Google Squared!

Behind yet again! What can I say? It's been crazy busy!
Here's another cool tool from Google: Google Squared.
It's a chart based on your search term. Boxes are linked to various websites! I love it and think it's a fabulous tool. You can also create your own boxes and add additional terms/information! Give it a try!

New Moon

How many of you have already seen New Moon? What did you think? So far, I've head it's much better than Twilight. That kind of surprises me; this was probably my least favorite of the four novels. Check out the official site for more information!

Book Club & The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones is a captivating and emotional read! It's been a popular book at RHS for the past few years, but many in our Book Club haven't read it. I thought this was the perfect time to read it since the movie is opening in December! Definitely check it out!

Stephanie Meyer Interview

Checkout Stephanie Meyer on Oprah this Friday! She'll be talking about the New Moon movie and more! Check out Oprah's website for more information!

Push by Sapphire & the New Movie Precious

Have you heard the buzz about Precious? It's a new movie based on the book Push by Sapphire. Published in 1997, the book is about an African-America girl, who with the help of her teacher, records her thoughts and daily life in a diary. Stop by to check out and read the book before you see it in the theaters.

Cool Google Feature--Wonder Wheel

Check out this great feature the next time you're doing research with Google!

Cool Site~EveryStockPhoto!!

Here's a cool site: EveryStockPhoto. Here's what their site says: "We are a search engine for free photos. These come from many sources and are license-specific. You can view a photo's license by clicking on the license icon, below and left of photos. Membership is free, without advertising, and allows you to rate, tag, collect and comment on photos." Try it out!

Book Club & American Born Chinese

Our Book Club meets every other Tuesday morning @ 7:05 and during the lunches! We have a great time discussing a wide variety of books. Our format is really flexible and informal; you are never required to read what anyone else does! We usually pick a different genre to read each month or so. Sometimes several of us will read the same book. This month the book some of us will be reading is American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. It's a fabulous graphic novel about coming to terms with one's identity. It won the Printz Award in 2007. Here's the author discussing his book in a YouTube Video.

Great Tool~Evernote

I love sharing cool tools with students and staff. Evernote allows users to capture info, organize it (they'll do that for you too if you like) enabling you to find things quickly. You can save all sorts of information, documents, snapshots, memos, clips from websites, etc.

Hispanic Heritage Month

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we've been displaying several books by Hispanic authors. One I'd like to feature is Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. School Library Journal says this: "This sensitive story of four sisters who must adjust to life in America after having to flee from the Dominican Republic is told through a series of episodes beginning in adulthood, when their lives have been shaped by U. S. mores, and moving backwards to their wealthy childhood on the island. Adapting to American life is difficult and causes embarrassment when friends meet their parents, anger as they are bullied and called "spics," and identity confusion following summer trips to the family compound in the Dominican Republic. These interconnected vignettes of family life, resilience, and love are skillfully intertwined and offer young adults a perspective on immigration and families as well as a look at America through Hispanic eyes. This unique coming-of-age tale is a feast of stories that will enchant and captivate readers." Stop by to check it out!

Banned Book Week

It's Banned Books week--a national event celebrating the freedom to read! Several books in our display have already been checked out! It made me laugh when some students thought I was banning the books! It's actually quite the opposite! I truly believe in the freedom to read. For more information about books that are challenged and banned, check out the American Library Association website.

Welcome Back!

Hello Everyone!
I hope you all had a wonderful summer! We opened the Media Center with new computers, a SMART Board, more LCD projectors, and Senteo Clickers!
We've also added several new titles to our magazine subscriptions! The new titles include: Teen Vogue, Lucky, Spin, Transworld Skateboarding and Snowboarding, and People en Espanol!
Stop by soon!

Have a Wonderful Summer & Use the Public Library!

While we may be closed this summer, there are some great events happening at your public library! Check out this link to the summer reading program, "Express Yourself @ Your Library" at all the public libraries in Minnesota this summer! There are online book clubs, Twilight movie nights, contests and more! You can also sign up for a free library card online.

