Breaking Dawn Part Two

I have a confession to make: I didn't read Twilight.  I know, I know-as a Teen Librarian I definitely should have read this.  It has always been on my to read list, but I just always skipped over it for other titles.  And because I always like to read the book before seeing the movie I have not seen any of the movies, until last night.  Thanks to a wonderful colleague, I was invited to see a preview showing of Breaking Dawn Part 2.  And I have to say, I enjoyed it.

The music and production was entertaining, with some humor and decent acting.  I have heard that the acting has improved immensely from the first movie.  I also have to say that the casting was quite entertaining as there were many very hunky characters at which to marvel. 

The story itself was not a masterpiece, but it certainly had me invested in the characters.  There wasn't a whole lot of action, in fact a lot of the movie seemed to be the characters just standing around, talking, and waiting.  As for the climax twist, I immediately said "That's a cop-out!"  I now know that the movie divurged from the book with this twist, though, and it makes me wonder what impact the books ending has.

All in all, I had fun seeing the movie, and I find it extremely interesting that I enjoyed it as much as I did having not read the books nor seen the other movies.  What did you think of the movie?

Check 'em Out

National Geographic Angry Birds by Mel White
Everyone's obsessed with Angry Birds, the most addictive app around. Devotees know all the behaviours of the birds in the game, from the speedy yellow birds to the exploding blackbirds. But what about real-life angry birds? Just what happens when real birds stop being polite and start getting angry? Find out in this funny and informative look at bird anger in the animal kingdom, a collaboration between National Geographic and Angry Birds creator Rovio Entertainment. Fans of the game will love to read these unbelievable stories and the science behind them, alongside fascinating photographs and familiar graphics from the game. The book is organised by degree of anger – Annoyed, Testy, Outraged, andFurious – just as the game progresses in degree of difficulty. Readers are rewarded when the world's angriest real bird is revealed at the end.
 

 Finale by Becca Fitzpatrick
Fates unfurl in the gripping conclusion to theNew York Timesbestselling Hush, Hush saga.
Nora is more certain than ever that she is in love with Patch. Fallen angel or no, he is the one for her. Her heritage and destiny may mean they are fated to be enemies, but there is no turning her back on him. Now Nora and Patch must gather their strength to face one last, perilous trial. Old enemies return, new enemies are made, and a friend's ultimate betrayal threatens the peace Patch and Nora so desperately want. The battle lines are drawn—but which sides are they on? And in the end, are there some obstacles even love can't conquer?

 Curiosities: A Collection of Stories by Various Authors
From acclaimed YA authors Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton, and Brenna Yovanoff comes this anthology. A vampire locked in a cage in the basement, for good luck. Bad guys, clever girls, and the various reasons why the guys have to stop breathing. These are but a few of the curiosities collected in this volume of short stories by three practitioners of paranormal fiction.  

 The Diviners by Libba Bray
Evie O'Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York City--and she is pos-i-toot-ly thrilled. New York is the city of speakeasies, shopping, and movie palaces! Soon enough, Evie is running with glamorous Ziegfield girls and rakish pickpockets. The only catch is Evie has to live with her Uncle Will, curator of The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult--also known as "The Museum of the Creepy Crawlies."

When a rash of occult-based murders comes to light, Evie and her uncle are right in the thick of the investigation. And through it all, Evie has a secret: a mysterious power that could help catch the killer--if he doesn't catch her first.

 Cadillac Chronicles by Brett Hartman
Sixteen year-old Alex Riley’s top priorities in life are to find his long-absent father and a girl with a decent set of breasts. But his mother has a knack for sabotaging his plans. To advance her political career, she takes in an elderly black man named Lester Bray. Lester arrives with a vintage Cadillac and an old man's personality. It takes only a week for Alex's mother to ask Lester to leave. That makes Alex angry. On the morning of his eviction, Lester and Alex set out on a road trip, ostensibly to find the boy's father in Fort Lauderdale. But the two don't just head south. They also cross through un-navigated political, racial, and personal territory. A wild ride,Cadillac Chroniclesexplores what it means to#151;finally#151;find a real friend.

 Beyond a Ghost Story by Graham Mcnamee
 Jane is not your typical teen. She and her best friend Lexi call themselves the Creep Sisters. Only Lexi knows why Jane is different from anyone else: Her own shadow seems to pull her into near-fatal accidents. Jane is determined to find out why these terrifying things happen, and to overcome her shadow enemy. Her sleuthing with Lexi connects her own horrors to the secret history of a serial killer.

