Does My Head Look Big In This?

Instinctively I have picked up a book that fits in perfectly (almost) with my cross-cultural theme: Does My Head Look Big In This by Randa Abdel-Fattah. The owner of the titular head has made the decision to wear the hijab, the headscarf worn by some Muslim women, in the middle of a school year. She realizes that this will only serve to make her stand out even more in her elite prep school in Australia, but she was inspired by Rachel on the television program Friends, when that character showed the courage to wear a hideous bridesmaid's dress at a wedding. Yes, it was just that lame. She made a decision about her faith and culture based on a sit-com episode, but such is the way life works, dunnit?

Appearing to be a challenging read at 360 pages, Abdel-Fattah manages to make this story (Amal is described as "hilarious" but not all that funny to me) warm-hearted, thought-provoking, and quick to read. All manner of Muslims (well, at least a nice cross-section) are portrayed from the Must Assimilate At All Costs to the This Is What Being Muslim Meant In My Village 20 Years Ago. Amal, the titular headowner, can get a bit shrill about what it means to be a modern, Australian-born Muslim, but she is just sixteen and if she didn't scream about how unfair everything was, how believable would she be?

This book is a good fictional introduction to Islam for the Clueless Teen. See? Amal is just like you, obsessed with boys, make-up, clothes (which ones go with her hijab), her hair (even if you can't see it anymore), zits, school, and the magazine Cosmo. Yes, it's a chick book, despite some token sports. We're dealing with the extreme emotions of the teen here. Even Adam, her male friend interest, is willing to talk about his feelings (although he complains about it). The story references the World Trade Center attacks and the bombing of the club in Indonesia. We see Amal cope with the fallout of the latter in the news, which have made her a lightning rod for the hostilities.

More tragically, she watches one of her closest friends badgered by her mother to stop spending so much time on her studies and pick one of the men being constantly paraded in front of her for a husband, get married, and have children. The girl instead has dreams of becoming a doctor, which her mother finds shameful. Her homelife is further darkened by her brother, who is into drugs, alcohol, and fast women. My reaction came right out of "Earth Girls Are Easy": Leave home, kid! It was not that surprising that she did, after being dragged home from a restaurant dinner party in honor of her birthday.

Being "hilarious," everything works out at the end. Polly-Amal helps bring her crabby neighbor and son back together. Okay, it's not as blatant as that. But will her "fat" friend finds true love without having to become anorexic? Will Amal's debate team win? Should Australia become a republic? Will Leila be found beaten and dead or will she return to her repressive home ... and then be found beaten and dead? Does Adam like Amal? Is she leading him on? Will she ever get over her big head? Tune in!

Being teen oriented, there is no shortage of angst, conflict, and pop culture references. On the whole, though, it's an interesting book and another great springboard for discussions on diversity and tolerance.

Melvin Beederman: Superhero

The Curse of the Bologna Sandwich by Greg Trine and Rhode Montijo.

At first I thought the author (The author writes the book, the author writes the book, Hi-Ho Librario, the author writes the book) had never been to Los Angeles, because the buildings aren't that tall, but that might just be my east coast elitism. Melvin Beederman is a superkid with more brains than superpowers. He can't always jump a tall building (even the ones in LA) in a single bound; it may take more. But unfortunately, he can always see everyone's underwear. And we all know how funny "underwear" is!
This first book in a series seems to be aimed at the Captain Underpants crowd. But there is a twist! There's a girl in it! What happens when Melvin graduates superhero school and goes to his first assignment (But I thought Los Angeles had a superhero!), only to lose his cape?
Rhode Montijo provides the amusing illustrations (The illlustrator draws-) of what is definitely a Melvin.

Testing

Attempting to embed video from YouTube to a post:

Put Down the Book! (and back away slowly)

Donna Washington in a rare moment of quiet and calm ...

The only thing I knew of worth attending SCLA for this year was the session with Donna Washington, storyteller, and I wouldn't have recognized it in the program if I hadn't gotten a note from my youthlib listserv about it. Why doesn't SCLA at least post vivid descriptions of the sessions on the website? They might not have all the info when the schedule is originally made up, but I went back time and again to find info about the sessions that would make me want to attend them and there was nothing. Friday at 9am only said, "Put down the book: YSS and Trustees, Cathy Pruett/Donna Washington" - that's it! The important bit, Donna Washington, was hidden at the bottom.
Anyway, I was really excited to go to her session and I wasn't disappointed. Donna Washington has been a storyteller since she graduated from college. She was pinpointed as a possible storyteller and then trained to be one. It is all she has ever done. She knows whereof she speaks.
Her first advice was to get a house husband (check!) if you can find one (amen!).
From birth to puberty, a child is geared to language acquisition. They watch the face and body, especially the mouth. (I start watching her mouth now.)
After puberty, they launch into sex mode and language learning goes out the window, but integration of language (collating) kicks in. So it's almost useless to have them writing papers before then.
It's important to look in the eyes of each of your listeners. This is something you can't do when you are reading from the book and your listeners can't look back because they're staring at the book.
They've probably heard your story or the book, but how are you going to tell it? What is this person going to bring that's new to a familiar story? Are you going to just use a flat face? Hope not. Physicalize the good, the bad, and the ugly. How you tell it is more important than what you tell.
Tongue-twisters: they're looking at the mouth and repeating what they hear. (Donna adds "purple" to the Peter Piper tongue-twister, improving the rhythm beyond all knowing. Try it:
Peter Piper picked a peck of purple pickled peppers. Somehow that one word makes it easier.)
The Economy of Gestures: choose your gestures and be consistent. Don't move all over the stage. It takes energy and makes the story into one about you running around. She never moves from the spot when she tells stories, but leaves the listeners with the impression she ran all over the stage.
You can be gigantic in a really small space.
Don't steeple your fingers or put your hands in your pockets.
She performed (with our help, of course) The Squeaky Door.
OMG! Look at that grownup doing that!
The Secret to Sound Effects: people will believe what it is if you tell them that's what it is. (Remember the moose on A Prairie Home Companion: Errrnnh! And the Eland: Errrnnh! and the wapiti: Errrnnh! and the springbok: Errrnnh!)
Don't let your accents fade out. Consistency again!
Just do it!
We performed a few simple activities: Telling a part of a story to a partner (from a short selected list) and then describing what you liked about what the other person did; telling a part of a story and concentrating on your movements (whoah! that was hard); and creating a sound effect and letting everyone else guess what it was. We have terrible trouble following directions, so this should prepare us for working with children!
A few simple rules:
Do not memorize. If you memorize, it sounds memorized.
Do not stop if you've forgotten something. (Yeah, and don't make a face either.) If you get lost in a story, ask the listeners. "Who knows what Epaminondas has in his hands now?" "Butter!" Yessss!
Do not bring a kid up to put in the story. The ones not picked will remember not being picked. :( If they can't do what you want them to do, they get embarrassed. It's cruel - just don't do it.
If you tell a story from another culture, be sure you know what it's about, especially if someone from that culture is there. Don't change it to make it make sense to you. "I can't believe you did that to that story!"
You will never have control over what kids are going to do or say. Live with it.
K through second grade will need to be told in advance that something is going to be scary. (Although, sometimes they freak out too much.)
Give kids opportunities to burst out by participating. Make it as interactive as possible.
Now this is really cool: you go to her website, and there you will see a link to BookHive, which is on the Charlotte-Mecklenberg Public Library site. At that location, you will be able to hear stories told by Donna Washington as well as other talented storytellers, along with suggested reading (if you like that story, you'll like this book!). Dang! PLCMC has all the great ideas! Double Dang!

Crafty Thursday

For the second week in a row I've been sub'ing in the Homeschooler program. They do a craft activity whilst I ruin their childhood with the 1947 Newbery award-winner Miss Hickory. I say ruin their childhood because wait until they get to the part where Squirrel - I can't go on. Oh, the horror! Already Squirrel has been eyeing Miss Hickory's head and popping up unannounced and uninvited in her bed (I'm not making this up, y'all!) to "keep her warm," he claims. It has become apparent that Fawn's mother is off to the local deer processor. Fawn's father is probably already on someone's wall. Miss Hickory is rendered homeless by a selfish chipmonk ("monk" indeed!). Poor drab Miss Hen-Pheasant has told her tale of abandonment by Cock-Pheasant, probably on account of her moping, lack of intelligence, and low self-esteem. Miss Hickory has advised her to throw the bum out if he comes back.

