So it's a well known fact that I DON'T do horror! No books, no movies, no tapes (especially NOT of The Ring..), no campfires ghost stories, no nothing, - etc, etc. add into infinitum. It's not so much what the actual books and movies do themselves to creep me out.. but what my imagination does to itself afterwards... for like 6 months, or a year, or however long it takes to make me sleep NOT at night & behave like jitter bug all day. Call me a wimp. I Don't care. I know there are others out there like me. As they say "You are Not Alone..." . So... If you are looking for someone to recommend you the most gruesome, fearsome, awesomest scares... that would NOT be me. Hence the title "Halloween for Scaredy Cats"

I DO however love weird, strange and slightly scary things, like pet vampires, spider fairies, and Harry Potter. The Wikkeling by Steve Arnston falls into this category. Scary - but not, the illustrations however are cool and strange enough for all. A mix of twisted B/W silhouettes ala Arthur Rackham and detailed pencil/watercolour collages in the vien of Tony Diterlizzi (Spiderwick), illustrator Daniela Jaqlenka Terrazinni does a good job of making the book absolutely intriguing.

Speaking on DiTerlizzi his black line ink drawing in Mary Botham-Howitt's 1829 poem "The Spider and the Fly" are definitely shall we say... juicy.

And Vampires? Well if you like Vampires you might actually hate this book. but if you can twist your head around a Vampire being CUTE, yes as in cuddly, then Hipira - a collaboration of Katsuhiro Otomo & Shinji Kimura (who collaborated on Steamboy) is for you. Funny and visually delightful especially if you like square spirals, square spirals, square spirals, square...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! * this blog is dedicated to all my fellow scardy cats out there - I know you're there ;)-

Teen Read Week is from October 16th -- October 22^nd.

To celebrate we are having a photo contest with the YALSA (the Young Adult Library Services Association)

The Challenge: Choose an awesome book and take a photo that visually represents it in a interesting, unique way.

Prizes:

• YALSA prize: an e-reader loaded with all sorts of awesome books as well as a signed copy of Jay Asher's new book Future of Us.
• CPL prize: A gift package from Calgary Public Library including a gift certificate to Chapters Indigo.

Contest rules: Because we are running the contest with YALSA, we are following their rules.

How to enter: You need to enter your photo in both contests to be eligible for both prizes. To enter YALSA's contest send your photo here. and to enter CPL's contest upload your photo to Teens Create and email it to teenservices@calgarypubliclibrary.com , please include your name in the email.

For more info email teenservices@calgarypubliclibrary.com

Deadline: October 31^st

Fall is a Beautiful, Bleak, Bizarre and Bountiful season. Things start falling apart and looking strange, half eaten, fiery and orange. You can smell the death and decay, feel the sting of the wind, and the wind of things slowly but surely changing into the mood for Halloween. Crisp fall leaves fall down making us cold and wanting to snuggle up with a good cozy book. It is a suitable time to explore the bizarre. We have some amazing YA Graphic Novels (aka comic books) that have beautiful art and strange stories. So much so they are more like ART novels. The black ink drawing's in Salem Brownstone could be compared to Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations of Salome by Oscar Wilde. An unusual story involving an unexpected inheritance, a contortionist, the circus and Salem's mission to battle out evil using his amoeba like familiar and a crystal ball to restore the balance of good in the world. The black and white graphic detail is stunning. More like Art Nouveau gone comic book.

For Bizarre/Strange Steampunk is the New Black with Tim Burton's new Alice in Wonderland movie being exemplary of this style. We have a new cool graphic novel inspired by the movie, the dvd, blu-ray, 2 movie book (s), and the CD. Avril Lavigne who composed the title track Alice on this album: Almost Alice is playing in Calgary at the Saddledome tonight! (October 11th). Rounding this out are 3 YA Graphic Novels that are definetly NOT childish: Alice in Wonderland (based on the new film), Wonderland (a fun re-imagining) and Hatter M, vol.1: The Looking Glass Wars (a little bit like Mad Hatter Karate!).

Alice is considered to be the first book that was written not as a moral tale for children but with the specific enjoyment of it's audience in mind. Technically classified as Non-sense Literature and having never lost it's grip on our imaginations, these books do much more than entertain. When our lives are turned upside down,

when we fall through the rabbit hole, when we enter the matrix: they are tales of survival in strange and bizarre circumstances. They stretch our minds and imaginations, enabling us to conjure solutions to the strange sudden bizarre and REAL events of our lives - like your grandfather dying, suddenly growing pubic hair (how weird was that!), moving to a new house, having sex for the first time, finding out you have an unknown sibling, accidentally being pregnant, being kicked out of your house, etc. etc., etc. At the library we have 11 illustrated versions of Wonderland, two of my favourite being Ralph Steadman's which isalso very Art nouveau/Aubrey Beardsley-ish and Robert Ingpen's 2009 edition illustrated with finely detailed pencil/watercolour illustrations from unusual perspectives. This is my favourite Alice to date.

