John Green's Crash Course Series

Popular young adult author John Green and his brother Hank Green created an educational Crash Course series which offers several YouTube videos explaining topics in biology, world history, ecology, chemistry, U.S. history, and English literature.

Crash Course is a great series to follow! Some recent videos dissect the major plot lines of The Great Gatsby in a format that might be more appealing to a student struggling to understand the novel. Parts 1 and 2 are linked to below.

***SPOILER ALERT: The videos assume you've already read the book!

Banned Books Week is Here!

Banned Books Week has arrived! Celebrate at the HHS Library and check out our banned books display. In the meantime, here are some great videos, created by Bookmans, to watch in celebration of your freedom to read.

Exercise your right to enjoy some great books. Do you really want someone else telling you what you can or can't read? 

Celebrate Banned Books Week!

Banned Books Week is the national book community's annual celebration of the freedom to read. The 2013 celebration of Banned Books Week will be held from September 22 - 28, and it highlights the value of free and open access to information.  Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community - librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, and readers of all types - in shared support of the freedom to seek information and to express ideas (ala.org).

Celebrate this year's Banned Books Week at the HHS Library!  A list of the most frequently challenged books can be found here.  How many have you read?

Tales2Go

The HHS Library now has a free 30 day trial subscription to Tales2Go.  Tales2Go is a service that offers instant streaming of hundreds of audiobook titles to desktops and mobile devices.  Included in those titles are many young adult novels; see the complete list of offerings here.

Interested in learning more?  See Mrs. Fournier at the circulation desk for login information.

Biographile

Biographile, a website maintained by Random House, is a great place for keeping up-to-date with what's new in memoir and autobiography publishing.  We've had lots of students in the HHS library recently, browsing our Biography section.  For those of you in Mr. Frey's class, you may find this site to be of interest.

See any titles you like?  Tell Mrs. Fournier or Mrs. Belcher and we will help you obtain a copy!

Free Audio Books

LibriVox is a resource dedicated to making "all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet." A non-commercial, non-profit, and ad-free project, LibriVox is sustained by volunteers donating their time and voices to each recording.

Not a fan of the narrator's voice? With over 7,000 titles available, often times you have multiple narrators reading the same novel - try another one!

Also available as an app, LibriVox is a great one to add to your smartphone/tablet.

The Lizzie Bennett Diaries

Any Jane Austen fans? Check out The Lizzie Bennett Diaries, a modernized adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Offered as a web series comprised of short videos, it's a fun way to experience a more modern take on the classic novel.