Guitar Hero Tournament Winners!

Eleven Guitar Hero enthusiasts participated in Englewood Public Library’s first gaming event on March 14. To win, players had to show their mastery of Easy, Normal, and Hard levels of the game, and we had pizza, snacks, card games, and magazines to keep the players and their audience occupied. The top three winners were each awarded a gift card from the new Gamestop on River Point Sheridan.

Congrats to our winners!

First Place: Samantha T.
Second Place: Veronica Z.
Third Place: Tyler R.

We are looking in to providing more teen gaming events, so if you have opinions on which games or consoles you’d like to see, leave a comment on this post or send me an e-mail. I’m also looking for recommendations for great board games, tabletop roleplaying games, and card games.

New Books and Graphic Novels – March 2009

New Fiction
Into the Dark: An Echo Falls Mystery. Peter Abrahams. Y Abrahams.
Thirteen-year-old Sherlock Holmes aficionado Ingrid Levin-Hill tries to clear her grandfather’s name when he is accused of murdering an environmental activist found dead on his farm.

Forever Princess. Meg Cabot. Y Cabot.
Although she has recently completed a 400-page romance novel, Princess Mia, in her last month of high school, has yet to pick a college, find a prom dress, or decide if her boyfriend J. P. is really The One.

Pandemonium. Daryl Gregory. YPB Gregory.
In the 1950s, ordinary people of varying ages and backgrounds are possessed by entities that seem to spring from the collective unconscious, that many would call demons. It is believed that the key to resolving this plague pivots around the possessed Del Pierce; for whom the cure may be worse than the disease.

The Ghost’s Child. Sonya Hartnett. Y Hartnett.
When a mysterious child appears in her living room one day, the elderly Maddy tells him the story of her love for the wild and free-spirited Feather, who tried but failed to live a conventional life with her, and her search for him on a fantastical voyage across the seas.

North of Beautiful. Justina Chen Headley. Y Headley.
Terra, a sensitive, artistic high school senior born with a facial port-wine stain, struggles with issues of inner and outer beauty with the help of her Goth classmate Jacob.

Venomous. Christopher Krovatin. Y Krovatin.
Since age eight, New York City high school junior Locke Vinetti has experienced bouts of overpowering anger, but now that he has friends who accept him and a true girlfriend, “the venom” threatens to destroy all that he loves.

Tender Morsels. Margo Lanagan. Y Lanagan.
A young woman who has endured unspeakable cruelties is magically granted a safe haven apart from the real world and allowed to raise her two daughters in this alternate reality, until the barrier between her world and the real one begins to break down.

Eternal, by Cynthia Leitich Smith

Author: Cynthia Leitich Smith
Publisher: Candlewick
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy/Horror
Pages: 320
Call number: Y Smith (available soon!)

A twist on the boy meets girl story: Guardian angel watches over teenage girl and falls in love. Girl is marked for death according to the laws of Heaven. Guardian angel makes big, big mistake in saving girl from her appointed death and loses his wings as punishment. Meanwhile, because of guardian angel’s screw-up, girl is captured and made into vampire. Fast forward a year. Girl is a vicious, blood-sucking fiend, the daughter of the vampire king, and ex-angel is sent to their estate to save her soul and earn back his wings. Bloody hijinks ensue.

I haven’t read Tantalize, the first book set in this alternate world, so I can’t compare the two, but Smith’s marriage of dark humor and true horror is sometimes jarring but always compelling (and sometimes very funny, though you may cringe at the same time). Heaven appears to be a stuffy bureaucratic organization (a memo from the angel Gabriel to another angel, including a request to fill out forms, is very amusing), while the vampire world is reminiscent of excruciatingly polite high-society on the surface, with goth decadence and callus displays of cruelty underneath. That alone make this book worth reading, but Zachary and Miranda, the boy and girl in question, are also intriguing characters throughout. In a triumph of characterization, Miranda remains sympathetic despite her descent into monster-hood. The ending to the love story (because it does become one, though a twisted one) is moving and hopeful in a way you don’t expect, as well.

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