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Enter to win a copy of The Sky Painter, by Margarita Engle and illustrated by Aliona Bereghici. Giveaway begins April 28, 2015, at 12:01 A.M. PST and ends May 27, 2015, at 11:59 P.M. PST.

Margarita Engle, author of The Sky Painter, selected these five family favorite children's books.

#17 The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf, illustrated by Robert Lawson (1936)
73 points

I remember liking this as a child, but I love it even more as a parent, when my children love to listen to it. It’s a gentle story, and can sometimes be calming at bedtime, but they also love to run around the house yelling “Wow! Did it hurt!” regarding the bumblebee scene. - Libby Gorman

What a beautiful message about being true to who you are! The simple sketches by Robert Lawson are fantastic. – Alexandra Eichel

Because, with a mix of humor and gravity, it sustains many very different interpretations. - Philip Nel

I was the Ferdinand in my family of birth. - Laura Gallardo

True story.  I walk into the local Aveda to get my hair styled and the fellow they’ve given me is a chatty sort.  Wants to talk to me about my job, librarianship, that sort of thing.  And in the midst of our conversation I somehow steer it over to the Top 100 Picture Books poll and the books that did particularly well.  He doesn’t remember the names of children’s books, but he brings up (of all things), “That story about the bull with the flowers.”  “Ferdinand?”, I ask.  “That’s the one!”  That leads into a conversation of the book, the fact that his roommate has that bull tattooed onto his back (this is true), and the controversy surrounding it  . . . but I get ahead of myself.  In any case, clearly this book is on the minds of the non-children’s picture book reading public at large as well as the fans of the field.

Children’s Literature described the plot as, “Set in Spain, it is about a young bull named Ferdinand. All bulls in Spain aspire to one day fight in the ring with a matador. But not Ferdinand. All day long the young bulls play at fighting in hopes that one day they will be strong enough to be chosen for the bullfights. But Ferdinand prefers to quietly sit in the pasture and enjoy his surroundings. When the bulls all mature, they long to be selected for the bullring…all but Ferdinand. As the other bulls prance and preen, hoping to be selected, Ferdinand ignores the commotion. Suddenly, Ferdinand is stung by a bumblebee. He bellows and dances around like crazy. The matadors are so impressed with his machismo they select him as the strongest bull. He is praised all around for his power, until the day of the bullfight. Poor Ferdinand just sits there. The matadors prod and coax with no luck. Ferdinand is not interested in fighting. Ferdinand is returned to his pasture to live out his life in solitude.”

In any case, this is a lovely banned book to place on the list.  Banned by whom?  Oh, nobody much.  Just a fellow by the name of Adolf Hitler.  You see it was published during the Spanish civil war, Franco banned it in Spain, and then Hitler goes and calls it “degenerate democratic propaganda.”  100 Best Books for Children does say that it had its admirers as well, though.  “Thomas Mann, H.G. Wells, Gandhi, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.”  So, to sum up.  Hitler hated it and Gandhi loved it.  That’s a fine pedigree for this list, I should think.

In Tales for Little Rebels, there’s quite the lovely section dedicated to the book.  “When the book was published in the fall of 1936, critics accused Ferdinand of being communist, pacifist, and fascist, and of satirizing communism, pacifism, and fascism. . . .

Abigail Sawyer regularly reviews books for us here at PaperTigers, and she’s also, in her own words, “a lifelong library lover and an advocate for access to books for all”, so who better to write an article for us about “unconventional libraries” and the children’s books they have inspired. Abigail lives in San Francisco, California, USA, where her two children attend a language-immersion elementary school and are becoming bilingual in English and Mandarin: an experience that has informed her work on the blog for the film Speaking in Tongues. I know you’ll enjoy reading this as much as I have.

On Traveling Libraries and Heroic ‘Book People’: Inspiring children’s books about getting books to people in remote places and difficult circumstances

My sons and I paid our first-ever visit to a bookmobile over the summer.  For us it was a novelty.  We have shelves of books at home and live just 3 blocks from our local branch library, but the brightly colored bus had pulled up right near the playground we were visiting in another San Francisco neighborhood (whose branch library was under renovation), and it was simply too irresistible.  Inside, this library on wheels was cozy, comfortable, and loaded with more books than I would have thought possible.  I urged my boys to practice restraint and choose only one book each rather than compete to reach the limit of how many books one can take out of the San Francisco Public Library system (the answer is 50; we’ve done it at least once).

The bookmobiles provide a great service even in our densely populated city where branch libraries abound.  There are other mobile libraries, however, that take books to children who may live miles from even the nearest modern road; to children who live on remote islands, in the sparsely populated and frigid north, in temporary settlements in vast deserts, and in refugee camps.  The heroic individuals who manage these libraries on boats, burros, vans, and camels provide children and the others they serve with a window on the world and a path into their own imaginations that would otherwise be impossible.

