Here are some more Rock Band high scores, along with logos for the bands.

Every BPL branch owns a PlayStation, as well as the game Rock Band.  At your next library Rock Band program, think of the best name you can for your band, and keep track of your score.  Make sure your librarian records your score, and sends it on to us.   Scores will be posted regularly on the blog, and you can find out which bands around Brooklyn you need to beat!

Want to come up with a band name quickly? Try this band name generator: http://www.bandnamemaker.com/.  

What's the best band name you've come up with? What's your favorite song to play in Rock Band? Write us a comment and let us know!

Here are some recent scores:

We will now be publishing submissions to In Your Own Words on this blog.  Please continue to e-mail your work to tzone@brooklynpubliclibrary.org, or give it to your local teen librarian.

Here are some submissions from Jeanni, aged 17. 

New York Faerie Tale
by Jeanni, age 17

Brooklyn.
Home of the Cyclones,
The Cyclone,
Coney Island,
Prospect Park,
Grand Central Library,
Brooklyn Museum of Art,
and Me.
Brooklyn Mermaid,
New York Faerie.
I found my faerie tale.
My love story.
And he’s a beautiful
Dorky
Sweet
Compassionate
Tinker Faerie.
From Brooklyn.

The Day Was Young and The Night Not Yet Begun
by Jeanni, age 17

Celeste strolled down a path with her sister Misty.  Misty’s long black hair hung free, Celeste’s long blonde hair was in a high ponytail.  Their skin shone in the afternoon sunlight.  A short black girl on a bench waved and both sisters waved back.  The girl’s wings fluttered lightly and she rose into the sky, smiling so wide her pointed teeth showed.  Celeste and Misty kept walking.  They passed a tree where a spirit lived; he looked out at them as he always did, a vacant expression in his leaf-like eyes.  Celeste shuddered a bit as she always did when they passed tree spirits.  The vacancy in their eyes scared her.  Misty squeezed her sister’s hand, and they moved on. A small girl with red hair and a red tail ran past them chasing a smaller boy with the same shade of hair and tail.  Misty giggled.  A pair of beansidhes brushed each others’ hair on the grass.  Misty hopped up onto the park wall and unfurled her long blue wings.  She jumped into the air and hovered over Celeste’s head.  Celeste hopped up and let her own long purple wings flutter in the breeze.
        Knees bent, Celeste leapt into the air and flew straight up for fifty feet.  A six-story apartment building was in front of her, and she flew over to a gargoyle perch.  The gargoyle had long ago flown away, leaving the perch open for Celeste.  She landed lightly, her toes barely touching stone, and twirled a pirouette.  Misty met her and landed on the perch beside Celeste’s.  They smiled at each other, then raced down their perches and dove into the air.  Afternoon sun warmed their skin and wings as they sank near the ground, then rose on an updraft.  Misty shrieked with laughter, a grin on her face.  Celeste dove close enough to touch the horn of a unicorn, then flew away as it snorted at her.
        The sisters flew to the river, crossing it low, the tips of their wings dragging in the water.  Celeste’s eyes shut; she was deliriously happy.  She was flying, she was over the water, she was with her sister, and they were free.  When they reached the Manhattan shore they rose and touched down on top of a building.  It was a tall steel skyscraper, at least 52 stories.  Celeste let out a whoop and jumped high, twirling, then came back to the roof.
        Their city, their beautiful New York, was alive with the mortal, the immortal, and the mystical.  Misty and Celeste spun and dove, circled and rose through the air, laughing and calling to each other and other faeries flying through the city skyline. The day was young, and the night not yet begun.

Here are some excerpts from the 3rd place winner in the prose category of our writing contest.  The author provides this commentary:
“You may label this piece in any category that you would prefer, but I would consider it a "fictional memoir". It is influenced by the book Midnight's Children by Rushdie. The piece is a combination of personal family experiences, historical events in my community, a bit of symbolic fantasy, and emotional truths."

Bugs and Spiders
by Nicole Gonzalez, age 18
Third Place, Prose

The Butcher Shop

         On February 23, 1991, I was born. I was born in Butcher Hospital. Or at least, that was what it was always called because of the way doctors patched people up--that is, if they did not die first--and the subsequent miserable state they left their victims for “recovery”. Somehow, Butcher Hospital seemed like a much more suitable name than Brookdale Hospital.

