Staff Developomendo

Leverage

2011-12-31T12:31:00.001-05:00

I've been agonizing over the homeschooler programs for 2012 this past week. January and February fell into place on their own, but March and April are a struggle. My first idea was the robotic hand made from corrugated cardboard, rubber bands, straws, string, and several rolls of tape. The age range makes these programs difficult. Whole families show up and I have to have something or things that will provide interest to K through 12. Gah!

My next project idea was from a book on levers, because, well, robotic hands are levers, right? The project is absolutely charming. A bird flies away as a cat jumps out at it. It took hours to color the scenery, not to mention work out the mechanics. The instructions only pertained to assembly of the scenery, which is complicated enough. The instructions for the mechanical innards amounted to, "You read the book - figure it out yourself." Now, I only have these kids for an hour, even if I cut all the levers out and hole-punch them for them, coloring and assembly would take too long.

But it so cute! ...

Birdie sits on the ground until ...

... cat leaps out of the bush.

I went back to the book and found the wooden example of the pecking chickens that provided the pattern for the innards and decided that would be simple enough. So this will be the project:

Pecking chickens

This one was made with enlarged clip art glued to card stock and cut pieces of card stock with those great brass fasteners. As you can see, there was a bit of trial and error involved. Some scrap corrugated cardboard will be involved in the actual project, pre-cut. More fiddly work of coloring, cutting out the chickens, gluing them to card stock should fill up the hour.

Very Colorful!

2011-08-26T12:26:00.000-04:00

<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4555477-the-color-of-earth" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Color of Earth (Color Trilogy, #1)" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1312054129m/4555477.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4555477-the-color-of-earth">The Color of Earth</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1224011.Kim_Dong_Hwa">Kim Dong Hwa</a> 
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/202384322">3 of 5 stars</a> 
This is a charming coming-of-age story set in Korea. I am now really annoyed that the next two books in the trilogy are checked out! Grr! Ehwa is a young girl filled with curiosity, which her mother, a widowed tavern keeper, gently teases her about. This first book covers Ehwa's discovery of the many facets of love and sex - from the point of view of a child and then one verging into womanhood. She interacts with children her own age and overhears adult conversations, which she doesn't understand. Her adventures are funny and touching in their realism. Korean customs and expressions are explained in footnotes. I never knew shoes were so expressive!
 

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The html code doesn't seem to be working here anymore, so I guess I'll stop duplicating my reviews to this blog.

There's No Place Like ...

2011-08-23T10:13:00.000-04:00

Okay, I won't go there. I'm sure it's been done to death.

<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11277216-the-iliad" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Iliad" border="0" src="http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11277216-the-iliad">The Iliad</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7778.Richmond_Lattimore">Richmond Lattimore</a> 
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/198841342">5 of 5 stars</a> 
No matter how many times I read this, I still find something new. This time I marveled at the similes. Many of the similes in the battle scenes dealt predictably with lions and wolves, but there were others that evoked daily life (the widow measuring her wool) or inanimate forces of nature (rocks falling like snow). The most striking thing about them is that they aren't all that brief (like my examples), but can go on for a while, longer than you would expect in a narrative. They'd be full-blown metaphors if they'd not been prefaced with "as" or the like. I discussed this online with a group and found that very satisfying. This translation just happened to be one I have, but I see that it's recommended by many (including Dr. Vandiver who does the Homeric Great Courses lectures) for being translated line by line (so you can make comparisons to the Greek) and for preserving the archaic flavor and the poetic "formulas." Dang, I just thought it was a great story! Amusing note: on the back of my copy, Robert Fitzgerald is quoted as saying no one need ever produce another verse translation of the Iliad ... but I guess he changed his mind 25 years later. Heh!
 
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Crouching Reader, Hidden Head-Desk

2011-08-01T11:58:00.000-04:00

Crouching Vampire, Hidden Fang by Katie MacAlister

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was ensnared into reading this by the amusing title. The plot is about as complicated as the film whose title it parodies, except there are fewer entanglements. There are some attempts to be amusing, but mostly this is your alleged standard women's wish fulfillment romance with a plump, needy heroine who just happens to be able to summon deadly amounts of light.
These supermythophagilisticexpialidocious stories are starting to get on my nerves. You have to absorb too much cant to follow the plot. What the hell's a zorya? A llargi? A lich? I don't even know how to pronounce this stuff, much less keep track of the spelling. Half the time I suspect they make this stuff up. Oh, wait, of course they do. Sorry.

Pia (uffda, that name!) continues her saga of being torn between her "job" as some kind of light spirit helping some mysterious Brotherhood and her new supernatural linking to the vampire-cum-Fabio-impersonator, Kristoff - the Italian guy with the German name (I've been to Northern Italy - I know it happens). In a previous book they "hooked up" as the kids say and now he doesn't call. Is she too fat? Was it something she said? She got his soul back (some way - I dunno - it was in the previous book) and now he's supposed to be permanently linked to her. What's wrong? She spends the whole book not believing his answers even after they become linked telepathically. Oh, man! I mean, oh, WOMAN! You've got cool supernormal powers! Either he puts out and adores you or you roast him, right? Half of this book is spent with him being diminutive-for-a-housecat-whipped into admissions of adulation. [I'd never do that, right, Bob? BOB?!]

And then the plot comes to a complete halt for the over-the-top sex. I have to admit I skipped over those bits because after reading the first ones I decided that they are less arousing than head-desking. Once you've superlatived someone to the point of explosion, what is left to life? More plot, please. Let me amend that: more comprehensible plot, please.
But it was okay. As mindless, harmless (I hope - this doesn't cause dissatisfaction with life because it sets up unattainable scenarios ... does it?) entertainment, it does the job.

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Someone Call Mark Teague!

2011-07-25T14:33:00.000-04:00

How Do Dinosaurs Use the Library?

How do dinosaurs use the library?

Do they come in boisterous, angry, or wary?

Do they stomp their way to circulation

Demanding or starting an altercation?

Do they visit the children’s room with their child

Then proceed to ignore it and let it run wild?

Do dinosaurs print off some stupid chain letter

Then leave without paying, though they ought to know better?

If a dinosaur has an overdue book

Does she sneak in and hide it in some remote nook

Then a couple days later does she harry the clerks,

Insisting they look harder and calling them jerks?

Do they think any of this works?

No, dinosaurs wouldn’t behave in that way.

They finish a book and return it next day.

They cheerfully own up that they owe a fine

And pay it all up without even a whine.

If they make a copy, they pay for it quickly.

They don’t come in sneezing and coughing and sickly.

Before coming in each dinosaur gave

Their child a brief talk on how to behave.

They write to their congressmen. They lobby for funds.

They bring the staff cookies (well, maybe just once)!

When they’re good to us, we just want to do more.

Thank you, thank you, Dinosaur!

Greek Letters Don't Scan Well

2011-07-17T12:28:00.000-04:00

Light From the Ancient East Or The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco Roman World by Adolph Deissmann
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Deissmann has done what I consider to be typically German research (involving the painstaking collection of material from disparate sources and comparing minute detail - all of which can probably be done these days in seconds with computers) and made it interesting. He studied the use of common Greek used at the time of the writing of the Gospels as it appears in papyri, stone inscriptions, or ostraca to evaluate whether the Gospels contain neologisms or if there were some prior usage of phrases and vocabulary. Being that sort of person myself (German extraction - I think I can make fun of us Squareheads - and the sort who combs the Iliad for each killing, lists it, then sorts the information by verb usage and weapon used), I found that fascinating. It wore thin when he ended with descriptions of what he felt would be a necessary project to create a lexicon and some flowery stuff about religion. Note where my interest flagged.
This Gutenberg Project edition (read on the Kindle) was an unfortunate mass of intriguing gobbledygook that I was tempted to correct (being almost able to read the German footnotes), but it has none of the Greek available in an intelligible form. Not that my Koine Greek is anything worth speaking of (I've only had 7 weeks of Ancient Greek and some unofficial study), so I would not really be able to make the comparisons even if Greek characters had been available. It would not be useful for the serious student.
I am sorely tempted to find out how you can correct these Gutenberg files. It would be incredibly tedious, time-consuming, and unrewarding financially - which means it's right up my alley.

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Requiem for a Humanist

2011-07-10T22:29:00.000-04:00

The Clue Bible: The Fully Authorised History of "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue", from Footlights to Mornington Crescent by Jem Roberts
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A thorough, if repetitive, study of the history of the antidote to panel games, this read is full of familiar gags. It takes a similar format to From fringe to flying circus: Celebrating a unique generation of comedy, 1960-1980 and covers much the same people as it starts with the college shows and works its way through ISIRTA and beyond.
If you are looking for sexy photos of Samantha, forget it. She's apparently not giving out - photos, anyway.
It was all very amusing until I came to the death of Humph at the end and I cried at that and at the description of the funeral, where they played the recording of him playing "We'll Meet Again." Oh, gosh!
This is all the more touching because Tim, Graeme, and Bill brought me and my husband together. Okay, maybe it was Alison Bean, but we've already thanked her.