Fortunately for their sakes, the kids had these nice, colorful beads to play with while I droned on and on about this forest soap opera. Fortunately for me, their regular host will be back to finish this story about a little stick-woman who gets her head torn off by her down-stairs neighbor leaving her body to stagger about and come to the "happy" conclusion that it would never have to do any of that "hard thinking" again. This book is perfect for Halloween! It's chock full of horrors!


Carolyn Sherwin Bailey's Miss Hickory

Update on Sherman Alexie, 2007 winner National Book Award for Young People's Literature

I was catching up on my sex advice recently by reading my favorite advice column when I noticed a question about a Native American fetish that was answered by the above-named author. Because one of the most popular features of this blog seems to be reviews of YA books (notably Alexie's below), I'm not going to link to it, hilarious as it was. I'm sure, though, that any middle-schooler worth his or her cheetohs can track it down with no trouble. If anyone my age is interested, send me a note and I'll point you in the right direction.
All you middle-schoolers might be more interested in his book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian...considering there might possibly be something naughty in there, eh? Might actually be worth reading it - the whole thing, you know, not just culling my blog for plot information so you can fake a book report.
Who do you think you're fooling when you do that, eh? I bet you make your mom type it up for you, too, because you're too busy with soccer practice. When I was a girl, we used to have to cross the trackless mud floes to get to school, uphill both ways. We had to write our own book reports by actually reading most of the book and when I say "write" I mean actually write it out on paper with an actual pen we had to make from a quill off of an eagle we trapped with our bare hands (which explains why they were on the verge of extinction). Then we had to gather berries and crush them for ink, unless berries were out of season and then we had to use our own blood.
Where was I? Oh, yeah. We didn't have these fancy computer things when I was a girl where you could look up other people's homework and just cut and paste it into a document. Teachers actually taught stuff, too, instead of spending three quarters of the year teaching us to pass some stupid test to make sure no politico was left behind in the race for government funds. I went back for my 20th college reunion about (mumble mumble) years ago and one of my professors said that ours was the last class that could actually think. We challenged her on that. "Oh, you say that to all the alums!" we chided. "Nope," she said, "it's true. The students now can spew out facts, but they can't make sense of them or use them in any way. They can't draw conclusions."
So, what conclusion do I draw from this? Oh, man, our future is soo effed!

Stormpulse!

Main view ... oh no! There's Ike!


Maximum zoom on the area, with historical view (on the right) and forecast models (at left). Hi, Ike! Ike says: Hmm, Texas, Mississippi, N'Awlins - so many places, so little time!

First of all, I'm soooo happy that the Learning 2.1 blog is posting again! And what a cool site this is! Track your favorite storm! Check out the forecast models! Look up past storms! There are also satellite images, which I'd pull up and paste into here, but they'd probably make me throw up! This map is scary enough. It's reminding me of that video with the 500km asteroid hitting the earth.
I think I have to go lie down now.

It's the Big One! The Big One-Oh

This book by Dean Pitchford had a lot going against it. It's written by a Broadway "star" and songwriter. It has glowing comments by literary greats like Jamie Lee Curtis and John Lithgow on the front and back covers. As much as I'd like to trash this book for being part of the Famous People Who Think They Can Write Children's Books Conspiracy*, I'm afraid I'll have to admit that this is a cute book. There isn't even a huge amount of exaggeration in it, well, except that a nine year old would make "veal osso buco with shallots in a red wine reduction" ... or even be able to pronounce that. Y'all, I do know humor when it's presented. I suspect that bit (and the bit where his mom refers to it as "beef stew") was thrown in to amuse the adult readers. Other than the culinary exploits of Chef Charley, age nine, I can see all of this happening. Man, I can just hear the high-pitched squealing!
My child's heart aches for a kid with no friends. Hell, even I had friends as a child and I had to make new ones each time we moved. Charley Maplewood has to navigate the undertow of bullies, kid politics, and the unfamiliar choke-hold of puppylove, all of which Pitchford handles with humor and grace. His father is literally distant (working in another country) and unable to remember his son's correct birthdate. His mother is over-worked and has bad taste in boyfriends. And if he's going to learn about love from watching his sister in action, well, he's in for a rocky ride down the pike.
I would recommend this book for boys, because there's enough gross-out in it to appeal to them. Girls, of course, would read anything, but they'll relate to the depth of emotional development and even some, like Jennifer, Charley's unbidden admirer, will relish the ghoulish bits. I know I would think it was cool to live next door to someone who made special effects.

* I don't have anything against Curtis's books or Lithgow - but who died and made them Literary Critics? It's the Madonna and Katie Couric books that make me all frowny-faced when I shelve them, which isn't very often - ha ha ha.

The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt

This was in my shelf-reading area (along with Bully-Be-Gone, see below) and looked interesting. The jacket blurb reminded me of David Sedaris's story of his foray into Shakespearean acting when he was a kid. As the title indicates, it is typical teen hyperbole where everything is about them and their own petty problems. There are no wars. Holling is just the only non-catechism student in his class, causing his teacher to find something to do with him on Wednesday afternoons. Because she tries giving him away, giving him icky chores, and finally caves in and forces him to read Shakespeare, he thinks she hates him.
Schmidt must be my age or a year or two younger. I remember all this Viet Nam angst and I certainly heard about generation clashes (which just didn't happen between me and my parents but I knew it must be going on because I saw it on television). There are some things, though, that I'm pretty sure did not happen, but I guess had to be written this way for the sake of the story. I am from New York and while we had air-raid drills my kindergarten year (none of the "duck-and-cover" nonsense from earlier in the Cold War), it was all over after then, so I doubt it continuing in 1968. Teachers were not delivered telegrams about the life or death status of their loved ones in the service in their classrooms. Any right-thinking administrator would call the teacher to the office to be given news in relative privacy with adult support ... if indeed the message goes there at all.
And one other thing bothered me.
Mrs. Baker and Holling read together "The Merchant of Venice" and have a fine discussion about it. They discuss what happens to Shylock and Mrs. Baker finishes by telling Holling that this is the reason this play is called a tragedy. I flipped to the back blurb about the author to confirm what I had read about him before. He is a college English teacher. Shylock's position in society and his losses at the end of the play notwithstanding, "The Merchant of Venice" was classified as a comedy at its first printing. Today we might refer to it as a "problem play," but the merchant of the title not only doesn't lose his pound of flesh, he gets the girl at the end. It might be a tragedy for Shylock, but the play itself is not called a tragedy.
This does not spoil the overall book, which is chock full of pathos that brought this reader to tears even as she resisted it. The book is not without humor as Holling relates how he suffers numerous "humiliations" such as playing Ariel, a fairy, in a scene from "The Tempest." I have to agree that playing a fairy, even in a Shakespeare play, would sink a teenage boy's macho rankings in the herd, much more so with tights and feathers on his bottom. (I also heartily disbelieve that any performance of any Shakespeare would move his peers to tears, but that's why they call it "fiction." I'm beginning to feel sorry for Mickey Mantle, by the way, because of how he's used in fiction to symbolize all idols with feet of clay. I know he was an alcoholic and hardly Mr. Nice Guy to his fans. It just seems to be kicking someone when they're down or dead or otherwise can't defend themselves. Feet of clay is an important lesson to learn, but I'm just sayin' ...) There is also the sole Vietnamese student who has to bear the hostility of some and the "noble" support of others.
I finished reading the book while working out at the club. I'd done my limit on the cardio machines and got to the end of the story by walking laps on the track. You know it's a good (if manipulative) read if I lose track of how much time I've spent exercising while reading! I'm willing to set aside my little quibbles (not without airing them to make me appear smarter - say, aren't those standard achievement tests called the Regents exams? My sister sweated those each year and had to go to summer school one year because she flunked them!) to call this a Good Book.

OMG! If only I had something to say!

