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I am still working on my mural design for the new Wakefield Library. I have scanned in all the most interesting creatures the children drew during the illustration workshop, like this badger and flamingo. I've kept everything at low resolution for now, so my computer doesn't grind to a halt:
I explained to the children that my plan was to create a crazy chase through the library, so some of them drew useful sundry objects in the background of their illustrations, things like shocked librarians, flying books and library signage:
These were all very helpful to add a sense of the location and to help create extra chaos. I had to find a way to incorporate this great staircase too:
As I expected, some simple graphics behind the creatures was needed, to tie the whole thing together. I decided to make the perspective really wonky, to add to the fun and to help the staircase fit. I pulled the colours from the colour scheme of the library furniture.
I had to flip and resize a lot of the animals in Photoshop. I spent ages moving them around to try and fit as many in as possible:
I wanted to add one or two bits of mine too. The dragon from Dragon's Dinner was an obvious choice. It was the book I used to kick-start the project, since the story is one big chase, and made a great counter-point to the massive dragon on the left:
There's a big sceen mounted in the middle of the wall in the children's library, which I had to bear in mind. I thought it would be fun to use that as a prop too (though there is a risk it will be so well camouflaged by the mural, punters may not realise it is there!).
This is just a rough by the way. I will boost the colour and strengthen up the outlines of some of the animals before I re-scan them, then get rid of fold lines and smudges in Photoshop.
I thought photo-montaged books spines would be a fun wat to fill the bookshelves, the same as I'm doing with the computer screens (spot my website!), so I've been scanning in the books from my shelves at home. Picture books are very skinny though and only hardbacks have enough spine - even stretched, they don't fill much space. I've now run out, so will have to borrow some to fill the bottom shelf. That's why I am going for ordinary adult non-fiction to fill the end bookcase. I'm still half way through:
I will use this low res version as a template when I up the resolution. I want to do the real scans at the actual size I need them, without messing around in Photoshop (otherwise you lose quality), so the plan is to scale up the template in manageable sections, then measure the size of each item, scan it to fit and simply drop it in. In practise, I doubt it will be possible to get them exact, but at least things should only need a single tweak.
The recent findings from the Pew Research Center funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates on libraries have been fascinating reading. And now, my youth services friends, it is our turn to have the research spotlight turned on our efforts.
As reported May 1, " the vast majority of parents of minor children — children younger than 18 — feel libraries are very important for their children. That attachment
carries over into parents’ own higher-than-average use of a wide range of library services." (emphasis mine)
In this brief synopsis of findings from the full report parents view libraries as vital to their children's reading and information needs. And - no surprise to us frontliners -these same parents are far more likely to use other library services and to express interest in expanding services and adding tech-related services.
I have had conversations over the years with colleagues in which we express frustration over the lack of support for youth services from our administrations, boards and even our co-workers in other areas of the library. This is the strongest piece of research we've seen in a while that underscores what we know - parents who use the library are vitally interested in its services not just for kids but for themselves.
When we see and serve families we are also drawing in these parents for all other adult services as well. These twenty and thirty somethings are a sweet spot demographic that some libraries embrace and some puzzle over. But they are ready for us.
I'll be highlighting this study at my library and in my workshops and presentations and sharing with my colleagues where I work. I hope you will too.
Powerful stuff.
Thanks to
Digital Shift for the heads up.
A while ago I mentioned a mural project that I am doing, based on children's drawings created during an illustration workshop, focussing on characterisation and movement. The wall I have to cover, at Wakefield Library, is over 13 metres long, but only 2 metres high - very long and thin - so the idea is to create a chase scene along it, as if the children's animals are running through the library.
I let the teachers take the drawings back to school with them, for the kids to finish off. Unfortunately, instead of posting them a couple of days later, as promised, it took them 6 weeks and repeated hassling, so I am only now getting down to it.
I am currently spending my time on Photoshop, trying to work out how to lay things out. It's so massive, and such a weird shape, I'm working on a one-tenth, low res mock-up, into which I have placed scans of all the animals, so I can move things around and re-size them, until it looks OK. Then I'll re-scan everything at the right size, as the final artwork will be created digitally (in sections and at one quarter size, so my computer doesn't blow its brain).
