Drowning in Books

OK, so what if I just posted this on my other blog. I liked it, so I’m posting it again. And those readers are not these readers.

Can books swim? Have they had lessons? Do they wear those little water wings? Should they? Well, what I do know about books is that they are fun, and you can take them with you to the beach or the pool, and make that experience even more fun. But did you know that you can borrow books from BookSwim just like you borrow videos from NetFlix, for a low, low monthly fee? And unlike those evil librarians who charge you late fees, (what? who would say such a thing about lovely librarians?) you can keep them for as long as you want without late charges. They have a fabuloso selection of contemporary books that you will actually want to read. You don’t even have to get out  of  your pjs to go to the library and check them out, or pay big bucks to buy them for yourself at the book store. You just pick out the books you want, add them to your “pool,” and then BookSwim mails them to you with no delivery charge, which is just about the nicest thing that can happen to a person these days. You read the books, and then BookSwim mails then back to you, again with no delivery charge.

And now you can even rent textbooks. College textbooks. Graduate school textbooks. For cheap, people. So, I’m working on my doctorate. The school I’m attending offers to sell me two books I need for something in the neighborhood of $150 each. I manage to find one at Barnes & Noble for $50. I just found it on BookSwim. I could have rented it from them for $28.60 for 90 days, the length of my class. I’m guessing they would have frowned upon my highlighting the pages, but to save that much money, I could have restrained myself. Another book for the same class was about the same price from a B&N used bookseller as it was to rent for ninety days from BookSwim (around $62 from each place) so it pays to shop around. At any rate, you can swim on over to BookSwim and see if you have been swimming in the right book pool.

School Book Clubs Live Blog from the Macon Teen Conference

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I will be live blogging the second session on school book clubs from the Teen Conference in Macon at 11:00 . Stay tuned!

Melissa Walker is the Latest readergirlz Diva!

Our friends at readergirlz have a brand new diva. Author Melissa Walker, whose book Violet in Private was featured on readergirlz in August, just joined the website as its latest author diva. Other books in her Violet series include Violet on the Runway and Violet by Design. The series follows Violet through the ups and downs of the fashion world. If you can wait until May, you can read her next book, Lovestruck Summer. Sounds like a perfect beach read! Melissa is from New Zealand, where she attended an elite finishing school for girls. She earned a BA in English from Vassar and now lives in Brooklyn. She is a former ELLEgirl Features Editor and Seventeen Prom Editor. Watch for the Violet books in The Unquiet Library.

2008 National Book Award Nominees Announced Today

The National Book Award nominees were announced today, and some Creekview favorite authors are on the Young People’s Literature list. Of course, there are also lists for Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry, but, who cares? We only care about our people! Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Grizzly favorites Speak and Twisted, was nominated for her new book Chains. E. Lockhart, author of this year’s Georgia Peach Book Award nominee, The Boyfriend List, in addition to other favs like Dramarama and The Boy Book, is another nominee for The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. Also nominated was Kathi Appelt for The Underneath (she’s the author of the great short story collection Kissing Tennessee and Other Stories from the Stardust Dance). Judy Blundell was nominated for What I Saw and How I Lied. The final young adult author nominee was Tim Tharp for The Spectacular Now. Tim’s other novels include Knights of the Hill Country and Falling Dark. The winners will be named on November 19.

Nick & Norah Hit the Big Screen!

If you haven’t read Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Creekview favorite authors Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, you’d better hurry, because the movie is set to hit theatres October 3! In her MySpace blog, Rachel confesses that there are a few differences between the book and the movie, but she thinks they only make the movie better. If you’ve already read the book, you may have noticed one major difference in the trailer. In the book, it’s Nick who asks Norah to be his girlfriend for five minutes, but in the movie, it’s Norah who asks Nick to be her five-minute boyfriend. Way to be a twenty-first century woman, Norah! You can visit Rachel’s website to learn more about Nick & Norah and all of Rachel’s other books, including her latest book, You Know Where to Find Me. You can also visit David’s website to read more about all of his other books, including his latest, How they Met. Hurry up, Grizzlies, and finish reading Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist before October 3 so you’ll be ready when it hits the theaters. It sounds like it’s going to be great!

