Monthly Archives: May 2017

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Making Magic: What the Heck is a FMV?

*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 as well as musings about art, creativity and imagination.

When given the opportunity to learn about something new, whatever it is, for better or for worse, I almost always say yes. Saturday was PILCON; the library’s first annual celebration of comic art, cosplay and animation; and in preparation for the big event I was invited to help judge the FMV/AMV Contest. For those not in the know, a FMV is a Fan Music Video and AMV stands for Anime Music Video. When invited to be a contest judge, I didn’t know what either one was or what the acronyms meant. No matter. I was curious, so I accepted the invitation to participate and I’m so glad I did.

FMV creators splice together clips from their favorite animated films and set them to music. The result is a music video that tells a story, sometimes a story that reflects the intent of the original film or films, and sometimes the clips are parsed together to convey the FMV artists’ own unique stories. Timing is key in FMVs. Clips are carefully set to the music to maximize emotional and visual impact whether it be funny, dramatic or uplifting, and in the case of some of the best FMVs, like some of our winners, you walk away with a completely new appreciation for something with which you thought yourself familiar. A great example is our Judges’ Choice winner, RD: ‘Oh, Action!’  (BasharOfTheAges / My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic / Imagine Dragons – “Radioactive”), which pairs clips from My Little Pony with the Imagine Dragons song Radioactive.

Shared for your viewing enjoyment, the following are the rest of our contest winners. Criteria for entry required that entries meet a rating category of no more than PG-13. Warning: Watching these videos will leave you with a growing list of animated films you want to see in their entirety.

#TalkSkatingToMe (Best Upbeat/Action)
Gina Nelson / Yuri!!! on Ice / Jason Derulo feat. 2 Chainz – “Talk Dirty”

A Better Place (Best Romance/Sentimental)
Studio le Croc (Maboroshi Studio + MomtoCutiePia + That’s so Pia) / Ponyo / Rachel Platten – “Better Place”

Waiting For Love (Best Drama)
Allegoriest / Steven Universe / Avicii – “Waiting For Love”

Assachusetts: A Wicked Good AMV (Best in Show)
shorisquared / Various sources / Funhaus – “MASSHOLES”

Our Adventures and Stories (Best Other)
joycescookie / Various Studo Ghibli films / Greek Fire – “Top of the World”

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Saturdays @ the South: Getting Graphic with Kids

This week, dear readers, has been the 98th National Children’s Book Week. Children’s book week is the longest national literacy initiative in this country, begun in 1919. Though Children’s Book Week ends tomorrow, there are still plenty of ways to celebrate it.

PILCON logo

Speaking of celebrations, today is also the Peabody Library’s first annual PILCON! This is an all-ages comicon that is completely free and utterly awesome. You can find a lot more information about PILCON on its events page and also on Kelley’s blog post about it earlier this week.

Given that PILCON is all ages and will be having programs that are suitable for kids, and given that it is still Children’s Book Week, I thought today would be a good day to celebrate the great things that are coming out of the graphic novels world for kids. Graphic novels are not all high-fantasy, manga or bound comic strips. This is an equally true statement for adults, teens and children. What many people don’t know is that we have our own graphic novels section for kids here at the South Branch that sometimes gets overlooked in the hunt for Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Captain Underpants. So here are some books from our kids’ graphic novel section that deserve a second (or first!) look from anyone, regardless of age.

Big Nate by Lincoln Pierce

These books are hugely popular here at the South and are ideal for kids who have blown through the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. These are episodic books ideal for short attention spans or quick reads as the “stories” only cover a few pages before moving on to the next one. Pierce originally published Big Nate as a newspaper and web comic strip, but the books are full-color and eye catching. Nate is a wisecracking 11-year old sure to delight kids in that age range or adults and teens looking for a lighthearted read.

Hilda by Luke Pearson

I LOVE the Hilda books. Hilda is a blue-haired girl who has an equal sense of compassion and adventure. Pearson balances real-life issues (feeling out of place , family struggles) with fantasy elements (trolls, talking birds, Hilda’s pet which is something like a small, antlered fox) and uses a muted color palette that convincingly create’s Hilda’s world. These are more of a classic graphic novel format with each story taking place over the course of the entire book, but I defy anyone not to be charmed.

Bone by Jeff Smith

This is a new-to-me series that is more fantasy but still fun. Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone are cousins who go on adventures through forests, foreign lands and townships, fighting dark forces, but getting help from friends along the way. These books are more plot-heavy but are beautifully illustrated with detailed characters and landscapes that draw the reader into the story and create convincing moods.

Unicorn Crossing by Dana Simpson

I’ve said before that Phoebe and her Unicorn is one of the best things to come into the comics world since Calvin and Hobbes and I meant it. I eagerly await each new installment of Phoebe and Marigold Heavenly Nostrils’s adventures which charm me and keep me laughing throughout. These have a similar setup to the Big Nate books, and are well worth reading.

