How to use this Page

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is a world-wide phenomena, a life-changing read, and a children’s book. Harry and his friends are mere 11 year-olds at the start of their first school year. Though their adventures and world get older, darker, and infinitely more complex, the series is still entirely at home in a children’s library. This year, for the first time since the blockbuster release of the seventh book in the series, librarians will be faced with two J.K. Rowling-sized collection issues.

The first is due to a new movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The movie, starring Eddie Redmaye, tells the story of Newt Scamander, famous in Harry Potter’s world for having literally written the book on fantastical creatures. The film was written by Rowling herself. Technically, this is not an adaptation of the textbook (also written by Rowling) of the same name. That slim volume, published in 2001, has almost nothing to do with the upcoming movie. Published as a fundraiser for Comic Relief, the Fantastic Beasts book clocks in at a mere 128 pages. Despite this, we’ve seen holds on our copy balloon into the double digits. Will you be buying more copies of Fantastic Beasts for the name tie-in alone?

The second, and most pressing, conundrum is the question of The Cursed Child. On June 7, 2016, previews begin in London for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a sequel play based off an original story written by Rowling and two collaborators. When publication of Cursed Child was announced, it was announced as a new Harry Potter book, but Rowling later clarified that the book was actually the script of the play, and not an new prose story.

The issue for children’s librarians comes from the subject matter. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is described thusly:

It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.

While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.

It sounds amazing, but that is beside the point. Does a book about adult Harry Potter, an overworked government bureaucrat, belong in the children’s library, next to the books about Harry’s childhood? For now, we’re saying yes at my library. Our original order of 10 copies are all already on hold, so we’ve added 20 more. Our final decision won’t be made until we can read the play, and Baker and Taylor has already sent the embargo paperwork.

I was 11 when the first Harry Potter book came out. I attended every midnight release party for the books and saw every movie on opening day. I am SO PUMPED for new Harry Potter. I just hope both of these new stories are for all Harry’s fans, not just the adult ones like me.

The post The Cursed Child Conundrum appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Broadway’s hit show Hamilton is nothing short of a cultural phenomenon: sold out until January 2017, its cast album just became a gold record, meaning it has sold more than 500,000 copies; meanwhile the cast recently performed live at the Grammy Awards and at the White House. For those not yet obsessed with the show, Hamilton mixes hip-hop with show tunes to tell the story of America’s “ten dollar Founding Father/without a father.” The cast is stunningly talented and diverse, and young people (and their friendly neighborhood librarians) across America are obsessed.

So how can we capitalize on this Hamilton hunger in the children’s library? True, the musical is based on a book, but not many 10 year-olds are wiling to haul an 800+ page, Pulitzer-prize winning behemoth to school. Prior to his recent fame, Hamilton was an oft-ignored Founding Father. In fact, Chernov’s book bills itself as the “first” full-length biography of the man, written nearly 200 years after he died. So what can we offer Hamilton‘s younger fans?

Luckily, offerings for the young reader are not as slim as you might think. The following books are in-print, well-reviewed, and fun to read:

Alexander Hamilton: The Outsider (2012, Gr. 6+)

The Duel: The Parallel Lives of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr (2009, Gr. 5+ )

The Founding Fathers!: Those Horse-Ridin’, Fiddle-Playin’, Book-Readin’, Gun-Totin’ Gentlemen Who Started America (2015, Gr. 2+)

Aaron and Alexander: The Most Famous Duel in American History (2015, Gr. 2+)

The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism & Treachery (2013, Gr. 5+ – yes, this one is not about Hamilton. But it’s excellent, and tells the story of another early American whose story has been reduced to one thing: traitor)

Better Nate than Ever (2014, Gr. 5+ – again, not about Hamilton. But a kid who loves Broadway will love this book. And so does Lin Manuel Miranda!)

What books would you give to a young Hamilton fan? And what’s your favorite song from Hamilton? Mine is (currently) “Dear Theodosia.”

The post Hamilton and the Children’s Library appeared first on ALSC Blog.

2016 will see the release of a book-to-film adaptation that’s been adapted before: Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. Interestingly, Hollywood often follows the same pattern as the publishing world, as similar films (think Ants and A Bug’s Life) are often in development at the same time and then released close to each other. In the next two years there are two competing live-action Jungle Books – the upcoming adaptation on April 15, and Jungle Book: Origins in 2017. Both adaptations are using motion-capture technology, with 2017’s film utilizing the talents of motion-capture genius Andy Serkis.

First up is Disney’s live-action version of their own animated film. Featuring the vocal talents of Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley Luptia Nyong’o, Scarlett Johansson, Christopher Walken, and Idris Elba, the film is directed by Disney/Marvel guy Jon Favreau. Disney seems to have dropped the racist caricatures in favor of drop-dead gorgeous, computer-generated imagery. In fact, the film is so beautiful that the director recently said he asked the visual effects team to tone down the images, saying, “So many of the notes I gave were like, “Make the sky less interesting,” or “Make that shot less beautiful.”

