Now you’ve got a bit more time to create a prize-winning recipe: the deadline for the Urban Survival Series recipe competition has been extended to 5pm on the 7th of August. This way you can incorporate some tips from the ‘Food Glorious Food’ seminar (be at the central library this Thursday the 23rd) to make your creation even more fabulous.
What recipe competition? Visit this link to find out more and to enter.
What Urban Survival Series? Find out all you need to know on the USS page, or pick up a flyer at a library near you.
The Urban Survival Series is almost here… The first seminar ‘Food Glorious Food’ kicks off on July 23rd at the Central Library 4-5pm.
It’s all about how to cook a mean feed without blowing the budget and the types of food you should be eating to keep looking good and healthy.
Wow us with your kitchen skills by sending us a recipe for our cooking competition and win yourself the best teen cookbook ever (it even has recipes for impressing your GF/BF).
Think you know how to cook? Or are you just keen to give it a go and get creative? Create a sumptuous recipe for us and the best entry will win Sam Stern’s cookbook Cooking up a Storm: The teen survival cookbook.
Entries close 5pm on August 7 2009 (you must be aged between 13 and 18 and have a Wellington City Libraries card to enter).
Entries have closed! Thanks.
Instructions
Create a recipe! Choose 5 ingredients of your own and at least 2 ingredients from our pantry (you can use as many pantry ingredients as you like, but it might not taste great if you include them all!)
Give your recipe a name (if it’s impressive that might make your food taste better)
Tell us how you’re going to throw it all together in the method box
Fill in your personal details and send!
Pantry Contents (Remember to use at least two of these)
Salt, Pepper, Sugar, Cooking oil, Butter, Flour, Water, Soup Mix, Weetbix, Marmite, Lemon juice, A can with no label (with food in it), Sultanas, Curry powder, Chilli flakes, Maple syrup
Entries close 5pm, July 22nd 2009
To be eligible for the prizes, entrants must be:
– Aged 13-18 years
– A member of Wellington City Libraries (Not a member? Go to your local library to join up!)
The judges’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
Acceptance of prize gives permission to Wellington City Libraries to display winner’s details in the libraries or any media. No payment will be made in any such case.
Your information will be kept confidential by Wellington City Council and not disclosed or sold to any other party.
Want to discover how to cook something tasty and perhaps even stylish (that doesn’t cost the earth) and other important food-related things? Check out Food Glorious Food on July 23rd 4-5pm, the first seminar in the Urban Survival Series at the Wellington Central Library. Find out about the rest next week! Oh look, the pig.
The Buy NZ Made Campaign is running a Video Ad Competition to raise awareness for buying NZ Made products and to provide base material for members to use to advertise their NZ made products. Entrants are being asked to submit a 15, 30 or 45 second advert about buying NZ Made and will need to upload their videos onto the Buy NZ Made Channel on the website Youtube. The most viewed video on Youtube between 1st June and 31st August 2009 will win a $500 prize. For the overall competition the ads will be judged with a first prize of $3000, second prize $1500 and a third prize of $500. For more information on the competition please visit the purpose-built website.
Inside Girl, by J Minter. And the crowd goes wild (except for the people who were in the Morganville camp – who knows, the library may end up investing in this series too in the future).
Thanks for playing. We’ll draw one lucky Inside Girl supporter to be first in the queue for when the series arrives!
Postscript: message from Paula the Selector – “think I might order the vampires as well, they seem […] fun!” So there you go.
It’s Inside Girl versus Morganville Vampires! What to pick, what to pick?
Do Texan vampires have a show at defeating Flan Flood? Will the fangs come out, and if they do will the vampires cope?
So, readers, you get to choose which series the library will purchase: it’s the vampires whose peaceful towny existence is disrupted by the arrival of the evil Bishop versus a rich kid who used to attend an exclusive academy but decides to rub elbows with students at a typical high school (proper descriptions are here).
You’ve got until next Tuesday to decide: this is the final round, so get voting! One lucky voter will get the chance to be first in the queue for the winning literary treasure.
ps congratulations to Rachel for picking up the voucher for 2 free DVD rentals.
Five series have survived the cutthroat first round of Selector. The series walking the plank are:
Drama!, by Paul Ruditis Fabulous Terrible, by Sophie Talbot Fashion-Forward Adventures of Imogene, by Lisa Barnham Divas, by Victoria Murray Gert Garibaldi’s Rants and Raves, by Amber Kizer
Tis a shame but there can be only one winner!
Those still in the running are nervously awaiting your Round Two votes:
Drama Club, by Peter Lerangis is wondering if it’s a bad sign that another Drama series didn’t make the cut; Vampire Kisses, by Ellen Schrieber is quietly confident, since there’s both vampires and kisses in the title – how could that not be a winner?; Queen Geek Social Club, by Laura Preble would like to remind you that geeks are chic; Morganville Vampires, by Rachel Caine again points out that vampires are hot, hot, hot; and Inside Girl, by J. Minter says it’s a bit different, since the story is about a rich girl going to an average high school.
Those are your choices (fuller descriptions are here), so get voting. You’ve got until next Tuesday, so remember, if you don’t vote your favourite may go south!
Hello, happy Easter. Just a quick reminder to check out Selector, your chance to choose the next YA series the library purchases. You’ve got until Tuesday to vote in the first round – we’ll let you know which series has made it through to the next round next week.