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The Wrong Way to Woo

2011-07-06T12:31:00.002-04:00

The Power of Persuasion by Shelagh Watkins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm not a huge fan of Jane Austen, in fact, I think the zombies improved Pride and Prejudice or, if not the zombies themselves, the kicking of Darcy into the fireplace, which was so richly deserved. Consequently, Beth Durban's disdain for F. William D'Arcy, the overweening critic at the newspaper, seems to me equally richly deserved.

The style of writing in this novel of modern manners reminds me of some of Alexander McCall Smith's Edinburgh stories, with meandering digressions and flashbacks giving a snapshot of Beth's travels and past. Her wanderings take her to places I know as well as to exotic locations: Chichester and Singapore, Boston and New Zealand. Her life is so full, it's not surprising that romance was not her focus.

I did sort of wonder if it was paranoia that kept D'Arcy popping up. Was it all in her head? Is there anyone named D'Arcy in the real world? And, if there is some man saddled with the name D'Arcy, can't he be forgiven for hating Jane Austen?

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Reminds Me of an Old Boyfriend ...

2011-07-02T14:34:00.001-04:00

The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery by Wendy Moore

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was an interesting book, if a bit dry and lacking in illustration. Hunter's controversy-bedecked life is an interesting one. He was both admirably correct and terribly wrong on many counts, but relied on his own observations and testing and not on prevailing opinion. His minute studies of anatomy (thanks to wholesale body-snatching and a ruinous collecting of animals) led him to the conclusion that life on earth evolves. His study of fossils eroded away any idea that one forty day flood was responsible for the amount of life contained within. His written work on this idea of the development of life was never published because a fellow scientist suggested he amend "thousands of centuries" to "thousands of years" because it might incite the rabble in those revolutionary times.

His conservative methods were rejected by other surgeons, he died in debt, his brother-in-law published Hunter's work as his own and then burned the papers, but his legacy lived on through his museum and his students.

He was not a pleasant man, but he was driven to understand and to share his knowledge, even if what he knew tomorrow was different from what he knew yesterday. He was not so hidebound that he could not correct even his own conclusions. A lesson for all of us.

Note: my copy had a different cover. I wish I'd had one with his portrait, so minutely described by the author but conspicuous by its absence in the book.

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A Series of Impossible Events

2011-06-29T10:16:00.002-04:00

Ape House by Sara Gruen

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book was so disturbing that I just skimmed it. I have a problem with the innocent and helpless being put in jeopardy, even in fiction. I know this is just my problem; I'm dealing with it, okay?
The premises behind this book are so horrific to me as to be impossible to believe: firstly, that someone who wants to air a reality animal show would pretend to be an animal rights terrorist group, create a front page story of explosives and mayhem to effect the transfer of bonobos from a research facility to this ridiculously public display ... as if no one would notice? Or that a man would conspire with this group, leading to the disfigurement of his fiancee, let her fish and plants die while she was in hospital, and still want to get back together with her although he's obviously a horndog would would screw anyone. Why would that person care one whit for her?
All my complaints aside and despite the speed read that glossed over quite a bit, it was an exciting read. Somehow, however, I just knew Amanda would go through an apotheosis that turned her into a clean freak. The mother's finding of the sex toys and zippy-bagging them was ... humorous. I find it hard to believe that a writer in California would be subjected to the same pressures as an actor, but it is California after all. If it was meant to be humorously satirical, it just wasn't funny enough.

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Plump and Juicy Mystery

2011-06-27T18:42:00.000-04:00

Too Big to Miss by Sue Ann Jaffarian

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I'm fat, middle-aged, and a former paralegal.
I devoured this in one day. Most of the ickier bits (the death is a gritty one that's revisited through retrieved screen captures) I skimmed over. Jaffarian has created some interesting characters, many of them plus-sized which is nice to see. The mystery was a good one and there is a spot of romance, where Jaffarian falls into the fatal blunder of making the sex "the best [Odelia] ever had." Writing like that makes me want to bang my head on the desk. Every now and then I run into an author who has the ovaries to write that the sex was "pretty good ... and worth repeating to see if it got better." If it's the best, chances are it will only go downhill, you know. Real life says that sometimes it's really, really good and sometimes it's adequate and sometimes it knocks off socks you weren't even aware you had on.
Odelia's cherished friend and mentor in the plus-sized world has committed suicide. She did it on an internet camera, making it fairly obvious what happened ... or did it? Odelia has her suspicions but the police have called it suicide. Then Odelia discovers that her friend had many secrets in her life, each more shocking than the next! No! You don't say! Ahem. Was one of them the incredibly handsome but poisonous man who came to the funeral? Or the little man who attacked him, blaming him for the death?

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Whatta Croc!

2011-06-24T14:36:00.001-04:00


Sample clip art for 5 hungry crocodiles

I've got a mess o' crocodile stories coming up for a storytime I'm doing next week as a special program for a Rotary Club Family Lunch, and I thought I'd share a few of my treasures.
.
I got the flannelboard poem of "Five Hungry Crocodiles" from Story Place. I found the black fish in MSPublisher and right-clicked on it, selected Format Picture, then the "Recolor ..." button and I was able to make five fishies in different colors to print off, laminate, and either glue scrap felt or sticks or whatever you choose to the back.

You could use that or "Five Little Monkeys" - where they tease Mr. Crocodile.
Five little monkeys sitting in a tree,
Teasing Mr. Crocodile, "You can't catch me!"
Along came Mr. Crocodile, quiet as could be and SNAP!

Four little monkeys ... etc.

Eileen Christelow has a book version where they don't get eaten, but, I mean, what's the point of that?!

If you want a nicer ending, try Crocodile and Hen, a Bakongo folktale retold by Joan M. Lexau. There are two versions of this - different illustrators. One is an easy reader. Crocodile learns how he and hen are brother and sister, so he can't eat her, however fat and delicious-looking she might be. I do this one with puppets.

I also do the Monkey and Crocodile story with puppets and foam balls as mangoes. Monkey is fairly fainting with desire for the mangoes he sees ripening on an island in the middle of the river, but he must get past Crocodile. After convincing Crocodile to take him across in exchange for his monkey heart (the best and most delicious part of a monkey) which he claims to keep in the mango tree, Monkey throws a hard, unripe mango down to Crocodile, who chokes on it. For older children, I go on to the part where Monkey has now run out of mangoes and faces starvation if he can't get back. He persuades Crocodile that he's ready to be eaten for being such a baaaaad monkey, but to swallow him whole because he's afraid of being chewed up (or that whole drown-and-tuck-under-a-log-in-the-water-to-soften-up-for-snacking-later for the zoology-obsessed children). Claiming he's going to run and jump in the crocodile's mouth, he has Crocodile open his mouth so wide he can no longer see, and then jumps on his back, using him as a springboard to the mainland. Oh, he's a baaaaad monkey! Crocodile overacts a bit on the choking, but he's such an emo, ya know?

There are a couple of fun crocodile songs, both of which I plan to use. One is the familiar Crocodile Song with the hand gestures and the other I found on YouTube billed as The Most Annoying Song Ever (which intrigued me immediately). It's from a German tv show, but English translations are available.

I'm finishing up with making a Schnipp-Schnapp-Schnappi the little crocodile puppet.

Schnipp-Schnapp-Schnappi, Schnappi Schnappi Schnapp!

Teensy Rant

2011-06-22T10:36:00.001-04:00

I'd like to talk about decimals. I'll start with the "Our children's room non-fiction collection is so small that I don't see the point of going out three spaces, much less four." I understand that there is a jobber who does all this work for us so we don't need the MLIS's cataloging in-house and that company apparently can't discriminate between juvenile and adult collections (maybe without charging more), but still ...

Next up: Y'all, decimals are just like money.
Which is worth more: $90 or $97?
Let's put some numbers in front.
Which is worth more:
$56,790 or $56,797?
$567.90 or $567.97?
Okay, take that zero away. [Occasionally the jobber puts the zeros in, but they're supposed to leave it out.]
Which is more: 567.9 or 567.97?
What if money were broken into even smaller pieces? Let's look at this.
Which is worth more: $900 or $912?
How about 567,900 or 567,912?
Which is more: 567.9 or 567.912?
Here are some trickier ones.
What's worth more: $970.40 or $970.04?
How about 970.4, 970.04, and 970.004?
Or 970.1, 970.004, 970.4?
That was easy, wasn't it? So, tomorrow when I go to shelve some books, I don't want to see 398.209 coming after 398.24 or smack in the middle of the 398.2s. Ithankyew.

