I’m going to do something I haven’t done for a very long time. Starting on Monday, I am beginning a library management course (on library buildings). Soon I will be throwing around terms like HVAC and looking up building codes and pestering the life out of the Maintenance Supervisor at my library. But I’m a little worried about this. Although I regularly attend conferences and go to workshops and webinars, this will be the first time since 1982 (you do the math, if you’re inclined) that someone will have expectations of me in a class setting. It’s an asynchronous online course, so I’ll have to find time to do the reading and the homework. I’m going to have to…what’s that called again?  Oh yeah…focus.

The thing is, I know from being a children’s librarian and a parent that being a student is HARD! Just the other night a family came up to the desk with worksheets in hand. The mom, who had limited English, wanted help understanding what a “consonant blend” is. I looked at the worksheet, figured out what it was looking for, and gave her an explanation. She and her son then sat down, and then the little guy (about age 6) came back with the packet. They had faithfully found words with the right consonant blend (an s blend, an l blend, etc) but sadly, they were not the words on the sheet in the sidebar.

So, I helped him erase the words, and he went back and worked for awhile and then came up again with only a couple of lines done, because they couldn’t understand the meaning of the words well enough to be able to match the right words to the sentences. So, we worked our way through the sheet, and got almost finished when we came to the question “Which word would you use if you were giving directions?” And there was no good answer to that question. There just wasn’t. I called over my colleague and she looked, and also couldn’t come up with an answer.

This child now must be the intermediary between me, his mother, and his teacher, to try to explain with limited English why he has a random word in that space. This is the kind of thing that kids face every day in school. It’s frustrating and very hard, because a whole lot of their success depends on their finding not just a good answer, but the answer that matches the one the teacher is looking for.

So I’m kind of worried to be starting a course at this point in my life, when I feel reasonably successful. I think it’s going to knock me down a peg or two, and that’s okay. At least I will have a better idea of what my young patrons are going through every day.

Wish me luck!

Everything in a Youth Services Department of a library is a balancing act these days.  Perhaps I am romanticizing the past (…who am I kidding? Of course I am romanticizing the past!) but I see the library of my childhood as being quiet, peaceful, and filled with beautiful rows and rows of books in order. I am old enough that all you could get were books and magazines.

There’s a sort of purity to that approach that I find appealing, particularly on days when my library is loud and crazy and full of people. But really, it is all about the balance, and I find most of my managerial decisions these days come down to finding the balance.

Loud vs. quiet One of my priorities when we are working on an upcoming renovation is to figure out a way for there to be quiet spaces as well as the loud spaces. I don’t delude myself that designating something as a quiet zone will stop an overtired baby from screaming or a parent from bellowing across the room to their child, but I’m hoping there is still a way to create quiet areas for studying, reading, tutoring, and writing. At the same time, I want to be sure there is room for preschoolers to act like preschoolers, for kids after school to be able to talk above a whisper, and for groups to be able to work on a project together without constant shushing. We need a balance.

Browsing vs. locating titles In one ideal scenario, every book in the library could be in order by Dewey number, and once you knew the number, you could find the book. DVDs might be in title order with no regard to genre or age, television or movies, and once you knew the title, you could find the DVD.

In the other ideal scenario, everything would be set up to look as appealing as possible–books and DVDs facing out so there covers can be seen, picture books in bins so you can flip through them, each topic pulled out so you can browse the self-help or the mysteries. Need a specific title? Good luck with that.

I’ve tried hard at my library to hit the balance with browsing vs. locating titles. Board books for babies are not kept in any order at all, on the theory that babies pull things out and are not very likely to put things back in the right place (and neither are their parents). We have some particularly appealing topics like folktales and ABCs in separate sections so they can be easily located, and our hugely popular series paperbacks are in spinners for easy browsing. But a lot of the rest of the collection is in good ol’ Dewey order. It’s a compromise–some browsing to boost circulation, some specific order to make it possible to locate things when people want them.

I get nervous when libraries move too much in the direction of retail stores. We aren’t stores. The more we call our patrons customers and imitate the retail display models, the more confused our patrons get. Clearly, the more we grow more like a trip to the shopping mall, the more patrons expect to act like they are at the mall, and they expect the library to be open the same hours that the mall is open. And I think libraries are more special than that.

But it’s all a balancing act.

Back to one of my favorite subjects, weeding.  I’ve continued working on the fiction section, and discovered that the author Ellen Conford’s books have most of the kiss o’ death markers from the last post, so sadly her section of the shelf is half what it was. Nice to find that her nearby neighbor Beverly Cleary is still going so strong, though–not a single title there popped up on the no-circs-in-3-years list.

The heartbreaker this week was finding every title from Helen Cresswell’s hilarious Bagthorpe series on the list. In fact, I could tell from looking at the list that I passed over them last time, too. I’m not sure what the Kiss o’ Death marker is for those. The covers (vintage Trina Schart Hyman) are a little dated, and they are British but that usually isn’t a problem. I’m stumped. And sad. I wish the publisher would reissue the first three with new covers to give them another chance.

Speaking of Kiss o’ Death markers, here are the rest we’ve noticed.

The cover has a horse on it. Again, I am baffled why it is that books with horses on the cover are dead in the water at my library, but aside from the quite popular Black Stallion series, they just don’t go. I think they partly like Black Stallion because it’s a series, and partly because the focus is on the trials and travails of the horse itself. Many of the others are either girl/horse stories (and my community doesn’t get a lot of horseback riding in) or they fall into the next category on my Kiss o’ Death list:

Westerns. No form of Westerns circulates in my department. They see a picture with a horse or a cowboy hat or something with tall cliffs in the background and it just sits there. Maybe it’s that there hasn’t been a truly popular western book or movie or television show in decades, so there are no cross-references pointing kids to those books. It doesn’t matter if they’re funny or mysteries or adventure stories, Westerns are dead. Maybe it’s because they usually fit into the next category on the list…

Historical fiction. Yes, sad to say, historical fiction in general does not circulate well at my library. The westerns do the worst, but really anything that isn’t part of the Dear America series or the American Girl series is a shelf-sitter. This is especially true of American historical fiction, and maybe it’s because our community has a lot of recent immigrants and they just aren’t that interested. Books featuring queens or princesses do okay, and Avi books do okay, and when you put a great historical fiction book on a reading list, they like them. But they don’t check them out without a push.

