Central Massachusetts Year of the Teen

Handouts and links from our two final Year of the Teen workshops are now posted on the CMRLS website. You can find them at:

http://www.cmrls.org/development/workshop_materials.htm

There was a great article in this weekend’s New York Times about NYPL adding video games to their collections and services for teens. They’ve also added gaming space in a bunch of their libraries. Check it out!

BTW, Jack Martin, who is quoted often in the story, will be here to do a workshop on serving GLBTQ teens on May 12.  Cool!

Just in! New professional titles:

Best Books for Young Adults, Third Edition. Edited by Holly Koelling

Sizzling Summer Reading Programs for Young Adults, Second Edition by Katharine L. Kan

They can be requested via CW/MARS – enjoy!

During the February school vacation, librarians at the Chelmsford Public Library in northeast Mass did a fun math-based program. Yes, that’s Fun and Math in the same sentence! They are doing a lot of math-based programming this year, and, inspired by the book “All of the Above” by Shelley Pearsall, decided to construct a Sierpinski tetrahedron. It became an all-ages program, that anyone in the community could work on.

Volunteers spent many, many hours cutting out 4,000 tetrahedrons on the Ellison machine. Library patrons taped them together to create small, 3-sided pyramids. During February vacation teens took all the individual tetrahedron shapes and glued them together to form large structures. The end result is amazing.

You can read about it in the Chelmsford newspaper, and see an excellent explanation of the whole project on YouTube . They also have photos on their Flickr site.

Congratulations to the teens, staff and volunteers who made it happen!

Do you have aspiring songwriters at your library? They should definitely check out this contest! It’s for teens ages 15-19 who are unsigned songwriters and/or producers. The deadline to submit their original songs is March 10, 2008. Judging will be based on innovative lyrics that convey a positive message, as well as melody and composition.

And get this, winners will attend the 2008 Berklee Five-Week Summer Performance Program (July 12–August 15), which immerses students in performance, music theory, and music technology, with electives focused on songwriting, music synthesis, and music business. Two of the three winners will receive the grand prize of a full scholarship, including tuition and room and board (each valued at $6,930). The second-place winner will receive a tuition-only scholarship (valued at $4,130). These three winners will also perform at the 2008 Peace Hip-Hop Festival on August 2 at Boston’s City Hall Plaza.

Here are the details:

Essence’s Take Back the Music campaign and Berklee College of Music are again looking for the next generation of hip-hop stars. Since 2005, Take Back the Music has examined the ways in which black women are depicted in popular music and videos. The campaign continues to promote balance in mainstream hip-hop’s messages, and remains the inspiration behind the third songwriting contest.

Entry forms and contest details are posted at Essence.com/takebackthemusic and Berklee.edu.