Shortly after my own bookmobile experience, Jeanette Winter‘s Biblioburro (Beach Lane Books, 2010), a tribute to Colombian schoolteacher Luis Soriano, who delivers books to remote hillside villages across rural Colombia, arrived in my mailbox to be reviewed for Paper Tigers.  I loved this book, as I do most of Winter’s work, for its bright pictures and simple, straightforward storytelling. Another picture book, Waiting for the Bibiloburro by Monica Brown (Tricycle Press, 2011), tells the story of Soriano’s famous project from the perspective of one of the children it

More about Ferdinand at collectingchildrensbooks.blogspot.com.

(And while visiting Collecting Children's Books, see Monosyllabic Monographs of Antediluvian Yesteryears about "An odd fad in past kid books.")

Aaron Schmidt, Adina Lerner, John Blyberg, Carol Bean, Allan M. Kleiman, Glenn Peterson, Marilyn Turner

question: bookspace page is great, looks great; I wonder about these lists, because blogs are self-correcting, but the lists seem to be more static; how do you know the lists are doing their job and accomplishing what you want them to accomplish?
answer: glenn - recently noticed that on one of the lists, someone said “here are the titles that I like about such and such and if you have favorites, comment below,” but we don’t have offer comments on the lists; so there are ways we can make the lists more organic and dynamic
Marilyn - there’s a list called “all pink book covers,” so you can’t really correct everything

question from allan: we haven’t been very successful to get our staff to adapt to 2.0, although we’re playing with sites; how did you actually motivate your staff - with or without a stick - to blog? reference staff don’t see this as part of their job
answer: Marilyn - can’t pretend we haven’t had people kicking and screaming, but feels that if you can snag new librarians who aren’t afraid of doing these things and see this as part of their job, try to harness them; had trouble getting people to contribute content for the web back in 1996; saw that staff started to rely on resources their colleagues were maintaining, which helped; something collaborative finally happened, but not sure it can be described easily; they use statistics to show usage of the web resources; staff will update their blog if you tell them you are going to feature it on the home page; something is making it real for them, but it didn’t happen overnight
Glenn - have had their intranet for a long time, which helps, because they were able to start their in a controlled and safe environment

question: why did you use coldfusion instead of php?
answer: we selected CF in the mid-1990s, one of the few developmental languages at the time; rapid development environment, can use dreamweaver with it, easy to learn, similar to HTML in the way it uses tags; might have made a different decision of making it later

question: when I go home, my coworkers will ask the “what if” about user-generated content - how you deal with the bad stuff, who deals with it, etc.
answer: john - it’s a good question; need to understand it could happen, but can have a plan for how to deal with it; you won’t get a flood of participation to begin with; aaron - noted that you can moderate comments so that they have to be approved by the person who is worried about this happening
glenn - comments go live on their site unless they get trapped by their “naughty word” filter (eg, “title” gets blocked because of the first three letters - about one of these a day gets trapped and has to be approved); trapped comments are sent to a group of employees via email every couple of days - can click on a link to follow-up

question: NJ library where user-generated comments are approved before going live; has never seen a problem; if anything, people think they’re reserving a book; have a home-generated chat room for book discussions, staff meetings, etc.; can see the number of lurkers, which is pretty high - they don’t have anything to say; in the web 2.0 world, really likes the SOPAC, how do you get the lurkers to participate? he recently put up a “suggest a new title” box on their website, and it’s been a flood; thinks all of these people never thought to participate or contribute until they saw that box
answer: john - by lurkers, you’re really talking about people who are not predisposed to using those types of services; no better way to get someone to participate than to make them mad, but in the end, you really need to create incentive for them to participate; eg, if you put in 10 reviews, we’ll waive your fines; the end game is to build a community around the core elements of the social software, get that network effect rolling
allan - one of the issues that came up a few years ago is that the ILS vendors looked at 2.0 and were going to incorporate all of these features, but that’s come and gone so we have to implement it; it’s the vendors who really need to be the ones working on this, rather than us recreating the wheel

question: how do you measure and report value? we can all agree that there is inherently good value in these things, but how do you measure that value and report it out so that it is useful for decision-makers who are not librarians?
answer: aaron - at a very basic level, you can take your website statistics and look at hits from other sites where you have a presence
john - it’s also important to remember that you can look at metrics but your ultimate goal is enhancing the user experience in a way that changes the face of librarianship
allan - has been doing workshops around the state about the value of libraries using a web-based calculator that highlights the value based on your usage; gives annual reports to customers
Marilyn - it’s important to put modesty aside and send comments up the chain; she is constantly surprised how many users leave positive comments on the site; leave modesty aside and promote those comments

