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Help The Edgar Allan Poe Bronze Bust Project Meet Its Stretch Goal!

Edgar Allan Poe Bronze Bust Project

I came across this interview of horror filmmaker Izzy Lee during a visit to the Women in Horror Month blog, and learned about her newest effort, which actually has a lot to do with horror fiction.  The Edgar Allan Poe Bronze Bust Project will fund the making of a life sized bust of Edgar Allan Poe that will be placed prominently at the Boston Public Library. The same people running this project did a similar one in Rhode

Visit the Kickstarter page here to learn more. Island, funding the making of a life-size bust of H.P. Lovecraft for the Providence Atheneum.  It is being funded through a Kickstarter project. The  project reached its goal of raising $30,000 for the bust, and now has a stretch goal:

 if they can raise another $5,000, that money will go to Read Boston, a local children’s literacy program. They are really close to reaching that goal–they need to raise just about $800 to reach it, but they have less than 48 hours.  If you give, you’ll be in the company of some greats– among others, Guillermo del Toro is supporting this project — and there are some really cool rewards. So whether you’re a fan of Poe, a believer in children’s literacy, or a library lover, here’s your chance to spread some joy about reading. Much better than giving your dollars to irony-laced potato salad.

Posted on July 10, 2014 by , 1 comment

Monster Movie Month Is Coming Up: Are You A Monster Kid?

The Monster Kids documentary Kickstarter project got me thinking about what it means to be a Monster Kid. When the classic monster movies first came out, you could only see them in theaters, for a limited time. My dad, born in 1945, might have seen Godzilla in the theater, but I’m not sure how available monster movies really were after they finished their movie theater runs. Maybe you could see them on television, but it wasn’t like you could get these movies on demand.

The seventies and eighties rolled along and with them came a series of books I have encountered over and over in many, many libraries; the Crestwood Books Monster Movie Series. Here’s an article from Rue Morgue about these books tribute to them from James at Cinemassacre. You can see that they influenced him not only to become a monster-loving kid but also a reader, a writer, and now a no-frills moviemaker. In terms of reader engagement, it doesn’t get any better than that.

One thing he talks about in his video is how impossible it was to actually SEE the movies he was reading about. These books were responsible for introducing a whole new generation of children to monster movies, movies that weren’t really even available for them to see. Unfortunately these books are no longer in publication, and most of them were so well loved that you might not find them in your library today. I can tell you how beat up they were when I was weeding library books fifteen years ago- I had to fight to keep them on the shelf. Bless the wonderful school librarian at my son’s elementary for keeping them safely on the shelf- they have had the same exact effect on him that they did on kids my age (or just a little older). Midnight movie hours also became popular with a certain crowd. There were a lot of these shows that were local, and Sammy Terry, the host of the show here, was certainly memorable- heck, now he’s considered part of local history. Of course, as we moved on into the eighties a lot of movies started to be available on VHS, but that doesn’t mean they were easily available. My dear husband went through some rather convoluted methods to get VHS copies of his favorite Japanese monster movies, not an easy thing before the Internet was available. Maybe you remember the advent of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the show that encouraged you to videotape it and send the tapes around to other fans of B movies, grainy copy after grainy copy.

As we moved into the nineties, it got easier to order movies, first on VHS tapes and then on DVDs, because it became possible to order online. Dedicated websites, Youtube and streaming video have radically changed the availability of information and of the movies themselves. Stuff that used to arrive at my house in envelopes from Hong Kong can now be accessed through Netflix streaming. And while it’s not USUAL to have a Godzilla obsessed six year old, said child can watch videos from the movies on Youtube, DVDs or streaming video. He can explore Toho Kingdom and find pictures of movie monsters using Google Image Search. He can learn about Ray Harryhausen just by typing the name into a search box in Wikipedia. He can even borrow his dad’s videocamera and film his own Godzilla movies. The idea that sixty years ago none of this was possible is incomprehensible to him. Only seeing movies in the theaters? Trading videotapes? No internet to watch videos of the Zone Fighter Monsters?

Note to librarians: even with the Internet, and multiple options for watching movies, he keeps checking out those Crestwood Monster Movie books. Having now brought home the Mad Scientists book he now knows more about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the Invisible Man than I do. So if you have them, for gosh sakes KEEP THEM!

Today’s Monster Kids have incredible resources at their fingertips and don’t even know it. But what they do have, still, is that love of monsters and the creativity it inspires. Whether you saw the original Godzilla in the theater, learned about him from the Crestwood Movie Monster books, were mesmerized by midnight movies, traded videotapes with other monster movie lovers, or saw giant monsters for the first time on Netflix streaming, there is the engagement and enthusiasm that teachers and librarians hope for when it comes to reading, understanding, and taking it to the next level. And that’s awesome. And in honor of that, this year we’ll be making July our Monster Movie Month. Got a favorite monster movie or idea for a book/movie tie in? Comment below or email us at monsterlibrarian@monsterlibrarian.com

Posted on May 19, 2012 by , Reply

Linkity Links: Monster Kids, Scary Stories, Fifty Shades, and Maurice Sendak

First, I’ve learned about a couple of cool Kickstarter projects. We received an email telling us about a documentary about “Monster Kids”- the kids who grew up on classic creature features and horror movies and became the next generation of artists, moviemakers, writers, and actors. From Rose Fox at Genreville, I learned about Nightmare Magazine, soon to be presented by Creeping Hemlock Press, and edited by John Joseph Adams. The lineup for the first issue is impressive- it includes original short stories by Sarah Langan and Jonathan Maberry, among others. Both of these projects are still in need of funding, so if you’re intrigued I encourage you to check them out.

Not that long ago, I wrote about an excellent reason to read the classics– Harry Clarke’s illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination At the time, I had seen them only in an article from io9, but now, those who would like a full scale experience (and don’t have the book) can go here to the book design blog 50watts.com and see how disturbing they really are when they fill the entire screen.

And, over at Agnostic, Maybe, Andy Woodworth discusses why the Brevard County Library System’s quandary over Fifty Shades of Grey should lead to pairing Banned Books Week with “National Update Your Collection and Challenge Material Policies Because You Probably Need To (No, Seriously, Do It)” week. Apparently the Fond du Lac Library in Wisconsin declined to purchase it as well, but at least they made the decision, based on their selection policy, BEFORE purchasing the book. Not that the average person who wants to check out Fifty Shades of Grey will care whether the reason it’s not there is because of selection policy or because of censorship, but librarians are going to have to take a position, because it affects them now, on a practical level. It’s going to be an interesting Banned Books Week this year, no matter what.

Finally, Maurice Sendak and his impact on children and children’s literature (and me) can’t be summed up in a couple of paragraphs here. When I went to Amazon.com to look at children’s bestsellers, up at the top was Higgelty Piggelty Pop!  I was a little surprised, since I don’t think of it as being as well known as many of his others. It’s an odd little book, with a lot of story devoted to eating (and being eaten, by a lion). This afternoon one of my kids said “I don’t care” in response to something, and the other said “Well, you’ll be eaten by a lion”. They were referring to Sendak’s Pierre, in which a little boy who only responds to his parents with “I don’t care” is, in fact, eaten by a lion. And then there are the Wild Things, who scream to Max “Oh please don’t go! We’ll eat you up, we love you so!”  And so I was glad to have this article come my way. It does an excellent job of expressing why Sendak’s nightmares and bizarre fantasies are so powerful for so many. And maybe also why he wrote so much about being eaten.

And that’s all for now! Whew!

Posted on May 10, 2012 by , Reply
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