Although my initial chase idea sounded simple, I soon discovered that, if I don't want to end up with just a 'procession' of animals, in a long, uninteresting line, I will need to draw in incidental props, like bookshelves for animals to climb onto, or chairs for them to jump over. I might need to do some graphic things will colour in the background too (like I did with the cover of Swap!), to divide up the space. Not sure yet.
Right: back to it...
By: a bad case of books,
on 4/20/2013
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Bats at the Library by Brian Lies Another inky evening’s here- The air is cool and calm and clear. Can it be true? Oh, can it be? Yes! Bat Night at the library! Join the free-for-all fun at the public library with these book-loving bats! Shape shadows on walls, frolic in the water fountain, and …
From everywhere and from different backgrounds and knowledge, we all came together to create this site and I thank you so much! Click on the image to get there and enjoy....
By: Jason Boog,
on 4/16/2013
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The American Library Association (ALA) has released its annual list of the most frequently challenged library books of the year. We’ve linked to free samples of all the books on the list–follow the links below to read these controversial books yourself.
The list was part of the ALA’s 2013 State of America’s Libraries Report. During the past year, the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom received 464 reports of challenged books. Here’s more from the report:
In California, a school committee voted to remove the Stephen King novella “Different Seasons” from Rocklin High School library shelves. The lone dissenter on that committee was 17-year-old student Amanda Wong, who continued to fight the ban and spoke against the decision at a later school board meeting. After hearing Wong’s concerns that the removal “opens a door to censoring other materials,” the district superintendent overturned the committee’s decision and returned the book to the Rocklin High School library’s collection.
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
As news emerges about two explosion at the Boston Marathon, television news reports are filled with graphic images. To help parents, we built a list of books to help parents discuss traumatic events with children, grade schoolers and young adults.
If you want to help, you can donate to the Red Cross.
We’ve linked to WorldCat records for each book, so you can find a copy at a library near you. Feel free to add more suggestions in the comments section. The Child Witness to Violence Project has a more complete bibliography, exploring all the emotions kids face while coping with such terrible violence.
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
For the next year, Simon & Schuster will test a pilot eBook program with the New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Library. Here’s more from the release:
The participating libraries can acquire any Simon & Schuster ebook title at any time during the pilot’s one-year term, with each title usable for one year from the date of purchase. Each library can offer an unlimited number of checkouts during the one-year term for which it has purchased a copy; each copy may only be checked out by one user at a time. All of Simon & Schuster’s frontlist and backlist titles that are available as ebooks are eligible for the program, with new titles being made available simultaneous with their publication.
In an interesting twist on the traditional model, patrons can buy books through the library online and the library will receive a portion of the sale. The New York Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library programs will start April 30th and the Queens Library program launches in May.
continued…
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By: Robin,
on 3/29/2013
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We love listening to Chris Crutcher. He always has the most interesting things to say. Luckily his new novel, PERIOD 8, is full of things to talk about!
Watch Chris Crutcher discuss the truth and when to tell it, what it means to live a good life, and PERIOD 8. Make sure you stick around until the end for a special message to teachers and librarians!
Download the PERIOD 8 discussion guide and get talking . . .
A Chicago Public Library patron wrote a book about his relationship and proposed in the library last weekend. As you can see by lovely photograph embedded above, she said yes.
Where in the library would you get engaged? Here’s more about the library marriage proposal, the most romantic use of the stacks we’ve ever seen.
Jason and Molly both love books and libraries. So Jason decided the library was the perfect place to pop the question… after he wrote a story about how they met, had it illustrated and bound into a book, and then placed on the shelves in the Thomas Hughes Children’s Library. He and Molly “found” the book on Saturday and we are happy to report she said YES! Congratulations to you both – we wish you a long, happy, and book-filled life together!
Photo courtesy of Aparna Paul Jain Photography
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
By: Jason Boog,
on 3/25/2013
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The New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers has picked 15 writers and journalists as its annual fellows.
Selected from a pool of 313 applicants, this is the 15th class of fellows for the center. These writers will get a stipend, a private office in the Cullman Center and support from the library staff.