Books that are too fat by an author who writes skinny books. We could name this category after Scott Corbett. He wrote all of those “Trick” books and although our copies are in fairly disgraceful condition they continue to circulate. But his longer novels like The Discontented Ghost–which features a ghost, usually popular, and has a perfectly fine cover–are dead.  I think it must have to do with the expectations the readers/their parents have when they think of an author. Speaking of parents…

Books that are too skinny. I have also found the reverse to be true. An author who normally writes longer books will write a skinnier one, and that’s the one that won’t go. My theory from overhearing conversations is that parental pressure is a factor here. The parents feel that if a child can read a longer book, they should only read longer books.

Most of these things are out of our control. We can push things by putting them on lists, and we can handsell our favorites (which obviously I did not do well enough with the Bagthorpes). We can put books from the neglected bottom shelf on display. But I must admit that at this point in my career I have finally resigned myself to the fact

Some books practically weed themselves.  In weeding the fiction collection, it was not a difficult choice to let go of Freddie Freightliner despite its riveting plot about bad guys “from another country” attempting to steal the parts of a space shuttle. They are foiled because the truck has learned to talk, and confers with a limo who informs him, “I was stolen by my driver!” No, that one wasn’t that hard to weed.

Other books break your heart and make you feel like a terrible librarian for letting them go–titles by Alan Garner, Virginia Hamilton, and Anne Fine all went away today, after years of giving them another chance, and another chance, and another chance. Sometimes the good books just stop circulating.

Still, now that I’ve been a librarian for a lot of years, and a librarian here at this library for over ten, it’s gotten easier to let some books go. At your library, other things may qualify for the Kiss o’ Death, but here are a few things that at my library mark a book as doomed never to circulate here.

KoD #1: A bad spine. You can have an awesome cover but give a book a bad spine and it is just not ever going to go out. A bad spine is one where the type is unreadable against the background, or in pale letters, or too fancy to read. Maybe it is a reinforced paperback with no room for info on the spine.  Bad spine = no browsability = never circulating. Bye!

KoD #2: A dated cover. I realized this go-round that I had saved a lot of books in the past out of respect for the authors, and/or because they are local authors. But as I pulled them out, certain covers are simply never ever going to go. You know how these days there are lots of covers showing someone without their head, or as a silhouette? In the 70s and 80s, the style apparently was for a misty view of someone looking pensive. It makes you realize that the current body part book covers are an attempt to avoid having someone look at the cover and hate the character portrayed because they look stupid and mopey.

KoD #3: Hey, Book Title! You Are Trying too Hard to Be Lively! It sometimes works initially, but ten years down the road the Fun and Lively book title has become not fun, not funny, and kind of embarrassing. Hello? Is Anybody There? was one from today. It usually involves punctuation and a character’s name, like Giff’s Tootsie Tanner, Why Don’t You Talk? or Gregory’s Happy Burpday, Maggie McDougal!

That’s just a few of the Kiss o’ Death markers, with more to come.

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My grandfather, Frank J. Dove, was a very quiet man. My grandmother, Carrie Belle Hamlin Dove was a chatty lady, and my grandpa tended to sit back and let her do the talking. So it was quite a surprise to come across a scrapbook he created back in the 20s, with tiny black and white photographs and a typed narrative telling the stories of some of their college adventures. They are so vivid and funny, and it is both delightful and unsettling to come across his words some 90 years later and realize that my Grandpa Dove was not always solemn and thoughtful.

In this age where so many of us document our lives quite thoroughly, you have to sometimes remind yourself that although pre-computer people did not document their lives in the same way, they had some of the same impulses to share their stories and to speak to people who might come along later. What a treat to get to catch a glimpse now, in 2011, of my grandparents back in 1921. A big thank you to my generous cousin Carrie, who brought the scrapbooks and photo albums to the family cottage!

Here are some samples, with photos to come:

“The two remaining canoes came up, all went ashore and made a good fire beside a clump of bushes. Toast, eggs and coffee were soon produced and greatly enjoyed. Certain members of the crew used the sugar cubes for irregular and forbidden purposes.”

Needless to say, we are curious to find out what irregular and forbidden purposes one used sugar cubes for in Michigan in the 1920s.

“Another fire was built and all preparations made for eats. But alas! the beefsteak could not be found! After search and discussion Captain Dove remembered that he neglected to bring it from the fraternity house basement…The dinner was a real success without it, though, especially so when topped off by some bottles of Claret Cocktail “made in the cellar” by George Mitchell. The remainder of the afternoon was spent in spinning yarns and trying to keep warm.”

“The boys performed the Seven Labors of Hercules by uprooting trees and carrying logs for a grand bonfire. Supper was served after which the whole crowd sat around and bayed at the moon.”

and one more from another canoe trip:

“So here we made our first stop. We men gathered wood and we women cut up the bread, made toast and poured the colored sawdust into the water. Carrie says it was coffee, but we who drank it, say nothing and have our own opinion.”

The more I read, the more I get a whole new perspective on my grandparents and what their life was like before they got married, had two kids, and grew old together. And I get a whole new appreciation for Frank J. Dove and his sense of humor, as well as for my grandma, who went on camping trips at a time when that probably wasn’t what lots of girls did. It’s like getting an amazing present from the past.

I don’t want to brag, but I am rich! Not in money exactly, but I have so many books stacked up to take on vacation that I feel like the Warren Buffet of book-wealth right now, and let me tell you, that feels like riches to me.

What I love to do is take so many books with me to our family cabin in Michigan that I have the luxury of choosing which one to read next. Not which one I have to read to review. Not which one I have to read next for an award committee. Not which one I need to read for my department’s Battle of the Books list. Not even which one I should read to feel like I am semi up-to-date in my field, though today I am reading Gary Schmidt’s Okay for Now. No, on vacation I will be choosing from my stack of books which one I want to read next, for me. I’m rich!

On vacation, I have certain books I always take. I always take something by the Scottish writer D.E. Stevenson. She was writing mostly during the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and her books have a very comforting old-fashioned appeal for me. (Sadly, these days I have to really work to ignore the sexism, elitism, and worst of all the racism, but they do capture a particular time and place.) If you only ever read one, read Miss Buncle’s Book, which continues to completely charm me.