Last night I was going to check Twitter one more time (for some reason I didn't have my TweetDeck up - the TweetDeck allows me to arrange my twitty friend's posts in categories so I don't miss those direct ones and @malburns doesn't hide everyone else's tweets under a pile of his very useful and interesting links) when I saw again that someone was streaming live. It was @malburns. I know other "twits" who stream video live, for whatever reason, on the internet but when I went there, it looked like I had to be signed in to even see it and I didn't want to bother and didn't see the point, yadda-yaddah. What was different about last night, I don't know. Maybe it was that it was Mal and I've "met" him in Second Life at the BlogHer Conference and I pay so much attention to the links he posts on Twitter - I don't know. I clicked on that link as well and almost instantly I was seeing him trying to set-up a co-host, Tara. They were musing that no one else was watching. I immediately signed up and in two minutes I was logged in and was able to comment. I now have my feet wet in this live video streaming watching wheeze.
This morning, though, the message from Ustream.Tv was in my mailbox trying to tell me how easy it was to have my own internet broadcast. Ho ho ho.
Ho ho - oh, dear. I have an account now. I have a video camera (okay, I bought one for Bob to do videos of his guitar work - I have access to a video camera). I had thought I needed one of those special cameras and that it would be beyond my capabilities to ...
Now if only I had something to say!
It's not enough that no one reads my blogs (okay, some of you do), I want no one watching my broadcasts as well! But what do I do? My husband suggested a puppet show. Well, I mentally checked with all my puppets and they said they didn't know what to say either. While I realize that this hasn't stopped anyone else on the internet from posting anything, I do really feel I can't just do nuthin' and broadcast it.
Perhaps our library needs a storytime broadcast ... Hmmmmmmm. I see copyright problems with that. This sounds like a question for Carrie, the copyright maven in School Library Journal. Purpose of use of picture books or their stories: nonprofit and educational, but nature of work: published (some of it) and amount of work used: whole thing. Possible effect on market? Hmmmm. /me thinks back to former first lady of our state reading entire books on public radio and purses lips. It would be a live stream, not a recording. This is getting complicated.
Maybe I should just take my clothes off. People would "tune in" for that.

A Turnabout

Everyone is probably sick of the Digital Youth Summit notes, so I've prepared a short book review to provide the refreshing lime wedge to the notes' eye-watering tequila shot.
In what appears to be a series of the Misadventures of Millicent Madding, Brian Tacang (above), a former fashion designer, offers us Bully-Be-Gone. The titular character of the series, an unrepentant inventor named Millicent, devises a formula to fend off the middle-school bullies that make her life, and that of the rest of the smartypants crowd of multi-culturals, a living heck. She calls this formula ... well, "Bully-Be-Gone," but it unfortunately backfires by making the bullies romantically interested in their former victims which, at least for middle-schoolers, is even worse than bullying. I must say that I find the group of kids with mult-cultural backgrounds in children's books to be utterly unrealistic, but this isn't a realistic story, so I'm going to let Tacang get away with it.
Although it's my opinion that Tacang is trying a bit too hard to be funny, especially with the names (such as Uncle Phineas Baldernot), some of this is actually amusing. One could only hope for a librarian with Shakespeare and Toni Morrison tattooed on her well-developed biceps, and I was particularly taken with the cross-dressing English teacher. Oh, sure, it was the monthly Greats Of Literature class and Mr. Templeton was dressed in period costume (big skirt and hat - this must be where the fashion designer bit comes in), but ... Oh, never mind. I just love a man in a dress. What a great middle-school this must be! If only I had children, I'd send them there.

Digital Youth: Part III, Tweens

Again, if my notes here are too much for you, the podcast for this portion of the summit is here. I don't blame you at all - it's taking me three, no, four days to transcribe my notes!

Anastasia Goodstein came back at us in the afternoon, tonsils blazing. I don't know how she does it. The topic was the same, but skewed to the Tweens age group.
We are immigrants and they were born into this internet/tech world. They work intuitively (banging away until it works). We might delicately consult a manual [yeah, I used to do that - now I just bang away]. We might dig for more information and they don't bother. "Privacy Settings? What are those?" They don't look for settings to tweak.
1. Phone.
35% of Tweens own a cell phone because they want what their older siblings have and they get it because parents are afraid since 9/11 and want to be in contact. There are companies and services just for Tweens, with parental controls, such as the Firefly Phone. They view the phone as an extension of themselves, as a new kind of watch or alarm clock.
2. Computer/Internet
They use them for games, memory games. The digital divide still exists, but it has narrowed. It's a good thing to have some blocking for younger kids and Tweens, but keep the social sites open.
3. Portable Gaming Device
Tweens are still looking at their parents for cues. The desire to stay connected with friends is strong and universal. We had our landline friends after school. They text and call their crushes continuously. IM is more important to Tweens than Teens.
They're into WebKins Mail and MySpace (yeah, they aren't supposed to be on this, but they are). They use e-mail to communicate with adults. Tween e-mail addresses and handles are often wildly inappropriate (hotchicksexy44). Make sure they fix those handles if they want to communicate with adults for babysitting jobs, teachers, etc.
Gosh, do they ever talk to each other in person? Yes, but texting is just as meaningful. And it's easier to share digitally, can say more, can say things you can't say to a face.
Younger kids are online, but not as much as we think. Heavens, they're even reading books! Girls and multi-cultural types more likely to be reading non-textbooks.
They time is more planned out, less time to hang out and be kids.
More than 1/4 of age 13 kids have social site profiles. There's a law that companies/sites can't save info on users age 13 and under. Easy to lie about one's age and create multiple profiles. They want what the older kids have.
They're on MySpace and message boards.
Beinggirl.com - a commerical Tampax site - hang out and chat!
Virtual Worlds: There has been an explosion in the population here. 100+ live or in beta. Some are independent communities and some are commercial, such as: Disney, Nickelodeon, other tv-related virtual worlds (half of the most popular sites are these), Lego, Barbie Girls, Brats, Webkins, Club Penguin ... and more coming because these are really effective with the tween demographic. They are playing games on them and not socializing as much as teens and adults. Same idea as our paperdolls: penguins or Barbies, you put clothes and things on them. [Same with my avatar in Second Life, but I can radically change her look to almost anything: man, dinosaur, something teensy, something huge.]
The language on these sites is filtered and often moderated. You can only use certain words. But tweens are ingenious at getting around this.
Projected population of 8 million to 20 million 2007-2011 in virtual worlds.
Being a tween is about experimenting with identity. Most tweens go online pretending to be someone else. They customize the technology to reflect their identities. Celebrities play a big role, as well as special ringtones for their phones, wallpaper, icons, and twinkly fonts. Tweens really care about the environment, and this will show up as well. [Programming idea?] They lard up their MySpace profiles, shocking our sensibilities by the way they express how they see themselves ... today. Tomorrow, I guess, they can find All New Ways to shock us.
They love to use widgets and comment on blogs. Boys mostly like to upload video. Tween boys like videos that gross out or are about falling down. Girls prefer performance videos: nailing that perfect handstand. YouTube is a favorite site; Kidsbop hosts videos as well.
Validation, Fame, and Fortune:
Tweens have a gap in their sense of privacy and what is for public consumption.
This again, is blamed on the advent of reality tv, which they grew up on and are the biggest consumers of these programs, even if they are aimed at adults. They are used to a public confessional booth, baring souls and sharing frustrations. They now have their own tools to do this themselves. We used to write our deepest feelings in a diary we kept locked; they put theirs in a blog. What they share takes our breath away.
They don't think how this will affect future employment (as babysitters or even farther in the future), but if employers start eliminating applicants based on their blog content, they will soon run out of employable applicants.
Everyone has their own person brand. They are creating media that is successful with their peers (because we are horrified).
One speaker started designing websites for her friends, next she had to hire her friends to help her. At age 17 she was a sponsor for Anastasia's speaking engagement.
There's a successful 15 year old podcaster. [Granted, they aren't tweens now, but they were when they started out.] These kids who are really driven are exceptions.
Validation comes swiftly, if not that coherent.
The Dark Side:
Cyberbullying is a problem. It's just so easy to be more cruel in the anonymity of being online. This happens most with middle-schoolers, just like offline bullying. They are afraid to tell their parents or other adults because they might lose their computer privileges. 30% report online bullying; 54% report offline bullying. 16% of that 30% report that someone intentionally posted something mean about them online. The only positive note is that the tools are their to block online bullies.
Tweens are entirely too trusting and share passwords. This makes it easy to flame ex-friends (dropping friends happens all the time at that age). Other tweens can get into their ex-friends' sites and spend all their virtual money or destroy their virtual weapons, etc. They can create an "Anastasia's A Slut" page; stuff like this spreads faster than offline cruelty, making it a much bigger deal.
This online cruelty between peers is a more frequent threat than predators. It's not just in the hallway anymore.
Librarians can lead the assault on this by teaching digital ethics. Teachers are overworked, having to teach to tests, the sites are blocked in schools.
Tweens are the most marketed-to generation. Anastasia is a Gen-Xer and she doesn't remember anything like this from her youth. After the clamp down on ads for sodas, cereals, and candy on tv, these have been moved to the internet sites where kids play games.
Kids are used to googling for schoolwork. They excel at finding, but not at evaluating credibility. Library databases are not keyworded the way Google is and it's harder for them to learn (so they don't bother). They don't know how to evaluate what is credible information. So, if you teach them to edit a Wikipedia article, they will learn that any dufus can do this. You can show them Wikiscanner, and make another teachable moment.
While they can't drive real cars, they can go online and outfit a Scion on Whyville. And, if they miss clam payments on it, their virtual car is virtually repo'd. [Cool! An important lesson!]
Ask them what sites they go to, why they go, why they are fun. There are more and more all the time. Have them show you how to do it. They will laugh at you, but will be glad to show off their expertise. You can use that for another teachable moment - asking about privacy and ethics.
Tweens are continuously text messaging. They only use e-mail with the dinosaur adults. Have to point out that IM/text messaging shortcuts are fine for that, but don't look good on an English paper. Teach them active reputation management.
Tweens are more comfortable screwing up online. [Perhaps they'll make teflon presidential candidates.] They need to know that their real names should go on thoughtful comments and intelligent blogs for future employers to find.
As librarians in the avant garde, we need to talk to the Luddites among us and stop dropping names like Pownce, Twitter, etc. [Second Life] and making them dizzy and resentful [and giving them headaches].
We should take more time to educate than to legislate.
Question period:
Question about putting out TMI (Too Much Information). Answer: Well, sometimes when you put personal stuff out, it helps someone.
Tweens as 9 to 14 year olds? Yes, they run the gamut on maturity levels. However, children under the age of 8 do not understand what advertising is - they can't recognize it.
Sharing in previous generations was keeping diaries and journals, but not really "shared" outside of that. We took photos all the time, but didn't put them up for all the world to see. Kids now will undress and take pictures of themselves. Their peers call that being a "camwhore." Pornography is becoming a part of mainstream culture. Witness the "Pussycat Dolls" [Wha-at?! I looked this up and it's apparently some sluttier version of the Spice Girls?]. Girls like to look sexy and pose sexy. [Note: There was a photo of Shirley Temple as a child posed like Betty Grable from a 3/4 rear. This is not terribly new, but more widespread. The writer Charles Dodson (Lewis Carroll) took nude photographs of children, which was apparently common in Victorian times and allegedly innocent of sexual content.] These photos are taken for boyfriends, not the creepy pedophiles. They get out virally, though, which Anastasia finds disturbing.
Kids find ways to get access to the internet from their mobile phones,not laptops.
They need to learn to manage their online reputations, use sources appropriately, to help them get in the workforce. From celebrity culture they've learned how to virally promote themselves, a valuable skill, sought after by marketers.
There was a kid in Oregon, who was totally unpopular. He started a t-shirt company and studied what made people buy them. He figured out that kids liked cool party pictures of themselves, so he went to parties (lord knows how someone so unpopular got invited), took high quality pictures that the kids couldn't do for themselves [at this point I realized that this is, OMG!, what I do in Second Life.], and created a brand around "Pretty Ugly." Once he'd established himself and his "brand" this way, he used that to sell tees. He is now the "cool" kid.
Different carriers/agreements/plans make mobile social network difficult. Some kids are using the "Sidekick" with friends, but not having that system cuts other kids out, creates a barrier. The cost is coming down. What kids really want is the iPhone and smartphones in general. This wave is coming. Europe and Asia already have this.
Parents get all bent out of shape over technology because they don't hear about it until the news has a story about someone getting into trouble. They don't see the value. Should have programs for parents to see what is good about the technology. It's hard to get parents to come out at night, so Anastasia points out that her book is "really easy to read - ha ha!"

