App of the Week: iDrakula

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Name: iDrakula
Platform: iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch (requires iOS 4)
Cost: Free preview (first five days) and $1.99 to finish the story

I’m kind of obsessed with Dracula and I rather enjoy my iPhone, so when I heard that Bekka Black had written a modern retelling of Dracula that I could read on my phone, I had to have it. ‘ Like Stoker’s original version, the story is told in correspondence, in this case, through texts, emails, voice mail, and browser history.’  Check out these cute YouTube promotional bits.

Here’s the title page and contents:

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South Park, Goths and Twilighters

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Like all good satire, the television show South Park is often thought provoking. The recent episode The Ungroundable hit me’ where I work. In it, the school’s popular students embrace the current vampire craze (Twilight is directly referenced) to the point of wearing black clothes, plastic fangs and drinking Clamato juice as a blood substitute. No one is more horrified and disgusted by this than show’s well established clique of goths. They feel this is an appropriation and debasement of their style. For me, the show raised an immediate question with larger implications; how as a youth librarian, do you cater to both the vampire kids and the goths?

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Twilight

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Last night at 12:01 AM I, along with a theater full of teens, gasped with delight when the opening scene from the movie Twilight began. The delight was evident again with the first appearance of Jacob and even more so with the first appearance of Edward. This movie is great! Agree with me or not, I think we can all declare with full confidence that this blockbuster hit is going to make the Twilight Saga even more popular with readers of all ages. Read More →

Melissa de la Cruz’s Vampires in New York

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Blue Bloods

Blue Bloods by Melissa de la CruzSchuyler Van Alen, scholarship student at the posh and selective Deschune school, has always had a cool head on her, even when sneered at because of her thrift-store clothing when the norm is something from 5th Avenue. Her cool head, however, is slowly developing something more for one of the richest kids in Manhattan, New York — Jack Force.

And whaddya know – he tries to throw himself under a cab right before the first time Schuyler talks to him. …..Ooooohhhhkay…..turns out he’s an invincible vampire. And so is Schuyler. And her new best friend, Bliss from Texas.

It turns out that Schuyler’s blood is kinda out to get her — she’s a vampire. Well, only half, but that makes no difference to the something that’s stalking and killing off vampires, ‘cuz, you know, the Committee’s really been lying to them about their complete immortality… Read More →