Youth Week Trivia - Win Great Prizes!

Now is the time to start gathering your smart friends and getting a team together for the awesome annual Youth Week Trivia at the Dubbo Branch Library.

Form teams of up to 6 people and get your brains working overtime. The Quiz is sponsored by Dubbo City Youth Council and ZOOFM - and features heaps of prizes, music , frivolity, free pizza and soft drink.

When: 3.00-5.00pm Wednesday 13 April 2011

Where: Dubbo Branch Library, Corner of Macquarie and Talbragar Streets Dubbo

Register: 68014510 by Tuesday 12 April

Inside a Dog - Updated

If you love everything about books and like to post reviews, talk about your reading and win great prizes, visit Inside a Dog!

http://www.insideadog.com.au/

The site is a place for teens to find great reads, and share their thoughts via reviews, blogs and book clubs. Read about an author's process with a new guest Writer in Residence each month, create your own profile and discuss the latest news in youth literature.

Back to School - get a great start @ the library!

Want to get great marks with less work? Check out some of the great resources available from the Dubbo branch library for students.

The Dubbo Branch library has a dedicated HSC collection with heaps of useful information to assist you - from Excel guides to journal articles and literature guides to help you 'translate' English prescribed texts for your exams and assignments.

We have a range of databases available for library members to access from home as well as great links to internet sources from our website (http://www.mrl.nsw.gov.au/). Available databases include Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, Australia/NZ Reference Centre, Consumer Health Complete, Find Legal Answers, History and Reference Library, and more.

Try the HSC Help link to find even more great info to help you out.

Our helpful and knowledgeable staff are also more than willing to assist you with your study information needs - and are happy to demonstrate how to use databases and other resources.

The Library is OPEN!

Great news for all our fantastic customers - The Dubbo Branch is all dried out and open again to the public!

So come on down and borrow some books, DVDs, CDs, magazines or talking books, take advantage of our free wireless access or use our internet computers.

The Summer Reading Program is in full swing so grab a pack and get reading for your chance to win a Nintendo Wii console and games! Entries close on Friday April 8 - so read as much as you can for more chances to win! Contact the Dubbo Branch library on 68014510 for more information.

Glug Glug Glug...

Unfortunately due to the flood conditions in Dubbo, the Dubbo Branch Library is closed until further notice (sob!)

If you have any library stuff at home, please do not return it yet - we will wipe any overdue fees that add up during this time.

Also, much to our disappointment, we have had to cancel our awesome Youth Holiday Program! (We are still trying to console Katrina, our Children's and Youth librarian)

But don't despair - you can still participate in our Summer Reading Program which has been extended and will now end on Friday 8 April 2011. So you still have a chance to win a Wii! Reading logs can be downloaded from the Macquarie Regional Library website (http://www.mrl.nsw.gov.au)

Have a great Christmas and New Year - and try to enjoy your holidays without the library...But keep checking the Web - we will let you all know ASAP when we will re-open.

Beat the holiday boredom this January...

It is almost that time again - Christmas fun and festivities followed by the long January break. It's all OK at first,
(Yay! Holidays!) but as the long hot summer drags on, the boredom sets in.

The Dubbo Branch Library has the solution!

Join us at the library for our spooky youth program and 'Scare up a Good Book'. You can use your creative skills to make a Zombie Feltie or beaded jewellery, indulge your competitive side at the 'Play On! game challenge and party hard at the Monsters and Vampires fancy dress party.

And if that is not enough, you can take part in the Summer Reading Program and could win a Nintendo WII - and all you have to do is read!

Contact the Dubbo Branch Library on 68014510 for more information, and get your reading record for the Summer Reading Program from Thursday 2 December.

This book was awesome!

The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Having had another of Carlos Ruiz Zafon's books recommended to me (The Shadow of the Wind), I figured that since I enjoyed that so much I would give The Prince of Mist a try. And I was not disappointed... This author has an uncanny way of sucking the reader into his stories, and his way of describing places and people makes the reader feel as if they are actually a part of the action. I didn't realise that the story had a clown in it - and I am kind of phobic when it comes to clowns ('thanks' Stephen King's horror novel It...) but the novel is meant to be somewhat creepy and it does achieve that end.

The novel begins when Max Carver's father - a watchmaker and inventor - decides to move to a small town on the Atlantic Coast. They move into a house that was built for a surgeon, Dr Richard Fleischmann and his wife but was abandoned when the couple's son drowned in a tragic accident. Behind the house Max spies an overgrown garden full of statues surrounded by a metal fence topped with a six-pointed star. When he goes to investigate, Max finds that the statues seem to consist of a a kind of circus troup. In the centre of the garden is a large statue of a clown set in another six-pointed star.Max has the curious sensation that the statue is beckoning to him. As the family settles in they become increasingly uneasy: they discover a box of old films belonging to the Fleischmanns. His sister Alicia has unsettling dreams and his other sister hears voices whispering to her from an old wardrobe. But Max spends most of his time with his new friend Roland, who takes him diving to the wreck of a boat that sank close to the coast in a terrible storm. Everyone on board perished except for one man - an engineer who built the lighthouse at the end of the beach. During the dive, Max sees something that leaves him cold - on the mast floats a tattered flag and on it is the symbol of the circle and six-pointed star. As they learn more about the wreck, the chilling story of a legendary figure called the Prince of Mist begins to emerge.