Chicago, IL -- (ReleaseWire) -- 02/16/2016 --Just weeks after news that Hollywood director Guillermo Del Toro is adapting popular kids book Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark into a film, a documentary exploring the legacy, art, and folklore of the books is well underway and crowdfunding on Indiegogo.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is an anthology of folktales and urban legends by Alvin Schwartz with original illustrations by Stephen Gammell. Along with being a wildly popular kids book series, it is also the most banned book title of the last 30 years. Examining the legacy of the books will also be an exploration of how children's books are banned, challenged, or censored in elementary schools, middle schools, high schools and even libraries. The Scary Stories books were the most challenged children's books of the 1990's according to the American Library Association and remained on the top ten in the subsequent decade. Along with being a nostalgia title for so many people, they are also a controversial title for many schools and libraries.
In addition a documentary about Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark allows Producer Cody Meirick and his team to delve into folklore, folk tales, and the history of horror and scary stories within children's literature and storytelling. The source materials and detailed appendices listed in the books invite us into an intriguing exploration involving some of the foundations of cultural storytelling. Death, fear, the unknown. There are a host of Hollywood and horror movie directors, horror writers, and gothic artists who attribute these kids books as both an early inspiration as well as a cultural phenomenon. Understanding the source of the fears and exploring what it is that inspires us to love them at an early age promises to be an interesting journey.
Interviews conducted and upcoming include family members of author Alvin Schwartz, long since passed away, as well as a veritable who's who of authors, folklorists, and scholars in the field of literature. This includes fellow Scholastic book author and Goosebumps and Fear Street scribe R.L. Stine just shortly after the Goosebumps children's book series was adapted into a feature film themselves by Sony Pictures.
Exploring censorship, folklore, children's literature, modern art and gothic art, this upcoming documentary about the Scary Stories books is bound to be a unique story in and of itself.
The Official Scary Stories Crowdfunding Campaign on Indiegogo - http://bit.ly/1PrsUQF
The Official Scary Stories Website - http://www.scarystoriesdoc.com/
About Cody Meirick
With over six years managing for a nonprofit initiative aimed at improving early education at Erikson Institute, Cody Meirick has gained a unique perspective on childhood development. His years of experience developing media in the effort to better understand young children and how to best educate them will be an asset to this documentary film.