Next year we’ll see the second adaptation, about which less is currently known. This movie will feature voice-acting by luminaries such as Benedict Cumberbatch and Christian Bale.

The library world has been talking for some time about problematic texts. Do we keep them in our collections simply because they’re classics, even if they have racist elements? The Jungle Book, like Peter Pan, poses a deeper conundrum due to public attachment to the (completely racist) animated movies. I am interested to see if these movies will drive new interest in Kipling’s story, and what that means for our discussions about problematic classics.

You can watch the 2016 trailer here.

The post Upcoming Adaptation(s): The Jungle Book appeared first on ALSC Blog.

The weather outside may not be this frightful, but circ is still down!
courtesy of Flickr user Phil Roeder/CC

December is a traditionally slow month for circulation in our library. Though the library itself is usually packed with patrons on their school breaks attending our annual Stuffed Animal Sleepover and Winter Crafts programs, something about the combination of visiting relatives bringing children to the library and the lack of projects and homework over the break make our circulation dip. I recently pulled our monthly print book circulation for the past five years for a project I’m working on and was surprised to note that each year; December is our lowest-circulating month. The drop from November to December is not drastic, but it is significant, and it remains consistent no matter the weather, break schedule, or staffing of the children’s library.

With nowhere to go but up, this December we decided to play with different types of displays in an effort to see if we can raise circulation. Was December circulation destined to remain lower than the rest of the year?

I will always circulate!

Our motto was “Give the people what they want.” Instead of putting new books on display, we put popular books on display. We brought all the extra copies of older Diary of a Wimpy Kid and the original Percy Jackson series up from their homes in storage. We turned display space traditionally reserved for a broad array of holiday-themed books into a display of Dora, Daniel Tiger, and classic animated Holiday DVDs. Our themed displays, which traditionally circulate well (except in December!) came down in favor of “We Love Wimpy!” “We Love Harry!” and “We Love Percy!” displays centered on, respectively Wimpy Kid, Percy Jackson, and Harry Potter, plus close read-alikes that we knew kids would take out.  Our Non-Fiction display area became home to a wide variety of fact-based books, like Guinness World Records and This or That?

The results were encouraging. While circulation didn’t climb to the heights of summer reading, it did outstrip ever December for the past five years! Th experiment raised interesting questions. Are we doing our patrons a disservice if we only highlight new, well-reviewed books by authors they may not know? Is it elitist to keep books like Wimpy Kid off display because you know children will ask for them anyway? What matters more – keeping circulation high or giving the people what they want?

January is witnessing a transition back to our traiditonal types of displays, which truly drive circulation during other months of the year. But I wonder if we should be mixing more populist displays in with our regular displays on a monthly basis. How do you decide what goes on display in your library?

The post Displays, Circulation, and the Power of Wimpy Kid appeared first on ALSC Blog.

With the imminent arrival of my own new baby, I’ve had baby books on the brain these past few months. From the books we recommend to sleepless parents to the books about childhood and technology we give to the parents of savvy teens, librarians are sometimes intimately involved in the struggles of our patrons’ childhoods. Never is this more clear than when we’re asked for books about a new baby. A great new sibling book can help immensely in easing the transition from being an only child to being one of a group.

Kevin Henkes’s Julius, the Baby of the World is one of my favorite picture books, period, but it also is one of the best new sibling books I think I’ve read. I recommend it to parents all the time, and have the personal experience to back it up – this is the book my parents gave to me and my sister before the arrival of my much-younger baby brother. Children of all ages can identify with Lily’s excitement about her new sibling before he arrives and her horror at the way her life changes afterwards! The resolution, when it comes, is perfect. Of course Lily can say mean things about her brother, but no one else can!

Anxiety over a new sibling is a universal issue, which is why a book first published in 1967,  Peter’s Chair by Ezra Jack Keats, as relevant today as it was the day it was published. When Peter’s parents repaint his crib pink for his new baby sister, Peter is perturbed but willing to let it go. When they decide to paint his chair, however, Peter takes a stand. Again, Peter’s eventual acceptance of his sister’s place in his life shows a way forward for children hearing the story that is both natural and comforting. Life will change with a new sibling, but it doesn’t have to change for the worse.

What are you favorite books about new babies?

The post New Baby Books appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Jurassic World broke all kinds of records when it opened this weekend at box offices across the world. It scored the highest opening weekend ever in America (beating the first Avengers movie) as well as the highest opening weekend internationally (knocking down Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2). All together the film brought in more than 500 million dollars in 48 hours. That’s a lot of eyeballs, and its safe to say that many of those eyeballs belonged to kids.

When the first Jurassic Park movie came out in 1993, the UK film board required it carry a warning for parents about violent and scary content.  Spielberg himself said he was not allowing his young sons to see the film, saying the movie was “too intense” for his children, then 8 years-old and younger. Common Sense Media currently recommends the original film for children 12 and up, noting mild bad language and “terrifyingly realistic dinos.”

