Tag: Young Adult Fiction

Teen Book Club Reads The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Posted on by Olivia

Meet up with book lovers just like you at the Aurora Public Library for a discussion of The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky on Tuesday, June 27th @ 4 pm. Free snacks and drinks will be provided. Stop by the Aurora or Dillsboro Library to pick up your copy today!

This is the story of what it’s like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie’s letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas, and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is the perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.

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

Not Your Mother’s Book Club: A New Reading Experience

Posted on by Olivia

Want some excitement in your book club? Check out “Not Your Mother’s Book Club” from the Aurora Public Library District, where you’ll get to read today’s hottest books from Booktok and beyond and discuss them with readers just like you! Olivia, our resident “edgy” book lover, will be there to lead the discussion and take recommendations from attendees. Remember, this is your book club, and your reading opinions matter!

This month, we will be reading “Verity” by Colleen Hoover.

Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, the husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish.
Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity’s notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn’t expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity’s recollection of what really happened the day her daughter died.
Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents would devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen’s feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife’s words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue to love her.

This book includes themes of child abuse. Please read at your discretion.

We will be meeting at Great Crescent Brewery at 6 pm on June 15th. You can pick up your book TODAY at the Aurora or Dillsboro Public Library. We’ll see you there!

Teen Book Club Reads “Renegades” by Marissa Meyer

Posted on by Olivia

Meet up with book lovers just like you for a discussion of Renegades by Marissa Meyer on Tuesday, May 23rd @ 4 pm. Free snacks and drinks will be provided. Stop by the Aurora or Dillsboro Library to pick up your copy today!

The Renegades are a syndicate of prodigies — humans with extraordinary abilities — who emerged from the ruins of a crumbled society and established peace and order where chaos reigned. As champions of justice, they remain a symbol of hope and courage to everyone… except the villains they once overthrew.

Nova has a reason to hate the Renegades, and she is on a mission for vengeance. As she gets closer to her target, she meets Adrian, a Renegade boy who believes in justice — and in Nova. But Nova’s allegiance is to a villain who has the power to end them both.

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

Teen Book Club Reads One of Us is Lying

Posted on by Olivia

Meet up with book lovers just like you for a discussion of One of us Lying by Karen M. McManus on Tuesday, April 25th @ 4 pm. Free snacks and drinks will be provided. Stop by the Aurora or Dillsboro Library to pick up your copy!

We will be meeting on Tuesday, April 25th @ 4 pm at the Aurora Public Library. Anyone 13-19 is welcome to attend!

Pay close attention and you might solve this:
On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention:

  • Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule

  • Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess

  • Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing

  • Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher

  • And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High’s notorious gossip app 

Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom alive. And according to investigators, his death wasn’t an accident. He died on a Monday. But that Tuesday, he’d planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates. Now, all four of them are suspects in his murder. Are they guilty? Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who’s still on the loose?
They all have a motive. They all have something to hide. They all have a history with Simon. And one of them is definitely lying.

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.