Rosalie @ Fairwood Archive.

Be sure to have your library card and PIN ready to enter.  If you wish to change or reset your PIN, you must present a photo ID in person at your local branch.  For questions about your PIN, call AnswerLine at 425-462-9600 or 1-800-462-9600. 

To start a session enter your name, library card number, and your question in the column on the right side of the screen. Then click on the connect button. You will automatically receive a welcome message. The librarian my ask you come clarifying questions. Chat messages from the librarian will appear on the right side of your screen.

Professional librarians will send answers to your questions, or sources of information, which may involve sending websites. Web pages that we send will appear on the left side of the screen. You may have up to 20 minutes of live chat service at a time. The main focus of this service is to provide quick information and referrals using online sources including our online databases, the Catalog and the Internet. If the question cannot be answered within the guidelines, we will refer you to an appropriate reference service.

• Tuesday, August 18th at 4:30 pm:Define Normal by Julie Anne Peters
• Tuesday, September 22nd at 4:30 pm: The Compound by S.A. Bodeen
• Tuesday, October 20^th at 4:30 pm:Vampire Academyby Richelle Mead

Teens can also find info on the Auburn Library blog: http://blogs.kcls.org/auburn/teens/

Black Diamond's Teen Book Review Group meets on the third Tuesday of every month at 4pm. Next meeting is August 18.

Fairwood Library's Books and Bites meets on the second Thursday of the month at 7pm. Come join us for snacks and hear about the newest, hottest books coming out. Our next meeting is August 13 at 7pm and we'll be serving pizza. Please call ahead if you plan on coming 425-226-0522.

Or maybe you'd like to start a book group of your own. You could connect with friends and talk about what you're reading. It's pretty simple to do as long as you agree on a time, place, and what everyone is expected to read for the meetings. Here are a couple books we have at the library to give you some ideas and a few websites to help.

Running Book Discussion Groups: A How-To-Do-It Manual by Lauren Zina John
Good Books Lately: The One-Stop Resource for Book Groups and Other Greedy Readers by Ellen Moore and Kira Stevens
http://www.readinggroupchoices.com/
http://www.readinggroupguides.com/content/index.asp

Summer Teen Writing Workshop
July 6, July 20, and August 3rd at 4pm
For middle school, junior high, and high school
Participate in writing exercises that will stretch your creative thinking and jump start your word craft. Receive your own writer's notebook and enjoy ice cream treats courtesy of the Friends of the Fairwood Library.
Location: Fairwood Library, 17009 140TH AVE SE, Renton, WA 425-226-0522

Write Your Novel This July!
Bothell Library invites you to see if you can write a novel in a month. National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. The problem is that's it's in November and most teens are really busy in November. So begin writing July 1st and see if you can write a 175-page (50,000) word novel by midnight on July 31st.

Stop by the Bothell library 3:30-5:30 Tuesday afternoons in July. Join us in the teen area for write-ins and support. You can also come to the Teen Writing Workshop on July 16th at 3:30pm for a mid-month pick-me-up.
Library Location: Bothell Library, 18215 98th AVE NE, Bothell, WA  425-486-7811

 

Teen Writing Group
July 14, July 28, August 11, August 25 at 3:30pm
Join this group on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of the month to do writing exercises and discuss your work.
Library Location: Auburn Library, 1102 Auburn Way S, Auburn, WA  253-931-3018 

Teen Creative Writing Workshops with Author Louise Marley

Wednesday, July 8, 2pm--Snoqualmie Library, 7824 Center Boulevard SE, Snoqualime, WA  425-888-1223 

Wednesday, July 22, 2pm-North Bend Library, 115 E 4th Street, North Bend, WA  425-888-0554

Wednesday, August 19, 2pm-Fall City Library, 33415 SE 42nd Pl, Fall City, WA  425-222-5951

Have you ever been working on a country or state report and not had everything you needed to complete it or maybe just wanted a good place to start?  King County Library's database, Culturegrams, may be just the tool you need.  To reach it from any computer you begin by typing in www.kcls.org, then click on the link to "Databases" at the top left of the page.  Scroll to the Subject List and choose "Countries and States".  From there you can pick "Culturegrams".  If you're not at a King County Library you'll have to enter your card number at this point to get access to this database.

Once you've entered the database you'll find a wide range of options.  You can either link directly to the country information or you can also link to information on the 50 states and each of the 13 Canadian Provinces.  In addition there's a kid's version to make it easier for younger kids who are working on reports.