After this, Charlotte-Mecklenberg had a presentation on things they have done in this area that they are proud of. They brought up the "Boys Read" blog and then my feed got cut off. Bummer! This Digital Youth summit had a lot of great and useful information, that may have been more useful if I had been able to see the slideshows. Then again, maybe, being so busy taking notes, I may not have had the time to appreciate the slides anyway.

Digital Youth, Part II: Megan Deana

The second speaker in the morning was Megan Deana from Global Kids. Megan started out with a degree in computer science and then moseyed to education (presumably because she'd be making too much money in computer science) and got a job through LinkedIn that led her to the non-profit group, Global Kids, whose mission is to transform urban youth into successful students and global and community leaders by engaging them in socially dynamic, content-rich learning experiences. Ninety percent of their students graduate from high school. Digital media is just a part of this.
Megan works with the Online Leadership Program, a student-centered program, which leads the kids to things they need to know in order to be successful, collaborating with different kinds of people. They learn about global issues by building and playing socially conscious video games. They spend the 1/3 of the first semester discussing what topic they want to cover. They learn what goes into making a game by partnering with a game designer professional [Don't think our library can manage that].
One group created "Ayiti: The cost of life" where players help a Haitian family living in poverty make decisions in work, education, etc. to better their situation. [Far cry from the 1960s board game about living in a ghetto, eh? I remember going straight into prostitution on that game.]
Another program is the Virtual Video Project. They do a machinima video on a topic of they're interested in. They meet twice a week, lured in with subway tickets and snacks. They learn storyboarding, scriptwriting, character development, and set designing (digitally, of course, because this is machinima). Example is "A Child's War" - where they interviewed experts and put together a fictionalized account using Second Life. They learned presentation skills, pitching their ideas to Ashoka Youth Ventures.
Global Kids guides the kids, facilitating not teaching.
They learn how to create a "safe space" in which to interact, and decide their own rules on this, defining respect as no cursing, no put-downs, no weapons [well, duh!].
Use a technique called the human barometer, where spaces are set out (say, on different levels) for "for," "against," and "undecided." And they have to explain why they are moving from one level to another.
There is a Ning for educators interested at RezEd: the hub for learning and virtual worlds.

Digital Youth Conference Part I

BlueWings uses her voice chat to stream the audio from the Digital Youth summit into SL. I type notes madly trying to keep up.

If you don't want to bother with my notes, the podcast for this part of the summit is here.

Today I attended the Second Life (I know, I know) herniation of the Digital Youth summit at ImaginOn in Charlotte. The keynote speaker was Anastasia Goodstein. Goodstein is the author of Totally Wired: what teens and tweens are really doing online http://www.totallywiredbook.com/. Her blog, YPulse http://www.ypulse.com/, is a leading media, technology and youth development information source, and School Library Journal recently published Goodstein's article What Would Madison Avenue Do? Marketing to Teens. http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6555544.html

[Cribbed from Deborah Hotchkiss's promotional e-mail]

We had some technical hiccups to begin with, but then got the stream of Anastasia's speech fairly clearly. I took notes like mad, but I wasn't always able to keep up. Anastasia gave a presentation on Teens in the morning and one tailored more about Tweens in the afternoon. Also speaking in the morning was Megan Deana of Global Kids, a non-profit group working with urban youth and digital media.

Megan Deana of Global Kids

Anastasia began by describing SL to the attendees, who, if they were familiar with SL, would be listening to the conference in the comfort of their own homes wearing sweatpants and petting their kitties. Ahem. She was describing the Teen SL as a teaching tool. She went on to talk about social sites (such as MySpace and Facebook). Teens are too savvy to talk with creepy over 50s that could be either librarians [got me nailed there] or predators. They don't want to hang around authority figures of any sort. They want to interact with other teens, preferably ones they already know. But their lives are not constructed to hang out with friends, like our were. Teens lead highly structured lives where they have more lessons scheduled outside of school or sports activities. The places where they used to hang out, such as the malls, are becoming more restrictive. The bad behavior of a few teens has eliminated a real world space for them to meet. One of the few ways left to hang out with their peers is through social sites or mobile devices. And these are becoming increasingly popular.

