Picture It! The Power of Art

The Teen Read Week theme is Picture It! @your library. We love the theme for all the possibilities it brings through films, artwork, photos, and so much more. Art has the power to compel us, inspire us, and inform us. We may have never set foot in France, but we all know what the Eifel Tower looks like, because we have seen photographs and paintings, maybe even miniature statues. We find beauty in the chaos of Jackson Pollock’s paintings and Tiffany’s stained glass. Like the artwork in the NEH’s Picturing America series, art can also share our history and our past with our current and our future.

In Carrie Ryan’s TheForest of Hands and Teeth, Mary is obsessed with the ocean. Raised in the confines of the village, she has never seen anything beyond the fence that keeps the unconsecrated away. Her mother would tell her stories about the ocean and once showed her a photo of her many times great grandmother standing in the ocean as a little girl. Mary describes it as a little girl surrounded by nothingness. However, even after the picture is long gone and Mary claims to no longer believe in the ocean, she still remembers her mother’s stories and that photograph. As she listens to the sound of the wind in the trees, she will close her eyes and imagines herself surrounded by the cool water.

It brings the question to mind…how important is art in your life? Leave a comment below to be entered for a chance to win a $15 gift card to Barnes & Noble. All comments must be made by the end of Teen Read Week (October 22, 2011). 

Zombies vs Unicorns: Who do you think would win?

The debate started last year with young adult authors split on who would win in the ultimate battle of zombie vs unicorns. Think unicorns are nothing but rainbows and sparkles? Well, you haven’t checked out Rampant  by Diana Peterfreund. Her unicorns are bone smashing, battle brawling, monsters.

To settle the debate, bestselling authors JustineLarbalestier and Holly Black created the anthology  Zombies vs Unicorns featuring both zombie and unicorn tales from other bestselling authors like Meg Cabot, Libba Bray, Scott Westerfeld, DianaPeterfreund, Carrie Ryan, and Garth Nix.

We admit to still being on the fence about who would win, both sides make a compelling case. Who do you think would win?  Leave a comment below for a chance to win a copy of the Walking Dead: Days Gone Bye graphic novel. All comments must be posted by the end of Teen Read Week (October 22, 2011). 

Let the Zombie Games begin!

Zombies are all over the media and it is no surprise that zombies can even be connected to online gaming. From role playing shooter games like Call of Duty to apps like Plants vs Zombies, the object of the game is to use your skills to well…survive.

We even found some variations on old favorites with a zombie twist. On college campuses across the country, coeds are playing a variation on the game of tag called Humans vs. Zombies. The object of the game is for all the humans to be turned into zombies or for the humans to survive a set amount of time. While those of you who watch Big Bang Theory might have heard of RockPaper Scissors Lizard Spock, have you every played the game using zombies? Thanks to the folks at Think Geek for giving us this idea:

Fearless Leader: "One, two, three, SHOOT!"
Rules Lawyer: "What's that?"
Free Thinker: "It's a zombie."
Rules Lawyer: "There is no Zombie in Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock."
Free Thinker: "Braaaaaainsssss."
Rules Lawyer: "There are no Brains in Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock."
Merchant Monkey: "Lizard and Spock have Brainnnnnnnsssss."
Second Merchant: "Right. And Rock bludgeons Zombie into a small pile of blood, teeth, and hair."
Free Thinker: "Awwww."
Fearless Leader: "Are you two done? Okay. Again. One, two, three, SHOOT!"
Rules Lawyer: *raised eyebrow*
Free Thinker: "It's the Large Hadron Collider."

--From thinkgeek.com

What are some of your favorite zombie games? Leave a comment below for a chance to win a copy of the Walking Dead: Days Gone Bye graphic novel. All comments must be posted by the end of Teen Read Week (October 22, 2011). 

Top Ten Ways to Know You are a Zombie!

Follow us on Twitter tonight from 5-6pm EST @DeGroodtLibrary for zombie trivia using hashtag #ZAA11. We will have even more chances to win great prizes from our partner Famous Faces and Funnies Comics and Toys.

In the meantime, here in Letterman style are the Top Ten Ways to Know You are a Zombie!