An Itch

            Somehow my grandmother, Daphne, had to escape the hell she lived in. She was born and raised in St. Kitts for so long that she could not help feeling that there was more beyond the beautiful beaches that surrounded her. She could not sleep at night because bugs crawled up her legs, between her skin, and she could no longer shake them off. One late night she snuck into the kitchen, careful not to wake the maids or the chickens, and gently pulled a knife out of a drawer. She then made her way to her room, her feet making slow and silent steps. As soon as she felt she was safe in her room, she closed her eyes to control her rapid breathing. Hopefully that would stop the brutal thumping in her heart. Breathe, breathe. She held the knife close to her body. As the blade licked her legs, warmth trickled over her hands. The bugs spilled out and relief washed over face. She quickly ran to the washroom to clean herself and dress her wounds. As soon as she pounced on her bed, she fell into a deep sleep. There may have been a slight smirk on her face while she was at peace at that moment, but poor Daphne will soon realize that she never completely got rid of the bugs. They were frightened, but still existing between her skin. They only crept when they felt unbearably restless, when they knew something big was going to happen. She had to have gotten rid of something. That something was a piece of herself.

            Daphne finally left the beautiful beaches of St. Kitts and flew to London. Years from then, when she is old and expecting her death at any given moment, she will miss her country. But as a young woman, she would be elated because change had finally come. In London, Daphne would meet her husband, a beautiful light-skinned man with a permanent smile. They would have two beautiful sons, Stephen and Derrick, and her husband would have died years later.

             Daphne would have met her next husband-to-be, who was quite different from her first. There was something about this man, Samuel, who would make her stick by his side for years and years. Something that made the bugs crawl. She did not know what it was exactly. Whether it was the burnt scars on her arms or the sweet love that they made, there was something in him that would make her leave her cultured British homeland to a new life in America. Of course not after she gave birth to five more children, Sandra, Colin, Paul, and baby Annette. When they reached the United States, they bought a wonderful row house in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and Samuel began his mission to reinforce its mighty strength so that it would grand for years to come. As they settled into their new lives, the population shifted drastically in the seemingly passive neighborhood. A vast amount of West Indian immigrants and African Americans from the South flocked to the neighborhood as well as newer Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. The nation itself was suffering from an economic downturn and Crown Heights residents were especially hurt by this depression. As poverty increased, so did racial conflicts. During the Johnson administration, it was declared a primary poverty area.

* * *

"Wait.  You said there were five more children; I only count four," says George with a suspicious tone.  Well, I never adored my sweetheart for his patience.  Yes, I did mention four more names but had I mentioned five, my mother would not have been the baby of the family.  Let us instead leave the unnamed one in the sweet slumber she had fallen in the moment she was born.

Storms Brewing

     Annette loved to make up new lives for her dolls for fun. She could make them do and live however she wanted and escape from the constant noises of screams and shouts and beatings. She would quietly invent new games for them to play, their stories unfolding only in the back of her mind. There was not really anyone else to play with. Her mother’s watchful eye made it difficult to keep friends outside of school, while her father’s hot temper made it difficult to keep pets. Sandra always looked out for her, but her older sister had outgrown dolls. She never would have dared ask her menacing brothers, who were always being punished for something. However, she enjoyed the company of her brother, Stephen, who recently moved in with them. He was always so nice to her, even when he seemed preoccupied with building his own escape. He never got along well with her father and stayed from home for long periods of time. Sometimes she would spot him on her walk to school at the corner of Nostrand Ave and Crown St with his cool new friends, taunting the Jewish girls in their long green skirts as they strolled together toward the Yeshiva. After school, Annette would walk slowly, knowing that as soon as she would turn the corner on the block of her house, her mother would be watching through the blinds her every dreaded step home.

            The only haven she had in that house was the quiet space she kept in the corner of her room, reserved only for her and her dolls. But she could not ignore the day Stephen would be arrested for a crime he didn’t commit, becoming the biggest scandal in the neighborhood. He would be sentenced to life in prison and he would be a stupid teenager who was at the wrong place at the wrong time. After getting kicked out of the house by his stepfather, Stephen found comfort in his reliable friends, especially his mentor who became somewhat of a father figure to him. How unfortunate that his mentor was the most notorious gang leader and drug dealer in the neighborhood, responsible for the carrying out of various murders. Though he never done anything illegal in his life, Stephen’s  poor choice of friends were his downfall rather than his escape. After the officers took him away, Annette dashed into her bedroom with streaks of tears in her eyes. As she scurried under her bed, her pinky scraped the sharp edge of an object she could not see and it began to bleed. She screamed. It is said that her screams were so loud that they could be heard by a electrician in Westchester County. The screams startled the silly man that he forgot to finish tightening the locking nut in the circuit breaker that he was working on.

