First Line Friday

KIDS BOOK: 
"If I found a magic lamp and I could have one wish, I would wish that I had a normal face that no one ever noticed at all." -Wonder by R.J. Palacio

August Pullman was born with a facial deformity that, up until now, has prevented him from going to a mainstream school. Starting 5th grade at Beecher Prep, he wants nothing more than to be treated as an ordinary kid—but his new classmates can’t get past Auggie’s extraordinary face. Wonder begins from Auggie’s point of view, but soon switches to include his classmates, his sister, her boyfriend, and others. These perspectives converge in a portrait of one community’s struggle with empathy, compassion, and acceptance.

TEEN BOOK:
"Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death." - The Fault in Our Stars by John Green


Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

ADULT BOOK:
"The dying actress arrived to his village the only way one could come directly -in a boat that motored into the cove, lurched past the rock jetty, and bumped against the end of the pier." - Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.  And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.

If you would like to put any of these titles on hold, just click on the title above and you will be re-directed to the library catalog listing for the book. Or give us a call at (609) 654-6113 and we would be happy to put it on hold for you!

Summer Reading Program - Halfway Point!

It is hard to believe, but we are already at the halfway point in our summer reading program. Today starts the second half of the program. So if your kids haven't signed up yet, they still have time. And we still have lots of fun programs lined up for the summer! For a schedule of upcoming events, check out our online calendar and select "Pinelands Library" for the location.

Let's take a quick look at how things are going so far:

On June 25th, we kicked off the Summer Reading Program. This summer's theme is: Dream Big, Read!

This year, we have a new Early Literacy Program
for kids between the ages of 0-3 years old.

The Summer Reading Program is for
kids between the ages of 3-12 years old.

One of our first programs was the summer Lego Club event! This month we decided to "Dream Big" and build whatever our imaginations could come up with! Check out these creative masterpieces:

At storytime, we read these fun books about stars and the nighttime sky, and then made our very own shooting star!

Stars by Mary Lyn Ray

Papa, please get the moon for me by Eric Carle

How to Catch a Star by Oliver Jeffers

We had some intense games of Book Cover Bingo:

Last week, we were visited by a Singing Cowboy, who had the kids hopping around to the tune of his banjo:

The Singing Cowboy and his pal, Amy Oakleaf.

And last but not least, our newest program, Reading Buddies, has been a big hit! Kids (Pre-K -- 3rd Grade) get paired up with a teen buddy. It is great for building self esteem and reading skills! Look how much fun they are having:

Nora read with her buddy, Kyra

while her brother, Nathaniel,
read with his buddy Isaac.

Another Nora read "The Lightning Thief" with her buddy

while her sister, Claudia, read Spot.

If you are interested in signing your kids up for the Summer Reading Program, simply stop by the library at any time and pick up a summer reading supply bag. It has everything they need to get started - a reading log, a bookmark, stickers, prize slips, and more! Speaking of prize slips, don't forget to turn in the prize slips so that your kids earn cool rewards for all of the reading they do this summer. We have everything from free books to fun toys to free Rita's water ice coupons. The more reading they do, the more fun stuff they earn. And we even have a weekly raffle for a $10 Barnes & Noble gift card. Don't forget, there are still 4 weeks left to participate!

First Line Friday

KIDS BOOK: 
"OMG! I have never been so EMBARRASSED in my entire life!!" -Dork Diaries 4: Tales from a Not-So-Graceful Ice Princess by Rachel Russell 

Nikki Maxwell isn’t at all surprised to find out that her crush Brandon volunteers at a local animal shelter. He’s such a sweet guy—of course he wants to help those adorable puppies! Then Brandon tells her that the shelter is in danger of closing, and Nikki knows she can’t let that happen.


TEEN BOOK:
"I've lived with the pretense of perfection for seventeen years.  Give my room a cursory inspection, you'd think I have OCD."- Perfect by Ellen Hopkins

Cara’s parents’ unrealistic expectations have already sent her twin brother Conner spiraling toward suicide. For her, perfect means rejecting their ideals to take a chance on a new kind of love. Kendra covets the perfect face and body—no matter what surgeries and drugs she needs to get there. To score his perfect home run—on the field and off—Sean will sacrifice more than he can ever win back. And Andre realizes that to follow his heart and achieve his perfect performance, he’ll be living a life his ancestors would never have understood.  Everyone wants to be perfect, but when perfection loses its meaning, how far will you go? What would you give up to be perfect?

ADULT BOOK:
"We arrived in an undignified heap of witch and vampire." -Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness

Now, picking up from A Discovery of Witches’ cliffhanger ending, Shadow of Night plunges Diana and Matthew into Elizabethan London, a world of spies, subterfuge, and a coterie of Matthew’s old friends, the mysterious School of Night that includes Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh. Here, Diana must locate a witch to tutor her in magic, Matthew is forced to confront a past he thought he had put to rest, and the mystery of Ashmole 782 deepens.

If you would like to put any of these titles on hold, just click on the title above and you will be re-directed to the library catalog listing for the book. Or give us a call at (609) 654-6113 and we would be happy to put it on hold for you!

First Line Friday

KIDS BOOK:
"Eleven-year-old Melody has a photographic memory.  Her head is like a video camera that is always recording.  Always." - Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

Melody is not like most people. She cannot walk or talk, but she has a photographic memory; she can remember every detail of everything she has ever experienced. She is smarter than most of the adults who try to diagnose her and smarter than her classmates in her integrated classroom—the very same classmates who dismiss her as mentally challenged, because she cannot tell them otherwise. But Melody refuses to be defined by cerebral palsy. And she’s determined to let everyone know it…somehow.

TEEN BOOK:
"The servants called them malenchki, little ghosts, because they were the smallest and the youngest, and because they haunted the Duke's house like giggling phantoms."- Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Orphaned by the Border Wars, Alina Starkov is taken from obscurity and her only friend, Mal, to become the protege of the mysterious Darkling, who trains her to join the magical elite in the belief that she is the Sun Summoner, who can destroy the monsters of the Fold.

ADULT BOOK:
"In Paris, the evenings of September are sometimes warm, excessively gentle, and, in the magic particular to that city, irresistibly seductive."-Mission to Paris by Alan Furst

It is the late summer of 1938, Europe is about to explode, the Hollywood film star Fredric Stahl is on his way to Paris to make a movie for Paramount France. The Nazis know he’s coming—a secret bureau within the Reich Foreign Ministry has for years been waging political warfare against France, using bribery, intimidation, and corrupt newspapers to weaken French morale and degrade France’s will to defend herself.

 If you would like to put any of these titles on hold, just click on the title above and you will be re-directed to the library catalog listing for the book. Or give us a call at (609) 654-6113 and we would be happy to put it on hold for you!