Read to Vote!

Voting is a great way to express your opinion. You may not be quite ready to vote in an election just yet, but there are still opportunities out there for you to express your opinion. Every year, the Pacific Northwest Library Association provides an opportunity for you to vote on your favorite book from a list of nominated titles. Although the voting doesn't start until March, there's no time like the present to get start reading the nominees.

Read at least two books in your grade category, and then vote for your favorite title between March 15th and April 15, 2010. You may have even read some of them already.!

This year's nominees are:
Junior Division (Grades 4 to 6)The Candy Shop War by Brandon Mull
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Greg Heffley’s Journal by Jeff Kinney
Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis
Igraine the Brave – Cornelia Funke
Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
Marley: a Dog Like No Other by John Grogan
Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
No Talking – Andrew Clements

Middle Division (Grades 7 to 9)
Alchemyst: Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott
Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
Zen And The Art Of Faking It by Jordan Sonnenblick
Peak- by Roland Smith
Plain Janes by Cecil Castelucci
Schooled by Gordon Korman
The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex
Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landry

Senior Division (Grades 10 to 12)
Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
City Of Bones by Cassandra Clare
Deadline by Chris Crutcher
Does My Head Look Big In This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah
Enter Three Witches by Caroline Cooney
Mistik Lake by Martha Brooks
Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson
Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

Drop in at the Library This Saturday for Game Days!

OK....you've been sitting around like a slug over the holiday break, haven't you? Well, here's your chance to get moving and have some fun. Stop by the Renton Downtown branch this Saturday, January 2nd for Game Days from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. We'll have Dance Dance Revolution, High School Musical karaoke, Guitar Hero, and board games. Come on, it's time to get off the couch and work off some steam at the library. Oh, and maybe check out a book or audiobook too.

Teen Tuesdays Go Big

Sure, winter break is great...but what about that slow week after Christmas? Stop by the Highlands Library Tuesday the 29th for a Bigger & Better Winter Break Teen Tuesday!


Make your friends stars with your own cartoons. Make expansive art. Eat Bigger & Better holiday treats! Play SingStar, DDR, and Guitar Hero and take home free stuff!!


Teen Tuesdays are the last Tuesday of every month, 3-4:30 at the Highlands Library, and are always for teens only.
(image is courtesy of freeimages.co.uk)

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

It's the day of the Reaping, an annual ritual in Panem, a futuristic world where hunger and starvation are the norm. Every youth between the ages of 12 and 18 from all 12 districts await the verdict. One boy and 1 girl will be selected from each district to participate in the Hunger Games, twenty-four in all. They will be trained for a week, with abundant food, exercise and clothing. And at the end of the week, they will be placed in the arena, where they will be observed by millions on live TV as they are forced to fight to the death.

16-year-old Katniss is used to hunting for food since she secretly poaches meat back home to feed her family, and to barter with at the market. So when her younger sister’s name is called to be a participant in the Reaping, Katniss steps forward to take her place. In another world, Katniss and the other participants might have been friends. Some might have even been more. But in the world of the Hunger Games, there can only be one winner, and that is the only person left alive.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

It is the near-future where advances in biotechnology have made it possible to create synthetic body parts and even brains that behave just like human tissue. But it is still a controversial and very illegal practice. Jenna Fox has just woken up after a year in a coma, and the world she wakes up to is completely unfamiliar to her. Slowly a few memories begin to return, and not only her own memories, but she can recite Thoreau and the details of obscure events in history as though she pulled them out of a textbook, and she can even remember things that happened when she was only a year old. But she can't seem to remember the car accident or what happened to her friends Kara and Locke who were in the car. As her memories begin to return, Jenna begins to make some very disturbing discoveries about her existence, and even her own humanity. Is she real, or is she something else?

The Giving Season......Renton Library's Mitten Tree

Hey Teens! How would you like to do something meaningful for others this holiday season? Between December 1st and December 31st, you can decorate the library's first Annual Mitten Tree with mittens, hats, scarves, socks, and other warm fuzzy things. Items donated will benefit mothers and children of the YWCA of Renton.

You might even try your hand at knitting some things yourself. The library has some great books on knitting.

