Archive | January, 2019

From Colorful Plots to Complicated Endings: The Transformation of Children’s Movies

30 Jan

wreckitralph
When did “kid’s” movies become less about the colorful plot and happy endings and more about teaching life lessons and appealing more to the adults of the family rather than the children? I had recently watched Wreck It Ralph 2 – a bit late – with my family and as soon as the movie ended the first thing my little brother says is, “well that was the weirdest movie I’ve ever seen”.

When did Wreck-It Ralph go from funny anecdotes about sugar and candy to learning how to deal with a long-distance friendship and managing your own insecurities?

If my little was able to notice how far off the mark it was, and he’s 12 years old, then clearly something is amiss.

Revamps and interesting adaptations of fairy tales and children’s stories are surfacing from classics such as the recent French cinematic adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. These movies that once were designed to have hidden meanings that could reach adults but mainly entertain children – such as Inside Out and even Frozen or Moana – have thus become explicitly pushing passed the vale of meaning and seem to have become the forefront of the movie.

Now, I’m not saying I’m against it, but so far even my 12-year-old brother agrees that something is up.  Come in and borrow some movies on DVD and Blu-Ray at the library or stream them on Hoopla and Kanopy and see what you think.  

Written by:
Sherissa Hernandez
Adult Programming Assistant

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Diplomacy and Baseball: A Peak inside HPL’s Vertical Files

25 Jan

This is the first in a series of monthly blog posts that give insight into Hoboken History by taking a look at materials in our History Collection.

Ambassadors profiles.jpg

Image Courtesy of the Jersey Journal

In the summer of 1988, a group of teenage boys from Hoboken was tasked with a very important diplomatic mission. The boys, all 14 and 15 years old, were members of a baseball team traveling to the Soviet Union to play the game abroad and hopefully improve relations between Soviet and American youth. The team, renamed the Hoboken Ambassadors for the trip, embarked on a multi-city tour of the Soviet Union, playing multiple Soviet teams (usually made up of players several years older than them), exploring the country, and eating unusual foods, and the entire journey was dutifully reported day by day in both the Jersey Journal and Hudson Dispatch.

Baseball in the Soviet Union wasn’t the most fun part of the trip – the Ambassadors went undefeated against players who were physically stronger and older than they were, but lacked the baseball experience that they had – but the boys reported that they greatly enjoyed meeting the people in the three cities they stopped at on their whirlwind tour, Moscow, Kiev, and Tblisi. This was perhaps the actual most important part of their trip, as they were serving as cultural envoys for the United States at a crucial time in the history of the Cold War (Perestroika was well underway and Reagan’s “tear down this wall” speech had occurred approximately one year before the tour). The Ambassadors all spoke to how meaningful the trip was for them and how friendly and accommodating the Soviets they met were, although there were definitely some things left to be desired: second baseman Rickey Huggins stated the first thing he wanted to do upon arriving home was “going to White Castle,” whilst infielder/pitcher Blair Degaeta Jr. planned to “go to Biggie’s and order a cheesesteak and fries.”

The Hoboken Ambassadors vertical file has been completely digitized and, along with 286 other subject files, can be found on the Hoboken Public Library website. To read the Ambassadors’ entire story chronologically, go here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W1t2Nnk4oLsC9lGNpa2eVk4L8j_60nvo/view

If you’re more interested in other historical subjects, all 287 vertical files can be perused at your leisure here: https://hobokenlibrary.org/history-collection/hoboken-vertical-files/

Hoboken Library cardholders can also access full back issues of new and older newspapers online including the Jersey Journal from NewsBank.

Love Baseball?  Stop by the library on Saturday, January 26 at noon, for A Society for American Baseball Research Meet Greet and Lecture.

Written By:
Steph Diorio
Local History Librarian/Archivist

Steph loves writing and talking about the collections under her care, so feel free to ask her to talk about any of the historical materials at the library and setup a research appointment.

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