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Witches on Trial @ your library

“Are you a good witch, or a bad witch”? That’s the first question Dorothy is asked when she arrives in Oz. Kind of a bewildering question even if you haven’t just had your house blown into a magical country by a tornado and recovered from a bang on the head. Of course, the answer to that question is decided pretty quickly, since her house has squashed the Wicked Witch of the East. But that’s the way decisions seem to be made when it comes to judging who’s a witch and who is not. Lucky Dorothy managed to gain the support of the people of Oz, but that pendulum usually seems to swing in the opposite direction. And in America, the most notorious example, although not the only one, happened in Salem, Massachusetts.

        

     

 

 Even children know the story of the Salem Witch Trials, and if they don’t, they really should. Any community can be shaken up by mass hysteria, the source of the horrific events that took place in this quiet New England town, and with the presence of social media in our midst, it can spread faster and further than ever before. Witch hunts are certainly no longer just the province of the superstitious. For a really excellent, accessible, and gorgeously illustrated historical account of the Salem Witch Trials, I recommend seeking out Rosalyn Schanzer’s  Witches! The Absolutely True Story of the Disaster in Salem. While the target audience is really older children and young adults, this is a great choice for general readers of any age. A great follow-up title is the Newbery winner The Witch of Blackbird Pond. That award is an award for excellence: don’t let the fact that it’s an award for children’s literature stop you from reading it (Kit, the protagonist, is sixteen). While it’s set in Connecticut in the early 1600’s, it does a great job of bringing home how personal and irrational these persecutions could be. It’s a memorable title you won’t be sorry you’ve read.

It’s hard to talk about Salem without bringing up Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. This is probably the first play I ever saw (my aunt was in it, in the dancing scene at the beginning). While it’s short, it surely makes an impact (it has been made into an opera, and may be the shortest opera I have ever seen). The  play brings to life the Salem Witch Trials and the hysteria that accompanied them. The Crucible, written in the 1950s during Senator Joseph McCarthy’s “Red Scare”, is, under its surface, a rather pointed allegory about the “witch hunts” against supposed Communists that occurred during that time. Miller demonstrated exactly what I wrote about above: that incitement to mass hysteria is no longer limited to the superstitious, and any of us can become a target at any time. There’s an excellent movie adaptation of The Crucible, with Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder, as well. It’s frequently used in American Literature classes to engage students’ interest in the play, which is generally required reading for those classes (Want to give required reading pizzazz? Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder can do that). I haven’t seen this next movie, but The Salem Witch Trials, originally a miniseries on CBS, and starring Kirstie Alley and several other notable actresses, is supposed to be a very good fictionalized version of the events of that time.

Authors have taken varied approaches to the events of the Salem Witch Trials and to witch hunts in general. One surprise is Robin Cook’s medical thriller Acceptable Risk, which involves a subplot with one of the main characters discovering she is related to a Salem witch. I don’t know that you can say that Robin Cook is actually a good writer, but he is a compelling and memorable one– books of his that I read in high school still stick with me. I constantly hear complaints from my dad that there are no good medical thrillers out there anymore, so why not take this chance to resurrect what is admittedly a rather elderly title?

More recently, Alexandra Sokoloff produced Book of Shadows, a supernatural thriller/police procedural that involves a contemporary witch living in Salem, who gets involved in helping a police detective solve the mystery of the murder of a college student that appears to have Satanic overtones. While not directly tied to the original trials, I happen to enjoy Sokoloff’s books, and many readers who normally skip over witch-themed horror may find themselves drawn in to this.  And within just the past few months, the last book in Melissa de la Cruz’s trilogy Witches of East End, Winds of Salem, was released. While the image above is of the first book in the series, the second, Serpent’s Kiss, and the third, Winds of Salem, have a strong thread involving the Salem Witch Trials. With Witches of East End just coming out as a television series, including these books in a display on the Salem Witch Trials  is a great way to draw readers in to a witchy world as Halloween approaches. These books are more urban fantasy than horror, but paranormal lovers will get right into them.