“Elect to Read a Banned Book”

The Creekview High School Library, in cooperation with the American Library Association (ALA), is celebrating Banned Books Week, September 27-October 4, 2008. The Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF) of The ALA has recorded more than 7,800 book challenges since 1990. A challenge is a formal, written complaint asking that a book be removed from school curriculum or library shelves. About seventy-five percent of these challenges involve schools and school libraries; the remaining twenty-five percent involve public libraries. The OIF estimates that only about one-fourth of the book challenges are actually reported. In support of the right to choose books freely for ourselves, the Creekview Library and the ALA are sponsoring this year’s Banned Books Week, with this year’s theme “Elect to Read a Banned Book.” Here is a list of the most challenged authors of 2007, according to ALA:
1. Robert Cormier
2. Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
3. Mark Twain
4. Toni Morrison
5. Philip Pullman
6. Kevin Henkes
7. Lois Lowry
8. Chris Crutcher
9. Lauren Myracle
10. Joann Sfar
And here are the most challenged books of 2007:
1.“And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
2. The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier
3. “Olive’s Ocean,” by Kevin Henkes
4. “The Golden Compass,” by Philip Pullman
5. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain
6. “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker
7. “TTYL,” by Lauren Myracle
8. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou
9. “It’s Perfectly Normal,” by Robie Harris
10. “The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky
You can check out the ALA website for more information and check out the Creekview High School library for a list of our banned books.

Sure Harry Potter Can Make a Couple of Kids Invisible, But What About a Tank?

Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley, funded by the United States military, have developed a new material that can bend light around objects, making them virtually invisible. The scientific breakthrough could make not only humans, but almost anything, including tanks and ships, disappear. The technology is still years away from realization, but it is still exciting! It is based on earlier research with microwaves at Imperial College London. The research by both groups is based on the theory that an object can be hidden by bending light around it. The lead researcher, Xiang Zhang, said: “In the case of invisibility cloaks or shields, the material would need to curve light waves completely around the object like a river flowing around a rock.” Someone who looked at the cloaked object would only see light from behind it — making the object seem to disappear. For more information about the invisibility cloak, you can read an article at FoxNews.

Yes! We Made it to 100!!!!

Mrs. Beasley, Mrs. Hamilton, and I have been reading our little brains out over the past school year or so, and we just reached our 100th book, which we added to our media center LibraryThing account! Click here to see all the books we read! You can get some ideas of good books you might want to read, many of which are available in the Creekview Grizzly Unquiet Library. You can also go to Library Thing and quickly and easily set up your own account. You can also click here to figure out how to set up your account. Use your LibraryThing account to keep up with all the books you read throughout your high school career. You can even check your LibraryThing account from your mobile phone while you’re at the library or book store to make sure a specific book isn’t already on your list before you check it out or buy it.

Welcome Kelly Bingham!

Don’t forget, grizzlies, on Monday, April 28, and Tuesday, April 29, The Unquiet Library will host author Kelly Bingham, author of Shark Girl, for a discussion and workshop on poetry writing! Here’s a brief synopsis of Shark Girl:

On a sunny day in June, at the beach with her mom and brother, 15-year-old Jane Arrowood went for a swim. And then everything – absolutely everything – changed. Now she’s counting down the days until she returns to school with her fake arm, where she knows kids will whisper, “That’s her – that’s Shark Girl,” as she passes. Poems, letters, telephone conversations, and newspaper clippings look unflinchingly at what it’s like to lose part of yourself – and to summon the courage it takes to find yourself again.

For more information about Kelly, visit readergirlz, where she is this month’s author. There’s a live chat with Kelly TONIGHT AT 9:00 PM on the readergirlz MySpace Forum. There’s also a round table discussion between Miss Erin, Little Willow, and author Lori Ann Grover on Little Willow’s cool book discussion site, bildungsroman. Need more? Check out the great interview on Cynthia Leitich Smith’s blog, Cynsations.

Keep the Poetry Celebration Going!

It’s still National Poetry Month, courtesy of the Academy of American Poets. Today’s poet is Sandra Beasley of Washington, D.C., a recent recipient of the 2008 Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award. The award, sponsored by Poets & Writers— the nation’s largest nonprofit organization serving creative writers— provides two writers with an honorarium and all-expenses-paid trip to New York City in October to meet with agents, editors, publishers, and other members of the New York literary community. Beasley won the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize for her book Theories of Falling (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2008), selected by Marie Howe. Her poems have also been featured in Verse Daily and Best New Poets (Samovar Press, 2005) and in journals such as 32 Poems, Barrow Street, Blackbird, RHINO, and SLATE. Awards for her work include the 2006 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize from Passages North and fellowships to Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Millay Colony. She serves on the editorial staff of The American Scholar. You can learn more about her at her website.

Cherry Tomatoes
by Sandra Beasley

Little bastards of vine.
Little demons by the pint.
Red eggs that never hatch,
just collapse and rot. When

my mom told me to gather
their grubby bodies
into my skirt, I’d cry. You
and your father, she’d chide—

the way, each time I kicked
and wailed against sailing,
my dad shook his head, said
You and your mother.

Now, a city girl, I ease one
loose from its siblings,
from its clear plastic coffin,
place it on my tongue.

Just to try. The smooth
surface resists, resists,
and erupts in my mouth:
seeds, juice, acid, blood

of a perfect household.
The way, when I finally
went sailing, my stomach
was rocked from inside

out. Little boat, big sea.
Handful of skinned sunsets.