Haunt your library this Halloween

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

It’s Halloween time, and spooky and scary is the order of the day.  Here are some ideas from Litchfield’s new materials that fit the season:

The Ghost Fields by Elly Griffiths is a Ruth Galloway mystery.  Ruth is a forensic archaeologist called in when a World War II plane with a body in the pilot’s seat is discovered by a construction crew in Norfolk, England.  Ruth ends up trapped in a crumbling English manor on a dark and stormy night. 

In a Dark, Dark Wood is a psychological thriller that is very popular right now.  This first novel by Ruth Ware is also set in the English countryside.  A reclusive author accepts an invitation to spend a weekend at a long-lost friend’s strange home, then wakes up two days later not remembering anything except that someone is dead.  This fast-paced story is being compared to Gone Girl and Girl on the Train.

For something gentler, pick up The Ghost and Mrs. Mewer, a Paws and Claws cozy mystery by Krista Davis.  The crew for a reality show about ghost hunters has arrived for the Halloween festivities in Wagtail, Virginia, described as “the top pet-friendly getaway in the United States.”  Holly Miller and her pets discover a young woman drowned in a supposedly-haunted bathhouse, and Holly works to solve the crime before someone else is killed. 

For a true story about a ghost (whether the ghost is real or not), check out American Ghost: A Family’s Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest by Hannah Nordhaus.  Nordhaus is the author of the 2011 bestseller The Beekeeper’s Lament.  For her new book, she researched the life and supposed afterlife of her great-great-grandmother Julia Schuster Staab, a Jewish immigrant who died in 1896.  Sightings of a dark-eyed woman in a long black gown were first reported in the 1970s in the Santa Fe hotel that used to be her home.  Nordhaus tells of her ancestor’s frontier history and examines how a true story becomes a ghost story. 

For another nonfiction book that seems to fit the season, place a hold on The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff.  Schiff won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for the book Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) and had a number one best-seller with her book Cleopatra: A Life in 2010.  The buzz about this book is tremendous, with many people saying it’s the best book on the Salem witch trials that has ever been written.  We've got a waiting list on this one and it won't be published until October 27^th, so put your name on the list if you’d like to read it soon. 

If you’d like to brush up on the Addams Family before the Litchfield high school’s production of the musical, we have some of their creepy and kooky DVDs and a music CD.  The Addams Family, Volume One is a three-DVD set of the original television episodes from 1964-65.  We also have the 1991 movie The Addams Family, starring Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia, and the cast album for The Addams Family: A New Musical, in case you’d like to hear the songs the local students will be performing in their show.  Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth starred in the original Broadway cast.

On the afternoon of Halloween, which falls on a Saturday this year, our library is hosting a Halloween murder mystery costume party for teens, ages 12-18.  Called “Get Away (with murder?) @ your library,” this is a Teen Read Week event.  The 2-hour party starts at 1:30 on the 31^st.  The murder mystery will involve a live Clue-style game (not a board game) with prizes to win along the way.  Costumes are optional, and refreshments will be served.  Happy Halloween!

The Library is Alive with the Sound of Music

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian


Have you gone to see Fiddler on the Roof? I haven’t gone yet, but I plan to go so that I can see our library staff member Elle Dinius as Hodel. If the community theater production has gotten you in a musical mood, come to the library to find some CDs and movies to keep it going.

Do you have “Matchmaker” or “If I Were a Rich Man” in your head? We have the original Broadway soundtrack of Fiddler on the Roof on CD at the Litchfield Library. We also have the DVD of the movie, starring Topol. We even have the sheet music, vocal with piano accompaniment, so that you could try playing and singing the songs at home.

Want to go back and revisit last year’s community theater show? We have the DVD of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, starring Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae. You can watch Curly ride up on his horse and sing “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” and most of the cast dance and sing to “The Farmer and the Cowman”.

Are you going to go to Hutchinson community theater’s production of Singin’ in the Rain in August?  You can find Singin’ in the Rain starring Gene Kelly on VHS at our library, although you’d have to still have a VCR to watch it. A new anniversary edition is coming out on DVD, and I plan to get it for us. You can order the DVD currently from other libraries in the system.

Is anyone else excited about the movie version of Les Miserables that’s coming to theaters in December? I can hardly wait. While you’re waiting, you can watch our DVD of Les Miserables in Concert: The 25th Anniversary, Live. The actress who will be playing Eponine in the movie is in the concert. Her performance is breathtaking.