10. You realize you only like your boyfriend/girlfriend for their brains.
9. What you thought was a marathon, is actually people running in fear away from you.
8. You literally shamble to school/work in the morning.
7. You find yourself wanting to hang at the mall a lot…after hours.
6. You find “hoard” has new meaning.
5. You find yourself unable to say anything beyond “braaiinnns”
4. You develop a paralyzing fear of shotguns, baseball bats, flame throwers, and axes.
3. You not only start to lose your hair, but also fingers, toes, and ears.
2. You find it hard to make friends because you keep trying to take a bite out of them.

And the number one way to know you are a zombie…

1. You find yourself spontaneously breaking into dance moves in graveyards after dark.

Beware the Apocalypse!

Did you watch the premier of season two of AMC’s Walking Dead? Have a favorite zombie chiller that you love to watch? Back in 1968, George A Romero introduced audiences to a new type of horror film like they had never seen before, a cult classic was born. Night of the LivingDead continues to thrill audiences and has even been selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Hulu 's link to Night of the Living Dead (1968) NR

Michael Jackson’s Thriller is another classic zombie flick that continues to dazzle audiences. Check out the following youtube videos that pay tribute to the video.

Click here to view Thriller...with LEGOs

Of course we would have none of these without first having Richard Matheson’s classic 1954 novel, Iam Legend. The novel was influential to the development of the zombie horror genre because it introduced the theme of a disease born apocalypse. This was the inspiration behind Romero’s classic. Can you name the other two films based on Matheson’s book? What are some of your favorite zombie films? Once again, comment below for a chance to win a prize from Famous Faces and FunniesComics and Toys.  All comments must be posted by the end of Teen Read Week (October 22, 2011). 

Are you prepared for the Zombie Author Apocalypse?

It’s Teen Read Week at the library! The theme this year is PictureIt @ your library and in celebration we are paying homage to the classic silver screen zombies. To help us celebrate, we will have an author visit, made possible through a grant from YALSA and the Dollar General Literacy Foundation, the Satellite Beach Library and the Franklin T DeGroodt Memorial Library will host the author of the YA bestseller TheForest of Hands and Teeth, Carrie Ryan. That’s right, prepare yourself cause it is time for the Zombie Author Apocalypse. We invite you to join us all week as we discuss zombies, zombies, and more zombies.

From theme parks to commercials to television, zombies seem to be everywhere lately.  Why zombies? Many have said that they are a metaphor for today’s society and well, zombies are fun. This idea of survival has been used by companies to promote awareness of their product in new and interesting ways. Even the CDC has used the concept of surviving a zombie apocalypse to conceptualize on how if you are prepared for a zombie outbreak then you can survive anything (we Floridians know that this is really hurricane survival in the guise of zombie survival, so guess you could say we are ready).

To kick off our Zombie Author Apocalypse, we ask: What would you do to survive the pending zombie uprising? Comment below and you might just win a prize from our own Famous Faces and Funnies Comics and Toys.  All comments must be posted by the end of Teen Read Week (October 22, 2011). 

Book Review: The Shattering

The Shattering 

by Karen Healey

• Reading level: Young Adult
• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; 1 edition (September 5, 2011)
• ISBN: 978-0316125727

Reviewed by Leah S. 

The Shattering was a magnificently written book though I would not recommend it to any child under the age of eleven due to explicit language and material used throughout the book.  Karen Healey helped to portray the reality, despair, and frustration of the situation that the main characters were in by using the tone that many teens can relate to today.  This tone made the book an easy and relatable read.  With each chapter narrated by alternating characters, the reader will be able to connect to the way the characters portray themselves and really delve into their personality traits.  Keri, Sione, and Janna (extremely different from one another but all have one thing in common) had each lost their older brother due to apparent suicides. However, when they start to put the puzzle pieces of the suicides together and discover a pattern; they come to the conclusion that their brothers did not commit suicide-- they were murdered.  Throughout the book, Healey describes obstacles that the three friends encountered throughout their journey; Sione must discover who he is and what he wants to do in life, Janna deals with her true love, and Keri reveals her best-kept secret.  Little did the friends know, there was something more than a murderer behind the deaths of older brothers over the years, something supernatural that was keeping their town of Summerton from falling apart.  People that they trust are now suspected of the murders and many stones are overturned with secrets and hints hiding beneath them.  The Shattering is recommended to anyone who wants to read a gripping and page-turning novel or anyone who had geared their preferences toward science fiction, fantasy, or mystery.  Karen Healey prevails with this thoughtfully-written, infatuating piece of literature that is sure to astound any reader.