Not only will you find information under the typical categories of Land and Climate, Population, and History, etc., but Culturegrams also includes unique information on lifestyle, holidays, and daily life.  Other special features of Culturegrams are five recipes for each country, color flag images and flag outlines, sound files providing natonal anthems and country name pronunciation, and state bird sound files

For teachers there are also suggested activities and a list of national curriculum standards met by CultureGrams.  Students and teachers can create their own data tables and graphs to do comparisons between countries which may be a valueable teaching tool.  Be sure to take advantage of this online source that at one time you had to go into the library to use.

Have you recently gotten an assignment requiring you to read some historical fiction or are you looking for enticing historical fiction to read? Don't worry. Not all historical fiction is boring. In fact most of the stories listed below read like a good mystery and/or suspense. From the heart of battle in Vietnam to a riches to rags story in Mexico, you'll encounter brave, courageous, feisty main characters and action to keep you hanging on to every word. 

• Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson.
  When Hattie goes to Montana to work the farm her Uncle left her in his will; she faces a bitter winter that threatens her very survival.
• A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly.
  It's 1906, and as 16-year-old Mattie struggles to make her way to college to be a writer, a summer job at an inn entangles her in a murder mystery.
• The Keeping Room by Anna Myers.
  When his father leaves to fight as a rebel in the Revolutionary War, thirteen-year-old Joey must guard his home and family against the British who threaten their safety.
• Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War II by Joseph Bruchac.
  Ned, a Navajo, joins the Marines in World War II and becomes a code talker, sending coded messages in his native language.
• Fallen Angelsby Walter Dean Myers.
  Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry is sent to Vietnam and experiences firsthand the horrors of war.
• Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan.
  When her father is brutally murdered, 14-year-old Esperanza and her mother leave Mexico to work in a California migrant camp in the 1930s.
• Under the Blood-Red Sun by Graham Salisbury.
  Tom's typical teenage life is turned upside down when Pearl Harbor is bombed in 1941 and his father and grandfather are taken away to a prison camp.
• Grape Thief by Kristine L. Franklin.
  In Washington State in 1925, 12-year-old Slava "Cuss" Petrovitch does his best to stay out of trouble, but when the annual Californian grape train comes through town he decides to join his friends in stealing some grapes and maybe hopping a ride.
• Wolf by the Ears by Ann Rinaldi.
  Harriet has the privilege of being freed from slavery when she turns 21, but this means leaving the only home she has ever known, the household of Thomas Jefferson.
• Ten Cents a Dance by Christine Fletcher.
  After her father's death and her mother develops severe arthritis Ruby must work as a taxi dancer to get her family out of debt, but faces physical threats from some of her customers and increasing difficulty hiding her job from her family and friends.

• Teen Writing Workshops
  2nd Thursdays, February 12th and March 12th at 7pm
  Participate in exercises that will stretch the your creative thinking and jump start your writing. Receive a writer's notebook and enjoy winter treats courtesy of the Friends of the Fairwood Library. No registration is requires and you can come to one or both sessions.

@ the Auburn Library

• Writer's Group
  Thursdays, February 3rd and 17th, 3:30pm-5pm.
  Like to write? Want to share your work? Auburn Library's Writing Group meets twice a month to do exercises and discuss our work. 

Have you discovered an author and/or book that you really liked and wanted to find more like it?  King County Library has many different ways to help you locate similar books.  One way is to contact a librarian.  You can call on the phone, interact with one online through live chat, and/or visit a library to get a librarian's assistance with finding a similar book.

We also have several ways online.  From www.kcls.org find the green square to the bottom right called "Pages For", select "Teens".  On the Teen Page you will find a list of booklists with "Twilight Read-A-Likes" toward the bottom.  Soon we will have Eragon and Stormbreaker too!

We also have two databases on our web page which can assist with finding similar books.  To get to these you go to www.kcls.org and at the top left click on "Databases".  Then choose "Reading" as a category.  If you are not in a King County Library, you will need to enter your library card to link to these databases.  One of them is "Fiction Connection" which allows you to pick a topic you're interested in and get a list or you can pick an author or title you like and then link to "Find Similar". 

The other is "Novelist" which has three different ways to find "Read-A-Likes".  When you log into the database you can go directly to a list of "Author Read-A-Likes" in order by last name of the author.  Another way is to pick a book and/or author you like and then choose the details you liked from that book which will then allow you to find similar books from those details.  In addition most listings have links to similar authors.  So when using Novelist, for example, if you searched for "Prodigal Summer" by Barbara Kingsolver you could then link to "Similar Authors" from that record, Author Read-A-Likes and link to "Find Similar Books" to choose what characteristics you'd like from Prodigal Summer in another book.