Wellington City Libraries

Te Matapihi Ki Te Ao Nui

Search options

Teen Blog

Reading, Wellington, and whatever else – teenblog@wcl.govt.nz

Month: May 2008

Many questions

We have put together a very quick survey for you all to do. The reward for completing it is a sense of achievement! How great is that.

The survey can be found here.

Thanks!

Authors are bloggers too

So you kind of like this author, right, and you want to, you know, get to know them a bit better…

Some writers have surprisingly good websites and blogs (and some have sites with flashy buttons and bright colours from the nineties…), and reading them can give you a good insight into their writing and what they’re up to and all that.

Here are some good examples:

book coverStephenie Meyer’s site has got lots of info (if you can see past the Arial font) and a countdown to the publication of Breaking Dawn (65 days, 9 hours, 27 minutes and 7 seconds when I last checked).

You can buy Scott Westerfeld-ish T-shirts from scottwesterfeld.com. Plus he calls his blog Westerblog, which I kind of like… and the header image is great.

E. Lockhart (who wrote The Boyfriend List and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks) has a blog that she updates daily, and sticks photos on. It’s quite chatty and, well, blog-like.

book coverNeil Gaiman’s blog is great. He is a very clever man, plus there’s a link to a teaser for the Coraline movie, which is out some time soon.

Robert Muchamore (CHERUB Campus)- there’s a helicopter that flies across the top of the header. Cool. Also, join CHERUB and you also get monthly newletters and… missions!

I tried to look at Darren Shan’s site, but got a message about bandwidth. I’m sure that means it’s really flash (no pun intended).

And finally there’s *another* countdown at alagaesia.comChristopher Paolini’s counting the days until Brisingr (3 months, 22 days, 9 hours and 48 seconds, I saw).

There you are.

Little bow … wow

We’re all familiar with cute animals, and especially cute animals saying funny things. But sometimes we tire of cuteness (well, not really), and need to look at really ugly dogs. And vote for the ugliest! It’s not often that an opportunity like this presents itself. (My vote went for Pee Wee Martini.)

(Cute bunny inside!)

Read More

New Comics!

A massive stack of new graphic novels has arrived. There are (like the new books) too many to list, but here are some of the outstandings ones.

 There are about fifty other new comics. Most are new installments of established series, from J.S.A., Batman and Spiderman to The Hardy Boys, Duck Tales and Avalon High. Check them out!

The quick brown fox

TypeRacer is a Flash game in which you race a car against others. Your typing speed determines the speed of your car. My measley 50 words per minutes seems to let me lead most races (though the current champion can type 219 wpm).

Not only is this game fun, it also qualifies as typing practice.

The ‘Everywhere Girl’

I must admit that I have a bit of a thing against stock photography, particularly in shopping centres: perfect-looking models with perfect white-toothed smiles, holding iPods, showing off shoes, posing in jeans, eating exotic looking foods, flirting with other exceptionally good-looking people; these images just don’t seem representative of the people who are doing the actual consuming! It feels fake. But love it or loathe it, stock photography plays an important role in everyday image exchange. Stock photography is found pretty much everywhere in the media: on book covers, advertising posters, websites and magazines…

Now just imagine if a photo shoot turned you into one of the most used stock-photo faces in the world. This happened to Jennifer Anderson. She’s no celebrity musician or movie star, but her stock-shot face features in numerous advertisments, on countless book covers and various websites. Anderson has gained a cult internet following and has her own blog and online store at www.theeverywheregirl.com .

What are some of the stock photos or images that seem to be everywhere? Let’s “take stock” of them (groan, bad pun alert!). Comment back with the web addresses, advertisments, or book covers that feature the image, or a variation thereof. You’ll need to have seen the image in two or more places for it to qualify.

“You’ll be amazed at what you can learn in an evening”

says Victoria University…

VU are referring to their Information Evening being held on the 8th of May. Prospective students, this is your chance to find out about the university’s full range of courses, degrees and student services.

VU’s Information Evening is on Thursday 8 May 2008 from 6pm at the Maclaurin Foyer (Kelburn Campus, Gate 5, Kelburn Parade, Wellington).

RSVP to 0800 VIC UNI or email course-advice@vuw.ac.nz.  Visit their site to find out more.

Have yourself a whale of a time, all expenses paid…

Get yourself down to Te Papa and tohora for free!  No, tohora is not really a verb but the Maori word for whale.  Wellington City Council is paying for residents of Wellington to see  ‘Whale: Tohora’, an exciting cetacean exhibition at Te Papa.  This one day offer is only available May 8, 10.00am – 9.00pm.  You will need to prove that you live in Wellington, so dive into your wallets and make sure you have your library card handy (Of course you do! You use it all the time to access our amazing services) before heading out.

New Zealand Music

It’s New Zealand music month at the moment so I’m sure you’ll all be racing down to the library to get your hands on some Kiwi music to listen to. I’m here to help. New Zealand produces a lot more than just the Fat Freddys and the Brooke Frasers that get played to death on the radio, so here are some alternatives. I’ve also tried to keep these relatively newish.

  1. Mint Chicks – Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No!
    A heavily punctuated title from one of my favorites. This is pop-punk at its very best, it’s all catchy hooks and sweet danceable guitars. Also keep your eyes out for their always entertaining videos.
  2. Disasteradio – Visions
    With its keyboards and synths approach Visions sounds like your big brothers old video games having a dance party with some crazy 80s cartoon from Japan. So, awesome then.
  3. The Checks – Hunting Whales
    They do that early 70s rock thing that’s pleasingly in vogue right now. They’ve been over in the UK honing their craft and this is their little gem of a debut album. Put on some skinny jeans and rock out!
  4. Cut Off Your Hands – Blue on Blue
    A charming-sounding 80s indie pop throwback. Cut Off Your Hands are danceable post-punk revivalists from the fertile North Shore scene up in Auckland and this is a great starting point.
  5. Liam Finn – I’ll be Lightning
    He crafts wonderful pop songs, plays all the instruments, has performed on Letterman and has the kind of beard that any man should one day aspire to. Yup, he’s pretty good and so is this album. In fact one could make a case that this is the best record ever made by somebody with the last name Finn, gasp!

These can all be found in the YA section, but you don’t have to stop there. The Adults collection contains some amazing treasures and can be snapped up for the tiny fee of $1! Why not try out some of these bands; The Clean, The Veils, White Birds and Lemons, The Sneaks, The Verlaines, Toy Love and all the countless others?

New CDs! New DVDs!

Yet again, more new YA DVDs and CDs are available. Since they’re so new and so popular you may need to reserve them, which you can do online – just click on the title to go to the catalogue entry for each item.

The CDs are:

If you think that’s a lot, check out all the DVDs that have arrived: