The Library

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