See you in the fall and enjoy a happy and safe summer!

Cool Resume Builder Website

Looking for a great site to build your resume? Check out VisualCV. Not only can users display their resume, they can make it interactive! They can add videos, links, pictures, etc. It's another cool tool!

TimeTube

TimeTube is a site that allows builds a time line of videos based on a user's keyword searches. It's a great way to obtain videos and information that are current and relevant. Try it out!

BOTW ~ A Thousand Splendid Suns

Mrs. Kill, our media assistant highly recommends Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. He is also the author of The Kite Runner. Mrs. Kill has this to say about A Thousand Splendid Suns:
"This book takes place in Afghanistan. It's about 2 generations of women trying to survive the war, poverty, and their unlikely friendship. Really Good!!"

OR Live

OR Live is really an interesting website, although it's not for the faint of heart. It's podcasts and live webcasts of actual surgeries. Originally, it was meant to provide surgeons around the country with access to observing a wide variety of surgical procedures. Now, patients are actually finding it useful as they can see for themselves what the procedure will be. This isn't your typical online video!

BOTW ~ Belpré Author Honor Book ~ Reaching Out

Here is what the publisher had to say about the book:
From the perspective of the young adult he was then, Francisco Jiménez describes the challenges he faced in his efforts to continue his education.
During his college years, the very family solidarity that allowed Francisco to survive as a child is tested. Not only must he leave his family behind when he goes to Santa Clara University, but while Francisco is there, his father abandons the family and returns to Mexico. This is the story of how Francisco coped with poverty, with his guilt over leaving his family financially strapped, with his self-doubt about succeeding academically, and with separation. Once again his telling is honest, true, and inspiring.

It's the third in the series by Jiménez, and we have all three titles in our library!

BOTW ~ Tough Boy Sonatas

Since it's National Poetry Month, I'm featuring Tough Boy Sonatas by Curtis L. Crisler with illustrations by Floyd Cooper. Both School Library Journal & the American Library Association named this a Best Book! It's bittersweet poetry, with a real edge to it!
Elizabeth Alexander says this about the book: "These white-hot poems scream and sing, in the poet's words, 'I Am ALIVE,' at every juncture. What an ear, what an eye, and what heart has Curtis Crisler in this indelible first book.

April is National Poetry Month!

Cool Tool--Draw Anywhere

Draw Anywhere is a great website for making flow charts, diagrams, and floor plans. It's free to use! Check it out!

Great Information about the Credit Crisis!

Thanks to Mr. Johnson for recommending this video. It's really informative and easy to understand!


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

BOTW

In the Media Center, we have many books recommended by staff members. You'll find them on the first bookcase on the left-hand side. Mrs. McDonald recommends The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang because it: "Chronicles a Hmong family's refugee from Vietnam, through and on to St. Paul. It is beautifully written and the author lives locally."

Cool Tool for Studying

Study Stack is a cool website that has a ton of interactive tools to help you study. There are a ton of subjects including novels that we read here at RHS, foreign language flashcards for different topics, and preparation for AP, SAT, & ACT tests! There aren't a log of graphics, but the content is good! You can also make your own interactive notes, flashcards etc.

BOTW

The New York Times had this to say about Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books: "[The book] is a visceral and often harrowing portrait of the Islamic revolution in that country and its fallout on the day-to-day lives of Ms. Nafisi and her students. It is a thoughtful account of the novels they studied together and the unexpected parallels they drew between those books and their own experiences as women living under the unforgiving rule of the mullahs. And it is, finally, an eloquent brief on the transformative powers of fiction — on the refuge from ideology that art can offer to those living under tyranny, and art's affirmative and subversive faith in the voice of the individual. — Michiku Kakutani

The following YouTube is a nice trailer for the book too!

Visual Search Engine for Music & Videos

LivePlasma is a cool visual search engine for music and videos. It's a great way to find new music, videos, and artists! Check it out!