Next week: The Alphabet.

Hold the Mayo

2011-06-19T11:13:00.000-04:00

A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Audio-version.
Perhaps this was annoying because the child-like voice with the excruciatingly plummy accent of the reader grated on me. It's a tone of voice very popular in theatre because the nasality is very penetrating and projects really well. Nine cd's of it is very wearing.
On to the story - Why do I expect things in mysteries to make sense? What sort of infant baptism holds a fragile child by the ankle and dunks them like Achilles? Why would a murderer hang a body from a statue when leaving it where it was would hide it longer while hanging it would expose the murderer to a bigger chance of being discovered? Kill, hang the body, leaving the weapon in place? Oh yes, yes, people under stress do strange things. Usually, they just run away though, or wipe their fingerprints.
And if Flavia only wears dresses, she must give the villagers a lovely view when she rides Gladys with her feet on the handlebars.
I was surprised by the amount of blood that came from a non-fatal head wound. Not that I'm a forensics expert or anything, but ... who would have thought the old woman had so much blood in her?
The first book in this series annoyed me by having poison ivy in an English garden. I keep asking Brits about that and get no clear answer. I suppose it's far-fetched enough having an 11 year old genius-chemist.
The family conflict is getting old. You know, I only had one older sister who did things like tie me to chairs so I wouldn't bug her when her friends came over, but even I think this family is out of control. And the father needs a good smack up-side his head and a torch put to his stupid stamp collection.
What is my problem?
I really appreciated the addition of Porcelain (not sure of spelling because this was the audio) when she behaved with good sense, cutting off exploration of a dark place or fetching help when the plot called for it. But how old is she? She has no parents, so where does she live ... besides "London"?
Next time I will read the book (I will keep reading them) because the turn of phrase is good.

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Manage the KIDS?

2011-06-18T18:25:00.001-04:00

In all the years I've been doing storytimes, I haven't had nearly the amount of trouble with kids that I've had with the adults that come into storytime with them. This doesn't mean I don't want them in there, just that I wish they would use some common sense.
Problem #1: Cell phones. They forget to turn their cell phones off. The cell phone rings during storytime and the adult steps over the children on the way out, talking all the way. Solution: Start each storytime with the Cell Phone Song:
I went to the storytime with my mom,
But she left
Her cell phone on.
The cell phone rang
And she took the call.
Now we're not allowed back in at all.*
And have the kids pretend to take out their cell phones, turn them off, and put them back in their pockets while glaring meaningfully at the adults.

I also have a sign that used to be posted on the wall (but now that we're in a new library, we can't put anything up until it gets all grungy and lived-in again). The idea was that if the cell phone rang, the tiger would come out and eat the phone ... and anyone holding it.

These aren't the exact signs - but you get the idea.

Problem #2: Adults talking during storytime, daycare providers/teachers doing their work, or texting. Rather than shame authority figures in front of their charges, I have a sign I hold up that has the "No cell phones" on one side and the "Please model good listening." on the other. I may need to flash both. I do mostly pre-school storytimes, so they can't read and the adults get the message. If they don't get the message, some day, some day, I may just resort to public shaming.

The best storytime experiences I have had were with groups that had adults who participated.

* This song has more verses that involve restaurants and airlines and gets progressively vitriolic. I hate cell phones. Even though I own one, I rarely turn it on. Be in the moment, people!

The Slippery Slope

2011-06-16T12:28:00.001-04:00

Not Just a Witch by Eva Ibbotson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ibbotson writes in the simple declarative sentences of someone telling a bedtime tale ... and then guides the reader gently by the hand into horror. Because it's a children's book, all has to turn out for the best. In the meantime, the most unimaginable cruelties can take place.
There are two witches who were best friends in witching school but had a falling out and went their separate ways. Because they are "good" witches, they try to do good. This seems to consist of finding very bad people and either turning them into interesting animals (that are now "nice" so they must be cared for) or to stone.
If you are a child, this might make sense, and two out of the three children who get involved are happy to help. The third child, a very very smart Asian girl, is reluctant, but she loses her reservations when a white supremacist comes to town. Ah, how easily we respond to fear!
We can also be gulled by love, which steers the witches blindly into cruelty on a mass scale.
If the actions in this book seem horrifying, they are told in a fairytale style, softening them and making them seem palatable until the little snowball runs out of control and the avalanche ensues. This is a cautionary tale. It's about right and wrong. And Ibbotson has very clear ideas what constitutes right and wrong.

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Fully Rounded Pig

2011-06-13T11:28:00.001-04:00

Death in the Truffle Wood by Pierre Magnan

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

First of all, I'm appalled by the cover. How do I know this takes place in France? Perhaps by the man in the horizontally striped boating shirt and the red beret? Where's his baguette?
Alyre has a prized Trüffelschwein who indicates clues everywhere but is ignored. Alyre is proud of his beautiful but unfaithful wife but, as he apparently loves the pig more, he doesn't let it bother him much. He is more upset when someone throws a stone and injures the pig.
Hippies who come to his town tend to disappear, so Laviolette is sent to look into the matter semi-unofficially. He prefers to stay at small boarding houses and hang in the background observing. The local police cooperate with him. He investigates. Magnan manages to make it all come off sort of quirky. Maybe it's the pig. Maybe it's the very nearly humorous grotesqueness. It stoops to the "get everyone in the room and make calculated insinuations to see who blinks" wheeze then builds to a climactic if ridiculous chase scene. And it has a nicely cynical coda. All in all, it was worth reading.

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Bertie Wooster Writes a Thriller

2011-06-07T19:46:00.001-04:00

The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hugh Laurie manages to mix humor with thriller, but I think I need less thrill in my life. I am assured by my husband, who used to work for a US defense contractor, that while it is true that footage from the Gulf War is used to advertise military hardware, etc., no one, but no one, would develop a prototype helicopter or anything for the military without first being paid by the military and this hasn't happened since Abraham Lincoln took a consignment of rifles with interchangeable parts. This takes a load off my mind.

Thomas Lang finds himself forced to become an international terrorist in this plot-with-more-twists-than-a-twisty-turny-thing. As an Amurrikin, I am horrified to think that 1) the good ole US of A would sponsor terrorism for any ... ruh-roh, 2) that anyone would think that would even be a plausible ... aw, shee-it, and 3) Why doesn't everybody love us?! [Breaks down and sobs.]

Sprinkled herein are many witticisms about modern life as well as metaphors about sex stretched tighter than sausage casings on Lance Armstrong's thighs. It's so easy to see the goofy side of Hugh Laurie in the lead role, right up until he starts killing people. And he seems to know an awful lot about guns. This does seem to be running backwards: a Brit going on lovingly about guns and an Amurrikin with a growing horror of them and descriptions of death, but it'd be a funny old world if we all ran to type.

I don't blame the author for hitting the US too hard. In fairness, the Brits seem to be complicit in the scenario and the baddies are described as renegade CIA. There's plenty of blame to go around. Lang's background even includes his tour of duty as a servant of the oppressor in Northern Ireland, which goes to explain his military acumen as well as a reminder that the Brits don't always get it right either when dealing with terrorists. Or at least it reminds me, since I seem to be one of the few that remembers IRA terrorism at a time when everyone else in this country seems to think terrorism was invented by a different religious group.

But, as I said, this was a bit too thrilling for me. I've been typing this review for some few minutes and my heart rate is still up. Other folks might find this tame, but it was a rollicking, riveting read and should satisfy the tastes of most people who aren't as namby-pamby as I.

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Dear Parents

2011-06-04T15:01:00.000-04:00

Dear Parents of the cute children who come into the Children's Room of the public library,

Get this through your heads: we are not School. Although committed to "lifelong learning" in our mission statement, this is just a ruse to make Reading For Fun more palatable come funding time. Your lovely child slogs for nine months each year through the soul-crushing graded readers, the No-Child-Left-Interested required curricula, and, my personal bugaboo, the Dreaded Accelerated Reader tests. Don't make summer just another opportunity to make reading a deadly chore.

Do not:
Insist your child read only at or above her reading level during the summer. No one really likes the Tiger Mom.
Tell your child something is too old or too babyish for him.
Shame your child by remarking in front of the entire library that she "didn't finish the books she checked out last time," so she can't have that many this time. Books are not brussel sprouts. They don't go bad if they aren't read. The only reason to limit books is if they tend to get lost.
Ask the librarian to back you up on your opinion of the books. Hell's bells, I'm a 57 year old married woman! I don't have the same tastes as a nine year old boy. Okay, maybe I don't necessarily have his tastes. Maybe he doesn't like the Three Stooges and comic books - ahem, I mean Graphic Novels. Oooo, look! Captain Underpants!

