Books & Media for Zombie Fans

This week the library, BASE (Building A Safer Evansville) and the Evansville Youth Center team up to bring middle school students a safe, entertaining Halloween event: our first-ever Zombie Night!

Here are the important details:

When: Wednesday, October 30^th

What time: 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Where: Creekside Place, 104 Maple Street

Who: 6^th – 8^th grade students

What goes on at a Zombie Night? Here’s a sampling:

• Zombie lurch race
• Zombie (or victim!) costume contest
• Movieoke (just like karaoke, but with movies instead of songs)
• Creepy cupcake bar
• Zombie mural making

To get you ready for this evening of fun, here are a handful of zombie books, graphic novels, and movies that you can find at the library:

General fiction about zombies:

Zombies vs. Unicorns

World War Z: an oral history of the zombie war by Max Brooks (also available as an audiobook)

The End Games by T. Michael Martin

Zom-B Series by Darren Shan

My Boyfriend is a Monster: I love him to pieces by Evonne Tsang

Zombie movies:

George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead

Shaun of the Dead

World War Z

Do you have questions or want to RSVP for Zombie Night? Call the library at 882-2260 or stop in and see us! We'll see you at Creekside on the 30th!

Books for Football Fans

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s football season! Whether you’re a die-hard Packers or Badgers fan or find the obsession with the sport to be totally nerve-wracking, there are books and more for you at the library.

Books on the ins and outs of the sport:

• Football Made Simple: a spectator’s guide by Dave Ominski and P.J. Harari
• The Pro Football Fan’s Companion: how to watch the game like an expert by Ralph Hickok

Books about leagues, teams, and people:

• LT Over the Edge: tackling quarterbacks, drugs, and a world beyond football by Lawrence Taylor with Steve Serby
• Packers: green, gold, and glory edited by Bill Syken
• The National Forgotten League: entertaining stories and observations from pro football’s first fifty years by Dan Daly
• Green Bay Packers: trials, triumphs, and tradition by William Povletich
• Paterno by Joe Posnanski
• I Beat the Odds: from homelessness, to the blind side, and beyond by Michael Oher, with Dan Yaeger
• Through My Eyes by Tim Tebow
• Where Men Win Glory: the odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer
• Boys Will Be Boys: the glory days and the party nights of the Dallas Cowboys dynasty by Jeff Pearlman
• Favre by Brett Favre
• When Pride Still Mattered: a life of Vince Lombardi by David Maraniss
• Friday Night Lights: a town, a team, and a dream by H.G. Bissinger

Football movies:

• All Things Fall Apart
• The Blind Side
• Leatherheads
• The Game Plan
• Gridiron Gang
• Facing the Giants
• The Longest Yard
• Friday Night Lights
• Radio
• Rudy

Stop in or give us a call if you’d like us to put one of these titles on hold for you, or do so yourself by signing in to RockCat. And enjoy the rest of the 2013 football season!

Celebrate the Wisconsin Book Festival!

This week we celebrate the Wisconsin Book Festival, which comes to our neck of the woods (it’s based in Madison at the branches of Madison Public Library) at the end of the week. The weekend is packed full of literary events, from author signings to writing workshops to poetry readings, and on and on. So, on the blog this week, I thought it would be fun to highlight some of the wonderful Wisconsin writers we have in our collection. 

Sidenote: our wonderful library clerk Barb N. has been setting up a little display next to the CD rack highlighting a different Wisconsin writer every couple of weeks, so keep an eye out for those!

Popular Wisconsin writers:

• Jerry Apps – a popular writer of Wisconsin farm and rural life, Mr. Apps writes both fiction and non-fiction/memoirs.
• Ilsa J. Bick – a young adult author from Wisconsin. Ms. Bick’s books are mysteries with a blend of fantasy and realism.
• Jacquelyn Mitchard – writes for all ages, including picture books, young adult mystery novels, and love stories for adults.
• Kathleen Ernst – Ms. Ernst’s books follow a range of Wisconsin cultural mainstays, from the American Girl stories to a mystery involving Old World Wisconsin!
• Ruth Ann Montgomery – Evansville’s own wonderful historian and former library director has a number of books that celebrate Evansville’s storied past.
• Jennifer Chiaverini – Ms. Chiaverini is the author of the popular Elm Creek Quilts novel series.

Other Wisconsin titles to enjoy:

• Uprising: how Wisconsin renewed the politics of protest, from Madison to Wall Street by John Nichols
• Bottoms Up: A toast to Wisconsin’s historic bars and breweries by Jim Draeger and Mark Speltz
• Cut from plain cloth: the 2011 Wisconsin workers rallies by Dennis Weidemann
• Putting Down Roots: Gardening insights from Wisconsin’s early settlers by Marcia C. Carmichael
• While America Sleeps: a wake-up call for the post-9/11 era by Russ Feingold
• Beyond the Trees: stories of Wisconsin forests by Candice Gaukel Andrews
• The Round Barn: a biography of an American farm by Jacqueline Dougan Jackson
• A Nation Within a Nation: voices of the Oneidas in Wisconsin edited by L. Gordon McLester III and Laurence M. Hauptmann
• A Short History of Wisconsin by Erika Janik
• The Flavor of Wisconsin: a history of food and eating in the Badger State by Harva Hachten and Terese Allen
• Star Lake Saloon and Housekeeping Cottages by Sara Rath
• Building Taliesin: Frank Lloyd Wright’s home of love and loss by Ron McCrea

There are many more where those came from, but we’re out of time for today! If you make it up to Madison this weekend, have a great time at the Book Festival!

P.S. Our assistant director Laura will be up at the Central Branch of the Madison Public Library hosting drop-in art-making workshops all day on Saturday October 19^th. Feel free to drop by and make some art with her!