STEM Friday

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It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

Happy STEM Friday to all!

Free Book Friday!

Welcome to Free Book Friday! If this is the first time you've ever stopped by the Lerner Books Blog we hope you take a second to look through our previous posts which give great insight into the inner workings of Lerner and highlight interesting back stories on how our books come to life. We also hope you add us to your blog list and come back each week to check out our contests, special promotions, and giveaways including Free Book Friday where we give away new books every week!

Congratulations to United Christian Academy! You are the winners of Counterattack, a new series for reluctant readers from Darby Creek. Email us at publicityinfo@lernerbooks.com with the subject line "Free Book Friday" to tell us your mailing address and we'll get your books in the mail just in time for some fantastic summer reading. 

This week we are honored to host Free Book Friday along with Teachingbooks.net! For this special promotion we will be hosting a two week-long Free Book Friday contest where two lucky readers will win Tillie Pierce: Teen Eyewitness to the Battle of Gettysburg.

Imagine being fifteen years old, facing the bloodiest battle ever to take place on U.S. soil: the Battle of Gettysburg. In July 1863, this is exactly what happened to Tillie Pierce, a normal teenager who became an unlikely heroine of the Civil War (1861-1865). Tillie and other women and girls like her found themselves trapped during this critical three-day battle in southern Pennsylvania. Without training, but with enormous courage and compassion, Tillie and other Gettysburg citizens helped save the lives of countless wounded Union and Confederate soldiers. 

In gripping prose, Tillie Pierce: Teen Eyewitness to the Battle of Gettysburg takes readers behind the scenes. And through Tillie’s own words, the story of one of the Civil War’s most famous battles comes alive as the nation marks the 150th anniversary of the turning point of the Civil War. 

To bring this book to life in your library or classroom, make sure to check out our fantastic Lerner eSource materials which are available as FREE downloads! Activities include a Common Core discussion guide, a Civil War timeline project, and Taking Tillie's Path: An Activity Using Google Earth which takes readers on tour of modern Gettysburg. To download these great Lerner eSource materials just login to www.lernerbooks.com.

If you'd like to win a copy of Tillie Pierce: Teen Eyewitness to the Battle of Gettysburg, leave a comment on this post (including your name), or Tweet this line: "Free Book Friday! RT to win the new TILLIE PIERCE from @LernerBooks. bit.ly/1OrSN."

We'll announce the two winners during Free Book Friday on May 31, so be sure to come back to the Lerner blog to see if you've won!

Good luck!

A Little Dose of Reality

How many of you guys grew up reading teen lifestyle magazines? You know the kind I mean—they talked about fashion, health and beauty, and current stars. These magazines could be a lot of fun, but they could also leave you feeling like your life was somewhat lacking. They were full of articles about the "ideal teen girl." She was up on all the trends, she  had a date every Friday night, she spent her Saturdays volunteering, and—of course—she had the perfect clothes, hair, and body.  

Kids are still reading magazines like these. Believe me, I know! I read a lot of what's on offer for kids myself to stay on top of which stars to feature in our Pop Culture Bios series. They're still fun, but they also still promote ideals that are less than realistic.

That's why I think it's so important to have books on offer that satisfy the insatiable desire some of us (ahem, maybe me!) have to read about stuff like style and entertainment. These books present the same info as the magazines, but they aren't trying to sell products or a certain lifestyle. In fact, they show that celebs' lives are far from perfect and that it's crucial to think critically and ask questions in our consumer culture.

Here are just a few Lerner books that cover fun subjects in a thoughtful and objective way. Perhaps you’ll want to hand them to a young reader you know who can’t get enough of popular magazines and celebrity websites.


Liam Hemsworth:  The Hunger Games’ Strong Survivor 
        









Stay Clear!: What You Should Know about Skin Care



Relationship Smarts: How to Navigate Dating, Friendships, Family Relationships, and More

You're the Chef: Lerner eSource Freebies!

Have you had a chance to check out You're the Chef, Millbrook's awesome new cookbook series? Filled with detailed instructions, down to diagrams of which tools to use for each technique, these books will help budding chefs make all kinds of delicious foods.

                                

We've compiled a few helpful extras so you can take full advantage of these fantastic titles. I'll let you in on a little secret. The author offered us so many tasty recipes, we couldn't fit them all in the books! But we still want you to have them. So they're available from Lerner eSource, our online repository of fun, free, complementary content. Crunchy Tuna Salad, yum!

