Library Newsletter @YourLibrary

Summer Reading

With summer almost here, it’s important that we remember that just because school ends, we should never stop learning.  A summer reading program can:

• Reduce learning loss
  • Reading just FIVE books over the summer can prevent learning loss, common in students both with and without learning disabilities.
• Help students score higher on assessment tests
  • Students who participate in summer reading programs increase their fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
  • Students who read for fun outperform those who do not.
• Reduce the summer “blahs.”
  • The Westbank Regional Library has great events every week for teens. Click here for a calendar of events.

Best New Teen Reads

Here are just a few “great reads” other teens are reading:

A Court of Thorns and Roses – by Sarah J. Maas-When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a beast-like creature arrives to demand retribution for it. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she only knows about from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not an animal, but Tamlin-one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled their world.As she dwells on his estate, her feelings for Tamlin transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie and warning she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But an ancient, wicked shadow over the faerie lands is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it . . . or doom Tamlin-and his world-forever.

Hold Me Closer:  The Tiny Cooper Story – by David Levithan
– Watch out, ex-boyfriends, and get out of the way, homophobic coaches. Tiny Cooper has something to say—and he’s going to say it in song.
Filled with honesty, humor, and “big, lively, belty” musical numbers, Hold Me Closer is the no-holds-barred (and many-bars-held) entirety of the beloved musical first introduced in Will Grayson, Will Grayson, the award-winning bestseller by John Green and David Levithan.

The Alex Crow – by Andrew Smith
– From the critically acclaimed author of cult teen novel Grasshopper Jungle, Andrew Smith, comes a startlingly original tale of friendship and brotherhood, war and humanity, identity and existence. Ariel, the sole survivor of an attack on his village in the Middle East is ‘rescued’ from the horrific madness of war in his homeland by an American soldier and sent to live with a family in suburban Virginia. And yet, to Ariel, this new life with a genetic scientist father and resentful brother, Max, is as confusing and bizarre as the life he just left. Things get even weirder when Ariel and Max are sent to an all-boys summer camp in the forest for tech detox. Intense, funny and fierce friendships are formed. And all the time the scientific tinkerings of the boys’ father into genetics and our very existence are creeping up on them in their wooden cabin, second by painful second.