Paul Stewart's Edge Chronicle's illustrated by Christopher Riddell are also fantastically strang. Riddell's The Emporer of Absurdia definitely falls into Dr. Suess territory both in terms of graphic illustration and imagination. There are even echos of Dali. Fine line work and stunning hat collections!

Shaun Tan has written some great books for down days. These include The Red Tree, The Arrival (a YA graphic novel) and The Lost Thing expanded as Lost & Found and recently made into a short animated film. Watch the Trailer here! The Lost Thing reflects on the doldrums of conformity and things that just don't quite fit in - highlighting the importance and value of the weird and the wonderful. Happy Fall!

..... to be contiued (we have such a beautiful, bleak & bizarre collection you can look forward to more!)

Graphix are great…Ok, maybe not quite in the “ginormous” way that I've said, unless it is relatively large book, but it is a cool word that starts with G!

Most of us grew up with comic books in one form or another. My earliest memories of comics, like many, included following the adventures of Snoopy, one of the many recognizable characters from Charles Schultz’s Peanuts. And then there was the mischievous Calvin from Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes series (which, by the way, we also just happen to carry in the library.) Calvin and Hobbes is an irresistible mix of a little boy with a big imagination, who faces everything from evil babysitters to dinosaurs, teachers and a mild mannered little girl named Susie Derkins, all the while combating boredom. So if you ever need to combat boredom yourself, Calvin might be just the ticket.

Our Graphix collection gets more sophisticated than a mere collection of comics, however. There are many book series that are now Graphix, including the famous Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys book series, and the Warriors series, based on a popular book series about a group of feral cats. We also have tons of Manga, with series such as Naruto, Dragon Ball Z, and Shaman King, to name but a few. My favorite Graphix happen to be our non-fiction graphix.

Non-fiction you ask? Yes, non-fiction. I recently read Alia’s Mission Saving the Books of Iraq by Mark Alan Stamaty (YA Graphix 020.92 BAK). It is inspired by the real life story of Alia Muhammad Baker, a librarian who became the chief librarian of the Central Library in Basra, Iraq. When she heard about the possibility of a war being ravaged on her city, she begged the Iraqi officials to let her relocate some of her books, for fear they would be damaged. While Iraqi officials refused her request, she did it herself – finding places through friends throughout the city to house thousands of books (including a book that was hundreds of years old.) When war did break out, bombs destroyed the library, but not the books, thanks to Alia’s heroic efforts. You can read non-fiction in our graphix collection, including in our teen zones at your local public library!

If you haven't noticed, the bloggers here in the Teen Zone get pretty freakin' psyched about books. And there's one coming out on Tuesday that has us positively tingling. It's called "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children", and I have literally had my copy on hold from the second I heard about it.

Inspired by the freaky and crazy photography that came out of the Victorian Era, author Ransom Riggs pulled together some of the weirdest ones he could find, and wove a story around them.

It's about sixteen-year-old Jacob's discovery of an abandoned building that used to house children of extraordinary --and possibly dangerous-- talents. It's been labelled "tense", "moving", and "wondrously strange" and even though the book hasn't been released to the public yet, 20th Century Fox has already scooped the movie rights.

So here's the deal:

We're so excited about this book, we're going to start giving it away for free! We have several copies available to be won through the TEENS CREATE portion of this website.

There are two ways to submit an entry:

1) Create an image of the weird and wonderful. You're free to use digital photo-editing tools, but why not try playing around with perspective and exposure the way the Victorians used to? They loved things like carnival freak shows, fairies, and the paranormal.

2) Write a limerick as a caption to one of the photos in the image above! For example:

"There once was a man so balding,

That the back of his head was appaling.

He'd cover it with paint

(which attractive, it ain't)

and it earned him some awful name-calling."

Believe me, it won't be hard to write one that's better than that.

Once you've created your entry, all you have to do is log-in to TEENS CREATE, and upload your image or your limerick. Make sure you indicate somewhere in the title that it's an entry for "The fReAkY cRaZy Contest".

The contest closes June 16th, so you have about two weeks to get cracking. Once we have all of your submissions, we'll enter them in the draw for the book prizes. We'll inform everyone shortly after that who the winners are!