But despite all the warnings in the world, most of the people in my age group (I was under 10 when the first film came out) saw Jurassic Park in theaters, and I am assuming that most of our young patrons will see Jurassic World well, especially since this week I have fielded more requests for dinosaur books, movies, and games than in all the previous weeks of the year added together! My esteemed colleague Amy Laughlin (@amysaurusrex on Twitter) put together this post to help our patrons access our dino content.

How will  you be capitalizing on the dino-mania?

The post Jurassic Park, Jurassic World, and the Eternal Appeal of Dinosaurs appeared first on ALSC Blog.

From l-r, Fear, Disgust, Sadness, Joy, and Anger help run Riley’s brain

American audiences won’t get to see Disney/Pixar’s latest film Inside Out until June 19th, but the film recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. The resulting outpouring of affection for the film from critics and those lucky enough to view it hints to librarians that we may have another summer of children devoted to a specific movie on our hands!

For those who haven’t yet seen the trailer, Inside Out takes an anthropomorphic look at our emotions. The protagonist, a pre-teen girl named Riley, experiences a personality shift when Joy and Sadness (voiced by Amy Poehler and Phyllis from the Office!) get trapped outside of Riley’s brain’s Command Center, leaving Fear, Anger, and Disgust to take over her personality (perhaps this happens to all teenagers?)

Brave Horace by Holly Keller helps children accept their fears.

At my library, we tend not to purchase books based on movies or tv shows. This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, and we’ve broken it many times before, but though they’ve been in my carts, I haven’t yet purchased any titles related to this upcoming movie. Instead, knowing ahead of time how popular we expect Inside Out to be has allowed us to start to pull together a list of children’s picture books that deal with the same sort of emotions focused on in the film. Books like When Sophie Gets Angry – Really, Really Angry and Stuck with the Blooz help children explore those conflicting emotions that it can be difficult to talk about, and as a great bonus, we already own them, so we don’t have to buy new books right at the end of our fiscal year!

What are your favorite emotion books for kids? Are you ask excited about Inside Out as I am?

The post Film & Books: Pixar’s Inside Out appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Where should I live?

Certain collections are associated with a little bit more parental angst than others, and books about puberty, changing bodies, and human sexuality often seem to fall into this category. Some parents see their value and appreciate their inclusion in the collection, while others are aghast that a children’s library would carry such material.

While librarians agree that books dealing with these topics are important to own in a collection, the trickier subject of where these books should live often pops up, usually after a child has checked out a book with a puberty or human sexuality theme their parent is less than thrilled about. Do we keep these books in our offices and only offer them to those who ask, or is that censorship? Do we file them with the rest of the books and deal with whatever fallout may come as it happens, or are we inviting an unnecessary headache?

What about me?

At my library, we use a two-fold solution. There is a collection in the Children’s Library called F5 Parents. The Parents collection contains a “best of” selection of parenting books, such as Raising a Digital Child and Your One-Year Old. It’s also home to a group of picture books we call “Special Topics” that parents can check out to facilitate conversations with their children about issues such as new babies, potty training, adoption, illness, and human sexuality. The younger human sexuality books, such as Hair in Funny Places, live here, as do books designed to be shared between a parent and a child, such as It’s Perfectly Normal. 

Meanwhile, our Kids Self non-fiction section, which debuted Fall 2013 as a part of our non-fiction reorganization, holds the puberty and human sexuality books that are squarely aimed at the 10-14 year-olds who are experiencing these changes, such as The Care and Keeping of You and Will Puberty Last My Whole Life? This allows kids to browse for books they might find helpful, while providing parents with a dedicated place to go for the same topics.

Where does your library keep the puberty books? Do you believe librarians should be cognizant of parental feelings on the subject, or check books out to children who want them regardless of potential parental objections?

The post Where do I live? Finding a Home for Puberty Books appeared first on ALSC Blog.

The Newbery Award, over its long history, has produced many enduring classics. But just how enduring are those classics when they are transferred from the page to the big screen? As my library plans our next season of R.W.D. (Read, Watch, Discuss) we took a look at some Newbery movies to see how they stack up to their literary predecessors.

I think my favorite Newbery-award-winner-turned-big-screen-phenomenon is Louis Sachar’s Holes, though I will admit a bias: I am a huge fan of the book, and think it is one of best-plotted middle grades around. It helps tremendously that Sachar himself wrote the screenplay, an honor afforded to very few authors. Even J.K. Rowling didn’t get to adapt her own books! Any adjustments to the plot seem to flow organically and make sense. The cast is also excellent: Shia LaBeouf, whatever has become of him since, was magnetically watchable as the down-on-his-luck hero, and the always charming Dule Hill added extra pathos to Sam, making his demise even more tragic. If you’re looking for a great Newbery book-to-film adaptation, look no further.

Bridge to Terabithia is another classic Newbery-winner that was adapted into a well-regarded film, in this case, 2007’s version starring a young Josh Hutcherson (Peeta!). The trailer for this film made fans of the novel anxious when it was first released, as it seemed to over-emphasize to “magic” of Terabithia while containing almost none of the real-world issues that continue to resonate with readers today. It took me a long time to see the movie because of those fears, but when I finally did, I was pleasantly surprised by how faithful of an adaptation it was. The performances from the  young actors are great and the film manages to evoke the same emotions the book does.  When I was in school, we watched the 1985 TV Movie version, which has a decidedly more low-budget aesthetic but still holds up as a decent version of this beloved novel.