Witch hunts haven’t been limited to Salem and its environs, though. Witch Hunts: A Graphic History of the Burning Times, a non-fiction graphic novel by Rocky Wood and Lisa Morton, with shocking and effective artwork by Greg Chapman, also details witch hunts in Europe, from the time of the Black Death through the Reformation and finally to the Enlightenment. With torture and burning witches alive being methods often used by witch hunters, you can imagine what the artwork must be like. The book, written by Lisa Morton and Rocky Wood, noted scholars in horror non-fiction, treats its topic respectfully and seriously, and won the 2013 Bram Stoker Award for Best Graphic Novel.

The movie Season of the Witch does not pretend to be a serious, non-fictional account of the Burning Times in Europe. It does take place in Europe, during the Middle Ages, at a time when accusations of witchcraft were very serious. Two former knights, played by Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman, are assigned to escort a young woman to an abbey to face accusations of witchcraft. It’s not a great movie, but it’s entertaining, and keeps you guessing as to whether the woman the two men are escorting actually is a witch.

There are a lot of other books, movies, and other materials on witches out there, so maybe I’ll come back to the topic again, but I think this is a good collection to get those interested in Salem, witch hunts, and witchery in general, started on that TBR pile.

 

 

 

 

Posted on October 10, 2013 by , 1 comment

North Carolina School District Bans Literary Classic “Invisible Man”

No, not that Invisible Man.

 Yes, we write about the horror genre here, but the book under question is this  one:

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953 and is counted among the top 100 novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library, was just banned in Randolph County, North Carolina.

It’s a different kind of horrifying than what we usually talk about here, although the confusion is understandable, I guess– even Google Books makes mistakes (link here). Invisible Man addresses many of the social issues African-Americans faced during the middle of the 20th century, especially in the South. Rather than physical invisibility, Ellison’s narrator describes himself as socially invisible, and is a part of the “underground”. This is the book that the school board in Randolph County, North Carolina, voted 5-2 to remove from school libraries and reading lists (link here).

Banned Books week starts September 22. That’s Monday. This incident will, I’m sure, give Invisible Man some new visibility.

It’s been interesting following the news regarding banned and challenged books since last year’s Banned Books Week. Alan Moore’s graphic novel Neonomicon was removed from the library of Greenville, South Carolina in December of 2012; The Diary of Anne Frank was challenged in Michigan (it stayed); Marjane Satrapi’s incredible graphic novel Persepolis was removed from the Chicago Public Schools to public outrage (and restored); the anti-war manga classic Barefoot Gen was banned and then restored to libraries in a school district in Japan; and emails revealed that the former governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, had attempted to influence the textbook adoption process to prevent A People’s History of the United States from being taught in Indiana schools (not that that ever would have happened here anyway) and teacher education classes; and an Alabama senator attempted to remove Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye from state reading lists. With this week’s removal of The Invisible Man from North Carolina schools, that makes seven times I’ve seen banned and challenged books make the news, and there are so many more cases out there that I’ve never heard of, or that haven’t been reported to anyone at all.  And none of that includes the many other cases of censorship around the world.

To learn more about Banned Books Week, visit the website for Project Censored here and the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week here. And to discover more about banned books and media visit our Pinterest board on Banned Books here. Trust me, I worked hard on it and it is awesome. As for the kids of Randolph County, I’ll quote them Stephen King:

Don’t get mad, get even… Run, don’t walk, to the nearest nonschool library or to the local bookstore and get whatever it is they banned. Read whatever they’re trying to keep out of your eyes and your brain, because that’s exactly what you need to know.

 

Well said, Mr. King.

Not everyone, everywhere, has that choice. This week is a great time to celebrate that in this country, you can, in fact, do exactly that.

