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Buffy the Vampire Slayer– #1 Now and Forever

Nope, not biased at all here. I unashamedly admit that I am a huge fan of Buffy The Vampire Slayer— and especially of Rupert Giles, who is one of my favorite fictional librarians ever. I hooked my husband, watching it on my grainy television with him well before we ever got married; I converted my best friend after the DVD’s came out, one episode at a time.

So I can’t say I’m surprised that Entertainment Weekly chose it as the #1 cult TV show of the past 25 years. The thing about Buffy The Vampire Slayer is that it taps into things that are truly scary– I have never been able to go back and watch The Body.

And also, Rupert Giles is an inspiration, at least for this mild-mannered librarian. Ruthless, determined, witty, patient(sometimes), able to find obscure answers and motivate teens to learn and use vital research skills, doing his best to save the world. Monster Movie Month is over, but that doesn’t mean you should stop searching for ways to connect horror readers to the best of what’s out there… and Buffy has translated into many mediums, including some fantastic graphic novels. I love No Future For You, from Season 8. It’s written by Brian K. Vaughan, who also wrote Y: The Last Man and Runaways, both great graphic novel series in their own right. There are books based on specific episodes, original works that take place in the Buffyverse, and so much more. Hey, if Twilight can inspire huge numbers of people to read Fifty Shades of Grey, just imagine the directions intelligent and witty writing  inspire!

In the meantime, my kids are asleep, and I think I’m going to sneak in Halloween, from the second season, where Giles’ true colors start to emerge from beneath the tweed.

 

Posted on August 2, 2012 by , Reply

Teen Read Week is here!

It kinda sneaked up on me, but Teen Read Week is here! I love that there’s a time of year to celebrate teens reading and get them involved with books and materials of all kinds in brand new ways.

This year’s theme is Picture It. That can be interpreted in so many ways! The obvious connection is to point teens to great graphic novels, or to media tie-ins to favorite television shows, movies, and video games. Although we haven’t gone in that direction for teen tie-ins here yet, there are many of these specifically aimed at teens that might lead them to related books, with you as a guide.

There are a lot of oldies out there that you can give some new life to, as well. Dracula, Frankenstein, Edgar Allan Poe- there are so many connections there I can’t even list them. From Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (sorry, this list hasn’t been updated in awhile); from Jessica Abel’s fantastic graphic novel Life Sucks to the awesome iPad app Dracula: The Official Stoker Family Edition; from storyteller Syd Lieberman’s audio recording of The “Tell-Tale Heart” to Ray Bradbury’s “Usher II”… these are the things that (to paraphrase Dave Etter) create the pictures that storm inside our heads.

Whatever you decide to do or promote, have a great Teen Read Week!

Posted on October 18, 2011 by , Reply

Vampires: The New All American Hero?

I was excited to see that the American Library Association had published a new readers advisory guide, Fang-tastic Fiction, with the subtitle “Twenty-First Century Paranormal Fiction”. It’s not often that a professional readers advisory guide appears that supports the librarians and readers who use our site (kind of- the author, Patricia O’Brien-Matthews, attempts immediately to remove the horror genre from her definition of paranormal fiction- but that’s not as easy as it sounds).

I’ll try to do a complete review of the book soon, but something she said in her introduction really jarred me. She wrote that vampires have “all the traits of the all-American hero”. What?

To put it in context, she’s writing about the transition of vampires from monsters to sympathetic leading characters. She attributes the change to the Twilight books and Anita Blake series, but I think that’s a stretch. Would you really pair Edward or Jean-Claude with Mom and apple pie? Deborah Wilson Overstreet was writing about this evolution before Twilight was even published, in her book Not Your Mother’s Vampire (Twilight came out in the fall of 2005, and Overstreet’s book was published shortly afterwards, in 2006, so it doesn’t mention Twilight), and she described the new, more sympathetic vampire as the “postmodern vampire”, which I think is a more accurate description. The postmodern vampire owes a lot to the media and literary franchise created by Joss Whedon, called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He (usually he) is more angsty, more likely to land a human soulmate, and may be a little more public- heck, he may be working towards redemption- but he isn’t any less a monster. A sympathetic character, perhaps, but what makes them sexy is the danger. Not the sparkles.

Of course, there are differences between the scholarly book Overstreet produced in the pre-Twilight days and O’Brien-Matthews’ guide to readers’ advisory for practicing librarians looking for immediate references. O’Brien-Matthews isn’t doing critical literary analysis- that would be WAY outside the scope of her book, which still has to cover an extremely broad field of literature for some very busy people. But all-American hero? Isn’t it enough to be a sympathetic protagonist in the world of the book?

Posted on May 5, 2011 by , Reply
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