NSLS Blogs

Home » Blogs » Something Different Every Day

RSS

Something Different Every Day

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)

August 25, 2008

Facebook, YAs, and Adults

So yesterday I finally created a Facebook page.  I held off for a couple of years because it was initially something for students, and I felt like I would be horning in on something that was rightly the turf of my two sons.  But now, everyone has a Facebook page, and with the two of them heading off to college, I wanted to have access to the info they were sharing with everyone else.

But it does bring up the question we struggle with when we try to work with Young Adults, which is How do we reach out to them without intruding on them?  We sit in our meetings or write on our listservs about meeting them on their own turf, but the sad fact is that as soon as a library creates a page on whatever the hottest service is, it by definition is no longer that cool.

I think there are particular librarians who are sensitive and cool enough to be able to try to mix with YAs on their own territory without embarrassing anyone.  But I’m not sure about the rest of us…

posted by Susan at 7:16 am | Comments (0)

July 25, 2008

The prize dilemma

What’s the best summer reading prize? My answer to that used to be automatic: Of course you give them a book. Of COURSE! If you have a lot of money, you give them this:

If you have a more normal amount of money, you can only afford paperbacks so you give them this:

If you have superpowers, you give them this (and prepare for the stampede):

Those all look nice, don’t they? Especially the one that hasn’t even been published yet? But the bottom line is that while books make a wonderful reward for kids who like reading, they make a pretty bad reward for the kids for whom reading is a struggle. You know, the ones Summer Reading is trying to reach?

So libraries turn to things like t-shirts and bags, usually with the name of the theme and the library’s name on them, and they’re very cute!

But then, aren’t you sending the message with non-book prizes that now that they are done with that yucky old reading, they can have something they’ll like better?

Then there’s our other prize dilemma. Virtually everything we hand out as our daily prizes is small stuff made in China. After last year’s bendables painted with lead paint, that no longer looks as appealing. And one of our always favorite prizes, shiny satin sand animals, came this year with big tags stating “NOT A TOY”. Since the company listed it as a toy and didn’t mention their non-toy status on their website, that was a little annoying!

So for next year, I can’t decide. Do we get rid of concrete prizes for daily prizes and call it “Going Green”? What do you do with the little guys, who don’t understand the concept of coupons or working toward a bigger reward? I am just not sure, but I’d love to hear what other libraries are planning.

posted by Susan at 10:55 am | Comments (2)

July 3, 2008

ALA part 1: I paid for an ARC!

I couldn’t decide what to write about first, but hearing my son’s laughter coming from his room decided the question for me–I have to write about the first time I have ever paid for an Advanced Reader Copy.

Technically, I did not pay for my ARC of John Green’s Paper Towns, due out in October. Technically, I paid for a paperback copy of Looking for Alaska so I could get my free ARC of Paper Towns. But frankly, since I already own Looking for Alaska in hardcover, that makes it a “free” ARC.

I guess I can understand it. Brotherhood 2.0 (the video log between brothers John and Hank Green) generated a huge demand, as is demonstrated by the fact that I didn’t feel I could come home from conference without a copy or the local Nerdfighters might not let me in the house.

But still…they took a risk, making me pay for this. I’d better like this book, because now I’ll be cranky about it if I don’t, instead of just disappointed.

My other big score from ALA:
I have some good reading ahead! I love getting ARCs at conference!
Update: Resident 17-year-old says first 58 pages of Paper Towns are “really good”. He’s a sterner critic than I am, so that’s good news!

Update to the update: He slapped Paper Towns down and said, “The Printz”. I’m thinking that means he likes it. A lot.

posted by Susan at 3:10 pm | Comments (0)

April 24, 2008

No Child Left Behind @ your library?

I am back on my early literacy soapbox, thanks to the checklist someone passed to me of how library staff in one library system are being rated on their storytimes. The checklist is entirely based on Every Child Ready to Read standards. It includes things like: “Presenter makes connections between letters in children’s names and in alphabet book or book title”.

Reading is important. Building reading skills is important. Getting young children ready to read using the six skills of early literacy is important. But the most important thing is story.

Schools have to implement No Child Left Behind styles of teaching reading to get funded. But I think many of us in Youth Services would agree that focusing too much on the mechanics of reading is a huge mistake. Are we falling into that same trap in libraries?

