A Long Way Gone

The High School Book club read A Long Way Gone over the past month. It's an epic story of survival in war and the loss of childhood. Participants said the story was intense and depressing, but that they were glad they read it anyway.
The book left me wondering what Ishmael Beah did once he got to the U.S. He is still involved in international panels regarding armed children in conflict, including the UN, Religions for Peace Youth Assembly, Human Rights Watch, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities.

He started writing in a class at Oberlin college and his teachers encouraged him to continue.
To see Ishmael Beah explain his own work, watch the videos at http://www.alongwaygone.com/media.html

If the story deepened your interest in the conflict in Sierra Leone and child soldiers around the world, there is lots more to explore.
UNICEF has a great resource about child soliders:
http://www.unicef.org/protection/files/Armed_Groups.pdf

The movie Blood Diamond takes place partly in Sierra Leone and explores the parts of the war that A Long Way Gone does not. It is about conflict diamonds and also about child soldiers in the rebel forces, contrasting the importance of a child with the importance of a jewel.
http://www.blooddiamondaction.org/

There was also some debate about the extent to which the account could have been fictionalized, and those views are best summarized in the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Long_Way_Gone#Credibility_dispute

The Library Becomes a Galaxy Far Far Away

On Thursday afternoon the Community Room became a haven for Star Wars and Soul Caliber enthusiasts.





Imperial stormtroopers of the 501st Legion's New England Garrison paid a visit to the Fletcher Free's monthly video game tournament.











This trooper plays his own game, with others of his kind running around on the screen of Battlefront II.













Non-troopers got in on the action, too.

The tournament was in Soul Caliber IV, just released on Tuesday. Characters included Yoda and Darth Vader's Secret Apprentice.
Duncan was the winner after several rounds of battle. He won a fancy Star Wars illustrated guide.



One trooper strums his stuff on Guitar Hero Aerosmith.





Thank you to the members of the New England Garrison for coming, and to Leonardo's for donating pizza!

Scratch is Amazing!

Several students were introduced last week to the wonders of Scratch, an open-source (free!) software to make programming and animation easy and fun! We edited pong games to make them harder and made our own animations and stories. On Wednesday, July 30, we'll have drop-in on the laptops from 3-5pm where you can get a tutorial or work on a project. Check our program listing for future classes on animation and programming. Scratch is also easy to download at home and learn. Try it out! http://scratch.mit.edu

Book Review: My Heartbeat

It's hard to make a narrator funny, insightful and realistic all at the same time. Garret Freymann-Weyr does that with most of his characters in My Heartbeat. Both the story and the characters are believable: Ellen, 14, loves her older brother math-whiz Link, and has always loved his best friend and cinema critic James. After wondering aloud if they are more than just friends, Ellen pulls out questions of identity in all three of them.

The author creates characters that are just normal enough to relate to (watching movies and running together) but not normal enough to be boring (going to hospital dining halls to write and sketch about the strangers). Ellen also talks about her summer reading of Age of Innocence, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights for some fun tie-ins to those plots.

For an absorbing and meaningful read, I highly recommend My Heartbeat!

For more (older) books this one shares a list with, check out http://www.asu.edu/clas/english/englished/yalit/engedya02honorlist.htm

~Cara

Blender Basics Class

Students tried their hand at some 3-D modeling under the direction of Brendan Owens of Middlebury College. The recent library computer class taught design and animation of 3-D objects that could be placed in gaming worlds.

The young game designers were using Blender, an advanced open-source design tool.

The next game design course at the library will be on Friday, July 25. Students will learn to use Scratch, a simple animation and programming tool that is very rewarding.

Pre-registration is required: call Cara at 865-7228 or email her at clovell@ci.burlington.vt.us

Game Tournaments in the Community Room

We rocked out in the library's basement again last Friday...

And are planning either a Videogame Triathalon or a championship series to earn points in tournaments towards a grand prize. Thoughts? Ideas?

Summer Reading Program Volunteers are Stylin'

The shirts volunteers get for free sport this year's Catch the Reading Bug artwork by local cartoonist Harry Bliss.

We decided to let volunteers individualize their shirts a bit this year...





Have some old t-shirts to cut up? Get inspiration from some great books in our catalog:
99 Ways To Cut, Sew, trim & tie your T-shirt into something special
http://search.fletcherfree.org/uhtbin/cgisirsi/r4gsJymKS8/0/102520109/9 and
Generation T : 108 ways to transform a T-shirt
http://search.fletcherfree.org/uhtbin/cgisirsi/gp2rSMlX93/0/102520109/9