Tag Archives: Games

VPL’s Staff Choice Awards of 2023

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Inspired by Adam’s post last year of a similar nature, I thought that it would be fun if the last HOTS post of 2023 was a communal one! And yeah, the title is clickbait; there’s no such official award…but I did reach out to my fellow VPL colleagues and ask them what their favourite and/or most memorable book, movie, show or game was that they enjoyed this year. It didn’t have to be published or created in 2023, but it did have to be currently available in our catalogue (which means I wouldn’t be featuring anything that was currently on order).

My lovely colleagues have delivered their recommendations in their own words. Check it out and discover something new (or old, as the case may be) to explore in 2024!

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Wonder Woman: Dead Earth

“Anything by Daniel Warren Johnson, his comics have been just off the wall amazing. His Wonder Woman mini-series was incredible, but his original work Do A Powerbomb and Murder Falcon are just masterpieces.

He’s the current author of the reboot of the Transformers comics that I have but haven’t started reading yet, but I’m looking forward to it.” — Tommy

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Type Talk: Gamified Reads

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In honour of VPL’s ongoing Reading Challenge and this year’s Summer Reading Club, Type Talk is a series of blog posts on non-traditional or uncommon storytelling formats, genres or structures, which both challenge our idea of what storytelling is and will perhaps inspire us to try a new kind of media we might not have before.

Today’s post will be on Gamified Reads!

You may be wondering what on earth gamification is, but have no fear, Dr. Zachary Fitz Walter has a neat definition for you:

“Gamification is the application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts. It can also be defined as a set of activities and processes to solve problems by using or applying the characteristics of game elements.

Games and game-like elements have been used to Educate, Entertain and Engage for thousands of years. Some classic game elements are; Points, Badges, and Leaderboards.”

gamify.com
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Search and Spot: Animals!

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EDIT: Take a look at the Vaughan Public Libraries COLOURING PAGES. Each branch has its own colouring sheets that portray a distinctive feature of the library, and you can print out and colour them in via that link! We would love to see your completed colourings!

Laura LjungkvistI haven’t really played spot-the-whatever games for a while now (probably since Where’s Waldo as a child, and even then not much), and whenever I have encountered them as an adult, I’ve found them to be a bit too easy to complete to truly engage with. This one though, is a treasure. Search and Spot: Animals! will keep you entertained (or frustrated) for maybe not quite hours, but at least a good half hour or so! And considering it’s a pretty slim book, I’d say it’s an amazing payoff. It really depends on how easily you can spot the animals, but I personally found it surprisingly difficult, which in turn made the experience surprisingly fun. I’d always get to, say, 9 out of 10 animals before having to start all over again because – fiddlesticks! I’ve gone through the entire 2-page spread, systematically, already! Or there’ll come a point where I start forgetting which of the insects I’ve found and which I haven’t, and, hey doesn’t this look like that insect? No, no, the pink part of its body is in another spot, and haven’t I already found it somewhere up here on the page? Now where’d that go?! Even the cover is a session of find-the-8-rabbits!

This is filed away under our junior section, but in light of the recent boom (or maybe not-so-recent? I don’t remember when those actually became popular…) of adult colouring books, I thought I should highlight these for all ages so we can satisfy our inner children!

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