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Teen Blog

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

Month: January 2009

Coraline

The film Coraline is due out next month in April (for NZ), and if you’ve read the book or the graphic novel you will probably love the movie. (You will love the movie if you haven’t read the book, and you may very well love the book as well.)

Coraline author Neil Gaiman’s latest award-winning book, The Graveyard Book, is also going to be made into a film.  Watch an interview about it!

Here’s the trailer for Coraline – check for buttons.

FOUR NEW THINGS TO PUT IN A DVD PLAYER

We have four new DVDs to issue, watch and enjoy. Here they are …

First up is Speed Racer, which is about a young man who races speedily. Based on the catroon of the same name (remember that? It had a top theme tune) Speed Racer is a high-octane, turbo-charged joyride. It really revs my engine, ok, I’ll stop with the punning.

Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging is based on the books by Louise Rennison and is directed by Gurinder Chadha, who also did Bend It Like Beckham. File under coming-of-age chick flick comedy.

In Hellboy II: Golden Army our hero is once again charged with saving the world by shooting, punching, looking tough etc. Will he and his band of misfits save the day? Probably until the next sequel at least.

Lastly we have a new David Attenborough doco titled The First Eden. It examines the Mediterranean in the pleasing style we have come to expect from David and the BBC. <3 Edutainment <3

Win something

We have two large, large Twilight film posters to give away. So we thought we’d have a small competition; write a review – a short paragraph of about 50 words – of the Twilight film in the comments below and we will randomly draw two winners by 5pm on Thursday next week (i.e., the 5th of February). Don’t forget to include your email address and full name! (We won’t publish either, of course.)

Also, you need to be a Wellington library Young Adult cardholder.

Almost Amazing Race

The Almost Amazing Race is almost upon us. What is the Almost Amazing Race? I can’t tell you too much at this stage, only:

1. that there will be prizes
2. it is on the 28th of March
3. it’s only for teens

Keep your eyes peeled for more details. (I mean read this blog.)

… And One More

Another CD just came down from Cataloguing, conveniently too late for the last new music post. So here he is, all by himself, Robin Thicke with Something Else. Did you know that his father Alan Thicke was on the sitcom Growing Pains? Let’s hope this album doesn’t cause any listening pains. Aren’t I funny? In other Thicke trivia, did you also know he won a Grammy for his work on Usher’s Confessions?

Thicke

Art Space

If you’re a young artist and would like to display your work – paintings, drawings, photographs, daguerreotype, etchings, and so on – in the Central Library, send us an email. We have created some display space in the young adult area, and it’s only for teens; we want the place to feel like it’s yours. Which it is, in a way, given how rates work.

Our email is teenblog@wcl.govt.nz.

Six new CDs

The YA music collection has some new CDs. Six of them in fact. Here they are …

First is Beyonce’s new album I Am… Sasha Fierce, which sees her alter ego Sasha Fierce get one of the two discs all to herself. It reminds me of the time Outkast split Speakerboxxx/The Love Below in half, only a bit weirder.

The Flying Club Cup by Beirut is next for a bit of meaningful-core indie folk. These guys were critical darlings in 2007 and for good reason, a wee gem says I.

Hilary Duff is back with The Best Of Hilary Duff. Now you can listen to all her best songs all at once, without changing discs. This copy even comes with some exclusive bonus tracks for the Australian/NZ release.

Have you guys heard of High School Musical? Apparently it’s quite a big deal. Anyway, we have High School Musical 3 – Senior Year  and judging by the way they’re jumping about on the cover in graduation robes it looks as though it might be the last one. hop aboard now I guess.

On Day & Age The Killers ask the question; are we human or are we dancers? I think I’m a dancer. This the the fourth release from the Las Vegas foursome and it finds them shooting for even more chart success.

We Started Nothing by The Ting Tings is the last on the pile. They were at the Big Day Out the other week, did anyone see them? They make indie-pop to dance to.

23/1/2009

Linkity-Link-Link

Some neat and interesting websites. For the weekend! Or week. Whatever.

Become a Garfield Illustrator

This Digital Inspiration blog post entitled, informatively, Create your own Garfield Comic Strip, will introduce you to the wonderful world of, well, creating your own Garfield comic strip. In summary, you can download this application and drag and drop (so you can do it if you can’t draw) and hey presto! I guess it’s similar to creating your own giant squid (mine has now swum 180 kilometres and most recently beat up a diver).

Big Day In

If you wanted to go to the Big Day Out but can’t, you can watch it instead via this live stream. You won’t get sunburnt and you won’t need to go to Auckland.

People look like ants

These photos of the Earth taken from space are amazing. And so beautiful! More may be found at NASA’s Earth Observatory site.

Related: International Year of Astronomy ’09.

Twilight Soundtrack: reserve it now

Twilight SoundtrackIf you want to re-live your movie experience in music, but you’re not sure if you want to buy the CD then reserve the library copy of the Twilight Soundtrack and try before you buy for free (on a YA card, that is). There are some interesting artists on here, including Iron and Wine (we like Iron and Wine) and Muse and that, so it’s bound to be good.

