Monthly Archives: October 2016

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Making Magic: Bringing “What If” to Life

*This post is part of Free for All’s “Making Magic” series, which will focus on Kelley’s exploration of the opportunities in the library’s Creativity Lab.

Having a rich inner world is a gift. Kids are great at imagining and, as adults, if we give ourselves a moment to wonder without limits, we can be pretty good at it too. We can conjure characters we’d like to meet (or hope we never do), wish for things that haven’t been invented yet, and picture ourselves in fantastic situations that will never happen but would be lovely or exciting if they did. In one of my previous posts I mentioned that it was unlikely that I would ever sprout fairy wings and develop an ability to fly, and while that’s entirely true, what if I were able to make it look like I did? What if I could create an image that made it look like I had wings and was flying through the sky? Or one where I was in a cave fighting a fire breathing dragon? What if there were a way to make our dreams come alive if only for a moment frozen in time?

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The knight in this image is a Maker Academy participant dressed in costume.

This summer, I had the privilege of being a part of the Creativity Lab’s two-week Maker Academy program where teens came together to create their own photo comics. Our imaginative team developed their own fantasy and superhero characters, learned costuming skills to outfit themselves as those characters, worked in groups to write stories that featured their characters, and finally took photographs of each scene that they then edited for the photo comic. The result was Four Ways to Save the World: Or, Cliched Title of a Collection of Cliched Stories, some panels of which you’ll see illustrating this post.

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Some students learn basic Photoshop skills while others take green screen photos.

When the teens came up with their characters and stories, although the stories would need to be photo illustrated for the comic, there were no limits to their settings. Thanks to some Photoshop instruction and the Creativity Lab’s new green screen, teens were able to photograph themselves in action shots, and then swap out the green backgrounds for public domain images they found online. When photographs are taken in front of a single color background, Photoshop makes it easy to select everything in that single color to be removed and replaced with something else.

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Character head shots from Week 1 of Maker Academy

In some cases, in addition to swapped backgrounds, participants even used Photoshop’s painting tools to turn themselves fully into their characters.

A panel from "The Last Resort"
A panel from “The Last Resort”

Pretty cool, right? What’s even cooler is that if you’re a registered maker in the Creativity Lab, you can bring your “what ifs” to life too!

All Creativity Lab computers have Photoshop installed on them, and the green screen is available for use anytime during Open Labs. Don’t know how to use Photoshop? No problem! The Creativity Lab offers periodic Photoshop classes (see the complete events calendar for a list of upcoming classes), and during Open Labs the Programming Librarian is available to help out with basic instruction for specific tasks.

Now, I’m going to ask you to do yourself a favor: Give yourself some time to wonder without limits. Then, come down to visit the library so that we can help you bring the things you dream up to life.

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Saturdays @ the South: Diversity in Horror

bonesIt’s getting close to the official All Hallow’s Read and while I can’t wait to see what Arabella has cooked up for Monday, we’ve still got one Saturday left in our month-long celebration. I’d like to spend it talking about diversity in what is often considered a white man’s genre: horror. Many will automatically think of Stephen King, Dean Koontz or even more classic authors like M.R. James and Edgar Allan Poe when they think of people creating horror stories. While they have produced many wonderful horror stories that have terrified people through the years and are read with good reason, they are not the only voices in horror.

In fact, amidst a predominantly white publishing industry,  authors, readers and interest groups (such as the fantastic “We Need Diverse Books“) are starting to take a stand to encourage more diverse books among horror and all types of literature. Blog favorite Book Riot has spoken several times on making it a point to recommend and speak about diverse books on their site and in their podcasts. I myself am working to have more voices of all types in my reading and when I looked back at what I’ve been reading this month (mostly horror and ghost stories in my own celebration of All Hallows Read) I noticed it was primarily white male voices.