Then there are less successful adaptations. The Dark is Rising, which became The Seeker: The Dark is Rising in 2007, is notoriously terrible, with a 14% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Time Out London noting that Susan Cooper’s fans “…are appalled by what they see as this dumbed-down version.” It stands as a good example of how not to adapt a beloved and award-winning fantasy series.

What are your favorite Newbery movies? Are there any you’d love to see on the big screen?

The post First the Newbery, then the Cinema! appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Prince Christopher serenades his Cinderella, 1997

This afternoon, as part of our Black History Month film festival, we showed 1997’s Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. The color-blind casting process led to a diverse finished product that our patrons really responded to. Librarian Krishna Grady introduced the film, and talked about the casting director and how producers set out to find the best person for each role, no matter their skin color. This led to a pleasingly diverse royal family with Queen Whoopi Goldberg and King Victor Garber acting as parents to Paolo Montalban as Prince Christopher. Add in the phenomenal vocal talent of Bernadette Peters, Whitney Huston, and Brandy, and its no wonder our patrons responded so well to the film! Their extremely positive reactions made me think about the many, many Cinderella films available to children’s librarians today for programming purposes. There are too many to list entirely, but we can talk about a few!

A very young Julie Andrews arrives at the ball, 1957

Of the Rogers and Hammerstein adaptations, I remember loving the above version as a child. I also loved the decidedly less diverse 1965 version, starring Lesley Ann Warren, Ginger Rogers (!), and Stuart Damon, which my  mother grew up watching. You can even see the original version, which starred a young Julie Andrews in one of the cheesiest made-for-tv movie sets of all time, from 1957. They hold a sparkler in front of the camera while her transformation is occuring! It’s magical.

If musicals with real people are not your cup of tea, there’s always the classic Disney animated film or the upcoming live adaptation of that film starring the incomparable Cate Blanchette and Helena Bonham Carter (though the 2015 version, as far as I know, will be without songs).

Those looking for a Cinderella with agency and a mind of her own would do well to check out 1998’s Ever After, in which a feminist Cinderella (here named Danielle) schools her Prince on the plight of his people and the power of the written word. That movie also features a delightful turn by Anjelica Huston as the evil Stepmother and Leonardo DaVinci’s character plays the part of the fairy godmother.

1955’s Caldecott Medal winner

Of course, all of these movies are based on the same fairytale, which most of us are familiar with through the work of Charles Perrault. There’s a Caldecott-award winner based on a translation of his work, and too many picture books to list. The “Cinderella story” has been found all over the world, making for a wonderfully diverse list of books to pair with any of the films above. For older readers, there’s Newbery Honor-winning Ella Enchanted (skip the dreadful film adaptation, no matter how winsome Anne Hathway is), Chinese Cinderella, Cinderella: As If You Didn’t Already Know The Story, and many more!

What did I miss? What is your favorite Cinderella book? How about your favorite Cinderella movie?

The post Fairytale to Film: Cinderella appeared first on ALSC Blog.

September of this year saw the re-introduction of a popular program at my library: Newbery Visionaries!

The Newbery Visionaries logo, designed by Lisa Nowlain, Harold W. McGraw Jr. fellow.

The last, incredibly successful Newbery Visionaries program at our library was in 2010. With the lessons of the Bill Morris Seminar fresh in my mind, I thought 2014 would be a perfect time to reinstate this fun, enlightening book group.

Our mock-Newbery group was a registered program consisting of 12 4th-6th graders. Interest in the program went through the roof when we sent an eblast to our parent list enumerating the ways book discussions (and the critical thinking they encourage) enhanced Common Core skills. We met once a month for four months, and will have our final voting meeting next week. I selected the discussion books myself, mostly through reading Newbery prediction posts and stalking the pages of Heavy Medal. All told, the Visionaries read 16 potential Newbery contenders and logged 10 after-school hours of discussion, debates, and book evaluations. We ate a lot of pizzas, too!

Which book will win our Mock award? For that matter, which book will win the real one?

We began our first meeting by translating the Newbery Medal Terms and Criteria into “plain English.” Participants took turns reading the criteria our loud, and then interpreted what they read for the group. I was surprised at the passion and debate that sprung up around the terms. Our kids were were very into the details: how and why a book was eligible, what was residency, publication dates, “distinguished,” etc. We had a long conversation about popularity vs quality that was especially impassioned. I left the library that evening on a cloud of love for books and the kids who read them.

The Visionaries will vote one week from today on their Newbery winner, which we will announce on our library website. I cannot wait to see what they will choose! Going into our final vote, the three highest rated books are The Night Gardener, Brown Girl Dreaming, and The Family Romanov. 

The entire experience has been a joy to participate in, and I can’t wait to start it again next year. Do you have mock-award groups at your library? How do they work?

