Scrabble Tile Necklaces!

Last night, we had a fabulous time making scrabble tile necklaces (type it into the search box on Etsy, you'll see tons of examples).

First, Candie patiently told us what we ought to do...


We tore through dictionaries and scrapbook paper and vintage pictures to figure out what we wanted our pendants to look like.




Then we painted (Plaid has great acrylic paints...)!


And we Mod Podged!



We shared the Mother/Daughter love...



And we took home some amazing necklaces!




Thanks to everyone who came and to Candie for all her help! I hope everyone had as much fun as I did.

Get ready, ladies!

As pristine snow drifts over the library, I am in the program room, shoving tables around.

Why?

Because our Mother/Daughter Jewelry Making program is TONIGHT!

I have a ton of you registered and I hope to see you all as we Mod-Podge our hearts out and drive away the cold this evening.

As a reminder: the program starts at 6:30 p.m. at the library, downstairs in our program room. That's where you'll find me and our fearless leader, Candie Cooper, along with (if we can track them both down) our moms. I'll be the one checking off names on the clipboard...because that's how I start my evenings. They finish with me covered in acrylic paint and holding a blow dryer.

Aren't crafts just magical?

Wait a minute...what's a Shmoop?"

I just put some goodies upstairs, stickers and bookmarks, which all say "Shmoop" on them, so I thought I would be a good and responsible person and tell you what Shmoop is before you all come ask me why I'm making up words again.

I do that sometimes.

But I cannot take credit for the word "Shmoop," as I didn't coin it or anything.

Bored already? Then go explore.

Shmoop (go up and click on the link up there) is an online source for study guides and the like, covering literature, history, civics, biography, music, etc. It was created by the same people who create most of our cool new online resources, bored grad students and bored former grad students. It's amazing what creative people can come up with given enough boredom.

Boredom is an amazing force of creativity. How else would my brother and I have managed to fall into the river so many times? We have one right by our house--it isn't like we went looking for it or anything.

So say you have a history test tomorrow, and you just don't know why you need to study the French and Indian War, when it just doesn't make any sense that the French and Indians totally fought on the same side (mostly) and not against each other the way it sounds in the name of said war, and since the U.S.A. was totally not even a country back then, why do we have to study it for U.S. History?

Shmoop dumbs it down so that people like me, an avid hater of all things nonfiction, will actually read the entries all the way through. Then, they follow it up with this great little section entitled, "Why Should I Care?" When I first saw that section I laughed so hard I needed my inhaler*. I mean, that was my job all through high school, to convince my fellow classmates that learning about whatever we happened to be studying was worthwhile for whatever reason I could think of at the moment.

The glory of this site, the thing that makes it so much better than, say, Wikipedia (which I still love, but don't trust) is that actual people with actual degrees are writing what you find on Shmoop, so it isn't some unshaven illiterate basement dweller deciding what the entry for the French and Indian War should say, it's someone who bothered to study the French and Indian War in grad school, and though they may still be an unshaven basement-dweller, they are far from being illiterate.

So go, explore, maybe pick up a fancy sticker upstairs on the manga/graphic novel shelf, and hopefully you might end up liking your history, lit, or government class a little more than you did before you read this today.

*You should know that, even though I've had asthma for like four years, I still can't spell the word "inhaler" without the computer fixing it for me. That's a little sad, isn't it?

Ladies and Gentlemen...

May I direct your attention to the sidebar? The one to your (looks at her hands, thinks...) right. Your right. No. Your left. We read left to right.

Look to your left.

You will see the words "WCPL Young Adult Blog" since it's the title. See it? Okay. Underneath it is a little label that says "pages" and beneath that there is "Home" which is where you are right now. You are home. Well, this page is on home. You might be at school or here at the library, I don't know.

Underneath that is a little link that says "YA Authors on the Web!" and it's clickable, just like it is here in this sentence.

Click it here or click it there, because I just spent a long-ish time tracking down all the author blogs and websites I could think of off the top of my head.

Now you can go visit your favorite authors without the hassle of sifting through Google results trying to sell you their books on Amazon. You come here, you can make me get those books for you, and then other people can read them too. So you don't so much need Amazon...at least not for books.

I'll keep hunting down more author blogs and adding them to the list, but I'll try and let you know as I do it. Or, you could always just go click the link and check.

Bond with Mom and Make Some Jewelry!

Once again were are being graced with the presence of the lovely, talented Candie Cooper! This workshop will be for mothers and daughters. It's set for February 24 at 6:30 p.m.--make sure you register soon, space is limited.

This time we'll be decoupaging pendants for necklaces. Candie made me one (which I love) and we also have a sample she dropped off on display upstairs at the circulation desk. She left me a sample because I couldn't bear sewing my necklace onto a felt backing and then just leaving it there. I am guarding it with extreme jealousy.