I also noticed that while there are virtually infinite ways to scare people, many of these books fall into similar tropes. With that in mind, I thought I would take a look at some other voices in horror, to look at the possibility of other ways to be scared and to also see what are some of the commonalities of what is fundamentally scary as part of the human experience, regardless of culture. As Haruki Murakami said: “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” So here are some books that will help you think outside the box of typical horror:

3789533The Graveyard Apartment by Mariko Koike

Koike is a hugely popular author in Japan working primarily in horror and detective fiction. In this newly-translated work from 1986, in some circles considered her masterpiece, a family moves into an apartment building  next to a graveyard where strange things begin to happen. The potential evil lurking in the young family’s new home seems to feed off of a dark secret they’re harboring and the psychological suspense builds as they explore the building’s spaces and its past. This book is purported to make basements even creepier, so sign me up!

3544400Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

When I went searching for more diverse horror reads, I found this rec from Book Riot contributor Jenn Northington. Written with a diverse cast of characters, Northington had this to say about Broken Monsters: “Whether you’re a veteran horror reader or a hide-under-the-blankets-put-the-book-in-the-freezer newbie (I am the latter), Beukes has something for you. Her books are both terrifying and wildly imaginative, and so so hard to put down.” I’m so there. This may very well be the next book on my to-read list (All Hallows Read or not!) with a recommendation like that.

2267807Wee Winnie Witch’s Skinny by Virginia Hamilton

Working with her extensive knowledge of African-American folklore, Hamilton manages to make a children’s book truly scary for any who reads it. Uncle Big Anthony and James Lee have been cursed by Wee Winnie Witch who rides them like a broom throughout the night. Mamma Granny knows what to do to break the curse, however, in a clever twist that rivals any in the Grimm’s fairy tales.

3022778American Gods by Neil Gaiman

I know what you’re thinking: Lady Pole, while we are well aware of your love of Neil Gaiman, he is, in fact, a white, male author. Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of your post? Your point is certainly fair, but I’m including this book because Gaiman himself has spoken up and acted on (through some of the collections he’s edited) about diversity in literature. He has vehemently worked to ensure that the main character of this book, Shadow , does not succumb to Hollywood whitewashing and is striving to keep the cultural diversity of his book in the upcoming Starz adaptation. I’ve included this book because it is a horror book about the immigrant experience and because Gaiman does a pretty decent job of writing outside of his own cultural borders, which not every author is brave enough to attempt.

3699308The Girl with the Ghost Eyes by M. H. Boroson

Li-lin is cursed with”yin eyes” the ability to see ghosts in 1800’s San Francisco Chinatown. She is the daughter of a Daoshi excorcist who becomes cursed by a powerful sorcerer. It takes Li-lins powers of sight to defeat the curse all the while struggling against the demands of being a dutiful daughter and the stigmas of being a widow. This book got a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly and is described by the publisher as having: “…a rich and inventive historical setting, nonstop martial arts action, authentic Chinese magic, and bizarre monsters from Asian folklore…” I’ll never know how this didn’t end up on my radar sooner.

Diverse books are important for so many reasons. Readers need to see a portion of themselves represented on the page, regardless of who they are or where they come from. Books are one of the easiest and cheapest ways to broaden our horizons. If you’re already planning on reading something for All Hallows Read, why not see if you can be scared in a way that perhaps has never creeped you out before? If none of these books whet your whistle, you can try this great list from Goodreads which includes not just cultural, but gender and ability diversity as well. Till next week, dear readers, let’s try to break some boundaries with our reading. You’ll never know what new favorite you can discover.

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Five Book Friday!

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downloadThat’s right….As if the Library wasn’t a great enough place already, this year, the West Branch is an official polling place for early voting in Massachusetts!  Those who choose to take advantage of this new option can check out the schedule of polling locations and places by clicking on this link, which will take you to the website for the Secretary of the Commonwealth.  The application for an Early Voter Ballot can be found by clicking here, as well.  We hope this process will make it a little easier for you to fulfill your civic duty by voting when you are able to do so…and also, hopefully, minimize the stress of these elections by allowing you do avoid any nonsense that may occur on Election Day itself.  You can also visit the Torigian Life Center and City Hall to cast an Early Ballot.

See? Libraries are good for All Things.
See? Libraries are good for All Things.

If you have any problems, especially on Election Day, you can feel free to talk to one of the wardens (police officers) at the polling place, or call the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Elections Division at 617-727-2828 or 1-800-462-8683. Additionally, the national Election Protection Hotline is 1-866-OUR-VOTE or 1-888-VE-Y-VOTA (en Español).

