No more Artemis!!!

Eoin Colfer has announced that after this summer's addition to the Artemis Fowl series, The Atlantis Complex, the teen master criminal is retiring.  The series has sold over 20 million copies worldwide.  For those who have never met Artemis, we are introduced to him, in the novel Artemis Fowl, as he conspires to steal enough fairy gold to ransom his kidnapped father.  He takes on the Lower Elements Police, a collection of fantastic and mythological beings who operate like a high-tech law enforcement agency.  As far as I know, the Artemis Fowl books are the only fairy-cop novels out there for teen readers.

In The Atlantis Complex, Artemis dedicates his considerable fortune to a project designed to save the world's inhabitants, human and fairy, from certain destruction.  His sometime nemesis, Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon forces, suspects that Fowl's change of heart from criminal to philanthropist is a scam or worse.

When Artemis first appeared on the scene there was a lot of talk about a possible movie version.  Now that the series has run its course, perhaps the movie will finally be made.  We can only hope.

All good things come to an end.  As summer draws to a close, there is still time to get prizes out of Davy Jones' Locker.  If you have not signed up for the "Make a Splash - READ" Summer Reading Club, there are two more weeks of fun, prizes and books!  Sign up today!  For more information, click here.

Stories in the Schools finished up this week as well.  But young readers can still participate in Read to the Pups on August 2nd and August 9th from 6:30 pm to 7 pm on the Parkland Community Library lawn.  And the Summer Reading Club Final Party, Pirates HO!, scheduled for August 17th in the evening, promises to be a lot of fun for everyone.

Book Title Games

At the teen program last Saturday, the teens played an improv game using book titles. First, the teens searched the YA Fiction and Fiction shelves for the oddest titles they could find. They wrote the titles down. Here are some examples; "Al Capone Does my Shirts", "Audrey, Wait", "Why I Let my Hair Grow Out".

Then, two teens volunteered to do an improvised scene based on a situation suggested by the other teens. Some of the suggestions were; a boss firing a worker, someone receiving the wrong change after a purchase and a patron arguing that they returned a library book.

Each of the actors were given two of the book titles to work into their improv scene somewhere. The results were pretty darn funny.

Make your own list of odd book titles. And play this game the next time you have a group of teens and pre-teens around.

Twins

For most of us, twins are fascinating.  What fun it must be to have a built in best friend!   Most of us imagined the tricks we could play on teachers and parents, if only we had an identical twin.

Books about twins are fun to read, too.  This week, two new books about twins arrived in the library.

In The Other Half of My Heart, by Sundee T. Frazier, twins Keira and Minni could not look more different if they tried.  Minni looks white, with red hair, freckles and blue eyes, just like her father.  Keira is darker with dark tight curls and she resembles her mother.  When the twins are invited to spend ten days with their maternal grandmother, and participate in the Miss Preteen Black Pearl of America program, Minni is the one who stands out as different.  Readers in grades 5 and up will enjoy this book.

Younger readers might enjoy Ting and Ling : not exactly the same by Grace Lin.   The identical twins that I know get a little annoyed that people think they should be alike in everything.  Ting and Ling are no different.  This book, for readers in grades 1 and up, shows how different Ting and Ling actually are.

Twins have interested authors of older books, too.  Katherine Paterson won a Newbery award for Jacob I have loved, a story about fraternal twin sisters. Though these twins are the best of friends, the attention that beautiful and talented Caroline receives makes Sara Louise envious.  Caroline seems to get everything that Louise wants.  The story follows the girls into adulthood.  Older readers, grades 6 and up, will find this book satisfying.

Lost and found by Andrew Clements centers on identical twins, Ray and Jay.  They have long resented being treated as if they are just one person.  When they move to a new school, they discover a clerical error that lets them take turns being just one person.  Readers in grades 4 and up will enjoy the escapades of these clever twins.

Video contest

Reading Rockets is running a writing/video contest for young screenwriters.  Click here for the rules and the prompts.  The contest is open to writers between the ages of 7 and 18. 

Ten middle school students met this morning at Springhouse Middle School library to talk about The Wimpy Kid and how to turn their own stories into comedy and comics.  Click here for a list of books that Wimpy Kid fans might enjoy.

Check the Parkland Community Library's Summer Reading Club page for more book lists for young readers.

Calling all artists!

Today, I received word of a great contest for artists of all ages.  Chronicle Books is running the Oodles of Doodles Contest to announce the launch of Taro Gomi's new line of products, adding coloring and activity books to Gomi's award-winning picture books.

There is a display with postcards, designed just for this contest, in the Picture Book section of the Parkland Community Library.  The postcards can be used as entries into the contest or you can click on the link above to download and print out a different entry form.  The link leads users to coloring pages designed by Taro Gomi.

Check out one of Gomi's books, My Friends, from the Parkland Community Library.

Read around the Lehigh Valley

Libraries aren't the only organizations that encourage Summer Reading.  ABC Channel 6 has sent the Parkland Community Library entry forms for the Summer Sweepstakes.  Young readers can write down three book that they read this summer and enter a sweepstakes to win tickets at one of several amusement parks or the Philadelphia Zoo.  The entry cards are on display in the Children's area of the Parkland Community Library.

TD Bank is offering $10 to add to an existing TD Bank savings account or to use to open a TD Bank account to any one, ages 18 and under, who reads 10 books this summer.  Click here for more information.

Barnes and Noble's Summer Reading Club is open to readers in Grades 1 through 6.  The book log offers lists of books for children to read.   Here is the link to the B&N Summer Reading Club.  Download the Passport to read the rules and print out the booklist.

Borders Books and Music is running a Double Dog Dare Summer Reading Club for readers under the age of 12.  Here is the link to Borders Double Dog Dare Summer Reading Club.

Make sure that you read the rules and the dates carefully.  Keep reading all summer.  It will enrich your life in more ways than one!!