I always take at least one mystery–a P.D. James, a Martha Grimes, or lately a lighter Braun “The Cat Who…” book.  For many years, like…6 of them, I had the newest Harry Potter to read out loud to my guys, but no more. A couple of years ago I had the newest Hunger Games to read, which was cool. But what I love the most is having the luxury of time to read what I think of as grown-up books. Presumably most of you reading think of them as just, you know, books.

Most years I ask the readers advisory librarians (Hi Mary and Greta!) for help picking things out, but this year thanks to Good Reads, I already had flagged a long list of things “to read”. I actually sort of missed talking with them but I already had too many!  So I am happily heading off to the cabin with a new Anne Tyler, a book about weeds, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (yes I am behind), A History of Love (ditto), the next Kate Atkinson…I forget what all.  Anyway, lots. More than I can possibly read. And that makes me happy.

By the way, for any burglars who might be ready, we have a very ferocious cat-sitter. So, don’t bother. And if anyone wants to see what I end up reading, you will find it on Good Reads under Susan Dove.

P.S. This doesn’t even include the audiobooks! And then there’s doing logic problems, and crosswords, and a jigsaw puzzle, and swimming, and walking, and playing games… Yay, vacation!

P.P.S. I earned this vacation.

This past week, two authors I greatly admire popped up on Facebook–Jack Gantos and poet Betsy Franco. A dozen times I’ve gone back and forth whether or not to send a friend request.  I usually don’t request myself, but I’ve been delighted to get some friend requests from authors. Since I don’t live in a part of the country with a lot of authors nearby, it’s a really nice opportunity to get to know some of them better.

You learn so much about the writing life and process from some of the people’s posts on Facebook. It’s enlightening and fascinating to me. But it worries me a little bit too, because when you get to know someone as a person, then when you have the Advanced Reader Copy of their newest book in your hands to review, suddenly you are looking at it with two sets of eyes. Obviously you really really want it to be great.

Fortunately,  everything I’ve gotten so far has been excellent. And I also find that I can separate the book from the person and review the book on its own merits, but I must admit that it’s a little bit harder. It requires some real attention to being unbiased whatever the result. One of the things I admire most about my editor at The Horn Book, Roger Sutton, is his ability to say what he thinks clearly and without fussing over anything. He just says what he thinks, and everyone knows him to be truthful despite his many friendships in the field. So he’s my role model.

Still, I think I won’t send those friend requests. I’m sure it’s pretty fun to get a sneak peek into Jack Gantos’ life, but since he writes fairly autobiographically anyway, I guess I already do. I’ll be satisfied with that.

Spoiler alert: I did not get picked for a jury yesterday. They were down to picking the last alternate, and I was in a pool of four. They dismissed #1 and took #2. I was #3, so whew!

I actually have mixed feelings about jury duty. I find it really interesting to see the court system at work. I have never gotten a civil case, so that might be partly why it’s interesting to me–yesterday’s case was first degree homicide. Hard to get more interesting than that!

The day began with setting off in my car at 7:30 on a sunny day, but about 20 minutes later one of the worst storms I have ever experienced blew in and began rocking my car. The rain poured down, the trees were whipping around, branches were hitting the car, and I pulled off for about five minutes.  When I got going again, street lights were out–in fact, at one huge intersection (North and Cumberland) the street light was lying smashed in the street. At one point, I had the thrilling but fortunately not shocking experience of driving over a couple of downed power lines. Seriously scary.

So by the time I got parked at the horribly designed Maywood Courthouse, my nerves were pretty jangled. Getting through security took awhile, and they don’t actually put a sign at the entrance to say where jurors go, so here’s a tip if you have jury duty in the Maywood Courthouse. You have to go down to the basement and find a really dingy room where you will wait and wait and wait with your fellow citizens.

After lunch (mmm, McDonalds for me!) and accidentally giving myself a scenic tour of Maywood because I didn’t know Cumberland had turned into First, we finally got taken to a courtroom. And that’s when you know it’s really serious business. There’s a young man there (my younger son’s age, as it turns out) and four attorneys–two for the defense and two for the state. And the judge reads a series of charges that to my ear were identical–maybe she was emphasizing different syllables in the words, I don’t know. But the bottom line is this young man the age of my son is charged with shooting another young man to death. And whether or not I will be one of the jurors is completely in the hands of these people, not me.

Jury questioning is always fascinating if you’re a people-watcher, and no two judges seem to carry it out the same way. This time, they took fourteen at a time and asked them all the same questions–do you subscribe to a newspaper? What are your hobbies? (Fishing seems to be a surprisingly popular hobby.) Some of the people seemed very resigned to serving, while others were clearly trying to weasel out of doing their civic duty. The answer that made everyone laugh was “I can’t be impartial. The defendant has the same name as the man who stole my girlfriend four months ago.” One time I served, the judge took anyone like that and held them aside, not releasing them until the end of the day. The judge and attorneys made the decisions in back and then dismissed about half–sadly, all of the people who tried to weasel out were dismissed.

It’s such an important job, and being there made me realize that all of my worries and concerns beforehand about the inconvenience of the long drive, and missing work, and being upset and uncomfortable were not significant next to making sure that the court system worked as it was supposed to. I’d have been glad to serve, if I’d been picked.

It’s also such a strange set of contrasts. You have the majestic language, the judge’s robes, the seriousness with which the security people walk you from place to place. The court room has high ceilings, and clearly is supposed to look imposing…and behind the state’s attorneys were a couple of cardboard boxes with carelessly scrawled signs: Sergio Martinez, murder.

So that’s it for this year. Interesting, unsettling, and now my life isn’t on hold anymore. I’m kind of glad,

I’ve never been to the Printz Awards before. I love YA books and truly believe we are living in a golden age for YA fiction in particular, but by Monday night I am pretty ready to head back home. So I haven’t been before, but I will go again!

A.S. King (Please Ignore Vera Dietz) gave a a powerful, perfectly crafted speech–the best speech I heard in the entire conference and one that I will watch again if they put it on Youtube.  Any parent of a teen would benefit by watching it too, because she speaks so honestly and persuasively about how her mother brought up difficult subjects with her and how she does with her own children. She just makes so much sense. There is a section in the speech about her mother in the hospital that had everyone sitting up straight and many of us crying.

Paolo Bacigalupi won the Printz for Ship Breaker and also gave a passionate, moving speech about how exciting it is for a science fiction book to win the Printz, and about the world we are leaving to our kids. As he said, “I depress the crap out of myself sometimes,” and it was not a kumbaya kind of speech, but it was  funny and wise. The response of the Little Brown group in attendance was hilarious as well.