And just a friendly reminder, pursuant to General laws chapter 56, section 25, it is against the law to allow the marking of his ballot to be seen by any person for any purpose. This includes a voter photographing their own ballot after marking it.  So party like it’s 1992 while at the polling places, ok?

Ok.  Now that all that Adulting has been done and dusted, let’s get to the books….This week is a survey of histories of many different kinds.  We hope you enjoy!

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3757073The Terranauts: Ostensibly, T.C. Boyle’s newest novel is science fiction; it’s set in a version of 1994, in the deserts of Arizona.  With global warming an ever-growing threat, eight ‘Terranaunts’ are preparing to enter a three-acre biodome where they will live completely sealed off from humanity in preparation for an off-earth colony.  Yet while Boyle’s book has plenty of interesting scientific details, and his alternative America is a fascinating place, this book is really about the lives, loves, and choices of the Terranauts themselves–those who enter the dome, and those who are left outside.  By switching narratives, he allows the reader to full experience life through these characters eyes, making this a much more personal, searching, and therefore, realistic story than might otherwise be expected.  Many are calling this book Boyle’s masterpiece (or one of them, at least!), with Publisher’s Weekly proclaiming it “A sprawling tale of achievement, yearning, pride, and human weakness…a multilayered work that recalls the tragicomic realism of Saul Bellow and John Updike.”

3757027Napoleon’s Last Island: When Thomas Keneally was visiting Melbourne, he learned the story of the Balcombe family, who lived on the island of St. Helena.  Mr. Balcombe worked for the British East India Company, and was responsible for provisioning ships bound for the Cape Colonies.  The family also played host to St. Helena’s most famous inhabitant–Napoleon Bonaparte, who was sent to live there in exile following his defeat at Waterloo.  Taken with the Balcombe’s story, and, most specifically with the experiences of their thirteen-year-old daughter Betsy, he crafted this novel, a fascinating blend of fact and fiction that explores not only the relationships on the tiny St. Helena, but also its place in the wider world of the French Revolution and Terror.  At the heart of it all, however, is Betsy, and her remarkable, heartbreaking, horrible, and vivid memories.  The New York Times Review of Books was particularly taken with Keneally’s “Insightful and nimble prose. . .[Keneally] seamlessly unites fiction and the ‘truth,’ which means in this case that its armature of fact supports its layers of fictional invention as thought they were weightless.  The delight Keneally took in pulling off this trick shows on every page.”

3783601The Authentic William James: From the imagined past to the reconstructed past to an historical mystery we go.  Stephen Gallagher’s fin-de-siecle investigator Sebastian Becker has seen some of the worst that Britain has to offer.  Now an agent for the Crown, Becker is once again called upon to use his familiarity with madness and the human soul to evaluate the sanity of a confessed arsonist known as “Wild West Showman, The Authentic William James”.  The quest will take Becker to the wild world of Hollywood, where his hunt into James’ psyche will force him to reconsider his own duty–to his country, and the man he pursues.  Stephen Gallagher clearly delights in delving into shadowy, nearly-forgotten corners of history for his tales, and this book is no different, offering readers a very unique view of his subject, through the eyes of a increasingly interesting protagonist.  Publisher’s Weekly agrees, giving this book a starred review and saying “Gallagher gives Sebastian Becker another puzzle worthy of his quirky sleuth’s acumen in his outstanding third pre-WWI mystery…[He] makes the most of his unusual concept in the service of a twisty but logical plot line.”

3817995A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in the Trash: A bit of actual (and recent) history here:  In 2001, 148 tattered and mould-covered notebooks were discovered lying among broken bricks in a dumpster on a building site in Cambridge, England.  Filled with dense handwriting, the books were the partial record of a life, spanning fifty years from 1952 until weeks before they were discarded.  This book is biographer Alexander Masters’ five-year journey to discover the author of the diaries, and piece that person’s life back together, with results that are as surprising as they are touching.  Masters’ is a talented biographer, and this real-life detective novel is also about putting the titular ‘discarded life’ in a much broader context, making these diaries the center of a considerably larger, and deeply emotional, and undeniably odd tale.  This book got rave reviews in England, where it was first published, with The Spectator hailing it as “Playful, unsettling and altogether compelling … pin-sharp and generously open to eccentricity … an ingenious new twist on the concept of a ghostwritten biography, in which the ghost turns out to be the kind of person who usually disappears between the cracks of society without leaving a trace behind…brilliantly fleshed out and brought back to life.”