Picture youself as a teen and recall the music you listened to. [I know I listened to the radio while doing my homework. There are certain songs that can whip me back to particular times of my life faster than an SL teleport ... when it's working.] Music is something very important to teens and young people. Choosing favorite songs and artists helps give them identity. MySpace started as a place for 20-somethings in the arts to display their wares. Teens are always interested in what the 20s are doing (the way that Tweens are interested in what the Teens have), and they were lured in by their favorite musicians. Then the Teens co-opted it for their own use, making contact with each other and displaying their individuality (personalizing their profiles).

Most teens (about 55%) use social sites like this. They are starting to migrate from MySpace to Facebook because of the rampant spamming and commercialism in the former (partially from being snapped up by Fox and forced to generate real revenue). Facebook started as a place for Harvard students to connect. Then they grudgingly opened it up to other Ivy League schools. It was meant for college students, but their teen siblings saw them using it and wanted in. Besides, authority-types (such as the police and parents) had cottoned on to the party bulletins that were sent out on MySpace. Many parties were being busted. Now even us common folk can join to make contact with old and new friends. Facebook tends to attract the more upwardly mobile, "college type" people while the Other Folk tend to stick to MySpace. Facebook was meant for people who already knew each other [although recently I've been receiving messages acquainting me with people I might know, based on the friends lists of people I do know whom I can add to my list of friends. That is still pending on their approval, though.] Despite the influx of teens, the over 40s are the largest growing segment of the population on these sites. Most teens have profiles on at least 2 sites.

Other social sites that are growing quickly: myyearbook.com, Beebo, skonex (??) tagged.com.

Teens are also all over the virtual worlds. Teen SL is one, but it's not the most popular and tends to be more for the nerdy types who enjoy scripting, etc. They are predominantly male and mostly have parents in the SL maingrid. Other, more popular worlds: gaia online, zwinktopia, hammahotel [don't quote me on this stuff - I didn't have a powerpoint in front of me], virtualhills (and MTV virtual world that eventually moved to gaia because that's where the teens were). The virtual worlds are the new chatrooms. MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft are too much crowded with content to be places to chat. You're busy helping your team achieve some goal to talk about the latest music. [And this is why Linden Labs and IBM have been working on allowing avatars to cross platforms, so that you can slay dragons in WoW and then cross into SL, which is rubbish for gaming apparently, to a bar and boast to your buddies, possibly bring the head of the victim with you.] 24% of children/teens will use virtual worlds monthly, making them not nearly as popular as the social sites.

Identity: It's all about who am I and how am I different from my wretched parents. And they have no taste, most of them, at this age. Their profiles are littered (or perhaps glittered) with these expressions of individuality. The way we had individualized our lockers [those of us who bothered - can't say I did], they find crazy fonts and widgets for their profiles and special ringtones and wallpaper for their mobile phones.

While some kids just use sites for socializing, others make them altars to their interests. They make mash-ups, and Anastasia used as an example the craze last year for making your own video for SoulJa Boy [video on this link explains it all]. If you go to YouTube, you'll find hundreds of versions where kids do the dance themselves or they set Dora the Explorer or SpongeBob video to the song. Crank that! [Apparently the new In Thing is to make a parody of Katie Perry's "I Kissed a Girl."]

Validation, Fame, and Fortune: Today's teens feel differently about privacy that we did and do now. Anastasia blames, I mean, traces this back to reality tv shows. They are used to seeing real people using the camera as a confessional. They share their most personal thoughts and feelings in blogs and on video. Using Paris Hilton and her sex tape as a paradigm, they feel such exposure only makes someone more famous, more notable, and they don't see it as the end of the world. Anastasia opines that if employers start eliminating hires based on their Facebook pages, they would soon run out of viable candidates. The emphasis today is on celebrity (Top Model, etc.) and not so much on how you achieve it. They seek instant validation, which the technology can provide. How many views on YouTube this past hour? [Erm, or who's looking at my blog through lijit.com.] She gave examples of teen entrepreneurs becoming famous behind the scenes, so it's not all just for notoriety.

Education and School: Nickelodeon proposed taking the internet away from kids for a week and asked what they missed most. They claimed they were unable to do their homework. [A likely story!] When the computers go down in offices, the Babyboomers say, "Go get a pencil and do some brainstorming," and the GenYer's say, "We can't do anything - let's go to Starbuck's." Teens are great at getting information, they just don't have the patience to sift through the first five hits. They're great finders, but not memorizers [Now they keep their memories outside of their skulls?]. They depend too much on Wikipedia without thinking about any editing going on there. Corporations can edit Wikipedia to suit themselves. This can be tracked on Wikiscanner. Teens don't realize they can be manipulated.

Anastasia considers the blocking of social sites at schools (and some public libraries) to be a travesty. This means that there is no way for teachers to show them how they can be used better, safer. Teens are on their own, like in Lord of the Flies.

Teens are media multi-taskers; they'll have everything going at once. Homework, four browser windows open, music playing, IM popping in and out. The tv networks are terrified. They still read what's left of the teen magazines. They want shorter, bite-sized entertainment, like the webisodes. Prom Queen was a story in segments less than one minute long. They are the most-marketed to generation. They totally "get" brands. They brand themselves.

Things to do:
1. Survey your teens. [We are told over and over and over to ask people what they want, but do we do it? No. We decide what they should have and then get all frustrated that they aren't grateful and don't show up in droves. Again and again this happens. We know this, we've been told this by experts, and we never never never ever do it!]
2. Teach them reputation management
3. Teach them to recognize ID product placement, when something is not a straight-forward ad, but is sneaked into content.
4. The trailblazers need to evangelize - reach out beyond your trailblazing peers.
5. Support efforts to unblock social media in schools (and public libraries where it occurs)

Questions:
We weren't able to hear the questions asked (next time let's instruct the speakers to repeat them because I'm sure even all the people on location were able to hear the questions). There was a question about inappropriate relationships with the teens. Anastasia suggests you be available to teens, but not friends. Have your own friends and professional contacts, not teen friends.
Webblogged [couldn't find] has lists of books on using social networks and tech for education, also extensive blogrolls for online reference.
Kids want more and better cellphones because they want the internet available on their cellsphones. [OMG]

Meet the New Frog!

Elmerthefrog, tentatively identified as a Gray Tree Frog (click on photo for link to information).

We have a new frog in the vivarium. I caught Elmerthefrog on my patio. As usual, my cat Collage found the amphibian for me. She also lets me know when there is a treefrog at the front door window. The treefrog, however, is a bit smarter than this chap. I was probably only able to catch Elmerthefrog because when I got the mason jar and opened the screen door, the screen door pinched his foot to the glass door. I was horrified to see the frog's form splayed out on the glass and reclosed the screen to set it free. Wounded, he was easy prey.
When I put him in the vivarium the next day (he was reluctant to leave the jar, but I upended it in the tank and eventually he let go), he went right for the same rock the leopard frog lives under. I spend hours showing kids the frog that lives under the rock and explaining "nocturnal" to them. "When we turn off the lights and go home at night, he probably comes out and has a big party!"
We also have tadpoles (both toad and frog, I think) and we're watching the back legs appear on the toad ones. This is so exciting and the kids love it.
Why do we have this in the library? Just an attraction? Well, this enables us to speak to the shy child. We don't have to look directly at each other. We can both focus on something in the tank and talk about it. Having been a shy child (oh, sure, I know none of you believe this), I understand how important this can be, to get a child started talking.
The original idea had been to have a bunny, but frankly, if a frog or toad croaks (so to speak, ahem), it's no big deal to me. We had Mr. Toad for two years. Then he "went home." One astute little girl responded to that euphemism recently with, "You mean he died." Yes, he died. Then he was taken "home." If a bunny "went home," I'd just freak. It would be the same as one of my cats dying, and I didn't take that well either time.
I also don't have a big problem when one of the "pets" (say, the crawdad) eats one of the others (say, the ubiquitous and mostly useless mosquito fish that people optimistically put in their ponds, etc. hoping they will eat mosquito larvae but in fact they eat anything that wiggles, including their own babies and the babies of more interesting fish and amphibians). My lovely co-workers go on and on about "murder" and "ichthycide" and it is a little gross when the crawdad rips the head off of a small fish, but it's interesting, too, ya know?
The crawdads are endlessly fascinating. I brought one huge one in I found in my street. You read that correctly, it was crossing the road and, I might add, it raised its puny front claws threateningly at my car! I drove home, got a gallon pickle jar (handy thing, those!) and a pancake flipper and went back to get it. It was all clumpy on the bottom of the tail and I thought it was just muddy (they are called "mudbugs"), but it turned out to be hundreds of perfect miniature baby crayfish! What a great display that made! Once in the water in the bottom of the jar, the babies let go and swam all over. If I jiggled the jar, they reattached to the momma. I was able to return them to the pond the next day.
That was just a pickle jar and some local fauna! We also have walking sticks at my house, so I put them in the giant pickle jar and bring them in for a day or so. Not only does this help communicate with kids who look on adults with the wary eye, but it may even give them a subject to read about: animals, bugs, pets, biomes ... the list goes on.
Get some critters in your library!