The other speeches were very good, too, and it was just so fun to be part of a group celebrating books for teens. The only odd note was a reception with not the expected desserts but instead chips and dip. Big bowls of barbecue chips and corn tortilla chips.  It must have seemed like a good idea to someone at the time, but since I hadn’t had dinner, and had a 5:00 am shuttle to catch so wouldn’t have breakfast either, it wasn’t my favorite part.

One more fun thing yesterday was attending a grown-up function for the CIS-Proquest customer appreciation breakfast. The selling point was a speech by Roy Blount, Jr., and just like on Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me (the NPR radio comedy show) he drawled and meandered and made lots of good and funny points about language. One comment I particularly appreciated–and I can’t remember it perfectly to do it justice–was about how language has developed to slide easily off the tongue, but that now it’s developing to be easy on the thumbs.

So that’s just a few highlights of this year’s conference. I highly recommend going to ALA if you can spare the time and money. It’s a lot of effort but so worth it.

I should be at the ALSC Poetry Blast but the shuttle did not cooperate, so instead I have time to blog. It is a little disappointing but also a little nice to have some unexpected quiet time. Conferences are grueling.

Last night was the Newbery/Caldecott/Wilder banquet, always a great event. For those of you who haven’t been there, it’s perfectly enormous, hundreds (close to 1000, I think) of dressed-up authors, editors, publishers, librarians, and fans sitting at round tables. It must be a very daunting thing to get up in front of such a large group and speak, especially for these two first-time winners, Erin Stead and Clare Vanderpool. Erin is very young and very shy and I can’t imagine what that was like, except that we all could see that it was moving and scary. She gave a lovely speech.

Clare Vanderpool, the Newbery winner, was a little more self-assured, but she too started crying when describing her parents and their optimism and encouragement. She mentioned several books she admires, and I wasn’t surprised that one was Richard Peck’s A Year Down Yonder, because I was strongly reminded of Peck in Moon Over Manifest.

Tomie dePaola received the Wilder Award for lifetime achievement, and proceeded to give a very Tomie dePaola speech–brash and funny.

Then this morning they gave the other ALSC awards, in which I learned that Nic Bishop is from New Zealand, that Sy Montgomery feels very passionately about saving endangered species, that Kate DiCamillo and Allison McGhee ARE Bink and Gollie to go by the way the artist depicted them, and that the English speaker of the year’s Carnegie winning video who sounds like a distinguished stage actress (think Vanessa Redgrave) looked about 20. In short, it was fun.

I also learned at this morning’s ALSC Awards that at my age (old!) I still get incredibly shy in any kind of setting where you sort of look around to see if you know someone. That part was not fun at all. I am much much happier when I have worked out in advance to meet with someone. I would love to be more bold and confident but I’m just not. Maybe when I am in my 60s?

So much for my good intentions of blogging my way through the conference. It seems that you can attend conference events or you can sit in your hotel room and blog about them.

High point so far has been the Scholastic Literary Brunch, where editors and authors spoke movingly and with humor about their upcoming books. David Levithan, in introducing their new book Eleventh Plague commented that he has gotten so many dystopian-after-the-apocalypse novels that at times he thinks “Bring it on! It has to be better than reading these books”. His point was that this one is a great one in a very crowded field. We all got to eat pie in honor of Sarah Weeks’ new book, Pie, and Allen Say made most of the room cry.

Another high point was getting to meet Kate DiCamillo and Michelle Knudsen and to smile at least at Katherine Paterson. It’s fascinating how different the authors are from each other.

Another interesting thing is that Dav Pilkey (Captain Underpants) and Jeff Kinney (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) both said the same thing in speeches yesterday. Each of them commented that when they go into Kindergarten/First grade classrooms and ask Who here is an artist? Who here is a writer? the hands all go up, but when they ask the same question in fourth or fifth grade, only one or two hands go up. They each said that part of the reason they make cartoon books for kids is to encourage them to keep up with drawing and writing. Although they both work hard on their books, they try hard to make it look easy and do-able.

As always it was fun listening to teens talk about this year’s books at the Best Fiction for Young Adults session–you have to love their enthusiasm and their honesty, though I would never advise authors to be in the room because sometimes the kids come up with very odd statements which I will not repeat. But overall they are wise and funny.

In other news, Bourbon Street is like nothing in Chicago. You’re welcome for that dazzling piece of insight. And now, off to the Newbery-Caldecott-Wilder banquet for more food and more speeches and more chances to show the great writers and illustrators for kids how much we appreciate their work.

Anyone who follows children’s books knows there’s been a ghastly outpouring of the I Love You So Much picture books–ghastly, because mostly they are pretty bad. And dumb. I’ve been working on an article for Horn Book (Sept issue) and the section on these books got pulled out to keep the article more focused, which means yay! A pre-written blog post! I could go on and on with lots more examples, but I’m lazy so here’s what I wrote:

One of the biggest booms in picture book publishing over the past few years has been in the I Love You So Much market, which now includes books for grandparents to express their feelings too, as in Billy Crystal’s heartfelt but amateurishly written I Already Know I Love You:  “I’m waiting to show you the stars, / storm clouds, and the moon. / I want to make silly faces / and laugh just like a goon.” Though children may enjoy sitting one on one with a grandfather to read this book, the focus is all on the adult, not on the child and they are very unlikely to want to read it otherwise.

There are dozens of mediocre, adult-centered books—and a good rule of thumb is if the title includes the word “I” or “You” it is probably not about a child’s feelings—but fortunately there are a few that withstand scrutiny. Kady MacDonald Denton’s Would They Love a Lion? shows a little girl playing at being a variety of animals, but always wanting to be sure that her family will still love her. The beautiful book-making, with thick, textured pages and the warm mixed-media illustrations center around the child’s experience, not the adult’s, and conveys a tremendous feeling of love at the same time.

Patrick McDonnell’s Hug Time shows a little kitten overflowing with so much love that he wants to hug the world, and sets about it one hug at a time. The book’s small size contrasts nicely with the big imagination and feelings, and it all concludes with the advice “Start with the one who’s closest to you. Hug time!”  Again, the focus is on the child, not an adult, but it still would help adults to express that loving feeling to the child.

