Week 3 - It Came from Outer Space with the Young Professors

It Came from Outer Space!!!!!

This morning we welcomed the Young Professors back into the library! We had 10 Professors today: Zoe, Ava, Sydney, Tyler, Joshua, Cohan, Cody, Chloe, Paige, and Chesney!

We started off talking about our theme for the week! This week's theme: It Came from Outer Space, meant that today we were going to venture out into space and talk about aliens, planets, and astronomy!

To begin everyone was given a rocket ship name tag! The name tag had a space that said "My name is ______________ From the planet of ___________________" 

Here, we made up our alien names for our name tags by taking the first 3 letters of our first names and adding it with the first 3 letters of our last names! Mine was a pretty horrible sounding name "Amapou"! But the kids seemed to find it funny! We had some great alien sounding names though! Some like "AvaJin", "ZoeGil", "TylMcN", "JosFri", and "ChesFlu". 

What are name tags looked like!

After completing our name tags we all gathered on the tarp area and talked about Science Fiction books in the library! We talked about what sort of things you would find in a science fiction book! Things like time-travel, space-travel, science, aliens, futuristic technology and so on! We also talked about fiction books and non-fiction books and where to find them in the library!

Next we looked at some photos from the great Hubble Telescope! The kids enjoyed looking at the photos!

We talked about NASA and astronauts and played a game pretending to be astronauts and moving in 0 g gravity! Here they had to try to spin around, sitting in a rolling chair without using their feet or arms to touch the ground or without pushing off the ground! 

Here are some pictures of us playing this game!

Astronaut Sydney working her way through 0 g

Week 3 - It Came from Outer Space with the Little Einsteins

This week's theme: It Came from Outer Space!!!

Today I was conscious enough to remember my camera this morning and I played paparazzi for Rhonda and the Little Einsteins!

With the theme being very alien-oriented Rhonda started off taking about outer space to the kids and singing a couple cute songs!  

Rhonda's prepped crafts! UFO's, complete with little alien drivers! Too cute!

Rhonda read a few stories about aliens and outer space and the kids were such good listeners! And very very smart! These little guys knew all about planets and gravity it was fantastic!!

Then came craft time! Rhonda did such a wonderful job! The crafts for today were little UFO paper plates with little alien friends! The kids decorated their little spaceships and went crazy with stickers and such! Masterpieces were created by the handful!

CUTE!

Children's Book Review: "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler"

by E. L. Konigsburg

Wow! This book is fantastic! I can't believe I never read this book when I was younger!


I'm lucky enough to have some of the absolute best co-workers, both at the library and the theatre! And Miss Kim from the theatre is a great book aficionado and all-around great person! I mentioned to her my enthusiasm of working at the library and she quickly rolled off about all the great, classic children books and shared some great ideas with me about what to do for the summer! 


She also recommended the book "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler" by E. L. Konigsburg and the dear that she is she brought me a plethora of lovely children's books for me to go through! 


I decided to tackle down "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler" first, since Kim had raved so much about it! I'd never heard of it! So I was excited to read it! 


May I just say that reading this book was like rediscovering a lost part of my childhood, a missing puzzle piece of my past!


It's lovely! The story follows the adventures of Claudia Kincaid and her younger brother Jamie. The story itself though, is written from the perspective of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler, who is writing a letter to her lawyer, Mr. Saxonberg. This book is in fact a from the files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler!  Claudia, a headstrong, dramatic, and independent child, is sick and tired of the monotony of life and the injustice she faces at home. 


The story from Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler's perpective introduces us to Claudia, who, these injustices are perhaps not so bad as they are blown out to be! Setting up the table, cleaning up the table and low allowances are putting quite the toll on her life, and Claudia no longer feels appreciated at home!


Claudia is a mastermind of planning the first chunk of the book deals with her methodically planning out where she''ll run away to, when she'll run away, and who will runaway with her! 


This is such a lovely story and I fully recommend it to anyone, young or old!

5/5 for sure! Thanks Kim! and thank-you E.L. Konigsburg and Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler!

Happy Reading!!

