R.L. Stine

During the month of October, the library highlights spooky stories and authors. This week we are focusing on R.L. Stine. As you may know, R. L. Stine is the author of the popular Goosebumps series books, as well as Fear Street and other chilling tales. He is known far and wide for his gift of combining thrills and chills with humor in his stories. He is one of the most popular authors for children, and has sold over 300 million books so far.

Robert Lawrence Stine was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1943. When he was 9-years-old, he found an old typewriter in the attic. He immediately started typing short stories and jokes on his "new" typewriter, preferring writing to playing outside! In 1965 he graduated from Ohio State University. He began his career by writing joke books for children. It wasn't until 1986 that R.L. Stine started writing creepy stories. His first scary story was Blind Date and was his most successful book thus far. Stine had found his gift! He has written scary stories since that time. He has even written three scary stories for adults, and continues to write his Goosebumps and Fear Street stories for children and teens. You can find even more about R.L. Stine by visiting his official website. You will find the link under the author section of this blog!

Graphic Novels

Welcome back to the library media center! We have made a few changes in our program this year, including new books and accelerated readers. We have created a larger young adult collection for our students to access with parental permission. We also have added sets of graphic novels to our collection. Graphic novels are books that are written using graphic representations, and generally in a comic book format. Many students find these books more appealing than the traditional chapter book because of the illustrations and design. Our graphic novel set includes classic works such as Black Beauty, The Call of the Wild, and Frankenstein and many more retold in a comic book design. We also have many nonfiction high-interest graphic novels for our students as well. Accelerated Reader tests are available on most of our new graphic novels sets. We welcome parents to come by, check out our books-including our parent collection-and see what we have available in our library.

CMS Favorite Books

Last week, we asked the students of Central Middle School to vote on their favorite book of all time in honor of National Library Week. The results are in! Look to the left to see what books made our top picks. You can also see what books were favorites by grade level and see if you agree with Central Middle School's favorite books. Special thanks to all CMS students who voted, and Mrs. Kelly and her high school students who counted these votes.

National Library Week

National Library Week will be celebrated during the week of April 11-17. The theme this year is Communities Thrive @ Your Library. The Central High School Library, Middle School Library, and Elementary School Library and teamed up in honor of National Library Week. We are currently taking polls from our students to learn their favorite book of all time. We will be posting the results of our poll in the next few weeks, so be sure to check back often to see which books are our favorites. In the meantime, you can learn more about libraries and National Library Week by visiting The American Library Association website.

CyberSafety

This month we will focus on CyberSafety during our library classes. Advances in technology have brought with it a wealth of information that can be easily accessed; unfortunately this ease in access has created a new set of social, ethical, and safety issues for children and adults. Our goal is to empower students to deal with current issues that arrise in the online world. During this month will learn about online predators, cyberbullying, ethics, and social networking. We will also discuss measures you can take to protect yourself from online predators and cyberbullying, and what to do if this happens to you. For more information on cybersafety, click the links to the left. These provide excellent resources for students and parents.

Book Fair

The Book Fair is coming to the CMS Library this week! Scheduled to arrive on Tuesday, December 8, 2009, the bookfair will last through Monday, December 14, 2009. Be sure to save your pennies and come do some holiday shopping at the Book Fair. You can stop between 7:45 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. to do your browsing. Go to the Crane Book Sales at http://cranebooksales.com/intermediate.htm to preview just some of the books that are going to be available.

Holiday Season

Thanksgiving kicks off our holiday season every year. We take this time to reflect on all the we have to be greatful for in our lives. Many of us celebrate Christmas on December 25, and will spend the next few weeks decorating our homes and Christmas trees and buying presents for our loved ones. Others might celebrate Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Chinese New Year or a host of other holidays. Take this time to appreciate your own family and traditions and also learn a little more about the traditions of others. You can stop by the library media center to check out a book of holiday traditions or research the traditions of another culture. The CMS Library Media Center wishes you all a safe and happy holiday!