(DLA Las Piñas HS LRC) March Book of the Month - Towering

Still in line with International Women's Day that took place yesterday, we're featuring Towering, a retelling of Rapunzel set in frozen Upstate New York, that was released in 2012. It's the gothic and darkly romantic young adullt latest from New York Times bestselling author Alex Flinn. If the original fairytale wasn't girl power enough for you, this retelling will surely be it.

Flinn has written and published ten books to date but we all know her as that girl who changed how we saw the beloved fairytale Beauty and the Beast when she set everything in modern-day New York City and told the story from the viewpoint of the Beast named Kyle Kingsbury in the 2007 novel Beastly.

After that success, she decided to just keep the fairy-tale mash-ups coming! Beastly turned out to be the first book from the Kendra Chronicles and then, three more other reimagined fairytale books were put out. Towering is the fourth book from the Kendra Chronicles but is officially Book 3 (Book 1 is Beastly, Lindy's Diary is 1.5, the 2nd is Bewitching).

It's in two viewpoints: Wyatt, a teenager who moves from Long Island after the devastating loss of his best friend and his best friend's sister to a remote town where his mother grew up, only to have vivid nightmares and to hear a haunting singing voice, calling him into the wilderness, and Rachel, a beautiful girl who was taken as hostage and locked in a crumbling tower by a woman she calls Mama.

She was quite excited at first, felt like a princess living in a castle. Many years later, Rachel realizes it's really a prison in the forest and begins to plan her escape. When the two meet, they begin to solve the mystery of why each is there. The novel moves back and forth between Wyatt and Rachel, raising questions that keep the pages turning. It's absolutely a good read for mystery and fairytale fans alike.

(DLA Las Piñas HS LRC) March Author of the Month - Rainbow Rowell

Tomorrow is International Women's Day so we're featuring someone who can totally represent girl power! Rainbow Rowell is an American author of young adult and adult contemporary novels. Her books have ed a great deal of critical acclaim in 2013. She currently lives in Nebraska with her husband and two sons. Rainbow is fond of reading comic books and planning Disney World trips when she's not writing.

Rowell was a columnist and a copywriter at the Omaha World-Herald from 1995 to 2012. Her first published novel was Attachments in 2011. In 2013, she published two young adult novels that were named by The New York Times as among the best young adult fiction of the year.

Eleanor & Park was also chosen by Amazon as one of the 10 best books of 2013 and as Goodreads' best young adult fiction of the year. Rainbow completed the first draft of Fangirl for National Novel Writing Month in 2011, it was chosen as the inaugural selection for Tumblr's reblog book club.

Her work gained some attention in 2013 when a parents' group at a Minnesota high school challenged Eleanor & Park resulting to Rowell being disinvited to a library event however, a panel ultimately determined that the book could stay on library shelves. She noted in an interview that the material that these parents were calling "profane" was what many kids in difficult situations realistically had to deal with, and that "when these people call Eleanor & Park an obscene story, I feel like they’re saying that rising above your situation isn’t possible."

Rowell's fourth book, Landline, a contemporary adult novel about a marriage in trouble was released on July 8, 2014. In the same year, talks of DreamWorks planning a movie based on Eleanor & Park was released, for which Rainbow has been asked to write the screenplay. She announced in December 2014 that her fifth book, Carry On, based on the book series central to the plot of Fangirl, will be published in October 2015.

(DLA Las Piñas HS LRC) January Author of the Month - Markus Zusak

This month we're featuring Markus Frank Zusak, an Australian young-adult fiction writer. He's best known for two international bestsellers. Zusak won the annual Margaret Edwards Award in 2014 for his contribution to young-adult literature published in the US.

He was born on the 23rd of June 1975 in Sydney, Australia. His mother, Lisa, is originally from Germany and his father, Helmut, is from Austria. They emigrated to Australia in the late 1950s. Markus is the youngest of four children, he has two sisters and one brother.

Zusak attended Engadine High School in New South Wales and briefly returned there to teach English while writing. He studied English and History at the University of New South Wales, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts and a Diploma of Education.

He is the author of five books. His first three books: The Underdog, Fighting Ruben Wolfe, and When Dogs Cry released between 1999 and 2001 were all published internationally. They also garnered a number of awards. The Underdog, his first, took 7 years to publish. The Messenger, published in 2002, won the 2003 NSW Premier's Literary Award (Ethel Turner Prize) in Australia and was a runner-up for the Printz Award in America.

The Book Thief, published in 2005, has been translated into more than 30 languages. Beside winning awards in Australia and overseas, it has held the number one position at Amazon.com and on the New York Times bestseller list. It was adapted as a film of the same name in 2013. In 2006, Zusak was the recipient of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Young Australian Novelist of the Year Award. His next novel is reported to be Bridge of Clay. He has two beautiful children with spouse, Mika.

(DLA Las Piñas GS LRC) January Book of the Month - The Name of This Book Is Secret

Kickstart the new year right by reading something fictionally intriguing! The Name of This Book Is Secret is a secret story about a storied secret where it all begins, it's the first book off of The Secret Series, a pentalogy of novels all about one secret based on the five senses: Sight, Smell, Sound, Taste, and Touch written by an anonymous author.

