BELLAIRS, GOREY, ADDAMS

Students are to post ONE reaction (minimum 350 words) to the assigned listening/reading/viewing linked below. Students are encouraged (but not required) to additionally respond to other student reactions.

"The Autumnal Genius of John Bellairs" by Grady Hendrix: "There’s a particular kind of nostalgia that smells like burning autumn leaves on an overcast day. It sounds like a static-filled radio station playing Brylcreem advertisements in the other room. It feels like a scratchy wool blanket. It looks like a wood-paneled library stuffed with leather-bound books. This is the flavor of occult nostalgia conjured up by author John Bellairs and his illustrator, Edward Gorey, in their middle grade gothic New Zebedee books featuring low-key poker-playing wizards, portents of the apocalypse, gloomy weather, and some of the most complicated names this side of the list of ingredients on a packet of Twinkies." Click heading to read essay.

"Is there still room for scares in John Bellairs?" by Erik Adams: "The imagery and atmosphere of Bellairs’ work inspired a previous generation of readers to become a new generation of writers: The John Bellairs Fandæmonium website collects testimonies from such fans-turned-authors; The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy recently dropped Bellairs’ name in an NPR interview about Under Wildwood, his second YA effort with wife/personal Edward Gorey Carson Ellis. It all goes to show that the art that most often sticks with us, the work that most terrorizes and tantalizes, is that which leaves room for the unknown and the unsaid, that which invites us back by leaving room to interpret what’s hovering just out of view." Click heading to read the essay.

AND

THE GASHLYCRUMB TINIES by Edward Gorey: "Part Tim Burton long before there was Burton, part Edgar Allan Poe long after Poe, the book exudes Gorey’s signature adult picture book mastery, not merely adorned by the gorgeously dark crosshatched illustrations but narratively driven by them." Click heading to read/view The Gashlycrumb Tinies.

THE HAPLESS CHILD by Edward Gorey: Click title to download PDF of The Hapless Child.


 Why the Link Between Bellairs & Gorey is Unbreakable by Matt Domino: "Bellairs were browsing a bookstore and came across The Fatal Lozenge, an illustrated alphabet book by Edward Gorey. Bellairs was particularly fond of Z, which was illustrated with a Zouave [a class of French Army infantry members in the 19th and 20th centuries] hoisting an impaled baby on a bayonet with an accompanying verse." Click heading to read essay.

AND

Charles Addams by Christian Willaims (The Washington Post): In a sunny day in 1953, patent attorney F.T. Griswold holds a funny-looking electrical gizmo out the window of his office, aiming it down at the streets below. At his side stands the inventor of the device, hat in hand and waiting hopefully. "Death ray, fiddlesticks!" comes the verdict. "Why, it doesn't even slow them up."That is, of course, a New Yorker cartoon perpetrated by Charles Addams. Like his inventor's ray gun, Addams has never successfully harmed anybody. But it is safe to say that, over the past 50 years, his weird cartoons have certainly slowed them up." Click heading to reading article. 

The Father of the Addams Family (NPR): They said that Charles Addams slept in a coffin and drank martinis with eyeballs in them. They said he kept a guillotine at his house and received chopped-off fingers in the mail from fans. It was once reported that he had been given a monogrammed straitjacket as a birthday gift -- a garment that might have come in handy if the other stories were true, such as the one Patricia McLaughlin told about Addams moving around the living room at a party, "methodically and imponderably depositing" dollops of tooth powder in various corners. "A charm to ward off cavity-causing vampires?" she wondered. People said that Addams had married Morticia, the pale dagger in the spidery black dress from The Addams Family, that familiar band of subversives that included Gomez, Lurch, Pugsley, Wednesday, Uncle Fester, Grandma, Thing, and Cousin Itt. Click heading to read essay, excerpt, and/or listen to interview.

Is Someone Going to Bake Me a Pie? The eeriness of Mother Goose. Charles Addams' Illustrations remind us how the classic tales could seem in the minds of the kids to whom we read them. Click heading to view book.

MG vs. YA

Students are to post reactions (minimum 350 words) to the assigned reading linked below. Students are encouraged (but not required) to additionally respond to other student reactions.

 

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Middle Grade: A Conversation w. Editor Molly O'Neill: "As you know, I have a marketing background, which means that whether or not I intend it, one of the first things my brain starts thinking about for a book is its readership: who is a book FOR? What kind of reader is it going to reach, and how? Maybe instead of asking “What is middle grade?” it’s easier to think about “Who is the middle grade reader, and what is he/she looking for in a book?” I think that a middle grade reader is often (and note, I’m speaking BROADLY, here) reading for one of two reasons: to understand, or to escape. Middle grade readers who read to understand look for stories that help them piece together the truths that seem to be opening up all around them, about the world and their place in it, and the connections between themselves and their family, their community, their friends, etc. Or they’re reading to understand about a different time/ place and what it was/would be like to be a kid then. Or they’re reading to just understand how stuff works, period—from the everyday mundane stuff to big concepts like justice and honesty and friendship and happiness and love. Click heading to read the rest of the interview.