And just in case you guys need some paranormalic, steam-punky, or down-right creepy reads to tide you over until this one comes out, check out these:

Freedom to Read Week happens every year and is a chance for us all to think about our right to choose what we read. Every year our right to read what we want to is challenged in many ways. Books are often banned, reporters lose their jobs because of opinions they are expressing, and often material is not even published or purchased because of its content. So, we are holding a contest to celebrate the freedom to read!

Here are the rules:

Express your thoughts on the freedom to read with words, film or graphic arts.

Choose one of the following methods:

Make a poster: draw, paint, or use photography and other graphic arts (8 ½ x 14” or 11 x 17”)

Write: a poem, short story, or essay (max. 300 words)

Create a film: (3 min. or less)

All content must be original, except for short, cited quotations.

Criteria:
1. Persuade an audience and support your point of view.
2. Use techniques of form effectively to engage an audience.

Contest is open to Calgary students in Grades 7 – 9. Include your name, school, grade, and telephone number with your entry. Enter by email: freedomtoread@calgarypubliclibrary.com AND upload to Teens Create (http://www.calgarypubliclibrary.com/teenscreate); OR submit your hardcopy to any Calgary Public Library location. One entry per person. Entries must be received no later than Wednesday February 9th 2011.

And of course...there will be prizes!

First of all, let's talk about SLAM!

SLAM is a poetry competition. Poets bring 3 works that are timed to be exactly 3 minutes in length. They recite these works to an audience and a panel of judges, selected from the audience, gives them a 'grade.' There are 3 rounds of recitation and judging, after which a winner is selected!

I know, I know, you're thinking poetry?! Reciting poetry out loud?!! Judging?!!!

Let me promise you, this is not your grandmother's poetry.

A poetry SLAM! brings poetry to a whole new level--a beat-packed, crowd-cheering, performance-based, energy-filled level. A poetry SLAM! is about rhythm and expression. A poetry SLAM! is performance art that is fun for the performer and the audience. Let me repeat: this is not your grandmother's poetry (no offence, grandma).

Now if you're not into competition, no problem. You can come, listen, cheer, and judge. As I said, the audience is integral to the success of SLAM!

But if you do want to compete, here's how:

Bring 3 poems, each of them no longer than 3 minutes. You may not get to perform them all, but bring them just in case...and...get ready to SLAM!

Upcomming Youth SLAM!s

February 12 - 1:00pm - 2nd floor Central Library

March 12, 2011 - 1:00pm - 2nd floor Central Library

Open Mic Night

This is your chance to try out your new poem, play your new song, do your stand-up comedy routine, show off your mad dancing skills. You name it. It is open mic night. And it is FREE.

When: November 16 from 7-8 pm

Where:Louise Riley Library - 1904-14 Ave NW

This is my first time posting on the teen blog, and as a way of letting you know what I'm about, I'm going to write about something that I'm really interested in.

I’ve been helping out with all ages music shows in Calgary for a while now, and thought that I would share some of my favorite local-under-18 bands. This is a only a small selection of teen bands who play in Calgary and if I don’t mention your favorite, or a band you play in, then message me with the myspace link and let me know what I’m missing out on.

For those of you who already go to all-ages shows, I'm really looking forward to hearing who your favorite under -18 bands are.

And for those of you who have never been to an all ages show, then holy smokes, welcome to your cheat-sheet of rad, all-ages live music in Calgary.

Most of these guys (and gal) play shows pretty regularly and probably have something coming up in the near future, check the myspace links for tracks, updates and show postings.

Disclaimer: This list is in no particular order.

Faux Fur

http://www.myspace.com/fauxfurfakefur

Jean Sebastien (brains behind Faux Fur / Priests and countless other projects that he is probably cooking up somewhere) is totally hustling right now. He plays a ton of shows, releases a ton of material and even has his own label called Yew Nork records .

Kumon Plaza

http://www.myspace.com/kumonplaza

Whoa dance party! Dylan makes electronic music that gets people clapping, dancing and remembering how much they loved that old Legend of Zelda soundtrack. He is from Edmonton, but plays in Calgary a lot and is building a big group of fans down here.

Julianna Hindemith

http://www.myspace.com/juliannahindemithmusic

Juliana makes super nice acoustic songs and has a great stage presence, complete with her epic rock-chick-hair-flips. If you’re into folksy acoustic vibes, she is one to check out for sure.

Cartoon Violence

http://www.myspace.com/patrickstarnightlife

A favorite young Calgary band, these guys are really fun live and are super messy and loud. It looks like their myspace hasn’t been touched in a while, but if you see their name on a poster just go to the show!

Here on the Sun

http://www.myspace.com/hereonthesun

OK I’ll admit it. I love the Harmonica. Plus, any band who’s name makes HOTS as an acronym, has got something figured out. They’re playing a show on the 8^th of October that should be awesome.