Wile E. Coyote Experiments by Suzanne Slade & Mark Weakland

Not many people realize that there are some amazing non-fiction graphic novels (partly because graphic “novel” is a misnomer in these cases) out there both for adults and kids. These books are eye-catching, thin volumes that explain scientific principles in plain language and hilarious illustrations. If you’ve ever laughed at a Looney Tunes cartoon, these books are delightfully nostalgic and if you ever wondered about the principles behind Wile E. Coyote’s exploits (and spectacular failures), these are a must-read.

Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier

This book is beautiful, heartbreaking, wonderfully drawn and wonderfully told. It is a story of sisters, ghosts, love and acceptance in the face of difficulty and disease done in a more traditional novel format with panels and the entire book devoted to the story. The illustrations are colorful and do wonders to set the scene. This book is well worth the read by any adult as well as any older kid or teen.

Till next week, dear readers, enjoy as much of this unpredictable spring weather as possible, and check out PilCon. If you think you’ll like these selections I talked about today, there’s far more to discover!

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The Green Carnation Book Prize

February 20, 1892, was the premiere for Oscar Wilde’s comedic play Lady Windermere’s Fan. It’s a glorious, smart, subversive play that deals with gender assumption, class issues, love, trust, loyalty, and you should read it.  Or see it.  Or hear a recording of it (I really love this play, if you can’t tell…).

The play was an enormous success, but Oscar’s speech at the end (he was brought out on stage to be applauded, as well) may have actually been the most memorable part of the evening.  You can see a reproduction of it here, with Stephen Fry playing Oscar:

Anyways, for the premiere, Oscar arranged for one of the actors to wear a green carnation in his buttonhole.  He also gave carnations to his friends who would be attending, so that it would appear that a select number of audience members were in cahoots with the actors over the style.   Artist Graham Robertson was one of the people Wilde asked to wear the flower.  As the story goes, Robertson asked Wilde what the green carnation was supposed to mean.

“Nothing whatever,” Wilde replied, “but that is just what nobody will guess.”

The story is a good one, and definitely fits with Oscar’s love of gently mocking society at large for being ridiculous, but the truth was that there was a lot of meaning behind the green carnation.  Green was the symbol of Irish nationalism, and Oscar, an Irishman himself and a firm believer in the cause of Irish nationalism.  It was also the color of absinthe, a hallucinogenic drink that of which Oscar was particularly fond (you can still get it now, but it’s not a hallucinogen anymore…).  Finally, to Oscar, green was the color of artists–a green carnation is not natural.  You can’t grow them naturally.  They have to be created, with intention, and purpose.

Oscar Wilde was also a homosexual, and today, there are a lot of assumptions that the green carnation was a covert symbol of homosexuality.  It wasn’t–or, at least, it never seems to have been used as a symbol by Oscar himself to denote homosexuality (it was never referenced at his trials, and he himself never wrote a word about it, though he wrote about his carnations and the color green fairly often).  However, there were a number of people who mocked him (covertly and not-so-covertly), and stated that the green carnation was some kind of symbol of depravity.

Since that time, however, the green carnation has been adopted as a highly literary and rather esoteric reference to homosexuality, in deference to Wilde who, in many ways, defined what a homosexual man should look, act, and sound like.

Fast-forward to 2010, when author Paul Magrs, who also writes funny, charming, and very clever books, tweeted about the “scandalous lack of prizes for gay men” in the UK (<– Quoting the tweet there), and he and journalist Simon Savidge decided to set up just such a prize, they decided to name it The Green Carnation Prize. The Prize was originally awarded to the best fiction and memoirs by gay men.  In 2012 the prize opened its submission criteria to include all LGBT writers, in 2015 it widened its submission criteria even further including all ‘works of translation’.

Why is this important?  You might ask.
It’s important because human beings are herd animals.  We accept things are “right” when other people do them/think them/say them/wear them/eat them/sing them/dance with them/etc. first.  It’s why it’s so easy to do what everyone else is doing.  It’s why humans who do things alone, who are the first to say something or do something is such a momentous event.  Affirmation and validation and self-confidence are all wrapped up together in our cave-people brains.  And it’s really hard when you are a reader, to never read a book about people like you.  Whether the “people like you” have a certain skin color, speak a particularly language, practice a certain set of beliefs, looks a certain way, or loves a certain way, it’s enormously important to our self-understanding to know that there are other people “like us” somewhere in the world.

And, as tribal animals, who understand that taking care of our human tribe is as important as taking care of ourselves, we need to make sure that everyone can find a book in which they can find themselves, and feel like they belong.  It might not be a book that you yourself enjoy, or with which you identify–and that’s ok. We’ll find some.  Or we’ll write some.  Or maybe you’ll write them.  But the point is, the more we celebrate diversity in all its forms, the more diversity there will be.

So today, we bring you the Green Carnation Short List.  Where the books haven’t yet been released in the US, the WorldCat links are provided.  We can get these books for you, if you come in and ask!

The winner will be announced at Foyle’s Book Shop in London on May 22nd!

Courtesy of http://greencarnationprize.com/

 

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The Romance Garden!

