INTRO – FRED - It's Morning Edition on KRPS, tomorrow Bookhouse Cinema and Pub in Joplin will hold a fundraiser to raise money for the first annual band Boot Camp, which starts Saturday, June 10th.00:00:12 Speaker 2
Recently I spoke withBookhouse co-owner Holly Crane about the idea behind the band book film series.
She says it's been on her mind for some time.
Holly - Yeah, well, you know, I've been wanting to do a free teen series since before we opened.
It's just part of our mission to do outreach and to serve our community. And teens are just are underserved when it comes to free fun summer activities
There's a lot out there, so something just kind of fun, cool to hang out and meet new kids. We have kids from home school and all the different schools in the area.
So, I'm hoping that they come, and they make some new friends outside of they're natural circles.
FRED – Right, I mean, our society is really oriented around sports. So, when I saw this, I thought to myself, is this something that you saw somewhere else you wanted to bring here, or is this something organic that you want to start here and grow, go out to other independent movie locations?
HOLLY - Well, we've been wanting to start a, you know, teen summer series for years. And just the theme this year is based on banned books. It just seems really relevant and something that you know is kind of at the forefront of national attention that we find storytelling is really important. It's what we do here. It's why we exist for stories.
FRED - And so yesterday, before we were talking for this interview, you told me about some support that you're getting from the community.
HOLLY - We have a team of people that collaborated to help put this together. Area teachers and librarians, as well as some folks from different organizations, the Joplin Area League of Women Voters will be able to lead the craft activities and have done a lot of support and promoting and fundraising for us.
The George C. Spiva Library has contributed a copy of each of the books that are the topics of each film for every attendant. So that's really amazing.
FRED - So these films you, how, how were they selected? Do you want to go over the films because this is happening starting on June 10th and it looks like it's every other week.
HOLLY - It's it's just about every other week we kind of stretched it out throughout the summer. We did choose PG-13 films that was part of the criteria because it's for 13 to 18 year olds.
And they'll be on their own coming here. So we wanted to, you know, have that guideline and within that realm, films that were good that are based on books that have been on the ALA, the American Library Association's Top 100 list of books that are banned in this country and different school systems and libraries.
And from there we narrowed it down to things that would be relevant to kids today, because there's just so much to choose from. Sadly, we, you know, we had to. Pair it down.
FRED - Well, so I was going to ask how you did pare it down because there are a lot of books. It seems like it's a news story in one state. Or school district, or national, every every week, sometimes every day you hear multiple times depending on the state.
HOLLY - Florida.
FRED - Or Florida, yeah. I didn't want to mention the state. In particular, but. You're right, it is in Florida, sometimes in Kansas also though.
HOLLY - And you know, and it's happening in the strangest places where you have a small handful of people who get involved with the school board and then they get to determine what you know. People get to read and think, and I know that when I was in middle school and high school, we were learning in history class about different books throughout the ages that had been banned.
I immediately ran to the library and checked out a copy. I think it’s going to have the have the opposite result of what they want. Because when you, when you do a book ban, that ends up being documented in the history books, and then it kind of goes down forever, it makes that book sort of immortal. So even after, you know, its initial popularity has gone away, it's always going to be brought up again because it's just documented forever that there was some sort of controversy around it.
FRED - Yeah, kind of it’s the opposite effect. I mean, and I've heard authors that have had banned books on shows talking about how they've become, they have more notoriety there before the book was ever been at all.
HOLLy - Yeah, there's a cause and effect there. It makes us even more interested, because that's what people do.
FRED - So this list of movies, is there one or two that that particularly interested you or maybe you didn't know that was banned and then you saw the like you're like, really?
HOLLY - Yeah, well, you know the presenters when we were having our meeting, our planning meeting, we, you know we're going over this list of probably 50 titles that I had selected that had a decent movie attached to it and fit the guidelines and and the presenters chose the one that that spoke to them the people presenting.
So we'll have a brief introduction to each. Each session we'll have local teachers and librarians introducing them, and they're very scholarly people. They'll be able to explain, you know, why this story is important, at least to them. You know, they're sort of hand selected favorites.
FRED - Right.
HOLLY - So I think that we also wanted to have a variety and have some diversity in there and different types of stories. As well as different types of books, Persepolis is a graphic novel.
So, since Persepolis is a graphic novel, we wanted some sort of animation to go along with the live action. We've got different cultures represented in here and and just different genres of movies, so that there's a variety.
FRED - Holly Crane, co-owner of Bookhouse Cinema and Pub, and Joplin, speaking about their first annual band book film series for teenagers, registration for the series, is free and required to learn more.
Visit the link at our website, krps.org. Book House is holding a fundraiser tomorrow at 7:00 PM to raise money for the six movie series that starts on Saturday, June 10th and runs through Saturday, August 12th. It's Morning Edition on KRPS. I'm Fred Fletcher-Fierro
