Teacher Treats

We can't tell you how much we appreciate the GMS teachers and staff!  We invited them in for some cake and offered many books for their holiday reading pleasure.  Teachers and staff, thanks again for all of your support this semester!

Season's Greetings

We hope you enjoy our video holiday card.  We used the free app, VLIX, to make it.  Try it out and make one yourself.  Let us know how it goes!

Enter to Win

UPDATE:  This contest is now closed.  Thank you to all those who participated!

Leave a comment below to the following questions and you will be entered to win a book or poster from the library.
What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you will read next?

Hope to hear from you soon!  Happy reading!

P.S. Oh, and here are my answers just so you know I play fair:


What are you currently reading? I am reading Crossed, by Ally Condie.  It is the sequel to Matched.  I am just starting, but very excited to see what happens.


What did you recently finish reading? I just finished Enclave, by Ann Aguirre.  It is post-apocolyptic society book with a lot of action.  I really enjoyed it, and it moved fast.


What do you think you will read next? I have about 4 books on my nightstand.  I am debating between starting A Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet, by Erin Dionne, or City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare.  They are very different, so I will have to see what I am in the mood for.

NEW BOOKS!

Mrs. Chetty and Jon Scieszka 

Have you noticed the new books we have in the library?  Thanks, again, to all of you who purchased books from the book fair and made it possible to buy these books.   One book is particularly special:  Guy's Read Thriller.  This book was signed by Jon Scieszka, who put this group of thriller short stories together, and dedicated "To all the Griffin Thriller!"  I hope you will stop by to see it.  If you are wanting Son of Neptune or Crossed, they are all checked out right now, but you can request them now on the HIP or in the library.  Happy Reading!

Trailer Tuesday - The Running Dream

Author Wendelin Van Draanen talks about her book The Running Dream in today's Trailer Tuesday.

If this book looks interesting, stop by your favorite library to pick it up!  

Happy Reading!

The GATOR has a name!

The library wishes to introduce you to Nigel, our library gator.  Thank you to all who entered names and voted.

Ally Carter's Website

Have you visited Ally Carter's website?  She posts contests and things like that on her blog, so if you are a fan of Ms. Carter's books, hop on over to her site. Let me know what you think!

Finally, we will name the gator!

Great Book Club Meetings Today

Hey guys!
I wanted to share with you that we had some great book club meetings today!  Our attendance at least doubled in each grade level.  It was fabulous seeing all of the new faces.  I am especially excited to hear how everyone is enjoying their new books.  I will post more on the Book Club page soon (with pictures), but I just wanted to give a quick shout out about what great clubs we have!

Mrs. Chetty

Book Club Tomorrow

so tonight, I am baking cookies!  Hope to see you there! 

Happy Reading!

Need a laugh?

How about a laugh on this dreary Monday? It is a good thing GMS students are smarter than Cookie Monster!  Let me know what you thought.  

Winners!

Congratulations to the following winners of the Guess the Novel Contest:
Catherine Rothman
Andrew Helsley
Karyshma Khan
Ally Womack
Ben Hsu

The novel that was most read over summer was...Downsiders!

Thanks to everyone for guessing.  Our next contest is now underway.
Come by the library and suggest a name for our gator!

Trailer Competition

The Library Aides have made several book trailers for books off the Lone Star 2012 Nomination List.  They would like to know which is the best, so leave a comment and let them know which you like and why.  Also look at this post to see if you like any of those better.

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New Trailers

The library aides have been working on new trailers for you!  They found books that look interesting (and are possible Lone Star 2012 Books), learned how to make trailers on PhotoStory, and here is the end result.  Watch the trailers below and let us know what you think of the books and the trailers.

Here is one more for you:

And one more:

Which was your favorite?  Are you inspired to check out the book?  If so, stop by the GMS Library and we will help you find it! We will be posting new trailers as they come in, so give us some feedback! 