Many patrons over the weekend were bemoaning the fickle nature of springtime in New England, and the general inability to get any productive gardening accomplished in the face of Mother Nature’s ill-humor.

We can’t fix the weather, sadly dear readers, but there is one thing we can do, and that is promise you plenty of reading material (as well as viewing material, listening material, etc…..) to get you through these less than sunshine-filled days.  And there are few books that are quite literally designed to make your days a little happier than a romance novel.  Which is why our genre experts are back for a round-up of their recommendations for your reading pleasure.

And just a silly note to keep you smiling: We feature “women reading” a lot in this particular series of blog posts, and it’s tricky to find new (and attributable) art sometimes.  So here, if you’re interested, is the MFA’s online gallery, entitled “Women Reading“.  Enjoy!

And so, without any further ado…

Bridget: I Dared the Duke by Anna Bennett

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy (Oscar Wilde)

Anna Bennett’s new book may have some familiar tropes–the innocent lady governess (of sorts), the notorious, ne’er-do-well Duke, and the “battle of wits” between them.  What really surprised me here, however, was how much this book ran counter to traditional tropes, giving us a heroine with backbone and confidence, and a hero whose thin veneer of misogynistic bluster barely hid a smart hero who knows when and how to apologize.

Miss Elizabeth Lacey is the middle girl in a family of wallflowers.  As such, she has become a companion to the Dowager Duchess of Blackshire–the grandmother of one of the more notorious Dukes in England.  And upon their first meeting, Alex, the Duke of Blackshire, he of the handsome face, the mysterious burns, and the dark reputation, more than lives up to his reputation, bursting into the house and promptly firing Beth.

Alex knows exactly what people say about him, and he doesn’t care.  But someone wants him dead, and until he can unmask the villain, he refuses to take any chances–he needs to get his Grandmother out of London and hidden safely away before any harm can befall her.  But it seems he must match wits with the most cunning and determined woman in London in order to succeed.

I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed this romance.  There was something Jane-Eyre-esque about Beth’s relationship with Alex, where they both saw each other from the first as humans, and their class and positions of power fell away when they were together.  I really appreciated that Alex’s Grandmother was not a plot point, but a living, breathing human character who I really came to care for over the course of the story.  And Bennett’s writing was spot on, providing a book that was genuinely funny, emotional, and suspenseful by turns, making this an ideal bit of reading fun.

Though I’ve not read much by Anna Bennett in the past, I know I’ll be placing a hold on her other books soon!

Kelley: My Fair Duchess  by Megan Frampton

In the world of historical romance novels, there are a few things that readers can almost always expect to find: a trip to the modiste, at least one ball and possibly a house party, scandalous behavior on a carriage ride…. You see where I’m going with this. But for readers looking for something a bit different, Frampton’s latest “Dukes Behaving Badly” novel offers a pleasant surprise: the “duke” behaving badly is a duchess!

After her father’s death, Genevieve learns that he fought to have the title passed to Genevieve if his sons predeceased him. The scenario was unlikely at best, so when Genevieve becomes a duchess, she finds she is entirely unprepared to take on the role and duties that come with it. A concerned  letter to her godmother leads to the arrival of Archibald Salisbury, “Archie”, a war hero and steward who just happens to be the disowned son of a viscount, and therefore the perfect person to teach Genevieve what she needs to know to navigate society and manage her estates.

What I loved about this romance wasn’t just the unconventional title inheritance; it was the way that Archie and Genevieve challenged each other to confront the challenges in their lives. Archie admires Genevieve and loves watching her grow confidence and embrace her position of power as a duchess. In turn, Genevieve becomes the bridge that brings Archie to take steps to mend his relationship with his family. The two encourage each other to embrace who they were born to be, but at the same time it’s clear that they will do things their own wonderful way.

Until next month, beloved patrons–may all your books have happily ever afters!

 

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Making Magic: PILCON!

*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 as well as musings about art, creativity and imagination.

PILCON logo

If you’ve been to the library recently, or the Creativity Lab, or visited our Facebook page, or talked with any one of us who works here, surely you must have heard about PILCON! PILCON is the library’s first ever FREE all-ages Comic Con. PILCON is coming on Saturday May 6th from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., and we are incredibly excited to bring it to downtown Peabody.

buttonsIn addition to panel talks with local artists, PILCON will provide plenty of opportunities for you to make your own creations as well. Learn how to make your own props and armor with EVA foam, attend a cartoon drawing workshop, or compete to win our Iron Cosplay Competition. Our KidCon space will offer plenty opportunities for kids to create as well.

Not into making stuff? No problem. We’ll have a game lounge with arcade games provided by BitBar, a Quiplash competition, and Artist Alley will be open all day long so that you can see what local artists have to offer. In addition, the Star Wars Meetup with the Local 501st Legion is not to be missed. Check out our complete schedule of events to decide what you’d like to attend.

PILCON is a free event, but we do ask that people get tickets in advance. So, what are you waiting for? Get those tickets today! We look forward seeing you at the library on Saturday!