The winner of the Award for Excellence in Nonfiction has been announced!

The Award for Excellence in Nonfiction is awarded each year to the best nonfiction book published for young adults ages 12-18 in 2013.

The winner this year is Bomb: The Race to Build-and Steal-the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin.

In this suspenseful combination of science and history, Sheinkin masterfully exposes the international race to develop an atomic weapon and bring an end to World War II.  This true-life spy thriller features an international cast of characters and will keep readers on the edge of their seats.  Period photographs of key players and an abundance of primary sources bring this well-researched story to life.  Sheinkin gives readers insight into what happened with all of the major players after the end of the war.  A thought-provoking epilogue on the long term implications of atomic weaponry reminds readers that the results of scientific inquiry have long term implications for everyone.

There were four finalists for the award:

1. Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different by Karen Blumenthal

2. Moonbird: A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95 by Phillip Hoose

3. Titanic: Voices from the Disaster by Deborah Hopkinson

4. We’ve Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children’s March by Cynthia Levinson

Click here to read my original post and find out more information about the finalists.

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Nonfiction Award

The Award for Excellence in Nonfiction is awarded each year to honor the best nonfiction book for teens. The 2012 winner is The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism, & Treachery by Steve Sheinkin. The author takes readers through means, motive, and opportunity as he outlines Arnold’s path toward treason. This well reasearched biography emphasizes the political, social, and military issues within the Colonial army and how Arnold maneuvered his own career through grit and determination. Sheinkin looks not to show whether or not Arnold betrayed his country, but why.

There were also 4 nonfiction finalists worth checking out:

Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom and Science by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos. Blending facts with personal narrative, this true tale of the sugar trail shows an intimate and troubling portrait of the white grains that sweeten everything from coffee to bubblegum. The authors use their own family histories as well as individual accounts to show that sugar changed the course of commerce, government, slavery, invention and immigration. Photos are included.

Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition by Karen Blumenthal. This book about the history of the Temperance movement provides an interesting look at the societal issues and historical figures behind the passage of the 18th movement. She also describes the unintended consequences of gangsters (including Al Capone) committing alcohol-related crimes, as well as adults and children ignoring the law to bootleg and smuggle over the course of the 13 years it was in effect. Photos included.

Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way) by Sue Macy. With the invention of the bicycle, women began by rising sidesaddle but quickly switched to riding sleek two-wheelers as they left their restraining corsets and petticoats aside. Adventurer or activist, male or female, young or old, African American or white, many women quickly adopted this new mode of transportation. Photos included.

Music Was IT: Young Leonard Bernstein by Susan Goldman Rubin. This is a lively account of the challenging and passionate life of young Leonard Bernstein, beginning with his childhood in Boston and concluding with his brilliant conducting debut at the age of twenty-five at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic. The remainder of his life is included in an epilogue. A timeline, brief biographies of friends and colleagues, a discography, photos, and more are included.

From ala.org.

Teen Tech Week: LML Website

Have you ever used the library’s online resources for teens through www.lowermaclib.org, and then going to the teen page? If so, what is your favorite resource? If not, what website do you find you use most often for school projects?

Answer this question to be entered to win a prize for Teen Tech Week!

PS: You can still answer the question from yesterday if you have not done so already 🙂

Ask Here PA, Part 2

Want an insider look into Ask Here PA? Check out our interview with LML/Ask Here PA librarian for a more interesting look at this online reference tool:

Give us a Super Bowl-worthy “30 second commercial” on why students should use Ask Here PA:

Well first off, it’s a proven fact that using Ask Here PA immediately makes you 23% cooler.  That’s not an opinion, that’s SCIENCE.  It also makes doing homework easier, writing research papers faster, and lets you win arguments with your friends when you can’t agree if Clumsy was a Smurf or a Dwarf (Smurf obviously, which you totally knew because you’re 23% cooler than your friend who doesn’t use Ask Here PA).

How long have you been doing these online reference shifts:

I’ve been doing about two or three 1-hour shifts a week for 4 years now.  I’m no mathmagician, but with about 6 questions per shift I’m pretty sure that means I’ve answered about eleventy billion questions.

What’s the weirdest question you’ve ever gotten:

Tie between three:

1. Will you marry me? (Got this one many times, but pretty sure they thought I was a woman)
2. Why does it burn when I urinate? (Sometimes, more details makes a question HARDER to answer, not easier)
3. What’s a good website to find a mail order bride? (Pretty much the only thing you can’t get on Ebay)

What’s some good insider info:

The biggest thing to remember is that this is a statewide service, not something run by your local library (Sorry ma’am, I cannot tell you if your teenager is currently on a computer in the Erie Public Library).  That’s both good and bad.  Bad because they can’t renew your books or tell you if it’s so cold in the library you should wear your sweater, but good because you can get access to a whole states worth of resources.   If you’re talking to someone who works at Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh,  they’ll be able to access any databases from one of the biggest libraries in the state to help you find your answer, and they can still use the ones your local library has as well.  Not only is Ask Here PA a great way to get 24/7 contact with people trained in helping you find information, it’s also a great way to remotely access databases you’d normally have to drive across the country to use.  Also apparently it’s a great way to find a librarian to propose to.

Ask Here PA, Part 1

Let’s set the scene: You’ve waited until the night before to finish your research paper (never happens, we’re sure!), or right before any assignment is due or you have a test the next day. Or, you just have a random question that you’re dying to know that Google or Wikipedia is incapable of helping you with. Enter Ask Here PA!

Ask Here PA is a FREE online information service for all Pennsylvania residents. As if “free” weren’t good enough, it’s available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. So you’re stuck and your school or public library’s not open, all you need to do is contact your friendly (state) librarian through Ask Here PA!

Simply go to http://www.askherepa.org/ and click on Connect to a Librarian. A window will open for your session and get your answers!  You can follow Ask Here PA on Facebook and Twitter, too!

Check back for Part 2 of the Ask Here PA post, where we’ll get the inside information from one of LML’s librarian’s who covers shifts on Ask Here. We’ll ask Chris about some of the interesting things they may not mention on their site and maybe what some of the craziest questions he’s been asked are!

Britannica Online!

We know, you’re probably not thrilled about being back to school (although some of you with “cabin fever” may!), but here’s something you might want to check out! You can access Britannica Online Reference Center through the library’s website or by clicking here. Note, you must be a Lower Macungie Library patron in order to access this, as you need your barcode number. But as the marking period ends, this might be a useful tool for any big projects… accessed from the comfort of your home whenever it’s convenient for you! There’s all the usual “encyclopedia information”, all current and very up-to-date, as well as articles and blogs about current events and news from trusted sources around the world!

If you have any questions on how to use it, please comment below and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. If you need immediate help and it’s during library hours, call or stop in for help!