Absolutely True

Ohhhh, some of these YA books really are good. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (like American Born Chinese*) is a book I might even be able to read again. Never has tragedy been so funny. Sherman Alexie writes a humerus-tickling, duct-milking story of a Spokane tribe kid who leaves the rez to save his own life. The rampant alcoholism that destroys his people (belying Tolstoy's axiom that all unhappy families are unhappy in different ways) is treated with the same deftness as the vagaries of his adolescent erections. Ellen Forney's cartoons/illustrations capture the whimsical pathos of Alexie's prose. I'm sitting here at the Children's Room desk wiping the last of the tears away. Where else can you find basketball, comics, and Tolstoy all mixed together?
AbTrue and American Born Chinese join with The Watson's Go to Birmingham - 1963 in a bittersweet minority triptych sure to rock the discussion house for any youth book club of over-privileged, pasty white kids ... and maybe some not so privileged ones. These are the experiences of American kids, realistic kids anyone can relate to, each one's story told by a master of his craft. Each one leads the outsider quietly towards empathy.
* see review below

Go Lijit!

Aside from blogging about the BlogHer conference, I decided to take a babystep toward giving a higher profile to my blogs. I can tweet about it, plurk about it, pownce on it ... and another idea that was given, was to link up with lijit.com and get an idea of how many people visit my blog and what they are actually reading. As far as I know, Julie (Hi, Julie!) is the only person (she's not, Hi, Tammy!) who reads this blog and she even leaves a comment now and then. This inclines me to read hers. But I'd really like to know, in a general sense, if there are any other people reading my blog, etc., but just not leaving comments.
I have information like this on Flickr, and I found it fascinating. I check it every morning. What photos were looked yesterday? How many times? Were they direct traffic? Did someone post my photo on their site? Dead useful info!
So I signed up for this lijit thing. Wheee! Take a look below!These are my ligit stats.
Ooo, a pie chart! Doncha just love those? There's a graph showing the number of hits my sites (the ones I've included) get every day (oooo!), the pie chart breaking it down into sources (how many googled? how many direct?), a list of the locations in the world that accessed my sites, and a handy map showing the viral spread of the marfnet! See the little dot off the coast of China? Who could that be? (Hi, Marleeeeeene!)
There is also a widget, the lijit "wijit," that will search a list of your included sites. No one has used that yet. I might at some point, when I've lost track of what I'm writing about where. This is embedded in my blogs.
Another really useful statistic is a list of popular search terms. What were they looking for when they found your site? Information like this will help me pander to the lowest common denominator - mwah-ha-haaaa! - and tailor future blogs to lure in the unsuspecting, people who really are looking for someone named Richard Hertz (Dr. Dick to the rest of us).
I really enjoy this tool! (Hee! I said "tool"!)

Pants On Fire

Live video feed in Second Life from the BlogHer '08 Conference in San Francisco. By the second day, the feed from the conference was much better and the closing session was only interrupted once. They promise to do even better next year

"But you promised, you say. You swore you were moving all this icky Second Life crap to another blog and we wouldn't have to see it anymore!"

Calm down, calm down - this isn't about SL (well, it is; but in for a penny, in for a pound). This is a report on the conference I attended which just happened to have herniated into SL. It was the BlogHer '08 conference for women bloggers. I have a blog (okay, I lie again, I've got about five ... or so ... I've lost track), I'm a woman (or perhaps I just play one in SL), SL attendance was FREE (and we know how I love that word) and I thought "what the hey!"

Panelists for the Blogging SL session and some of the attendees (note wheelchair accessibility).

In the beginning, we had some technical problems. The feed from the live conference ("live"? what's that?) in San Francisco kept cutting in and out. After the intro and keynote came the break-out sessions and there were some specially devised for SL. Over the course of two days I attended the Blogging and Second Life, Second Life and Security, and Using Second Life for Good (not Evil) sessions. Just like any other session in Real Life (tm) there is a panel that discusses their experiences and then the attendees were allowed to make comments and ask questions. In most cases, the panel operated in voice chat (except when their transmission was icky and then they did text chat). To keep things reasonably organized, the attendees used text chat. In one of the sessions, someone transcribed the voice chat for the technologically impaired. I wish someone had done that at one of the Info Island conferences when I didn't have voice chat when I was unable to hear anything. I was working directing people to the correct sessions and had hoped to be able to attend sessions, but that was verklapft. Now my system can handle voice chat. Whee!

While Lludmila is all dressed up and professional-looking, her typist is in sweatpants, unwashed hair, and probably picking her nose.

While at the conference, I mini-blogged the experience on Twitter, annoying all the people who follow my tweets, no doubt. I noticed Lexi did this all the time and it annoyed me until I saw how useful it was. Yes, I could take notes and I could probably share them, but I was able to share bites immediately with my "posse" and get comments back from some of them, one who had already tried an internet tool I mentioned in a tweet.

This is a wonderful tool that our State Library should employ so that more librarians can attend conferences and workshops. There is no driving time or distance involved, a much smaller carbon footprint, no parking, no overnight stays, no per diem. Of course it is always better to be there live, but this not only saves time and money, it's just dead cool.

I will add more info on the conference on my SL blog so that those who are interested (ha!) can read it there and the rest of y'all are off the hook.

My Latest Addiction

I've tweeted on Twitter, I've Plurked, I've Pownced and I've tried to aggravate/aggregate/whatever them into FriendFeed or Plaxo and from there to Facebook so I'm not stretched flatter'n a 'possum on I-75, but not until I ran across Swurl from a comment by a Plurker (I can just see y'all wincing out there) did I really fall in love. I have no use for this thing, but gosh and by golly it's beautiful! Notice how much better I'm getting at profile pictures ... well, artier anyway.
This is by far the prettiest of the Swurl pages. There are two others, one for my feeds and another for the feeds from my friends - and boyoboy is there a long list of friends/contacts! I linked up with just about everything I had and it found my contacts on each one and then matched them up to the contacts' other pages on other sites. That looks to be a bit much, but I can also click on just the Swurl link for someone and look at that, or just the Flickr link for them and peer at that. So, if I were limited to a quick peek at just one site, I think this would be it.
There is also a way to comment on any of the entries, even my own. And off to the right is a space for "conversations," which I haven't had yet. I've only had time to put comments on two things so far.

Just look at the timeline above! It's a mosaic of the content that I've added to mini-blogs and Flickr and YouTube. /me just swoooooons. /me also comes to the conclusion that she spends far too much time on Second Life.

The Amazing Something-Something of Octavian Nothing Part Whatever

I give up. I can't listen to this any more. I can deal with the faux 18th century language and the reader on the audiobook has a dishy voice (if voices can be dishy), but I can't listen anymore. This book makes me want to lie down and never get up again. It sucks all the happiness out of my life - what's left of the happiness. The happiness, that is, that has not been sucked out by this recurring IRS problem. Anyway, teens, if they can wade through the archaic language, will love this. This is a drama party with all the stops pulled out. Whippings? Canings? Torture? Slavery? You name it. Teens might find all this new and fascinating, but for me it just confirms the ugliest side of humanity. I got as far as the fourth cd before my husband told me, as my head lay on the floor and my flesh pooled around me, I didn't have to read it any more. Thank you, my love. You have saved my life.

Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko

What is it with the drama? Why do people like it so much? And do kids like it that much? According to the blurb on the jacket, Choldenko is renowned (at least in her family) for her quirky humor. I dunno what's wrong with me, but I don't find this funny at all. Harris and Me was funny, Al Capone Does My Shirts is a tragedy with a happy-ish ending slapped on the end. "Moose" in this story has a life hardly anyone could envy: Depression era, overworked/underpaid father, mother who's too busy dealing with his sister, and the sister who is autistic and apparently his responsibility. The so-called humor, I suppose, is in the relationship with the boss's daughter, the redoubtable Piper, who would give a preacher's kid a run for his money. Piper is obsessed with trading on her position and access as the warden's daughter. Yes, they all live at Alcatraz. Choldenko at least adds some interesting historical background material at the end to give you an idea of what living in the workers' quarters of Alcatraz was like.
I just couldn't get into this. I tried the play-away version first, but I fell asleep as I usually do. Then I couldn't get myself to rewind and start again. So I grabbed the hardcopy, which is a quick read. I was hoping for some humor in this to brighten my drab existence, but I just didn't find it. I suppose it's Piper soliciting clothing from her fellow students on the mainland to be washed in the prison laundry "by Al Capone" for five cents. Capone apparently operated the mangle in the prison laundry when he was first moved to Alcatraz. Operating the mangle was considered back-breaking work and the least desirable of jobs, which must mean the mangle wasn't ergonomically designed. Not like our new-fangled mangles with the height adjustment and Pentium processors! This sort of hijinks always reminds me of Lucille Ball, whose shows I often had to hide from because I could tell, even as a tiny tot, that she was just going to get into trouble, which was too much like watching my sister in action. Funny, I didn't get that impression from Harris and Me, where a boy in an unfortunate family situation is shunted from one relative's home to another and ends up with a cousin like Piper who is just bursting with "great" ideas. But the humor (what little there was) was in there to mitigate the agony and frustration of dealing with an autistic family member, something Choldenko knows from experience and so that part is touching, heart-wrenching, and realistic.
It just isn't funny enough to live up to the title.

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

Normally, I wouldn't read something like this even with a gun pointed at me. I don't care how "good" it is supposed to be. But, I have two things mitigating my horror of Nazi Germany stories which give me nightmares thankyouverymuch and invoke my inherent War Guilt (still have relatives in Germany, not to mention the "Nazi-sympathizing" ones stateside). One, reading YA lit reflects on my performance evaluation (which I can almost see, as I work with kids and often have to take the older ones to the teen section and point out books and programs because there is no teen librarian on duty at this time) and, two, my book group (with gritted teeth:) is reading this one. Arrrrrrrrrgggggh!
This is a Very Good Book. I'm not just saying that because reading it affects my performance evaluation. "Sid and Nancy" is a Very Good Movie, but I don't want to have to watch it again. "Alfie" (the real one, not the recent abomination) is a brilliant movie I was unable to turn away from but I hope I never have to see it again. So, I can be thoroughly repelled by something and admit it's a good thing. I bet teens would eat this up. It's larded, oops, I mean loaded with emotion-button thumping drama that will wring the last tear out, then wallow in the details of the drama again in case you missed any of it the first time. With all the emotions and hormones running rampant in teens, this is a terrific outlet. I used to read A Little Princess at least every month when I was a kid for a really good cry. Now all I have to do is think, "Even when I was coldest and hungriest I tried not to be," and I'm simultaneously revolted and elevated. But I have enough drama in my life right now, so this is just too much.
It is somewhat comforting to read that some Germans weren't the monsters that the few who relished the plight of the Jews make them appear. I know that my old German professor was a member of the Hitler Youth. He waved his hand dismissively and said that there was no choice. At the end of the war, they were so hungry that they climbed some apple trees and ate the green apples and then, predictably, were sick. This book reminded me of his stories. It also reminded me of the used clothing that was packed up to send to our relatives in Germany after the war and my dad wondering what on earth they would need his tuxedo for. He griped about that for decades. They were apparently quite grateful and sent many letters of thanks and updates to my aunt.
Zusak uses interesting descriptive language, unexpected adjectives modifying ordinary words. This made the narrative quite poetic, the effects being beautiful or jarring by turns. The book is narrated by Death, and perhaps this explains it. I haven't read any of Zusak's other material to know. I didn't, in fact, read this. I listened to our audiobook version in the car in very small doses, which just made it more painful, I think. Corduner puts some excruciating emotional depth in this story, which makes driving all the more dangerous.
I am so glad this book is done. Go read it for yourself. I don't think I'm even that happy about talking about it.

Utterly Charming

While traipsing back and forth from the Children's Room to the Teen area (seems I'm doing a lot of that since kids are used to coming to us about summer reading and, if they look a bit tall, need to be redirected) today, I stopped to peruse the new book rack (as if I don't have 3 unfinished ones at home). A book whose title failed to interest me had an author who did. It's The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett [pictured is our large print edition]. Bennett is a favorite of mine from the "Beyond the Fringe" group. I've also read his The Clothes They Stood Up In and The Lady in the Van.
The book is about a familiar topic: reading, but with an unfamiliar protagonist, The Queen of England.
"Charming" is not an adjective I bandy about, less so as an unironic adjective. Someone is charming when I cannot bring myself to call them an Arschloch. I can think of no other descriptive for this book which has utterly charmed me. It was a gentle read that I could finish in the doctor's waiting room this afternoon (it takes time to do the bloodwork) and hand off to Bren who had read about it. I started reading it with a smile playing about my lips. I wondered as I read, though, what is the point of writing a book about reading when readers will read it anyway and non-readers never will and it won't help them. I'm listening to the audiobook of The Book Thief right now (and can't wait until it's over because the relentless suspense and horror of Nazi Germany is the source of nightmares for me and a certain amount of residual familial guilt since we still have family in the Fatherland), which is also nominally about reading and its importance to Liesel. It can sneak that message past the teen reader who's insatiable thirst for sensation pulls him through the plotline. But this book is about reading on the surface, while slyly commenting on politics, the monarchy, and some other things too subtle for me to parse.
My initial smile widened. I was chuckling a bit here and there eventually. Finally, I gasped.
Hey, it's not long, the letters are really big, and it's amusing. Give it a try.

I Lied Back There in February

Just when even I thought I'd had enough, I add to my list. I have been using Twitter for mini-blogging (just random thoughts or things I've done here at work that I will soon look at for my May monthly report to my super), but lately Twitter has been crashing and showing us all that cute picture of the tiny birds hefting a whale in a net. I love Twitter. I love the name, I love the vocab in general (on Twitter you post a "tweet" and the other people who post are called "twits" ... at least by me). There are associate applications such as Twirl and Twubble. But if you want to post a photo, instead of just a link, you have to go to TwitPic.
FriendFeed outpaced them. Like Plaxo, you can feed other mini-blogs, photoshares, bookmarks but you can also mini-blog on FriendFeed. Sooo, I started shifting slowly over there. Then I noticed that there's another mini-blog on the block and I'm trying it out. It's called Plurk, and the name and the logo are about the creepiest around. BUT, and it's a big "but" as you can see, BUT you can add photos and videos. I, of course, added Bob's latest latest video (he has two new ones now). I've noticed some other people making noises (on Twitter) about Plurk. Plurk has a timeline style. I'll see how it goes as it fills up with the thous- um, hun- um, several contacts I have. I had to unsubscribed from a contact on FriendFeed because I got feeds from his friends as well and he was already a power user of Twitter and FriendFeed. I couldn't find posts from anyone else!
If you visit Plurk, I apologise about the logo. It's a cartoon drawing of a headless dog with a bone sticking out where its head should be and its tail wagging. You have been warned. I just think it's creepy. The drawing of the vicious cat is okay though. I mean, that's fair comment.
If Twitter can't get its act together (it's painfully slow even when it is running and not all its features are working), I will probably have to move, but it will be with a heavy heart.

