'Teen Read Week' contest bringing out artists

 

In celebration of 2013 Teen Read Week, four artists from TCU High School won cash and prizes from the Montgomery Library on Wednesday, Nov. 20.

 

Teen Read Week is a national adolescent literacy program created by the Young Adult Library Services Association in 1998. It is held annually the third week of October to encourage teens to be regular readers and users of libraries.

 

The theme of this year's contest was “Seek the Unknown @ Your Library” that encourages teens to explore and learn about the unknown through mystery, adventure, science fiction and fantasy books.

 

To help encourage the teens, the library held a contest to design a bookmark. In cooperation with TCU High School, the library enlisted in the help of art teacher Tony Barnack and the Rebecca Carson, TCU High School media staff, to promote and it encourage students to participate.

 

A total of 38 students submitted designs around the “Seek the Unknown” theme. Judges Maureen Gunderson, Sue Hayes and Judith Forster-Monson had the difficult job of picking out the top four designs, but it was the design by Victoria Roberts that caught their attention. The design features an open book with literary quotes floating up through a forest to a castle at the top of the bookmark. 

 

Roberts said she wanted to design her bookmark that honored the greats of literature, so she used quotes from many famous authors. The castle at the top of the bookmark is that of the Neuschwanstein Castle that she visited when her TCU German group visited Germany. After she came up with the idea, Roberts said it took her about five hours to create it. 

 

Ashley LeBrun, who took second place, was inspired by her fascination with water and fish. Her design depicts a boy sitting on a dock with dolphins swimming below in the water. She said it fits in well with her love of aquariums. She has 20 of them, the biggest being 125 gallons.

 

Alexandra Jakes took third place for her design that incorporated fingers and an eyeball. 

 

“I was doodling one day in art and my art teacher told me to do something,” she said. 

 

So she started with the fingers because she loves drawing hands, then added an eye to reflect the theme of “Seek the Unknown”. 

 

The fourth place winner was Brittany Rezac whose design uses a dragon.

 

“I like fantasy things and movies with dragons,” she said.

 

The four winners received free pizza coupons for Domino’s Pizza, and gift cards for Amazon. Roberts received $140; LeBrun received $70; Jakes received $30, and Rezac took home $25.  

 

Roberts said she will probably use her winnings to buy some Christmas presents this year. “Some really good ones,” she said.

 

Montgomery librarian Nancy Noffke was thrilled with the number of entries they received for the contest. To keep the momentum going for the winning bookmarks, she said they are going to copy and laminate the four winning bookmarks and pass them out to students in the schools.