Recommended Reads: Ask Again Later

Ask Again Later is a funny book about a girl with a lot of problems. Firs off, her name is Heart LaCoeur (la coeur is French for "the heart" so her name is literally Heart The Heart you guys!). Second, she has vowed NEVER to be in a relationship because she does not want to be like her mom, who got pregnant and married at a young age and ended up leaving the family when Heart was little. Third, two guys have asked her to prom. That last one doesn't sound like that bad of a problem, except that Heart really doesn't want to go with either of them, she wants to stick to her plan of going to prom with a big group of friends and have a great time. But, she feels REALLY bad about saying no to either of them, because one is just a really nice, sweet guy from drama who she's friends with, and the other is her brother's best friend who has just been dumped by his long-time girlfriend. 

Heart can't make up her mind who to go with, so she flips a coin to see what she should do - and that's when things get weird. Basically, the book is told on two separate time lines - you get to read what happens when Heart says yes to her theater friend AND what happens when she says yes to her brother's best friend. Both turn out to be basically the prom from her nightmares - with the added complication that one of her best friends may actually have a huge crush on her, and may have been planning to ask her to prom himself. 

It's a really fun, lighthearted read and you can download it from Hoopla Digital with your library card. 

Official rating: 2/4 Booker Bears. 

Program Review - Financial Planning After High School

On Thursday, November 8th of 2018 the teen room hosted a program presented by Business Librarian Andrew Zollman on financial planning after high school for teens. Teen Blog contributor Nina Hook was at that program and this is what she thought of it.

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"I am constantly anxious about the future. I think it’s very easy to get caught up thinking about years to come, and how you are going to figure everything out. While the future is unknown, and there is no reason to fret about it, there are ways to plan accordingly to give you the best future possible. 

I recently attended a talk about financial plans after high school for teens at the Yuma County Library and it truly opened my mind to so many options that I didn’t even realize I had. It helped me understand the infinite number of roads the future as in store for me. With the immense variety of topics we covered, this talk was applicable to any and every teen! 

Also, the discussion was great because it answered so many questions that I didn’t even think I needed to ask! There is so much to living on your own that teens don’t even realize. While it was realistic, it helped me understand what I was getting in to, so I could succeed. 

I am pretty set on going to Tennessee for college. I cannot begin to express how much this discussion helped me on figuring out every inch of my move concerning my finances. There were things brought up that I did not even realize were going to financially affect me and my lifestyle. In addition to helping me figure out my financial plans, the discussion shared many helpful tips to help my budget!

Overall, there are 101 ways to get to where you want to go! But I highly recommend figuring out your financial situation before graduating so you can be as prepared as possible. There are so many things unknown to us teenagers, that information like the one I got from the discussion, is vital. 

~Submitted by Nina Hook.

Recommended Reads: The Mermaid Upstairs

The book “The Mermaid Upstairs” by Jami Lilo easily captivated me from the first chapter. The riveting, unique story keeps you on edge throughout the whole book while the realistic aspects relate to your everyday life!

As a teenager, the main character, who is around my age, has a very different life than mine. Nevertheless, I found myself relating to her in so many ways. Rules, boys, and school have never felt so relatable before. The perfect mix of fantasy and reality is found in “The Mermaid Upstairs” and I read the book faster than any before. The anticipation, love, and imagination that was poured into this book is not only eye catching, but mind catching. 

The use of detail to describe the overwhelming change in the protagonist’s life makes the reader feel as if they are experiencing it themselves, without boring them with useless information. When reading in my everyday life, I find myself drifting away from the words due to the overuse of details. However, in “The Mermaid Upstairs” the amount of detail used created an intricate image in my mind while keeping me on focus with the book. The interesting, vivid use of details help the reader zone into the fantasy of the book, while relating to the character’s very real, true problems that many teenage girls have. 

“The Mermaid Upstairs” relates to teenage girls my age and helps us realize we are not alone in our problems with boys, school, family issues, and other similar problems. It shows us the importance of family, to respect your parents, and to be true to yourself in an interesting, fantasy-like way. Showing the true importance of family is often not seen in teenage books, whose main focus is typically romance. However, “The Mermaid Upstairs” captures the importance of family, romance, and friendship all in one. It truly relates, entertains, and shows the morals needed in this world to all, especially the teenage age group. I highly recommend reading it, for it will give you a completely new perspective. 

Submitted by Nina Hook.

(Hi guys - this is Elia. Just letting you know that we do not have this book at the Library at this time, but Nina liked it so much I will do my best to order it for the teen room so we have it to check out! Keep an eye on the catalog to see when it is in!)

