Diamonds in the Shadow is an exciting and suspenseful book about what happens when an African refugee family ends up living with an American family in suburban Connecticut. Jared Finch, a typical American teenager, does not want to share his life or his room with a boy he has never met. The Amabo family seems overwhelmed by American life. They cannot believe the generosity of the church for sponsoring them and the Finches for helping them acclimates to American life. As time goes on Jared begins to notice odd things about the Amabo family and begins to wonder if these are the people that the Finches were suppose to host or has someone made a mistake? Diamonds in the Shadow is a book that deals with the realities of life in a war torn African country and its impact on its inhabitants.

To request this book from Wake County Libraries click here.

Review by Marci @ Duraleigh Road Library

Test your vocabulary skills while you feed the hungry. FreeRice will donate 10 grains of rice to hungry people if you play their vocabulary game. Neat, huh? Play here. It helps you study for the SATs or just learn cool new words to impress your friends. There is an FAQ you can read to learn how it works.

Ginny Davis and her 7th grade year of school is the subject of this book, which uses notes, report cards, newspaper clippings, birthday cards, and other miscellaneous texts to tell her story.

This is one of many books that has come out recently that uses a multi-media approach to storytelling. One look at the cover, which sports meatloaf and tater tots, is enough to make anyone quote Napoleon Dynamite: “Give me your tots.”

Holms is successful in telling this tale. I found myself smiling at Ginny’s misfortunes. She lists people she could babysit for, the last one being Tiffany Kurtz, who bites. Of course, it is Mrs. Kurtz that ends up calling Ginny to babysit.

But the story isn’t all humor. Her older brother, Henry, gets into some serious trouble. And at one point, Ginny’s grades drop noticeably from almost all A’s to C’s.

This is sure to be grabbed off the shelf often. The audience here is clearly lower middle school.  To order it from your library, click here.

It’s a podcast booktalk!  Should it be a podtalk or a bookcast?  Anyway, take a listen.

To request this book from the library, click here.

We had a contest to celebrate Teen Read Week – congrats to our winner, Victor!

Well, YALSA moved fast and has already announced the national Teens’ Top 10!  The winners listed are in order of most votes to least.

Congratulations to all of the Top 10 authors, especially Stephanie Meyer and New Moon, which received the most votes from teens all over the country.

The 2007 Teens’ Top Ten is (Clicking on the linked title will send you to our catalog, where you can place a request to get a copy of each book):

• New Moon by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2006).
• Just Listen by Sarah Dessen (Viking Children’s Books, 2006)
• How to Ruin a Summer Vacation by Simone Elkeles (Flux, 2006).
• Maximum Ride: School’s Out – Forever by James Patterson (Hachette Book Group USA/Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2006).
• Firegirl by Tony Abbott (Hachette Book Group USA/Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2006).
• All Hallows Eve (13 Stories) by Vivian Vande Velde (Harcourt, 2006).
• Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer (Harcourt, 2006).
• River Secrets by Shannon Hale (Bloomsbury, 2006).
• Bad Kitty by Michele Jaffe (HarperCollins, 2006).
• Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks (Chicken House, 2006).

Thanks to all of our teen readers who placed votes!  To see a list of the top ten for Wake County teens, click here.

Read-in: /’reed – in/ (n.) a form of direct action that involves one or more persons nonviolently occupying an area for reading, often to promote social change.

On Friday, October 19, teens from Wake Forest, Wendell, East Regional and Eva Perry libraries gathered at Triangle Town Center for a read-in. Teens read, shared books with their friends as they sipped on donated Starbucks coffee. (Thanks, Starbucks!) Some of the teens had even made tee shirts to promote the event, and wore them to the mall for the read-in!

The read-in was just one of dozens of teen reading events held across Wake County during Teen Read Week. Thanks to all the teens who participated and had fun!

Click here for more photos of the Teen Read-In!

Thanks to everyone who voted in our Wake County poll for the Teens’ Top Ten Reads! The Top Ten that Wake County teens selected are:

Firegirl by Tony Abbott
The Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks
Secrets of My Hollywood Life by Jen Calonita
Just Listen by Sarah Dessen
How To Ruin a Summer Vacation by Simone Ekeles
The Christopher Killer: A Forensic Mystery by Alane Ferguson
Born To Rock by Gordon Korman
New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
Prom Anonymous by Blake Nelson
Maximum Ride: School’s Out — Forever by James Patterson
All Hallow’s Eve: 13 Stories by Vivian Vande Velde

Okay, okay, that’s actually 11 titles, but there was a tie! So, there you have it. If you are interested, the title with the most votes was Just Listen by Sarah Dessen. Now, those are Wake County’s results, but the national results will not be announced until early November by YALSA. The national vote results come from votes cast by teens all over the country, so the YALSA Top Ten might look a bit different from ours. Check the Teens’ Top 10 website for the national results!

Don’t forget to click the titles to request your copies of our winners today!

Don’t forget to place your vote for the Teens’ Top 10 anytime online from October 14-20, 2007.  Vote here by scrolling down and clicking on the VOTE button.  You will vote twice:  once in the Wake County vote and once in the national vote.  Click here to vote.  This way we can know what OUR teens love.  Get out and VOTE.  VOTE.  VOTE.

Join Mirrorstone and Hallowmere to celebrate Teen Read Week (Oct. 14-20) and enter a Hallowmere virtual fan contest. Your entry could win a Nintendo Wii for your library or an iPod just for you. Visit Mirrorstonebooks.com for complete info on the contest!

Hallowmere is an all-new fantasy series for teens. In the 10 book series, six girls from around the world are drawn together to rescue their missing classmates and prevent catastrophe in an epic battle between dark Fey and the mortal world.