GreenBeanTeenQueen

Happy Holidays!! I hope you have a wonderful day and get all the books you wanted! :) I will be taking a blogging break and will be back in 2013! See you in the new year.

I try to repost my review of this book every year because I love it so much! Also, I think the cover changes are interesting. Here's the original cover, published in 2008: And then the next cover:  And yet another cover: I think all three covers are good but I like 1 and 3 the best. Rating: 5/5 Stars Genre: Romance Release Date:  October 2008 About the Book:  Let It Snow is a new holiday offering from three popular teen authors. Each author contributed a holiday romance short story to add to the collection. Maureen Johnson starts things off with  The Jubilee Express , in which Jubilee (no, not a stripper, but named for a piece in her mother’s collection of the Flobie Santa Village) finds herself stranded on a train in Gracetown in a huge snowstorm. A trip to the Waffle House introduces her to Stuart and friendship, or maybe something more, starts to form. In  A Cheertastic Christmas Miracle , author John Green hilariously describes the mission

  Please welcome author Karen Cushman to the blog! I am so delighted to be hosting Karen Cushman  on tour for her latest book, Will Sparrow's Road. I have been a long time fan and no one writes historical fiction like the amazing Ms. Cushman.   Her latest book is a bit different-this is the first male narrator for the author! Here's Ms. Cushman to talk about why she chose to write from a male point of view this time around.   Why did I write a book about a boy?  I had in mind a story about a child alone and on the road in Elizabethan England.  I knew a girl likely would not survive there in those somewhat brutal times.  And I don’t believe that in a world with so little privacy, she could successfully disguise herself as a boy for long.  She wouldn’t have access to a private bedroom or dressing rooms or bathrooms. London did have one public restroom—a plank with 18-holes, emptying directly into the Thames River.  In fact using the whole world as a toilet—streets, f

This week is a big deadline for all of my committee reading. So as I'm working my through my reading and nearing that deadline, I've decided to take a blog hiatus for the rest of this week. I'll be back next week!

I've got more hardcover to paperback changes! What do you think of these? Hardcover Paperback -I think both of these are well done and reflect the bleakness of the landscape in the story. Hardcover Paperback -As fun as I think the paperback is, I think it's marketing more to an adult audience. It looks like your typical adult mystery bestseller. The hardcover looks like lots of fun and like the book will have lots of action (which it does) Hardcover Paperback -I'm not a big fan of either covers, but I gotta got with the hardcover because it's creepier. Hardcover Paperback -I like the hardcover on this one. The paperback is too simple and I think the hardcover has a cool computer/techy/time travel feel to it which matches the book. Hardcover Paperback -The paperback for this one changes the entire look of the book! Now it looks like a steamy romance novel instead of historical fiction

\ \ One of the joys of working at the library is that I get to work with lots of wonderful people who geek out about the same things I do! One of my coworkers (C.) is a huge Tolkien fanatic, so she organized a giant series of programs called Tolkien Fest. \ The library district hosted programs kicking off with Bilbo's birthday in September, book discussions and a Tolkien Scholar talk in October and November and culminating in watching all three Lord of the Rings movies on the library's big screen in December. To help celebrate, I hosted a birthday party for Bilbo Baggins on World Hobbit Day (September 22, which is also Bilbo and Frodo's birthday). It was a huge program with lots of activities-we hosted it in our auditorium with various stations set up around the room. In the end, over 100 people attended the event! Here's what I did: Station 1:  - Name Tags (with your name written in dwarven runes) I used the nametags and dwarven runes from Houghton Mi

The Wright and Wong Mysteries by Melinda Metz and Laura J. Burns were first published in 2005. The books feature two tween detectives who couldn't be more different- B. Orville Wright has Aspberger's Syndrome with a high IQ and great eye for detail where Agatha Wong is able to see the big picture. Together they make a great detective team. This series is especially important because it features a main character with Aspberger's Syndrome. This is such an important topic and kids need to see main characters with Aspberger's and Autism featured in books. Authors Melinda and Laura have put together a petition asking for The Wright and Wong series to go back into print.  If you believe in this important topic and series, please sign the petition . Hopefully together we can bring this great series back into the publishing world and into the hands of tween readers.

I love looking at covers! And I think we all judge books by their covers to some extent. Here are some recent hardcover to paperback changes: Hardcover: Paperback: -I gotta got with the paperback on this one. It just looks more appealing to me. Hardcover: Paperback: -I think both covers are appealing. I think the paperback has more action and the hardcover is more subtle, but both fit the book well. I think I still like the hardcover better. Hardcover: Paperback:  -The paperback looks like a comic book. It's still really cool and I think this cover change is interesting because I think each cover markets to a different group. The first looks like fun and fluffy and the second looks more serious. I'm not sure which one I like more. Hardcover:  Paperback: -I love both of these covers, but I think I like the darkness of the paperback. I do think the hardcover has more of a Sleeping Beauty feel which matches the boo

We had our last week of storytime this past week since we take the month of December off. There are always such sad sighs from the parents when we tell them this and I assure them that we still have lots of programming happening, just not weekly storytimes. I decided to do a Winter themed storytime, even though it's been warm here and hardly feels like Winter. It's the though that counts, right? :) Here's what we did: Opening Song : I recently started doing two opening songs (Wake Up Hands off a CD that I can't remember the name of right now! and Finger Poppin by Georgiana Stewart) I got the idea from another branch in our library district and I like that it gives parents and kids just a bit longer to arrive. Racing to Read Skill: Talk and Read-we were exploring lots of winter words in our storytime this week! Read : Kitten's Winter by Eugenie Fernande s (for toddler storytime)-I love this book because it has great pictures and vocabulary-"scurries