Or listen to it now! Legally!

TWILIGHT MOVIE SOUNDTRACK/OFFICIAL [2008]

New DVDs

A stack of new DVDs has arrived. They’re only 50c to issue for a week on a YA card. That’s cheaper than a bag of chips!

» Avenged Sevenfold : Live in the LBC / Diamonds in the Rough CD – Avenged Sevenfold belong to the New Wave of American Heavy Metal, or NWOAHM. This DVD has a concert of theirs, filmed at the Long Beach Arena.
» Ben 10 Alien Force : Volume 1 – This collects the first five episodes of the animated series.
» Futurama : Bender’s Game – This is the latest Futurama direct-to-DVD film (the third; four films will make up the fifth season).  We watched it in the weekend and it’s very funny. I recommend it!
» Enter the Ninja – Naruto : Volume 1 – This collects the first five episodes of the cartoon series, based on the popular manga. There is well over 100 episodes already, so there will be a lot of DVDs to get through.
» Samurai Jack : The Premiere Movie – This is Samurai Jack. The premier movie.
» A Time to Remember : World Edition – A DVD series featuring ‘pristine archive newsreel footage’ of the many historical events that marked the twentieth century.
» Gracie – 15-year-old Gracie vows to take her recently killed brother’s place in her high-school’s soccer team. Unfortunately, it’s 1978, when soccer teams were usually all boys and Gracie’s got to prove herself.
» Sleepover – Four friends compete against the ‘popular’ girls in an all-night scavenger hunt.  

Writers’ Blogs Part 2: read them for random insights

Last year I did a post about authors who blog (regularly). I’ve dredged up some more, which are rather enlightening (to varying degrees).

John Green, author of Paper Towns, published last year (which we quite liked), writes in a chirpy, humorous, self-deprecating fashion, and even reads comments and comments on them.

Megan McCafferty of Sloppy Firsts fame, has an interesting take on blogging. She’s called hers a (retro)blog, and she includes writing assignments and essays she produced in school (going back to the 1980s). You’ll also find articles she’s written on the Twilight saga, containing a hint that Marcus Flutie (from Sloppy Firsts, not Twilight) is based on a real person (or persons).

Susan Beth Pfeffer, author of the horribly harrowing (really, really) stories about what happens to the earth when the moon is knocked out of orbit by an asteroid (The Dead and the Gone, and Life As We Knew It).

Brent Hartinger updates his regularly (the key to keeping a good blog, that). 

Robin McKinley, author of Beauty and Sunshine (for those vampire fans). I love what she’s called her blog.

Ysabeau S Wilce, author of two of the coolest-titled books ever. Her website is pretty flash, too.

William Kostakis, who kindly responded to our questions last year.

And for those Bear Grylls fans, keep up with what the Bear is up to: http://beargrylls.blogspot.com/ 

Incidentally, the wonderful Neil Gaiman is going to win the 2008 Weblog Best Literature Blog Award, unless people start voting for Samuel Pepys (actually, I find Samuel rather dull).

Shmoop

Shmoop has been developed by students and teachers in some of the U.S’s top universities, and is laden with resources – summaries, multimedia content, and links – for students and teachers. It’s still in beta but it looks very good! Try it out. Try eeet.

Teen Blog Short Short Story Competition: the results!

After much deliberation we are extremely pleased to announce the winner of the 2008 Short Short Story Competition is ‘Choices’ by Georgia. Congratulations!

Here is the winning story, and other notables we thought were great.

We had heaps of entries and competition was fierce. There was an impressive array of story subjects (including a fair bit of blood and guts (my fault for including “forks” in the required items I think)) and some high-quality writing, so you should all be proud of a job well done.

Keep checking in with the teen blog; we’re planning on more competitions and other things this year (apart from witty and informative posts of course). 

Holiday Time!

Here are some songs with the word Holiday in the title – if for no other reason than it’s summer and therefore time to go on holiday. Where are you all going this year? I’m going to Huntly. Choice!

If you’re not going away this summer then why not come into the Library, issue some CDs, then play them to your family in a small hot room for a few hours – that way it’ll feel like you’ve been on a roadtrip. Anyway, you can find Green Day, Madonna and Atomic Kitten in our collection.

Doctor Who?

The actor to play the eleventh incarnation of the Doctor has been announced: it is Matt Smith, who will be the youngest Doctor ever. There is an article and a video interview with him here. As you all know, Time Lords only have twelve or thirteen incarnations before their time is up, so this particular incarnation will (hopefully) stick around for a long time.

A squid to call your own

We’ve all wanted to design and name our own squid; now we can, thanks to Te Papa. Mine is named Tom! (After Tom Sawyer, not Tom Cruise.) He just passed the research ship, Tongaroa.

Update: He just had a fight with a diver! Oh, Tom.

Update: He passed a vampire squid – no fighting this time though. (Tom would’ve won.)

Update: Tom’s now 22-days-old, and just passes a leaking submersible. Will he help it? Like heck!