DPL Blog

As a kid, I loved them. As an adult, I still do. Christmas specials, people. Christmas specials. A Charlie Brown Christmas, with the little tree and Linus’s speech. An animated Fred Astaire dancing around with a bunch of forest critters. Scrooge McDuck holding onto Jiminy Cricket for dear life as they fly through the air. I can’t get enough of them and have a steadily growing collection of these classic Christmas specials on DVD.

One of my very favorite specials is Will Vinton’s A Claymation Christmas Celebration. For those of you who aren’t in the know, this special is from 1987. It’s about an hour long and features two bickering dinosaurs as masters of ceremony for a variety show of Christmas carols. Think Fantasia. With clay and Christmas. The California Raisins perform “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” Quasimodo directs an orchestra of bells in “The Carol of the Bells,” and three camels steal the show in “We Three Kings.” Each segment is animated using stop-motion animation and clay figures, sets, and props. Everything is made of clay.

Screencap from “Joy to the World” Animated by Joan Gratz

For years, one segment of A Claymation Christmas Celebration has confused me. “Joy to the World” always looked hand-drawn or painted to me. What was it doing in a claymation movie, anyway? This year, I finally learned Will Vinton’s secret. Her name is Joan Gratz, and she animated “Joy to the World” using clay painting. That’s right. It’s still clay. Watch the segment for yourself on YouTube. As a child, I loved the music and the colors of this segment. As an adult, I am blown away by the amount of time, energy, and talent that went into this two and a half minute song. It’s some of the most beautiful art that I’ve ever seen, and this year I got to see it with new eyes.

This Christmas, I hope you get to look at your own traditions with new eyes and see the time, energy, and talents that go into making Christmas the best time of the year.

Merry Christmas!

Liz

Teen Librarian

There’s only 10 left in November! That means there’s only 10 days left in NaNoWriMo!

NaNoWriMo? What’s that? How do you say it?

It’s National Novel Writing Month, the month when writers everywhere try to write a whole 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I’ll save you the math: that’s about 1,667 words a day, for 30 days. For a normal typist (40 words per minute), that’s about 42 minutes of straight typing per day. I’m a fast typist (60 words a minute), but writing 1,667 words takes me about an hour.  Either way, that’s a lot of typing.

And it’s pronounced “Nan – Oh – Wry – Mo”

As the organization says on their website, “Valuing enthusiasm, determination, and a deadline, NaNoWriMo is for anyone who has ever thought about writing a novel.”

And it’s certainly one way to do it, though it’s no easy task.

Every year, I try to do NaNoWriMo. First, I’m excited. What will I write this year? Sci-fi? Fantasy? A cheesy vampire novel? I do some planning and get a basic outline going for the story. Then November starts, and I start typing. And typing. And typing. Then I miss a day, get the flu, get busy making paper wreaths for a craft show… Life happens. And suddenly there are ten days left in November, and I’m short about 25,000 words.

Oh, well. There’s always next year.

Two years ago, I did get to 50,000 words. Here are a few tips I picked up for overcoming writer’s block and keeping the momentum going:

1. Write something every day
2. Stop writing in the middle of a scene – this forces you to get back into writing to finish it the next time you sit down
3. Keep a general list of upcoming scenes so you know where you want to go next
4. Don’t worry – this is a first draft.
5. Seriously, it’s a first draft. Just write. Worry later.

NaNoWriMo may be ending, but that doesn’t mean you have to wait a whole year to write your novel. Make December your WriMo. Or make 2016 your WriYear. Make your own goal, set your own deadline, and write the book you’ve always wanted to.

Happy Writing!

Liz

Teen Librarian

PS: Link to my very favorite random writing tool: Write or Die by Dr. Wicked. Check it out.

“I have great faith in fools – self-confidence my friends will call it.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia

Next week the Dover Public Library is hosting a series of events inspired by the master of horror and the inventor of the detective story, American author Edgar Allan Poe.

I’ve loved Edgar Allan Poe since I was about 11. His stories were dark and weird and twisted, and I loved them. I was obsessed with reading as much Poe as I could get my hands on. Somewhere between “The Gold Bug” and “Three Sundays in a Week,” I finally burnt myself out on Poe and moved on to Shakespeare for a while. What can I say? I was a weird kid.

Years later, I had the opportunity to take a class on Poe in college. Just Poe. There was a room full of people just like me: Edgar Allan Poe Fanatics. None of us was geekier than the professor, who owned and displayed an Edgar Allan Poe action figure. (Yes, they exist) This class rekindled my love of Poe and gave me a greater understanding of the man behind the stories. Get me talking, and I’ll geek out all week about Edgar Allan Poe and what you might not realize about him.

Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston. His parents were actors, and his father left when he was a year old. His mother died the year after.

The “Allan” is not his middle name. Poe was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. John Allan in 1811. Poe and John never got along. Mrs. Allan died in 1829.

Poe deliberately got himself kicked out of West Point. (John Allan didn’t like that.)

At 26 years old, Poe won a contest for “The Manuscript Found in a Bottle,” an adventure story on the high seas. 

Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia. They had no children, and she died of tuberculosis at the age of 24.

He loved puzzles. If you like Sherlock Holmes, you have Poe to thank. He invented the modern detective story when he wrote “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Poe wrote 3 stories featuring his detective. My personal favorite is “The Purloined Letter.”

Poe was afraid of being buried alive.

Poe did not make a good living as a writer. This is an understatement. He made a lot of people angry with his critical essays and was fired on more than one occasion.

They don’t know how Poe died. Theories include rabies, a drugging related to an election-day scam, and drug overdose. What we do know is that Poe died on October 7, 1849, in a hospital in Baltimore.

“The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether” inspired the 2014 film Stonhearst Asylum starring Kate Beckinsale.

Oh, I guess you got me talking…

I hope you visit the library next week for our Poe programs, which include a Tell-Tale Tale on Sunday at 6:00 PM, a Poe Movie Night on Monday, and a book discussion on Tuesday at the Carriage House. Call the library at 330-343-6123 for more info!

Liz

Teen Librarian & Poe Geek

A patron asked me for season two of The Walking Dead last week. As I placed the hold, I read the info on the DVD and realized something I didn’t know before. The Walking Dead was a graphic novel before it was a hit TV show! That got me thinking… what other graphic novels are on the big screen? Some I remember from when I was a kid; Batman, Superman… I remember watching some of these when I was in Junior High. So then I started thinking, okay, Batman, Superman, Hulk, Wonder Woman. Comic books are everywhere! We still have these in the Young Adult area of the library, and they were around when I was young.  Now we have the graphic novel, and more and more authors are releasing their series in graphic novel form. The author Janet Evanovich has some, and Game of Thrones has an epic series of graphic novel adaptations as well.  Not to mention all the great graphic novels in the YA section! 

(Our Teen Librarian wants me to mention that, for the record, the Evanovich and George R.R. Martin graphic novels are NOT in the Young Adult section… if you’ve seen Game of Thrones on HBO, you know why)

So, let’s do another contest. How many movies on the big screen are from comic books or graphic novels? Bring in the list to me in the month of October, and the person who has the most will win a prize. Good Luck, and thanks for reading and playing along!

Denise

Adult Department