The post Newbery Visionaries appeared first on ALSC Blog.

2014’s Gold Award winner, Benjamin Chaud for The Bear’s Song (Chronicle Books)

Each year, the New York Society of Illustrators hosts The Original Art, which showcases the exquisite work of children’s book illustrators in the previous year. If you live in the Northeast, the show, which is in its 34th year, is an absolute must-see.

“In 1989, The Original Art found a permanent home at the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators in New York City. It also became a juried event, with a committee of art directors, editors, publishers and illustrators selecting the best books from among hundreds of submissions and awarding Gold and Silver medals to the top pieces.” NY Society of Illustrators 

Monday, December 8th was the Society’s fourth annual Reading Pictures event, a sold-out afternoon and evening seminar for librarians and children’s book lovers alike. Three amazing illustrators (Melissa Sweet, Barbara McClintock, and E.B. Lewis), all with pieces in the show, spoke at length about their backgrounds and creative processes. Melissa Sweet and E.B. Lewis even gave demonstrations of their techniques! Then art directors led groups on tours of the show, which fills two galleries with 166 works, to speak at length about the creation and successes of the art. Check out this year’s amazing artists!

Gary Kelley won the Silver Award for Harlem Hellfighters. This book was also a NYT Best Illustrated Book!

The show began on October 22nd and runs through December 20th. If you happen to be in New York in the next few weeks, I cannot recommend this experience enough! For anyone who loves picture books or art, the chance to see such exquisite work up close- to examine the minute pieces of paper in a Steve Jenkins picture or be overwhelmed by the size of a painting from Neighborhood Sharks- is a rare and wonderful thing. It’s also an excellent reminder that among the many attributes of the picture book, when you give one to a child, you are letting them hold a piece of art in their hands.

ALSC Awards, the Children’s Librarian version of the Oscars!

With the end of 2014 on the horizon and all eyes turning towards the excitement of the ALSC awards in January, it’s a great time to talk about where we keep award winners in our libraries. There is something to be said for democratic shelving, where each book is shelved in accordance with a system that does not take into account its shiny, shiny medals. Are award winners too noble to mingle with their less-professionally-lauded brethren, especially when those other titles occasionally get more love from children themselves? At the same time, students and parents often come in and ask for award winners. Shelving them all together makes sense.

At my library, we’ve worked around this issue with the addition of two collections which did not subtract any books from the exisiting collection. First, at the direction of then-Head of Children’s Services Kiera Parrott in 2012, we added the F5 Favorites Caldecott section. The F5 (First Five Years) Favorites collection already contained all of the picture book award winners, so it was easy for us to add this collection without adding a new collection code. We purchased two more copies of each award winner, stickered them at the top of the spine with Demco labels, and shelved the new copies together at the end of the Favorites collection. In this way, patrons had the best of the both worlds: they could browse a section of excellent award winners, or find the same great books on the shelf if they were looking for a specific author. The new collection had a very successful debut – circulation was so high we  were able to allocate additional funds in 2013 to add popular Caldecott honors to the collection, too.

Darien Library’s Harold W. McGraw, Jr. fellow Lisa Nowlain designed this AMAZING graphic to explain how awesome the Newbery award is.

With the success of the F5 Favorites Caldecott collection, we turned our eyes towards the Newberry award. Current Head of Children’s Services Claire Moore correctly reasoned that older readers (and their parents) would be just as happy to have a collection of librarian pre-approved titles, and this summer we set about ordering at least 2 copies of every Newbery Award winner. Contrary to popular belief, they are not all still in print (or at least, not all available from our vendor). Learning from our Caldecotts, we also purchased additional copies of extremely popular or excellent Newbery Honor books as well.

The Kids Newbery collection debuted in September and has proven to be just as popular, if not more popular, than the Caldecott collection. Shelves that were pleasantly full looking in August now look empty, a happy problem to have!

Although this idea isn’t new, implementing it at our library caused a noticeable bump in total circulation while not costing nearly as much in man-hours as other collection projects. Where do you shelve your award winners? Do they live together?

Laika, the magical stop-motion animation studio behind such gloriously ghoulish fare as Coraline and Paranorman has a new movie coming out on September 26, and I couldn’t be more excited. The Box Trolls looks to be another impressive entry in this talented studio’s work for children and the interactive IMDb page is a hoot! The work done by this animation studio is simply top-notch, and we’ve hosted 2 successful Read, Watch, Discuss programs at my library based on their previous films. The kids are as awed by the special features (showing the minute details that go into creating these films) as the librarians are!

I was doubly excited when I learned, from an excellent Early Word post, that The Box Trolls was based on a book! In fact, it’s based on a children’s book I have not yet read, 2006′s Here Be Monsters! by Alam Snow. It seems the length of this book (544 pages) and decent but not spectacular reviews have kept it from becoming a juggernaut on its own. The movie is poised to change all that.

