School is back in session and summer reading is finally over! And what a summer it was! Haverhill teens read a total of 473 books for the library this summer and posted 250 individual book reviews. The sheer quantity of books read, alone, is pretty awesome but the even more amazing part is Haverhill teens, with the very generous donations from the Friends of Haverhill Public Library, will be responsible for sending $500 to the Haverhill Gazette Santa Fund.

The Library Friends group pledged to donate a dollar for every book read and every review written up to $500. In past years, we’ve gotten awful close to making the full donation but the teens that participated in the 2012 Summer Reading Program are the first group ever to hit the limit!

So, if you needed another reason that definitively shows how awesome Haverhill teens are, there you go! Thanks guys!

Make sure you’re logging all the books you’ve read this summer and make sure to get your friends and family to log their reading too!

Remember, for every book you read, we donate $1 to the Santa Fund to give presents to kids in need during the holiday season. And…if you read 4 books, you can get a free appetizer from Pizzeria UNOs. Can’t go wrong with that, right? Food, Fund and, uh, Fresh Reads.

From the top of the atmosphere to Mars’ surface, it will be a seven-minute plummet. Contact between NASA and the rover has a 14 minute delay however. What’s that mean? Well, when we first hear that the rover has touched the atmosphere of Mars, in reality, it has already finished landing. We won’t know about its success or its failure for a full seven minutes after the fact. This is called the Seven Minutes of Terror and if you’re interested in learning more about it, check out NASA’s awesome video:

Want to find out more about the NASA Space Program? Check out their website at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/

or follow the Curiosity Rover Exploration Program on the National Public Radio’s newspage.

If you like space and science, don’t forget there’s a lot of awesome books on the Middle School and High School Summer Reading Lists.

If you’re in 5-8th grade, check out Laika. It’s a graphic novel about the first dog in Space. Or, Almost Astronauts, the true tale of the “Mercury 13″ Women.

If you’re in 10th grade and like all things outer space, don’t miss reading Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Pluto Files!

11th graders interested in our planet and the atmosphere should grab, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet.

If you’ve been catching up on your sleep since the end of school, you’re missing out! Haverhill Public Library has a kids (Grades K-5), teens (Grades 6-12) and adult (18+ and out of school) summer reading program. Sign up and log how many books you’re reading – there’s prizes, glory and more!

And, teens, it is time to get serious about your summer reading!

Teens and Adults are competing to see which group can read the most books this summer. Right now, the competition is awfully close: teens have read 166 books and adults are just behind with 162 books. Everyone knows this shouldn’t be a competition. If every teen in Haverhill logged the books they’re reading for the school summer reading assignments alone, we’d have upwards of 1,000 books read. And, honestly, do you really want to let the adults show you up?

Get out there. Sign up for summer reading! Get your friends to sign up! Log your books!

Remember, if you read 4 books this summer, you can come to the Teen Zone and collect your certificate for a free appetizer at Pizzeria UNO.