Posted on September 20, 2013 by , Reply

Women in Horror Month: Researching Women in Comics– Guest Post by Rachel Hoover, Librarian of the Dead

Rachel Hoover is a librarian and aspiring writer living in the Chicago area. She runs the blog Librarian of the Dead, where she blogs about the sorts of things you’d expect from such a title. She writes frequently about the horror genre–whether it’s books, comics, movies or games– as well as gravestone art, cementeries, and other items or topics that are dark, spine-chilling or have something interesting to say about our relationship with fear or death. Rachel is an official participant in Women in Horror Month this year, and is spotlighting women in horror comics this month.

With comics and graphic novels such a big topic in libraries right now, we wondered how you discover horror comics created by women, and Rachel offered to share her research strategies. It takes some work, but there are some interesting surprises. Until Rachel wrote about it, I had no idea Nancy A. Collins, who won the Bram Stoker Award for Sunglasses After Dark, also wrote for comics, including Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing! Want to introduce women in horror comics to both comics and horror readers? Read Rachel’s suggestions below.

 

On Researching Women in Horror Comics

Rachel Hoover

In honor of Women in Horror Month , an annual event put on by the Viscera Organization each February, I’ve been writing about Women in Horror Comics for a weekly series on my blog, Librarian of the Dead.

The goal of WiHM is to provide exposure, support and education about the typically underrepresented women working in the horror genre. So each Monday, I’m featuring a specific female writer or artist that works on horror comics, discussing their work, and asking them a few questions about the industry, what influences them and what advice they have for aspiring comic creators.

I came up with this project was because I couldn’t think of that many women working on horror series that I read or was aware of. It’s not always easy to stumble upon the names of all the artists, colorists, pencillers, letterers that make up one issue of a comic, one graphic novel, let alone the many people that could contribute to work on a trade paperback that collects multiple comic issues. It’s even harder when you’re only looking for women in one genre.

Since I am an actual librarian (that blog title isn’t just for fun!) I was up to the challenge. I used a couple of different strategies. No one had already created the kind of resource I was looking for, so I went with the next best thing: a list of women working in comics in general, and I found a nice long one on Wikipedia.

Part of my work was looking through lists like this and trying to either identify horror titles, or watch for publishers that I knew did horror series (Dark Horse, for example). I also worked the other way around sometimes, looking up a specific comic series or a graphic novel and checking if they had any women working for them. The main websites that I used to explore names and titles were things like Comic Book DB, Comic Vine, and  DeviantART, as well as the publisher and convention websites.

Librarians looking to stock female comic creators on their shelves should dig deep into the comics or graphic novels they already read and seek out the names of all of the writers and artists who have contributed to it. Research their careers and you’ll find new titles to check out. But be open to seeking out independent comics, there are a lot of wonderful unknown writers and artists that self-publish or work with indie publishers. They may not have easily-available trade paperbacks, and most libraries don’t stock individual issues of comics, but what about buying digital issues and loading them onto a tablet? Slap a barcode on that device and you still get circulation stats!

I would also recommend going to comic conventions and visiting with the female comic creators and artists that are there, talk to them about what they’re working on right now, what they’re reading and other women in the field who do work they enjoy. Once you start learning their names you’ll see them everywhere and realize what you and your library users were missing out on before. Maybe you can inspire them to become a fan of something they wouldn’t have picked up on their own. Maybe the girls and women in your community will even try their hand and writing or drawing their own comics when they see the possibilities. It’s a win-win: you and your library benefit, and so do the women out there already creating comics.

If you’d like to learn more about the women I’m featuring in my blog, I have a few up already. My first feature is on writer Rachel Deering and her epic werewolf comic ANATHEMA and my second is on cover artist Jenny Frison, who works on titles like HACK/SLASH, REVIVAL and ANGEL . I have two more to go, plus bonus posts of more women I discovered, but couldn’t fit in February. I’m excited and passionate about my project, because I believe these ladies are doing amazing work and deserve the exposure.

If you don’t want to miss the next features in my series you can subscribe to my blog, follow me on Twitter @rachelsstorm or keep an eye on all of the Women in Horror Month events through their website, Twitter @WiHmonth or Facebook page.

Posted on February 22, 2013 by , Reply
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