Molly can’t stand perky Cassie Birchmeyer. When they are forced to collaborate on a school project, their bickering escalates into a food fight in the Sunshine Day School cafeteria. But because Sunshine Day isn’t your average high school, the girls’ punishment isn’t detention—it’s to work in the cafeteria as lunch ladies. Ugh! They’ll have to cook up a way to get along in order to get out of the kitchen.

Don't miss this fun read. Hot Lunch is the best thing to hit school lunch since Tater Tots.

Walter Dean Myers was interviewed recently by NPR, maybe because he just had an August birthday or maybe because he's a respected heavyweight when it comes to writing for teens. He's released two titles just this year, which makes about 70 titles all total. The Iraq War is the setting of Sunrise Over Fallujah a story told by Robin Perry, a young recruit from Harlem.
Myers son, Christopher, creates images with collage and photos, and joined up with his Dad on Harlem which was named a Caldecott Honor Book.

After she flops at washing hair at her mother's beauty shop, Irene is forced to take a job babysitting. It's at the beach, where she takes the kids to swim, that she first observes lifeguard Starla, a beautiful drama queen on whom she gets a girl crush.

Soon Irene checks out Starla's blog, and quickly realizes that Starla has noticed her--and appointed her the Witness, the person who will observe her vengeance against D., the boyfriend who dumped her. The role includes Irene's watching Starla key D.'s car.

When Irene discovers that D. is interested in her she knows that the countdown to real life is over and her fate is in her hands. Read My Almost Epic Summer.

We've got Chinese, Double-Dutch and standard jump ropes ready to go for all levels of jump roping this Saturday, August 16, 1:00-4:00 pm at the Malletts Creek branch. Look for a section of the parking lot blocked off with orange cones. Come ready for a good time.

Check out the movie Jump In! or the Jump In! soundtrack or, if you're training for a fall sport, try the book Jump Rope Training which covers some great speed and quickness drills to get you ready for any sport. If you're still not inspired to jump, check out any of the Rope Masters videos on YouTube.

This past Saturday marked some significant milestones in the proud history of the AADL-GT series. We had our first real workout of the new library Wiis while moving our official Smash Bros. competition up to Brawl. We also had our first online competition with other libraries, playing in a small elimination tournament against the Detroit Public Library and the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County. New clans were the order of the day as the newly formed Whole Famn Damily racked up the points. Even with changes, traditional powers found their way to the top of the leaderboard.

At the 2000 Sydney Olympics chess was included as a trial sport for display. However, both speed matches played ended in a draw and little has been said about it until Time magazine’s Meaghan Haire posted “Should Chess Be an Olympic Sport?” on August 5th.

Should the Olympic committee consider adding mental sports like chess, bridge, or Go? What about a combo of mental and physical like chess boxing?

Respond here or even better share your thoughts and play some chess this Sunday, August 17 at Pittsfield Branch. Join us 1-4 p.m. for Chesstastic!

It's the opening weekend of the 2008 GT season, and it all kicks off with a BONUS Brawl open play this Friday from 11 AM - 6 PM at the Downtown Library! We've got 8 new Wiis and we need to get some serious unlocking done. We won't have any food, but please come on down and help us get as much unlocked as possible for the tournament. Then, Friday night sees our next Revolution Hero tournament for all ages: try to win the Guitar Hero 2 or DDR brackets, or go for the double crown. Saturday features the Smashkart championship series season opener for Grades 6-12 (sorry lain) kicking off at High Noon with Brawl Singles. Full details follow below, but Saturday will also include our first ever gtsystem exhibition match, where the winners of our Smash Singles will face off online against the best players that Detroit Public Library and Columbus Public Library have to offer! Then, opening weekend wraps up with a Rock Band tournament for All Ages Sunday from 1-4pm, and then the last Pokémondays of the summer on Monday from 1-5.

Hope to see you all there, and read on for tourney specifics!

An 11 year old boy recently took top honors at the National Scrabble Championship tourney.
He was the youngest in a group of 700. National Scrabble Association has a website with tournament updates, as well as a word of the day. Today's word is "cushaw", a variety of squash. Check out Word Freak or Word Wars to satisfy your curiosity about words.

Bring your collected items (photos, ticket stubs, sports ribbons, etc.) from home and create your own scrapbooks.
Thursday, August 7, from 2:00-4:00 pm at the Pittsfield Branch. Grades 6-12.
Check out Cool Scrapbooks or The Simple Art of Scrapbooking to get inspired. See you there.

Our 2nd Annual Manga Drawing Contest has drawn to a close! This year our hard working judges were Jerzy Drozd and Shannon Towsend. They each spent hours judging the entries and providing feedback to each and every entry - thank you! In case you don't know what manga is click here. If you missed this year and are looking to find other places to post your work Jerzy made a great resource sheet. You can check out all the entries in this year's contest in our image gallery.

Click Read More to see the list of the winners!