Normal Public Library provides many enriching events and resources for teens. Find items from our teen collections and helpful online resources.
Activities
We have lots of activities going on every month for teens to enjoy. Whether you are into technology, poetry, crafts, anime, or more, there is something for you at NPL!
Learn more about current activities here.
Teen Spaces
The library is a great place to meet up with friends or spend some time studying.
We hope you will check out our Teen Department next time you are at the library.
Teen Mobile Maker Space
Our Teen Mobile Makerspace is an area that encourages participation in hands-on collaborative learning, sharing, and creating through the use of technology and do-it-yourself materials. Teens, take a look at the makerspace during your next visit.
Thanks to our Giving Tuesday campaign in 2015, we are pleased to offer our Teen Mobile Makerspace.
Collection
The library has a fantastic collection of the latest books for teens and we work hard to maintain a great selection of graphic novels.
You will also find tons of music and movies to check out and a huge selection of media to download & stream.
Top Titles for Teens
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Maya in Multicolor
After realizing her freshman boyfriend is wasting her time and refuses to put a label on their relationship, college freshman Maya decides to reclaim her life but does not have a lot of confidence in romance, so she is not thrilled that her co-planner on the Holi planning committee is the heartthrob Nishanti Rai, especially since their visions (and personalities) do not match.
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Sunrise on the Reaping
Hunger Games 5th Novel
As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes. Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves. When Haymitch's name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He's torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who's nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he's been set up to fail. But there's something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena
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When We Ride
Diego Benevides works hard. His single mother encourages him to stay focused on school, on getting into college, on getting out of their crumbling neighborhood. That's why she gave him her car. Diego's best friend, Lawson, needs a ride--because Lawson is dealing. As long as Diego's not carrying, not selling, it's cool. It's just weed. But when Lawson starts carrying powder and pills and worse, their friendship is tested and their lives are threatened. As the lines between dealer and driver blur, everything Diego has worked for is jeopardized, and he faces a deadly reckoning with the choices he and his best friend have made. Award-winning memoirist and poet Rex Ogle's searing first novel-in-verse is an unforgettable story of the power and price of loyalty.
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Divining the Leaves
Plant-loving Ridhi Kapadia and popular Nilesh Batra were friends once. Now, seventeen and alone, Ridhi blends natural perfumes, wears flower crowns, and wanders her local woods, listening for the leafy whispers of her beloved trees. Pleading for the yakshas to admit her into their enchanted forest kingdom, where she knows she truly belongs. After learning his parents' perfect marriage is a sham and getting suspended from school, a heartsick Nilesh lands at Ridhi's doorstep--the last thing either of them wants. So when a pretty yakshini offers him the distraction of magic, the same magic he mocked Ridhi for believing in, he jumps at it. Furious, Ridhi strikes a bargain with a noblewoman of the yaksha court. In exchange for helping restore her reputation, Lady Sulochana will turn Ridhi into the yakshini she yearns to be--and teach her to divine the trees' murmurs. But when Nilesh ends up trapped in the yakshas' realm, Ridhi realizes the leaves might be telling a disturbing story about the forest her heart is rooted in--one that, even if the two of them band together, threatens to shred the future like so many thorns
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Every Borrowed Beat
After receiving a successful heart transplant, seventeen-year-old Sydney starts to fall for her organ donor's best friend whom she met under false pretenses and feels guilty as her own best friend's health worsens.
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These Vengeful Wishes
When her stepfather is arrested, aspiring artist Ceci moves back to her mother's hometown of Santa Aguas, an eccentric small town steeped in the legend of La Cegua, the specter of a wronged witch who appears on lonely roads at night, luring untrustworthy men to their deaths. Ceci and her mother take up residence in the abandoned manor of the Sevilla family, rumored to have been cursed by La Cegua, where she begins to uncover a past connected to her mother. The more she learns of the Sevillas, the more Ceci finds herself forming a strange affinity with the feared Cegua, who she suspects is the one inspiring her paintings of a mysterious door in the forest. When the very door Ceci has been painting appears in the woods, she ventures through it with her new friend, and maybe crush, Jamie. Together, they discover a well for granting wishes. The well of La Cegua. After learning others are also searching for the well, Ceci must confront the truth of her mother's past and prevent La Cegua's wishes from being used for the wrong reasons. Every wish has its price, and La Cegua never forgets the ones who have wronged her
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The Scorpion and the Night Blossom
Nine years ago, the war between the Kingdom of Night and the Kingdom of Rivers tore An'ying's family apart, leaving her mother barely alive and a baby sister to fend for. Now the mortal realm is falling into eternal night, and mo--beautiful, ravenous demons--roam the land, feasting on the flesh of humans and drinking their souls. An'ying is no longer a helpless child, though. Armed with her crescent blades and trained in the ancient art of practitioning, she has decided to enter the Immortality Trials, which are open to any mortal who can survive the journey to the immortal realm. Those who complete the Trials are granted a pill of eternal life--the one thing An'ying knows can heal her dying mother. But to attain the prize, she must survive the competition. Death is common in the Trials. Yet oddly, An'ying finds that someone is helping her stay alive. A rival contestant. Powerful and handsome, Yu'chen is as secretive about his past as he is about his motives for protecting An'ying. The longer she survives the Trials, the clearer it becomes that all is not right in the immortal realm. To save her mother and herself, An'ying will need to figure out whether she can truly trust the stranger she's falling for or if he's the most dangerous player of all . . . for herself and for all the realms.
