Tag: Young Adult Fiction

Margaret Peterson Haddix Visits!

Posted on by Olivia

Calling all readers! Acclaimed and world-renowned author Margaret Peterson Haddix is stopping by the Dillsboro Public Library on April 4th @ 6 pm to meet you all!

Margaret Peterson Haddix grew up on a farm near Washington Court House, Ohio. She graduated from Miami University (of Ohio) with degrees in English/journalism, English/creative writing and history. Before her first book was published, she worked as a newspaper copy editor in Fort Wayne, Indiana; a newspaper reporter in Indianapolis; and a community college instructor and freelance writer in Danville, Illinois.

She has since written more than 40 books for kids and teens, including Running Out of Time; Double Identity; Uprising; The Always War; the Greystone Secrets series; the Shadow Children series; the Missing series; the Children of Exile series; the Under Their Skin duology; and The Palace Chronicles. She also wrote Into the Gauntlet, the tenth book in the 39 Clues series.  Her books have been honored with New York Times bestseller status, the International Reading Association’s Children’s Book Award; American Library Association Best Book and Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers notations; and numerous state reader’s choice awards. They have also been translated into more than twenty different languages.

Haddix and her husband, Doug, now live in Columbus, Ohio. They are the parents of two grown kids.

Want to read more by Margaret? Just search “Margaret Peterson Haddix” in our catalog or follow this link. You can also read her novel, The Summer of Broken Things with the Teen Book Club in March! Everyone ages 13-19 is welcome to attend Teen Book Club and you can check out your copy of the March Selection at either library today!

Want to meet Margaret? Registration is not required, but is recommended for this event. Margaret can’t wait to meet you!

Teen Book Club Reads The Summer of Broken Things

Posted on by Olivia

Meet up with book lovers just like you for a discussion of The Summer of Broken Things by Margaret Peterson Haddix on Tuesday, March 21st @ 4 pm. We’ll be reading this book to get ready for Margaret’s author visit to the Dillsboro Public Library on April 4th @ 6 pm! Free snacks and drinks will be provided. Stop by the Aurora or Dillsboro Library to pick up your copy today!

Fourteen-year-old Avery Armisted is athletic, rich, and pretty. Sixteen-year-old Kayla Butts is known as “butt-girl” at school. The two girls were friends as little kids, but that’s ancient history now. So it’s a huge surprise when Avery’s father offers to bring Kayla along on a summer trip to Spain. Avery is horrified that her father thinks he can choose her friends—and make her miss soccer camp. Kayla struggles just to imagine leaving the confines of her small town.

But in Spain, the two uncover a secret their families had hidden from both of them their entire lives. Maybe the girls can put aside their differences and work through it together. Or maybe the lies and betrayal will only push them—and their families—farther apart.

Everyone ages 13-19 are welcome to attend! We can’t wait to see you there!

Teen Book Club – Fangirl

Posted on by Olivia

Do you end up saying “just one more chapter” every night? Or maybe you haven’t read a book in forever. Either way, our new Teen Book Club is perfect for all young adult readers!

This month, we will be reading Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. This coming-of-age story introduces Cath, the quintessential, modern-day fanatic, and her journey through college, growing up, and worst of all, real-life boys who aren’t Simon Snow.

Cath is a Simon Snow fan. Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan, but for Cath, being a fan is her life–and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.

Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words . . . And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?

Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?

And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

Our next book will be selected by YOU, the reader! Our meeting will be at the Aurora Public Library on February 28th at 4 pm. Everyone ages 13 to 19 is welcome to attend. Registration is recommended but not required.

Books will be available for pickup at the library soon! We hope to see you there.

Teen Book Club – Maus

Posted on by Olivia

Do you end up saying “just one more chapter” every night? Or maybe you haven’t read a book in forever. Either way, our new Teen Book Club is perfect for all young adult readers!

This month, we will be reading Maus by Art Spiegelman. This harrowing tale of one of the worst atrocities in history is told through the eyes of a mouse, as he recounts his experiences of being persecuted by the Nazi cat regime.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father’s story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in “drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust” (The New York Times).

Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek’s harrowing story of survival is woven into the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century’s grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us.

Our next book is Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. After our first two meetings, book club members will select the next read. Our first meeting will be at the Aurora Public Library on January 24th at 4 pm. Everyone ages 13 to 19 is welcome to attend. Registration is recommended but not required.

We would like to include a trigger warning for suicide and abuse for this book.

Books will be available for pickup at the library soon! We hope to see you there.

Bleak Books with Olivia: House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland

Posted on by Olivia

Have you ever read a book all the way through just to close it for the last time and say “wow, that was bleak”? Well, I’m here to make the case for those dark, dreary, haunting, and disturbing reads that keep you up at night long after you put them down. Welcome to Bleak Books with Olivia, your resident creepy book lover at the Aurora Public Library District.

Let’s switch gears for a minute, shall we? I think it’s time to make the case for teen fiction. I turn 24 in a week, but I still love to read teen fiction. Although it’s not aimed at my age group, recent young adult novels have evolved into darker, scarier, and deeper stories that grip you from start to finish, and the only time House of Hollow doesn’t stick out is when it’s blending into the edgy new class of young adult books.