We also have other resources available. Maybe you want to figure out which food groups are represented in each recipe. Well, we can offer you that too. And maybe you could use a metric conversion chart while you're cooking? Or perhaps you'd like a link to an online video to show you a particular technique? Done and done.

                      

Each season, our editorial staff puts our heads together to come up with great extras to help you get more out of our new series and titles. Today's featured Lerner eSource series is You're the Chef.

To download free resources for a book or series, visit a book's product page on our website: https://www.lernerbooks.com/products/t/11671/9780761366416/super-pasta-and-rice-dishes. If you haven't registered with us, please do so at the upper right corner of the page. On future visits, you'll need to sign in to download files. Then look in the right-hand column of the page for the eSource logo. Just under the Font Lens, you'll see the downloadable eSource files. Click on an individual file or on "download all."

Happy cooking!

A Death in the Family, Amazon's Virtual Currency, and Other Internet Junk

On Thursday of last week, my wife met me at the door with a look on her face that I knew meant something had gone very, very wrong. "What is it? What happened??" I inquired. "It's...the TV." She shook her head, and I knew. For the sake of an entertaining blog post, you can now imagine her tear stained cheeks and me falling on both knees, arms to the sky, screaming "Noooo! MENDOOOZAAAA!"

Goodbye, Old Friend

I purchased my 50" Samsung DLP in 2002 with my first paycheck from my first "real job" out of college. The enormous screen was housed in a sleek, 3-foot deep silver cabinet, and sat upon an elegant matching base. The loud hum it produced was the soundtrack for countless make-out sessions on the loveseat (Okay, at least two. Come on!). It was a bachelor's dream, and it was all mine.

Sentiment aside, however, the reality is that I was happy that had suffered a natural death. By today's standards the TV was a behemoth, taking up too much space in the family room. The technology was outdated, and the picture was too dark to view with the shades up. I had been ready to replace the 11-year-old set for a couple years, but it's hard to justify spending money on a new TV when the old one is "just fine" (my wife's words).

The process of researching and bargain-hunting began before HLN507W's circuits were cool. Because, seriously, what am I going to do without a TV? Read a book? Haha, nope! Here are 5 tips I learned during the process:

1. Samsung is still regarded as the best TV manufacturer, but LG and Sony are good too.
2. LED is better than LCD and Plasma.
3. You do not need to pay more for 240hz. 120hz is plenty. The human eye can not see the difference.
4. "Contrast Ratio" is basically brightness. If your TV is in a sunroom or other bright location, you may opt for a higher contrast ratio.
5. Smart TVs are getting close, but are not yet worth the added price. If you want to use streaming services (Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc..) you're better off investing in a digital/streaming media player.

When I opened up Amazon.com to scrounge for TV deals, I was met with a splash page introducing their virtual currency called "Amazon Coins". These coins can be purchased and used to buy apps and games for the Kindle Fire. This type of virtual currency is not a new concept. Here is the summary of things that we (the internet) has learned regarding virtual currency: Virtual currency only benefits the issuer.

Why? The system is designed so the consumer will always struggle with their coin balance. For instance: if I have 500 coins, you better believe there's no chance of spending all 500 coins on any combination of purchases-- therefore, I'm always left with a balance. And if I don't  have enough balance to purchase the app I want? Well, I need to buy another bundle of coins! Since I am not allowed to buy the specific number of coins I need (the minimum number is 500 for $4.80), I will always have extra. These extra coins are the crux of the problem.

1. There's a strong psychological urge to spend the coins I have rather than leave a balance in my account, so the cycle of purchasing apps and coins continues.
2. The coins are non-refundable. If I stop using the coins, then I've just given Amazon a micro-loan for as long as my balance sits.

To Amazon's credit, the virtual currency is optional. Unlike some other issuers, you can always buy what you want with cash. But they've given every new and existing Kindle Fire owner the "gateway drug" of 500 free coins. Well played, sirs. 

Now some web gems!

• $10 gadget contains "the entire English Wikipedia with 3 million topics" [boingboing]
• David Arenberg Reflects on Being Jewish in State Prison [SPLC]
• Two months aboard an Antarctic ice breaker, condensed to 5 minutes [boingboing]

If only the ice breaker was on lake Mille Lacs... [Caution: Annoying Minnesotans talking, and a four-letter word near the end of the video.] For those wondering, this is caused by strong wind, rising temperatures, and weak ice. The entire sheet of ice is being pushed off of the lake on to shore, and is splintering into shards. The force is clearly enough to break windows and force open doors.