YA: Your Athenaeum

Staff Picks: Own The Night

Libraries all around Rhode Island are celebrating reading this summer with a dark and mysterious theme: Own the Night. At first it might seem unusual to celebrate everything the goes bump in the night during the season of swimming and sunshine, but when else do we really get to appreciate night-time?

Summer’s the season of fireflies, star-gazing, and stories around the campfire. School’s out, so you can stay up late reading just one more page of that bone-chilling page-turner. My picks for this season are all creature features - vampires, ghosts, zombies, lake monsters, chimaera, and one decidedly spooky fairy prince.

But wait! There’s more. Every week, all summer long, you can help decide who is the baddest baddie in fiction. You may have argued a hundred times that Batman would easily beat up Spiderman (or vice versa), but how would the Dark Knight fair with a Balrog thrown into the mix? Katniss Everdeen might be handy with a bow and arrow, but is she any match for a brain-eating zombie hoard?

Voting for the Who Will Own The Night tournament here at the Your Athenaeum blog starts Monday! You can also come in to the Providence Athenaeum and submit a vote in our YA corner - paper votes are going to count more than internet votes. Keep our summer hours in mind when you plan your visit!