3789541Truevine: And finally, another true, and nearly forgotten story to round our our survey, this one opening in 1899, on a tobacco farm in Truevine, Virginia.  As the story goes, one sweltering summer day, a man approached two young boys, George and Willie Muse, who worked as sharecroppers on the farm, and lured them away with candy.  Albino black children, the boys were captured into a circus that performed all around the world, and they became celebrities, performing as “Ambassadors from Mars”,  among other far more derogatory titles.  Back in Truevine, their mother frantically searched for her missing children, leaving a scar on the family that lingers to this day.  In this haunting and meticulously researched story, journalist Beth Macy followed not only the Muse brother’s experiences in the circus, but also the effects their disappearance had on those left back home.  What she discovered was a tale much more twisted, challenging, and morally complex than she ever suspected, and the book, as a result, is a fascinating, moving, and occasionally chilling tale about race and family and memory that is already being nominated for non-fiction awards, include the Kirkus Prize.  Kirkus said in its review, “The story draws on years of diligent, investigative research and personal investment on the author’s behalf, and it features numerous interviews with immediate family, neighbors, distant relatives, Truevine townsfolk, and associated friends, most notably Nancy Saunders, Willie’s fiercely outspoken primary caregiver. Macy absorbed their own individual (and often conflicting) interpretations of the Muse kidnappings, condensing and skillfully braiding them into a sturdy, passionate, and penetrating narrative.”

Until next week, beloved patrons–happy reading!

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A Genre-Bending All-Hallows Read

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http://intbride.blogspot.com/2014/09/all-hallows-read-posters-2014.html

Books, like people, are made up of layers and contradictions…and flaws and strengths….the list goes on….but the point is that, like people, books aren’t just one thing.  This can make them difficult to shelve, or to choose which of those little genre stickers to affix to the spine:

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…But it can also be glorious for readers, because there are so many options in this genre buffet from which to choose: there are mysteries that have ghosts in them, and there are horror novels set in space, and there are legal thrillers that have romance in them, and they can be set in the past or the future, or during the holidays, or be aimed at younger readers or older readers….

The point is that there is a books for everyone, and for every taste.  And your All Hallows Read selection doesn’t have to be a nightmare-inducing, white-knuckle terror-trip, and it doesn’t have to be set in this time period, this country, or this galaxy.  There are ‘spooky’ stories aplenty (and by ‘spooky’ I mean a book with elements of the horror genre, like ghosts or vampires or weird trees) that are genuinely, delightfully funny, powerfully romantic, and whip-crackingly insightful.  And while they might not be the first books that people think of when they think of Halloween, they are absolutely as satisfying a Halloween read as the standard classics.

Here are just a few ideas, by way of example, of books that will might help you discover your new favorite All Hallows Read selection:

3739635The Gentleman: Faithful readers will know that Lady Pole truly loved this wonky Victorian tale about a young poet who marries for money, and then inadvertently sells his wife to the Devil.  I am pleased to announce here that, while her literary opinion should always be regarded as excellent, in this instance, she was spot on.  This book is a marvel of comedic timing and verbal wit, while at the same time delivering some charmingly well-rounded characters, including several very impressive female characters, and terrific plot.  Though there is plenty of devilry and Faustian bargains in this tale, I promise you that it will also keep you grinning the whole way through.

2385049The Terror: I will be honest with you, I was just a little heartbroken when the news broke a few weeks ago that scientists had discovered the remains of the HMS Terror, the ship that carried Sir John Franklin’s Arctic Expedition on their doomed voyage to discover the Northwest Passage in 1845–because it means we might not get any more historic horror novels like this gem by Dan Simmons.  A very gifted historical novelist, Simmons has the ability to blend facts and accurate details with wonderful sensory descriptions and emotional characters that make his worlds come alive, and put the reader right in the middle of the action.  Here, we are aboard the Terror, experiencing the cold and the dark and the hunger right along with the crew…..but those same literary talents also make Simmons a powerful horror writer, because whatever it is that is stalking the ship’s passengers, it isn’t human, and it is very, very scary.  The combination of history and horror makes this a big, epic, thoroughly creepy adventure that is sure to give you plenty of shivers.

