November News

There is a lot happening here in the library, and we can't believe it's the end of November already! We wish all our staff and students and their families a happy Thanksgiving holiday break. Take some time to enjoy a good book.

Upcoming Page Turners' meeting times are Tuesday, 12/2, and Tuesday, 12/16, during 1st lunch. We hope you join us for continued discussion of The Hungry Tide and The Wind in the Willows.

We have had a lot of new books arrive in the past several weeks. Ask us if you need a recommendation. One of our new favorites is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

Finally, look for our "book swap" cart that will be introduced soon - books free for the taking. We will be registering those books with bookcrossing.com, a website that assigns ID numbers to registered books, so that anyone who picks up a book with an ID can write a brief journal entry about the book, free and anonymously. The goal is to then leave the book somewhere else for a stranger to pick up and read. The idea is to keep books circulating in the world, free, with people journaling about the books as they read them - kind of like a "message in a bottle." Some quotes about bookcrossing.com: "an online trend that has people committing random acts of kindness" (National Public Radio); "an innovative attempt to make the whole world a library" (Yahoo.com); "a phenom among readers with a taste for mischief and a touch of altruism" (The Los Angeles Times); and "a craze that is catching on globally" (The London Times). If you visit bookcrossing.com/hunt, you can locate books that have been "released" in NH, and see if you can catch them.

Teen Read Week

Teens across America have voted, and the results are in. Here are this year's Teens' Top Ten books:
1. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
4. Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead
5. Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports by James Patterson
6. City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
7. The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray
8. Extras by Scott Westerfeld
9. Before I Die by Jenny Downham
10. Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson

Our celebration of Teen Read Week is next week, October 27th-October 31st. Check out a book or a magazine from the library during the week, and you'll be entered into our drawings for daily and grand prizes! See the library for details of what you could win. Also, Tuesday - Friday, the whole school will be participating in Drop Everything And Read (aka DEAR) time. The schedule is as follows:

Tuesday, Oct. 28th 1st 15 minutes of block 4
Wednesday, Oct. 29th 1st 15 minutes of block 4
Thursday, Oct. 30th 1st 15 minutes of block 2
Friday, Oct. 31st 1st 15 minutes of block 2

Happy Teen Read Week!

Teen Read Week is coming

Next week, October 12-18th, is National Teen Read Week. This year's theme is "Books with Bite." There will be live chats with authors every night on the Readergirlz MySpace forum. Check out this trailer to see more:

If you are interested in voting for your favorite books this year, click on this link:
On that page, you can also get a pdf of the list of nominees for 2008. Join teens across the country to determine the final list of winners!

Here at Hopkinton Middle/High School, we will be celebrating our own version of Teen Read Week during October 27th-31st. Anyone who checks out reading material from the library during that week will be entered in our drawing for fabulous prizes: Borders gift cards, magazines, and more. Also, from Tuesday through Friday, the whole school will celebrate with 15 minutes of school-wide reading each day.

Come in to the library to see our Teen Read Week displays and check out a book or magazine to be entered in our drawing! Winners will be drawn Friday afternoon and announced Monday morning, November 3rd.

Lastly, our book club, the Page Turners, will meet October 21st during first lunch. Everyone is welcome!

Welcome back to a new school year.  Here in the library, we have been adding lots of new titles, and promoting this year's Flume and Isinglass Award nominees. Come in to see the list and the displays of books!  This week, our first podcast will be published, Dark Water Rising, by Marian Hale.  You can link to it from our homepage, or sign up for an RSS feed.  We will keep adding podcasts to our Isinglass page from now until March--approximately one new podcast each week.  Stay tuned for more updates!  Also this week, we are celebrating Banned Books Week 2008 in the library.  Listen to the announcements each day for an excerpt from a Banned Book, and try to guess which book it is. Good luck!

The Page Turners Book Club will meet Tuesday, September 30th, during 1st lunch in the main office conference room.  Bring your lunch and have fun discussing books.  We'll choose our next read at this meeting.

Summer Reading

Ah, summer. Friends, fun, fooling around -- and time to read the good stuff. I always think summer is a great time to try out a series; if you like it, you’ve got a month’s worth of good reads ahead. Here are a few to try, and a bit about them:

The Bloody Jack series, by L.A. Meyer: Bloody Jack, Curse of the Blue Tattoo, Under the Jolly Roger, In the Belly of the Bloodhound, Mississippi Jack -- 1800s, orphans, pirates, kidnapping, disguise, adventure...

The Maximum Ride series, by James Patterson: The Angel Experiment, School’s Out -- Forever, Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports, Ride the Final Warning -- plots, genetic engineering, flying, suspense, saving the world...

The Shadow Children series, by Margaret Peterson Haddix: Among the Hidden, Among the Impostors, Among the Betrayed, Among the Barons, Among the Brave, Among the Enemy, Among the Free -- population control, identity, secrecy, adventure, friendship, science fiction...

The Traces (Luke Harding, Forensic Investigator) series, by Malcolm Rose: Framed!, Lost Bullet, Roll Call, Double Check, Final Lap, Blood Brother -- murder, suspense, mystery, robotic assistant...

The Twilight series, by Stephenie Meyer: Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn (coming this August) -- love, high school, vampires, danger...

The Uglies series, by Scott Westerfeld: Uglies, Pretties, Specials, Extras -- conformity, friendship, suspense, beauty, identity, science fiction...

Tape to DVD Gets Easier!

With the addition of a new Sony VCR/DVDR, we can now help your students take their completed video projects from DV, mini-DV, and D8 (even VHS...) tapes directly to DVD.