Watching the trailer, I was struck by several things. The humor that was present in Paranorman and even Coraline seems to be integral to the story this time out, which makes sense, as one review of Here Be Monsters! called it “inspired lunacy.” With it’s seemingly-classic plot of a child raised by outsiders, it should be easy enough for those unfamiliar with the source material to identify with the story. The idea of people disliking and distrusting others simply because they look or act differently from them is a powerful and important message for children, especially in our current cultural climate.

John Leonhardt/Focus Features, via the New York Times.

Finally, the look of this film, as always, is out-of-this-world amazing. Check out the scene where box trolls jump off the roof, or the physical comedy in the ballroom tongue-licking scene. Laika’s designs are so intricately marvelous they were recently featured in the New York Times! If the book is half as fun as the movie trailer, then patrons in our libraries may very well go nuts for it. I definitely ordered a copy, and look forward to reading it before the movie comes out!

Does your library own Here Be Monsters!? Are you planning on purchasing a copy?

I was so excited when the graphic novel adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book arrived in my library this week. I’ve been looking forward to the graphic novelization for months – advance reviews were glowing, and it seemed like the perfect addition to our Kids Graphic Novel section, which serves all reading children in our library (mostly ages 6-12). Then I opened the book.

Gaiman’s Newbery Award-winner famously opens with the eerie, perfectly spine-chilling line, “There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.” The graphic novelization of a novel which begins with a family’s murder was always going to be on the dark side. I expected that. I did not expect to turn the second page of a book touted as acceptable for age 8 by 4 of the 5 major review journals and see graphic, bloody images of a family with their throats slit open, red blood pooling around them. These images are hinted at but not described in the novel ( I know, I reread the chapter to be sure!)

Where did you shelve The Lost Boy?

After quickly conferring with my coworkers, we decided to move the book to the YA Graphic Novel collection. The magic power of the internet helped reassure us in our decision: none less than the venerable NYPL had shelved the book either in YA or Adult graphic novels, depending on the branch. I was bummed to lose what I am sure will be a highly-circulating book to another department, and doubly bummed after reading it – the book was excellent, just not quite a fit for the Children’s Library. I was also glad this happened, as it made me think about how much I rely on reviews when adding to the collection, and how badly reviews had failed me this time around.

Here is my question to you, fellow graphic novel collectors for children: how do you decide if a graphic novel is appropriate for the children’s library, especially when the collection has to appeal to a wider audience than kids in grades 3-6? If a book is dark but not graphic, does it stay (The Lost Boy)? If the characters are battling in a fantastical setting (Battling Boy), does it go in YA or children’s? If there are romantic entanglements (a la Drama), where do you put the book? Where did you put The Graveyard Book?

Tomorrow marks the return of my favorite program we offer at the library: R.W.D., or Read, Watch, Discuss! I’ve written about my book-to-film club previously, but tomorrow kicks off our special summer session. First up: Neil Gaiman’s Coraline!

Oh, how I adore this book. I was always a fan of plucky heroines (and heroes!) and books that made me afraid to fall asleep. Coraline is all of those things and more. I read it as an adult first, but I know I would have loved it as a child, fan as I was of Betty Ren Wright and The House With a Clock in Its Walls. Coraline tells a remarkably creepy story – remarkable because it feels like something that really could happen, especially if one lives in a creeky old house with eccentric neighbors and parents who love you but don’t really have any time for you. The writing is wonderfully evocative, the tension nearly unbearable, and our heroine is fond of thoughts like, “Coraline wondered why so few of the adults she met ever made sense. She sometimes wondered who they thought they were talking to.” What’s not to love?

The film has two key differences from the book. First, there is the inclusion of a friend, Wyborn, whose grandmother’s sister was also taken by the Other Mother. Giving Coraline someone to talk to was a smart choice, as most of the book involves her inner monologue. I just wish Coraline was still allowed her solo, triumphant final defeat of the other Mother by the well, without the help of the added boy character.

Movie Coraline, blue hair and wellies at the ready.

The second major change is Coraline herself. Film Coraline, as voiced by Dakota Fanning, can be more than a little obnoxious, a choice by the filmmakers that I both respect (not too many borderline-unlikeable protagonists in a movie for kids) and dislike (borderline-unlikeable!) simultaneously. The personality change is jarring, especially since her literary counterpart is a slightly strange, mostly polite and good child.

What the film gets deliciously, marvelously correct is the eerie sense of dread that pervades Coraline’s world. Even when Coraline first visits the Other Mother, you can tell (to quote another famous literary mother figure) “Something is not right!”

Coraline is placed in her magical surroundings in this still from Animation Magazine. http://www.animationmagazine.net/features/coraline-set-photos/

And of course, there’s the animation itself. The Other Mother’s hand, skittering across the screen, is literally the stuff nightmares are made of. When Coraline first arrives, the seemingly perfect world is warm and colorful, with just the right touch of menace added by crooked shapes and gaping mouths. The character design is wonderfully evocative. Coraline is all spindly limbs and blue hair. Mr. Bobinsky’s anatomically impossible elongated arms and giant potbelly are the picture of someone gone to seed. The Other Mother goes from perfectly normal to hellish and creepy. When the world begins to disintegrate, the creators literally peel away the sets in front of our eyes. It’s marvelous stuff.

