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Monster Movie Month: At the Movies with Ray Harryhausen– A Monster Kid Request

In perusing a list of monster movies on Wikipedia recently, my son discovered a movie called 20 Million Miles From Earth. When he clicked on the link to the entry on the movie, there he was, once again… Ray Harryhausen, master special effects artist in stop-motion animation.

It wasn’t our first encounter with Harryhausen’s work. My son had early encounters with Greek mythology due to my own fond memories of spending hours at my grandma’s poring overD’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Mythology, a book I now own. So he’d heard the stories and even seen color pictures of many of the monsters, gods, and heroes, and when we sat down to watch the original Clash of the Titans I didn’t think too much about it. In my defense, I probably hadn’t seen the movie in at least 20 years. I did remember the scene with Medusa being pretty intense, but considering his personal interest in monsters and mythology it didn’t occur to me that his reaction would be anything except “Cool!”

Well, let me tell you, that was not his reaction. First, he became obsessed with watching the scene again and again. If she had been real, those glowing eyes would have had him stuck permanently in place. Luckily, Medusa is not real. And I could prove it. I found pictures of the model online, like this one. Still, she is a fascinating creature, and according to this video, a very complex piece of stop-motion animation. And even once the initial fascination with Medusa had passed we kept tripping over Ray Harryhausen’s movies. The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, It Came From Beneath the Sea , 20 Million Miles To Earth, Jason and the Argonauts… from the Ymir to the skeleton army, there he was, with work to fascinate and terrify.

While Harryhausen worked more in the fantasy and science fiction genres, it all kind of blends together for my monster kid, and the creatures Harryhausen created are memorable. He’s still alive, at age 92, and if you’d like to learn a little more about him, he has an official website. In the past couple of years he’s also published several books through Aurum Press, with the most recent (and most easily available) being Ray Harryhausen’s Fantasy Scrapbook: Models, Artwork and Memories from 65 Years of Filmmaking, which looks REALLY cool! With so many kids and teens now able to do their own simple stop-motion animation, and so many in love with monsters and magic, why not introduce them to Ray Harryhausen? Dust off his movies and not only can you introduce a special effects master to a new generation, but you can remind some nostalgic adults of the way they felt when they saw Harryhausen’s Medusa for the first time.

 

Posted on July 5, 2012 by , Reply

Welcome to Monster Movie Month!

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say, and it’s true that in a horror movie you can experience in a a moment a feeling of terror you might never capture with words. With the right camera shots, music, and special effects, films do more than give a face to horror– they add new dimensions to storytelling. There are a lot of horror readers who also love horror movies (reviewer Colleen Wanglund is currently spending a lot of time at the New York Asian Film Festival)Yet there’s a divide between horror movie watchers and horror fiction readers–there are lots of people who watch horror movies who don’t read horror fiction, and there are many readers who don’t watch the movies.

This gives readers advisory librarians a special opportunity to share the horror genre with both audiences–watchers and readers. It can be hard to know what to suggest, especially if you don’t know much about the genre. In the recently published second edition to The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, author and RA librarian Becky Siegel Spratford suggested ten horror films for horror readers. Then my six year old Monster Kid asked if we would write about monster movies (he’s a big Godzilla fan). So we are declaring this July Monster Movie Month (I apologize to all those expecting Werewolf Month, but I promise we’ll still have something for you).

We created a Monster Movie Month web page where we’ll be posting reviews of some of the great movies in the horror genre, with suggested watch-alikes and read-alikes, and we’ll also have several guest blogs- you’ll want to take some time to read what Becky Siegel Spratford has to say about marketing horror, and what the podcasters from The Cutting Room horror movie podcast think about horror movies, books, and libraries.

We’ll also be sharing a variety of resources for further investigation- in addition to links on the web page, visit our Monster Movie Month board on Pinterest and you’ll find additional resources. Right now, we’ve got some great information on Lovecraftian horror movies and Godzilla, kaiju and giant monster movies, and there is more to come. Visit us often to see what new things we’ve posted to this blog and added to the Monster Movie Month web page. There is a ton of cool stuff here so take time to explore! And thanks for joining us for Monster Movie Month!

To find the resources for Monster Movie Month easily, check out the links below, and search for posts about Monster Movie Month on this blog’s tag archive under Monster Movie Month!

Monster Movie Month Web Page

Monster Movie Month Pinterest Board

Posted on July 1, 2012 by , 2 comments

Monster Kid Request: Move Over, Judy Moody!

If you are a children’s librarian, or a school librarian, or anyone who works with upper elementary aged kids, you are probably familiar with Judy Moody. Judy Moody is one of the less annoying protagonists that appear in series books targeted to girls. She isn’t concerned with looks or popularity, she wants to be a doctor, and her concerns go beyond the superficial. I find her annoying anyway. She rolls her eyes and says “boring” a lot, and she’s not very nice to her younger brother, who she’s nicknamed Stink.

But Stink is now coming into his own. He has his own series of books, with witty cartoons (supposedly drawn by him) and fun stories that even manage to sneak in a little learning. These books are aimed at kids who are a little younger, and my kids, who are 4 and 6,  will sit and listen to me read a Stink book for over an hour. I can’t say I like everything about the books, but they are enjoyable and funny without having nearly as much name calling or gross humor as some other books aimed at kids this age.

What’s really interesting to me, though, is that the Stink Moody website has zoomed in on one particular book (that I haven’t read) and created a whole event kit around the theme. The book is Stink and the Midnight Zombie Walk and the event is… wait for it… Reading Is Undead. The kit even ties in last summer’s movie, Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer, which, in addition to Stink’s extensive hunt for the elusive Bigfoot (which resulted in some pretty fun movie tie-in books that we do own, due to the Monster Kid’s obsession with Bigfoot and other cryptids) also has a fairly memorable zombie scene. Now, the Monster Kid is not allowed to watch zombie movies, and we try to tone the whole zombie thing down here, but there it is- another kid his age who gets into monsters, at probably the most age appropriate and non-gory way possible (yes, you may laugh at me now).

I think Stink and his friends could appeal to both girls and boys, especially because of the Judy Moody connection (the series is very popular) but, given how many books are already in the series and how many themes they address, I think it’s crazy fun that Candlewick Press is promoting reading, and the Stink Moody books, with cryptids and zombies. There are so many ways to get kids to read using this promotion, I encourage you to check it out, as well as the other Stink Moody books and resources, available here.

Posted on June 20, 2012 by , 3 comments
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