With a diverse array of people originally from Nigeria, Turkey, England, Argentina, and Serbia, the class of 2013 includes: The fiction writers Tea Obreht, Rajesh Parameswaran, Paul La Farge, and Uwem Akpan. The historians Linda Colley and Anthony Grafton. The journalists Arthur Lubow, Elizabeth Rubin, Elif Batuman, and David Grann.
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Do you remember your first library card? My first card was printed deep blue cardboard and the librarian typed my name on a typewriter at the Lyons Township District Library.
The Chicago Public Library invited patrons to send photographs of their first library card, starting with that super cute picture of two young patrons. Check it out:
Isabel & Jasmine got their first library cards last week! Congratulations to you both! Send us photos of your first library cards (to firstcards@chipublib.org) and we will give a shout out to your kids here!
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Just before Christmas, I had an email from a librarian working in Barnsley Children's Centre. She told me she was planning a course for local parents, teaching them how to create story sacks. She wanted my permission to use one of her favourite books, Class Two at the Zoo, to base the course around. How lovely! 
For those who don't know, a story sack is a bag you fill with all sorts of little props and ideas, relating to a favourite book, to help you to add value to storytime with your child. The bag might include a simple puppet to help you read the story, or activities that pick up immediately after finishing the book, like games or songs with a related theme, or props to help you retell the story together. It's basically the same kind of thing I use when I am doing a
storytelling with a school group.
I have come across libraries that make story sacks and lend them out with the books, but Jane in Barnsely wanted to empower parents to create their own - a great idea and good fun I should think.
The parents made sock puppets, bingo games, snap cards, laminated puppet masks and games of snakes and ladders. They also made copies of my illustrations, which they cut out and coloured in, re-creating background settings from the book with Velcro-on characters, to animate the story with their children.
All the parents ended up with a lovely story sack to take home and share with their child, as well as a certificate to say they had completed the course. Fantastic stuff.
If you have young children or grand children, why don't you have a go at creating a story sack? As long as you are not selling what you create, you are free to use any of the illustrations or ready-made activities, colouring sheets, step-by-step drawings you find on my website, either to creare props to add to one of my books, or someone elses.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a 6-3 opinion that “ first sale doctrine” applies to books purchased overseas.
The court decided that Supap Kirtsaeng did not violate copyright when he purchased textbooks overseas to sell to friends and families in the United States. Textbook publisher Wiley had sued Kirtsaeng for reselling these books.
You can read the complete Supreme Court decision at this PDF link. First sale doctrine applies to the sale of copyrighted goods, letting the buyer’s copy be “resold or otherwise redistributed without the copyright owner’s authorization.”
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Author and New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean inked a deal for The Library Book.
The book will explore the power of libraries and her “quest to solve a crime that has gone unsolved since it was carried out in 1986: who set fire to the Los Angeles Public Library, ultimately destroying 400,000 books?” If you want to read more about this sad story, the LAPL posted a complete account of the fire.
InkWell Management agent Richard Pine negotiated the deal with Jonathan Karp and Jofie Ferrari-Adler at Simon & Schuster.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 3/4/2013
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Children's book author Terry Deary
stirred up some controversy last month when he said libraries have "had their day" but no longer make sense in today's world. He cites the lack of compensation for authors and damage to bookstores, who have to compete with an institution giving away the book for free:
"People have to make the choice to buy books. People will happily buy a cinema ticket to see Roald Dahl's Matilda, and expect to get the book for free. It doesn't make sense."
Deary may have staked out a particularly anti-library position, but he's hardly the only person within the publishing industry who is grappling with the role of libraries in publishing economics in an electronic world. Penguin was among other publishers who
pulled their e-books from libraries before
restoring them with a new program.
There's no doubt that libraries have played an important role in society in democratizing access to information and reading, and fostering a love of reading in children. Libraries are also an important source of sales for small presses in particular. They do buy books, and they can be a significant customer for publishers.
At the same time, libraries also foster an expectation that books should be available for free and can potentially undercut an author's sales. They're absolutely indispensable and important for people who can't afford to buy books, but I have to admit that I cringe a bit when well-off people borrow from the library instead of buying the book. Here in the US those print circulations don't result in extra income for the author, though there are some different approaches when it comes to e-lending.