Chances are, if your kid can relax during the summer and read something she enjoys (for a change), she might decide that reading isn't the big drag it was during the school year. Who knows, it might make a big difference in her life. So lay off the kids. If you insist on riding their backs even in summer, just make sure it's something other than reading, like piano lessons and science camp until it runs out their ears. There's nothing sadder in this room than seeing a kid be told he can't have a particular book for some reason. Worse yet, making him come up and shuffle his feet while he tells me that he can't have that book.

Oh, and about complaints I've heard about Junie B. Jones - get over it. You think your kid doesn't know bad language or behavior when she sees it? [I'm still trying to figure out what Junie B.'s "bad language" is.] You haven't taught your child what kind of behavior you expect? He doesn't know the difference between fiction and reality? Perhaps you just need to develop your sense of humor. I understand that if you lack one, you might find the rest of us behaving irrationally. Just think about it.

Maybe Wodehouse Ripped Off Lomax for Spode

2011-05-31T11:47:00.002-04:00

The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this book many years ago as a teen when I was in my Christie phase. I remember being annoyed with it because it appeared to be ripping off P.G. Wodehouse. There were the typical Wodehousian characters in situations where people were actually being killed! Re-reading it this month, I decided it was more an homage to Wodehouse. And even though I'd read it before, I guessed wrong. That's what's so wonderful about having a poor memory; a few months/years later, and it's almost a whole new book!

If you read this, look for the characters comparable to Jeeves and Wooster and to Lord Emsworth. If the subtleties don't pop out at you, Lord Coote's secretary, the Efficient Bateman is clearly the Efficient Baxter. Of course, Baxter would never have the nickname "Pongo," but there is a Pongo Twistleton in Wodehouse.

Christie says she was intending something lighthearted (aside from murder, of course, which is not that frothy) and while she isn't Wodehouse, she does succeed. There are several charming and humorous scenes, such as George's proposal to Bundle and Lady Coote's demeanor at the bridge table. If you obsess too much with the Wodehouse connection, as I did in my early read of the book, you might find the murders and genuine danger incongruous. Taken by itself, though, it's a cracking read.

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The Art of Storytime

2011-05-05T15:25:00.000-04:00

Marf and friends at the old library.

You think you've told everyone that there are no storytimes in May at the library. It has been this way all the 17 years you have worked here. People who have run Head Start for all those years should know that too. So, you're sitting at the Children's Room desk, minding your own bidness and a woman comes in. You ask if you may help her because a) you're polite and helpful and b) adults aren't supposed to wander freely in the Children's Room. No, she doesn't need help because she's just waiting for the Head Start group to arrive for their "field trip." (Parents often accompany the group to help monitor, but arrive separately.)
You think you know for certain that no group was scheduled for today because, well, it's May and you don't do storytimes in May. There are exceptions, so you check with your supervisor. She calls the Head Start office and learns that the bus has already left.

This is a job for SuperStoryteller!

Drat! I put the books I used last week away. What was I thinking? I'm not usually this tidy. No matter! I'll just wander in the picture books and pull out a couple I like. I just made some new flannelboard stories (thanks to Flannel Fridays at Mel's Desk); it would be fun to use a couple of them. And we top it all off with The Animal Boogie!

I chose Two of Everything by Lily Toy Hong because I just love that story annnnnnnnd, Oooo! Can't You Sleep, Little Bear? by Martin Waddell because adults can relate to that. Also, I have some puppets for it, if I can find them in time. These books have nothing to do with each other. So much for always having some sort of theme! I have less than 20 minutes to pull this together. If I had more, maybe I could have made a theme package.

I looked at the new flannelboards and chose the "Five Bottles of Juice" and "Blue Car, Blue Car." This may be a colorful storytime!

Our Storytime space

The new library's storytime room is in what we call The Rotunda. It's a round space, and the acoustics are fairly lively. I'm a loud person and I have to pull back in here. The purple thing* stores big books as well as holding them for you. Mostly I use it to prop up the books I'm going to read. The dragon rug is from Highsmith. We bought it after seeing it at the Charlotte ImaginOn Children's Library. I wanted to set up a creative play space in our children's room. For storytimes I prefer to sit on a small chair. We do have that rocking chair that was originally purchased for our Parenting Corner, but I find I can't do what I want in a big chair that moves. Fortunately, the child chairs are weight rated for someone my substantial size.

The bus arrives, the children file in, and I start with the "If you're happy and you know it" song. Then I launch into my first book, Two of Everything. The first book I read gets the special treatment. I point out the author and illustrator and we sing the songs:
The author writes the book,
The author writes the book,
Hi-ho, librario
The author writes the book.

The illustrator draws,
The illustrator draws,
Hi-ho, librario
The illustrator draws.

Then I read the book. When old Mrs. Haktak falls in the pot, I stop and ask them what they think will happen. Afterwards I ask them what they would put in the pot to make another one of.

Next is a flannelboard. We sing "5 bottles of juice on the wall" and with each color I ask what kind of juice that might be.

I show them the book Can't You Sleep, Little Bear? Then I tell them how much I really love the story - but it's more fun ... with puppets! I pull out the big bear puppet and the baby bear puppet (whose Folkmanis tag I'd removed minutes before) and do the whole thing in my lap. I have some props I made for a puppet show of this years ago that I adapted for the flannelboard by sticking velcro on them: three lanterns and a big moon with stars attached with floral wire. There's also a small book I made, The Koala Code by Dan Braun, for Big Bear to be reading. The favorite part of any story I do seems to be the snoring. Well, whatever works!

Next is the Blue Car, Blue Car flannelboard. They shout the names of vehicles and colors out to me.

And it was all finished off by The Animal Boogie. We get up and dance to the song. I have this at the end of all my storytimes now. I like having something that I do every time so that they have that to look forward to. They're usually good and jazzed up by the end, so we all sit down and I pull out my Goodbye Couplets, pictures of animals on sticks.
See you later, ... alligator (I give them time to give me the rhyme).
In a while, ... crocodile.
In a blizzard, little ... lizard.
In two shakes, garden ... snake.
Time to scoot, warty ... newt.
Let's meander, ... salamander.
and Hit the road, hoppy ... toad!

And I tell them that this is the last, absolutely the last, full stop, storytime until summer starts. And unless their director says something to them, they will never know they were unscheduled. I make a policy of this in my private life as well.

* I don't know where the purple thing came from so I can tell you not to buy that model. The display panel somehow comes off the track (it slides back up to be flat on top) occasionally and the panels inside that are supposed to keep the big books upright ... don't. They fall out of their slots at the slightest pressure. Although it was a good idea, it was poorly executed. That's a shame because I love purple.

The Holy Art of Lying

2011-04-07T10:44:00.000-04:00

Forged: Writing in the Name of God by Bart D. Ehrman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you've read the rest of Ehrman's oeuvre, there won't be a great deal more in this book to sink your teeth into. Right now I suspect Ehrman's a popular New Testament exegesis factory but even a factory turns out good material, even if it all starts to look the same. He does, however, footnote everything. He gives you the location of his source material in English so you can check up behind him. He does not make things up (as colorful as Borg and Crossan's book might have been, they made stuff up, just showing how easy it is to extrapolate, infer, and they produce a factual lie) and it doesn't lose anything for being relentlessly factual because of Ehrman's easy-going, highly readable style.
A better title for this book, though, might have been "Forgeries and Other Bare-Faced Lies." Ehrman stretches the definition of "forgery" to the breaking point over Acts. Perhaps the title as it stands is the last punch pulled. Ehrman's gloves are off (as my husband pointed out) as he makes no bones about lies perpetuated in the name of an alleged "Greater Truth." Normally we call such lies "Fiction," or perhaps "Politics As Usual." At no time does Ehrman deny the existence of an historical Jesus. All he's saying is that the people who were inspired by his story fibbed about some things. And if they fibbed about who wrote what or made up false attributions, what else might they have fibbed about, eh?
The last chapter of the book does make a person think about Lying. Do you side with Augustine, that a lie is never excusable? Do you permit small social lying? Where do you draw the line? To get a child to take its medicine? (To get my mother to the hospital to have her tonsils taken out, my grandmother told her she was going to get a pony. My mother felt utterly betrayed and refused to lie to us kids about anything like that.) Is a lie permissible to save someone from eternal damnation? It might depend on how hard you believe in that damnation to make you think it's not just okay, but imperative, to lie in the name of Truth.

