Thursday, March 27, 2014

Small Fry Pick of the Week: Pop Art: Decorating and Shaping Custom Cake Pops



Pop Art: Decorating and Shaping Custom Cake Pops

Pop Art: Decorating and Shaping Custom Cake Pops by Kris Galicia Brown

Make your treats pop!  Turn ordinary cake pops into true artistic masterpieces! You've never seen cake pops like these: 

Hot Air Balloons
Pineapples
Giraffes
Easter Baskets

Whether you're a beginner or a veteran, cake pop artist Kris Galicia Brown shows you how to shape, dip, and decorate over 40 amazing designs for any holiday or event. Learn her most mouthwatering and beautiful cake pops.

Make your cake pops stand above the rest with the recipes in Pop Art!

Read a great book lately? Want to recommend it as Pick of the Week? Email me!

Click on the title to place it on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

Small Fry Pick of the Week: Ice Dogs

[Cover] 

Ice Dogs by Terry Lynn Johnson 

Lost.  That's how fourteen-year-old dog-sledder Victoria Secord has felt ever sine her father died.  A champion musher, Victoria is independent, self-reliant, and, thanks to her father, an expert in surviving the unforgiving Alaskan bush.  When an injured "city boy" and freak snowstorm both catch Victoria and her dog team by surprise, however, a routine trip becomes a life-or-death trek through the frozen wilderness.  As temperatures drop and food stores run out, Victoria must find a way to save them all in this high-stakes, high-adventure middle grade novel of endurance, hope, and finding your way back home.

Read a great book lately? Want to recommend it as Pick of the Week? Email me!

Click on the title to place it on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

New and Noteworthy: Bonus Teen Pick

Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos

He hugs trees and tries to save animals. He talks to an imaginary pigeon therapist named Dr. Bird. He often hates himself, but loves to recite Walt Whitman because it can be recited with exclamation points! And it annoys his father, the Brute, who dislikes all things that seem fun. And even though his parents believe life is better since they kicked his sister, Jorie, out of the house, James feels her absence deeply. How can James continue to wake up with a celebratory YAWP, like his namesake poet-hero?
James tries to connect the dots around his sister’s mysterious expulsion, but his mission falters as he discovers that some of her secrets are not that different from his own. Secrets not even Dr. Bird can help with. Might it take something radical to intervene–like helping his best friend or talking to a beautiful girl–for James to help his sister and truly celebrate himself?
Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets is a 2014 Morris Award finalist!
Read a great book lately? Want to recommend it as Pick of the Week? Email me!

Click on the title to place it on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

Teen Pick of the Week: The Winner's Curse

The Winner's Curse by Marie Rutkoski

WINNING WHAT YOU WANT MAY
COST YOU EVERYTHING YOU LOVE 

As a general’s daughter in a vast empire that revels in war and enslaves those it conquers, seventeen-year-old Kestrel has two choices: she can join the military or get married. But Kestrel has other intentions. 

One day, she is startled to find a kindred spirit in a young slave up for auction. Arin’s eyes seem to defy everything and everyone. Following her instinct, Kestrel buys him—with unexpected consequences. It’s not long before she has to hide her growing love for Arin. 

But he, too, has a secret, and Kestrel quickly learns that the price she paid for a fellow human is much higher than she ever could have imagined. 

Set in a richly imagined new world, The Winner’s Curse by Marie Rutkoski is a story of deadly games where everything is at stake, and the gamble is whether you will keep your head or lose your heart.


Read a great book lately? Want to recommend it as Pick of the Week? Email me!

Click on the title to place it on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

Thursday, March 20, 2014

New and Noteworthy: Bonus Teen Pick

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

Sixteen-year-old Austin Szerba interweaves the story of his Polish legacy with the storyof how he and his best friend, Robby, brought about the end of humanity and the rise of an army of unstoppable, six-foot tall praying mantises in small-town Iowa.

To make matters worse, Austin's hormones are totally oblivious; they don't care that the world is in utter chaos: Austin is in love with his girlfriend, Shann, but remains confused about his sexual orientation. He's stewing in a self-professed constant state of maximum horniness, directed at both Robby and Shann. Ultimately, it's up to Austin to save the world and propagate the species in this sci-fright journey of survival, sex, and the complex realities of the human condition.