More broadly, as we move to to a world of near-universal Internet access and with it an unprecedented amount of information online for free, are libraries as crucial as they used to be? What role should they play in an electronic era? Should they continue to lend free e-books to customers and what should the economic balance there be?
Art: In der Bibliothek by Maurice Leloir
A rather unusual project has come my way...
Wakefield's central library is a brand new building (I did some storytelling to help celebrate the opening in November). There is a very long, very empty wall running through the children's library. It's supposed to be decorated with a mural. The mural was part of the original building contract, but the various designs offered were apparently awful and the librarian's rejected them all.
So, I got an email asking if I had any ideas. Everyone thought it would be a good idea to involve local children in some way, so I dedicated one of my long train journeys to giving it thought.
Which is why I was in Wakefield again this week.
I didn't really fancy painting onto the actual wall: that's very much out of my comfort zone, especially as it's over 12 metres long (!). Yikes.
My idea was to bring a couple of school groups into the library for illustration workshops and get them to draw (on paper) various animals chasing one another through the library (books flying everywhere, horrified librarians...). I would then take these home, scan in my favourites, and use Photoshop to combine them into one long, digital illustration, which I could simply send to a printer, to have made into panels, to attach to the wall.
Which all sounds kind of straightforward, doesn't it?. Hah! If only.
The workshops were the easy bit - they went really well and we had a lot of fun together. The children did some smashing illustrations, which they've taken back to school, to finish colouring in.
But, when the drawings come back next week, I have to play around, grouping them in different ways, designing the mural's layout. Which means I need to get the individual animals to a scale where I can move them around in a space the same shape as the actual wall. This is the tricky bit.
Even scaled right down, the wall is too long and thin to look at on the computer as a whole, but I don't have a real-life space anything like big enough to lay out the actual children's drawings on the floor. Hmmmm.....
Plus, even when I have somehow designed the mural and scanned in all the drawings, I'll need to create the final, digital artwork in several sections: even at one quarter size, the entire file will be so massive, it would crash the computer several times over!!
I'll let you know how things progress...
In the meantime, I hope you like these
watercolour pencil sketches, which I did on my way to Wakefield on Wednesday morning.
When libraries made the shift to digital records, many librarians were stuck with beautiful old card catalog boxes and shelves. One high school library converted the boxes into writing supply storage.
Here’s more from Reddit user Wcubed3: “I am a student volunteer in my high school’s Library Media Center. We often lend out supplies to students working on projects during their study hall or lunches, and were tired of being interrupted every five minutes for whiteout or a glue stick, so we created a self-serve station out of our old card catalog that was doing nothing besides being another horizontal surface to lose paper on.”
What did your library do with the old card catalog boxes?
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
White campaign tab with “WIN” in bold, red letters accompanied by a small red fish.
I had read with interest the articles that came out recently about the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library getting a Wikipedian in Residence. For more info, see this a short article about the library’s exhibits coordinator Bettina Cousineau talking about the library’s participation in the GLAM-Wiki Initiative (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums with Wikipedia), and a little more about the Wikipedian in Residence program.
I think this program is nifty and I was excited this time because the WiR is a Master’s student at the University of Michigan’s iSchool. I dropped him a line and asked if he wouldn’t mind answering a few questions. Here is a small Q&A (done over email) with Michael Barera about his new internship.
JW: The Ann Arbor Journal says you’ve been a Wikipedian since 2001. Is that a typo or have you been an editor there for over ten years? In any case, what first brought you to Wikipedia or the Wikimedia school of websites? What is your favorite thing about working on Wikipedia?
MB: 2001 isn’t exactly the true year that I started on Wikipedia: I found the site first in 2005, and made my first edit in 2006. 2001 is the year of the oldest photograph that I have uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, so in a way my contributions go back to 2001, although I didn’t edit Wikipedia or Commons until 2006. I was actually introduced to Wikipedia by my high school Western Civilization teacher in 2005, which is interesting because most people don’t have such an academic entry into the site: perhaps he was part of the reason why I’ve always taken it seriously.
