#ComicsWednesday: Princeless Vol. 1 Save Yourself by Jeremy Whitley & M. Goodwin

A princess, locked in a tower, guarded by a dragon, waiting for a prince to save her so she can marry him and they can live Happily Ever After. It's a familiar story, which is why it is such a delight when Princeless by Jeremy Whitley and M. Goodwin turns the trope on its head.

Princess Adrienne is sick of waiting for a knight to come rescue her. In fact, she never wanted to be rescued in the first place. In an attempt to get their daughters married off, her father has locked up Adrienne and all of her sisters in different prisons around the land. Guarded by fearsome beasts and tricky riddles, this will make sure that they are only rescued by someone strong enough to rule.

After berating a knight who attempts to rescue her, Adrienne finds a sword hidden in her tower. She decides to make an escape, and flies off on Sparky, the dragon who guarded her tower. Adrienne sets off to rescue her sisters on her own.

Adrienne has a few misadventures before she gets to her sisters, and she picks up help along the way. When she needs armor, she runs into Bedelia Smith, a half-dwarf blacksmith. (Their
hilarious discussion about the practicality of armor for women has been distributed in geek circles for a few years now.) Once Adrienne's father finds out she is missing, and that the "knight" responsible probably killed her, he sends the most vicious bounty hunters in the kingdom after her.

Princeless is a great all-ages comic. It's perfect for parents and kids to read together. Adrienne and Bedelia are funny, and are great role models for young kids. It explores gender roles in a fun and accessible way that is sure to spark conversations about why there are "girl things" and "boy things." Most of all, you will cheer for Adrienne as she makes her way to each sister and finds out that nothing is as clear as it seems.

- Libby, Youth Services

#WCW Woman Crush Wednesday: Imperator Furiosa

There are many reasons I loved Mad Max: Fury Road. I loved the guy tied to a truck with bungee cords playing a guitar that shoots flames. I love that to make this movie the director actually had an actor attached to a truck with bungee cords play a guitar that actually shot flames. I love that this movie was essentially one long, glorious car chase. But most of all, I loved Imperator Furiosa.

I love action movies: the adventure, the explosions, the lone hero (or rag tag band) fighting impossible odds to save the day. Unfortunately, your standard action movie also tend to have at most one female character, and she's generally the one who needs saving, the hero's love interest, or both. Not so with Fury Road: Imperator Furiosa is the literal driving force of the movie's story. Even with a minimum of dialogue, the movie introduces a varied cast of characters (female and male) with distinct motivations.

Bonus #wcw Melissa Jaffer as Keeper of the Seeds saying "Kaboom!"

Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) is on a mission to save a group of young women imprisoned as wives to a warlord, while Mad Max (Tom Hardy) is merely carried along for the ride. I don't want to drop any big spoilers in case you're waiting for the DVD or Blu-Ray (release date: September 1st), but this was one of my favorite movies of 2015 and I highly recommend you check it out.

#WCW Women Crush Wednesday- Cast of the "Ghostbusters" remake

By now, you've probably heard that Ghostbusters is being remade with the main characters as women. There have been some grumblings about this, but I can't understand how a new Ghostbusters film starring Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones, and my favorite current Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon could possibly be a bad thing.

Accessed at: http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/07/10/comic-con-2015-ghostbusters-gets-first-official-cast-photo

While we're waiting for it to come out, watch some movies starring the new Ghostbusters.

Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader are the Skeleton Twins, a brother and sister who haven't seen each other in ten years, but come together after they both suffer a tragedy.

Melissa McCarthy stars as a single mom whose 12-year old son sparks a friendship with their neighbor played by Bill Murray. (I wonder if McCarthy and Murray talked about ghostbusting while shooting St. Vincent.)

Leslie Jones is on Saturday Night Live and has a role in Chris Rock's Top Five, where Rock plays a comedian trying to become a serious actor.

Kate McKinnon is a current Saturday Night Live cast member and has done some voice work on The Venture Bros.