Iris Hollow just wants to be a normal seventeen-year-old with a normal life, and she does her best to fade into the background at school and in public, but her normal dream is far from reality. When Iris was a child, she and her two sisters, Grey and Vivi, went missing for a month and returned apparently unharmed, but certainly… different. All three sisters’ hair turned the color of snow, matching scars appear on their throats, and each one of them has a new ability more strange and terrifying than they could have imagined. Where did they go? None of the sisters remember. Almost a decade later, Vivi and Grey have left home to live their extravagantly wild lifestyles, leaving Iris with her overprotective widowed mother and nothing but memories of her dead father, who took his life shortly after his daughters returned home.

Iris is finally settling into her seemingly quiet and normal life when her oldest sister, Grey, goes missing. Vivi returns to help Iris search for their sibling, but as they look, the clues they find become increasingly strange, terrifying, and dangerous. Who took Grey, and where did she go? The truth will leave you haunted.

This book was incredibly morbid, haunting, and beautiful all at once. The Hollow sisters were so interesting to read about and were written like real, honest young women. They were tough, honest, imperfect, and brutally beautiful. I cannot recommend this book enough.

So next time you think you’ve run out of things to read, check the teen shelf! You never know what you may find or what may spark your interest. Don’t let the label scare you.

Thank you for joining me on this dissection of one of my favorite Bleak Books. I hope to see you again sometime soon! Please take a look in the Adult and Teen Fiction section at the Aurora and Dillsboro Public Libraries for my favorite Bleak Books, or check out our e-books on Libby. If you are looking for this specific title, you can use our catalog to locate it or ask a librarian for help! If you meet me in the library and have any Bleak Books suggestions, please let me know! I’m always looking for a new book to disrupt my life for a couple of weeks.

Best of 2020

Posted on by Jamie

Our patrons checked out over 34,000 books, ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, and DVDs in 2020! That’s a lot of reading, watching, and listening! Here are the items people checked out the most in 2020!

*Data is as of 12/28/2020

CD

The CD section includes both Adult Fiction and Nonfiction Audiobooks. Our patrons checked these items out over 350 times. The most popular titles were:

#1 Long Range by CJ Box

#2 Twisted Twenty-Six by Janet Evanovich

#3 The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon

DVD

The DVD section includes both films and tv series. Our patrons checked these items out over 4,000 times. The most popular titles were:

#1 Game of Thrones Season 1

#2 Game of Thrones Season 2

#3 Outlander Season 4

E

The E section consists of easy picture books. It does not include board books, easy chapter books, or ABC books. Our patrons checked these items out over 6,000 times. The most popular titles were:

#1 Chicken Big by Keith Graves

#2 Ladybug Girl by Jacky Davis

#3 Dinosong by Tim McCanna

FIC

The FIC section includes both paperback and hardback Adult Fiction books. Our patrons checked these items out over 6,500 times. The most popular titles were:

#1 Hush by James Patterson

#2 Moral Compass by Danielle Steel

#3 Cajun Justice by James Patterson

 

JFIC

The JFIC section is comprised of both paperback and hardback Juvenile Fiction books. These items were checked out over 2,500 times. The most popular items were:

#1 Lord of the Fleas by Dav Pilkey

#2 For Whom the Ball Rolls by Dav Pilkey

#3 Brawl of the Wild by Dav Pilkey

LP

The LP section includes Large Print Adult Fiction and Nonfiction books. These items were checked out over 1,500 times. The most popular titles were:

#1 A Cat Named Brat by Lydia Adamson

#2 Deceived by Irene Hannon

#3 A Cousin’s Challenge by Wanda Brunstetter

MAG

The Mag sections includes all Magazines. These items were checked out over 1,000 times. The most popular titles were:

#1 People

#2 Food Network

#3 Country Homes & Interiors

NF

The NF section includes all Adult Nonfiction books including Oversized and Biographies. These items were checked out over 1,500 times. The most popular titles were:

#1 Caring for Your Baby and Young Child

#2 Nolo’s Essential Guide to Buying Your First Home

#3 Magnolia Table Volume 2

TFIC

The TFIC section includes both paperback and hardcover Teen Fiction books and Graphic Novels. These items were checked out over 800 times. The most popular titles were:

#1 Midnight Sun by Stephanie Meyer

#2 Arch Enemies by Marissa Meyer

#3 Supernova by Marissa Meyer

 

There you have it! The most popular items of 2020! Have you read these titles yet? You can place a hold* on these items by clicking on the link, selecting “Place Hold,” and signing in with your library card number and pin. You can also call us at 812-926-0646 (Aurora) or 812-954-4151 (Dillsboro) and we will place a hold for you!

*Holds cannot be placed on DVDs.

