Greetings to my three and a half blog readers! I know, I need a new website, something where I can and will post more often and talk about things that maybe matter in some small way. But I digress! What scares you?
Right now, I am either rapid-cycling or my barista gave me caffeine in my coffee drink. I don’t know which. But I’m all kinds of amped. Which is nice after the last couple weeks. But I digress! What scared you?
I was listening to Stephen King’s Danse Macabre and thinking about my background, which really is in writing horror short stories as a kid. I’ve got about six different projects brewing right now, and one of them just so happens to be a horror story that I hope will more middle grade, but knowing me…well, it’s hard to say. I got to thinking about what books or stories actually, really scared me as a kid. Movies are easy; maybe you saw my Halloween blog post about them. But books? It takes a different flair to give someone the creeps (or terrors) than it does on film.
Then I remembered the inimitable (and late) John Bellairs. The Mummy, The Will, and The Crypt is decidedly MG, but when the withered mummy shows up on a dark and stormy night…dude. That was creepy in fourth or fifth grade, no kidding. All of his kids’ books are awesome, some moreso than others, but none of which are merely passable. It was such a shame to lose Mr. Bellairs, and he’s someone I wish I could’ve met. I don’t hear his name crop up during discussions about scary books for kids, and I’m usually met with blank stares when I mention his name on panels and the like. This is truly too bad, and I hope you’ll give him a whirl. Start with The Curse of the Blue Figurine, or go straight to Mummy, whichever. But you can’t pick a bad one. (The possible exception are the novels released after his death, which were completed by someone else. Eh…I get it? But you can sort of “taste the difference.” )
Now, listen, let me couch what I’m about to say quite carefully, all right? I love Goosebumps. And Fear Street. They came around after I was past the age of his target audience, but only just barely, and I still (proudly!) have an almost complete collection of the original GB series. And yeah, I still read them. But let’s be serious: Stine is to kid lit as Saw 12 is to fine cinema, no? Oh, it might be fun. Maybe even one or two are memorable. They might even give you a chill or two. But can you give me three protagonists by name? I tried this and came up with: Carly Beth and Slappy. That’s one protagonist, and one villain. That’s it. I remember the endings to many of them (since endings were really what they were all about, other than manufactured page-turning cliffhangers). Compare this to Johnny, the Professor, or Fergie from Bellair’s Mummy series. Or Lewis Barnavelt, Uncle Jonathan, and Rose Rita. Bellairs wrote characters; Stine wrote sit-coms.
That’s not a complaint! It’s not even a fact, it’s just an opinion. Bellairs has a damn near literary quality to him that Stine doesn’t, and that’s okay. But what I wonder is, is there room for that kind of literary kids’ fiction? Is that what I’m even writing? (Don’t break your arm pattin’ yourself there, skippy, amiright?) Has the old guard of librarians already passed, to be replaced by fresh, young librarians who have no idea who Bellairs is? The thought is chilling. Which I guess is appropriate…
Anyway. I’m still researching this, and think maybe I’ll even pitch it as an article. Meanwhile, I’m watching my first film The Moon Daemon, shot on an ancient VHS videocamera, wherein the VHS unit itself had to be carted around seperately from the camera. Yeah, I’m that old.
But one last thing about The Moon Daemon. (Chad? Don? You out there?) And this ties in more specifically to the message I always try to convey at my school visits and other panels.
Three 13-14 year olds improvised a three-act structure script (we had no actual script, we literally made up the scene as we went along. Yes, it shows.), shot it, edited it, and put it together. Silly, even stupid? Yes. But so much fun. And we did it. Several adults, including my dad and at least one teacher, helped us get it done, and even let us screen it at school.
More of that for our kids, please. Much, much more of that.
Happy Halloween…in June.
(P.S. I’ll be at Changing Hands on June 17 at 1 pm to be part of a reader’s group for ZERO. Hope you can make it!)