3712878The Everything Box: I adore Richard Kadrey’s books, particularly the Sandman Slim series, as we’ve discussed, and was thrilled to see that this new series, featuring a former (and/or current) thief named Coop, and his exploits with the Department of Peculiar Science, features all the fever-dream creativity and larger-than-life characters that I had come to expect from his books.  But I truly didn’t expect this story to be as absurdly funny, or bitingly snarky as it is.  Kadrey is one of the few authors who can truly capture the cosmic horror of a modern-day shopping mall, or the frustrations of a would-be doomsday cult, and is definitely one of the only people who could bring the two together in a quest for the cube with the power to deconstruct reality in a book that manages to be a kind of slapstick paranormal adventure and still an emotionally engaging series that I cannot wait to follow.

3587650Get In Trouble: The author of the One City One Story selection  at this year’s Boston Book Festival, Kelly Link’s short stories are the stuff of marvels.  She takes armloads of familiar tropes and characters, from fairy tales and travel narratives, from aging movie stars and post-modern teenagers, and produces whole worlds and startling original tales that are funny and haunting and insightful all at once.  This book, which was a finalist for this year’s Pulitzer Prize, features nine stories that are all wild and wonderfully creative–from a young woman charged with guarding a house full of unseen creatures to a ghost-hunting reality show in the Florida swamps–but each also remains deeply grounded in human emotions and relationships, making these stories all vividly real, utterly unique–and compellingly creepy.

Be sure to check out the displays in the Library for more selections for your All Hallows Read!

 

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Paul Beatty Wins the 2016 Man Booker Prize!

On Tuesday, at 4:50pm Eastern Standard Time, Paul Beatty, a California-born author, became the first American to win the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Sellout.  

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http://n.pr/2eJlcrn

In awarding the most prestigious award for fiction in the UK, the judges of the Man Booker chose a very specifically American novel.  Beatty himself has made a career for himself by observing the beauty and horror of American life, and capturing it in his stories in a manner that is both deeply troubling and shockingly funny–and The Sellout is no exception.  The book itself opens as our narrator, Bonbon, stands in front of the Supreme Court.  A black man from a forgotten town near Los Angeles, Bonbon grew up with his father, a controversial sociologist, who used Bonbon as a subject in his racially-charged psychological studies.  Bonbon has spent his life believing that his father’s long-promised memoir will justify all their struggles–but when his father is killed in a drive-by shooting, it is revealed that there is, and never was, a memoir.  Lost, in despair, and determined to right what wrongs he can, Bonbon decides to find a way to put his tiny town on the map.  The way he does this?  By attempting to reinstate slavery and to segregate the local high school–the act that ultimately lands him in front of the Supreme Court.

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A man who has built his career on challenging stereotypes, and questioning our inability to overcome the effects of history, The Sellout is Beatty’s fourth novel.  His debut novel, The White Boy Shuffle, about a black surfer in Los Angeles, came out in 1996.  He published two more novels, Tuff in 2000, and Slumberland in 2008, and edited an anthology of African-American comic writing.  The Sellout met with rave reviews when it was released; the Wall Street Journal called it ““Swiftian satire of the highest order. Like someone shouting fire in a crowded theatre, Mr Beatty has whispered ‘Racism’ in a postracial world”.  But it didn’t cause an enormous stir, perhaps, as The Guardian points out, because it is so different from the standard fare, and it’s humor is so risky.  And even though the book won the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award, it still has flown under a lot of readers’ radars–until now, of course.

