Mini-Collection Adult Crossovers
Title: The Shining
Author: Stephen King
Format: Book
Subjects:
- Hotelkeepers -- Fiction.
- Families -- Fiction.
- Horror fiction.
- Paranormal fiction.
Publisher: Doubleday
Copyright: 1977
Plot Summary:
Things have never been easy for the Torrence family. They have tried for years to deal with depression, alcoholism, strange events, and young Danny’s uncanny abilities. When dad, Jack, gets the opportunity to be the caretaker for the Overlook Hotel during the winter off-season, it seems like the perfect opportunity for the family to be able to have time together, away from outside influences, and get things back on track. Jack will be able to work on his book. Wendy will be able to have peace, and Danny will be away from everything that seems to be affecting him at home.
But the Overlook Hotel is more than it seems and it’s filled with a force that wants Danny and his ability to join it forever.
Critical Evaluation:
This is a famous story after the Kubrick movie, but the book is even better. The tension ramps up slowly and carefully, taking its time until the reader feels like he/she can’t escape anymore than the Torrence’s can. I may never look at hedge menageries the same way ever again.
Reader’s Annotation: More thriller than horror with a ghost story added in.
About the Author:
Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.
Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.
He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.
Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
(from Goodreads.com)
Genre: Horror, Paranormal Fiction
Curriculum Ties: Literature
Booktalking Ideas: Link to the Kubrick film and the modern sequel, Doctor Sleep.
Reading Level/Interest Age: 9/10, high school and above
Challenge Issues: violence, nudity, language, horror, ghosts, hauntings
Challenge Issue Resources (for usage in a challenge situation):
- Active listening to the patron
- Library Selection Policy
- Rationale explaining why the item was chosen for the collection
- United States Supreme Court - BOARD OF EDUCATION v. PICO (1982) - No. 80-2043 - Argued: March 2, 1982 Decided: June 25, 1982
- Reconsideration form (as a last resort)
- National Council of Teachers of English “Right to Read”
- Reviews
- ALA Strategies and Tips for Dealing with Challenges to Library Materials
- ALA Bill of Rights on Intellectual Freedom
- Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.
Video Interview with Author:
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Title: Jurassic Park
Author: Michael Crichton
Format: Book
Subjects:
- Cloning -- Fiction
- Dinosaurs -- Fiction
- Amusement parks -- Fiction
Publisher: Knopf
Copyright: 1990
Plot Summary:
When a rich man builds his own zoo filled with dinosaurs, he brings in a couple of scientists, a mathematician, and his own grandchildren to prove that his park is safe.
The dinosaurs have other plans.
Critical Evaluation:
This is an edge-of-your-seat novel almost from page one. The movie gets a few things right, but more wrong, and this book is so much better overall. Reading the descriptions of everything from the initial views of the dinosaurs to their deadly ways to kill draws the pictures in the minds of the readers in chilling ways.
Reader’s Annotation: Greed and dinosaurs do not mix.
About the Author:
Michael Crichton (1942–2008) was one of the most successful novelists of his generation, admired for his meticulous scientific research and fast-paced narrative. He graduated summa cum laude and earned his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1969. His first novel, Odds On (1966), was written under the pseudonym John Lange and was followed by seven more Lange novels. He also wrote as Michael Douglas and Jeffery Hudson. His novel A Case of Need won the Edgar Award in 1969. Popular throughout the world, he has sold more than 200 million books. His novels have been translated into thirty-eight languages, and thirteen have been made into films.
Michael Crichton passed away from lymphoma in 2008. He was 66 years old.
(from Goodreads.com)
Genre: Thriller, Action
Curriculum Ties: Dinosaurs, capitalism, cloning, genetic science
Booktalking Ideas: Link to the movies
Reading Level/Interest Age: 9th grade, high school interest and above
Challenge Issues: violence, death, language
Challenge Issue Resources (for usage in a challenge situation):
- Active listening to the patron
- Library Selection Policy
- Rationale explaining why the item was chosen for the collection
- United States Supreme Court - BOARD OF EDUCATION v. PICO (1982) - No. 80-2043 - Argued: March 2, 1982 Decided: June 25, 1982
- Reconsideration form (as a last resort)
- National Council of Teachers of English “Right to Read”
- Reviews
- ALA Strategies and Tips for Dealing with Challenges to Library Materials
- ALA Bill of Rights on Intellectual Freedom
- Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.
- Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.
Video Interview with Author:
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Title: The Handmaid’s Tale
Author: Margaret Atwood
Format: Book
Subjects:
- Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
- Dystopias -- Fiction
- Misogyny -- Fiction
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Copyright: 1986
Plot Summary:
Offred (Of Fred) is a Handmaid in Gilead, the country that replaces the United States of America in the not so distant future. Her job is to get pregnant by way of a monthly forced sexual experience on her most fertile days. If she is successful in a land where pregnancies are now rare, she will have to give up her child to the wife of the Commander who lays with her once a month.
This is her story, both of her present, of her past, and her hope for the future.
Critical Evaluation:
Gilead is a little too real of a future when read here. It is far too easy to picture this dystopian future coming true. Atwood’s words and ability to paint the picture of the daily hopelessness and fear faced by Offred every day gives the reader a frightening portrait of one can and may come.
Reader’s Annotation: The future may not be the bright and shiny thing we hope for.
About the Author:
Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.
Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than thirty-five volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003. The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short stories) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth in the Massey series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, The Year of the Flood, in the autumn of 2009. Ms. Atwood's work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian. In 2004 she co-invented the Long Pen TM.
Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.
Associations: Margaret Atwood was President of the Writers' Union of Canada from May 1981 to May 1982, and was President of International P.E.N., Canadian Centre (English Speaking) from 1984-1986. She and Graeme Gibson are the Joint Honourary Presidents of the Rare Bird Society within BirdLife International. Ms. Atwood is also a current Vice-President of PEN International.
(from Goodreads.com)
Genre: Dystopian fiction
Curriculum Ties: Dystopia/Utopia, Theocracies
Booktalking Ideas: Link to the Hulu series
Reading Level/Interest Age: 8th/9th reading, high school and above interest
Challenge Issues: sex, violence, defiance of authority, anti-Christian, death/murder
Challenge Issue Resources (for usage in a challenge situation):
- Active listening to the patron
- Library Selection Policy
- Rationale explaining why the item was chosen for the collection
- United States Supreme Court - BOARD OF EDUCATION v. PICO (1982) - No. 80-2043 - Argued: March 2, 1982 Decided: June 25, 1982
- Reconsideration form (as a last resort)
- National Council of Teachers of English “Right to Read”
- Reviews
- ALA Strategies and Tips for Dealing with Challenges to Library Materials
- ALA Bill of Rights on Intellectual Freedom
- Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.
- Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.
Video Interview with Author:
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