Dear Abby: Sister looks to help homeless brother | 2E
Today
S U N D A Y , O C T O B E R 20 , 2013
SECTION E
WWW.TUSCALOOSANEWS.COM
LYDIA SEABOL AVANT
THE MOM STOP
Little show of horrors
Map out some fun for your batty brood
H
alloween is around the corner, which means there is a plethora of fall festivals and Halloween-themed events planned in Tuscaloosa County. Here are just a few family-friendly events coming up for you to enjoy with your little ghosts and goblins: ■ Tuscaloosa One Place will hold a free fall festival from 2-4:40 p.m. Oct. 20 at Jaycee Park in Alberta. There will be a costume contest, free food, games and a bouncy house. ■ The Children’s Hands On Museum will host its Halloween Spooktacular and Monster Mash Ball from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Oct. 24. Anyone wearing a costume will be admitted. Tickets can be purchased for the carnival games. ■ Tuscaloosa Belles will host a “Sunday in the Park” 2 p.m.-4 p.m. Oct. 27 at Capitol Park. Tickets cost $10 for families with four children and $2 for each additional child. Tickets can be purchased by calling 205-758-2238. ■ Holy Spirit Catholic Church will host a trunk or treat from 4 -7 p.m. Oct 27. Cost is $5 per child over age 4, or a maximum cost of $15 per family. There will be games and a hayride. ■ Arbor Springs Baptist Church near the Samantha Volunteer Fire Department will offer a fall festival from 3-6 p.m. Oct. 27 with “trunk or treat,” games and free food. ■ Park Manor Health and Rehabilitation in Northport will host a fall festival from 2 -7 p.m. Oct. 28. There will be trick-or-treating for the kids, outdoor activities and games. ■ The Alabama Museum of Natural History at the University of A labama will host its annual “Haunting at the Museum” event from 6 -8 p.m. Oct. 29. The free event will feature guided, candlelit ghost walks around the Quad, children’s activities, a scavenger hunt and ghost stories at the museum. ■ The University of Alabama’s Panhellenic Association will host its annual sorority row trick-ortreat from 6-8 p.m. Oct. 29. Children ages 12 and younger are invited to dress up in Halloween costumes and trick or treat. ■ Forest Lake United Methodist Church will host a “trunk or treat” from 5-7 p.m. Oct. 30 in the church parking lot. ■ The Tuscaloosa a Public Library will host a Halloween “toddler time” at 10 a.m. Oct. 31. Costumes are encouraged. From 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 5 -7 p.m. the library will have a photo booth for Halloween picture postcards. ■ Lake Lurleen State Park will host Camp Fear from 6- 9 p.m. on Oct. 31. Children can trick or treat at more than 30 campsites and go for a hayride. The cost for children younger than 12 is $1, and the cost for those 12 and older is $3. The hayride will cost $1. ■ Indian Lake Baptist Church will host a “trunk or treat” at 6 p.m. Oct. 31 at the church. There will be candy, inflatables, a praise band and more. ■ Capstone Community Church and Northridge Baptist Church will host a fall festival Oct. 27 from 3-5 p.m. at Northridge Baptist with games, candy and prizes. ■ Cross Pointe Church will host a fall holiday bazaar from 8 a.m.- 2 p.m. Nov. 2 with vendors, homemade fried pies, peanut brittle and baked goods. Reach Lydia Seabol Avant at 205722-0222 or email her at lydia.seabol avant@tuscaloosanews.com.Visit www.tuscmoms.com to read her blog, meet other moms in West Alabama and to share photos, videos and more.
Fourth incarnation of beastly bash finds new territory for our kids’ imaginations By Mark Hughes Cobb Staff Writer
Y
ou know what’s really scary? Kids. Or maybe I should be more specific: K ids’ imaginations. We knew this going in, to be fair. This is the fourth time The Tuscaloosa News has created a Monster Makeover, where we go into a school — Westwood Elementary for 2013 — and ask fi rst-graders to draw us some nightmares. And then.... And then we asked for descriptions. Many of our adult artists, who take the kids’ drawings and reinterpret them in various media — sculpture, paintings, fabric art and more — get as much meat and bone and, um, blood, from the descriptions as from the visuals. For example, this one by Athena Garner is about as unsettling as anything written by a young Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen King or Clive Barker: “There are two spiders and a dog on a bike. They are at a bloody place where they eat their stuff. The dog just sits on the bike. They are in the forest. Actually, it is not nighttime. The stars are over the sun. They don’t have parents ...
they are bad guys! There is a skeleton in a cage, and the cage hook is hanging on the tree. There is a potion on the bottom that turned them into bad guys. His kids are asleep in their home under the cage. He has two kids. He goes to sleep in the cage. There is a spider above the dog in the bike. The trees are different worlds. Their home is in the trees. The water is in between the two worlds. There is a human coming out of the water, and then he died.” But note the codicil: It seems to be because they don’t have parents that the villains became evil. Good save, Athena. Artist Tony Bratina, who chose her work to re-create, noted “If she would have had more time, she could have written an entire book.” And maybe she will some day. Because despite the fact that we like ghoulies, ghosties and longlegged beasties at this Halloween time of year, what Monster Makeover is really about is releasing imagination, for both the kids and the grownups. We could as easily have asked them to draw fairies or hobbits or unicorns or an entire Marvel Comics’ lineup of superheroes. The idea grew out of a website spotted by former Tuscaloosa
News videographer Steve Mullen — www.themonsterengine. com — where professional artist Dave Devries was posting work by his nieces, which he’d then redrawn in more painstaking detail. Devries had worked as a comics artist for Marvel and DC, but also drew and painted monsters for Universal Studios. Yet he found deeper inspiration in the unfettered imaginations of his nieces’ drawings. Devries projects the sketches, traces their lines, then paints the images in hyper-realistic manner, working mostly with acrylic paint, airbrush and colored pencil. Mullen showed that concept to me. Realizing we needed the real visual eyes for the monster guys, we roped in graphics editor Bratina, former design editor Shweta Gamble and photo editor Robert Sutton. This team, which also began to involve other News staff, expanded on the idea by involving numerous local artists and a schoolroom full of kids; Capitol School that fi rst year. We also let the artists’ interpretations run wild. Some of them seem almost abstracted from the kids’ art, while some follow more closely the line and form, as Devries does. In writing each year’s stories,
MONSTER MAKEOVER IV CLOSING RECEPTION ■ What: Closing reception and charity auction for Monster Makeover IV ■ When: 6-9 p.m. Thursday. Bidding for art will end at 8 p.m., with artwork paid for and distributed between 8 and 9. ■ Where: Bama Theatre; lobby and upstairs Junior League Gallery. ■ Cost: Free ■ More: See the Monster Makeover IV Facebook page.
I’ve talked with educators, artists and psychologists about what we’re doing, including Joy J. Burnham, an associate professor of education at the University of Alabama who has done years of study on childhood fears. She explained that as children mature, they can tell real from make-believe, and thus most of our fi rst-graders are probably not working reliving nightmares. Mostly, they’re just having fun with their brains, putting playful creativity down on paper, because that’s what Halloween is: a rollercoaster ride, thrilling and chilling, something to make the blood pump, but ultimately a safe outlet for spooky stuff. SEE M AKEOVER | 7E