WPL Teens Blog

Have you ever wanted to be famous?  It seems like it would be wonderful if everyone knew your name and your face, if you got invited backstage at your favorite band’s show, and if people you didn’t even know wanted to be you.  But what if you were only famous because you broke up with your loser boyfriend, and he wrote a song about it?  That’s what happens to Audrey in Audrey, Wait!, and she’s not very happy about it.  Now all of a sudden, interviewers are calling her house night and day, she can’t even fall asleep in class without someone taking a picture of her and sending to the papers, and people she’s never even met are calling her names in online forums.  Fortunately, she has an awesome best friend to help her get through it all… but whose side is Victoria really on?

Audrey, Wait!, by Robin Benway

It’s May 2003, and Robin “Birdy” Perry, born and raised in Harlem, has just enlisted in the U.S. Army and been sent to Iraq.  He’s part of a Civilian Affairs unit, whose job is to try to improve relations with the Iraqi people.  But how can you expect people to be friendly after your fellow soldiers have just shot up their village?  And how can they live with people shooting at them, without shooting back?  Every day in Iraq seems to bring more questions than answers.

Birdy and his friends, including a blues singer from Georgia, a tough blonde from Long Island, and a stuffed monkey named Yossarian, get a close-up look at a war most of us have only seen on TV.

Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers

Jill Kismet is a Hunter.  Saved from a bloody past, she fell in love with her mentor.  Now that he’s dead, she must deal with the city’s Hellbreed on her own.  Every night, she goes out to Hunt and kill these “vermin.”

Working with the police, she is on duty whenever they find something out of the ordinary.  (Like mauled remains and werewolf-looking marks.)

Things take a turn for the worse, and her plate is piled a little too high, when she gets a case that just doesn’t add up.  Could a Were and ‘Breed (rival enemy species) be teaming up and killing Jill’s citizens?  And worse yet, does she have a thing for the new Werewolf crashing at place?

If you like dark fiction, you’ll love Night Shift.  It’s a wondeful addition to any bookshelf, sitting right next to authors like Anne Rice and Kelley Armstrong.  Lilith Saintcrow has outdone herself in this novel.

And that was all that she wrote….

City of Bones is the first book in an electrifying new trilogy, in a genre that sometimes gets called “urban fantasy”.  It’s all about demons and demonhunters and warlocks and werewolves, living side-by-side with “mundanes” in New York City, and about what happens when 15-year-old mundane Clary Fray suddenly finds herself becoming a part of this strange new world.  If that sounds a bit Harry Potter-ish, you’re on the right track, although Harry Potter never spent much time dancing at Goth clubs or riding a vampire motorcycle over the Manhattan skyline at dawn.

Clary is out clubbing with her best friend Simon one night when she sees three teenagers kill another boy — who promptly disappears.  Clary is shocked, but that’s nothing compared to how she feels when she’s attacked by a monstrous creature in her own home, or when her mother disappears.  Eventually, Clary is going to have to face up to the fact that her life is a whole lot weirder than she thought — and even she may not be the person she thought she was.

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
City of Ashes (book 2)
City of Glass (book 3, coming in 2009!)

If you are a fan of supervillains, musicals, or funny musicals about supervillains — or if you’re a fan of the people who created the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show — you may be interested in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which is now available to watch through hulu.com.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog stars Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible, a second-rate aspiring villain who longs to join the Evil League of Evil, but is thwarted at every turn by the chiseled jaw and bulging biceps of Captain Hammer, his nemesis.  Will he defeat Captain Hammer and win back Penny, the girl of his dreams?  Will his Freeze Ray ever work?  And will Bad Horse (aka The Thoroughbred of Sin) ever approve his application to the Evil League of Evil?  You’ll get the answers, but you may never get the songs out of your head!

Tim Temples is the golden boy in his small hometown of Mattoon, Illinois (home of the annual Bagelfest parade).  He comes from a family of local baseball stars — his dad even played in the minors for a while — and he likes living in a place where everyone knows him and where, when the cops pick him up for speeding, they let him off with “Oh, Tim, I didn’t see it was you.  Say hi to your dad for me.”

It’s the summer before he’s supposed to leave for college at the University of Illinois, and Tim’s got a job working at the local Kraft plant with his friends.  It’s going to be a sweet, easy summer, full of sunshine and girls and card games with his buddies.  But when Tim meets Helena, who is beautiful, mysterious, and maybe a little damaged, he’s unprepared for everything to change.  Now he finds himself wanting to spend every day and every night with Helena… and possibly the rest of his life?

I loved getting to know Tim and his town and his friends, especially Jessica, the girl next door who can’t wait to start college, and Tim’s brother Doug, who blew his college baseball scholarship and is now home, growing his beard and not doing much else.  Catch perfectly captures the feelings of excitement, uncertainty, and nostalgia that you feel in the long summer days and weeks before everything in your life changes.  Highly recommended.

Catch by Will Leitch