6662b17b-f86d-479d-b280-4512d6cf6eb5-1020x612Amanda Foreman, the Chair of the Judges’ Panel, said that Beatty’s victory was a unanimous decision, in part because of his willingness to write a book that challenges so many, and on so many levels.  In her speech during the award ceremony, she noted, “It plunges into the heart of contemporary American society with absolutely savage wit of the kind I haven’t seen since Swift or Twain…It manages to eviscerate every social nuance, every sacred cow, while making us laugh and also making us wince … It is really a novel for our times.”  As to the language (and delicate subject matter) in the book, Foreman noted “Paul Beatty has said being offended is not an emotion. That’s his answer to the reader”, emphasizing the critical role of satire to comment on modern-day issues.

The win is also a coup for Oneworld, Beatty’s publisher, who also published last year’s Man Booker Prize winner, Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings.

If you’d like to hear Beatty’s talk after his award about race and America and stories, check out the video below–and be sure to check out The Sellout soon!

http://youtu.be/U6ycBUNBFnU

 

 

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On Happy Endings…

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I think we can all be honest with each other here and acknowledge that, on the whole, 2016 has been a pretty rough year.  We’ve lost a lot of very talented, respected, and decent people, the weather has been extreme to say the least, and this election is just plain ugly.  I mentioned the other day that if I was reading a book about the major events of 2016, I would probably choose to read a different book.

Which got me thinking about why I read.

There is no short answers here.  I read to learn, I read because I am in school and was told to, I read to communicate….but mostly, I read to cope.  This is one of the reasons I am such a fan of horror novels.  Because, as we’ve mentioned before, horror fiction offers a safe, manageable way to experience, and thus learn to cope with fear and anxiety (the good ones also tend to be wonderfully creative and smart, too).  They also allow us to experience the worst-case scenarios through the experiences of other character, while remaining unscathed ourselves (I have not been turned into a vampire more times than I care to admit), and to come away realizing that our own reality is far more stable in comparison.  But fear, or dealing with fear, is not all there is to life, right?

And that is why I believe in books with happy endings.  Because life can be ruthless and mean and utterly unconcerned with us and with those we love.  And life is a huge fan of throwing bad news at us when we are least prepared.

Some people choose to deal with that by reading about other people’s experiences with sudden shocks, with loss, or with life crises in general–much like my reason (one of many) for reading horror novels.  Novels with sadness and heartbreak and unpleasant, real-life surprises provide a manageable, controllable way of dealing with the issues in our own lives.  They allow us to empathize with others in similar situations, and, perhaps, to find ways of coping (or things to avoid) based on the actions of characters.  And some people find crying cathartic.  And I promise you, if these kind of books are for you, we will help you find them–because there are a lot of them.

crying-woman-graphicI, however, almost always hate crying.  Crying makes me angry.  As does bad news, sudden surprises, and loss.  And when bad things happen to characters for whom I care greatly, I get just as angry on their behalf as I would if those things happened to me.  Thus, I realized long ago that books that mirrored life were probably not, overall, beneficial to my health.  And I proudly, and loudly, began looking for books with happy endings.  Books where characters survived and grew and were rewarded for doing so.  Books where people could be redeemed and the devil could be bested and the  fires could be put out and there was still magic left in the world.  I know these things don’t happen in real life.  That is why these books are fiction.  But there is a huge amount of power in creating–and insisting on–happy endings.  They are a source of defiant hope in a world that seems to be getting cynical.  They are a little bit of light in an otherwise dark day.  They are a reassurance that if it could happen to these characters, it could happen to you.

bunnicula-quoteNow, I realize that we are not all going to agree on what a “happy ending” is….which is a prime example of why I hate love triangles.   Happy endings don’t have to be a Deus Ex-Machina descending on a scene to right every wrong to the utter detriment of reality, nor to they have to be ones where everyone is rewarded according to their actions, like in Victorian school primers.  Instead, the books that I love are the ones where courage, honesty, self-realization, and love–actions that reject and repel anger and cynicism and dejection–are all valued and championed.  Those kind of books can come in many forms.  Ultimately, what makes a book’s ending “happy” is often when characters decide to turn their story into one of triumph.  When they chose not to give in.  When they chose to love.  When they chose to celebrate their successes, rather than regret their defeats.  And that is something that takes an enormous amount of courage, especially in today’s climate.