You can see some of Candie's decoupage here, on some luggage tags she made (and blogged about) a few years ago. Sadly, I discovered these long after my Grand Tour, so I didn't have super-cool luggage tags as I lugged my suitcase around Europe. So you know, I think my suitcase is lined with lead to make it safe for my clothing during a nuclear disaster. This, however, makes the suitcase weigh something like twenty pounds before I've put anything in it and that makes cobblestone streets hard to cope with.

We'll be re-purposing Scrabble tiles by taking bits of decorative paper, paint, and other bits and bobs. When we're done, they'll be much cooler than earning a triple-word score, and we'll be able to wear them out and about with pride. And of course, there will be the whole mother/daughter bonding thing, which is always good.

In case you're curious, this is a mother/daughter/aunt/niece/mentor/mentoree/grandmother/granddaughter/friend's mom/daughter's friend event, meaning that it is absolutely okay for you not to actually be mother/daughter to participate. You can sign up with any adult you want to spend time with.

Blog Note: In case you were wondering, the word mentoree is one of those words that Frankie Landau Banks would use (from E. Lockhart's great book The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks), but it is not officially a real word according to that horrible creation: the dictionary.

But take it from me, you can word anything you want, verb anything you want, it's wide open. Tons of our words came from Shakespeare's plays--no one had ever written them down before he did. So if you think something should be a word that isn't, go for it. Just don't do it on a research paper...

Scarlett Fever III: Laura's Finished!

Mere moments ago, just as I inhaled a slice of freshly baked bread, I finished Scarlett Fever.

For the record: I will not be content without a third book in the series, if only for the prospect of more donuts used as projectile weapons. It's a lovely image.

I love the way Maureen Johnson captures humor in her writing, nothing seems staged or unnatural, her narrators respond convincingly when faced with the absurd (such as in the case of Murray the tinkler...and Murray the doorman), and her novels never fail to make me laugh out loud at the circulation desk, in fast-food restaurants, sitting in a coffee shop, anywhere where my laughter would be something of a disruption or inexplicable enough to attract attention. In other words, I get stared at when my laughter brings tears to my eyes faster than that Christian the Lion video on YouTube.

It's like junior high but without all the dodge balls.

I think one of the major reasons Johnson manages to make me snort Wendy's sweet tea (I get the large, with tax it's $1.92 and well worth all the calories and caffeine) up my nose every single solitary time I read the "When Scarlett Met Murray" scene is the theatrical dramaturgy thing. If you know how to make a scene seem real on stage, I'm sure it wouldn't hurt when you sat down to write a novel.

Okay, my writing rant is over--I get this way because of the English degree; I really do try to control myself.

The bottom line? You really should read Johnson's books. I mean it. And with the sequel to Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes coming out mere months from now, what do you have to lose?

Scarlett Fever, a very short quasi-read-a-long

I'm doubting that many of you have been able to skip out on school and drive all the way to the nearest bookstore to buy Scarlett Fever, nor do I encourage you to do so since that would defeat the purpose of my buying it and putting it upstairs with all the other books we at the library intend for you to check out and read.

That being said, I also don't expect you to do what I have done and will continue to do, which is to pre-order certain books integral to your health and happiness (Melina Marchetta! Suzanne Collins and Hunger Games III! Ally Carter's new book Heist Society!)

Now that I have acknowledged that you are totally off the hook for not standing/sitting in front of your computer while you read this, cradling Scarlett Fever in your reverent hands, I must ask that you forgive me for doing just that.

My compulsion, manic, obsessive fascination with this book began roughly four hours ago, fueled by the happy little icon on Teen Reads announcing their brand new book review for this brand new novel. Before that, I just really wanted to read it. It happens that way with me sometimes. It's like when little kids think of Christmas or their birthdays, and they can focus on nothing but that for days or even weeks beforehand, except for me it's specific books not a new bicycle.

Let me just say, now that Mr. Kindle tells me that I've read 20% of Scarlett Fever: It is every bit as fabulous as Suite Scarlett, if not more so.

And, just so you know, when I'm done being strange about this book, I'll have moved on to this one.



And this one.

I'm sure there'll be more after those...

Scarlett Fever, It's not just a deadly illness anymore...

Hooray for Maureen Johnson!

Her sequel to Suite Scarlett, Scarlett Fever (no link for this one on her webpage yet, but here's Teen Reads), hits bookshelves today. I have just had it sent to my Kindle so that I can give you a review the second I put it out on our shelves...

Make sure to read the first book before you grab the second!

I'm very excited. Can you tell?

Okay, now I'm going for the Kindle so that I can turn it's little wireless thingie on so that the book can download...