 "A Definition of YA" by Brooklyn Arden: "So I've been thinking off and on about a practical definition of YA literature -- something I could look at to help me decide whether a manuscript is an adult novel or a middle-grade novel or, indeed, a YA. Such delineations don't matter to me as a reader -- a good book is a good book -- but they do matter to me as an editor and publisher, because I want every book I publish to find the audience that is right for it, and sometimes, despite a child or teenage protagonist, a manuscript is meant for an adult audience

An SFWA Introduction to Middle Grade & Young Adult: "For writers who are interested in writing middle grade or young adult fantasy or science fiction, the first step is puzzling out what exactly those categories mean. Science fiction and fantasy, after all, has a long tradition of featuring young protagonists — including such classics as Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey, Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings, and Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey — even if those novels weren’t originally published as middle grade or young adult books." Click heading to read the rest of the article.

"Middle Grade and YA: Where to Draw the Line?" by Judith Rosen: "Since Harry Potter first hit these shores in 1998, there’s been confusion over where best to shelve it: put it where most kids look for it, in middle grade (ages 8–12), or where the later, darker novels belong, in young adult (ages 12–up)? But J.K. Rowling’s books aren’t the only ones that fall into a gray area, especially as more kids aspire to “read up” because of popular films like Divergent and The Hunger Games. At the same time, adults have begun reading down, not just YA but also reaching for middle-grade books like Wonder and Out of My Mind, because they don’t want to miss out, either." Click heading to read the rest of the article.

KELLY LINK

 

Students are to post reactions (minimum 250 words each) to the assigned listening/reading linked below. Students are encouraged (but not required) to additionally respond to other student reactions.

KELLY LINK Monster Librarian Interview:  Kelly Link is the author of the young adult collection Pretty Monsters. She has written two other collections, Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners. Her novellas and short stories have won a variety of awards. Neil Gaiman called her "the best short story writer out there, in any genre." She co-founded Small Beer Press with her husband, Gavin Grant, and edits the fantasy zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. Click heading to read the interview.

KELLY LINK NPR Interview: Author Kelly Link says her short stories are inspired by what she calls "night time logic." In fiction that strives for realism, she says, everything has a place. Everything makes sense. It's kind of like dream logic, she tells NPR's Audie Cornish, "except that when you wake up from a dream, you think, well, that didn't make sense. Night time logic in stories, you think, I don't understand why that made sense, but I feel there was a kind of emotional truth to it." Click heading to listen to NPR interview.

THE WEIRDEST STORY IDEAS COME FROM YOUR OWN OBSESSIONS by KELLY LINK: "One of the most useful pieces of writing advice I've ever come across was something Kate Wilhelm said. To roughly paraphrase, she suggests that every writer indirectly collaborates with her subconscious — she calls this collaborator your Silent Partner — who supplies you with ideas that you then turn into stories."Click heading to read the rest of the essay.

THE SPECIALIST'S HAT by KELLY LINK: "When you're Dead," Samantha says, "you don't have to brush your teeth." "When you're Dead," Claire says, "you live in a box, and it's always dark, but you're not ever afraid." Claire and Samantha are identical twins. Their combined age is twenty years, four months, and six days. Claire is better at being Dead than Samantha. Click heading to read the rest of the story.

KELLY LINK

 

Students are to post reactions (minimum 250 words each) to the assigned listening/reading linked below. Students are encouraged (but not required) to additionally respond to other student reactions.

KELLY LINK Monster Librarian Interview:  Kelly Link is the author of the young adult collection Pretty Monsters. She has written two other collections, Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners. Her novellas and short stories have won a variety of awards. Neil Gaiman called her "the best short story writer out there, in any genre." She co-founded Small Beer Press with her husband, Gavin Grant, and edits the fantasy zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. Click heading to read the interview.

KELLY LINK NPR Interview: Author Kelly Link says her short stories are inspired by what she calls "night time logic." In fiction that strives for realism, she says, everything has a place. Everything makes sense. It's kind of like dream logic, she tells NPR's Audie Cornish, "except that when you wake up from a dream, you think, well, that didn't make sense. Night time logic in stories, you think, I don't understand why that made sense, but I feel there was a kind of emotional truth to it." Click heading to listen to NPR interview.

THE WEIRDEST STORY IDEAS COME FROM YOUR OWN OBSESSIONS by KELLY LINK: "One of the most useful pieces of writing advice I've ever come across was something Kate Wilhelm said. To roughly paraphrase, she suggests that every writer indirectly collaborates with her subconscious — she calls this collaborator your Silent Partner — who supplies you with ideas that you then turn into stories."Click heading to read the rest of the essay.

THE SPECIALIST'S HAT by KELLY LINK: "When you're Dead," Samantha says, "you don't have to brush your teeth." "When you're Dead," Claire says, "you live in a box, and it's always dark, but you're not ever afraid." Claire and Samantha are identical twins. Their combined age is twenty years, four months, and six days. Claire is better at being Dead than Samantha. Click heading to read the rest of the story.