The book that probably kicked off the I Love You So Much boom by its popularity is also a very good book in its own right. Sam McBratney’s Guess How Much I Love You is the solid story of Little Nutbrown Hare trying to postpone bedtime by challenging his father, Big Nutbrown Hare over which of them loves the other more. The emotional heart of the story isn’t a generic expression of love but the back and forth competition between father and son. The illustrations are both beautiful and funny, and it’s a satisfying story.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So my advice to you is if you are lucky enough to still have your father with you, and I sure miss mine, you don’t need a smoochy-woochy book to tell him so. Just tell him yourself. And maybe give him a hug.

We are bracing ourselves, because today is the first day of our annual Summer Reading Club. From this point on any time the Youth Services Department is quiet, we will all pause and listen and enjoy that silence, because it won’t happen very often.

Summer Reading puts huge strains on staff, from the PR/Marketing staff who have to prepare reading logs, program flyers, posters, and oh, yes, an enormous pair of game boards, to the circulation staff who must deal with lines of people waiting to check out, to the pages who have to restore order to the shelves after a day camp has come through and pulled out dozens of books to consider them for checkout. The Maintenance Department must keep up with the increased messiness, and the general noise and activity spills over into the rest of the Library, too. Most of all, the burden falls on the Youth Services staff, who deal with a nearly constant onslaught of questions and requests while trying to keep the volunteers equipped with all they need for the game, keeping on top of ordering materials, and  trying to prepare the programs that help fuel the chaos.

It doesn’t have to be this way. This time of year I start to feel like maybe we are over-doing it.  I know that by the end of the summer most of the library staff will be fed up with the whole thing, and I don’t like making people stressed and annoyed. So we could take steps to reduce the chaos. We could downscale the game itself, making it something people only do online, entering their books and getting in a drawing for prizes. We could greet people with a scowl and do a lot of shushing while they’re there. We could get rid of the many games and puzzles and early literacy toys that we have on hand that cause a lot of clutter and interruptions. We could yell at kids when they take too many books off the shelf, and reprimand them when they don’t put things on the cart. We could stop having the Rise and Shine storytimes and the Chat & Chomp book discussions and the Writing for Real workshops, and we could stop bringing in performers. That would cut down a lot on the level of noise and mess and the sense some days that being at work is an ordeal.

But we won’t. Because as stressful as it is, and as much as we long for peace and quiet at times, we love keeping the Library a busy, happy place for our community. We love the excitement that surrounds the game, and the joy that kids feel at finding exactly the book they always wanted, and the sense of accomplishment they feel when their name goes up on the wall, showing that they met their goal. It’s arduous, it’s exhausting, and it’s why we decided to work in a library.

Happy Summer Reading, everyone!

Race to the Top–that’s the federal program to give grant money to the states for early childhood education. You can read about it here, and give input, which many of you are very qualified to do:  Race to the Top blog.

Libraries have been doing storytimes for what, 80 years? These days, most public libraries are focusing lots of their attention and efforts on making Every Child Ready to Read.  They should be working hand-in-hand with us in the library world, but they’re not.

Likewise, Chicago’s energetic new mayor, Rahm Emanuel, has announced his new reading campaign, Rahm’s Readers.  Sound a little familiar? Like, maybe a summer reading club? Something the Chicago Public Library and most other public libraries have been doing very successfully for decades?

Now, of course, I sound ungrateful. Whiny, even. These are both good programs! We should be happy that politicians are focusing their attention on helping kids learn the skills they will need. And I am happy. Happyish. But it is very frustrating that we seem to be so ineffective at getting the message out to them that they already have the infrastructure in place for running great childhood education/literacy programs, and that is the amazing public library system. Use us. Partner with us. Help us get our resources into the hands of the public–we’ll take it from there!

Libraries, though, need to really take a close look at this kind of thing and ask ourselves the hard question–why DON’T they think of us?

Last night, I attended the annual Zena Sutherland Lecture at the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago. It was, as always, a delightful occasion. This year, the author speaking was the brilliant and very funny Mo Willems. And that was kind of the problem…I’ve been going to the Sutherland Lecture for years, and some years there’s a pretty nice-sized audience and some years it’s a little sparse, particularly for the more “literary” writers. This year, because Mo Willems is so highly regarded and so entertaining, the event sold out, in a giving-free-tickets-away sort of sell-out.

And just like with our library programs, a whole bunch of people signed up and didn’t show up. It was a good audience, but there were lots of empty seats, and I know of several people who wanted to attend but couldn’t sign up. They could easily have had a full house.

It happens to us at the library all the time! We will book a performer or prepare a lovely program only to have half of the expected attendees not show up. I am convinced the problem gets worse and worse, and I thought it might be fun to speculate why. Is it because:

*People are just ruder than they used to be? Yes, I think so. Manners aren’t considered very important any more, except of course when someone else is being rude.

*People are busier than they used to be? Yes, definitely. They run from activity to activity and it is hard just making all of the pieces fit.

*People don’t value what they don’t pay for? I wonder if this might not be true. I am philosphically opposed to charging for library programs, and I am very grateful to have the Sutherland Lecture as a free thing to attend every year, but I wonder if people don’t have more respect for the things for which they had to whip out their credit card.

There are probably other reasons too. The other big question, then, is what to do about it. Many libraries turn to a policy of not registering any of their programs. If you show up, you get in. But I think, again, that people don’t value things for which they don’t have to exert any effort. I think it might be wiser in the long run to make people jump through a hoop or two to have the privilege of attending a great program. And I increasingly feel inclined to experiment with having a blacklist, where if you sign up your four children to a program that seats 20 and you decide instead to go to the beach that day, you don’t GET to sign up your children again.

Librarians, parents, others, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this pesky issue.

This is not the topic I’d planned on posting next. In fact, I tend not to let most people know my guilty secret: I love my soaps. One of my first memories of my mom is being in the cool basement with her as she was ironing, watching General Hospital. It was companionable, though I couldn’t understand most of it. That was not a bad thing–I remember trying to sort it out, and asking my mom questions like, “Why did he say that?” “Why did she do that?” I had two younger brothers and really enjoyed the chance to be one-on-one with my mom, and to listen as she let me in on what made people tick.

