Posted on Friday, July 28, 2023 by DBRLTeen
We are excited to announce that we have the winners of this year’s Teen Photo Contest! We had many entries and they were all outstanding! The teens have submitted their photographic interpretations of this year’s Summer Reading theme “All Together Now: Friends and Family” and after much deliberation, we have selected this year’s winners. Below are the top three winners. Continue reading “2023 Teen Photo Contest Winners”
Posted on Wednesday, July 26, 2023 by Brianna
How’s your Summer Reading going? If you need a few more books to finish up, try these! I have no theme this month, except general awesomeness.
“Give Me a Sign” by Anna Sortino
Lilah has severe hearing loss, but with hearing aids and lip reading, she’s able to get along well enough. Still, she misses the feeling of connection she had when attending Camp Gray Wolf as a kid, a camp for deaf and/or blind kids. The summer before senior year, she applies to be a counselor at the camp and is accepted. While she never felt like she fully fit in with the hearing world, she also struggles to fit into the Deaf community—especially because her ASL is nowhere near fluent. But she makes patient and supportive new friends as she starts to define and embrace her identity. It doesn’t hurt that her sweet and attractive fellow junior counselor volunteers to help her improve her signing. This debut by a Deaf author explores many different aspects of Deaf culture, including perspectives from people with supportive families and not-so-supportive ones. It also gives good examples of difficulties Deaf folks might face in the hearing world, especially with things like interactions with the police. A summer romance with excellent diverse representation. Continue reading “The Selector’s Selections: July 2023”
Posted on Wednesday, July 19, 2023 by Dana
When Shakespeare wrote “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” it was King Henry IV moaning that people with great responsibility don’t sleep very well. While riches and power don’t seem like much of a problem to me, fictional royalty often has a lot of kingdom-saving and evil battling to do.
So if you’d like to forget your troubles and read about queens and princes and knights with some worthy struggles, take a look at some of these titled titles. Continue reading “Uneasy Lies the Head”
Posted on Wednesday, July 12, 2023 by Megan
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! No, not Christmas in July and not halfway to Halloween. We’re only about 4 weeks away from our annual cosplay contest. Join us on Monday, August 14 from 6-9 pm at the Columbia Public Library for our first in-person CosPlay Con in 3 years! Dress up as your favorite character, be it superhero, anime, sci-fi or your own original persona. We’ll award prizes for the best costumes and characterization in different age categories, so be ready to show off your cosplay game! Photos and registration will begin at 6 p.m., followed at 6:30 p.m. by a runway show. All ages are welcome!
If you’ve been paying attention we’ve been hosting cosplay programs all year long to help you build your cosplay skills (or costume). Don’t worry if you haven’t attended them all. Below is a quick rundown of all the projects you might have missed. Continue reading “Cosplay @ DBRL”
Posted on Wednesday, June 28, 2023 by Brianna
If I tell you to guess the theme this month, I think you’ll get it without having to try too hard. Enjoy!
“Starlings” by Amanda Linsmeier
Kit just lost her dad unexpectedly, and now she and her grieving mother have been invited to spend Christmas with her paternal grandmother. The problem is that Kit’s dad always claimed his mom was dead. When they arrive in the small town of Rosemont, everything is perfect. Roses bloom all year round, the townspeople are super friendly, there’s a cute boy (and girl!) to crush on, and everyone treats her grandmother Agatha Starling—and Kit by extension—with a deference bordering on reverence. Kit and her mother aren’t planning on staying past the holidays, but everyone else seems to think otherwise. When things start to go wrong, Kit has to discover the truth about the town, and why her father never wanted her to know it existed. With a bisexual main character, nuanced character development and suspenseful plotting, this horror novel has a lot to offer. Continue reading “The Selector’s Selections: June 2023”
Posted on Thursday, June 22, 2023 by DBRLTeen
Get into Summer Reading by entering our teen photo contest! Take a picture based on the theme, “All Together Now: Friends and Family” and submit it by filling out the form below.
Enter by Monday, July 10 for your chance to win a local gift card. Winners will be announced on Friday, July 28 and posted on the library’s social media if consent is given. Your photo can be of your human friends or your pet family–the possibilities are endless! For ages 12-18.
The submission period for this contest is now over. Thank you to everyone who participated in this year’s photo contest!
Posted on Thursday, June 22, 2023 by Megan
While we can’t guarantee that these crafts will make you happy, who can be blue when you’re crafting with rainbows? Below are some fun, queer crafts you can try at home! Some of these activities are more difficult than others so we have ranked them with rainbows, so the more rainbows the more challenging the craft. Enjoy and happy crafting! Continue reading “Be Happy. Do Crafts.”
Posted on Tuesday, June 20, 2023 by Grae
Warning: This blog contains spoilers for the series “Stranger Things,” plus a lot of fanning/fawning over New Wave/Synth Pop ROYALTY Kate Bush. Proceed with caution and/or get ready to dance your heart out.
It’s been a little over a year since the fourth season of Stranger Things debuted in two installments on Netflix in the early summer of 2022, and tbh I am still processing my feelings. I’ve been an avid watcher of Stranger Things ever since the first episode when Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers pulled her son Will (played by Noah Schnapp) close in his makeshift fort in the woods and endearingly screeched “What about my wiiiiiitch?” The series is famous for its 1980s pop culture nostalgia and homage to the films, television and music of that decade, but more generally I find that the show has just the right amount of heart, horror, humor and hair-raising adventure to keep me binging each season all in one go whenever it’s released. Plus, as someone who has basically wanted to be part of a Scooby gang and/or a Goonie all their life, I really admire how the show both explores and advocates for cross-generational friendships and community building, even in the face of (perhaps especially in the face of) truly gruesome ghouls from alternate dimensions.
But I’ll be honest, season four was rough. Continue reading “If You Like(d) Stranger Things . . .”
Posted on Thursday, June 15, 2023 by Adam
“There is a crack, a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in”
-Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”
This quote from a song by one of Lana Del Rey’s favorite singer/songwriters forms a kind of loose manifesto for her new album, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd” – the more cracks and flaws we have, and the more hardships we endure, the more compassionate, wise and humane we are capable of becoming. On her ninth studio album, the artist formerly known as Lizzy Grant is so cracked-open and vulnerable that it’s almost painful to listen to at times. What distinguishes “Ocean Blvd” from the rest of Lana’s catalog is the diaristic immediacy of the songs. Unlike her earlier work, Del Rey said in a recent interview with Billboard Magazine, “there’s no world-building…This music is about thought processing…Now, I just sing exactly what I’m thinking.” And what she’s thinking about on this album, beyond the perennial subject of romantic love, is family, faith, mortality, her troubled past and her uncertain future. Continue reading “Album Review: Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd by Lana Del Rey”
Posted on Tuesday, June 13, 2023 by Dana
Fools in Love – A diverse, inclusive young adult anthology featuring short stories that re-imagine or subvert popular romance and rom-com tropes by some of the biggest authors in YA and has a little something for everyone.