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Fresh As the First Time I Read It

2011-04-04T19:34:00.000-04:00

Something Fresh by P.G. Wodehouse

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I dearly love this book and its author, so take that into consideration when you read the review. I also used it for a dramatic reading in college (just happened to see the notes for that in my paperback copy) and managed to get through what I thought was the funniest part without breaking up. To my best recollection, the listeners did not fall over in paroxysms of hilarity, but I may have been numbed to their reaction in order to get through it.

Yes, it's as funny as it was the first time.

The Hon. Freddie Threepwood is engaged to Aline Peters, but his father (Clarence, the third Earl of Emsworth) has just "stolen" her father's prized scarab in a typical fit of forgetfulness. He now wants to retrieve some letters he wrote to Joan Valentine when she was on the stage but his go-between, R. Jones, has decided to milk more out of him than the 500 pounds he didn't need to give Joan because she said she threw the letters away. Joan is an old friend of Aline and promises to help her retrieve the "stolen" scarab, however, Joan's new friend, Ashe Marson has been hired by Aline's father for the same dark purpose. George Emerson fell in love with Aline on board ship and is using his friendship with the Hon. Freddie to get close to her again. Got all that, or do you need a diagram? They all convene (save R. Jones) at Blandings Castle where they land under the beetling brow and jaundiced eye of Freddie's father's secretary, the Efficient Baxter.

Wodehouse tackles the theme of equality of the sexes with a deft hand one would not expect from an author of that time period (ah, but it's comedy, so he can get away with that). Sadly, it's not developed fully and it does wobble at the end when Joan succumbs to Ashe's petition for marriage. We don't get to see her fall in love with him the way we see him fall for her and her sudden craving for dullness in place of adventure doesn't ring true. We do get to see Aline fall in love with George and we are with her when she does. She is obstinate in her keeping the engagement to the Hon. Freddie in the face of George's high-handedness, but begins her melt when he realizes that it rightly doesn't work to badger the one you love into loving you. Her subsequent interview with her fiance gives her the opportunity to view what life would be like married to a complete ass. The romance of living in an English castle among the peerage loses its appeal.

One of Wodehouse's earliest successes, Something New (or Something Fresh) introduces the third Earl of Emsworth and the gang at Blandings. It is also rich in over a dozen Biblical references and about 40 other literary and Classical references (at least according to the annotations I found online). Unlike the Bertie and Jeeves stories, it is narrated by what is normally called an omniscient narrator, but you can see an inkling of Bertie in the narrator's casual forgetfulness as well as the Biblical saltings (Bertie having won a Bible verse contest of some kind in his youth). The novel also demonstrates the winning formula Wodehouse finally developed and delightfully abused for another 70 books or so: something needs to be stolen (whether scarab, silver cow creamer, painting, manuscript, or necklace) and returned to its true owner, true love will out, and the Hon. Freddie and his chinless comrades will never get married. Although Wodehouse admitted to writing the same story over and over, it's the details of characters, the lovely language, and the absurd slow-motion description of slapstick that make each successive novel something fresh.

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Only 47?

2011-03-30T12:45:00.000-04:00

47 Rules of Highly Effective Bank Robbers by Troy Cook

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The title captivated me and once I got beyond the gore, the senseless violence, the incest, the anti-social behavior, the "guy humor" - I relaxed and enjoyed the story. It was a quick read. Tara was raised by her father to be a bank robber. One of those 47 rules is No Crying because she blubbed after accidentally shooting him in the foot. Tara needs excitement in her life, and so does Max, the son of a local sheriff. Max doesn't need Tara's help to get in trouble, but he decides having her in the mix adds spice to life. Unfortunately, her father doesn't approve of her choice in men - ever. The book is peppered with unforgettable characters (whose names escape me at the moment, but names were never my strong suit) on both sides of the law. Cook toys with the concept of good and evil, so don't expect any black and white distinctions here. You have good cops and bad, and good bank robbers and bad, good psychos and really, really bad ones. You want to root for the robbers, but if you're like me, you feel guilty about it.

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Let's Do Science!

2011-03-20T22:30:00.000-04:00

Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Richard Fortey peppers his description of the behind-the-scenes views of the Natural History Museum with salacious gossip about the past denizens. Apparently, scientists are not immune to the amorous arts. Who'd've thought?! Historically, the museum changed from being run by the elite in scientific fields and wealthy dilettantes to bean counters. These days its all about how your research can aid commerce or agriculture and there is precious little science for its own sake. Scientists around the world can't keep up with species yet to be cataloged, some that are only interesting for their own sake and some that may provide medical value. Fortey is lucky to have done his trilobite research back when research was an end in itself.

Statue of Darwin overseeing the entrance hall to the Natural History Museum -
from our trip to London (see other photos from my Flickr set).

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Mad? MAD?! Who Are You Calling "Mad"?!

2011-03-20T17:14:00.000-04:00

Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was quite a potboiler! Reminded me of that Thomas Hardy book, Desperate Remedies that was published in the years following, especially the part where someone attempts to burn their way out of their problems. I had to stop halfway through because it was about to turn into something that I find even more disgusting than burning someone to death: calumny. Lady Audley embarks on a scheme to discredit her persecutor by insinuating that he is mad, that there is madness somewhere in his family, and that his behavior towards her is a sort of mania. Why she abandons this very effective ruse and instead tries to fry two birds with the same arson is beyond me - except that she has to lose in the end.
Her antagonist (who is, I suppose, the protagonist in this story, being the "hero" and all, but Lady Audley is at least titular character) is "Bob" Audley, a lazy dullard who hands over all the clues and witnesses he has amassed so that she can (a) steal them, which she does or (b) kill them, which she never quite gets around to, but she has the information just in case she needs it!
All is sorted out because this is a Victorian novel and Lady Audley must have a punishment that fits the crime and everyone else must live happily ever after, getting married and having adorable children.
I was able to finish this book by sneaking a peak at the Wikipedia article about it and learning about the happy solution of setting fire to people instead of convincing their friends and relatives that they are mad. Originally I read it to see if I could fit it in with my Cozy Mysteries discussions, but decided against it and moved on to P. G. Wodehouse instead. The writing styles are similar in the more light-hearted sections of Audley where the author stops to describe love and that idiot Bob.
This was a Gutenberg Project book read on the Kindle

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I'd Sure Love to Have Your Job!

