Coming to the library February 21 at 3:00 pm.

The American Library Association announced yesterday the winner of the 2009 Caldecott Medal is The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson and the 2009 Newbery winner is The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. 

Just announced are the winners of the Michael L. Printz Award for outstanding young adult book of 2008. The winner is Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta. There are four honor books: Octavian Nothing Part II: Kingdom on the Waves, Nation, Tender Morsels, and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks. Check 'em out sometime and see what you think! Do you agree with the librarians who picked them as good books?

Congratulations to Mike Sutton, winner of the Madden NFL09 Xbox tournament. He won a $20 giftcard to GameStop, courtesy of our local GameStop store. GameStop also provided 2 Xbox 360s for us to use in the tournament. DeVante Coats was the runner up, and he won a $10 giftcard to WalMart. Thanks to everyone who participated! Keep an eye out for our next videogame tournaments.

If you haven't already signed up to play in our Madden NFL09 tournament, you'll have to wait until the next one, because it is now FULL. Sorry about that, but we don't have enough time in the day to have more players compete. We have them every January, so keep your eyes peeled for the next one, and in the meantime, watch the website calendar for upcoming videogame and other tournaments!

On January 26, 2009 we will be announcing the winner of this year's Caldecott award, and many more.  Check our website or come in to the library to be one of the first to check out the winners.

Whew, was that a storm or was that a storm?! 8 inches or more of snow fell in our area on Friday and Saturday, and as you may know we had to close the library on Saturday Jan. 10 (never even opened). So we've rescheduled Anime Club from that day to this coming Saturday, January 17. Still at 1:30 p.m. We'll be watching "Chrono Crusade" episodes and snacking on pocky. :-) See you there!

Our annual Lifesize Monopoly games were a huge success; both games had over 20 players on teams of 2 or 3. The pace got hectic near the end of the game as teams traded properties, built monopolies and then added houses and hotels to the board in a last ditch effort to wring more money out of their competitors. Lots of fun in Lifesize! More photos will be posted in the Photos section soon, so check back. And if you didn't get to play this year, we'll be doing it again next year and we'll have even more games so that no one gets left out.

Did you get any good new books for Christmas? I'm currently reading Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke, the third book in the Inkheart trilogy about a girl who can read characters out of books and also read people INTO books, and it's getting very intense. Meggie and her whole family are now trapped inside Inkworld, the world of Inkheart, and there are a lot of exciting things happening.

Allison Katitus - Mystery, Graphic Novel and Sports Patches

Erika Nittinger - Award Winners Patch

Ryan Tan - Mystery, Award Winners and Reader's Choice Patches

Don't forget to join our club - it continues until Memorial Day 2009, breaks for summer and then resumes in the fall. If you get all 10 patches, you'll receive a very nice book bag to put your patches on.