For the first year or so, before I made my first edit, I used Wikipedia essentially as an extension of my social studies textbook: I’ve always loved how much more inclusive it is than the mainstream social studies curriculum in this country. My favorite thing about working on Wikipedia is sharing everything I’ve created or contributed with everyone in the world. We all chip in a little, and because of the CC-BY-SA and GFDL licenses, everyone gets to share and enjoy in the totality, all without ads or paywalls or subscriptions. I love the fact that it really is “the free encyclopedia”, both in the “gratis” and “libre” senses of the word.
JW: You went to UMich for your undergrad work and now you’re pursuing your Masters at the School of Information. Is this internship a natural outgrowth of what you planned to do at the iSchool or is it more of a side hobby that turned into a big deal? What are your interest areas at the iSchool?
MB: The beautiful thing is that it is both part of my career plan at SI and an outgrowth of a multi-year hobby. That’s why it is so perfect for me, because it allows me to use both my U of M bachelor’s degree (which has a concentration in History) and my knowledge and experience with Wikipedia, all in one package. In terms of my areas of interest at SI, I am specializing in Archives and Records Management (and maybe dual-specializing in Preservation of Information as well), but I’ve really enjoyed everything I’ve taken so far, from human interaction in information retrieval to Python programming to dead media. SI really is a perfect fit for me!
JW: Sort of a silly question but are you literally “in residence” meaning that you get to go work at the library? Or is it more of a virtual residency?
MB: I’m literally “in residence” at the Library four hours per week, but as you know Wikipedia can’t be confined to just one place at a certain time, so there is plenty of spill-over above and beyond these four hours. It is rather interesting to have an internship that literally bleeds into my free time, but I love editing Wikipedia, so I can’t complain!
JW: This project seems like it’s sort of a trial partnership experiment for both Wikipedia and a US cultural institution. What are you hoping will come out of this partnership in addition to the stated goals of making more of the library’s public domain holdings available via Wikipedia?
MB: Well, to be fair, a number of US cultural institutions have already had Wikipedians in Residence: the National Archives and Records Administration, the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis, Consumer Reports, and the Smithsonian Institution have all beaten the Ford Presidential Library and Museum to the punch. For me, the biggest goals of my internship (in addition to the obvious desire to improve content on Wikipedia) are to foster and maintain a relationship between the Wikimedia movement and the Ford as well as to encourage content experts, like the people I work with at the Ford, to create Wikipedia accounts and to become Wikipedians themselves. I know it can be daunting at first, but there are lots of long-time users who are happy to give their help and guidance, myself included. We won’t bite the newcomers!
JW. Do you feel a little odd about being in a fishbowl with all of your Wikipedia edits and actions being visible or is this par for the course for you? What do you think is people’s largest misunderstanding about Wikipedia?
MB: Well, all of my Wikipedia edits and actions have always been visible (that’s the nature of the MediaWiki software), and while there is certainly an upsurge in media attention and awareness about the internship or me specifically, I don’t think that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of people paging through my edits or watching my talkpage. On Wikipedia, I still feel like a private citizen: I think most of the media attention has been at a very basic level, and I think some of it struggles to grasp the nuances of what I am doing or even the structure of Wikipedia itself, which brings me to your last question. In terms of people’s largest misunderstanding about Wikipedia, I think it is the simple fact that we are an encyclopedia: a tertiary source without original research. We are not a blog or a forum for anyone to post whatever he or she wants to post, but rather a dedicated and thoughtful group of “collectors” trying to assemble the world’s best encyclopedia piece by piece, bit by bit.
I think we sometimes get lumped in with other social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, and while there are a few commonalities (like the fact each is made up of user-generated content), Wikipedia really is a lot more like Britannica than it is like a blog, at least in terms of the content itself and the work that goes on behind the scenes.
[these are follow-up questions from a few days after our initial exchange]
MB: I’ve always loved how much more inclusive it is than the mainstream social studies curriculum in this country.
JW: I’m with you there. Are there any particular examples that stand out to you?