 Endlessly by Kiersten White
 Evie's paranormal past keeps coming back to haunt her. A new director at the International Paranormal Containment Agency wants to drag her back to headquarters. The Dark Faerie Queen is torturing humans in her poisonous realm. And supernatural creatures keep insisting that Evie is the only one who can save them from a mysterious, perilous fate.
The clock is ticking on the entire paranormal world. And its fate rests solely in Evie's hands.
So much for normal.

 Liar and Spy by Rebecca Stead
Seventh-grader Georges adjusts to moving from a house to an apartment, his father's efforts to start a new business, his mother's extra shifts as a nurse, being picked on at school, and Safer, a boy who wants his help spying on another resident of their building. 

 Now You Tell Me: 12 College Students
Each year in the U.S., 2.9 million young people graduate from high school, 70 percent of whom are heading for college.They've read the catalogs, spent months filling out applications, been accepted, chosen a school, shopped for dorm accoutrements and packed up their childhoods. But then what?What makes college a great experience? How do you make the most of what's offered on campus? How do you make friends? What should you do when you're homesick, or when your roommate parties 'till all hours? What are time drains to avoid? How do you come out ready for the "real world? 12 college students from all walks of life and different types of colleges and universities share the insider knowledge that isn't in the school catalog: what made it work for them.

Unbored: the Essential Field Guide to Serious Fun by Joshua Glenn and Elizabeth Foy Larsen

Unbored is the guide and activity book every modern kid needs. Vibrantly designed, lavishly illustrated, brilliantly walking the line between cool and constructive, it's crammed with activities that are not only fun and doable but also designed to get kids engaged with the wider world.
With contributions from a diverse crowd of experts, the book provides kids with information to round out their world view and inspire them to learn more. From how-tos on using the library or writing your representative to a graphic history of video games, the book isn't shy about teaching. Yet the bulk of the 350-page mega-resource presents hands-on activities that further the mission in a fun way, featuring the best of the old as well as the best of the new: classic science experiments, crafts and upcycling, board game hacking, code-cracking, geocaching, skateboard repair, yarn-bombing, stop-action movie-making-plus tons of sidebars and extras, including trivia, best-of lists, and Q&As with leading thinkers whose culture-changing ideas are made accessible to kids for the first time.
Just as kids begin to disappear into their screens, here is a book that encourages them to use those tech skills to be creative, try new things, and change the world. And it encourages parents to participate.Unboredis exciting to read, easy to use, and appealing to young and old, girl and boy. Parents will be comforted by its anti-perfectionist spirit and humor. Kids will just think it's awesome.

Storm by Brigid Kemmerer
Kemmerer delivers a brand-new paranormal series about brothers who can control the elements, featuring not just one, but five heroes for readers to fall in love with.

Norman Babcok can speak to ghosts, thus cementing his status as a weirdo by everyone in Blithe Hollow, including his own family. Norman accepts that people find him strange and is comfortable with being a loner. But his “talent” may just come in handy when a witch that was killed 300 years ago comes back from the dead, goes berserk and is determined to seek revenge for her death. Not an outstanding story, but entertaining nonetheless.

New Additions

 Blink Once by Cylin Busby
 West is a high school senior who has everything going for him until an accident leaves him paralyzed. Strapped down in his hospital bed, slipping in and out of consciousness, West is terrified and alone. Until he meets Olivia.She's the girl next door-sort of. A patient in the room next to his, only Olivia can tell what West is thinking, and only Olivia seems to know that the terrible dreams he's been having are not just a result of his medication. Yet as West comes to rely on Olivia-to love her, even-certain questions pull at him: Why has Olivia been in the hospital for so long? And what does it mean that she is at the center of his nightmares? But the biggest question of all comes when West begins to recover and learns that the mysterious girl he's fallen in love with has a secret he could never have seen coming.

 Confessions of a Murder Suspect by James Patterson
 James Patterson returns to the genre that made him famous with a thrilling teen detective series about the mysterious and magnificently wealthy Angel family . . . and the dark secrets they're keeping from one another. On the night Malcolm and Maud Angel are murdered, Tandy Angel knows just three things: 1) She was the last person to see herparents alive. 2) The police have no suspects besides Tandy and her three siblings. 3) She can't trust anyone-maybe not even herself. Having grown up under Malcolm and Maud's intense perfectionist demands, no child comes awayundamaged. Tandy decides that she will have to clear the family name, but digging deeper into her powerful parents' affairs is a dangerous-and revealing-game. Who knows what the Angels are truly capable of?