We have a lot of book series in our collection, and many of them are very popular (proving that you can’t have too much of a good thing). So if you like vampires you will thrill to the ongoing Vampire Beach/Vampire Diaries/Buffy the Vampire Slayer series; if you like the rich and fabulous you will delight in the many Gossip Girls-type series; fantasy fans enjoy the Quentaris Chronicles; and action buffs can tremble with anticipation as the latest Alex Rider/CHERUB/etc. book is released.
There are a number of book series written for teens that the Wellington Library doesn’t get, however. Here’s a list of them. The recession means that we can’t get them all, unfortunately, so we’ve decided to make a game of it. A game we have decided to call Selector. We even made a logo an illustration!
The rules are this; read through the list on this page and decide which series you think that the library should get. The four that receive the most votes by April 14th (that’s the Tuesday after Easter) will go into the final. The final four will be voted out, one-by-one, each following week. The one that wins will be purchased, and one lucky person will get to read it before anyone else does.
Once you’ve read through the list, vote in the form below.
The New Zealand Schools Photographic Competition is the largest photographic competition for students in New Zealand and it’s been around for about four years. Entry is free for anyone in New Zealand who is at a primary or secondary school (or is home schooled).
The top prize pack includes a digital camera, a canvas reproduction of the winning photo, a certificate and a trophy. We like trophies. Check out the website for more information (excuse the flash stuff).
The theme this year is “celebrate!”. Entries for this year close on 31 July 2009, so download the entry form (pdf) and grab your camera and start celebrating phototaking.
And go see some photos (advance warning)
Te Papa has got a display of some of the finalists’ photos from last year’s batch, so you should check them out. The display is from 1 April to 31 June 2009 (at the Angus Rooms on level 3).
The Library is running a Waitangi Day quiz! Answer the questions and you could win an MP3 player. Enter it here, but be quick as it closes on Saturday.
Congratulations to Zach and Hannah, winners of the fab poster* which you can view to the right here. We wish there were more to give away, but life’s like that I suppose**. We were interested to hear what you had to say about the movie – love it or hate it there will be Twilight movie hysteria at the end of this year with the arrival of New Moon.
Anyhow, the posters will be in the post as soon as we can find long enough containers to stick them in.
Thanks to Stu for the use of his feet.
Cheers.
* Fab, but with a couple of very small wrinkles on account of them being nicked (by us) out of the display posters box at the central library.
** Actually what I’d really like as a giveaway is a life-size cardboard cutout Edward. I think that’d make an interesting addition to any home. Maybe next year.
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.
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).
You’ve got almost exactly one week to get your short stories into us! Remember that the close off time is 12pm on Wednesday the 24th of December.
Some things to remember: make sure you include the following things (exactly); “forks”, “a swan” and “red carpet”. Make sure your story is no more than 350 words long too. And don’t forget to include your name and your library card number with your entry.
By the way, you can enter more than one story, but remember that we’re not pulling names out of a hat; you’re just as likely to win with one entry as with ten, so make sure it’s as good as you can get it.
Here’s the prize pack for the Short Short Story Competition. There is a copy of the book (the movie cover version), the soundtrack to the film (featuring a track by the sparkling Robert Pattinson), and a sixteen-month calendar (I’m unsure what that means). The total value is $90 or thereabouts – I’m no mathematician.
Check out the competition’s rules etc. here, or click on the competition logo to the left.
Can you write a good short story? To celebrate the end of the year, and to thank our readers, we’ve got a Twilight pack (including the Twilight soundtrack and more) to give away to the best short short story. It’s a most excellent prize – a must for any Twilight fan and very useful for trading if you’re not. We will also have internationally-acclaimed illustrator Gavin Mouldey illustrate the winning story!
So what do you have to do? Just write a short story, not more than 350 words (it can be as short as you like), that includes each of the following three words or phrases (exactly as written – think outside the box: is the word a noun only, or can it be used as a verb/describing word?):
forks¹
a swan
red carpet
¹note that this is a small f, so we’re not looking for place names.
Your story can be about anything. We will be particularly impressed if:
the story is well written and grammatical and all that
the three things listed above are well concealed in the story
the story has a clever twist or point of interest.
Send your stories to teenblog@wcl.govt.nz before 12pm on 24 December 2008. Please include your name and your library card number (very important!). The winner will be announced soon as in the new year (so you can get the most out of your calendar).
Small print:
You must be aged between 13 and 18 to enter. You must also be a Wellington City Library member. Judges’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into etc etc., although we do like getting emails and comments. The winning story and any others that are particularly special will be published on the teen blog, so if you send a story in be prepared for it to be published.
Good luck! Tell your friends to enter too, to make the competition more worth your while (healthy competition is a good thing)!
Now you’ve got a bit more time to create a prize-winning recipe: the deadline for the Urban Survival Series recipe competition has been extended to 5pm on the 7th of August. This way you can incorporate some tips from the ‘Food Glorious Food’ seminar (be at the central library this Thursday the 23rd) to make your creation even more fabulous.
Inside Girl, by J Minter. And the crowd goes wild (except for the people who were in the Morganville camp – who knows, the library may end up investing in this series too in the future).
Congratulations to Zach and Hannah, 
After much deliberation we are extremely pleased to announce the winner of the 
