We here at The Loft love it when teens build things. Whether it’s crafts, a play, or a papier-mâché zombie, we are thrilled when teens use their curiosity and creativity to make something awesome. That’s why we’ve set-up another opportunity for you to put your maker skills on display with Build-O-Rama!

At Build-O-Rama, you can figure out how to make an amplifier for your iPod, construct a robot that can navigate an obstacle course, or even work on wiring your own LEDs.

Build-O-Rama will take place on Saturday, February 11 and Saturday, February 18 from 11am-6pm, so feel free to drop in anytime either of those days or come to both and earn your place as a die-hard maker! Hope to see you there!

A wild-ride dystopic science fiction novel for 5th graders and up, Dark Life by Kat Falls crackles with action and features a richly imagined undersea setting. Set in a future in which 20% of North America is under water (the oceans have risen and the east coast has dropped off the continent), the story follows Ty, the son of pioneers who have built sustainable and beautifully engineered farms deep under the ocean. Only, the settlements are threatened by a band of outlaws called the Seablite Gang, a nefarious crew that raids Commonwealth ships and has started destroying the carefully constructed homesteads of the pioneers. It's also about Gemma, a girl from the suffocating skyscraper stack cities on land above - whom the pioneers call a "Topsider" - who's looking for her brother, who may have been murdered by the Seablite Gang and their ghastly leader, Shade. As they search for clues to her brother's whereabouts, Gemma and Ty risk their necks in an underwater saloon frequented by the sea's scariest (human) characters, hitch a ride with a whale, explore an abandoned underwater prison, and escape dangerous run-ins with the other-worldly Shade himself. To help them survive, they use Ty's "dark gift" - a superpower he's developed from growing up with so much water pressure on the brain - but can he use his gift to help them survive and also keep it a secret? The future of the settlements - the only world he's known and loved - is at stake.

Full of sharp, fast-paced prose, exhilarating inventions inspired by real scientific possibilities (like floating jelly-fish-shaped underwater houses with pliant walls), a great menacing outlaw narrative, superpowers, and beautiful descriptions of the sea, "Dark Life" is an immersive tale that deserves to be as popular as anything by Rick Riordan. Don't miss the sequel (which features even more action), Rip Tide. (Jarrett, The Loft).

Readalikes: The Lightning Thief, Leviathan, The Water Wars.

“I decided to deflect her attitude by giving a long, Southern answer. I come from people who know how to draw things out. Annoy a Southerner, and we will drain away the moments of your life with our slow, detailed replies until you are nothing but a husk of your former self and that much closer to death.”

Rory Devereaux doesn't want an ordinary high school life. Growing up in the South, she never thought she really stood out, so she jumps at the opportunity to move. When her parents' work requires that they move over seas, Rory agrees to go with, as long as she gets to pick the school. Rory ends up in a boarding school in South England, ready for adventure. Before she has a chance to adjust to boarding school life, England is terrorized by a historic killer on the loose.

Along with some new friends from her boarding school, Rory begins to uncover more than she bargained for in adventure. While the book has a somewhat slow start, it is really easy to get sucked into the mystery and thrill of Rory's adventure. Rory comes a long way from a little Southerner looking for excitement visiting pubs, brewing trouble in her dorm, and meeting strange figures in the night. Rory gets thrown into a new world, a lot more than she bargained for, dealing with strict teachers, crazy friends, and ghostly neighbors. Once the murders hit a little close to home for the school, Rory's life changes in a way she'd never have expected.

I was really captured by the thrill of this book. Definitely not a story to read at night when you're home alone. From the author of Suite Scarlett and 13 Little Blue Envelopes comes another great story with captivating writing. Johnson brings in unique characters, hilarious dialogue, and a terrorizing story to make a book that you won't want to put down! (Ruth, Teen Advisory Board).

Check out the book trailer!

“How can you understand something you don’t believe in?”

In the small town of St. Andrew Valley, a religious awakening begins with a punch to the head. When Jason Bock gets laid out by the menacing and unpredictable Henry Stagg underneath the town’s water tower, Bock is also struck by the simple magnificence of the tower itself. Lying on the ground with his best friend, Pete “Shin” Schinner, hovering above him along with Stagg and the water tower, Bock comes up with the idea that the water tower is God.

Initially, Bock’s enthusiasm for his new “faith” is a just a joke, a fresh fantasy that he and Shin can endlessly discuss and explore in a way they used to do when making their own superhero comics. But Bock’s spurious zealotry is having unexpected consequences. He soon has a small group of converts and Shin becomes increasingly obsessed with the new religion, “Chutengodianism”. Bock’s imaginative creation gains a momentum he never could have predicted. Can a flight of fancy actually be the foundation of a new theology?

Provocative without being too heavy-handed or partisan, Godless is a fascinating study of faith and friendship. (Dan, The Loft)

A re-imagining of the Persephone myth, a bullied boy who joins his POW/MIA grandfather on dangerous clandestine missions in his dreams, the strange life-long tale of conjoined female twins, two goofs searching for a dozen eggs in a food-starved Stalingrad, Abraham Lincoln's secret weapon against monstrous enemies, a guitar-wielding devil at the crossroads, raw short stories from some of YA's best about pick-up games of street ball, a dashing time-traveling librarian, a classic coming-of-age tale set on the 19th century prairie, a dystopic Hunger Games-readalike set in a futuristic Chicago, a truly deep and heart-touching tale about brothers, the horrors of Lithuanian deportation at the hands of Stalin's secret police told in blunt prose, cruel angels, life-stuffed soccer ball, and twin brothers obsessed with heavy metal and pursued by demons they've unwittingly let out of the bag - All of these stories and more can be found on the Loft's Teen Advisory Board and Loft Staff "Favorite Books We Read In 2011" booklist. Yeah! Follow the link for this amazing list of stand-out, f-f-f-fantastic books old and new that we great enjoyed - so much so that we can't stop talking about them - in the last 365 days. Check it out, check the books out, and while you're there, stop by the other booklists we've created from years past. Good luck getting your hands on Divergent! No worries, we've got additional copies on the way.

Prepare yourselves, curs! The blackest of metal is at hand!  Brought up from the pit by writer Rick Spears and artist Chuck B.B., Black Metal is the story of Sam and Shaun Stronghand, orphaned twins whose father was struck dead by lightning before they were born and whose mother died during childbirth. Despite being raised by a sunny and supportive foster mother, Sam and Shaun have found that their only solace in the world “has been in the sweet, grim sounds of black metal.”

Bearing birthmarks around their eyes that look indistinguishable from the corpsepaint used by black metal bands, the Stronghand twins have always been both outwardly and inwardly out of step with most of the world. But after listening to the latest Frost Axe album backwards, the twins find themselves in possession of the Sword of Atoll, an unholy blade forged by an ancient blacksmith to be used by a hell baron named “The Roth”. Now pursued by demons and Norse gods, Sam and Shaun must discover the true story of their birth and also conquer the armies of hell. Can a comic be any more metal than this? (Dan, The Loft)