Neil Gaiman, multi-award-winning über-author is going to be giving a talk at the next NZ International Arts Festival. He wrote Coraline and many other books and comics for kids, teens, and adults. There’s more information here. And! It’s only 15 bucks if you’re a kid, which seems pretty reasonable.
The Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield may be losing his grip on the kids, suggests the New York Times in this here article. Apparently his primary concerns – about phoniness and so on – have dated and aren’t quite as relevant to teens as they once were.
(Read a related post here.)
Well, by ‘fun’ I mean it’s more like educational fun. Edutainment? Funucation? I don’t know. Anyway, you can now convert measurements and units of weight by just typing it into Google. Say you want to know how many kilometres are in five miles; you can ask Google ‘how many km are in five miles?‘ And there it is. But! You might want to know what 80 knots is in kilometres per hour. I often do, so I can type in ‘how many km/h is in 80 knots?‘ Or ‘how many cubits in 3 hand?‘ ‘How many acres in 4000 square metres?‘
Also, if you need to know the time somewhere, just type in ‘time [city name]‘ and it comes up. (For example, ‘time reykjavik’.) That’s not so much fun as it is a helpful hint. (It also works with ‘weather’ (e.g., ‘weather ohakune‘), and ’define’ and some other keywords.)
Google Squared builds information tables out of data on the internet. It’s a bit hit or miss – a search for ‘Wellington City Library‘ is fairly useful, but ‘Twilight’ tells us that Bella is a guinea pig.
It’s Youth Week this week, which aims to create ‘a society that values young people and affirms their diversity. The week aims to highlight the amazing things young people (12-24 years) do.’ This year’s Youth Week is about relationships;
During Youth Week we ask caregivers and parents to make time for their teenage and older children, and for young people to do the same for adults.
You can read more about that here. We have a couple of events at the library – they (rather cleverly) mix Youth Week with NZ Music Month. Look.
Lauren Conrad, star of the sort-of-reality show Hills - the library has the first, second, and third seasons with the YA DVDs* – has written a semi-autobiographical book (the first in a series of three books) about someone moving to Hollywood and becoming the star of a reality show. It’s called L. A. Candy, and an excerpt for it can be read on the Teen Vogue website.
We also have Teen Vogue in the library. We pretty much have it all.
*YA DVDs cost a reasonable 50c on a YA card.
A sequel to J. D. Salinger’s classic novel, The Catcher in the Rye, has been written and is about to be published. It is called 60 Years Later (it’s set 60 years later), and Holden Caulfield, now an elderly man, escapes from a retirement home to travel through New York. Permission from Salinger wasn’t given, but as he’s so famously reclusive it was unlikely to happen anyway.
What would Holden say about it?
The Vampire Diaries are to be made into a television pilot, which is good news for fans of the books and fans of vampires. And fans of television, too. And fans of Ian Somerhalder, also, who has been cast as the vamp Damon.
The original four-volume Vampire Diaries series has been around since the ’90s, and are still popular. A new trilogy has just begun with the first new book, Nightfall. All are available from your local library, probably.
If you liked the Almost Amazing Race (or wanted to do it) check out the City Safari, which will take place on the 17th of May. It’s an all-day orienteering competition around Wellington that utilises public transport. School teams may enter. Take a look at the website for more information.
Thanks to everyone who has registered for the Almost Amazing Race - your registration packs will be sent out tomorrow or early next week.
It’s not too late too register, but you may want to be quick! There are already loads of teams and individuals registered.
(A new Youtube video will be released soon. You can view the first two here.)
Patrick Ness is the author of the recent award-winning YA book, The Knife of Never Letting Go (his latest book, The Ask and the Answer, is on order). He is also the first ‘online writer in residence’ for the British charity, Booktrust. Normally a writer in residence gets a house in a nice part of the world to live in and write for a year, a la the Katherine Mansfield prize. An online writer in residence doesn’t get all that, sadly, but Patrick Ness has a very nice blog going. You may also want to check out his tips for new writers.
We’ve created a new display for all the YA fiction [in the central library] involving vampires, both good and bad (the vampires, not the fiction). Vampires are in at the moment (thanks to Twilight) and there are many, many vampire stories in the YA area (and most predate Twilight). Conspicuous by their absence, however, are any Twilight books; they’re just so popular.
So! If you’re in the mood for a little undeath, you will know where to look. Or else click here and see what’s available.
The Alex Awards are given by the American Library Association to books intended for adults, but which also have teen appeal. As you probably know, there are lots of adult books that also have a presence in the YA area at the library, and there are many YA books that adults read (I’m looking at you, Twilight). The ten 2009 Alex Award winners are (links lead to the library catalogue, if we have them):
City of Thieves, by David Benioff
The Dragons of Babel, by Michael Swanwick
Finding Nouf, by Zoe Ferraris
The Good Thief, by Hannah Tinti
Just After Sunset: Stories, by Stephen King
Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan
Over and Under, by Todd Tucker
The Oxford Project, by Stephen G. Bloom
Sharp Teeth, by Toby Barlow
Three Girls and Their Brother, by Theresa Rebeck
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.
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.)
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.
The Internet is a handy wee thing. In addition to one or two other things, it can be used to keep track of what you’ve read, what you’re reading, what you want to read, and what other people recommend that you read. I’ve been using Visual Bookshelf via Facebook over the past year and I’ve found it to be quite good, if a little clunky. It does recommend books I might like, but not as well as the popular LibraryThing. BookRabbit is similar, but I’m not sure which is better (it looks nicer, if that matters). There’s also Goodreads, Bibliophil, and Booksie (for sharing your own stories). There’s Listbook.net, and also Shelfari, which lets users create a bookshelf to show off their latest books.
You could also just use a notebook – no one else would know what you like – but it’s a noble excuse to buy a moleskine, I reckon.
The Wellington City Libraries now has a Twitter page. Very Web 2.0! It lets us tell people what we’re up to. The Twitter homepage goes into more detail about Twitter and how it works; you can join up and let others know what you’re up to (if you want them to know).
There’s a group (or a brood) of ducklings waddling around with their mother duck in the empty pond out the back of the central library! So cute! There are eleven of them. Unfortunately their chances are 
pretty slim living where they live, so the SPCA is due to come in later on today to remove them.
ThinkB4YouSpeak.com is an American campaign that encourages teens to think about their use of language; homophobic remarks like “that’s so gay”, while usually unintentionally offensive, can be pretty damaging. Although designed for U.S. schools, the aim of the campaign is pretty international, and the TV adverts are very funny.
The Internet Public Library is “the first public library of and for the Internet community”, linking to many sites on nearly any subject you can think of. They have an excellent Teenspace, with articles, links, and pages specifically for teens. They have a FAQ of embarrassing questions and a rather cool Poetry Wiki. Take a gander! They don’t charge overdue fees.
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