SCPL Teen Blog!

Teen Halloween Party
Friday, October 29th @ 5pm
in the Barrett Room

What are you doing for Halloween? Do you feel like you're too old to trick or treat? Come spend Friday night with your friends at the library! Dress up in costume to enter our costume contest, play games, eat snacks, and have fun! Still not convinced? Check out some pictures from past years and see how much fun it is:

I’ve never read a book by Edith Wharton, but the title and inside flap copy of this book convinced me to read her biography! Edith was born into a rich family and lived a life of privilege with inherited money, servants, a summer house and annual European vacations. As a child she loved to read and write, which worried her mother since smart girls were hard to marry off. She needn’t have worried though, as Edith married Teddy Wharton at age 23 and continued to lead a very cushy life. She wrote on and off and published her first work of fiction at age 29. Being an author (or authoress, as she was called) in those days was brave. It wasn’t seen as a respectable career, and yet Edith managed to write prolifically and publish under her real name while mostly keep her social standing. She’s best known for writing The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, and The Age of Innocence (for which she was the first female to win the Pulitzer Prize). She experienced her share of tragedy (a mostly unhappy marriage, a husband who lost his mind, some family betrayal), but in general I think her life was pretty charmed. She got to see a lot of the world, had a wonderful circle of intellectual friends (novelist Henry James was among them), and she was a popular and successful writer in her time. Reading this book was interesting for me because I had conflicting feelings about Edith. On one hand I am biased against her because she had so many advantages that most writers don’t (*cough* independently wealthy *cough*) and led such an interesting life that I’m jealous. The book goes into some detail about her circumstances (for example, her yearly allowance was the equivalent of $230,000 in today’s money), but never paints her as grateful for any of it, and I think that’s what bothers me. On the other hand, I respect that she didn’t let society convince her not to write or to stay in an unhappy marriage. I found the book fascinating and enjoyed the photos sprinkled throughout the text. I checked out Ethan Frome and am excited to actually read a book by Edith Wharton now that I know so much about her!

Picture the Dead is a rich blend of mystery, ghost story, Civil War history, and nineteenth-century scrapbook. Illustrations of fictional characters in the book are based on real Civil War era photographs from the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. Inspired by a spooky old house near a graveyard where they stayed during a family vacation, Adele Griffin and illustrator Lisa Brown came up with many eerie ideas for their book.  When they stumbled upon a dusty trunk full of decaying Civil War memorabilia, including letters, photographs and scrapbooks in the basement, their story and illustrations began to take shape.  During this period in history, there was a great interest in spirit mediums, and some people actually believed that you could take pictures of ghosts. Jennie, the main character in this story, teams up with a spirit photographer to try to find answers to questions surrounding the death of her fiancé who was killed in the Civil War. If you enjoy history, mystery and artistry, you’ll find this is an entertaining book.

Those who enjoy this book may also enjoy Amy Gray‘s How to be a Vampire, which follows the same format, though is significantly more somber (as vampires tend to be).

Never Slow Dance with a Zombie by E. Van Lowe