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Musings: Gratitude

One thing this month has brought into sharp relief for me is how much I have to be grateful for.

I have discovered that I am surrounded by people of conscience who will actively challenge hate. Despite all the problems caused by the spread of poor information, the Internet has connected me when I felt isolated and alone.

I am within walking distance of my public library, a privilege that lifts me up, whether I am going there to work on this website, search for recreational reading, hang with my kids, or widen my understanding of the world. It’s a pretty great place, and during the month of October, I got to see democracy in action there, and show it to my kids, as it was an early voting location. People waited for hours to vote, every day. I wish everyone could easily access a library like mine. We all deserve it. Libraries are a cornerstone of democracy. If a major purpose of education is to create informed citizens able to participate effectively in democracy (and I firmly believe that it is) then publicly funded libraries are essential to our society. Where else can we freely access information and literature of all kinds, that opens windows in our minds and wakens us to ideas we’ve never encountered before? More than ever before, we need libraries and librarians, those professionals able to help us sort satire and lies from reliable sources. to help us identify bias and examine our reading critically. “Check your sources”, repeated by English teachers everywhere, has to be our gospel now. Librarians and libraries can show us how.

That we have freedom of information, freedom of the press, is such a gift. It’s one that can so easily slip away without our noticing in the morass of fake information and claims of bias. Corporations would like to end net neutrality and control our access: government would like to see the only news we see come straight from the source. That we live in a country where a free press  that keeps our government accountable not only exists but is something to have pride in, is amazing. That it’s a right we have is something we must protect (and that free press needs to be held accountable to accomplishing its mission, too). Our ability to express our outrage over challenges to literature and to question authority is a blessing that I am so grateful to have written into the founding documents of this country.

I am hopeful that we will remain a country of neighbors, reaching out to help each other in times of need. I have benefited from that generosity in my community as I cope with the death of my husband and the grief that accompanies it. I would like to think that the same people who have reached out to me when I have been in distress will also reach out to others outside our community when they see those people in need of help. I believe readers, especially, have a vision of the wider world, and will hold out their hands, and so I’m grateful for readers, and for all of you who have touched the lives of the people around you, near and far… and whether you know me or not, you have made a difference in my life.

I am grateful for a loving family and for my reviewers, some of whom have been such a part of the lives of me and my kids that they are like family themselves. And I will also be grateful if the sherry gravy on my stove right now doesn’t burn while I’m writing this.

Although for many people (including me) this is a difficult time of year, and in this year, for some it is particularly dark, I wish you all blessings in your celebrations, and reasons to find gratitude in your future.

 

Posted on November 24, 2016 by , Reply

The Scary Stuff: What’s Really Too Hard for Kids To Handle?

There are always limits we place on children’s reading.  Sometimes those limits can be pretty arbitrary. Children of course, aren’t necessarily interested in why we make those limits. They just want to read what they want to read,

One reason we place limits  is that it makes us uncomfortable. At least, it makes a lot of us uncomfortable. Mostly we want to protect our children from the evil of the world, not give them the opportunities to unsettle or terrify themselves.

Fear is a strange creature. I can hear gleeful stories about undead robot zombies daily from my seven year old, but faced with a bumblebee he freezes. The line is very thin sometimes. Larry the pet werewolf has joined my son’s odd cast of imaginary friends. Sometimes Larry is a friendly puppy. Sometimes he’s a protector. And sometimes he’s scary, mostly to my five year old, who gets freaked out by the howling in the dark at bedtime. We appear to be stuck with Larry, a creature who embodies all the contradictions to the ways my son deals with fear. Kids’ reactions to what they read and what they see can be so different from ours, and what we find disturbing may be a key clicking open a lock on a door to a room they need to visit. Alternatively, it could really frighten them. But life is less rich if we avoid everything that might evoke emotions that can be difficult to deal with.

As a parent I see these contradictions and the accompanying discomfort differently than I do as a librarian. As a librarian I might try to guide a child to something that seems more age appropriate or warn them that the book she’s chosen has intense content, and that it’s okay to put it down, but I don’t think I would completely refuse to give a child a book. I have to trust that parents are aware of and supportive of their child’s reading. As a parent I have absolutely told my kids that there are some books, movies, television, that they are not ready for yet. The Monster Kid is angling to watch Night of the Living Dead, and that is not going to happen.

