Teens: want to do something more imaginative than just writing a review for Summer Reading books that you have read? Create and submit a book trailer review for Summer Reading, and you could win a Kindle Fire! Upload a short clip, no longer than 4 minutes, to YouTube, providing your review of the book. Be creative!  The contest is open to all participants in the Teen Summer Reading Celebration.

How to enter:

• Create your own book trailer, reviewing a book that you read for Summer Reading. You can submit more than one video, but each video has to be for a separate book.
• Post the video on YouTube using the tag: SJPL2012SRC
• Sign up for Summer Reading here, starting in a few weeks.
• When you log the book you read on the Summer Reading website, make sure to include a link to your video in the review field.

Entries will be judged on creativity and content by a panel of library staff.

Need some examples? Check out the winning entry from last year's Book Trailer Contest, created by Nathan Verdonk.

Here are links to some professional book trailers:

- Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

- The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

- The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

Teens who submit links to their Book Trailer will automatically be entered in the contest. The top 3 winners will receive:

• 1st place: Kindle Fire
• 2nd place: $50 gift card for iTunes
• 3rd place: $25 gift card for Jamba Juice 

Entries for the contest must be submitted between June 1 and July 31, 2012.   Winners will be announced in August.

The Friends of the Joyce Ellington Branch Library are having a booksale event on Saturday, April 21st from 10am - 4pm in the Community Room of the Joyce Ellington Library Branch.

This is an excellent opportunity to purchase books and media (dvds, music cds, vhs videos, etc.) in different languages, genres and for all ages.

Come show your support to your neighborhood library, Joyce Ellington Branch by purchasing those gently used books and media.

Proceeds from this booksale event will go to help support Joyce Ellington Branch Library programs.

We encourage everyone to be green by bringing their own reusable bag for purchases made at the booksale event!

For more information or to volunteer at this booksale event, please contact the Joyce Ellington Library at (408) 808-3043.

Hey everyone its National Library Week, April 8-14!

Celebrate National Library Week with a fun Scavenger Hunt at your local library.  All participants will receive a prize. This program is designed for children ages 6 and up.

While at the library visit the information desk and pick up a heart and tell us why you love your library. 

The causes of Whitney Houston’s death were announced last week – and cocaine abuse appeared to be a major contributing factor.  Something else that happened last week while I was working at the Tully Community Library was that a representative of the nonprofit Asian American Recovery Services came into the branch bringing a stack of newsletters with Houston’s tragic death as one of its front page stories.  It was filled with articles on all the ways that someone can come under the power of addiction:  alcohol, prescription and illegal drugs, emotional abuse, smoking – but the one I knew the least about was problem gambling – which apparently can be a real problem for people and their families.   

Our neighbors come into the library for a lot of reasons, of course, but one is that it is a clearinghouse for free and useful information for the entire community.  Some of this helpful information can be found in the “Community Bulletin Board / Free for All” area in every library branch.  For example, there are the services that Asian American Recovery Services offers, such as support, counseling, resources and education are either free, based on a sliding-scale or Medi-Cal paid.  Their mission is to decrease the incidence of substance abuse and other addiction in the Asian and Pacific Islander communities in the Bay Area.  You can reach them at (408) 271-3900.