At the library, we often focus on programs for children and early readers. Programs such as 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten encourage the youngest learners to develop a love of books that continues to be fostered through storytime and craft programs for children at the library.  We also have many programs for adult learners, everything from Grow with Google computer classes to intricate craft and painting programs. But what about the teens you ask. Well, the library has programs for teens ages 11 to 17 as well, and this summer, those programs are focused on encouraging teens to read and express themselves.

The North Shreveport Branch has an amazing LYRC Book Club for Kids that meets virtually each month. The book club discusses books recognized as Louisiana Young Readers Choice award-winners and is perfect for teens and tweens in grades 4 through 7. This month, the book club is meeting on Tuesday, June 29 to discuss Margaret Peterson Haddix’s The Strangers, a novel full of mysterious clues, hidden rooms, and dangerous secrets. 

The book club will also meet on Tuesday, July 27 to discuss The Dark Lord Clementine by Sarah Jean Horwitz. The Dark Lord Clementine focuses on the story of 12-year-old Clementine who is forced to handle all of the Dark Lord responsibilities after her father is cursed. Can Clementine break the curse, perform all of the dastardly deeds required of the Dark Lord, and continue to run the family farm? 

Both book club meetings will be held via Zoom and will begin at 4:30 p.m. Registration is required and can be completed at https://bit.ly/SMLBookClub2021. Copies of both books are available for checkout at Shreve Memorial Library branches and on Overdrive as e-books. 

I understand that getting teens to read can sometime be a challenge no matter how intriguing the book might be. If reading isn’t your teen’s thing, then perhaps you can encourage them to express themselves through writing. The Main Branch is hosting a “Teen Writes!” series beginning on Wednesday, June 30. In this virtual programs, teens ages 12 and up will learn to express themselves through poetry, creative exercises, and writing prompts. All that is need to participate is paper, pencil or pen, and an imagination. The first session will be held on Wednesday, June 30 at 2:00 p.m. via Zoom and will encourage teens to write all about themselves. To sign up, please visit https://bit.ly/3uPdBxh. 

In addition to these programs, the library has a huge collection of teen and young adult materials, including books, e-books, audiobooks, graphic novels, and streaming video, that can be checked out from any Shreve Memorial Library branch or online via the library’s e-branch. Be sure to visit your favorite branch of Shreve Memorial Library to see what is available for all ages and continue to dream, discover, do.

What’s New at the Library

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (fiction)

In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames’s life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He “preached men into the Civil War,” then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle. Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father – an ardent pacifist – and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend’s wayward son. This is also the tale of another remarkable vision – not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames’s soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten.

Rock Me on the Water by Ronald Brownstein (non-fiction)

Los Angeles in 1974 exerted more influence over popular culture than any other city in America. Los Angeles that year, in fact, dominated popular culture more than it ever had before, or would again. Working in film, recording, and television studios around Sunset Boulevard, living in Brentwood and Beverly Hills or amid the flickering lights of the Hollywood Hills, a cluster of transformative talents produced an explosion on popular culture which reflected the demographic, social, and cultural realities of a changing America. At a time when Richard Nixon won two presidential elections with a message of backlash against the social changes unleashed by the sixties, popular culture was ahead of politics in predicting what America would become. The early 1970s in Los Angeles was the time and the place where conservatives definitely lost the battle to control popular culture. Rock Me on the Water traces the confluence of movies, music, television, and politics in Los Angeles month by month through that transformative, magical year. Ronald Brownstein reveals how 1974 represented a confrontation between a massive younger generation intent on change, and a political order rooted in the status quo. Today, we are again witnessing a generational cultural divide. Brownstein shows how the voices resistant to change may win the political battle for a time, but they cannot hold back the future.

Remember by Lisa Genova (non-fiction)

Have you ever felt a crushing wave of panic when you can’t for the life of you remember the name of the actor in the movie you saw last week, or you walk into a room only to forget why you went there in the first place? If you’re over forty, you’re probably not laughing. You might even be worried that these lapses in memory could be an early sign of Alzheimer’s or dementia. In reality, for the vast majority of us, these examples of forgetting are completely normal. Why? Because while memory is amazing, it is far from perfect. Our brains aren’t designed to remember every name we hear, plan we make, or day we experience. Just because your memory sometimes fails doesn’t mean it’s broken or succumbing to disease. Forgetting is actually part of being human. In Remember, neuroscientist and acclaimed novelist Lisa Genova delves into how memories are made and how we retrieve them. Once you understand the language of memory and how it functions, its incredible strengths and maddening weaknesses, its natural vulnerabilities and potential superpowers, you can both vastly improve your ability to remember and feel less rattled when you inevitably forget. You can set educated expectations for your memory, and in doing so, create a better relationship with it. You don’t have to fear it anymore. And that can be life-changing.

Samantha Bonnette is Marketing & Development Manager at Shreve Memorial Library.

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