BOTW

Jessica from book club recommends The Legend of Drizzt Series by RA Salvatore.

Here's what she has to say about it: "This book is about a dark elf, or drow, that tries to get through life in the evil drow city of Menzoberanzan. His name is Drizzt Do'urden. His journey leads him all over the Underdark, and onto the surface. He makes many friends along the way, like a magical panther, a deep gnome (also known as a svirfneblin), a pech turned into hook horror, and a blind ranger. This is a great book for people who love fantasy or who have played Never Winter Nights: Forgotten Realms.

Media Center Contests!

In honor of Read Across America Day, the media center is sponsoring two contests. First, every day we will be reading an excerpt from a book at the beginning of the day. Submit your answer in the green box in the Media Center for a chance to win a Barnes & Noble gift card. Winners will be announced at the end of the day.
Our second contest is even better! Every time you check out a book, register to win one of the following prizes: The Twilight series gift set, a $50 Barnes & Noble Card, or a $25 Barnes & Noble Gift Card.
Good Luck to Everyone!

BOTW

Tara, a member of our RHS book club, recommends A Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels by Libba Bray. Here's what she says about the series: It's a suspenseful, magic-filled story about a motherless girl going into an academy. She meets new friends and puts together pieces of the puzzle of her life and the schools.

We'll be getting the third book in the trilogy The Sweet Far Thing on the shelves soon!

What should I read next?

Here's a fun site to check out if you love reading. It called What Should I Read Next? and it allows users to submit the title and author of a book they've read and liked. Then the site provides users with a list of recommended books based on that particular title. It's an interactive version of "If you like this....then you'll love this too." Try it out!

Awesome Highlighter!

I love this new website called Awesome Highlighter. It allows users to type in the URL of a website and then highlight and create notes directly on that website! Users can highlight in different colors too! What a great new tool!

NEW BOOKS!!

One can hardly step into the media center without noticing all of the new books by the circulation desk! We have over 300 new ones! Some of them are featured on the shelf to the right. It's always fun to see students excited about reading. I love that teachers let students out of a class a few minutes early to ensure they were able to checkout their favorite new book.

As usual, our manga titles are super popular, but many of the memoirs and biographies flew off the shelf too! Be sure to check out the TVs in the media center for title suggestions. Many of the new books are featured along with a brief synopsis.

Thanks for all the positive feedback! I'm always open to suggestions for titles, so please let me know what you would like me to purchase.

BOTW

This BOTW focuses on Manga!
We have the following series here at RHS:
Bleach, Fruits Basket, Inu Yasha, Mars, and Vampire Night, and we also have various other titles. We've place them in a new section since we've expanded the collection so much! In fact, some of the kids in our Book Club focus on these books! If you'd like to join them, let us know in the Media Center. We meet every other Tuesday and have fun simply talking about books we love!

Lost Generation

This is superb video is so cleverly written; I love it and just had to share it.

BOTW

Yes, I know I'm already a week behind! This BOTW is actually a series, so I feel as if I'm making it up. :0)

Melody Carlson writes True Colors a series of chic lit books that focus on edgy but relevant topics. While we have all 12 titles in the series here at RHS, it's very rare to find more than a few on the shelf! Try them out!

Twitter--Hip or Hype?

"Twittering Tips for Beginners" is an interesting article by NY Times technology columnist, David Pogue. It contains some great tips for using Twitter. I'll be honest, I haven't done a lot with Twitter, but I know some people absolutely love it. What do you think?

BOTW

I'll be trying to feature a "Book of the Week" each week. Hopefully I'll keep it up! Each book will be one from our media center.

The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story by Richard Preston is a thriller, but readers should beware that it's a bit gruesome in parts!

Here's what Stephen King had to say about it:
"The first chapter of The Hot Zone is one of the most horrifying things I've read in my whole life--and then it gets worse. That's what I keep marveling over: it keeps getting worse. What a remarkable piece of work."