 

Stuck Between the Pages Final Meeting

Posted on by Ashton

The YA Book Discussion Group: Stuck Between the Pages will have it’s final meeting on November 12, 2019 at 6pm. We will be discussing the book: Pay it Forward by: Catherine Ryan Hyde and its movie adaptation that we will be watching on November 5, 2019 at 5:30pm. While we have been happy to see young adults enjoying the book club, we do not have enough interest to continue the book discussion group for next year.

About the Book:

The story of how a boy who believed in the goodness of human nature set out to change the world.

Pay It Forward is a wondrous and moving novel about Trevor McKinney, a twelve-year-old boy in a small California town who accepts the challenge that his teacher gives his class, a chance to earn extra credit by coming up with a plan to change the world for the better — and to put that plan into action.

The idea that Trevor comes up with is so simple and so naïve that when others learn of it they are dismissive. Even Trevor himself begins to doubt when his “pay it forward” plan seems to founder on a combination of bad luck and the worst of human nature.

In the end, Pay It Forward is the story of seemingly ordinary people made extraordinary by the simple faith of a child. In the tradition of the successful and inspirational television show Touched by an Angel, and the phenomenally successful novel and film Forrest Gump, Pay It Forward is a work of charm, wit, and remarkable inspiration, a story of hope for today and for many tomorrows to come.

 

 

Gena Showalter

Posted on by Ashton

 

In today’s literary world, so many authors are venturing out and doing different genres and doing both young adult and adult books. Authors from Nick Hornby (About a Boy and Slam) to Meg Cabot (Princess Diaries and Overbite) to Richelle Mead (Vampire Academy and Georgina Kincaid). More and more authors are venturing out of their comfort zones and tackling a new category, whether they originally wrote young adult and are now writing adult or vice versa.

Gena Showalter first came known to the literary world with a contemporary romance duology called Imperia. She eventually went on to write a widely known and loved series called Lords of the Underworld. This popular series has 15 books, 3 novellas, one spin off series, and two upcoming publications!

She is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author with over thirty books in paranormal and contemporary romances. She also has 4 finished YA series and just released the first in a new YA series called The Forest of Good and Evil. 

Her first foray into the YA world was with her series, Intertwined. This series follows sixteen year old, Aden Stone, who has four human souls within him. All four souls have a unique power such as time travel, raising the dead, possessing another human, or telling the future. Her second YA series, The White Rabbit Chronicles, a unique retelling of Alice in Wonderland, has taken her readers to a whole new world and created a loyal fan-base from the YA community. My personal favorite of her books is her YA series, Everlife, is a unique story like one you’ve never read before about what happens after your First Death!

 

Stuck Between the Pages Summer Selections

Posted on by Ashton

 

It’s about to be…SUMMER! Who doesn’t like summer? The birds are chirping, the lawns are mowed, the sun is out! It’s a perfect time to sit outside and read, especially with school being out! Don’t have any summer vacation plans? No worries! Check out a book from the library and go on a vacation into the pages of a book!

Stuck Between the Pages is the teen book discussion for our young adult patrons in our community. We meet every second Tuesday of the month at Aurora Public Library at 6pm. For the summer we’ll be reading  The Hate U Give written by Angie Thomas and Deadline written by Chris Crutcher.

 

Our June Selection is The Hate U Give written by Angie Thomas.

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

On Thursday, June 20, at 6 pm, we will be premiering the adaptation of The Hate U Give. Snacks will be provided.

 

Our July Selection is Deadline written by Chris Crutcher.

Ben Wolf has big things planned for his senior year. Had big things planned? Now what he has is some very bad news and only one year left to make his mark on the world.

How can a pint-sized, smart-ass seventeen-year-old do anything significant in the nowheresville of Trout, Idaho?

First, Ben makes sure that no one else knows what is going on—not his superstar quarterback brother, Cody, not his parents, not his coach, no one. Next, he decides to become the best 127-pound football player Trout High has ever seen; to give his close-minded civics teacher a daily migraine, and to help the local drunk clean up his act.

And then there’s Dallas Suzuki. Amazingly perfect, fascinating Dallas Suzuki, who may or may not give Ben the time of day. Really, she’s first on the list.

Living with a secret isn’t easy, though, and Ben’s resolve begins to crumble . . . especially when he realizes that he isn’t the only person in Trout with secrets.

 

Our June meeting will be on Tuesday, June 11, 2019, at 6 pm. Our July meeting will be on Tuesday, July 9, 2019, at 6 pm. Snacks and drinks are provided.

Register for your spot today!

We hope to see you there!

 

Michael Vey

Posted on by Ashton

I’ve personally read most of the books in this series and really enjoyed each book I read. The characters are all unique and the story itself is written well. If you are a fan of Percy Jackson, then look no further than Michael Vey!

To everyone at Meridian High School, fourteen-year-old Michael Vey is nothing special, just the kid who has Tourette’s syndrome. But in truth, Michael is extremely special; he has electric powers. And he’s not the only one, either,

Join Michael, Taylor, Ostin, and the rest of the Electroclan as they use their powers and wits to prevent a dangerous organization from achieving its sinister goal of global domination.-Goodreads