The beauty of the film is what wins me over to Coraline despite changes from the source material. We’ll see what the kids at my library think this afternoon!

Several forces combined to create this post: a recent viewing of the excellent film adaptation of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, coming up for air midway through a book I desperately wish someone would turn into a movie, new footage released from the upcoming TV series of another book I love, and the onslaught of summer reading sign-ups making me long for the silent ritual of popcorn, seltzer, smuggled Sweedish fish, and the movies.

The phenomenal box office success of #TFioS has already lead to mainstream articles marveling at the power of readers to influence culture. Linda Holmes’ excellent article for NPR, The Muscle-Flexing, Mind-Blowing Book Girls Will Inherit the Earth is just the most heart-warming example of the newly-recognized ability readers have to shape the media we consume on television, in the movies, and at the theater.

With all that being said, fellow Book Girls (and Book Guys!), which children’s books do you think we should use our cultural cache to get turned into movies? Here are a couple I would love to see in theaters in the next few years:

Merrie Haskell is one of the brightest new voices in MG fantasy, and this, her first foray into the genre, would make an EXCELLENT movie. The Princess Curse takes not one but two well-known fairytales (The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Beauty and the Beast) and combines them with vivid historical settings, a colorful host of well-developed characters, and stakes whose consequences feel real. Between the smart, witty, charming heroine named Reveka and its fairytale roots (and with the box office success of similar films like Maleficent and Snow White and the Huntsman), The Princess Curse has Hollywood written all over it.

Here’s another MG book screaming (operatically) for a film treatment. Better Nate Than Ever boasts a lovable hero, a plot brimming with quality humor and real pathos, and a focus (trying to make it on Broadway) rarely (if ever?) explored in films for kids.

Our profession’s recent high-profile focus on diversity in books for children walks hand-in-hand with a demanding need for real characters of diversity in visual media for children. And if money is all that talks in Hollywood, the success of shows like Glee and the arrival this fall of Alan Menken’s Galavant (!!!!!) proves the appetite for humorous, heartfelt, musical stories has never gone away. I think Better Nate: The Movie would be a surefire hit.

What about you? Which of your favorite MG books should be brought to the big screen?

Today is an important and exciting day at our library. Today, May 13th, marks the first day of our annual Booktalking project at public and private schools in our town.

The Kindergarten/First Grade booktalking bag is ready to go!
photo courtesy of the author

From mid-May through the end of the school year, librarians will visit almost every child in grades K to 8. We come bearing exciting news about summer reading, but just as importantly, we come bearing booklists! Beginning in the fall of the previous year, we zealously hunt down buzzing ARCs and F&Gs, searching for the perfect new books to add to our lists. We try to have a book on each list for every child – all genres, genders, and creeds. With the advent of Common Core, we beefed up the amount of non-fiction titles on our lists, so there’s a healthy mix of fiction, graphic novels, and non-fiction. We put 15 to 20 new titles on each list, we buy 10+ copies of each book, and then we bring the show to the schools. We visit individual classes in their classrooms and school libraries. We hope to hit every classroom, making sure that each child in town knows that Summer Reading is approaching.

The effort that goes into booktalking is enormous. Between Fall of 2013 and March of 2014, when we ordered our first cart of booktalking books, the librarians read, considered, and had meetings about over 200 books. This is in addition to our normal reading and collection development duties. Booktalking essentially takes up 6+ months of the year, but the payoff is worth it’s weight in gold, or in this case, statistics.

It is not an understatement to say that booktalking drives an entire year of circulation. Our circulation numbers are twice (and sometimes three or four times) as high in June, July, and August as they are during the rest of the year. We are a small town library, with a population of about 20,000, yet because of booktalking over the summer we routinely have 15 or more holds on a title that we have 10 copies of! Children race into the library after we visit their classrooms looking for the titles we talk about. And their excitement about the books we talked about bleeds into their excitement about Summer Reading, which helps boost our Summer Reading participation stats. It’s our favorite time of the year!

This year’s selections are listed below:

Kindergarten/First Grade

Second/Third Grade

Fourth/Fifth Grade

Public librarians – do you booktalk at schools? How many times a year? Does it drive your circulation?

Unless your library exists in the digital world rather than the physical one, everyone has experienced the limitations of shelf space at one point or another. With 3,000+ titles published each year for children, weeding is a way of life for the children’s librarian, lest our shelves begin to look like a particularly literary episode of hoarders! Older books and series that no longer have an audience have to make way for exciting new books and series that will become a whole new generation’s favorite books.

We still have about 12 of each of Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s adventures – and they’re always checked out!

So my query today, fellow collectors of books for children, is this: how do you decide to take the plunge on a new series? There are some obvious indicators, like a rave review for the first title or a first printing size that indicates the publisher believes the book has legs. I place some of my trust in the selectors at Baker & Taylor, and ask to see all titles in my carts which my warehouse (South) has purchased 400 or more copies of.

