Book Fair Bonanza!

Hello silent readers,
I want to inform you about our upcoming book fair at the end of this month. The fair will run from 11/29 - 12/2 and it's the perfect time to stock up on holiday gifts for your loved ones. For more information, check out the signs and advertisements posted around the school and in the library. The main goal I hope to achieve by holding this book fair is to raise money to buy books to boost our library's collection. Last year, we earned $800 in book bucks and ended up receiving a nice chunk of great titles from the fair. This year, we will have an entire case of young adult titles and there is an emphasis on graphic novels, a genre I've really been trying to build in our library. Spread the word and come on down the week of the fair. The more you buy, the more the GKHS library will earn. Also, who has been reading what? You're all pretty quiet out there.
Ms. W.

Welcome Back Readers!

Welcome Back Readers!

Hello my fellow readers. I hope you had an amazing summer filled with reading, reading, and more reading. Please encourage new students to join our blog. Let's get it rolling this year! I'd like today's topic to focus on your favorite book of the summer. Tell us what you read and what you liked about it. I'll kick it off with my list. I am very excited because now that I am done with my master's, I can enjoy free reading again. Hoooooray! I've got to get back on the young adult reading train ASAP. Anybody out there have recommendations for me? I took a little break from YA this summer and read some adult titles. Here are a few I enjoyed:

The Gospel According to Coco Chanel by Karen Karbo
Perfection by Julie Metz
Dreaming in French by Megan McAndrews

Currently Reading: The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michelle Young-Stone

If you need any recommendations for the new school year, try the following:

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Looking for Alaska by John Green
The Death of Jayson Port by Jaime Adoff
Knights of the Hill Country by Tim Tharp
If I Stay by Gayle Forman

Have a great year and read your hearts out!

Book Fair Bonanza!

Hello, all you silent readers out there. I hope your spring is off to a great start. I want to encourage you to attend our school's book fair, which will take place from May 10th - May 14th. We will be open from 7:30 to 4:00 Monday through Thursday and from 7:30 - 2:00 on Friday. Students will be able to purchase all day long, so save your cash and get ready to buy some fantastic books! Please visit and help us build our learning center collection. The more money our fair makes, the more money we'll earn to buy books for our library. Scholastic is conducting a trial run for high school book fairs, so let's contribute to the success of their test and assure that we'll have more high school fairs in the future. Title preview pamphlets are currently scattered throughout the learning center. Preschool books will also be available so spread the word to parents, siblings, or friends who have little ones. Please see me if you are interested in volunteering at the fair. We hope to see you there!

I Heart the Genoa Library!

Hello my fellow readers,
You've been awfully quiet these past few months. Wake up! Spring is on its way and we should all be exiting our hibernation period. I just wanted to take a moment to encourage you all to take advantage of the wonderful things going on at the Genoa Library. I have been doing an internship there for the past few weeks and I have been fortunate to meet the wonderful staff there. Thanks to Susan, Dorothy, Jim, and Isabelle, I've been having a great experience and learning so much. I've also established a connection I'm going to work hard to foster from now on. When libraries and librarians band together, everyone benefits.

I've gotten a chance to see all the wonderful resources they have, as well as hear about the cool events that go on there. Libraries are such important places and due to financial strains, they are often subject to funding cuts that affect everyone in a community. Please support your local library and ours here at GKHS! They are part of what makes communities and schools special, supportive, and educated. Go to the Genoa Library and show your support. You will find great resources and some of the friendliest people I've met. Check out their new Facebook page to see what's been going on and who is connected. Become a fan and give them the love they deserve! : )

Spring Will Soon Be Springing

I couldn't let an entire month pass by and not post. Come on folks! Let's wake up from our hibernation and get the blog going again. What have you been reading? What have you been up to? Have you seen any good movies? Played any cool video games? Discovered any exciting new websites? Books are not the only thing we can discuss on our blog. Media comes in many forms and I'd like to hear about your favorite forms of media to ingest. If you have any cool websites, blogs, social networking sites, TV shows, video games, movies, etc you'd like to discuss, share away!!

I've been hearing many requests for some new reading material and I aim to please, so I'd like to tell you about two new orders of books we just received last week. They are already flying off the shelves, so don't miss out on the chance to be the first to check out GKHS learning center's great new reads. They are located on top of the book cases by the windows. Please see me if you need any help.

Thanks Mrs. Sandora!

