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Dive into Summer Reading with Great Teen Reads

by Crystal Hicks, Collections Librarian

            School’s out, temperatures are soaring, and summer’s now in full swing.  Though this may be a summer unlike any other, there are still some constants, including teens with a lot of free time.  With so many regular summer pastimes unavailable, this is a great time to explore all the great YA books available, from new titles by favorite authors to escapism and more.  All of these titles are readily available, either digitally on Sunflower eLibrary or physically through our Library Carryout service.

The most popular teen title of the summer already seems to be The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins, a prequel to her mega-popular Hunger Games trilogy.  In this book, a young Coriolanus Snow mentors Lucy Gray Baird, the female tribute from District 12, during the 10th annual Hunger Games.  If you would rather listen to the audiobook, you can check it out immediately via Hoopla Digital.

Kiera Cass has built up a loyal following with her books that combine strong-willed heroines, courtly intrigue, and beautiful dresses.  Her newest book, The Betrothed, is sure to appease her fans.  After winning the affection of the king, Lady Hollis Brite thinks she has everything she needs to be happy, but a meeting with a commoner causes her to question what it is she really wants.

Teens missing out on summer camp can still get that summer-camp feel with L.C. Rosen’s Camp.  Though Randy’s always enjoyed being himself during summers at Camp Outland, a camp for queer teens, he’s reinvented himself this year for a chance at love.  As Randy gives up everything from flashy nail polish to the summer musical in order to catch the eye of hyper-masculine Hudson Aaronson-Lim, he comes to question the nature of love if you aren’t accepted for who you really are.

Abigail Hing Wen’s Loveboat, Taipei allows teens to imagine an escape from a summer stuck at home firmly under their parents’ eyes.  When Chinese-American Ever Wong’s signed up for a summer study program in Taipei, she’s expecting the worst, but she discovers it’s nicknamed “Loveboat” for a reason.  When she arrives, Ever is thrown into an exhilarating summer of scant adult supervision, love triangles, and self-discovery that teens will devour.  Best yet, this book’s already been optioned to become a movie by the same team behind the fantastic To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.

On the more fantastical side, teens who enjoyed Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone can find another great Afrofuturist book in Amanda Joy’s A River of Royal Blood.  In the Queendom of Myre, potential heirs must fight to the death for the right to the throne.  As her battle with her sister approaches, Eva desperately looks for a teacher for her rare form of magick and for a way to challenge her country’s bloody and prejudiced traditions.

With racial tensions currently at a flashpoint, some teens may want to learn more about racism and anti-racism in America.  Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped is a good starting point, as it provides a thorough and teen-friendly exploration of the topic.  Beginning with the origins of racism over 500 years ago, the book continues through the present day to cover influential figures and different trends in the fight against racism.  Reynolds punctuates this history with moments to pause and reflect, making for an enlightening, but not overwhelming, read.

For more teen book suggestions, check out the Teens’ Top Ten nominees at http://www.ala.org/yalsa/teenstopten.  Every year, 25 books are selected by teens as nominees for the best books of the year, and teens across the country have the summer to read these titles before voting for their favorites in the fall.  Every title on this list is available both digitally and physically, so teens can pick their favorite format to read them in before voting in the fall.

I hope it goes without saying that all of the above titles count for summer reading, even if read digitally or via audiobook.  What else counts for summer reading?  Any form of reading, including blogs, fanfiction, and webcomics.  I hope that you and yours are all signed up for summer reading, which continues this summer for children, teens, and adults through the end of July.  We’ll be offering programming online, as well, including live Zoom programs for teens.  Prizes can be picked up at the library during select hours, on the west side of the building.  You can sign up for summer reading and learn all about it at https://mhklibrary.org/summer-reading-2020/.

Digital Pursuits from Home

by Jared Richards, Technology Supervisor

For the last couple of months, I have been working from home. It took me a week or two to realize I would need to take a more active role in establishing a new work-life balance. In normal times, this balance can be difficult enough, but is largely determined just by the physical separation of your home and your workplace. When those two places merge, however, more of an effort is required to make the distinction between when you’re at work, and when you’re not.

One key for me, to make this distinction, was to make a schedule for when I would work each day, and stick to it. Mostly. When I wasn’t working, I would chase down all the random ideas and activities that I could partake in from the safety of my home. These adventures were largely aided by the library’s digital resources.

A seemingly big trend, throughout the global quarantine, has been making sourdough bread. I jumped on that bandwagon pretty quickly, because bread is amazing, and slowly building a sourdough starter over the course of a week gave me something to do. Not long after that, I was eating sourdough bread, pizza with sourdough crust, and sourdough pancakes. If you’ve never had the latter, they’re worth the time commitment.

I like to thoroughly research a topic before I dive in, and one book I found on Hoopla, “From No-knead to Sourdough” by Victoria Redhed Miller, was particularly useful. She takes the time to explain the various ingredients and the process, and then breaks down the types of breads that can be made into different comfort zones. She moves from simple no-knead breads up to low- and no-gluten breads. If you’re already a pro, you can go right to the recipe index at the back of the book and start wherever you want, maybe with lemon-currant scones or Montreal-style bagels.

While waiting for my starter to take off, I had some time on my hands. Throughout my life, I have dabbled in various computer programming languages, and recently I’ve become interested in Python. I’ve picked up a book here and there, but have never really taken the time to dig into them. Much like sourdough, however, I haven’t been able to throw a stick online without hitting a reference to Python, so I took it as a sign.

The Manhattan Public Library recently brought back Lynda.com and that resource has a wealth of Python and general programming courses, good for beginners on up to advanced users. I started with the course “Learning Python” with Joe Marini. It’s only two hours long but gives a good overview of what you can do with Python, without being overwhelming. It starts with how to install Python on your computer and goes through multiple examples of working with Python, like editing text files and automatically grabbing information from a website.

Near the end of my time working from home, I began to feel nostalgic for my more creative pursuits, most of which have been on hiatus, for one reason or another, for a while now. I’m not entirely sure what I want to do yet – maybe take a class on Creativebug, one of our newest online resources. In the meantime, I read “Steal Like an Artist” by Austin Kleon through Sunflower eLibrary, for inspiration. It is a quick read, packed with valuable tidbits, both from the author and quoted from other creative people. You are encouraged not to wait for creativity to strike, but to jump in and start making stuff. Kleon also admits that nothing is original and everything is built on what came before it, noting, “The writer Jonathan Lethem has said that when people call something ‘original,’ nine out of ten times they just don’t know the references or the original sources involved.” After finishing this book, I’ve started collecting art with the elements I would like to try out, and the writing that has the voice I want to achieve.

Like many of our patrons, I’ve been thankful for the digital resources I have been able to access through the library while at home. I have been able to read and listen to books, take classes, watch movies, and read magazines, all without leaving the house. On the other hand, I’m very excited that we’re once again able to access physical materials. Patrons can now place up to five items on hold, and schedule a time to pick them up once they’re ready, through our carryout service.