Another busy week...in pictures

The top ten things going on at the library last week were....

10. Treats from the Treasure Box
9.  Chess
8.  Homework
7.  After School ReadNSnack
6.  Checking out books
5.  Coach Dobbs (et. al.) Texas History Project
4.  Research
3.  Coach North's Health Project
2.  Teen Read Week
1.  READING

And now...the winner of the Teen Read Week reading contest is......
Mr. Vawter's 5th and 6th period 7th grade class!  Congratulations! 
Your ice cream party will be soon.
For all of you who participated but did not win, I appreciate you trying.  As a school, we read 73, 451 pages last week.  Isn't that phenomenal?  Pat yourself on the back!

     Happy Reading!

NEW BOOKS!

Have you checked out our new books?  We were so fortunate to get to purchase books after the book fair.  Come on in to be the first to check out a brand new book!  Here is a sneak peak of the display.

Didn't the 7th period aides do a good job with the display?  Leave a comment here or stop by the library to let them know what you think!

Chess Club

Did you know that there was a Frisco Chess Club?  I was looking at the Frisco Public Library Website  and found that Frisco has a Chess Club, and that the chess club has website.  Since we have such an active chess community here at Griffin, I thought you should know.  Wednesday, October 26 @ 6:00 p.m. If you attend the meeting, let me know!

Teen Read Week

Teen Read Week

October 17^th – 21^st, 2011

Here are the activities planned next week in the library to make reading fun and motivating :

·      Book Reviews – Students create book reviews from the latest book they have read.  By submitting a review, student’s name will go in a raffle for poster prizes.

·       Teen Read Week Bookmarks will be given away all week when students check out a book.

·       Read-Off – All week, the ILA classes will compete to see which class can read the most pages.  Book pages will be recorded by the students in their ILA classes from Monday through Friday.  The class with the most pages logged by the end of the day Friday will receive an ice cream party from the library.

·       After school on Monday through Thursday of next week, we will have READnSNACK, where kids can come in and enjoy some snacks as they log pages for their ILA class’ contest.

Thanks for supporting these activities and helping GMS to have a great Teen Read Week!

Trailer Tuesday

Enter the mind of The Dreamer.  Enter the mind of Pablo Neruda.
The Dreamer by Pam Munoz Ryan.  Pick it up at your library!

Last Week in the LIbrary

ILA Classes came in to renew books

These girls were happy to get new books!

Our morning chess battles were going strong.

Kids working on homework before and after school.

We have all mastered self check out!

Eighth graders learned how to evaluate web resources.

Book Fair was a HUGE success!

Thanks so much to everyone who stopped by and purchased books at Book Fair this year. We had a lot of fun, as you can see from the collage. The success from the fair will allow GMS Library to purchase more books for the Library. Thanks again!

What an Inspiration!

Have you met this Frisco kid? I think he is so inspiring.  I was first introduced to him at this year's convocation.
Stop by the library and tell me that you saw this post (or leave a comment below), and I'll be inspired to give you a treat!
 

Trailer Tuesday

Born To Rock
by Gordon Korman

Book Fair Commercial

Check out the Book Fair commercial made by two of our very own library aides (with the help of Mrs. Emmerson)!

Book Fair starts Monday!

The Book Fair is coming! The Book Fair is coming! I hope you will stop by the book fair next week and check out the goodies. We will even be open for the Fall Festival on Wednesday night, so you can bring the whole family!

E Book on Kindle!

Exciting news….