Sending out a big thank you to Mrs. Sandora for helping make at-home and in-school researching easier. Please take advantage of ELibrary, an awesome, user friendly search database, on which you can find articles, books, websites, transcripts, video clips, and much more to find out information about a variety of topics. Mrs. Sandora included a direct link to this database on our learning center website and you can now easily utilize this tool in school and at home. All you have to do is open the GKHS website, find the learning center link, click on the ProQuest icon and you are ready to research! For those of you who have trouble citing sources (who doesn't at one time or another?) ELibrary provides citations for the sources you use! Please see me in the learning center if you have any questions. Happy searching. : )

The Book Donation Wave is Catching On

The book donations are rolling in! Please participate in the donation wave and help us out.

Donated by Alyssa Hanchar:
`Blue is for Nightmares by Laurie Faria Stolarz
`White is For Magic by Laurie Faria Stolarz
`Silver is For Secrets by Laurie Faria Stolarz
`Red is For Remembrance by Laurie Faria Stolarz

These are some oldies, but goodies that my dad donated:
`Rick Steve's Postcards from Europe 25 Years of Travel Tales From America's Favorite Guidebook Writer by Rick Steves
`Coach by Ray Meyer with Ray Sons
`The Bare Truth About Chicago's Brashest Bear McMahon by Jim McMahon with Bob Verdi
`Ditka an Autobiography by Mike Ditka with Don Pierson
`Calling the Shots Mike Singletary by Mike Singletary with Armen Keteyian
`Bad As I Wanna Be by Dennis Rodman with Tim Keown
`Strange Stories Amazing Facts of America's Past by Reader's Digest Editor Jim Dwyer
`When You Ride Alone You Ride With bin Laden What the Government Should Be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism by Bill Maher
`Bleachers by John Grisham
`Charlie Wilson's War The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History

Keep checking back. Hopefully, we'll have more new titles soon.

Charity and Recycling Rock!

GKHS students are dying to see some new books in the learning center and due to the goodness in peoples' hearts, that wish is being realized. I decided to make the most of yesterday's super amazing snow day and trecked to the DeKalb Salvation Army, where they sell books (amazing vintage clothing) for 25 cents a piece. As I looked through the piles of donated books, I began to get very excited about all of the cool books that I knew would be great contributions to our library's collection. Please visit the LC and check out the discarded treasures I found. Due to yesterday's successful trip, I'm planning an outing to the DeKalb Goodwill ASAP! Stay tuned for lists of other new books . . .

I'd like to send out a big, warm fuzzy thank you to Alyssa Hanchar and Mrs. Beynon for making awesome book donations to enhance our collection. Because of these two kind-hearted souls, we now have some updated, popular books that kids have been requesting for weeks. Charity and recycling rock!

If you have any interesting books you'd like to donate, please see me in the learning center or simply bring in your books. Please make sure your donations are in good shape, are appropriate for high school students, and have a copyright date of 2004 or later. Thanks and Happy New Year!

Donated by Alyssa Hanchar
`Glass by Ellen Hopkins
`The Vampire Diaries Series by L.J. Smith
`A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
`Message in a Bottle by Nicholas Sparks
`Wicked by Gregory Maguire
`Dreamland by Sarah Dessen
`Icing on the Lake by Catherine Clark
`The Rescue by Nicholas Sparks
`A Year in Europe Three Novels by Rachel Hawthorne

Donated by Mrs. Beynon
`Fast Food Nation-The Dark Side of the American Meal by Eric Schlosser
`A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer

Found at the Salvation Army for 25 cents a piece!
`Cop A True Story by Michael L. Middleton
`To Live Again by Lurlene McDaniel
`Always and Forever by Lurlene McDaniel
`The Prince of Fenway Park by Julianna Baggott
`Outrageous! Charles Barkley
`O.C. Undercover An Unofficial Guide to the Stars and Styles of the O.C. by Brittany Kent
`Cut by Patricia McCormick
`Nothing is Impossible Christopher Reeves
`Green Boy by Susan Cooper
`True Horror Stories by Terry Deary
`Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo
`Send Me Down a Miracle by Han Nolan
`So Others Might Live- A History of New York's Bravest-The FDNY From 1700 to the Present by Terry Golway
`Rose Madder by Stephen King
`The Sopranos: A Family History by Allen Rucker
`For Young Women Only What You Need to Know About How Guys Think by Shaunti Feldhahn
`King James Believe the Hype: The Lebron James Story by Ryan Jones
`Calling the Swan by Jean Thesman
`The Truth About Chuck Norris 400 Facts About the World's Greatest Human by Ian Spector

Vow to read more in 2010!