2011-03-10T22:50:00.000-05:00

A recent post by a friend about the rigors of his job made me stop and think about mine, working in the Children's Room of a public library. One slow night I had someone remark to me as she left the Children's Room, "I'd sure love to have your job, just sitting around reading." This from a woman I had asked two or three times if I could help. Yes, I was reading a book. I lead an online book discussion. I was actually having to take notes on it, which takes some of the fun out of reading, I must tell you.
But what do I actually do besides sitting there watching people search aimlessly for some unnamed book?
I read children's books to children. I teach them fingerplays, tell them stories using a flannelboard or puppets, sing songs and dance with them, hug them when they leave. It all sounds idyllic, doesn't it? We have many people who come in who want to help by "reading stories to the children." It looks so easy.
But I'm working with pre-school kids, kids with the attention span of a gnat. This isn't the cozy, one-on-one reading you've done with your own child. This is a roomful (sometimes) of strangers aged three to four, and though one year doesn't sound like a lot, developmentally it can be a Grand Canyon. I have to be prepared to drop something that isn't working and move on to something that does. I have to be prepared for anything - such as vomiting children. There's a storytime stopper if ever I saw one.
Although I have boasted that you could turn me loose in a strange (to me) library and in five minutes I could put together a half hour storytime, that's only because I've been doing this for sixteen years. My head can now pinpoint a familiar book or story, pull relevant peripherals from my memory, arrange it all and spew it out with verve and ... whatever. However, that is all built on the back of using pre-existing flannelboards, fingerplays, etc. and reading books on doing storytimes and creating new flannelboards etc. that I like better or that will fit with some theme. [Here I plug The flannel board storytelling book by Judy Sierra once again as being the absolute best and the blog Mel's Desk for more great ideas.]
And I do puppet shows. These are programs I have created from scratch (well, using existing picture book stories I think lend themselves to puppet dialog): laying down audio with voice characterizations (I'm not exactly Mel Blanc, but you get the idea), sound effects, music (much provided by my brother-in-law), a sing-along in the middle; making props, puppets, and stage dressing; not to mention kicking the ankles of my assistants when they are too slow exiting puppets from the scene. You won't believe the energy that goes into one of these. But they are all recorded, so they can be put on again and again or remixed with each other or new stories to freshen them.
Lately I've been in charge of programming for homeschoolers, something I really enjoy because it involves school-age kids. You can do so much more with them. We've had programs ranging from Ancient Egypt to Geology, which key into my own interests in archaeology and science stuff. Okay, so maybe that's just too much fun.
This season I've been spared the monthly craft activities that have to be multi-age friendly, but I'm still doing crafts with the homeschooler programs and the branch storytimes.
And this is just the fun stuff.
Then there is the sitting at the desk for hours at a time trying to help people who don't know what they're looking for half the time and you have to tease the information out of them with the Reference Interview. I know all librarians have anecdotes about someone who comes in and says they're looking for one thing but actually they wanted something completely different, they just didn't know how to ask for it. Insert your favorite anecdote here.
Part of my job is finding a book for someone to read that they will enjoy. I have my own bad experiences with that, so I'm careful. "What was the last book you read that you really liked?" "A dog book? Do you want a dog story or true stuff about dogs?"
While out there I have to monitor computer usage. Children have to show me a library card to get on the computers, but most of them just go sit down and start playing so I have to ask them for their card and make them come to the desk and sign up. I also have to refuse this activity to kids who don't have a valid card or one with too many fines on them (which, of course, is not their fault because they can't drive to the library, can they?) in some way that doesn't humiliate or traumatize them. "Oh, honey, have your mommy take this card to the big desk and get it fixed first, okay?"
Then there is the state-of-the-art printer/copier I have to help people use that makes me want to beat my head against the wall. If you even lightly brush the screen, you'll make some hideous change and 30 copies will come out wrong. "You want to make two-sided copies? On this machine? Let me take this in the back. We have a machine back there that will do it automatically."
They come to the Children's Room for lamination because the machine is closest to our door. "You want how many pages laminated? You do know that it's a dollar a foot, right?"
We are in a new library and many people just want to wander through and look it over. Well, adults are not supposed to be wandering around in the Children's Room, so I give them mini-tours and then send them on their way to "see the upstairs!" This, at least, gets me off my duff. They have to be politely reminded (or informed) that there are bathrooms, copiers, computers, etc. for adults elsewhere in the library. As taxpayers they are owed some courtesy, aren't they? I remind them that if they have purchased anything in the county, the sales tax is helping to pay for the library and I thank them for that. Now, run along and see the view of North Main Street from the rotunda upstairs.
At the same time, although I'm 57 and chronically depressed, I have to be bright, helpful, and charming. I have to remember how I would like to be treated if I were in this situation. I've had a store owner complain about how her customers mess up her organization while I was still standing there. Did I purchase anything in that store? Oh, no! I'll be nice to my patrons who want to stick things back any old way. I use the old "I have to check that in as 'in-house use' first!" wheeze. I stop to show kids that the spine needs to be pointing out and while I'm there, show how to mark where the book came from so it can go back in the same place (assuming that we put it away in the right place to begin with) and then give them the option of letting me put it away.
Believe me, it's exhausting. I can be totally zoned out when I get home. Heck, I can be just staring into space while at the desk.
I am not 100% happy all the time at my job, but it is the best job in the world ... for me anyway. I hope you taxpayers think it's worthwhile.

Y'All Drive Me Crazy With Your Adult Over-Caution

2011-02-27T15:43:00.000-05:00

Island of the Aunts by Eva Ibbotson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I see a lot of objections in the reviews of this book to the "kidnapping" device of the story. Adults are having a big problem with the concept of kidnapping - but not the fantasy. I think we often stint on giving credit to children's intelligence. You only have to look at the cover of this book (with the giant eye of the Kraken and the mermaid) to see this is a book of fantasy. The first sentence tells you what you already know, that kidnapping children is not a good idea. Nor, I might add, is luring them away.
The author has to find a way to get three children from their mundane or painful lives to another place. One of them has to be a mistake. No sane child who is old enough to read this would make the assumption that being kidnapped is a fun thing to have happen. The children in the book know what kidnapping is really about - it's about being tied up and awful things happening. They have been taught properly. But this is a book of fantasy where things don't happen as expected in real life.
I think we need to let go of our adult sensibilities (we read murder mysteries, don't we, and we don't complain about people getting killed or tortured in them for our pleasure or it leading to readers who will go out and murder in real life) and enter this fantasy world that Ibbotson creates where there are nice people and not-nice people who do wicked things for what they think are good reasons and have silly opinions on "aristos" or men or whatever.
Ibbotson's work is great fun to read. There's lots of imagination and gentle humor and they are slightly sillier than, say, Diana Wynne Jones's books. Another fantasy writer who would appall adults and raise the hairs on the necks of kids is John Bellairs.

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It's Just a Diamond

2011-02-18T10:17:00.001-05:00

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's hard to believe that all of the mystery conventions in this book we might consider to be trite were innovations at that time. It's also amazing that Collins was (apparently) dealing with an opium addiction while writing this. [Well, that's what Wikipedia said Monday. It may have changed since.]
I had read this before, many years ago, after reading The Woman In White which itself was in response to a book I read in the 1970s about how real life experiences informed the fiction of several mystery writers. TWIW was terrific in the beginning, but my recollection was that I thought it went out of control toward the end and I lost interest in it. This book was not like that. I kept surging forward, although I had a memory in the back of my mind what the solution was. I just had to see how we got there.
What fun characters! And in their own words. There are many narrators, each giving their peculiar spin on events. How can you not love that dear Miss Clack and her well-meaning but "sadly" unwelcome proselytizing! And it's so much more fun to hear it from her side.
The re-reading of this book was a result of having read of the influence of the Kent murder on it (the nightdress! the nightdress! the failed detective! the failed detective coming out of retirement!) in Kate Summerscale's book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher.
A book of its time (which is a coded way of expressing the possible political incorrectness), there is a lot of silly business about the superstitions of the "Hindoo" and yet there are characters that tread a bit far the other way to ennoble the Indians. The most satisfying way in which Collins tips his hand in how he feels about them is by allowing them to rescue their Moon God's stolen diamond ... after 300 years of failing at it.
Collins also shows his sympathies to the serving class by giving us well-rounded characterizations there ... yet making the steward/butler a figure of fun with his obsession with Robinson Crusoe and his way of soothing the distaff branch of the below stairs bunch by setting them in his lap. Oh dear.
As I said, great characters, interesting POVs, a jolly good mystery, and a trailblazer in the genre!

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Molehills Out of Mountains

2011-02-11T10:33:00.000-05:00

Earth: An Intimate History by Richard Fortey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As much as I enjoyed his book on Trilobites and as interested as I am in geology, this meaty book was almost too much to handle (and I read John McPhee's Annals of the Former World. and ate it up - but, of course, that got a Pulitzer). The literary quotations included, whilst showcasing Fortey's well-rounded education, were merely annoying and the one by D. H. Lawrence about a tortoise seemed pointless. It took me months to read this because I had to mull over the material bit by bit to make sure I understood. [Also, by the end I was hearing in my head Pwof. Bwyan M. Fagan weading it.] I was also disappointed in the bit about glass being a solid and yet a very, very slow-moving liquid, which I believe has been debunked - but what do I know? [I only have a BA in Spanish. Carrumba.]
However, Fortey gives us just a taste of orogeny around the world and the make-up of the earth and only makes you want to go see it for yourself. Of course, he also handily describes parts we will never see because they are too deep and, necessarily, hot. I know from McPhee that there are scientists who do not subscribe to the tectonics gavotte of the plates, but none of that was brought up here. Fortey does not eliminate controversy from the narrative. I suspect that his trilobite hunting all over the world and other travels just made him more secure in that particular theory.

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Keine Zahnfee?

2011-02-01T11:45:00.000-05:00

Throw Your Tooth on the Roof: Tooth Traditions from Around the World by Selby B. Beeler

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A charming book of disgusting milk tooth traditions from around the world. Reminds me of Pratchett's book Hogfather in that many of these teeth are being taken away or protected. There must be some powerful universal hoodoo associated with this.

Mice seem to be in charge of collection in many places, which makes sense as they are rodents and have the continuously growing teeth. I'm not sure what throwing the tooth on the roof represents, but it seems to be popular. And, I don't know Danish, but I suspect that the tooth fairy "named Tand Feen" is actually named "Tooth Fairy." [Just checked that with Google Translate and I'm right.] Germany needs to get on the stick. Apparently, they don't do anything special with baby teeth which just seals their fate for me as the Most Boring People in the World. [Before anyone complains, I should point out that both sides of my family are German and no noticeable personality developed until they emigrated.] If anyone knows of any interesting tooth traditions from Germany, please let me know.

For additional reading, I suggest I lost my tooth in Africa by Penda Diakité which is a really cute story with great illustrations.

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Anatomy of a Shadow Puppet Stage

2011-01-31T12:16:00.000-05:00

Shadow puppet theatre in situ.

Puppeteer side with the cheap shoplight (on a microphone stand).

Frosty the Snowman knew the sun was hot that day ...