Read a great book lately? Want to recommend it as Pick of the Week? Email me!

Click on the title to place it on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

Teen Pick of the Week: Something Strange and Deadly

Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard

Eleanor Fitt has a lot to worry about. Her brother has gone missing, her family has fallen on hard times, and her mother is determined to marry her off to any rich young man who walks by. But this is nothing compared to what she’s just read in the newspaper—

The Dead are rising in Philadelphia.

And then, in a frightening attack, a zombie delivers a letter to Eleanor…from her brother.

Whoever is controlling the Dead army has taken her brother as well. If Eleanor is going to find him, she’ll have to venture into the lab of the notorious Spirit-Hunters, who protect the city from supernatural forces. But as Eleanor spends more time with the Spirit-Hunters, including their maddeningly stubborn yet handsome inventor, Daniel, the situation becomes dire. And now, not only is her reputation on the line, but her very life may hang in the balance.


"Thrilling, charming, and dark. If you enjoyed Clockwork Angel, you'll love this."
Mary Lu, author of the Legend trilogy

Read a great book lately? Want to recommend it as Pick of the Week? Email me!

Click on the title to place it on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Teen Pick of the Week: Being Henry David

Being Henry David by Cal Armistead

How can you move on with your life when you can't even remember it?

He wakes up in Penn Station with no memory of who he is. All he has in his possession is a worn-out paperback of Walden by Henry David Thoreau. All he knows is that he's on the run.

And so he becomes Henry David-or "Hank" and takes first to the streets, and then to the only destination he can think of--Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. There, while sleeping in the woods and hiding around town, it seems like he can begin again, with new friends and a girl he can't stop thinking about.

But when pieces of memories start coming back, Hank realizes the stranger he fears the most is himself. What's in his past that his mind won't let him face?

Read a great book lately? Want to recommend it as Pick of the Week? Email me!

Click on the title to place it on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Small Fry Pick of the Week: Dreaming Up


[Cover]
Dreaming Up 
by Christy Hale

Cup
on cup,
stacking up,
smaller, smaller,
and growing taller!

Children building--
Concrete poetry--
Pair them with notable structures from around the world and see children's constructions taken to the level of architectural treasures.

Here is a unique celebration of children's playtime explorations and the surprising ways childhood experiences find expression in the dreams and works of innovative architects.

Come be inspired to play--dream--build--discover!

Click on the title to place it on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

Read a great book lately? Want to recommend it as Pick of the Week? Email me!

Small Fry Pick of the Week: The Port Chicago 50



The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights 
by Steve Sheinkin


In San Francisco Bay there was a United States Navy base called Port Chicago.  During World War II, it was a busy port where young sailors--many of them teenagers--loaded bombs and ammunition into ships bound for American troops in the Pacific.  Like the entire Navy, Port Chicago was strictly segregated.  All the officers giving orders were white; all the men loading bombs were black.

On July 17, 1944, a massive explosion rocked Port Chicago, killing 320 servicemen and injuring hundreds more.  But the truly remarkable part of the story was still to come.  


Surviving black sailors were taken to a nearby base and ordered to return to the same exact work.  More than 200 of the men refused unless the unsafe and unfair conditions at the docks were addressed.  The sailors called it standing up for justice.  The Navy called it mutiny and threatened that anyone not immediately returning to work
would face a firing squad.  Most of the men agreed to back down.  Fifty did not.  

This is the dramatic story of prejudice and injustice in America's armed forces during World War II, and a provocative look at a controversial group of young sailors who took a stand that helped change the course of history.

Click on the title to place it on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!

Read a great book lately? Want to recommend it as Pick of the Week? Email me!

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Teen Pick of the Week: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown’s gates, you can never leave.

One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret. Shaken and determined, Tana enters a race against the clock to save the three of them the only way she knows how: by going straight to the wicked, opulent heart of Coldtown itself.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is a wholly original story of rage and revenge, of guilt and horror, and of love and loathing from bestselling and acclaimed author Holly Black.


Read a great book lately? Want to recommend it as Pick of the Week? Email me!

Click on the title to place it on hold at the Ventress Memorial Library!