 Guys Read the Sports Pages by Jon Scieszka
 A lineman with something to prove
 A vendetta against a baseball legend
 The rise of a real-life NHL all-star
 The luckiest grapefruit in sports history

Open up The Sports Pages, the third volume in the Guys Read Library of Great Reading, and you're in for all of this and more. From fiction to nonfiction, from baseball to mixed martial arts and everything in between, these are ten stories about the rush of victory and the crush of defeat on and off the field. Compiled by kid-lit all-star Jon Scieszka, Guys Read: The Sports Pages is a thrilling collection of brand-new short stories from some of your favorite authors and athletes.

 After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia by Various Authors
If the melt-down, flood, plague, the third World War, new Ice Age, Rapture, alien invasion, clamp-down, meteor, or something else entirely hit today, what would tomorrow look like? Some of the biggest names in YA and adult literature answer that very question in this short story anthology, each story exploring the lives of teen protagonists raised in catastrophe's wake—whether set in the days after the change, or decades far in the future.

New York Times bestselling authors Gregory Maguire, Garth Nix, Susan Beth Pfeffer, Carrie Ryan, Beth Revis, and Jane Yolen are among the many popular and award-winning storytellers lending their talents to this original and spellbinding anthology.
 

Immortal Lycanthropes by Hal Johnson
A shameful fact about humanity is that some people can be so ugly that no one will be friends with them. It is shameful that humans can be so cruel, and it is shameful that humans can be so ugly. So begins the incredible story of Myron Horowitz, a disfigured thirteen-yearold just trying to fit in at his Pennsylvania school. When a fight with a bully leaves him unconscious and naked in the wreckage of the cafeteria, Myron discovers that he is an immortal lycanthropeâa were-mammal who can transform from human to animal. He also discovers that there are others like him, and many of them want Myron dead. âŒPeople will turn into animals,â#157; says the razor-witted narrator of this tour-deforce, âŒand here come ancient secrets and rivers of blood.

Infects by Sean Beaudoin
A feast for the brain, this gory and genuinely hilarious take on zombie culture simultaneously skewers, pays tribute to, and elevates the horror genre.

Just Flirt by Laura Bowers

Serious relationships suck. So Dee Barton, self-proclaimed Superflirt, planning to spend her summer putting the moves on the guys who come to stay at her family's campground. Flirting is fun and makes everyone involved feel good--which is pretty much the exact opposite of her relationship with her toxic ex-boyfriend, Blaine.

Sabrina Owens's summer plans include keeping her over-the-top karoke dj mother in check, maintaining her status as the queen of the popular crowd--and being the perfect girlfriend to Blaine.
Dee and Sabrina hate each other. But when they're both drawn into a frivolous lawsuit, they must team up and embark on a risky, flirt-filled plot to set things right again.

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde
In the good old days, magic was indispensableâit could both save a kingdom and clear a clogged drain. But now magic is fading: Drain cleaner is cheaper than a spell, and magic carpets are used for pizza delivery. Fifteen-year-old foundling Jennifer Strange runs Kazam, an employment agency for magiciansâbut itâ™s hard to stay in business when magic is drying up. And then the visions start, predicting the death of the worldâ™s last dragon at the hands of an unnamed Dragonslayer. If the visions are true, everything will change for Kazamâand for Jennifer. Because something is coming. Something known as . . . Big Magic.

Lies, Knives and Girls in Red Dresses by Ronald Koertge
Writing in free verse honed to a wicked edge, the incomparable Koertge ("Stoner & Spaz") brings dark and contemporary humor to 20 iconic fairy tales, including OThe Little Match Girl, O OThe Twelve Dancing Princesses, O and OThumbelina.O Illustrations.

Ten by Gretchen Mcneil

Shhhh!
Don't spread the word!Three-day weekend. House party.
White Rock House on Henry Island.
You do not want to miss it.

It was supposed to be the weekend of their lives'three days on Henry Island at an exclusive house party. Best friends Meg and Minnie each have their own reasons for wanting to be there, which involve their school's most eligible bachelor, T. J. Fletcher, and look forward to three glorious days of boys, bonding, and fun-filled luxury.