Beyond that, deciding to purchase a new series that has decent but not astounding reviews becomes a puzzle with many pieces – do we have kids that read this type of fiction? Do we have similar series already? Does that series have any distinguishing factors, either character or plot, that will make it stand out for the pack? I admit that we have become very wary of purchasing new fantasy series without stellar reviews, as their popularity (at least in our library) seems to be on a slow decline.

Coco Simon knows what girls like to read!

Our most recent series decision was a long time coming. We didn’t purchased those pink-and-purple, absolutely adorable Cupcake Diaries for the first 6 months of their lives, for a few reasons. The series was publishing at a fast rate, which meant we would have to devote ever-increasing amount of shelf space to it each month. Additionally, our library already had several multi-book series about girls, cooking, and cupcakes. Demand for the series rose and we made the decision to weed a few of the older cupcake/cooking series to make room for Katie and her friends. Of course, the series circ’d like hotcakes and I was kicking myself for not snapping them up immediately!

How do you know when to purchase? How do you know when to let a series go?

There are kids who walk into the Children’s Library, walk right up to the desk, and tell you exactly what they’re looking for. There are kids with definite opinions and kids whose taste is harder to suss out. All these kids are a part of the joy of Reader’s Advisory – the easy ones make you feel like you’re aces at your job, while the difficult ones make you feel like a superhero when you find the perfect book for them to read.

But there is another group of kids that we noticed we were not reaching – the ones who won’t approach the librarian for suggestions, even when coaxed. At the same time, we noted our new fiction displays were not emptying out as quickly as they once had. In an effort to reach those children who don’t like to come to the librarian for RA and to help kids realize that there were worthy options among the new fiction, we started adding a simple and effective bit of hands-off RA to our displays.

Sneaky RA!
photo provided by the author

What we did was simple and not groundbreaking, but it has amped up our new fiction turnaround to the point where are there are days that we run out of new books in the library! I used the die-cut machine to punch out roughly 1 zillion (a real number) bright yellow medallions, on which we wrote “For Kids Who Love….” and then inserted the title of a similar book that kids will know. The thing that makes this so effective is we exclusively link the new books to massively popular titles and authors. This lets both kids and parents who might not be familiar with popular but mid-list titles recognize books they may want to read. Does the book have family issues or emotional plot beats? For kids who love Wonder. Are there animals who talk/have feelings? For kids who love The One and Only Ivan. Is there any magic? For kids who love Harry Potter.

What’s your favorite book’s soulmate?
photo provided by the author

We started applying this to our themed fiction displays as well. For example, in February, we had a Book Soulmates display. We invited kids to discover the soulmate to their favorite book and then linked massively popular titles to older books that need an new audience. This allowed me to FINALLY convince a child to check out Good Night, Mr. Tom, a book with some of the worst cover art I have ever seen, but which I love so much I wrote about it here. I advertised it’s soulmate as Number the Stars, since they’re both about children’s experiences during WWII. And Mr. Tom hasn’t been checked in since!

The author’s favorite tiara and everyone’s favorite song.
photo provided by the author

We plan to keep this up for as long as it’s effective. Patron feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Both parents and kids have remarked that they love the new displays, and our only questions have been about whether or not it’s ok to disturb the display and/or take a book with a medallion on it.

Now I just need to figure out how to tie together princesses, RA, and like titles for this display, and I’ll be golden!

We have a policy in my library regarding books based on movies and tv shows: we don’t buy them. In general, we try to avoid Dora, Sponge-Bob, and their friends. Of course there are always exceptions, especially when the books in question satisfy a need in our population or when they are of the highest quality. The graphic novelizations which accompany the Nickelodeon TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender fit that latter category to a T.

Avatar Aang and his friends Katara and Sokka.
Copyright © 2005-2008 by Nickelodeon

Avatar, or ATLA, premiered on Nickelodeon in 2005 to rave reviews. I first learned of the show when my boss at Barnes and Noble started praising its quality storytelling to high heaven. She was so enthused about it that I decided to check it out. Soon I too was hooked on a show about a 100-year old boy-monk frozen in ice and destined to save the world.

Our library owns all 3 seasons (or books, as the creators call them) of the show: Water, Earth, and Fire. We have two copies of each and they are never on the shelf! The element-related action can be intense but is never too scary, and the stories have real heart, which makes the entire series an easy sell to kids and parents.

Cover of the first graphic novel released in 2012

The series concluded in 2008 and launched its critically-acclaimed sequel show Avatar: The Legend of Korra in 2012. Also launched in 2012? My favorite media tie-in, ever! The continuing adventures of Aang and the gang can be traced in sequel graphic novels. These self-contained, 3-part graphic novels are written by recent National Book Award finalist Gene Yang. The stories have amazing flow and lovely illustrations, and they have proved as popular with our patrons as the original series was. Two 3-part series have launched so far. 2012 saw the publication of Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Promise and last month saw the release of the third part of Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Search.

Both series were among the best graphic novels I read this year, and a further illustration that not all media tie-ins should be kept out of the library.