Tales of Uncle Remus

Most of the time I don't enjoy these stories because, a) they weren't a part of my childhood and, 2) Brer Rabbit just strikes me as downright ornery and mean-spirited. I did like Julius Lester's tellings, and the way he slipped in some modernity (the difference between courtin' then and courtin' now, etc.). Then I thought I'd read a few of the Joel Chandler Harris stories by way of comparison. Just a few. Hmm, I looked at the dialect - maybe one. You wind up reading three or more, though, because he broke up stories like the tar baby one, I reckon to fit a newspaper column. [I actually have a childhood connection with JCH. One of his cousins lived on our street. She'd married a New York stockbroker named Brady. She was a very elegant lady, he was a very quiet gentleman with a very dry wit, and their son Petey (an adult in college when I knew them) a cheerful character who teased me about the plural of "moose." Catherine Brady would want her coffee served very, very hot but then wouldn't actually drink it until it was almost cold. We teased her husband because he seemed so sober and upright. I once took him a sponge sandwich which he had the good grace to try to eat because he could see how crushed I was that he was suspicious of it.]
Something that sort of surprised me was that both Lester and Harris use humorous conflict with their audience. In Lester's case, he is having a dialog with the reader, anticipating objections a child would throw out at him. Harris has Uncle Remus and the boy quibble back and forth. "I thought you said ..." Nebber mind! Oh, the dialect was very hard for me, and I had quickly gotten used to it in Porgy. I wracked my brain to figure out what "bleeds to" was supposed to mean. (I guess it's "pleased to," but seems to carry more connotations that pleasure, like, say, necessity.) Lester's Very Nearly Standard English version was a breeze. The stories were well told and the digressions amusing. I still think Brer Rabbit is unnecessarily mean, but then, I don't have the background where that makes sense. I had to be told what a "nee-grow" was when I was five, just in case I had come across one in kindergarten. Italians were about as exotic as my acquaintances got until we moved to Ohio when I was eight. I knew of Joel Chandler Harris and Uncle Remus only by name and because of Catherine Brady. While I could probably sing "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Da," I had no idea where it came from. My favorite Brer Rabbit story, which is not in this Lester collection, is the one with Brer Possum and the snake under the rock. I told this story at Leath Correctional and everyone in the room could recite the moral with me: Brer Possum, Don't trouble trouble till trouble troubles you!

Update

Please note that I'm sending all further blogs about Second Life to another blogspace. You can find that one under my profile here. Y'all didn't give a (tinker's) dam anyway.
Also, Bob has added a new video. You can click on it at the left where I have a quasi-permanent link to his channel or you can click on the title to this. It's awesome.

SPLASH Luncheon in Columbia

I drove all the way to Columbia listening to Tim Dorsey's Atomic Lobster. Them audiobooks sure make the driving go faster. I barely remember the trip at all except that there seemed to be a lot of cars in my way. Audiobook + cruise control = Little Old Lady from Pasadena. Gracious goodness, there was a parking place right in front of the State Library in the shade! Sure, I had to fill the meter with quarters, but it was right in front and in the shade!!!! For some reason it would not take the maximum amount of quarters and I figured I'd have to hop out towards the end of lunch or during a break and refeed. In the end, I didn't need to. It didn't last quite as long as I thought (or else I got more for my money than I expected) and when I returned to the car, I had two minutes left. I was tempted to sit there for it. Ha ha! Love getting my money's worth!

The program started with a sharing of ideaaaa of programmmm (to be fair, our speaker barely had time to cover her material in the amount of time given). Someone had done a Dora the Explorer themed program and had dressed up like her. Hmmm, sounds like a job for Bren. I was asked by my neighbor if there wasn't a copyright on that character that would be a problem and I opined that as it was PBS, they were probably more lenient than, say, Disney, who will hunt you down and squeeze the life out of you for painting Mickey on the wall of your daycare. Anyway, this program had dancing and exercise as a part of it. The kids were excited as all hell to see Dora. She hadn't realized the popularity of the character. Yes, well, Arthur was just about swamped when he was at our library.

The speaker at the luncheon was Oralia Garza de Cortés who had many recommendations for children's books in Spanish (quite a few of which we have already). She gave us the history of Día de los niños, which started during tenure of the most progressive of the Mexican presidents ... in 1924. I suppose Woodrow Wilson wasn't available to prevent it.

Garza shared with us things she has learned in her experiences with bi-lingual educations. Oh, sorry. We aren't allowed to use that term anymore because it's politically charged. Ahem, her experiences in Early English Learning. That's better. She went to school herself at a time when Spanish was forbidden in school. Hmm, I wonder how that worked in Spanish class. Studies Have Shown (I love that!) that language abilities transfer from one language to another. It is perfectly fine to use your native language in speaking to your young children because they will acquire language abilities along with the specific language. She regrets that the Every Child Ready to Read program does not translate to Spanish. She thinks ALA and PLA should work on that. That's not to say that the materials such as posters have not been translated into Spanish, but the practices used in storytimes are not adapted to the Spanish language and good books to use that are in Spanish or English/Spanish aren't listed.
A quick review of the ECRR practices in my head along with what little I know about Early Spanish Learning yields the following examples. In Spanish, you don't really separate consonants from vowels. Words are broken down by syllables: di -fí -cil. Rhymes in Spanish aren't quite the same as in English. You rhyme the vowel sounds, not the combination of vowel and consonant. Vida and encima rhyme. Besides, Spanish is just sooo much easier and more organized than English. There are actual spelling rules that are in force all the time. The letter "I" will always be pronounced the same way, like our long E. Spanish is almost understandable with 50% of the consonants missing: ¿’Omo e’tá u’té? Whereas in English, we can throw out most of the vowels: Djeet? Whadjeet? I had a German teacher who waved her hand airily and said that all you had to do was substitute some slightly different vowels to go from German to English and back. It doesn't quite work that easily, but every now and then I see what she meant. The point I'm making is that you're listening for different things in these languages. Translating ECRR into Spanish would require a whole separate system. Maybe they can just swipe something from Spanish education.
Garza adds that is it not just the home language that needs to be taken into account, but the cultural background and she directed us to the NAEYC statement which goes pretty much as follows:

The acquisition of language is essential to children’s cognitive
and social development. Regardless of what language
children speak, they still develop and learn. Educators recognize
that linguistically and culturally diverse children come to early
childhood programs with previously acquired knowledge and
learning based upon the language used in their home. For
young children, the language of the home is the language they
have used since birth, the language they use to make and
establish meaningful communicative relationships, and the
language they use to begin to construct their knowledge and test
their learning. The home language is tied to children’s culture,
and culture and language communicate traditions, values, and
attitudes (Chang 1993). Parents should be encouraged to use
and develop children’s home language; early childhood educators
should respect children’s linguistic and cultural backgrounds
and their diverse learning styles. In so doing, adults will enhance
children’s learning and development.
...
Each child’s way of learning a new language should be
viewed as acceptable, logical, and part of the ongoing
development and learning of any new language.
Responding to Linguistic and Cultural Diversity Recommendations for Effective Early Childhood Education A position statement of the National Association for the Education of Young Children Adopted November 1995

Or something like that.

She suggested that we provide brochures on the Rights of Immigrants (because they do have them, no really) as well as information on financial literacy. The Bank of America no longer requires a driver's license to open an account. Something like that would be helpful for guests in our country to know.

She provided lists of books for "noches de cuentos" (evening storytimes), suggested "ferias del libros" (book fairs) and pointed out that a parent literacy workshop has to be café con cuentos and that the café part is essential. None of this filthy iced tea. (Hough!)

Interesting point: Because she knows Yuyi Morales, author of Just a Minute! that we used recently in our puppet show for Día de los niños, she was able to ask her where the idea for Grandma Beetle came from. I mean, why Beetle? Apparently, in Xalapa, where Morales is from, there is this large, dark beetle she wanted to commemorate. Silly me, I thought she was a ladybug and when I tried to translate the story a couple of years ago, I called her Mariquita.
And I'll end with a quote from Gabriela Mistral (not the one about "Cuando una espina me hiere ..." that I usually go on about) she shared with us:
"Many things can wait. The child cannot. Now is the time his bones are formed, his mind developed. To him we cannot say tomorrow, his name is Today."

Notable books:
Family Pictures by Carmen Lomas Garza
Nochecita by Yuyi Morales
From Here to There by Margery Buyler
Cri Cri by Francisco Gabilondo Soler
The Pot that Juan Built by Nancy Andrews-Goebel