Puppet show "in progress" - ha ha.

Many years ago we created a puppet stage from two step ladders, two 1 by 6s, velcro strips, and some cloth. We were also able to do shadow puppet plays by substituting a white sheet in front for the black backdrop. I got ambitious one year and wanted to do some cute shadow puppet plays during storytime, so I made a stage from a poster carton and just some white roll paper. Wax paper would work for a smaller stage. Cardboard has the advantage of being lightweight and easy to toss into the back seat of a Toyota Corolla.

We've created several shadow puppet shows: one based on Remy Charlip's Mother, Mother, I Feel Sick, Robert Barry's Mr. Willoughby's Christmas Tree, Dr. Seuss's story "The Sneetches," and the songs "Frosty the Snowman" and "The Witch Is On Her Broomstick." They are all just short of a nightmare to put on, but the kids just love them.

The shadow puppets are often cut (and here the exacto-knife comes in handy) from black posterboard, but I've also used black foam sheets. If you use color sheets, the color will still show a bit. Storage is a problem because the fiddly bits start getting floppy so I've gone back and reinforced them with bits of wood (i.e. toothpicks, craft sticks, etc.) and then colored the wood with black magic marker if I need to use both sides.

Shadow puppets show up clearest if they are pressed flat against the screen of the theatre and to make this easier, I started putting their sticks in at an angle. For the sticks I use bamboo skewers that I've stuck (with hot glue) into packing peanuts hot glued to the back of the puppet. This works well as long as you aren't planning to use both sides of the puppet. The long bamboo skewers help me keep my fingers out of the shadows. Packing peanuts don't hold up forever, but they have the virtue of being plentiful and free, if you order a lot of stuff.

Diagram of dinosaur shadow puppet with packing peanut and skewer at an angle.

We store flannelboard stories in manila jackets and I've tried doing that with shadow puppets, but moved on to a flap from a corrugated cardboard box. The skewers fit nicely in the corrugations and the cardboard coordinates with the low-tech theatre.

There's something magical about shadow puppets. You can use them to freshen up some flannelboard stories and rhymes: Five little whatevers, The three billy goats gruff, etc. If you use them, it's probably best to use them at the end because it means turning off the lights - and then when the magic's over and the lights come back on, it's time to say goodbye, say goodbye, say goodbye.

Help! I Have 90 Firsts Graders Coming!

2011-01-27T12:20:00.000-05:00

Partial Cast of The Mitten

Set pieces for Granny Glittens and Her Amazing Mittens

Okay, you're told that 90 first graders are coming and expecting some boffo program as well as a tour of the new library. They're dividing them in half and taking one half on a tour while you do your fabulous thing. I've chosen two puppet plays I know I can do by myself (plus a shadow puppet play to "Frosty the Snowman" at the end if there's time). The first is The Mitten, a cute story where, by the end, the puppets explode out into the audience. That's almost as much of a crowd-pleaser as squirting them with water at the slightest excuse. The second is a favorite story from my childhood. It came from The Tall Book of Christmas Stories and captivated me totally by turning itchy woolen mittens into candy. I only have to put my hair up, my bifocals back on, and throw on a shawl to be Granny Glittens herself.

The set pieces for Granny Glittens are made from white posterboard (and one piece of corrugated cardboard for the packing box for her new stove) and backed with pieces of paper towel roll to keep them standing up straight. The balls of yarn are on bamboo skewers. I pop a white ball of yarn in the pot on the stove ... and out comes one by one: a red one, a green one, a brown one, a yellow one, and a black one. I've heard gasps of amazement from 4 year olds. First graders might be a bit more jaded.

Don't they wonder about the size of the stove relative to the human being? you ask. What, you haven't heard of suspension of disbelief?

Polar Bear Flannelboard

2011-01-14T15:17:00.000-05:00

The Cold, Cold Night

One cold, cold night in the snowy, icy north a man heard a crunching outside his little house. He opened his door to look out into the night but suddenly it was quiet. The cold wind blew, and the stars above twinkled, and the moon shone bright when over the snowdrift appeared two big, big ears.

“Oh, my,” he said.

“How strange to see such big, big ears in the cold, cold night!”

And the cold wind blew, and the stars above twinkled, and the moon shone bright

when over the snowdrift appeared two dark, dark eyes under the big, big ears.

“Oh, my,” he said.

“How strange to see such dark, dark eyes under the big, big ears in the cold, cold night.”

But still he stood in the doorway.

And the cold wind blew, and the stars above twinkled, and the moon shone bright

when over the snowdrift appeared a black, black nose under the dark, dark eyes under the big, big ears.

“Oh, my,” he said.

“How strange to see such a black, black nose under the dark, dark eyes under the big, big ears in the cold, cold night.”

But still he stood in the doorway.

And then the man said, “Where did you get such big, big ears?”

“Much listening, much listening.”

“And where did you get such big, big eyes?”

“Much watching, much watching.”

“And where did you get such a black, black nose?”

“Much sniffing, much sniffing.”

“And what brings you to my door?”
D
r
a
m
a
t
i
c
P
a
u
s
e

“Snowshoes!”

Circles made with various die-cut patterns: planets, insides of 4" letter O, etc.
Black flannel is plain, but white flannel is fuzzy flannel that I keep hidden from the rest of the library.

We've had snow down here all week, which is unusual for here and while I usually do something snow-related for pre-schoolers (many of them have not seen snow or ice - I had to explain icicles in December), I'm tired of doing the same stuff. I saw a print-out online of some circles that could be cut out to make a polar bear and I decided it would make a cute flannelboard. After looking at photos of real polar bears, though, I made the eyes smaller than the nose. I'd been casting around for a rhyme to go with this when I remembered the flannelboard of "The Pumpkin Man" - so I used that as a basis forthe flannelboard story above.

Next I'll probably make a big book out of it!

Hit the Road, Hoppy-Toad

2011-01-04T11:42:00.000-05:00

Adults are not allowed in the Children's Room of our library. Well, not exactly. Stray adults are not supposed to be wandering around the CR. Adults with children can hang out. Caregivers can come in without their charges and look for books. There isn't an operating PAC station in the adult area downstairs, so they have to come into the CR to look up a book. The die-cut machine is available to the public and it's pretty deep in the CR. So many exceptions. But how do you know if you have a stray adult or a caregiver? Yesterday I lurked by the desk to tell a woman that, for future information, there are adult restrooms in the adult area behind the stairs. I am not going to make someone turn around and go the whole length of the building in case it is an emergency. I will let them know there is a better choice in their own area. It turned out she had kids in the CR. I'm glad she spoke to them as soon as she came out or I'd have been embarrassed.

My strategy has always been to ask what appear to be stray adults if I can help them, but often they say no and keep moving. Next, I follow them and start a tour of the CR. They've helped pay for it, so they should be allowed to see where their money has gone. "You are in the Children's Room," I begin. "Is there something I can show you?" If they seem amenable, I will show off the computers for children, the puppet stage for children, the program room, the homework/tutoring rooms, etc. Usually this will work. In fact, I've given two tours already this morning. I will then finish it all off by suggesting they see the upstairs as well ("Run along, now!").

I don't want to appear to be accusing someone of anything or singling anyone out. I did monitor one man who didn't want help, didn't want a tour, but was just going to watch the children, he said, long enough to determine that he was actually there as a father who had finished what he was doing elsewhere in the library and was rejoining his wife and kid. Anyone could be there with a kid. The kids run down on their own (they're supposed to have an adult with them - and there's another thorny issue) and I have to look to see if an adult is coming along to be with them. Which adult?

A new library generates new membership. I don't know half of these people. The last thing I want is to come off like some brassy library dragon who challenges every adult who walks in (not to mention intimidates young children who got ahead of their parents). This is a tightrope I walk every day - without any set guidelines. All I know is: no stray adults and no unaccompanied children unless they're old enough to be too old for the CR, at which point they should be annoying the teen center people upstairs.

No adults on the children's computers - except we don't have the in-house use laptops yet, so parents often work or surf next to their children on the children's computers.

And, while we're at it, absolutely everyone, even nice people, is ignoring the "Please Turn Off Cell Phones" signs. I had a mom poke her head in the CR last night and say to her middle-school daughter, "You have a cell phone, look at it. I've called you three times." Ummm ... lady, she's not supposed to have it turned on. That's, like, a rule - like the one about no food or drink.