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And if you are like me, and believe that a few books with happy endings are good for the soul in troubled times, then stop by the Main Library and check out our display of Books With Happy Endings.  I don’t promise they will all be light, or easy reads.  But I can promise that they will take a stand for the goodness of people (and animals, in some cases), and provide an excellent counterpoint to All That 2016 has thrown at us.

http://www.gamerbasement.com/2014/09/thats-all-folks-my-thoughts-on.html
http://www.gamerbasement.com/2014/09/thats-all-folks-my-thoughts-on.html

 

 

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Making Magic: Making History

*This post is part of Free for All’s “Making Magic” series, which will focus on Kelley’s exploration of the opportunities in the library’s Creativity Lab.

Many of you are well aware that the City of Peabody has been celebrating 100 years with Peabody 100, a series of events that began with a Family Festival at Brooksby Farm in May 2016 and will culminate with a Grand Ball at the North Shore Mall in May 2017. As part of this exciting line-up of events, the City recently held the Centennial Parade, which included bands from across the country and featured music, costume, dance and the arts. Thanks to the approximately 200 volunteers and numerous city officials involved in the planning, the event was a tremendous success. Now, you may ask,  what does Peabody 100 have to do with Making Magic and learning to use the tools in the library’s Creativity Lab? Let’s take a moment to talk about the library’s parade float.

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City organizations built their own floats for the parade and the library was no exception. A group of volunteers met on weekends and constructed a rolling version of the Main Library equipped with George Peabody himself (well, not really, but you know what I mean), and of course lots of giant books! As the person who takes care of the library’s graphic design needs, I get some unusual requests. I’ve spent time gazing at the Sutton Room’s beautiful ceiling to find inspiration for the Peabody Institute Library Foundation’s logo, drawn whoopie pies for an International Festival banner, and even taught two teen guys how to Photoshop themselves into the roles of Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey during the final lift scene in Dirty Dancing. But the design project that will become a part of history is the 52 giant book titles that I laid out and vinyl cut for the books on the library’s Centennial Parade float.

titles

Although the project sounds straightforward enough, it wasn’t. I knew how to set up the titles in Adobe Illustrator, but when approached with the project, I didn’t know how to use the vinyl cutter yet. Details.… Going with an old philosophy that serves me well (most of the time) I decided to say yes to the project and figure out the details later. In this case, saying yes was a true win because I got to learn something new that I will use a lot in the future, and the added bonus is that it’s fun and has tons of creative potential too!

If you’re like I was, you might not even know the purpose of a vinyl cutter, but once you know you’ll realize vinyl cut work is everywhere. Lettering in the department store window? Vinyl cut. The hours posted beside the library’s front door? Vinyl cut. Those peel and stick animals, flowers, and inspirational quotes that people love to use to decorate walls? Vinyl cut. The cool thing about the Creativity Lab’s vinyl cutter is that if you can create a simple Illustrator or Inkscape file, you have what you need to start to cut your own original art! Why use the Home Depot wall art that everyone else is using when you can create something that is uniquely you?

Thanks to a short tutorial from the Lab’s Programming Librarian, I found that the vinyl cutter was an easy tool to learn. Mike showed me how to load the sheets of vinyl into the machine, change the speed and cut pressure of the blade, how to “weed” the vinyl once my file was done cutting, and finally how to apply the transfer paper necessary to get all of those titles onto the giant books in a straight line. After designing, cutting and weeding 52 titles, I officially consider myself a vinyl cutting expert. The best part was that the whole time I was working in the Lab, I was aware of the significance of what I was doing.

vinyl cutter

Leading up the event, for the purpose of designing the parade’s poster, I was given access to numerous images from the City’s 1968 Centennial events. The moment they were taken, just like those images from 1968, the photos from the 2016 Centennial Parade became important visual documentation of Peabody’s history. And although it’s only a small piece of the big picture, when people look at the images of the library’s float in the future, they’ll not only be looking at a rolling representation of the library, they’ll be looking at something that was created in part in the library’s own Creativity Lab.

parade poster

Want to learn more about the vinyl cutter? The Creativity Lab offers regular training classes, so you too have the opportunity to become a vinyl cutting expert. Check out the Creativity Lab’s complete class schedule for details.