I’m saddened by this week’s news that ABC is canceling both All My Children and One Life to Live, though I don’t watch them. And I’m increasingly annoyed by the coverage it’s gotten in the press. The phrase they use over and over is “a dying genre”. It actually is not a dying genre. It’s a genre that’s being killed off by corporate decision-makers. It is not just the soaps–it’s scripted television that is being killed off. And that’s why I decided to blog about it.

It’s old news that reality-based television is much cheaper to produce than carefully-crafted dramas and comedies.  Audiences are splintering with all of the new possibilities for viewing and spending time in general, and that’s making it look like people aren’t watching the soaps anymore. But millions of faithful viewers were still watching those shows. Millions more watch those shows from time-to-time, if not faithfully. It’s not that there isn’t an audience for them anymore, much as the commentators are talking about changing lifestyles. It’s about the $$.

If you care about writing and writers, you should care about this at least a little. The more scripted television gets pushed off the air by the bean-counters, the less likely it is for the younger generation to be exposed to scripted television. It’s already happening–the TV show I hear kids talking about at the library is Jersey Shore. They aren’t developing an attention span for more complex shows, and their tastes are being shaped accordingly. The market for all scripted television will continue to shrink.

Recently I caught a little bit of that classic soap, Ryan’s Hope. Mary Ryan’s future husband, reporter Jack Fenelli, has brought a Mother’s Day present to his future mother-in-law. It’s an old book of Irish history he found in a used bookstore. He’s reading it aloud gleefully, with its description of the childish, loud Irish men because he finds it very like his future father-in-law, Johnny Ryan. He doesn’t notice what the audience sees, which is the Ryan family becoming increasingly furious, until the usually gentle-spoken Maeve shouts at him to stop and then lets him have it with a quick synopsis of the real Irish history. A great scene.

But the next one is even better, when Johnny Ryan arrives home and finds everyone in a fuss. His initial reaction is to go out and punch Jack, but instead he gets a grip on himself and goes out and puts his arm around Jack’s shoulder and says that because his daughter loves him, whenever he sees him, “I will smile and say hello, Jack, and how are you, Jack? And I won’t mean it.  I will shake your hand, and ask you how your work is going.  And I won’t mean it.  I’ll call you boyo and I will put my arm around your shoulders. And you will know, and I will know, that I don’t mean it.”

That is just my memory of the scene, so I can’t do it justice, but it is a beautifully composed set of scenes, written with thoughtfulness and psychological depth. There continue to be some very fine writers working on the soaps, and some of them will now be out of work, along with the ones from the soaps that have also gone. The one I think of as MY soap, Y&R, continues, as I hope it will for a long ti

Last week, I had the chance to use the 2011 Caldecott Winner,  A Sick Day for Amos McGee, with my storytime group for ages 4-Kindergarten and with my story group for grades K-3. It proved to me once again that the process for selecting the award for the”most distinguished picture book” of a given year works. It just works.  Not only does the Committee look at hundreds of books, examine them closely, sort and resort the stacks, nominate and look at nominees, but the Committee has the chance to really put them through their paces.

Other awards have equally hard-working committees–some of them work extremely hard indeed.  Members of the Newbery Committee have said they have to read a novel a day to keep up. But by the time a Caldecott Committee votes, they have read books aloud multiple times to find which rhythms work, which page-turns create a great moment. Groups of children and individual children have pored over the pictures and pointed out the surprising details and hidden joys.  In fact, the one potential problem is for the book that comes out early in the year and is read almost too often, so it loses its potential to amaze the Committee member.

But usually what happens is that the Committee picks something that may not be the one that drops an adult reader’s jaw on a first reading. They don’t always pick the one that is magnificent or stunning in its artwork. And this year’s Committee picked the kind of book that, like its main character Amos McGee, is unpretentious, loving, and deeply connected to themes that matter. It’s not until you use it with a child that you realize how deep the connection to a child’s perspective really is. Amos’s kindness to the animals of the zoo is reciprocated when he gets sick, and that interplay of what is realistic (like the way the animals are drawn) and what is fanciful (those same animals riding the bus to see Amos) sets up a feeling in the reader/listener that is suffused with tenderness and delight.

I’m happy to say that the choice of the 1987 Caldecott Committee, Hey, Al, is one that still also connects deeply with children.  They still get pulled into the artwork to point out the significant details like the way important things push outside of the frame, or the newspapers piling up outside the door. And they notice that once Al and his dog Eddie have been through their adventure, they have learned to enjoy their life together. “Yellow is such a happy color,” one of the kids in my group said, looking at the picture where Al and Eddy begin painting their ugly walls a bright lemon yellow.

Yes, it still is. Congratulations to the 2011 Caldecott Committee for coming up with a choice that took so many by surprise. Your hard work turned up a treasure that might have gone relatively unnoticed. I’ll be using A Sick Day for Amos McGee for years to come.

The new Bed Bath & Beyond catalog came in the mail today. Clearly, a great deal of what they sell currently falls into the “beyond” category. Did you know that not only can you buy your own soda-making machine, and your own kettle popcorn machine, but you can even buy your very own cotton candy maker? Don’t worry–this isn’t a no-fun post about conspicuous consumption, though certainly the phrase does come to mind when browsing many catalogs this holiday season.

No, this is a no-fun post about the crumbling fabric of society. Each of these things and many others besides represent occasions when people used to leave their houses and go be with other people. You went to the theatre to get your movie popcorn and soda, and you sat there with all of the other people and grumbled about the high prices and your feet sticking to the floor and you interacted with other human beings. You heard them laughing or gasping, and you were part of a shared experience. You went to an amusement park or the state fair to get cotton candy, and yes the crowds were annoying but you were going on the rides together and looking at the prize animals together. Being with other people was part of the experience.

The trend today and for the last decade at least is for people to own all of the things that they once had to go out for. People install home theatres and buy DVDs and make their popcorn at home and avoid all of the annoyances of going out to the movies. They install elaborate play structures for their children in the yard, and get the sorts of playthings for home that used to be found strictly at preschools (or at a wealthy friend’s house)–things like a play kitchen or a lifesize playhouse. They put in enormous gardens with large showy plants that used to only be seen in a park, and they cook in kitchens that many small restaurant chefs would envy.

And in the library realm, looking just a little in the future, people will increasingly be downloading their books, their music, and their movies. They will read their magazine articles on the Internet and they already go to the library’s website to look up periodical articles to read at home. It is all going to be home-based.

