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Something Different Every Day

April 26, 2009

Why you should attend the Sutherland

I swore to myself last year after attending the annual Zena Sutherland lecture at the Harold Washington Library that I would hound my fellow NSLS youth services people to go next year.  And here it is next year already!

Here’s why you should go:

1.  Christopher Paul Curtis is the speaker this year.  A great writer, an excellent speaker, talking about some of the books kids love the most–The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963; Bud, Not Buddy; Elijah of Buxton–don’t you immediately remember those characters, those voices?

2. The speaker is introduced by the inimitable Roger Sutton.

3. You’ll get a chance to network.

4. It’s at Harold Washington in a beautiful space, and it’s downtown Chicago at night, which is often magical.

5. The food at the reception afterward is fantastic, and it’s easy to get a chance to chat with the author.

6. It’s free!  Just RSVP at 312-747-4780 or go online at www.chipublib.org/eventsprog/events/sutherland/sutherland.php

7. What, you want to know when it is?  Fine.  It is on Friday, May 1 at 7:30.  You should go!

posted by Susan at 4:30 pm | Comments (0)

April 17, 2009

Hunting for Poetry

Back in 2001, I was inspired by the CTA’s project where they posted poems throughout the transit system for people to read as they ride.  I thought it would be a very cool thing to plaster the Youth Services Department at the Niles Public Library with poetry.  But I knew that without some incentive, many children would walk past the poems without reading them, and so began our annual Poetry Scavenger Hunt.

On April 1st, I come in early and hang up 40-50 poems throughout the Youth Services Department, with a couple more spilling over into the Young Adult area outside the door.  Each poem is typed out in a distinctive font (one that hopefully matches the poem’s style) and mounted on colored paper and laminated.  Some of them are in clear view and easily found–others are tucked away and only the more determined searchers will find them.

Throughout the month of April, children can fill out a form where they write down the first line of each poem as well as its title and author.  They also have to write down their favorite poem.  If they find 20 poems, they can come collect a gel pen…so they can write their own poetry, of course!  Some of them manage to do it a second time.

Then beginning April 15, the second phase of the poetry hunt begins, where any child who has completed part 1 can answer specific questions where you must find a particular poem to get the answer.   The prize in past years has been a notebook…so they can write their own poetry, of course!

It’s a very low-key, low-maintenance program that never fails to bring me joy, so I wanted to share it with everyone else who works in Youth Services and loves poetry too.  Here are some pictures from this year’s hunt.

posted by Susan at 4:49 pm | Comments (4)

January 27, 2009

Yay! It’s the ALA Awards!

The morning that the ALSC/YALSA Youth Media Awards are announced is one of my favorite days of the year!  In past years, I’ve watched the streaming video and enjoyed it immensely.  But this year was even more fun being there in person, hearing the cheers for my committee’s picks.  SO MUCH FUN!

I have to say that I am very proud of the work the Geisel Committee did this year!  It’s really odd to be on a committee with such a short history–this was only its fifth year.  But that was also a cool thing, because it made you examine very carefully what the criteria for the award were, what fit, and what didn’t.  I learned a lot about how children learn to read and what gets in their way.

We picked another Elephant & Piggie book for the gold medal.  It’s the nature of easy readers that every once in awhile, a very strong series comes along and magically hooks kids into reading, and we are privileged to be living in the time when Elephant & Piggie does just that.  Our Honor books make a very nicely rounded group of books: A picture book (One Boy), a nonfiction book (Wolfsnail), a very traditional easy reader (Chicken Said “Cluck!”, and a graphic novel (Stinky).  And yet I can assure you that balancing the honor books was not part of the criteria–we just picked the books that we thought worked the best on every level for new readers.

Calling the authors was fun too!  One author had never heard of the award, but was pleased nonetheless.  Mo Willems of course HAD heard of the award, and made this charming and funny response, date-stamped because he (and Trixie) were sworn to secrecy until the awards were announced.