     A couple days later, a huge storm brew and lightening was rampant.  A lightening strike hit the circuit breaker and New York City was engulfed in darkness.  A perfect opportunity for the impoverished to reap what they sowed.  Violence erupted throughout Crown Heights as well as other poor neighborhoods and lootings became rampant.  The night became known as the New York City Blackout of 1977.  The city was no stranger to blackouts or violence but another outbreak would occur years later and this one would shake the diversity cliché that the city has firmly based a large part of its reputation on...

Spidery Beginnings

     On February 23, 1991, I was born.  Child Protective Services sent their henchmen in an attempt to steal me away from my parents.  I rejected my mother's milk and the nurses force-fed me for three days before I could go home with my parents.  They did not understand what my body was going through.  Little did they know that the spiders in my stomach were wrestling from their egg sac and were invading my tiny gut in delight of their freedom.  I could barely comprehend the muddle of light and sounds at such a young age, but the spiders knew that I was a precious being that needed to stay alive and well in the safety of my parents' home.  They allowed me to eat enough to stabilize my body and quickly spun their webs of manipulation into the minds of CPS agents.  After the scare of my starvation and their interrogation, my parents were relieved to finally take me to their apartment.  The home was a tiny apartment full of cracks and roaches and mice.  East New York was far enough from the clutches of my grandmother, but close enough to visit her whenever we wanted.  This small place was only temporary.  Soon we would go to the place where we truly belonged....

Here is the submission that won second prize in the prose category of our Writing Contest.

Is it more effective for a ruler to be feared or loved?
by Lucy Tan, age 14
Second Place, Prose

   As citizens of the Stone Age, cavemen feared the terrifying cacophony of thunder. Fear has existed for as long as we can remember, but so has love and thus the deliberation and controversy between these two emotions arise, begging the following question to be asked by many: is it more effective for a ruler to be feared or loved? Although many may say that love and peace is almost always the answer to conflict and disagreement, fear is a motivator and it allows us to become aware of the many consequences we may face before we take action, making it more effective for rulers to impose fear to discipline, rather than love to recklessly liberate.

            In the dystopian novel 1984, written by George Orwell, the main character, Winston, is a citizen of a totalitarian government in Oceania, with the dictator being Big Brother. Secretly disagreeing with Big Brother, Winston joins a conspiracy to overthrow the government, but his attempts were discovered and aborted. He was then sent to the Ministry of Love, where he was brain-washed to forever love Big Brother. This specific process of brain-washing incorporated fear, as Winston was repeatedly beat, starved and tortured inhumanely, until he truly loved and respected Big Brother for the sake of staying alive.

            This brain-washing technique utilized by the government or ruler, however, did not utilize love to manage problems and conflicts. Instead, they used fear to initiate love – in this case, love for the government and Big Brother. If they had used love and gentleness, however, the brain-washing process would not have been as rapid and quick as it had been, with the employment of fear, as Edgar Watson Howe, an American novelist, newspaper and magazine editor states, “A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice.”

            As Winston was afraid of the inhumane torture imposed on him by the Ministry of Love, many faithful followers of God are quite aware of the consequences they will face when they do not oblige to the rules. In other words, they are reasonably fearful of the consequences of their wrongdoings, and indirectly, God, as well, for He punishes them for such transgressions.

If punishment is not put upon those so-called rule-breakers, there would be minimal or no consequences for reckless behavior and activity. Similar to Big Brother and the envisioned totalitarian government in Oceania, religion also uses fear to initiate love, as the ones who obey are rewarded with relief, happiness and most of the time, a pleasant life.

            Such use of fear and love is also employed by many systems of today, as every institution possesses a set of regulations that must be followed if one wishes to be rewarded. If these regulations are not followed, negative outcomes will most likely result. Therefore, its participants, fearing and trying to avoid trouble and punishment, will pay heed to the so-called ruler of the institution, making an effective rule. Furthermore, fear imposes safety, as “it prevents us from going into dangerous situations. It keeps us at land when the sea is rough and we avoid places where we might become robbed” (Fearing Eagle).

            As a result, fear allows many tasks to be accomplished, without the need of bribery or false love.. As Machiavelli states, “It is better to be feared than loved, more prudent to be cruel than compassionate.” Fear is also a concise but efficient means of allowing others to become more aware of their surroundings and consequences. Besides, love is blind.