Within the week OverDrive will update our site to allow for transfer of ebooks  to Kindle devices! J

Here are some details you need to know:

• ·         The My Help wizard, help pages, and FAQs will be updated automatically when our conversion takes place.
• ·         Instead of the message that Kindle is “coming soon”, our site will say, “now available”.
• ·         All browsing, searching and checkout of ebook titles will remain the same. Patrons will check out the ebook on our site and choose, “Get for Kindle” at check out.
• ·         When a patron clicks, “Get for Kindle”, a link will open in a new tab at Amazon, prompting the user to login to their Amazon account. (no purchase or credit card necessary).
• ·         There are a few PDF titles that may not be Kindle ready for a while, but the EPUBs should all work (we don’t have many PDF titles anyway).
• ·         Patrons will then choose on which Kindle device (if they are linked to more than one) they would like to receive the ebook.
• ·         Kindle users enjoy the Whispersync technology that synchronizes notes, highlights, and last page read on the Kindle device and free Kindle apps on other devices (ipads, iphones, android…).
• ·         The ebook expires at the end of the lending period like on other device

Trailer Tuesday

Think you know everything about the American Revolution?  This book might make you think again! Watch today's trailer below.

This Week in the Library

This week, the library was busy, busy, busy!

The top seven happenings include
7. morning chess games
6. reading
5. researching on devices
4. exploring databases
3. checking out books
2. GT ILA Research

and the number one activity for the week is
Mr. Kindred and Mr. Morrow's U.S. History project!

What a great week we had!

I wanted to remind you that the Book Fair will be in the Library the week of Sept. 26-30
and Christopher Paolini will be at the Southlake Barnes and Noble on November 16.

Trailer Tuesday

A Great and Terrible Beauty
by Libba Bray

Football Display

Have you seen the new football display that the 3rd period student staff created? I think they did a great job! Stop by and let us know what you think!

Contests

Don't forget to take the "Gators Read Over Summer" survey.  You can access it at the bottom of the page.  Soon, I will close the survey, and we will open the contest.  Don't be left out!

Trailer Tuesday

All day, I have been thinking that it was Monday, and I should start thinking which trailer I would choose for tomorrow.  I realized, finally, that today was Tuesday.  Today's book choice was an easy one.  I really enjoyed this book, and I hope you do to.  It is Heist Society, by Ally Carter.

Jordan Sonnenblick is coming!

In the ILA orientation, all of the kids got to see this preview.  I am curious to hear students' reviews of the books since it flew off the shelves this week.  Add a comment here and let us know what you thought.
So, the great knews that bears repeating is that JORDAN SONNENBLICK is coming to Griffin on JANUARY 26! (UPDATE: NEW DATE is JANUARY 24!)  We are so excited that he will be visiting!  I hope you will read Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, Zen and the Art of Faking It, Notes from a Midnight Driver, and After Ever After so that you are ready to ask him good questions when he comes!

Library Orientation for ILA classes

This week, all of the ILA classes visited the library.  It has been great getting to meet many of the kids for the first time.  I really enjoyed getting to talk to them about books and library things.  Some of the kids asked me to share some of the videos I used in my presentation.  I found these via librarian friends of mine on You Tube.  They are quite funny. 



Trailer Tuesday

Museum of Thieves Book Trailer
One of the student library aides put this book on her recommended list.  It looks really interesting, so I though I would share it with you all!Thanks EE for sharing your pick with us.

First Week

I hope everyone had a great first week back!  The library is coming along and looking fabulous!  Thanks to the help of some great moms, we will be ready to check out fiction on Monday.  The ILA classes will be coming in next week to get oriented and check out books, and I'm so glad we will be ready for them.
Here are some pics of those hard working moms I was telling you about:

Thanks so much, ladies, for making us look MARVELOUS!

New Shelves!

So, if you came by to meet your locker tonight, you noticed some changes in the library.  Besides the new librarian, there are new (and taller) shelves.  We are working very hard to get books on the new shelves, but there are still many boxes around the library.  Here is the progress of what has been going on.

You can see that these new shelves were built from scratch!

These are the guys who built the shelves.

There were a lot of boxes!

With the help of Mr. and Mrs. Watson, the boxes began to find their correct homes.

Getting better!

Mrs. Watson and Mrs. Chetty were working hard for Griffin Library!