It’s the stories that count the most. Story is fundamental iin humankind–it’s why we pass them along for hundreds of years. It’s why we tell them to our children over and over. Stories help children become loving, connected, ethical human beings by what they tell about how people relate to each other. (Often the “people” are animals in picture books, but it means the same thing.) Stories are also how children can broaden their experience out of their own family into the whole big world out there of the past and the present and the potential future.

I love building early literacy elements into the library space. And any good storytime provider is going to work the six early literacy skills into their story programs naturally, because books are made out of words and words are made out of letters and leading children into talking about the stories and predicting what’s going to happen are just the sorts of things you do while reading with children.

But you have to start with good stories. In my Storytime for Big Kids program this week (ages 4-K) these kids, like so many others I have worked with over the years, were amazed and delighted by Keiko Kasza’s The Wolf’s Chicken Stew. I could have spent a lot of time talking about how the wolf was making 100 of each food to feed the chicken to fatten her up; we could have speculated on whether the foods were nutritious or discussed if one of the children in the room had a name that began with W, same as Wolf….but all of that would have sidetracked the surprise that makes children burst out laughing, when the Chicken introduces “Uncle Wolf” to the 100 chicks he’s been inadvertently feeding.

It’s the story that counts. It’s the story that provides the foundation, and the phonological awareness, letter knowledge, print motivation and so on get swept in with that great belly laugh and the longing to read the story again and again. So please, put “Did the presenter use some great stories” on your storytime checklists. Otherwise, all we are providing is No Child Left Behind @ Your Library.

posted by Susan at 12:58 pm | Comments (5)

March 21, 2008

Library books are too scary!

Last weekend, a mother asked me to help her find some books for her preschool daughter that might persuade her that all library books are not scary. She explained that for her daughter, any book where someone expressed fear, or there were surprises, or someone got angry, were all very stressful. Even beloved Mister Rogers was scary to this little girl on the days when he covered subjects like “What do you do with the mad that’s inside you?

I tackled the subject enthusiastically, but a few shelves of books later I realized just how challenging the problem was for her. Almost all picture books have an arc to them, and most of the time, the peak of the book would be stressful to a very sensitive child. Think of how many books you’ve read where baby duck wanders away from mama duck, or where the curious dog goes out exploring and gets into trouble! For most children, it’s a good, healthy way to have a little tension that then gets resolved at the end.

For this child, though, the stress of the library books became too much for her, and she began to refuse to read anything that came from the library. She was okay with her own books at home, because she knew them already. She knew they would come out happily, so she could bear the stressful middles. But library books are unknown. Beneath all those beautiful covers lurk lost, scared, worried, or angry characters!

Adult readers, I think, sometimes worry too much about kids finding a book scary. But some of us go the other direction and worry too little about it. I realized in looking for safe, sweet books that most of the books I love to use in storytime would send this child screaming from the room–anything by William Steig, say, or Lilly spending time in the Uncooperative Chair once again. So this gave me something to ponder, and also a good idea for a new bibliography.

Here are a couple I gave to the mom, if you ever need some happy, safe reading for yourself or for a child:

It sure isn’t easy, being a kid!

posted by Susan at 11:41 am | Comments (1)

March 7, 2008

Desk blogs

I know it’s kind of annoyingly navel-gazing to blog about blogging, but I’ve been wrestling with our department’s blog so it’s on my mind.

I’d read before about the benefits of having a departmental desk blog, but it wasn’t until Kate Hall at Park Ridge generously opened hers up to the YLA Managers to see that I realized just how useful it could be. With a staff of eleven, we generate a fair amount of email traffic, and at Summer Reading time the volume becomes unbearable. Just one program can generate 5 emails as details get straightened out. You must make a decision with each email of Do I save it? Do I file it? Do I print it out? Do I delete it? Lots of times you don’t feel like making that decision at the moment, so the email stacks up and eventually you get the polite but threatening email from Computer Services that your emailing privileges may be cut off if you don’t whittle your mailbox down to a manageable size.

With the blog, it’s all kept, but it’s all searchable. You can give things categories and tags so you can turn up everything on a particular subject. You can add comments to the original post rather than writing a whole new one. And you can have a sidebar with all those pesky wiki URLs and the other info that becomes so hard to track.

The hardest part is going to be getting everyone to check it routinely. An aggregator is only helpful if people remember to check THAT. So if anyone has a brilliant idea for how to build that into everyone’s memory, I’d love to hear it, and I’d love to hear about how you are using your desk blog!

posted by Susan at 3:13 pm | Comments (0)

Next Page »