Shoutout to Yuma Catholic High School!

At the end of November the Main Library's teen room hosted over 100 students from Yuma Catholic High School. They came in to get brand new library cards and tour the building, which some of them had never been in before! They also learned how to navigate the library's website and catalog with a little quiz the library staff made up for them.
We just wanted to take a minute and tell them we appreciate them stopping in and we hope we see them a lot more in the future! Hope you enjoy using your new library cards guys!

Teachers - if you would like us to come visit your Middle School or High School classes, we would be more than happy to! E-mail us at teen@yumalibrary.org for more information!

Recommended Reads: Binti

     Sometime in the distant future, Binti, a girl from the African Himba tribe, is such a gifted mathematician that she has become the first of her people to be given a scholarship to the prestigious Oomza University.
    The problem is, Himba people do NOT leave their tribe. EVER. Tribal tradition is very strict and no one, especially no girl, has ever left their land - let alone gotten on a space ship and flown across the galaxy to the Oomza University planet. But Binti knows she has to do this. It is her dream, and nothing is going to stop her - so she leaves without telling anyone where she is going.
    And that's when the trouble starts. Binti's school ship is attacked by the warlike Meduse - a race that is at war with Oomza University because of something very precious the school stole from them long ago. Everyone on the ship is killed and Binti is now more alone than ever, forced to fight for her life against creatures who don't understand her, and think of her as nothing more than an animal, or worse.

Binti is the first book in a trilogy, and bonus - each book is super short so you can read the whole trilogy super fast. Even though it's short there is a lot to the story though, and it will definitely keep you interested throughout. If anything, I thought maybe the story was TOO short, and the author wrapped the first book up too fast, I wanted to keep reading.
You can find Binti as a book from the Main Library at the link here, or as an audio book from Hoopla Digital .

Official Rating: 3/4 Booker Bears!

Escape Rooms Are Back at Main Library!

One of out most popular programs in the teen department is back: Mrs. Eva Cervantes is bringing back her super fun monthly escape rooms, each month with a different theme.

The program returned on October 17th with a spooky themed room just in time for Halloween. 18 teens were given 45 minutes to work together to solve a series of puzzles with themes like Dracula and Edgar Allen Poe and tried their best to unlock multiple locks to get to a treasure hidden inside the lock-box. (The treasure was candy, and who doesn't want free candy)!

In the end, the teens managed to complete the escape with just about 3 minutes left on the clock! Good job to everyone who participated.

If you missed the October escape room, make sure you stop by for the November room, which will run at 4:00 PM on Wednesday, November 14th, 2018. The theme will be Harry Potter. Mrs. Cervantes is also planning a Nightmare Before Christmas themed room for December! The date on that one will be decided soon.

They made it with 3 minutes, 16 seconds to spare!

Recommended Reads: Dead Girls Don't Lie

If you love mysteries, and are looking for something with a great plot twist, we recommend Dead Girls Don't Lie by Jennifer Shaw Wolf.
It's not a new book, it's been out since 2013, but it is definitely one we would call a "hidden gem."

The plot goes like this: Jaycee had a best friend named Rachel. They grew up together in a really small town, and were pretty much inseparable until Rachel (who is half Mexican in a town where being Mexican is NOT considered a good thing to be) started hanging out with some local gang members and changing basically everything about herself and keeping secrets from Jaycee. Then something horrible happens: Rachel is shot dead, in what SEEMS to be a gang-related drive-by shooting. This is the second gang-related death of a teenager in the small town - the first was a teenage boy who had been hanging out with Rachel and her gang friends.
Then Jaycee gets a text - from Rachel. The text basically lets Jaycee known that Rachel's death is not what it seems to be, and that a lot of people in town are keeping some really dark secrets, including Rachel and Jaycee's mutual crush and his two brothers (one of whom is a Sheriff). Rachel's message tells Jaycee the only person who can be trusted is a guy named Eduardo, a known gang member with a rap sheet. Jaycee knows she needs to figure out what really happened to her BFF, but she is not only dealing with her first real relationship, but she's hiding some secrets herself - and if they get out her life could be in danger too.

This book is definitely a mystery with a lot of twists and turns. It kept me guessing until almost the very end, and then the twist ending was totally unexpected. It is available to check out from the library in both regular book and e-book here: Dead Girls Don't Lie at YCLD.

Official Rating: We give it 3 out of 4 Booker Bears!

Reviewed by: Elia, Teen Services Manager