Hunger Games Release Party is this Saturday!

Have you registered for our Hunger Games Party this Saturday? If you loved Suzanne Collins' books and look forward to the first movie coming to theaters March 23, don't miss this event! Below are some games and activities we'll have:

* Pin the Mockingjay on Katniss
* Hunger Games Trivia
* Hunger Games Word Search, Word Scramble, and Finish the Quote
* Sponsor a Tribute Parachute Drop

Here are a couple mini parachutes I made for this game:

And here are the tributes you'll try to reach during the game:

The tributes will be spread out on the floor in the "arena" and you will have to float your parachutes so that they land inside the tributes' boxes!

* You will have the opportunity to win awesome prizes, including:

Buttons

Pencils

READ bookmarks

and even a Hunger Games READ poster

Here are the different types of buttons I made just for our party:

As you can see, all the tributes attending the Hunger Games Movie Release Party will have many chances to win prizes! I also made plenty of character display cubes (see below) to give away.

The Evernight series continues with "Balthazar"

Balthazar, the fifth book in the Evernight series by Claudia Gray, is out today!

Hunger Games Central

Hunger Games wall display in Teen Area

The Hungers Games will be in movie theaters March 23 and Hunger Games Mania is everywhere. If you've already read all three books in this trilogy (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay), be sure to check out more Hunger Games-related books from the library:

The Official Illustrated Movie Companion by Kate Egan

The Hunger Games Tribute Guide by Emily Seife

The World of the Hunger Games by Kate Egan (coming March 23)

The Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook by Emily Ansara Baines

More Hunger Games:

Hunger Games tributes visit Illinois!
As part of The Hunger Games mall tour, some of the cast will be at the Westfield Fox Valley mall in Aurora this Wednesday. Get information about the mall tour's stop in Aurora here. Josh Hutcherson (Peeta), Isabelle Fuhrman (Clove), and Jacqueline Emerson (Foxface) will be appearing.

Yahoo will stream the L.A. premiere of The Hunger Games on Monday, March 12: RSVP on Facebook.

Chicago's advance screening of the movie has been unlocked. Go to http://screenings.thehungergamesmovie.com/ and enter for your chance to win tickets to the March 21 screening!

Hunger Games Movie Release Party is Saturday, March 17 at 2:30 PM!
Don't forget to register for the library's Hunger Games Party. It will run 2:30-4 PM in the downstairs Meeting Room. We will have games, fun activities, trivia, and lots of cool prizes. Here's a sneak peak at some of the prizes:

Colorful Hunger Games-themed pencils!

That's only a small taste of what's to come at the party. Stay tuned to the blog, as I'll be sharing more tidbits soon!

Book Bite: Leaving Paradise

My dream is to find a guy who'll love me despite my flaws and won't turn away from me when a perfect girl walks by. Maybe a boy like that doesn't exist.

-- Maggie, Leaving Paradise by Simone Elkeles (2007)

New releases 2/28

Torn by Amanda Hocking #2 in Trylle series Read the previous book: Switched

Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver #2 in Delirium series Read the previous book: Delirium

Get ready for the Speed Scrabble Challenge

Do you like playing Words with Friends on your phone? Have you battled against friends and family members in Scrabble tournaments? Then you should come to the Speed Scrabble Challenge on Tuesday!

It's Scrabble with a twist. Instead of playing on a gameboard or computer or phone, we'll play with giant Scrabble "tiles" on the floor in the Meeting Room. The tiles actually are old DS cases with white paper letters on them.

Rules of the game:

1. Two teams of 2-3 people face off. -or- Two individuals go head to head.
2. All the tiles are placed face down in the middle of the room.
3. Each team takes 7 tiles to start.
4. The judge (me) tells the teams to begin and flip over their tiles.
5. The teams must use up all their tiles by creating a word or multiple words. Think of it as having your own Scrabble board. The words must build off each other.
6. Once a team has used up all their tiles, they say, "Take two." This means each team will take another two tiles from the center and add them to their boards. The teams may have to rearrange their words and word arrangements in order to include the additional letters.
7. This continues until one team uses up all their tiles and there are no more in the center to pick.

Speed is the name of the game! If you get too far behind and the other team is in a rhythm, you'll dread hearing "take two!" as you struggle to make words out of your pile of letters (I speak from experience).

Here's a short example:

These are my first seven letters.

I arranged the words "jail" and "fade," using all the tiles.

I pulled an O and M, and had to do some rearranging.

After the addition of C and D this is what I ended up with...after 10 minutes of frustration.

You can imagine how much space the teams will take up as they go through all the letter tiles. Register and come join the fun!

Anime Club fun: Button creations and another meeting this Saturday

The next meeting of the Anime Club is this Saturday at 2 PM. We had our biggest turnout yet at January's meeting, where Anime Club members had fun playing Wii games, designing their own buttons, and talking with friends.

 Here are some of the button creations from our last meeting:

And yes, the button-maker will be at Saturday's meeting too! Draw and color your own designs or use photocopied pages from popular manga.

New release Tuesday: Fever

Fever, the sequel to Wither (2011) by Lauren DeStefano, finally hits bookshelves today.

This series is set in a future where all diseases have been eliminated in the pursuit to create flawless human beings. As a result of this manipulation, women have a lifespan of only 20 years while men die at 25. Consequently girls are kidnapped into marriage, with young men taking several wives at a time in the hopes of continuing the population and providing test subjects to experiement on to find a cure. The main character, sixteen-year-old Rhine, was kidnapped and taken away from her twin brother in Wither. She then found herself in a marriage to the rich, clueless Linden, along with sister wives Cecily and Jenna. Rhine finds a friend (and maybe more) in Gabriel, who works in Linden's mansion. That's all I'll say if you haven't read Wither yet!

New books to check out

Shadowspell by Jenna Black (Faeriewalker series #2)	Glimmerglass by Jenna Black (Faeriewalker series #1)	Bronxwood by Coe Booth (sequel to Tyrell)
Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol	The Jerk Magnet by Melody Carlson	The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
Arisa manga series by Natsumi Ando	So, So Hood by L. Divine (Drama High #14)	The Meltdown by L. Divine (Drama High #13)
Bunheads by Sophie Flack	Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse, v. 2 by Floyd Gottfredson	Born at Midnight by C.C. Hunter (Shadow Falls series #1)
Awake at Dawn by C.C. Hunter (Shadow Falls series #2)	Legend by Marie Lu	Nightworld #3 by L.J. Smith