Anime Club Hosting Costume Contest this Saturday

Perhaps I'm biased, but I think the Anime Club at Mentor Public Library is pretty incredible.

They do fun stuff (like make candy sushi) and they often do it while in costume as their favorite anime characters.

We've seen cosplay from Naruto, Vocaloid, Black Butler and more pop up at Anime Club, so we thought it would be fun to have a costume contest.

The contest will be from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 26, at our Main Branch. All teens are welcome.

And you're not limited to anime either. You can dress as your favorite video game or comic book character too. (It's not a bad excuse to bring out your Halloween costume early.)

Just be awesome and be who you want to be.

To get ready for the contest, some of us at the library broke out our finest Portal costumes, Wonder Woman lassos and Totoro hoodies for a video.

We hope you enjoy it.

Visit the Mentor Public Library website for more info on the Anime Club costume contest.

Become an Iron Chef at Mentor Library's Anime Club

Perhaps, by now, you're familiar with our Anime Club.

If not, they're pretty awesome.

They're a group of teens who get together once a month at the library to watch anime, make duct tape swords, compete in Ramen-eating contests and paint kokeshi. They often do this while wearing costumes.

Like I said -- awesome.

Their next meeting is from 2 to 4 p.m. August 24 at our Main Branch. They'll be watching anime and making candy sushi. (Hopefully, they're better at it than some of our Iron Chefs.)

If you want to join in on the fun, you can sign up for Anime Club on the Mentor Public Library's website.

P.S. By the way, if you don't know what Meredith and Amy are spoofing in the video, here's some of the source material. (Our chairman should have worn a robe too. That would have been cooler.)

Speak Softly & Carry A Duct-Tape Sword

Our Anime Club made duct-tape swords and shields -- and I think I see a scythe back there -- during their most recent meeting Saturday.

My love for our anime club is pretty well documented here; and, while I hate to feature a club to the exclusion of others, the anime club keeps doing awesome stuff!

At their most recent meeting on Saturday, July 27, they made swords, shields and scythes out of duct tape.

They also perfected their warrior faces.

And they're still wearing costumes. This time, Meagan McLaughlin came dressed as Terezi Pyrope of MS Paint Adventures.

Yes, I had to Google "Pyrope" to make sure I spelled it right.

The Anime Club's next meeting is August 24. They'll be watching one of Hayao Miyazaki's classic Studio Ghibli films. (They haven't decided which one. My vote's for Totoro.) They will also make candy sushi.

Drop by if you like. You can register here.

We have a lot of other fun events for teens coming up in the next week or two, including:

• Storyteller Jim Kleefeld will share macabre and miraculous true stories later today (July 30) during Tales from Beyond.
• We close out our Mentor’s Rock Roots: Celebrating Homegrown Bands concert series with a split performance by Cheap Clone and Hedgehog's Dilemma on July 31. (As you probably guessed from its name, the concert series features bands from in and around Mentor).
• On August 3 (this upcoming Saturday,) teens can compete and win prizes in our Minute-to-Win-It Competition. (Register here and dress for a mess.)
• Then, on August 9, teens can celebrate Holi on our Read House lawn. Holi is a Hindu festival of color in which people celebrate the salvation of Prahlada, a follower of Vishnu who also happens to be the son of the great king of demons. People celebrate by surprising one another with brightly colored paint and powders. (In that way, it's a bit like paintball.) Feel free to join our celebration, but bring a white shirt and old clothes you don't mind getting messy.

You can always check out our event calendar at www.mentorpl.org to see more programs for teens, kids and adults.

Kids' Stuff at the Library: Cosplay, Pool Noodle Games & Hunting for Jewel Fish

More than 1,300 children have already signed up for our summer reading program.

And those kids have already read about 4,500 hours in the last month.

In addition to reading, they also built catapults, met some of Outback Ray's exotic animals and made good use of our karaoke machine.

But they've also done a lot of other cool things that I neglected to post here. (Please forgive me. I've been distracted by the concerts, Little Free Libraries and Cleveland Mafia.)

So allow me to catch up in the most effective fashion -- with photos of awesome kids doing cool stuff.

Who dares challenge Sasori of the Red Sand to a noodle-eating contest?

This is Vince. Vince is awesome for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, Vince is dressed as Sasori of the Red Sand from Naruto. He wore this to the most recent meeting of our Anime Club, the members of which (you may remember) like to get dressed up.

Furthermore, Vince devoured five bowls of Ramen to win one of our noodle-eating contests at the meeting.