MB: During my elementary, middle, and high school careers, I discovered that my history/social studies education was essentially a history of Western Europe and North America. While the curriculum has improved dramatically in terms of coverage of Native Americans, African Americans, and Asian Americans in the last few decades, there is very little Latin American, Eastern European, African, Asian, or Oceanian history taught at the primary or secondary levels in this country (and just about all of it directly impacts the United States, typically in negative ways, such as Vietnam’s one cameo appearance in American history during the Vietnam War). I think the heart of this issue is the old belief that history is “national myth-making” is still alive and well in this country, at least below the post-secondary level.
On the other hand, I absolutely loved how different history is at the college level: as an undergrad at the University of Michigan, it was refreshing to take history courses covering nearly every corner of the world that both attempted to show that country’s perspective and then critique it at the same time. My modern French history (1871-present) and Soviet/Russian history classes were the best examples, and I would highly recommend my professors, Joshua Cole and Ronald Grigor Suny, to anyone: they do it the right way, and I for one wish I had more exposure to that kind of “real history” when I was younger. Long story short, Wikipedia is much more like this post-secondary, “real history” than “national myth-making”, so I always enjoyed how much more objective Wikipedia is (although not perfectly objective, of course).
JW: One of the things that has been challenging for me in Wikipedia outreach is trying to convince people that they don’t need to get someone to do the editing, that they can be bold and dive in. Do you have any particular approach to trying to get people to get comfortable making their own edits?
MB: My advice for getting people to start contributing is simple. The next time our hypothetical potential editor is on Wikipedia, I would encourage him or her to create an account and then just stay logged in while reading articles. Anytime he or she spots a small error, such as a typo or punctuation issue, he or she should just go ahead and change it. Actually, an account isn’t even needed: readers can (on most articles) make such minor corrections without an account, too. Still, this notion of starting small is the real key, in my opinion: just start with the little things and become comfortable with the editing interface (and the notion of editing a wiki itself), and eventually that new editor will feel comfortable making larger and more substantial edits. That’s how it was for me many years ago.
JW: Are there other online reference sources (crowdsourced or not) online that are your “go to” sites when you are trying to do research either for Wikipedia or your other projects?
MB: The resources I use for referencing Wikipedia articles are broad and diverse, and they range widely from topic to topic, as is to be expected. One commonality, though, is that I use a lot of newspaper and journal articles: in most cases, they are reliable secondary sources that are very good at establishing the core facts that lie at the heart of the Wikipedia article. One hint for maintaining NPOV is to try to recognize the different sources and balance them with each other. For example, on the article on the 2001 Michigan vs. Michigan State football game, I made sure to use both the U of M and MSU athletic departments’ press releases and game notes.
And, in an even better example from my work on the article Queens of Noise (The Runaways’ sophomore album from 1977), I tried to effectively balance multiple perspectives on the content, including the recollections of Jackie Fox and direct quotes about specific songs and events from Joan Jett, Cherie Currie, and Kim Fowley. Most interestingly, that article includes two separate (and contradictory) accounts of why Jett sang lead vocals instead of Currie on one of the songs, one given by Fox and the other by Currie. The key is to make it clear who is saying what where, and so like the “real history” taught in colleges and universities across the nation (and the world), the article has become an effort to show the different perspectives in conversation with each other instead of just giving one point of view (as is the case with “national myth-making”).
JW: Cheers and thanks for doing this for me.
MB: My pleasure! Thanks for the interview, and take care!
I was sent a link to a little film last week, from a librarian all the way across the water, in Bighorn Library, in the USA.
I'll be honest, I hadn't realised that this year is Chinese Year of the Snake, but Rose Reid, the librarian in Bighorn, was on the ball. It was great that she selected Class Two at the Zoo as the perfect book to share with children, to celebrate (thank you Rose).
When I'm doing school visits or festivals, I always enjoy reading Class Two at the Zoo - Julia Jarman's rhyming texts are so playful to read aloud and the children always roar with laughter. It was definitely one of my favourites to illustrate too. I had a lot of fun thinking up different ways for the anaconda to gobble up the various children and drawing the reactions of the various other animals in the zoo!
In her film, Rose demonstrates a very simple, but very effective workshop activity too: how to create your own anaconda puppet to go with the story.
