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A Giant is Gone: Ray Bradbury Dies

 

Today I learned that Ray Bradbury had died.

From the day I snagged a library copy of Fahrenheit 451 (due to a school board election in which one candidate ran on the platform of removing it from the curriculum), Ray Bradbury had me hooked. It’s funny how his short stories sneaked in to the most unusual of places. I found  “The Flying Machine” and “A Sound of Thunder” in my middle school English textbook, and my junior year, after reading “The Fall of the House of Usher”, my American Lit teacher stuck a photocopy of “Usher 2000” in my hands. There were anthologies edited by Martin Greenberg that had his stories within, and somewhere in my days as the librarian for the science fiction society I belonged to in college, I acquired a used hardcover copy of  three of his anthologies bound together- The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles, and Dandelion Wine.  I just read a short essay on Bradbury criticizing him for not having written anything of note since the 1960s, but I completely disagree- although these are probably still my favorite stories, I love his writing for making me think.

I heard Bradbury speak once, on a double bill with Douglas Adams. I have to say that Douglas Adams, as much as I love his writing, was not a great speaker. Bradbury, however… Even in a wheelchair, mere days after a stroke, he was compelling and fascinating. Age, and even illness, did not stop his agile mind.  Just this year, I discovered the “official” graphic novel of Fahrenheit 451, with an introduction by Bradbury, where he wrote about how, as time passed, he had been able to reflect and recognize the origins of the book. Which has, ironically, been the target of censors many times, including his own publishers. If not for libraries, this book could never have been written- it’s a true dime novel, written on a typewriter in the basement of a library, at the cost of ten cents per half hour. You can find it at your library and check it out today, knowing that libraries have not only defended the book, but also allowed for its creation in the first place.

Bradbury resisted having his books come out as ebooks, but they did recently come out in that forrm. If you’ve never read his work now is an excellent time to start, and you have all kinds of choices.  A giant of literature, with the talent to create compelling, disturbing, and sometimes terrifying visions of the future present, he will be missed.

 

 

Posted on June 6, 2012 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

The Best and Worst of Stephen King

I think we can all agree that Stephen King is such a part of American pop culture that it’s hard to have gotten through the past forty years without experiencing at least one of his stories in book, graphic novel, television, or movie form. Even people who don’t read horror may have read Stephen King- my sister, for instance, who has complete disdain for genre fiction, loved The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. It’s actually one of the few books that she and my dad, who has much different reading tastes, will both discuss enthusiastically with each other.

King is a huge draw for reluctant readers. One King-obsessed guy I knew in college had never read anything until he discovered and devoured King. The Stand is the ONLY book I know of that my best friend has read cover to cover twice (she also brought the audiobook of Nightmares and Dreamscapes with her on an endless car trip we took together one summer to the Pennsic War. King in audio is pretty awesome).

Still, I am really pretty darn impressed that someone took the time to read everything he’s ever written and rank the books in order (click here to see the rankings). I know there are people who have read all of his stuff, but I certainly can’t claim to have done so. The rankings, as rankings always are, are pretty subjective and open to debate, but my gosh! It takes perserverance to get through some of those books (ahem, IT), and for the very reason that many non-readers of horror have found a King book they like, it’s hard, I think, to find someone who will find that all of his books will be personally appealing. I think that actually makes it hard for librarians to know which of his books to recommend. If someone comes in looking for another King book, is it because they loved Lisey’s Story, or because they were scared out of their wits by The Shining? I’d love to know if Becky Siegel Spratford, the RA queen of horror, has a list of read-alikes for them, since so many of them are so different in nature.

I will admit that I haven’t read a lot of the books that made the top ten. Some I had no desire to read, others I had no access to (a lot of the King I read was stolen from my dad’s bedside table). And my favorites, with the exception of Misery, didn’t make the top ten on this particular list. Carrie is right there at the top for me. When I read it in high school (which is the best time to read it) I literally jumped out of my seat when the bell at the end of study hall rang.

So, King. What are your top picks? Do you agree with the author of the rankings list?

Posted on April 26, 2012 by , Reply
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