Zotero

The worst thing about a research paper is usually finding sources and creating that bibliography or works cited page. Here's a great tool to help you with those pesky citations!

Zotero is a Firefox add-on (which means you can't use it with Internet Explorer, but I think you'll want to download Firefox once you see what it does...if you haven't already joined the Firefox revolution).  Once you've downloaded the program, it's easy to add citation records straight from your browser - there's even one-click functionality from sites like Amazon and Ebscohost.  I can't really describe it with words.   Watch this video to check out what it can do.


(You probably want to maximize this to be able to see it well enough.)

Hunger Games Movie

As many of you know, one of the most popular young adult series in the last few years is making its way to the big screen.  The Hunger Games is set to be released in 2012, and Vanity Fair was kind enough to share this cast photo with the world.  You can find a story about the casting process and an interactive version of this photo that tells which character each actor is portraying here.  If you are interested in seeing the latest trailer for the film or just learn some other great info, your source for movie information, IMDB (the Internet Movie Database), has a full page dedicated to the film as well.

If you're a movie trivia buff or find yourself stuck in the middle of a game of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," then there is also an IMDB app for your smartphone.  It's extremely user-friendly and puts IMDB's complete entertainment database at your fingertips. 

Patrick Ness - Author of the Month

From PatrickNess.com

Patrick Ness wrote the popular Chaos Walking series, which begins with the book The Knife of Never Letting Go.  Here's the first paragraph from the synopsis on Wikipedia:

Todd Hewitt is the only boy left in Prentisstown, a small settlement on New World where all boys become men at the age of 13. He begins the novel oblivious to Prentisstown’s history, having been told that all women have been killed by a ‘germ’ released by the native species on his planet known as Spackles. As a side effect of this germ, the remaining men in Prentisstown can hear each other's thoughts, described as an ever-present cascade of ‘Noise’.

The book has won numerous awards and is sure to make you stay up late to finish and find out what happens...and there are two other books in the series when you finish the first.

Ness was an army brat growing up.  He lived in Hawaii,