Take a look, especially if you are a librarian after a way to do some work around the Year of the Snake theme. There are other snake activities on my website too: a step-by-step guide to drawing the anaconda, a quiz to see how well you remember the story, an anaconda to colour in with your own pattern, plus a series of short films with lots of background information on how I create my books.
Have fun!
Oreo cookies destroyed an entire library for its Super Bowl ad this year.
We’ve emebedded the complete commercial above–what do you think? Hilarious or horrific? In general, Twitter viewers seemed enthusiastic about the ad.
In 2010, a Bud Light ad mocked book clubs, male readers, female readers, and book reading in general. The ad shows a couple fun-loving beer drinkers crashing a book club, playing with all sorts of stereotypes about American readers.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Happy National Libraries Day! No, this year has not been a happy one for Britain's libraries. But I don't want to rummage through nostalgia for reasons we should keep them open (despite having many, many nostalgic reasons). That's because we don't need to play the nostalgia card:
LIBRARIES ARE EVEN BETTER NOW.
A few reasons why libraries are better now:
* Libraries look better, they smell better. I loved my library as a kid, but I pretty much stuck to the rack with the flimsy paperbacks because I could pick them up and examine their covers. I didn't know how I could move on to the 'grown-up' books because they all had uniform library binding and smelled weird from their repackaging. They were all either beige, burgandy, green or dark blue. These days, librarians laminate the covers, so you can still see them looking as attractive as they would in a shop, and you can read the blurb on the back. You can pick up a book and feel it, gauge the heft of it (which you can't do online). I love walking into a library and seeing an attractive, tantalising display of covers.
* They stock more comic books. Our school librarian used to gripe about how all the kids just wanted to read the three Garfield books the library stocked. She wanted us to read 'proper' books. The waiting list was whole classes long just for Garfield. The librarian always tried to turn us to the other books, but we all hotly yearned for the comics. Librarians are wiser about comics now; they realise they're on to something good when kids can't get enough of them. Instead of making them fight for a few comics (Garfield wasn't even a very good comic), they stock lots of comics, and the best ones: humour comics, adventure comics, graphic adaptations of classic books and plays, Western comics, mystery comics, biography comics, history comics, info comics, you name it. My local ibrary in Deptford has two large racks of comics, and more in the children's section.
Perhaps librarians are rediscovering the importance of visual literacy, not just trying to get people to plough through chunks of text. And discovering from the commercial world the value of visuals (and smells, the scent of hot drinks?) in making people want to read.
* We need more help these days. When I was a kid, it was considered all right to do a research paper by going to the encyclopedia, looking up the entry and slightly rewriting the text I found there. Once I found the set of encyclopedias, I was pretty much okay to do it myself. I'd probably get a few other books and photocopy pictures out of them. Teachers didn't expect too much because they knew our resources were limited. Now we have far more information online. But teachers know that copying out a Wikipedia entry isn't the extent of learning, and we can push kids to look further, engage with world experts, talk with authors. The possibilities are endless and wildly exciting! But where? How? That's where librarians come in, being able to teach kids how search engines work, how to find the more informative sites, look up related books, and how to avoid internet dangers. Just because a kid can put a search term into Google doesn't mean they've mastered the Internet. Librarians really ARE the most powerful search engine, and they care about kids.
The Paralympic torch aloft in front of Deptford Library
Follow the hash tags #NLD13 and #LoveLibraries if you want to find out what all the buzz is about! Click here if you'd like a free printable poster.
Guys. Let me guess. If you're reading this blog post, you're probably:
1. Involved somehow in publishing
2. A published writer, illustrator or someone aspiring to be published
3. A parent who is impassioned about books for children, perhaps even with your own book blog
4. A teacher or librarian
5. My family
(If you don't fall into one of these demographics, give me a wave down in the comments box!) This is my point: whatever I'm going to say about libraries now will be preaching to the choir. If I write, 'Hurrah for libraries! Save Libraries', you'll feel a vague warm fuzzy feeling, think Good for her, she's one of us, and move on to the more interesting news about Oscar Pistorius shooting his girlfriend.