question from Michael: can each of you tell us a challenge you’ve faced and how you overcame it?
answer: aaron - he’s the director of a small public library with a small budget and limited staff, and the social software they use has been of immense help to them; was able to get a decent website going using free blogging software, staff collaborates with google docs, etc.
adina - is trying to find ways to bring more people into the library and offer more challenging classes, so at the end of next month, she will be offering a new class on web-based image editing software
john - oftentimes, we reach for the stars and we climb the highest peak we can find, and that leads to failure because we’re not focusing on the bedrock of our services (the backend, the foundation), so recognizing that fact we can’t innovate for a year because we need to lay the foundation and put the groundwork in is a way of acknowledging our limitations; so when you present a project that really works (like SOPAC), that’s a culmination of not just that project, but also laying the foundation
Carol - when she was first hired, she was the only one who understood the problems of having to get a mouse to teach how to use one; she just went out and did things (buying a mouse); when other staff didn’t like what she did, other staff pitched in and did something different, which helped move things forward; if others aren’t doing it, just do it yourself
allan - the biggest resource we have is our staff, and the biggest hindrance to going to the next level is our staff, so our biggest challenge is to get our staff to realize that their jobs have changed and they are all now technology specialists; he himself has this challenge because he tries to stay out in front of his staff, which seems impossible; the challenge is what we are as librarians to keep up with technology
glenn - our biggest challenge is with staff, not the public; patrons don’t have high expectations for library technology; it’s a great challenge to have when people figure out what technology can do for them, but then we have to manage expectations for what we can do; they see the magic in front of them but they don’t always have an understanding of what it takes to make that happen; so emphasizing communication (what projects they are working on, what information they need to make something happen, etc.)
Marilyn - her biggest challenge has been to be at the table of system-wide planning; because they’re not in each building, people plan without considering the web services components; her staff goes to a lot of meetings in order to contribute to these discussions and be part of things

Bookspace.org - Glenn Peterson, Marilyn Turner (Hennepin County Library)

Marilyn

book site went live on valentine’s day
contributions from staff and readers have been key
hennepin county is a county of readers
- on average, every suburban HC resident checked out 17 books, DVDs, and CDs in 2006
- twice the national average

wanted to maximize this when redesigning their site
- wanted to bring together relevant resources for a particular genre or subject
- to allow librarians to easily contribute content without need any programming knowledge

when they came up with the name “bookspace,” it was conceived as a true space where people could read, share, and learn
domain name was owned by a young adult librarian in missouri who was never able to use it so she gave it to them to use

latest blog post title appears on the home page
email newsletter that goes out every other month
featured readers list
find a good book

who is working on the site?
- coordinator
- workgroup of 5 librarians
- contributors (30 librarians)
- 2 librarians on each genre page team

easy to use tools for the librarians, all form-based on the web
they help each other to show new blog authors how easy it is
these are not volunteer activities, which is important
- this is part of your job and part of your performance expectation
- it’s become an expectation over the last few years that their librarians will add content to the web

Glenn

social features
- user comments on books and other titles
- right now there are 234 comments on the final Harry Potter book; comments started on this title while it was still on order
- blogs, where users can also comment
- booklists
- list top contributors of comments
- “It’s Alive”
- user profiles
- more than just screen names
- bring together user’s comments and booklists on their profile page
- also show what they have checked out as a wall of books (”what they’re reading”)

looking ahead
- new ways to connect users
- users who are reading x are also reading y
- facebook “wall”
- show user’s “friends”

challenges
- control issues

geek stuff
- database-driven
- RSS everywhere
- ColdFusion (or ASP, PHP, etc.)

takeaways
- draw on library staff
- empower your users (they want to add content, especially your younger users)
- create opportunities for serendipity
- let users interact

slides at http://hclib.org/extranet/

John: The Social Catalog

the transformative library
based on “The Experience Economy” book -
services, goods = 1.0
transformation puts services, goods, and experience (participation) together into a whole = 2.0
the media ecology is changing rapidly
the way we conduct business means we need to change the way we do things

create an experience in the library itself to offer a transformative experience for the user
the social catalog is one way to do this
a vital interim step to wherever we end up going

3 social catalog environments
1. pseudo-social
- authority presented as collaborative (ie Encore); subject headings as tag cloud
- there’s no feedback loop, though, no real collaborative experience, and not really social
2. syndicated social
- 3rd party data (ie LibraryThing for Libraries)
- the results you get are generally well-formed and almost always outstrip the usefulness of subject headings
- but get a homogeneous blend of information from a particular record
3. individually social
- user-direct and self-contained (ie Hennepin, SOPAC)
- run into other limitations, such as critical mass of content

showed Michigan State University’s implementation of Encore
- tag cloud, AJAX
- not really a social system, though, even though interface elements are indicative of social sites

showed Danbury Library’s implementation of LibraryThing for Libraries
- tags, but still no real social elements

showed Ann Arbor’s SOPAC
- users taking advantage of the social elements are probably teens, probably a handful of them (so have to be careful your data analysis isn’t skewed)

you need to ask yourself…
- do we want non-authoritative (user-generated) metadata associated with a record display?
- only your institution can decide
- authoritative and non-authoritative information can co-exist
- if you include folksonomy, do you:
- want it to originate from syndicated data?
- reflect your community?
- if you don’t have the content, how do you provide the incentive to use the system? and if you don’t have incentive to use the system, how do you have the content?
- what kind of development is involved?

the network effect

question: how do you prime the pump for comments?
answer: glenn - thinks we’ll see a phased approach in popularity; needs to build, not there from day one; their statistics show that people are more interested in reading than contributing, but thinks that will change over time; Marilyn: Glenn has put the opportunity to comment in places she hadn’t thought of (where normally it would be an email); have done a lot of PR with prizes when they introduce these types of things; can put your name in to win after you comment