Library Book Review: "This Dark Endeavour"

 - The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein
by Kenneth Oppel

I grew up reading lots of Kenneth Oppel, starting from at around Grade 6 or 7 ... I just remember at RSS, Mrs. Popoff reading to the class "Airborn". That was a pretty cool book. And then when I went to Crowe I rediscovered Mr. Oppel and the subsequent sequels to "Airborn", "Skybreaker" and "Starclimber"!

After that I read through his Darkwing series, featuring herds of bats and strange creatures. And more recently I bought and read the chimpanzee/anthropology-like book "Half Brother".

All he books, needless to say, are great, adventure-packed and set in wonderful words of fantasy grounded in some truth.

So when I started working at the library I noticed one of his newest titles "This Dark Endeavour", lying lonely and low on the general fiction! So I took it out for a read!

This book is fantastic, the premise itself, intrigued me greatly. The story follow a young teenage Victor Frankenstein, living in the chateau Frankenstein with his family. Joining his adventures are his twin brother Konrad, good friend Henry and adopted cousin Elizabeth! Here in the novel you learn a backstory to the darkness of Victor Frankenstein and find new found purpose in his past that lead to his future as a experimenter or magicks and science.

Here is a book trailer released for "This Dark Endeavour":

Like Oppel's other novels that I've read this one is packed with excitement, but what I enjoyed the most with this book was the character arcs, writing style and maturity of the story!

The characters (well really just character being Victor) are well fleshed out in this novel! Victor is such a well written and dynamic character! His complete sort of fragmentation of morality and desire, good and bad and right and wrong is fascinating, and I really enjoyed the alchemic aspects to the book! Victor is such a relatable character I think, especially for young adult readers who are going through a stage in their life where emotions are running wild and important choices are being made. You get that feeling from Victor and at times when he goes through this internal struggle of what he should do or not do, this sort of feeling is very reminiscent to me of growing up and being super dramatic!

Also, since this is a period piece dating somewhere in the 18th century, Oppel's writing is ripe with ye old English time sayings and I loved it! The way this is all written is charming, romantic and delightful. It takes you in a time machine to a different time and a different place entirely! It's lovely.

After reading this though, even given the sort of mature themes of love, morality and death, I definitely felt that this book belonged in the YA section of the library.

All in all, this was an enjoyable book to read and also very enlightening to me about the history of Frankenstein. It also made me want to continue the saga by reading the original Shelley version of Frankenstein. I'll have to add that to my reading list!

Thank you, again Mr. Oppel for a stunning novel! 5/5 to you good sir! And for those of you who haven't read any of Kenneth Oppel's books, I suggest "Airborn"! That is a wonderful read!

Happy reading!  

Prize Draw!

Here are the winners of the draw today! Good luck to the rest of you for next week! And congrats to the winners of this week! Remember to keep reading and recording your time in your reading records to increase your chances of winning

Little Einsteins - Tim

Young Professors - Ben

Mad Scientists - Caleb

Happy Reading! Enjoy the Weekend!

Mad Scientist Book Review: Sarah Giles

YAY! Our first Mad Scientist Book Review! HURRAY! 


So, if you missed the scoop, the Mad Scientists were given the task this week of writing book reviews for the books they are reading this summer! See this previous post for more information: http://beavervalleylibrarykids.blogspot.ca/2012/07/week-2-biggest-faster-first-with-mad.html


So today the lovely Miss Sara Giles handed in her first and our first book review for the summer! I'll be typing it down here for your enjoyment!!! (Sara's words will be blue and I'll be typing in my words in black!) 


Here we go (also heads up! This review has spoilers!): 

Book Review

Title: The New Adventures of Mary-Kate & Ashley: The Case of the Golden Slipper
Author: Melinda Metz


What was the book about? 
This book was about 2 girls who are detective. And they get invited to a ball then the princess kidnaps herself.


What did you like about the book? 
I like the part when the princess kidnaps herself. 


Were there any parts you didn't like? 
No


What was your favourite part of the book? 
My favourite part was when they found her. 


Would you recommend this book to a friend?
Yes


How many start would you give this book? (5 - Excellent, 1 - Poor)
5/5

Young Adult Novels Book List!

So I just finished writing up a list of young adult books that I recommend! I added some classics and some of my favourites! I'll hang it up in the YA section of the library and here's a copy that you can see!

See any of your favourite YA books missing from my list? Let me know and I'll check if we have them available and add them to my list! 

Happy Reading!