I'm actually losing track of what Terry Deary said because I keep getting pieces of it through different media sites (The Bookseller, Guardian, Telegraph, The Independent, Alan Gibbons, outraged tweeters) and hearing it back repeatedly, usually with nasty names and swear words included. But the thing is, I'M HEARING ABOUT IT. People who aren't even really into books have probably heard of Horrible Histories. The guy's prompted so many people read and care about history who might not have otherwise; I think he's earned his chance to say something and have us think about it. There's been a lot of good stuff said about libraries, but recently there's also been a huge amount of nostalgia, and people repeating the same things. I haven't heard a lot of creative solutions. Not because the ideas aren't out there - I bet loads of people are coming up with great ideas - it's just that the media doesn't work that way. People who aren't interested in the library debate aren't going to trawl through lengthy articles on literary blogs. The media jumps on people who say outrageous things. And outrageous things are never the things that make us feel 'that person is part of our club'.
Say that you're an aspiring author or new author, and you have ideas to get people reading that challenge the current library set-up. Perhaps your ideas even involved drastically changing libraries as we know them, or closing down certain buildings. It would be career suicide to put the idea out there... well, if anyone even noticed what you said. If somehow you did manage to create a few waves, you'd never get another library booking, librarians wouldn't want to stock your books, book people would snub you at parties (if you were even invited) and no one would ask you to speak at conferences. Deary didn't have to worry about this, he knew people WOULD listen, because he has clout, and he doesn't need events or bookings to make his books sell. And he also knew that if he toed the party line about saving libraries, all the library-friendly people would nod and say, 'good ol' Terry' and it would make very little impact on anyone outside the circle.
Now, I need to go back and read what he's said very carefully. The point that immediately raised my hackles was the implication that all people can afford books. No they can't, especially kids, they can go through hundreds of books a month if they're avid readers and few parents would support a habit like that. I doubt he's saying 'books only for the rich', that doesn't seem like something he'd say. But the points he made about libraries taking business away from bookshops made me think, what? And what he said about the cinema and telly not being free, so why should books be, was an interesting point. I don't get to go to the cinema and watch a film for free just because I don't want to own it, and I don't go to the supermarket for free food. I suspect , in the end, I will not agree with Deary about this, but I'd like to think about it some more. Maybe he can slightly alter some of the ideas I take for granted.
One of my best friends works like this; sometimes when I say something that everyone else is saying in the politically-left-leaning book world, he'll come back with something very contrary that sounds totally preposterous, often just to get a rise out of me. But usually when I talk with him about it, I'll find out why he's said that, and very often it will slightly alter my own opinion, even if I don't come to agree with him, or agree with him entirely. It's one of the reasons he's a best friend, and why I find working with him boosts my creativity so much.
What I'm saying is this: you don't have to agree with Deary, you might hate what he says. In fact, I'm almost sure you do, since you're one of the above demographic. But let's be civilised in our response; libraries have been a pinnacle of our civilisation. And contrary to what Deary implied, a lot of good things have come from the Victorians: women's suffrage, worker's rights, mass education (I'm repeating now what my friend said to me but I'm not going to make him jump publicly into the debate). And we can be glad that we CAN give a response, that Deary has the discussion going again in the media, and there's more chance the media will listen to you if you tackle what he's said. Thank you, Terry Deary, for that. I've seen several good responses already, but I've also seen a lot of name calling. Library friends, don't do that. You know Deary isn't anti-reading; Deary's the guy you want to invite to your panel discussions. We need more than only hard-working but invisible yes-men.
There are very practical reasons we still need libraries, but in what form? That's where we need you to come in with your ideas. Let's give people a safe space to share them without making them feel their careers are at stake if they say something odd. In fact, let's say more odd things. Let's get everyone talking.
By:
Heidi MacDonald,
on 2/19/2013
Blog:
PW -The Beat
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TweetThe Infinite Wait by Julia Wertz Koyama Press I have a complicated and knotty relationship with auto-bio comics, beset by apprehension and cynicism. There’s no doubt the genre produces some interesting material- Art Spiegelman, Seth, Robert Crumb, to name but a few, but more recently I’ve found a lot of it to be, quite frankly, boring. The [...]
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wow!! what an amazing piece of work. I'd love to see it
This is an amazing project! Thanks for sharing all the intricacies of putting it together. It's gorgeous! I love kids art!
Looking good!
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