So why are libraries more popular than ever? It’s in large part because of the people. It’s where you find knowledgeable staff who can help you locate and sort through information. And it’s also where you find your fellow parents/kids/seniors/job seekers/gamers–whatever your group is, you can connect with them at the library. The library will continue to be a place where people come to be informed and entertained long after the materials have gone online, because you can’t stay at home eating popcorn and cotton candy all the time, and after awhile, shopping gets old. Smart communities will continue to support their libraries and smart taxpayers will get in there and make use of the resources they will find.

So maybe the fabric of society won’t completely crumble. But if I get a Bed Bath and Beyond catalog that sells a machine for making elephant ears or deep-fried Snickers bars at home, I may wonder.

This summer, I was giving myself the big present of reading grown-up books while on vacation. Most of the time, the only way I can begin to keep up on the books in my field is to read them more or less back-to-back.  But vacation time is when I have the wonderful treat of reading books written not for children or teens, but for adults. So after getting recommendations far and wide, I set off to the cabin with my big bag of books, and amongst them was Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair. Ironically, the copy I checked out was in the library’s YA section, so that took away a little from the feeling of reading an adult book but anyway…

So I’m reading along and inside the book is a little square of paper. I look at it, expecting to see someone’s shopping list or a scribbled note, and instead I see this:

It reads: “You are loved. Don’t ever forget that.”

And on the other side was this:

The other side reads: ” P.S. You’re a totally made of awesome person. I can tell because you’re at a library.  Best wishes from [email protected]”.

I still get kind of choked up when I read it. It’s so clearly the work of a teenager, and I find it deeply touching. I’ve never checked to verify it, but I’m guessing it will somehow trace back to YA author John Green and his brother Hank. I put it back in the book when I returned it, and I hope whoever finds it next gets the wonderful moment of surprise and tenderness that I got. Thank you, whoever you are!

This morning, I attended the Chicago Area Children’s Book Publisher Spring preview, and it turned out to be a very thought-provoking session. I went mostly to support our local publishers, and to support the Center for Teaching through Children’s Books.  I wasn’t expecting the very engaging, very interesting, but very worrisome second half of the program.

Sourcebook’s publisher Dominique Raccah made the provocative statement that she believes hardcover books will not being published five years from now.  I never believe people when they say things like that, but I don’t know that I would have believed how quickly many people stopped using the phone except to text. Things move very fast now.

She was very persuasive, not just because of the graphs showing the tremendous increase in digital books being sold in the past year, though she seemed very knowledgeable on that front.  No, the most persuasive thing was how beautiful picture books look on an iPad, and how appealing it is to be able to change font sizes to whatever is comfortable to you, and how compelling it is to have books with sound or video clips. She kept showing us things and saying, “Isn’t that COOL?” and you know what? It was really cool. People are going to want them. I want them.

There’s been a slightly heated discussion going on at the Cooperative Children’s Book Center’s listserv on picture books, and why sales might be down. Is it, as the infamous New York Time’s article claimed, that parents are pushing their children to start chapter books and quit reading picture books, or is it more the cost? If it’s the latter, Raccah makes it clear that the cost will not go down with e-books–if anything, they are more expensive to produce because of the different platforms.

Two things worry me a great deal about this. First, there are many families in one of my library’s school districts that still don’t have a computer at home. The likelihood of their owning an iPad or a Nook or any other digital device anytime soon is low.  Reading can’t become something that only wealthier people get to do, for so many reasons. Second, I am not seeing where libraries are going to fit into this new world. The very thing that makes the new reading devices so wonderful–their ability to hold lots and lots of books at once–means even if a library invested in a $250 color Nook, one person would walk out with it and all of the books it holds.  I can’t imagine a library who could keep up with that.

I was hoping to wait until the market settled down and one format dominated the way videotapes won out over Beta, but now I’m thinking we can’t afford to wait that long. The question is, what’s the first step? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

My Aunt Carolyn died today, at age 80. She was the best aunt anyone could ever hope to have. My Aunt Carolyn:

My Aunt Carolyn

*Laughed. A LOT.

*Told me that if I ate bread crusts, my hair would turn curly. She got my cousin Carrie to nod in agreement too, and point to her curly hair. That’s my first memory of Aunt Carolyn, and of Carrie.

*Love love loved to read, loved to talk about what she read and what I was reading, and is part of the reason I became a librarian.

*Would get all of the 10 kids at a family gathering each started on doing a task to get dinner ready, while not missing a beat of the adult conversation and sipping a cocktail.

*Took us for rides in her convertible.

*Wrote letters–interesting, chatty, funny letters in a handwriting that was unique to her.

*Never let people slip out of her life, even after divorce and death changed family relationships.

*Was my dad’s big sister, so she could tease him and boss him around. My dad!

*Let me come stay with her for spring break my senior year, when I was high school yearbook editor. She went to work and I laid on her couch and read, and then she would come home and chat and have family over, and I healed from a year of intense stress.

*Bought me my first legal drink, in the state of Michigan where the drinking age was 18. Kahlua and Cream…mmmm.

*Took our tiny, shabby family cabin and transformed so that although it was still tiny, it looked out onto the woods and brought the outdoors in.

*Always remembered the names of my sons’ favorite stuffed animals.  “Hello, Iain. How is Splarchy?” “Hello, Alexander—how is Fing-Fong doing?” she would say.

*Showed me that if you cut an apple the right way, there’s a star inside.

*Had squash parties with her family so that everyone who was born in the fall got a birthday party together, where everyone had to bring squash.

*Even handled a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s with grace, and laughter.

*Got a tattoo of Picasso’s dove when she turned 80.

*Is gone too soon.

I’m reading Libraries Designed for Kids by Nolan Lushington (Neal-Schuman, 2008). It’s mostly practical and interesting, but it repeats the same ridiculous opinion several times. I hear library directors (not my own, fortunately!) repeating it too. Here’s how it goes:

1) Children choose books by their covers

2) You can’t see picture books enough to see the covers on regular shelving

3) Therefore, your picture book collection should go in bins

And here’s what’s wrong with that:

Three-year-olds are not supposed to be the ones choosing the books! Children will randomly grab any old book for any old reason. And sometimes that is fun and interesting and you end up with a book you might not have selected, and that’s great. But most of the book selection needs to be done by a parent or other person who can, you know….read.  Parents and caregivers should be keeping track of which authors they enjoy reading, and noticing which subjects their kid particularly loves (one kid it’s trains–another, it’s dogs). They should be reading a page or two and noticing if the language flows for them, or if the book might be a good bedtime story or a funny middle-of-the-day break. They may want to pay attention if the content will make them want to throw the book across the room while they’re reading to their child–The Giving Tree, anyone?