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Dear Manny
While running for junior class president at his university, Jared falls for his opponent who has a similar platform based on equity and inclusion, and processes his feelings by writing letters to his deceased friend Manny.
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Fable for the End of the World
By encouraging massive accumulations of debt from its underclass, a single corporation, Caerus, controls all aspects of society. Inesa lives with her brother in a half-sunken town where they scrape by running a taxidermy shop. Unbeknownst to Inesa, their cruel and indolent mother has accrued an enormous debt, enough to qualify one of her children for Caerus's livestreamed assassination spectacle : the Lamb's Gauntlet. Melinoe is a Caerus assassin, trained to track and kill the sacrificial Lambs. The product of neural reconditioning and physiological alteration, she is a living weapon, known for her cold brutality and deadly beauty. She has never failed to assassinate one of her marks. When Inesa learns that her mother has offered her as a sacrifice, at first she despairs, the Gauntlet is always a bloodbath for the impoverished debtors. But she's had years of practice surviving in the apocalyptic wastes, and with the help of her hunter brother she might stand a chance of staying alive. For Melinoe, this is a game she can't afford to lose. Despite her reputation for mercilessness, she is haunted by painful flashbacks. After her last Gauntlet, where she broke down on livestream, she desperately needs redemption. As Mel pursues Inesa across the wasteland, both girls begin to question everything: Inesa wonders if there's more to life than survival, while Mel wonders if she's capable of more than killing. And both wonder if, against all odds, they might be falling in love.
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Gradchanted
Eighteen-year-old Cass Issac doesn't believe in sticking around. She's had to move a lot due to her dads' house-flipping business--always a different school, always a new friend group. She's learned there's no need for drawn-out-goodbyes with people you'll lose touch with anyway. Which makes Grad Nite at Disneyland the perfect way to finish up high school, and have a magical last night with her best friend, Bryony--before she leaves once again. But amid the roller coaster rides and Cars Land dance party, the night turns into one big disaster. When she meets cute British bassist Freddie Sharma, she accidentally ruins his big break. Worse still? Cass gets in a major fight with Bryony. And instead of being able to make a quick exit, she's thrown for a literal time loop. Which means the queen of ghosting has nowhere to go as she's forced to relive the most dramatic night of her life, over and over. Now, Cass will have to find a way to make things right... or be stuck at Grad Nite forever
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Solving for the Unknown
To his friends back home, Viet Ho is calm and collected and a lovable oddball who nurses an obsession with forensic science. He’s relieved to head off to UC Davis and escape from being in the middle of his bickering immigrant parents. Evie Mai is a junior biology major and the eldest daughter who has never trod far off the beaten path. When a clumsy accident brings Viet and Evie together, they bond over their shared hometown and similar history—and their orbits grow smaller as their friends collide. The more time they spend with each other and support each other, mentally and emotionally, the more their friendship shifts into something else.
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Oathbound
Severed from the Legendborn Order and her ancestral ties, African American Bree binds herself to the Shadow King to hone her abilities and protect her friends while the fractured Round Table battles against the demons. Book 3 in The Legendborn Cycle.
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Banned Together
A multi-genre, young adult anthology that spotlights the transformative power of books while equipping teens to fight for the freedom to read, featuring the voices of 15 diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators
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Project Hail Mary
Ryland Grace has been asleep for a very, very long time. He's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. He can't remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. Alone on this tiny ship that's been cobbled together by every government and space agency on the planet and hurled into the depths of space, it's up to him to conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And thanks to an unexpected ally, he just might have a chance.
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To All the Boys I've Loved Before
Sixteen-year-old Lara Jean Song keeps her love letters in a hatbox her mother gave her. They aren’t love letters that anyone else wrote for her; these are ones she’s written. One for every boy she’s ever loved—five in all. When she writes, she pours out her heart and soul and says all the things she would never say in real life, because her letters are for her eyes only. Until the day her secret letters are mailed, and suddenly, Lara Jean’s love life goes from imaginary to out of control.
Outreach
Our Teen Librarian regularly visits McLean County's Juvenile Detention Center to introduce teens there to books that they might enjoy. She also visits schools in Normal during the students' lunch breaks to introduce them to great books through our Books & Bites program.
Explore & Learn
America's News

Black Freedom Struggle Website

Brainfuse HelpNow

Creativebug

Creativebug.com offers award-winning art & craft video classes taught by recognized design experts and artists.