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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

Another Reason To Read The Classics

No sooner had I written about why readers shouldn’t write off the classics any more than selectors (be they librarians, educators, booksellers, or whoever) should write off popular or genre fiction, than another reason to check them out came my way via reviewer Colleen Wanglund. An article from the excellent science fiction website iO9 shared the incredible, horrifying illustrations that appeared in Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Thinking back, it seems like the first volume of Poe’s short stories that I encountered had at least some of these illustrations in them. What a compelling way to seize a reader, to get pulled into the story before ever encountering the possibly frustrating tone, style, pace, and vocabulary of books written a hundred years ago. Yes, it IS worth it to try the real thing, to have it in your hands. Even if you just choose to find it for the pictures.

Posted on May 6, 2012 by , 1 comment

Fifty Shades of Shame

I haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey, but I am outraged by the media’s assumption that women are reading it on ereaders because they’re ashamed for the world to know what they’re reading. While it’s true that most of the copies sold have been ebooks, some of that is probably because print copies have been scarce. I can’t speak for all women, of course, but the last time I checked the catalog in the Indianapolis library system, there were 77 holds.  That’s 77 people, probably mostly women, who are okay with marching up to the circulation desk to check it out- 77 people who aren’t ashamed to read a physical copy with a cover that other people might see, even though Dr. Drew announced his disapproval, the media has anointed it “mommy porn”, and many reviewers have not been kind (Jesse Kornbluth at the Huffington Post called it “a sad joke”). The point is, it’s turning a lot of people on to books. Those people are not hiding their taste in reading, they’re celebrating it. Good for them. It’s fine to keep your taste in reading private, of course. But no one should be made to feel that they need to justify or defend it.  Why do I read genre fiction on my ereader? It’s not because I’m worried that someone might see I’m reading a book without the Oprah seal of approval. It’s because I read so damn much of it that if I bought physical copies of everything I read I’d be buried in them, and sometimes I’m too impatient to wait for the library.

Whatever you read, be it Fifty Shades of Grey, gory zombie novels, steampunk with parasols, witty Regency romance, or all of the above… here, we stand by your right to read what you want, the way you want to, regardless of what anyone else says, does, or thinks.

 

 

Posted on March 28, 2012 by , Reply
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