Among our DVDs, you can also find West Side Story, Forever Plaid, The Mikado, Dreamgirls, The Phantom of the Opera, Mary Poppins, Annie Get Your Gun, Cats, Hairspray, The Sound of Music, and Rent. I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting, and there are many more VHS tapes we still have in the collection.

A newly expanded part of our collection is the music CD section. Most of the new additions are popular music, old and new, but you can check out a few cast recordings and musical movie soundtracks. It’s a great way to learn the songs and be ready for a future community theater or high school theater audition. We have original cast recordings for The Music Man, Company, and The Phantom of the Opera, in addition to Fiddler. We have something called A New Recording of the Most Memorable Songs from West Side Story, and there’s a CD set of Showboat performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. Barbra Streisand’s Greatest Hits includes some songs from Funny Girl.

In our book collection, we have a number of scores and books of sheet music from musicals. They’re old, but you can find many of the classics: Annie Get Your Gun, Cabaret, Camelot, Carousel, Guys & Dolls, The King and I, My Fair Lady, and The Sound of Music.

I hope you’ll think of the library when you’re looking for arts, music, and culture in our community.

A Tale as Old as Time, Almost

By Jan Pease, children's librarian at Litchfield library

I’m looking forward to this week’s production of “Beauty and the Beast” at our local high school. Elle Dinius, who plays Belle, is our page, shelving books in between classes and rehearsals.  Philip Hansen, who plays the Beast, is the son of staff member Mary Hansen.  We’re proud of “our” kids!  The story of "Beauty and the Beast" has been told in countless versions, and the Litchfield library is a great place to check out a few.

One of the first items I found was an interesting movie version, "Belle et la Bête," a French movie made 65 years ago.  The dvd also includes an opera composed by Philip Glass with a sound track of his rich and interesting music added to the original movie.  The movie is based on the version originally written in 1756 by French author Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont while she served as a governess in Scotland. Director Jean Cocteau created this masterpiece which is a fairy tale for adults rather than children. Be sure to read the booklet that accompanies the dvd, which is full of interesting information about the making of the movie, as well as the original story by de Beaumont.   Cocteau said “My aim would be to make the Beast so human, so sympathetic, so superior to men, that his transformation into Prince Charming would come as a terrible blow to Beauty, condemning her to a humdrum marriage and a future that I summed up in that last sentence of all fairy tales: ‘And they had many children.’”  He certainly was not making a movie for those children!

One of my favorite video versions of the story is an episode from Shelley Duvall's FaerieTale Theatre.   Susan Sarandon plays Belle and the great actor Klaus Kinski plays the beast.  This film was made in the mid-1980s but is timeless.

One of my favorite book versions of the story is “Beauty: a Retelling of the Story of Beauty & the Beast” by Robin McKinley.  This is an older book, a young adult novel written more than 30 years ago.  Many of the elements of the Disney version are in this one, including the fantastic library. 

 A lovely version of the fairytale with art by the great Mercer Mayer was published in 1978.  The text was written by Marianna Mayer, who happened to be Mercer Mayer’s first wife.  I just learned of the connection today.  Anyway, the paintings in this version are breathtaking.

Author and illustrator Jan Brett published a version of the tale in 1989.  Again, the familiar story is told with illustrations in Brett’s unique style.  I looked for it on Amazon.com, and discovered that a new hardcover copy can be purchased for $137.00 to $237.00. Oh my.

 Donna Jo Napoli wrote an interesting version of the story, “Beast,” set in Persia and told from the point of view of the beast. Published in 2000, it gives a completely different look at the familiar story. 

In 2006, Max Eilenberg wrote and  Angela Barrett illustrated their version of the story, in which the beast is a grotesquely haunting creature.

In 2007, the book, "Beastly," by Alex Flinn, was published and then reprinted in 2011 with the release of the movie based on Flinn’s book.  Reviews were mixed.  It remains to be seen if it will stand the test of time like Cocteau’s master work.

Of course, the library has a copy of the Disney animated version of "Beauty and the Beast," which was followed by several animated sequels, each one going farther and farther from the basic structure of the story.  I wonder if, like Jean Cocteau, today’s fans are more interested in Belle’s life with the Beast than her life with her human prince.    These interesting versions of the classic story are waiting for you at the Litchfield library.  See you there!