mauer, who works with The Sentencing Project.  Burning Down the House: the End of Youth Prison by Nell Bernstein When teenagers scuffle during a basketball game, they are typically benched. But when Will got into it on the court, he and his rival were sprayed in the face at close range by a chemical similar to Mace, denied a shower for twenty-four hours, and then locked in solitary confinement for a month. One in three American children will be arrested by the time they are twenty-three, and many will spend time locked inside horrific detention centers that defy everything we know about how to rehabilitate young offenders. In a clear-eyed indictment of the juvenile justice system run amok, award-winning journalist Nell Bernstein shows that there is no right way to lock up a child.  Juvenile In Justice by Richard Ross The nearly 150 images in this book were made over 5 years of visiting more than 1,000 youth confined in more than 200 juvenile detention institutions in 31 states.  The Silence of Our Friends by Mark Long & Jim Demonakos As the civil rights struggle heats up in 1967 Texas, two families--one white, one black--find common ground. The white family, from a notoriously racist neighborhood in the suburbs, and the black family, from its poorest ward, cross Houston's color line to win the freedom of five black college students unjustly charged with the murder of a policeman. |
Game On @North
Thursdays
4:00-5:00 pm
Come challenge your friends to a game on our brand new Wii U, to a board game, a card game, or whatever! All teens are welcome, and refreshments will be provided.
Art, Music & Writing Club @West
Mondays
4:30-5:30 pm
Share your art, music and writing projects with your friends over popcorn!
Teen Crafts @West
Tuesdays
4:30-5:30 pm
Create duct tape wallets & flowers or fold some origami cranes & planes. Make plaster masks. Design your own buttons with our fabulous button maker. Always treats to eat!
Middle school to college-age youth are welcome.
West Teen Room.
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All Library locations close at 6:00pm on Wednesday December 31, 2014
All Library locations are closed
Thursday
January 1, 2015
All Library locations are closed
Monday
January 19, 2015
Martin Luther
King, Jr. Day
Library Holidays 2015
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Our Favorite Sci-fi film of 2014
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Live, Die, and Repeat
Edge of Tomorrow
Starring Tom Cruise & Emily Blunt.
You may have missed this film because you thought it sounded like Cruise's previous, the average science fiction fare oblivion.
This movie is in an entirely different class and is based on the novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, All You Need Is Kill; there is also a graphic novel adaptation. The story revolves around Lt. Col. Bill Cage (Cruise), who is great at creating publicity to attract new soldiers for the war but who is, in fact, a coward. Of course when the enemy is an all-consuming alien scourge, who can blame him?
When Cage unwillingly finds himself on the front line of humanity's last stand, he does what just about everyone else in his shoes would do: he dies. Then, surprisingly, he wakes up and finds himself living the previous day. He has been given the alien's gift of traveling back in time to learn from his mistakes, which he does over and over again. He has the help of Emily Blunt's Rita Vrataski, the hero of the war, who happens to have had, and lost, the same alien powers as Cage.
What makes this movie great is the relationship between these two as well as the directing, which is by Doug Liman, who also directed Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity. You'll want to watch this one over and over again.
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More Favorite Books from 2014!
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Hello all, Nikki here! I've had a whirlwind month of reading and I wanted to share a few quick blurbs and recommendations.
A Mad Wicked Folly
by Sharon Biggs Waller
If Sybil is your favorite Crowley sister from Downton Abbey, you'll enjoy this one. It's all about Victoria, a seventeen-year-old aspiring artist in 1900s London, who has to decide how hard she is willing to fight for what she wants in life. Read this while you blast David Bowie's Suffragette City.
The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim
by E. K. Johnston
Who knew revisionist history, classical music composition, modern day high school life, dragon slaying, and Canada went together so well?
Wildlife
by Fiona Wood
This book was SO GOOD! Top 3 of the year good. There are lots of books about loss, but this one felt so fresh and is about so much more. It's narrated by two girls spending a semester in the wilderness of Australia. Honest, funny, and sexy, featuring characters you'll wish were your buds.
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Homework Café @ Claremont & South
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