Every Monday night is DIY @the Teen Scene. 6-8 pm will find us crafting, cooking, adulting, and discovering all manner of Doing-it-Yourselfery. March 2019’s calendar includes perler beading (3/4), creating smart phone covers and other techy craftiness (3/11), and stop motion animation (3/25).

On March 18—that’s right! Day 1 of Spring Break!!—we’re having a special DIY: Multicultural Cooking Class. It starts at 4 pm instead of 6, so we’ll have plenty of time to cook REAL FOOD and EAT IT! Since it’s the day after St. Patrick’s Day, we’ll be exploring Irish culture. Nope, not green food. This is the real thing. We’ll be making colcannon and soda bread. Trust me, it’s tasty, and the teens will be the chefs! Be here on time so we can get our teams together and get busy. If you want to put together your own teams of 2-4 individuals, just let us know at the desk in the Teen Scene or send us an email at eday@rogersar.gov or kwright@rogersar.gov.

RPL’s Teen Scene DIY replaced Monday night’s Crafty Teen Crew. While we still include crafts, the new program focuses on more practical Do-It-Yourself applications. Cooking is a monthly occurrence in the Community Room. Past programs include creating chocolate confections for Valentine’s Day and creating hot chocolate kits for December holiday gifts. Participants learn practical cooking skills and get to eat or share their creations. Other activities may take place in the Teen Scene. In January we explored how to make our planners more personal and productive. We’re celebrating Teen Tech in March with crafty DIY projects for our personal tech (like cell phone covers) and using tech (like your cell phone) to create stop action animation.

March may be techy, but April will be something completely different. Make sure to pick up each month’s Teen Scene Events Calendar at the desk or check out our events online. We have so much going on, you’re sure to find something that’s just for you. The teen librarians are also all ears about YOUR ideas, too, so come talk to us and make a suggestion!

The Teen Scene at Rogers Public Library has in its collection several books that straddle the line between novel and art. Some highly illustrated, some with actual snippets of graphic novel included, these hybrids provide a fun way of trying out other genres while still enjoying your old favorites.

Cherie Priest has 2 novels out in the hybrid strain. Both use comic strip elements as an integral part of the story, not simply as illustration.  I am Princess X is an atmospheric mystery in which one half of a duo of comic strip creators must discover what lies beneath the death of her best friend with Princess X, their creation, as her guide. A comic book found in the depths of a dilapidated haunted house comes alive on the pages of The Agony House, Priest’s newest book. Mystery and murder share the center spotlight with the challenges of rebuilding and gentrification in post-Katrina New Orleans in this creepy, suspenseful novel.

You Were Here, Cori McCarthy. Exploration—urbex, emotion, personal identity, the past, the future—fuels this coming-of-age story. McCarthy employs unique voices for each of the 5 POV characters. Two of the narrators speak in visual forms: Mik through graphic novel and Bishop through street art.

If you enjoyed Brian Selznick’s Wonderstruck  and The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Pam Smy’s Thornhill may interest you. The novel is heavily illustrated with full-page black-and-white art that intensifies its dark atmospheric tone and gives voice to the selective mute narrator. The text mixes ghostly horror and mystery in a diary format that is engaging and easy to read. Check it out to see how the dual storylines—one told in picture, one in text—converge in this creepy ghost story.

YA/Adult

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer, an adult book for young adults, also crosses the boundary between novel and graphic novel. In a manner similar to Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children series, Foer uses visual artifacts (photos, drawings, typography) to illustrate not only the story, but the mind of the 9-year-old protagonist. This complex and moving book follows Oskar Schell on his quest to find a missing lock, and possibly to discover the secret to recovery when that which is lost is irreplaceable.