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July 20, 2007

Dear Ingram: Where Are My Harry's?

Friday afternoon, 2:00, the Niles Public Library District still has not received their promised 30 copies of Harry. The book processors are leaving for the day, and we still have no Harrys for them to process.

Next time there's a big book that people want instantly when it's open for distribution, I am ordering direct. Ingram, you have let me down, and I say that while still assuming that the UPS truck will be rolling up any second now. It's not like I didn't order the copies several months ago...

Update: 2:20

Posted by susan at 1:57 PM | Comments (0)

July 18, 2007

Girl Books and Boy Books

It works like a charm: whenever there is a 7th/8th grade boy standing in front of our service desk asking for a book off of the Rebecca Caudill list to read, the only available book is

This year's Caudill list (Illinois' children's choice award) seems to be the most divided ever between books that appeal to girls, and books that appeal to boys, with not a lot appealing to both equally. It's an excellent list with lots of good choices in general, but still...how did they end up with so many books that fall squarely in one camp or the other?

My instinct is that it fits with the whole princess fad in general. Little girls can wear pink from head to toe, often with sparkles, and their books have begun taking on that appearance too. Princess Academy is relatively restrained. There is also a huge surge in books about fairies, as you may have noticed, and of course the very popular Emily Windsnap to appeal to mermaid fans.

Then on the other side, we have the whole Guys Read phenomenon, which generally is a great thing--we have a display in our library filled with sports and dragons and adventure books and raucous humor.

But in general, I'm a little queasy about the way book jackets are signaling so strongly that a book is intended for a girl audience or has boy appeal. I reviewed the new Sharon Creech book for Horn Book , and made my 17-year-old son burst out laughing when I jokingly handed it to him out of my bag when he had asked for his own book. Yet over half of the characters in that book are boys, and there's no reason at all for them to have given it a cover like this:

Do they feel that the only way a book will sell these days is if it appeals to one group or the other? There was some complaint this past year that all four of the Newbery choices were girl-centered, character-based books with nothing there to appeal to boys. Are the books becoming more divided, or is it the audience? Are we telling girls and boys that they should be reading different books?

Posted by susan at 4:24 PM | Comments (2)

July 12, 2007

Keeping them reading

It's pretty easy to get kids excited about coming to the library to sign up for Summer Reading during a lively school visit. The harder thing is getting them to keep reading through the summer. Our goals here at Niles are:
~To keep children reading throughout the summer vacation to maintain their reading levels
~To encourage recreational reading
~To encourage library use
~To create a memorable experience

So our games are planned with that in mind--not that they just come through the door once to sign up, but that they keep coming back to the library. I am a big believer in counting the statistic "added visits" along with registrations and finishers, because every time they come through the library door is important.

The way we accomplish that is by setting up a game that is unveiled in stages. This year's game with the theme Mission Read began with astronauts off in a training station. Kids earned a turn on the game for every hour read, and they picked their favorite astronaut and took a turn. About two weeks into the program, an outer space mission was called: We were being attacked by robots sent by Pluto, whose inhabitants are mad that we said they weren't a planet anymore!

Game Board 2--the Outer Space Mission. Librarians and volunteers play the bad guys; kids play the good guys.

Game Board 2, section 2
Two weeks later, another section of outer space opens up with some new game spaces (found under the shiny squares which are velcroed on)

Scoreboard of Alliance vs. Plutonians

This lure of a new part of the story unfolding brings the kids back in droves, and I would really like to think that it also accomplishes the fourth goal--it gives kids a really memorable experience!

Posted by susan at 3:43 PM | Comments (0)

July 11, 2007

Harry Potter and libraries vs. bookstores

New York Times article
There's a lot of buzz in the mainstream press right now claiming that Harry Potter books have not changed the reading habits of a generation--that kids slow down in their reading as they get older in just the same way they did before.

First, I'm not sure I entirely believe it. I think the Harry Potter books clearly introduced a generation of readers to the idea that reading could be worth a certain amount of effort, and that all that practice has to have paid off in their reading skills. There's just no way to measure what they would have been like without Harry.

But it also strikes me--and I'll be the first to admit I'm prejudiced on this subject--that when the whole Harry phenomenon got taken over by the bookstores, some kids lost their chance to become introduced to the library as the source for other books that they might like too. After the second book came out and was SO phenomenally popular, bookstores jumped on the bandwagon in a huge way. Our library Harry Potter parties went from being crammed with excited attendees to having okay attendance, but not more than most other programs. The buzz was all with the midnight parties at the bookstores.

Libraries can't compete with the consumer appetite to get the next new thing NOW, and bookstores can. But it's a shame that some kids who might have found their way to the library through the Harry Potter craze got sidetracked into stores instead. I can't help thinking it might have made a difference for the kids to have formed relationships with library staff that might have helped them find their way to other books they might have liked just as well. Of course there are some wonderful bookstore staffs, but I will put a dedicated children's librarian up against most of them any day. Like I said, I'm prejudiced that way.

Posted by susan at 4:32 PM | Comments (2)