It’s important to include kids in the discussions of why you think they aren’t ready to read or watch something. They can learn from you, and you can learn from them. The knowledge can make us better at understanding the other person and respecting boundaries. And to express all this better than I really can, I’m going to share a link to a blog entry by Mini Lee, who I think has some interesting things to say about all of this from the kid’s point of view. As uncomfortable as some of the books and media kids are interested in may make you, the essential thing is that there has to be enough trust and respect there to be able to hold a conversation about it.

Posted on May 29, 2013 by , Reply

Media Tie-ins and Monster High

So, one of the things that we talk about at MonsterLibrarian is the value of using media tie-ins and cross-platform media to get people involved in reading horror fiction. Given the way our world is evolving today, the natural targets for marketers are kids. I watch kids who do a great job integrating existing media characters and stories into completely different scenarios (the Monster Kid’s many stories about the classic mystery solving team of Detective Baby Godzilla and Scooby Doo come to mind) but, frankly, Godzilla and Scooby Doo are small potatoes when it comes to marketing to kids today.

In a discussion of this very topic, two very different people recently asked me  “What about Monster High”? I’ve actually read quite a bit about the problematic nature (to put it mildly) of Monster High, but I hadn’t done any real digging on the topic. Fashion dolls representing the “hip,” teenage children of Universal Horror monsters? I was done on a personal level when I saw the words “fashion dolls”– those are code words for “Barbie”.  In spite of her popularity, Barbie and friends aren’t coming into my house anytime soon. And Barbie is wholesome looking next to the dolls for Monster High. However, the dolls are mainstream, and they are a riff on the Universal Horror monsters, who in turn are tied to some of the great horror stories of our time. For example, there’s Operetta, the daughter of the Phantom of the Opera; Draculara, Dracula’s daughter; and the imaginatively named Frankie Stein who… well, I’m pretty sure you can guess her famous relative.

What I didn’t realize is how overwhelming the presence of Monster High is now.  I knew it was more than dolls– I see licensed items all over the place (and apparently even my daughter’s best friend has a Monster High backpack. My daughter is five). I even knew there were webisodes. But a musical? A possible movie? A series of books? This is merchandising that outstrips what Scholastic did with Goosebumps, or at least comes darn close. Are these dolls really drawing girls to explore the horror genre? I have no clue. MonsterHighMom, a commenter on a post about Monster High on Peggy Orenstein’s blog said she used the dolls to introduce her 6 year old to the Universal monsters (you’ll have to scroll down– she actually made several comments regarding sharing the dolls, and horror movies, with her 6yo), but that doesn’t seem to be part of  Mattel’s marketing scheme. Mattel is trying really hard to push the line as having an anti-bullying theme, but researchers and marketers are getting opposite messages from the actual content Mattel is putting out. “Mean girls” given monster guise to raise the “cool factor” of a toy line are, well, icky. Mean girls are monsters without looking like them.

But the idea is kind of a neat one, even if the execution isn’t. My own daughter is surrounded all the time by monster action figures and images from B movies (which she’s only mildly interested in, although she’ll play Mommy and Baby Godzilla anytime). But she also likes Tinkerbell and princesses. I think maybe there are a lot of girls who are elementary aged who like monsters and also like dress-up. I think there’s a place for a doll– not an action figure, or a miniature, or a model, but a doll.  If you look at the Universal Monsters franchise, there aren’t really any girl monsters (except the Bride of Frankenstein, but she’s not exactly a dynamic character). A doll could create a place for girls where it really doesn’t exist, and provide the opportunity for all kinds of creative storytelling. I might be convinced to buy a monster doll for my daughter if it wasn’t all sexed up. Melissa Wardy of Pigtail Pals, in meeting with Mattel about Monster High, told them something similar. Her daughter, who is not that much older than mine, loves monsters too.

It’s been suggested that the Monster High franchise could be used to teach media literacy, and it’s probably necessary to do that to get kids to think about the messages they’re internalizing. But how would you feel about promoting Monster High as a way of introducing young girls to the monster genre? I think it would make me uncomfortable, in a way that Goosebumps doesn’t. All media franchises are not equal, and Monster High’s adult messages aimed at little girls bother me a lot. There are so many strong, creative, and intelligent women in the horror genre that I think it’s really important for girls to feel like there’s a place for them there as readers, writers, and creators. Monster High is the mainstream, and I don’t feel like it creates that place for them: my question is, what are the alternatives to this powerful media franchise?

Posted on April 1, 2013 by , 2 comments