#WCW Woman Crush Wednesday: Ursula K. Le Guin

Photo Copyright © by Marian Wood Kolisch

When Rachel wrote her review of The Dispossessed this weekend, I was reminded of how much I love Ursula K Le Guin's writing, which made her an obvious pick for this week's #WCW

I'm not a native Dubuquer, and I attended high school in a small Wisconsin town where the public library was small enough that the entire building would've fit in Carnegie-Stout's children's department. As a teenager who loved fantasy novels, I would check out any book with a unicorn sticker on the spine, so it wasn't long before I stumbled across A Wizard of Earthsea. I liked Earthsea okay, but it was her stories of the Hainish Ekumen that I returned to again and again.

The attention and detail she put into the people and societies in her stories captured my imagination. Her writing was a significant influence in my decision to major in anthropology as an undergrad, and I was only a little surprised that the "K" in her name stands for Kroeber. Her parents, Alfred and Theodora Kroeber, were early anthropologists of some note. Alfred Kroeber was, fittingly enough, one of the topics for my senior research paper on the history of anthropological theories.

Le Guin remains the standard by which I judge science fiction to this day, even as my tastes have changed and grown over time. I suspect that I wouldn't have quite the same reaction to reading her books for the first time today as I did when I was a teen, but it's equally true that if I hadn't read her books as a teen, I would not have become the person that I am today.

~Sarah, Adult Services

#WCW WomanCrushWednesday: Cheryl Strayed

No author has affected my life in the past few years as much as Cheryl Strayed has.

Photo found at http://www.cherylstrayed.com/

I loved Strayed before I knew her name. TheRumpus.net is an online magazine whose advice column, Dear Sugar, was a favorite of mine because of its honest, humorous, and heartfelt offerings. The column was done anonymously, but a few years ago, it was revealed that Strayed was Sugar. Some of my favorite Sugar-given advice is, “Every last one of us can do better than give up”; “The only way out of a hole is to climb out”; and “Be brave enough to break your own heart”. Tiny Beautiful Things is a collection of her Dear Sugar columns and I highly recommend you read it.

A few years ago, when I finished the first chapter of her memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, I put the book down and with tears in my eyes, said out loud to no one, "If the rest of the book is like that, I cannot handle it." In the book, Strayed's mom dies of cancer and at the time, my mom was four years cancer-free. I didn't want to read about a mom, anyone's mom, dying of cancer. I did get through the book and it remains a favorite of mine. I'm a person who prefers not to feel emotions and that book made me feel so immensely that I should have thrown it across the room and instead, I embraced it. I embraced it so much that when a friend told me his mom didn't like Wild because Cheryl Strayed wasn't prepared for the hike she takes in the book, I actually told him to tell his mom to come say that to my face. No one says anything bad about Cheryl Strayed around me.

When my mom was rediagnosed with cancer in mid-2013, I could not look at my copy of Wild (sometimes just a glance at the book would make me tear up), but I frequently turned to Tiny Beautiful Things and a poster with Dear Sugar quotes I had on the wall above my computer. I can't say I always took to heart sayings like "The thing about rising is we have to continue upward. The thing about going beyond is we have to keep going", "The unifying theme is resilience and faith", and the above-mentioned "Every last one of us can do better than to give up", but I wanted to. As I'm sure many other people who've read Strayed's work can attest, Strayed makes you want to hope, makes you want to try. Some days, I would see "The only way out of a hole is to climb out" and think, "Maybe today, it's okay for me to stay in my hole, but tomorrow, I'll get started on climbing out of it."

My mom died in October 2014 and again, Strayed helped me, this time with her advice of "Let yourself be gutted. Let it open you. Start there." "Gutted" is the perfect word to describe how I felt when my mom died and one of the reasons I'm not curled up in a ball on the floor is Cheryl Strayed and her advice. For that, she's my WomanCrush.

~Aisha