Being on a committee like this is a ton of work, and incredibly rewarding.  I highly recommend joining ALSC, filling in those volunteer forms, and attending conferences.  It enriches you personally and professionally, and it enriches the library you represent, too.

posted by Susan at 7:05 pm | Comments (0)

December 17, 2008

Top Ten of 2008

Here is a link to my Top Ten Books of 2008 for children and teens.  The list was due in mid-October, and of course two months later, I’ve read many other fine books.  It really makes me wonder how valid anyone’s Top Ten truly is.  For me, it’s a snapshot of what I had read so far that I loved, but also wanting the list to have some balance between the different ages, styles, authors, and even publishers.  Without taking anything away from any of the books on my list, which I stand by as wonderful choices, here are some others that could just as easily made it onto this year’s list:

1.  Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd.  I didn’t hurry to try to read this because I knew I really wanted to include Dowd’s London Eye Mystery, but this one is at least as good, it turns out.  What an astonishingly well-woven story.

2.  The Underneath by Kathi Appelt.  This is a strong contender for the Newbery, with its gorgeous use of language and amazing reworking of the selkie tradition in folklore.  I listened to it instead of reading it, an especially nice way to appreciate the lyrical passages.

3.  Wave by Suzy Lee.  What a satisfying depiction of the way a child interacts with the ocean!  Since my fellow Top Ten-er Dave already included it on his list I didn’t put it on mine, but it’s a huge favorite.

4.  The Little Bit Scary People by Emily Jenkins.  Children are so often frightened by people and their eccentricities, and this playful reminder of how even scary-looking people might kiss their cats and dance with their children is likely to help kids not to judge quite so quickly.

5.  Impossible by Nancy Werlin.  This lush, romantic, and very smart novel about generations of women who give birth at age 18 and then go crazy is a great choice to offer the Twilight crowd, and a great introduction to a very fine young adult author.

That’s just a few more favorites that happen to strike me tonight!  I have a feeling by the time I’ve finished Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, that would make the alternate list as well.  You may notice that the second Octavian Nothing isn’t on my list, but that’s no reflection on the book.  Instead it means that the first one was so heart-wrenching that I keep chickening out and picking other books to start instead!  It has been an incredible year for young adult novels.  The other significant omission are any of the books that might be eligible for the Geisel Award for the best book for beginning readers.  I’ll have more to say about those in late January.

posted by Susan at 7:08 pm | Comments (2)

October 29, 2008

Faint praise

About a new fiction title, this Kirkus reviewer begins his/her review, “Modestly engaging, …”  Ouch!

posted by Susan at 8:43 pm | Comments (1)

Benjamin Franklin visits Niles

As you can see, Ben Franklin paid a visit to the Niles Public Library recently, in honor of a traveling exhibit the library is hosting all about HIM.  Ben mostly stayed in character, though did occasionally show a disconcerting knowledge of the score of the Bears’ game. 

At the exhibit opening, we were privileged to hear a quite inflammatory speech by Library Journal’s longtime editor John Berry.  Librarians as a group tend to be very liberal politically; Niles as a community tends not to be so liberal, so the crowd reaction was mixed.  He spoke about the role of libraries in modern times, and how they were still extremely imortant in the role they began with of helping to create an educated electorate.  He maintains that a good deal of the information that comes to the public has been corrupted by big business and special interests, and that the massive distrust of government is purely to benefit those trying to manipulate public opinion.  He sees the libraries as helping people sort out the good information from the bad.

Some in the audience were squirming and annoyed, but who can imagine that Ben himself wasn’t sometimes politically inflammatory?  He was a revolutionary, after all.  It was a great night.

posted by Susan at 5:56 pm | Comments (0)

October 14, 2008

Fare thee well, SATA!

I love Something About the Author.  I love all those pretty blue volumes sitting on the shelf.  I love learning about the authors, who are some of my very favorite people.  I love having the perfect resource when a student needs information about an author.

But I didn’t love it enough to keep buying it at $116 a volume for an increasing number of volumes each year.  I didn’t love that they started padding their content to increase their number of volumes.  I didn’t love that they began covering authors who hadn’t even published in the U.S.  And the last straw was the volume where they covered both Jan and Stan Berenstain, with multi-page bibliography for Jan Berenstain which they repeated a few pages later for Stan Berenstain.