It is condescension disguised as respect.  They’re pretending to respect the child’s need to choose their own books, but the underlying reason is that they don’t think it makes any difference which book they choose. That bright, pretty cover is all that matters, right? They’re just kids, and just kids’ books, right?

Besides the fact that it makes it impossible or at least intolerable to find specific books when they are in bins, the whole thing is absurd. Are they envisioning the three-year-olds standing patiently in front of the bins, flipping through the covers to select the one that’s just right?  So silly…

Most of us make New Year’s Resolutions in January, but it looks to me like parents make New Year’s Resolutions in late August/early September. Their “new year” is the beginning of school.  That’s when we start noticing that the DVDs in the Youth Services section are getting a lot more full. That’s when suddenly we go from having 8-10 Wii games left  to check out, to having 50, stretching out the entire length of the counter where they’re kept. We sometimes catch enough snippets of conversation to know why:

Child: Hey, look! Wii games!

Parent: No way. You aren’t going to have time for those anymore.

Child: But…but…

Parent: You will have too much homework to do. You have to do better in school this year!

Now it’s October, and like most New Year’s resolutions, the parental school year resolutions face away too. The DVD shelves are back to looking a little picked over, and the videogame racks have emptied out too. The Percy Jackson books are all checked out, and the shelvers have stopped complaining about not having enough room in the series paperbacks. All is well, once again.

I don’t usually do reviews in my blog–I do enough of those elsewhere. But this brings up an interesting issue for me and I wanted to get some responses. If you haven’t read it yet, you may want to give this post a pass.

Nancy Werlin blends history with fantasy in her novel about Phoebe Rothschild, of the Jewish banking Rothschild family, who we know from the beginning has been targeted by the faeries. They send her a new best friend, Mallory, but several years later they also send Mallory’s brother Ryland to seduce Phoebe into sacrificing herself.

The novel suffers from some structural problems, such as not meeting a central character until very late in the book, so I rated it 4 stars on Goodread, and in some ways it feels like a couple of very different books linked together. The last third best matches the gorgeous cover, so if that’s what you’re looking for, hang in there and you will get to it.

The heart of the book, though, lies in the disturbing middle section. The whole thing is written by Nancy Werlin, so it’s all richly imagined and beautifully expressed. But that middle part…wow.  In it, Werlin shows, scene by scene, how even a young woman from a great family can be pulled into keeping secrets and even lying to those with whom she is closest. She can be manipulated, step by creepy step, into losing sight of herself and her own perspective until she is so wracked by self-doubt that her identity begins to be destroyed.

So what I am wrestling with is wondering how much I, as a reviewer, allow a book’s message to shape my review. The message here is one that as I was reading I was already envisioning myself encouraging a kid to read. There have been many 5-star YA novels that I absolutely love but can’t imagine myself pushing on a kid because they are just too depressing and painful–Patrick Ness’s The Knife of Never Letting Go, say.  This one is a solid 4-star book so of course it’s a good one to recommend, but what if it hadn’t been quite so well-written? Would I have had such a strong urge to get that book into the hands of readers that I would have written a review to make that happen? I really wonder.

In any case, may the lushly romantic cover lure teenage girls into reading a book that may help them be on alert for the guy who is manipulating them into a dangerous situation. We have seen Werlin’s gift for exploring the effect of abusers on teens before in The Rules of Survival, but here it is packaged with faeries and loveliness.

I’ve posted before about how much I love weeding. It’s extremely satisfying to pull outdated books off of the shelf. You can congratulate yourself on getting old, yucky material off of the shelves, and you can go work on finding updated information to replace it. Like cleaning, it is even more satisfying if you postpone it awhile–then you find all sorts of appalling things, because the shiny new book about Cameroon that you bought back in 1990 is now 20 years old and should have been discarded years ago.

Almost all libraries face space issues. With the thousands and thousands of books that are published yearly, it’s inevitable that eventually your space will fill up. So sometimes we must weed to make room for the new materials. That’s not as fun, but you can usually find books that your patrons just don’t love as much as you think they should, so they have a low circulation rate and you choose those to go away.

Those are normal issues. What concerns me is that even librarians are embracing a vision of the almost book-free library. Books are bulky and dusty and even germy if you worry about that. They are old-fashioned. Who wants to be seen as old-fashioned? Librarians embrace the newest technologies and have happily learned to work with databases. We love the improved access that computers allow, where you can combine search terms to come up with exactly the information your patrons need.  And who doesn’t love face-out shelving, with the beautiful covers enticing people to pick up the books?

But I’m sorry, it’s sad that librarians are so happy to throw away the books from the libraries. I too love the look of a newly weeded shelf, where the books look so pretty and the room doesn’t look like a storeroom.  But lately, it’s going too far! Everyone feels that their library is not the one that should be keeping older books–that’s the job of some other library. Small libraries assume that the larger libraries are doing it.  They aren’t. They assume that the biggest libraries are doing it. They aren’t. Everyone thinks that the special collections like the Center for Children’s Books at the University of Illinois is keeping them. They aren’t. They don’t have the space, either.

I get lonesome when I talk about this–it’s not popular with my peers. It is much more popular with the people who grew up loving libraries and books, but aren’t librarians and aren’t faced with the challenging issues of how to keep libraries and books vital in people’s lives.  But it seems to me that the surest way of losing taxpayer support is to stop fulfilling the role that taxpayers expect us to fill–cultivating library collections with care and discernment. We need to figure out what’s working in the bookstore model and shape it to fit our mission, not change our mission to feel like we aren’t so old-fashioned anymore. We need to consult with the experts and visionaries, but remember that when it comes to libraries, we ARE the experts.

On the bright side, the Internet allows book lovers to find the books they love so they can add them to their own collections. It allows libraries to share collections with patrons all over the country. So it’s not all bad news.  It’s great that libraries are wrestling with the issues of supplying what patrons need in these busy times. Let’s just not leap to the conclusion that we have to get rid of those stodgy books to make our libraries seem fresh and new.

One final note: Don’t use this post as an excuse to stop weeding!