Knitgrrl: Learn to Knit with 15 Fun and Funky Patterns by Shannon Okey

Knitgrrl 2: Learn to Knit with 16 All-New Patterns by Shannon Okey

Win a Basket of Books from Teen Reads!

Celebrate the season with Teenreads.com's Fourth Annual Holiday Basket of Cheer contest! You have until December 10th to enter to win a "Basket of Holiday Reading and Fun," including 10 great books and holiday-themed prizes like chocolate and warm, fuzzy things!

Having trouble finding time to read…..try an audiobook!

No one disputes the fact that teens have very little free time to read. Who does these days? So I want to let you in on a little secret that many adults have already discovered…….audiobooks. The Renton Libraries have a terrific selection of young adult audiobooks read by some really fantastic performers, oftentimes actors.

Audiobooks may not be for everyone, but if you haven’t tried one, you may be missing out on a really cool entertainment experience. And the beauty of audiobooks is that you can listen to them while you’re doing almost anything, like riding the bus, driving, or just messin’ around.

Here’s a list of some of my favorites:

Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson
In the not-too-distant future, when biotechnological advances have made synthetic bodies and brains possible but illegal, seventeen-year-old Jenna, recovering from a serious accident and suffering from memory lapses, learns a startling secret about her existence.

The Immortals trilogy by Cassandra Clare
Werewolves, vampires, fairies, and a very handsome but tortured angel....what more could you ask for?

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
In a future where food is in very short supply, sixteen-year-old Katniss's survival skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place in the Hunger Games, a televised competition and fight to the death.

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
In all the years she has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house, Grace has been particularly drawn to an unusual yellow-eyed wolf who has also been watching her.

Feed by M.T. Anderson
This story is set in a futuristic world where most people have computer implants in their heads to control their environment. Titus never questions the coolness of his feed even after he meets Violet, a beautiful, intelligent girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. What's great about this audiobook is that the commercials are performed as if the listener has his very own feed......Sinister!

His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman (performed by a full cast)
In a land where a person's soul is in the form of an animal companion, Lyra and her daemon Pan must set on on a mission to find out who is killing children's daemon's (and thus their souls) and to find the secret of "dust."

The Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett
A young witch-to-be named Tiffany teams up with the Wee Free Men, a clan of six-inch-high blue men, to rescue her baby brother and ward off a sinister invasion from Fairyland.

Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Looking for excitement, Coraline ventures through a mysterious door into a world that is similar, yet disturbingly different from her own, where she must challenge a gruesome entity in order to save herself, her parents, and the souls of three others.

Percy Jackson and the Young Olympians series by Rick Riordan
After learning that he is the son of a mortal woman and Poseidon, god of the sea, twelve-year-old Percy is sent to a summer camp for demigods like himself, and joins his new friends on a quest to prevent a war between the gods.

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin
After fifteen-year-old Liz Hall is hit by a taxi and killed, she finds herself in a place that is both like and unlike Earth, where she must adjust to her new status and figure out how to "live."

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
In a diary, sixteen-year-old Miranda describes her family's struggle to survive after a meteor hits the moon, causing worldwide tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions.

You can find these and other audiobooks in the YA section of the Renton Libraries, or you can place a hold on them in the library catalog using your Renton library card.

Teen Tuesday Goes Retro

Ready to go back in time? This Tuesday, November 24, go wayyy back...to the 1980s!

Play Frogger, the ORIGINAL Super Mario Bros., PONG, and more. As always, there will also be free snacks and prizes. Bonus points for wearing your retro '80s gear.

Teen Tuesdays are the last Tuesday of EVERY month from 3-4:30 at the Highlands library. They are always free and always for middle and high schoolers only, so see you there!

(the "joystick hand" is courtesy of freeimages.co.uk)

RPL Young Writers Group

Our next meeting will be this Thursday, November 19th from 4:00 to 5:15 p.m. In the meantime, don't forget to write.

In light of the Holiday-itis with which we are undoubtably all beginning to suffer, for this week's workshop we will just plan to kick back and have fun with word games and warm-ups. Scrabble anyone? Hope to see you there!