For the "more than you might have wanted to know" details, see the two newest Library Survival Sheets, Dubbing from a DV Camera to a DVD & Dubbing from a VHS Tape to a DVD. (Both are .pdf files.)

This will be especially helpful to PC filmmakers who do not have DVD burning capabilities at home, or to anyone else who wants to edit on a program other than iMovieHD.

Isinglass Winner Announced

The 2007-2008 winner of the Isinglass Teen Read Award is Perfect, by Natasha Friend. Hopkinton Middle School ran true to form, voting Perfect as its #1 pick, as well. (Our #2 was Heat, by Mike Lupica; #3 was Dairy Queen, by Catherine Murdock.) And the 2008-2009 nomination list is just out, so take a look!

Page Turners

The Page Turners book club will meet again on Monday, June 9th, during 1st & 2nd high school lunches, in the conference room by the Main Office.

Come for a pot-luck lunch and end-of-the-year wrap up discussion; also, think summer reading....

[Next meeting: next Fall!]

Summer Loans

If you’re in the middle of a great read when the end of the school year comes around, do not despair! The HHS Library is delighted to make summer loans. Just see Ms. Moore sometime after June 16th to make the arrangements.

End-of-the-Year Due Dates

It's almost June, so graduation and exams (and summer!) are almost upon us. With time so short, we have had to change our usual 3-week loan period. Unless you make special arrangements with us, all Library materials -- books, videos, cameras, the works -- are due as follows:

• Seniors: bring 'em back by Jume 4th
• 7th-11th graders: bring 'em back by June 10th
• Staff members: bring 'em back by June June 16th

Page Turners

The Page Turners book club will meet again on Tuesday, May 20th, during 1st & 2nd high school lunches, in the conference room by the Main Office.

Come and share your thoughts about one of this month's two short stories -- either The April Witch, by Ray Bradbury, or Girls at War, by Chinua Achebe. (If you're not in school, you'll need a copy of our password sheet to make those links work....)

Also cookies!

[Next meeting, June 11th.]

Flume Winner Announced

The 2008 winner of The Flume: NH Teen Reader's Choice Award is New Moon, by Stephenie Meyer. And HHS was right on the money, since most of you voted for the winner!

Coming in second was Sarah Dessen's Just Listen, while John Grogan's Marley & Me took third.

The 2009 nomination list is already out, just in time for beach reading.

A Gift from The Currier Museum

Thanks to the thoughtfulness of Andrew Spahr, Jay's Dad and Curator at The Currier Museum of Art, we are unpacking a wonderful box of art books. Mr. Kociuba is delighted, and these extras from the Currier's Library collection will be on our shelves by early next week. The titles include:

• Weinberg, H. Barbara and Curry, David Park. American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885-1915.
• Rubin, Stephen. American Watercolors from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Gerdts, William H. Art across America: Two Centuries of Regional Painting, 1710-1920.
• Landry, Linda. Classic New Hampshire: Preserving the Granite State in Changing Times.
• Wolf, Tom. Community of Creativity: A Century of MacDowell Colony Artists.
• Tarbell, Edmund Charles and Hirshler, Erica E. Impressionism Transformed: the paintings of Edmund C. Tarbell.
• Freilicher, Jane and Yau, John. Jane Freilicher: Paintings.
• Robertson, Bruce. Marsden Hartley.
• Jones, Caroline A. Modern Art at Harvard: The Formation of the Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums.
• Hansen, T. Victoria and Schwartz, Lloyd. The Prints of Michael Mazur.

Thank you for thinking of us!

No More Extended Hours

Yup. It's true. The Library's extended Wednesday hours are over for the year. So it's back to normal hours, which will be 7:15AM until 3:45PM, school days, from May 1 until school's out for the summer.

Page Turners

The Page Turners book club will meet again on Wednesday, April 30th, during 1st & 2nd high school lunches, in the conference room by the Main Office.

Come and share your thoughts about our very first group read, Candy, by Kevin Brooks. And cookies!

[Next meeting, May 20th.]

Isinglass & Flume Award Voting

Mark your ballots! Isinglass Teen Read Award votes are due in to Ms. Moore by the end of this week, as are those for The Flume: NH Teen Reader's Choice Award.

LitFinder

We now subscribe to LitFinder, which offers quick and easy access to over 135,000 full-text poems, stories, plays, and speeches from all over the world. Try this one out -- it will be especially useful in your World Literature, Short Story, and Public Speaking classes. As always, we provide both in-school and at-home connections (remember to pick up the password sheet for the latter, though.)

Britannica Online

Check out the Britannica from HHS or home (be sure to pick up a new password sheet for home access!)

Four encyclopedias for all levels of reading:

• Encyclopædia Britannica
• Compton's by Britannica
• Britannica Elementary Encyclopædia
• Britannica Concise Encyclopædia

PLUS

• Integrated searching of 98,000 articles and multimedia.
• View over 27,000 graphics plus 3,300 animations, audio clips, and videos with new videos covering topics such as: Civil War, Dolphins, World War II, and more.
• Detailed maps of more than 200 countries, all U.S. states, and all Canadian provinces.
• Spotlight features with study guides on topics such as Black History, US Presidents, Women's History, Normandy, and Shakespeare.
• Internet Guide that offers teachers and students easy access to the best sites available on the Web. Created by Britannica editors, it includes sites chosen based on their educational value and includes an emphasis on curriculum-based content.
• Journals and Magazines that locate the up-to-date information about classroom concepts and current events topics