The other thing I didn’t love is the same thing every Youth Services librarian doesn’t love.  All those pretty blue volumes are space hogs!  And so, at last, it is fare thee well to the whole 150 volumes. 

posted by Susan at 1:56 pm | Comments (0)

September 22, 2008

Learn from my mistakes

You know, when I started this blog, I thought of it as a way to share some of my experiences in 25 years as a children’s librarian.  I sort of forgot how often my experiences could be filed under the category “dumb mistake”.  Here’s another storytime one!

Everyone knows better than to get in front of a storytime group with a book you haven’t read before.  If you ever did, it would likely be a mistake you’d only make once.  But what you might forget is, you have to look at the actual copy of the book that you are going to read in front of a group.  It’s not enough to be familiar with the story–you have to have looked at the book’s physical pages.  Otherwise you end up with:

“Hey, Ms. Susan!!!!  There are scribbles on that book!”  “Oh, no!”  “Somebody scribbled on it?”  “Why did they do that?”

I valiantly continue:  “Leonardo snuck up on the poor, unsuspecting boy.  And the mon…”

“Oh, no!  More scribbling!”  “It’s blue!”  “They scribbled some more?”

“‘Oh yeah?’ replied Leonardo. ‘Then why are you crying?’  ‘My big brother stole my action fig…’”

Collective groan:  “Ohhhhhhhh, noooooo!”

Sorry, Mo Willems.  I feel this may not have been the most effective rendition of Leonardo the Terrible Monster ever.

On the bright side, at storytime the week before, The Hello, Goodbye Window was a huge hit!  So maybe next week will go more smoothly.  One thing is certain:  I will have checked every page of every book I am reading.

posted by Susan at 3:52 pm | Comments (0)

September 17, 2008

Biting my tongue

So far there’s only one drawback to being on the Geisel Award Committee.  Mostly, it is great.  You get to intensively study a particular area of children’s literature for a year, and how children interract with it.  Fun stuff for someone like me.

There is a drawback, though, and that is, when I get a really wretchedly awful horrible no excuse for its existence book that fits into the potential Geisel Award category, I can’t blog about it.  Sad.

posted by Susan at 8:20 pm | Comments (0)

Drowning in listservs

My listservs are going crazy right now.  Child_lit, CCBC, adbooks, and yalsa-bk have been dropping an amazing number of emails into my box, to the point where I can’t begin to keep up.  What kicked off the frenzy of posts?  The answer to that would be who rather than what:  Sarah Palin.

First came the intense round of discussion on whether or not one should use a listserv with 501(c)3 status to discuss politics.  Once it was officially barred on yalsa-bk, the discussion turned toward how perplexing it was for an organization that dedicates itself to protecting free speech to be telling its listserv members what they can’t discuss.  Then came the dozens of messages beginning “I know we’re not supposed to be discussing this, but…”  Interesting, but yalsa-bk is a busy listserv already.  Those YA librarians have a lot to say about books, programming, teenagers, and most especially about graphic novels.  Add politics on top, and a deluge of email results.

Child_Lit has always come in waves, where one day the only message will be “Is anyone there?” and the next someone will post a provocative comment and the members write back in force.  Ever since the announcement of Sarah Palin, one discussion flows into the next and the number of messages is just tremendous.  Interesting, again, but…I’m drowning!

I salute the moderators of adbooks and CCBC for keeping their discussions focused, though even they have had a hard time reining in some of the discussions.

What do you do when your listservs go crazy?  Delete without reading?  Unsubscribe temporarily?  Or do you just try to keep up with the volume and figure that it’ll die down eventually and you’d better enjoy it while you can?  That’s what I’m doing, but if it keeps up like it’s been the past couple of days, I’m not sure I can continue all the way till November.

Edited to add:  So far today, I have deleted 400 messages!  Sure hope none of those were from my coworkers that got mixed into the listserv tsunami.

posted by Susan at 8:13 am | Comments (3)

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