But what they expect is definitely not what they get, and what starts out as fun turns dark and twisted after the discovery of a DVD with a sinister message:Vengeance is mine.

Suddenly, people are dying, and with a storm raging outside, the teens are cut off from the rest of the world. No electricity, no phones, no internet, and a ferry that isn't scheduled to return for three days. As the deaths become more violent and the teens turn on each other, can Meg find the killer before more people die? Or is the killer closer to her than she could ever imagine?

Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

Before Peter Pan belonged to Wendy, he belonged to the girl with the crow feather in her hair. . . .

Fifteen-year-old Tiger Lily doesn't believe in love stories or happy endings. Then she meets the alluring teenage Peter Pan in the forbidden woods of Neverland and immediately falls under his spell.

Peter is unlike anyone she's ever known. Impetuous and brave, he both scares and enthralls her. As the leader of the Lost Boys, the most fearsome of Neverland's inhabitants, Peter is an unthinkable match for Tiger Lily. Soon, she is risking everything-her family, her future-to be with him. When she is faced with marriage to a terrible man in her own tribe, she must choose between the life she's always known and running away to an uncertain future with Peter.

With enemies threatening to tear them apart, the lovers seem doomed. But it's the arrival of Wendy Darling, an English girl who's everything Tiger Lily is not, that leads Tiger Lily to discover that the most dangerous enemies can live inside even the most loyal and loving heart.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Peaches comes a magical and bewitching story of the romance between a fearless heroine and the boy who wouldn't grow up.

Tilt by Ellen Hopkins
 Love—good and bad—forces three teens’ worlds to tilt in a riveting novel from New York Times bestselling author Ellen Hopkins.


Three teens, three stories—all interconnected through their parents’ family relationships. As the adults pull away, caught up in their own dilemmas, the lives of the teens begin to tilt….

Mikayla, almost eighteen, is over-the-top in love with Dylan, who loves her back jealously. But what happens to that love when Mikayla gets pregnant the summer before their senior year—and decides to keep the baby?

Shane turns sixteen that same summer and falls hard in love with his first boyfriend, Alex, who happens to be HIV positive. Shane has lived for four years with his little sister’s impending death. Can he accept Alex’s love, knowing that his life, too, will be shortened?

Harley is fourteen—a good girl searching for new experiences, especially love from an older boy. She never expects to hurdle toward self-destructive extremes in order to define who she is and who she wants to be.

Love, in all its forms, has crucial consequences in this standalone novel.

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde

Jennifer Strange runs Kazam, an employment agency for magicians; although jobs are hard to find in a world where magical energy is fading. Once great wizards are reduced to performing menial jobs like hardwiring houses and clearing drains, if even that. Magical energy then seems to become stronger and wizards then find themselves performing tasks they once found too difficult. Jennifer begins to hear whispers of something called Big Magic, but no one will explain to her what it is. A prophecy that the last dragon will be killed by the unnamed last Dragonslayer also soon flies around the kingdom of Hereford. Jennifer sets out to discover more about the prophecy and Big Magic by searching for the last Dragonslayer; she quickly discovers much more than she ever bargained for. A wonderfully humorous, quick read that had me hooked from the first page. The first book I’ve enjoyed as thoroughly as I enjoyed Harry Potter.

Book Review

In a Glass Grimmly by Adam Gidwitz

Join Jack and Jill as they search for the Seeing Glass, a supposedly magical treasure of immense worth, that a king could trade his whole kingdom for it and be considered wise.  On the journey, they will encounter fierce giants, tricky mermaids, manipulative goblins, and a very simple minded, yet scary salamander.  Will Jack and Jill succeed in finding the Seeing Glass when it is their very lives that depend on it?  Another humorous retelling of classic fairy tales and nursery rhymes that you won’t want to put down.

Necromancing the Stone by Lish McBride

Sam LaCroix is finding it tough to get used to his new life: he not long ago became aware he is a necromancer (someone who can raise the dead); he has extreme guilt over killing the evil necromancer Douglas; and feels responsible for his friend Ramon becoming a were-bear.  To top it all off he is being trained to fight and defend himself by a pack of werewolves, which basically means he is being beat up multiple times a day.  But the pack also protects him, so it’s not all bad.  When someone ends up being killed, Sam is asked to help find the murderer.  The only thing is, is there are not a lot of clues to follow, or at least any that make sense.  For example, how can the murderer have left no scent at the scene?  Another quick read, with both humor and supernatural elements that you won’t want to put down.