The moral: dressing like Sasori gives you powerful, digestive abilities. Also, Vince is awesome.

By the way, teens, if you love anime, our next club meeting is July 27. We'll be making duct tape swords.

Kim Sidorick, our children's services manager, shows a couple of members of our American Girl Book Club how to make a God's eye

Speaking of our clubs, our American Girl Book Club met Julie Albright -- a young girl growing up in the 1970s -- during their most recent meeting last week. They also learned how to make a God's eye.

The club's next meeting is Aug. 7 where the girls will meet Kirsten.

Jared Hines and Manav Malik search for scarabs, jewels and stoned with hieroglyphs in the backyard of the Read House during the library's Dig Into Egypt program.

During our Dig Into Egypt program, kids tried to catch a jewel fish (like in the Graeme Base book, The Jewel Fish of Karnac.)

They started their search by digging for special stones. Then they traded the stones for tools or won them by playing mancala. Finally, the kids used their tools to go fishing.

In hindsight, it was kind of like Legends of the Hidden Temple -- y'know with fewer palace guards and no Olmec.

We have more photos from the Dig Into Egypt program on our Facebook page, if you want to check them out.

You think croquet's tricky with a mallet? Try it with a pool noodle.

Finally, at last week's Fun Day Monday, kids used pool noodles as paintbrushes, croquet mallets and tic-tac-toe game boards. (It's incredible to see how creative children's librarians can be when coming up with games.)

We host Fun Day Monday every Monday at 1 p.m. in the backyard of The Read House, which is next door to our main branch on Mentor Avenue.

You don't have to register your kids for Fun Day Monday. Just come out and play!

We have a lot more fun programs coming this summer -- activities with fairies and dinosaurs and ninjas. (These are separate programs. We don't have a Fairy Ninja Dinosaur Party on the docket, though that sounds pretty incredible.)

Check out our calendar and see what's coming up. I bet you'll find something your kid will love.

I mean, who doesn't like dinosaurs?

Everything's More Awesome In Costume

If comic conventions have taught us anything, then it is this: Everything is more awesome while wearing a costume.

Don't believe me? Go to Zoup dressed as Batman or pick up your dry cleaning while wearing zombie makeup. (But be careful not to get the makeup on your freshly cleaned clothes.)

This lesson was reinforced at the first meeting of the Mentor Public Library's anime club last Saturday.

The teens painted kokeshi (which is a kind of Japanese doll), ate pizza and watched the first episode of Letter Bee.

All of that would have been cool enough by itself, but some of the teens made it even better by showing up in costume. Here's a shot of Meagan McLaughlin and Katie Hunziker dressed as Sebastian Michaelis from the anime series Black Butler and Rin Kagamine from Vocaloid, respectively.

The next meeting of the Anime Club will be 2 p.m. on June 22 at the Mentor Public Library’s main branch.

All teens are invited. The club will watch Hetalia: Axis Powers and have a Ramen-eating contest.

Come by. Wear a costume. You probably won't be the only one.

By the way, here are a pair of kokeshi, in case you were wondering what they looked like. This duo were painted to look like Naruto and Gaara from Naruto.

For more information on events and programs for kids, teens and adults, visit the Mentor Public Library web site at www.mentorpl.org.

For All The Anime Lovers (And Even The Anime Likers)

To all my anime fans out there, I have one question.

What hooked you?

Was it a hit series like Dragonball Z or something fringier?

Was it the action of Fullmetal Alchemist? The humor of Sgt. Frog? The romance of Kodocha?

OK, I lied. That was several questions. And now I have one more.

Do you want to watch anime with us and other like-minded fans at the library?

Mentor Public Library is hosting its inaugural meeting of the Anime Club from 2 to 4 p.m. this Saturday (May 18) at our main branch (8215 Mentor Ave. in Mentor;) and we'd love to have you join us.

The first meeting gets down to the basics: watching and talking about anime. You'll be able to vote on which series we watch at the meeting. Your choices include Letter Bee, Polar Bear's Cafe and Attack on Titan.

(Love me some Polar Bear's Cafe.)

There will also be pizza and pop; and you can make a kokeshi, if you like.

These are kokeshi -- in case you didn't know.

At the meeting, we'll also take suggestions from you on what other activities to do and what other movies and shows you want to watch in the future.

So come on in if you're an anime lover, anime liker or just curious.

If you want, you can register on the library's web site so we know to expect you.

Dewa mata atode.