5th-Grade Orientation to the Tween Area: Wednesday, June 1 at 3:30pm. Have you heard of our Tween Area? We have a dedicated collection and space for tweens, grades 5 through 7, in our library. Want to check it out and make it your new library home? Stop by our tween area orientation to learn about the space, guidelines, activities and events. For current 5th graders.

Tween Maker Team: Thursday, June 2 at 4pm. We'll teach you cool crafts, skills and make memories along the way! Each week, we'll make something new?—from cooking to zines with special guests teaching us how to make things. For tweens in grades 5-7. Register once for all sessions: 6/9 & 6/16. Participants must be able to attend all sessions.

Pride Rocks! Friday, June 10 at 4pm. Take your pride outside! We'll have sidewalk chalk and painting rocks to decorate! Beautify the library grounds with us or take your creations home! No sign up needed. Grade 6-12. Please email Courtenay for more information.

Online ACT Practice Exam: Saturday, June 18 at 9am. Taking full-length practice tests under timed conditions is essential to being ready for the official test. A proctored practice exam will help to build testing endurance and give you a real-time snapshot of your testing performance. Every exam comes with a free 30-minute score report review with a Revolution Prep testing expert to assess specific strengths and areas of improvement. Materials will be emailed to students 24 hours before the exam. Please complete registration on Revolution Prep's website. Can’t make this date? Check out the other dates and times for a practice exam!

Anime/Manga Club: Friday, June 24 at 4:30pm. Meet and hang out with lovers of all things anime! Activities will range from anime screenings to discussion of our favorite series, manga share and swap, anime-themed crafts, cosplay workshops, art trades and more! Ages 12 and up. This month: we'll screen a series & eat some snacks! 

Overbooked: A Teen Book Club. Monday, June 27 at 7pm. Have too much to do? Want to add something else to your plate? Join our book club, directed at the overscheduled teen! We'll discuss the book while munching on snacks. This month we'll be discussing TBD. Please pick up the book at the Main Desk. Registration is required. Please reach out to Megan at for more information.

Needle Felt a Totoro! Thursday, June 30 at 7pm. Learn how to needle felt wool with Pop up Art School. Use a barbed needle and merino wool roving to create a neighborly character from an Anime movie. In this beginner’s class, you’ll learn how to sculpt basic shapes and attach them together. This event will be in person in the Teen Area. Needle felting is fun, easy and relaxing! For ages 12+. Registration for this event will begin Monday, June 6.

Read Beyond the Beaten Path: Summer 2022! Have a blast this summer by joining Read Beyond the Beaten Path with Newton Free Library from June 13 to August 31. Rising 6th - 12th graders can use our online reading log to keep track of the time spent reading. Remember, all reading counts--read a book, magazine or e-book; listen to an audiobook; read aloud to a sibling; read aloud with your family. Tweens and teens entering 6th-12th in the 2022-23 school year can win prizes! Register and log your reading on Beanstack to be entered in a drawing to win a prize each week of summer reading (6/13-8/21). Write a book review on Beanstack; complete an adventure; or attend a library program (and fill in the relevant adventure on the site). Prizes will include experiences such as a kayak outing and cool stuff to enjoy such as gift certificates to bookstores. You can find registration, summer programming and everything else summer at newtonfreelibrary.net/summer.

This is Just a Test by Madelyn Rosenberg & Wendy Wan-Long Shang - In 1983, seventh-grader David Da-Wei Horowitz has a lot to worry about -- his bar mitzvah is coming soon, his Jewish and Chinese grandmothers argue about everything, his teammates for the upcoming trivia contest, Scott and Hector, do not like each other, he is beginning to notice girls, and Scott has persuaded him to begin digging a fallout shelter just in case the Cold War heats up. Place a hold on the physical book here!

Ellen Outside the Lines by A.J. Sass - Ellen, an autistic thirteen-year-old, navigates a new city, shifting friendships, a growing crush and her queer and Jewish identities while on a class trip to Barcelona, Spain. Place a hold on the physical book here!

Turtle Boy by M. Evan Wolkenstein - A seventh grader struggles through a new school year marked by bullying, his teacher's insistence that he return captured turtles to the wild and a bar mitzvah community service project that requires him to spend time visiting a terminally ill boy in the hospital. Place a hold on the physical book here!

Cool for the Summer by Dahlia Adler - Seventeen-year-old Lara's dream of catching Chase Harding's eye finally comes true even as Jasmine, with whom she just spent a confusing, oddly romantic summer, reenters her life. Place a hold on the physical book here!

Color Me In by Natasha Diaz - A coming-of-age story of friendship, first romance and religious intolerance finds a 16-year-old girl, Naveah, in an affluent New York City suburb confronting her biracial identity for the first time when she relocates to her divorced mom's family home in Harlem. Place a hold on the physical book here!

From Dust, a Flame by Rebecca Podos - On her seventeenth birthday, Hannah begins exhibiting impossible, temporary mutations--gills one day and horns the next--that are the consequences of a desperate bargain her mother made with a sheyd decades ago, and to break the family curse, Hannah and her brother track down their mother's estranged family and discover a legacy that traces back to the Golem of Prague. Place a hold on the physical book here!