Frequently during the course of the book, Pseudonymous Bosch chastises himself for writing the secret, going so far as to change his mind and stop halfway through, only to bribe himself into completing the story with chocolate.

When a real-estate agent for the deceased, named Gloria, finds a mysterious box called, "The Symphony of Smells," in a dead magician's house, she gives it to Cass and her grandfathers. Cass is a misfit in her school until she meets another misfit, Max-Ernest, who talks too much and has divorced parents but are still living in the same house.

The Name of this Book is Secret chronicles the hair-raising adventures of two 11-year-old heroes as they soon become collaborators and investigate nefarious villains alongside the mysterious death of Pietro Bergamo who has vanished under strange (and stinky) circumstances.

A sequel was published in late 2008, under the name If You're Reading This, It's Too Late. A third book was released on September 1, 2009, with the title This Book Is Not Good for You. A fourth book, This Isn't What It Looks Like, was released on August 21, 2010. A fifth book titled You Have to Stop This was released on September 20, 2011.

Recommended by teachers and librarians alike, you'll surely enjoy this funny read, even the vocabulary and wordplay scattered throughout the book is uncommon and definitely interesting especially if you like Lemony Snicket or Monty Python.

(DLA Las Piñas HS LRC) January Book of the Month - Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

Who could tell the origin stories of the gods of Olympus better than a modern-day demigod? Percy Jackson provides an insider’s view with plenty of attitude in this hefty illustrated collection of short stories as he takes a break from his exciting but surely exhausting adventuring to serve up the Greek gods in a more organized introduction like pancakes you have for breakfast before going to school.

"A publisher in New York asked me to write down what I know about the Greek gods, and I was like, Can we do this anonymously? Because I don’t need the Olympians mad at me again. But if it helps you to know your Greek gods, and survive an encounter with them if they ever show up in your face, then I guess writing all this down will be my good deed for the week."

So begins Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods, in which the son of Poseidon adds his own magic--and sarcastic asides--to the classics. The son of Poseidon is on form as he debriefs readers concerning Chaos, Gaea, Ouranos and Pontus, Dionysus, Ariadne and Persephone:

"He'd forgotten how beautiful Gaea could be when she wasn't all yelling up in his face."

Here they are, all 12 Olympians, plus many various offspring and associates: the gold standard of dysfunctional families, whom Percy plays like a lute, sometimes lyrically, sometimes with a more sardonic air. The age-old stories are endlessly strong, resonant, and surprising, while the telling is fresh, irreverent, and amusing. Percy's gift, which is no great secret, is to breathe new life into the gods along with the many pop-culture references. Percy definitely does not hold back.

“If you like horror shows, blood baths, lying, stealing, backstabbing, and cannibalism, then read on, because it definitely was a Golden Age for all that.”

The Greek gods have been around for, well, ages, but until New York Times best-selling author Rick Riordan got his hands on them, they seemed as remote as Mount Olympus to most young readers. Now he's agreed to oversee a tour through the pantheon of these often temperamental deities and he's enlisted Percy to be the tour guide in approximately 400 delightful pages. Dramatic full-color artworks throughout by Caldecott Honoree John Rocco which smokes and writhes on the page as if hit by lightning make this volume a must-read as stunning as it is entertaining.

(DLA Las Piñas GS LRC) Film Showing of the Week - The Polar Express

Santa Claus does not exist. Or does he? Many of us (especially those who have fireplaces) were raised earlier in our lives believing that he is the one who at least grants one of the things on our lengthy wishlists and eats the treats (typically composed of a glass of milk and some cookies) we leave somewhere in the house (usually at our bedside tables just to be sure).

Santa Claus (also known as Saint Nicholas) is a figure with legendary origins who in many Western cultures is said to bring gifts to the homes of children who have been good during the entire year on December 24, the exact night before Christmas Day. He's generally depicted as a portly, joyous, white-bearded man, sometimes with round eyeglasses, wearing an outfit out of red and white, riding on a sleigh pulled by reindeers.

This week's feature is a musical Christmas fantasy movie based on the children's book of the same title by Chris Van Allsburg.

It's the story of an unnamed young hero boy on late Christmas Eve who boards on a powerful magical train that's headed to the North Pole and to the home of Santa Claus along with many other pajama-clad children after lying in bed, just hoping to hear the sound of reindeer bells from Santa's sleigh.

What unfolds is an an astonishing adventure which follows a doubting boy who takes an extraordinary ride during which he embarks on a journey of self-discovery which shows him that the wonder of life never fades for those who believe. Bring all of your friends and come join us for the LRC cinema's last film showing for 2014, a Christmas gift from us to you, before you go home on Friday this week at exactly 4:00 P.M.!

DLA Las Piñas HS LRC: Teen Read Week 2014 Winners

Guess Who?

Edgar Jose Emilio D. Manuel

G - Integrity

Paolo Rañeses

G - Credibility

Teen Dream Art

1st

Aldrich P. Batabat
Danielle M. Peredo

9 - Nobility

2nd

Christine Garcia
Cherry Bantiling

G - Credibility

3rd

Marion Mercado
Bianca Roque

8 - Unity

4th

Jennifer Macarandan
Rochelle Lacsamana

7 - Autonomy