It's possible that we need signage, but the more you put up, the less inclined people are to read them. And I bet the architect will have a hissy fit if we start putting up any big signs on his nice, clean walls and columns. So it's down to me confronting people. Sometimes I wish I had brass - but I just don't. Why can't you just get in people's faces and tell them they aren't welcome in the CR for some reason? Well, there you go. If it's a child, I don't want to turn the library into some horrible experience (that kept me out of public libraries until I was in college). If it's an adult, who is paying for the building and my salary (however distantly), I don't want them to write letters to the editor or to their councilmen (or keying my car, depending on how they tend to react to rejection) because they wandered unknowingly into Forbidden Territory. I want them to see their library ... once, at least. I'm proud of it. I want kids to feel welcome, but not fall between some cracks (too old for the CR, too young to be in the adult computer lab alone).

For now, this is my method of coping:
Step One: "May I help you?" [Who are you and what are you doing in here?]
Step Two: "This is the Children's Room. May I show you something?" [You can't stay.]
Step Three: "Don't miss the second floor! There is a really nice view of North Main Street from the rotunda upstairs!" [Now, scram!]

I'm working on polite ways of making people with cell phones not talk on them. I'll stick with "Where's your mom, honey?" for loose kids.

Feline Exegesis

2011-01-03T18:35:00.000-05:00

The Rabbi's Cat by Joann Sfar

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this on the strength of The Professor's Daughter that I found so charming. This was a totally different kind of story about a cat in a sephardic household in Algeria. Why it's in our library I can't imagine, but I am grateful! I may also be one of the few people in town who can fully appreciate the book. There are three stories in this volume, the first about the cat's desire for a bar mitzvah so he can return to his mistress. Once he learned to speak (after consuming a parrot that would not shut up), he learned to lie, and so the rabbi separated him from his daughter. The cat, however, argues theology with him. Heh!
In the second story, the rabbi is poised to lose his position as rabbi if he cannot pass a French dictation exam. His cat, unable to enter and help him, prays for a miracle. This is always a mistake, as my friend who helped someone pray to be released from the curse of daily hiccups could tell you. I wonder if my friend is still hiccuping in her friend's stead ... While the rabbi is waiting to hear about his status, a young man come to his grandfather's funeral and also announces that he is a not yet official new rabbi for the area. The rabbi's cousin has a solution, a sword, and a lion, but nothing works out the way you'd think in these stories.
The rabbi travels to Paris in the last story in the volume. By the end of the book, he is an enigma to everyone, except perhaps, his cat.
There's a lovely photo of Sfar and his cat on the flyleaf. The cat is the model for the much more rangy looking drawn cat. The art in this book is rough and all the text as if hand-written. These are wonderful, amusing, and surprising stories.

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It's a Long, Long Way from May to ...

2011-01-03T11:51:00.000-05:00

The Professor's Daughter by Joann Sfar

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was utterly charmed by the story, the illustrations, and the printing. The cavorting with mummies reminded me of the Adèle Blanc-Sec books, but this story is slightly less gruesome than those. True, there are poisonings and shootings, but this is a love story between Imhotep IV and the daughter of the professor who planned to put him on display. While capturing the surreal, the exquisite drawings evoke the past with the regularity of their size and the monochrome treatment of the early part of the stories that gradually increases in color as the mummy's life becomes more ... fraught.

The plot itself begins almost halfway into the story. We don't know how the mummy came to be found or was discovered to be alive - only that the professor's daughter has dressed him in her father's clothes and taken him out for what can only be described as a date. Imhotep IV lives up to his proper English clothing for only a short time and then a taste of tea inebriates him and what started as a harmless outing turns into high adventure and courtroom drama! This short book leaves you crying for prequels!

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Spoiling for Murder

2011-01-01T15:24:00.001-05:00

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was soooo good! I even read the footnotes! Can you have spoilers in a non-fiction book? If you think so, I recommend you stop reading right now!

I mean, it's not as if the alleged solution isn't telegraphed to you right on the cover, now that I look at it. I'd sussed it by page 5 and a quick look through the photographs seemed to confirm it, so I guess it isn't meant to be that much of a secret. It is still a mystery, and we'll Never Know the Truth, but we can get all gurgly while guessing (or maybe it's the high-test tea I've been drinking lately).

Summerscale certainly did her homework and shows the math. She catalogs the influences of the murder on literature as well as the real life detecting, which became a passion for the population of England at that time, totally captivated as they were by the particulars. Our Mr. Whicher walks into the investigation weeks late, but seems to pinpoint the most likely scenario immediately. Unfortunately, he is unable to prove it or to pressure his suspect into breaking down and confessing.

There is no solution for five years, and then we have a bare-bones confession exculpating everyone else in a hundred mile radius. The confessed killer is spared the death penalty by Queen Victoria and, despite continual applications for early parole, serves the entire life sentence and goes on to lead what appears to be a blameless life. But, was there an accomplice? Was the father infected early on with syphilis causing the madness in his first wife, the deaths of many of their children, and the blindness and early demise of his second wife? Was the atmosphere in this family as poisonous as it would seem to need to be to cause the brutal murder of a young child? Or was this all just the fevered imaginings of your typical angst-ridden teens?

I have one quibble with one of the photos that was represented as a mosaic of a cherub with the face of a young child as made by the confessed killer. As one who pretends to artistic abilities, I know that I tend to use my own face and body, consciously or unconsciously, when creating the human form. And if you look at the mosaic and then its creator, you will see the resemblance. Oh, it would be nice if it were the head of the murdered child, especially because it looks decapitated, but I believe it looks ever so much like Constance.

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Titel ... Gut

2010-12-30T12:04:00.000-05:00

The Totally Made-up Civil War Diary of Amanda MacLeish by Claudia Mills

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Keeping in mind that this is a children's book, this is a fairly sophisticated story. Amanda's parents are splitting up (in a way that makes the mother at first look blameworthy) and her distress is paralleled by the class project: keeping a Civil War diary for Polly, a fictional girl her age who has one brother who supports the Union cause and another who supports Secession. This is a careful distinction. The younger brother does not necessarily support slavery, but does support the right of slave-owning states to determine their own regulations in this matter. The older brother, not Polly's favorite which adds to the complexity, is against slavery. And they all live on one of those border states that couldn't make up its mind either: Maryland.

The story lightly touches on attitudes about race and Amanda shows the typical attitude of someone who wants to be right-thinking, but still struggles a bit with her preconceptions while deploring prejudice. She also parallels the conflict with her own behavior when her pain over her parents' separation causes her to avoid her friend, yet want her friend to pursue her, and then blame her when she doesn't.
The message: I'm rubber and you're glue, if we go back far enough we'll find the problem was you. In her fictional diary, the brothers reconcile, as she does with her friend. Unless her parents can agree on an open relationship, that marriage is doomed and it looks like serial monogamy for Dad. And I don't believe for five seconds that her dad didn't start that relationship with Caroline until after the split and I bet Amanda's sister Steffi doesn't either, cynical little slut.

This book covers so much in so few pages. Amanda is confronted with the gamut of button-pushing situations: parental conflict, separation, adultery, pubescent sibling with attitude, shame, math homework, leaden political correctness, bad weather, racism, and a lost cat! I cried and cried. All of this is deftly written so that it doesn't seem like a ham-handed pulling out of all the stops, but just like normal life. Good job, Claudia Mills.

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No Reality Here

2010-12-26T18:20:00.000-05:00

Dating is Murder: A Novel by Harley Jane Kozak
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Contains serious spoilers - you have been warned. This story was going okay. The previous book was better, but the author made the time-honored mistake there of relenting the sexual tension and letting the main characters hook up. She had to undo it to free up Wollie in this next situation of date fodder for a reality show. That's understandable. And we were going along just fine until the earlobe business. Yes, it was gruesome and I can tolerate a certain amount of that if we don't have to actually see it (it's just hinted at with the sausage-making imagery etc.), but no Martha-Stewartesque type person would be so inept as to let an earlobe, much less one with an identifying earring (!!!!!) get away from her. First of all, she'd probably know better than to try to kill someone by cutting their throat. That is way too messy. You'd never clean that up, no matter how Martha-Stewarty you were. If the M-S type were going to kill someone and dispose of the body, she would be much, much more organized. Kill first and then cut up. Much less messy. And she just wouldn't let an earlobe get away. An experienced cook wouldn't hack away like that. I don't have an alternative, but this did make me set the book aside and put my head in my hands.
Also, the victim went to Pepperdine and I just don't see that type with that kind of earring, especially the son of a senator.
The characters other than that are nicely realized and likable. The detecting stuff was delightfully screwball, but I didn't think much of the reality show stuff. Then again, I haven't watched tv in a couple of decades now and the author is in the bidness, so I shouldn't judge that.

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Fun with Alzheimer's

2010-12-20T16:28:00.002-05:00

Lunch at the Piccadilly by Clyde Edgerton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was read by my book group a number of years ago when I was still caring for a parent (or maybe two - I've forgotten how long ago it was) with dementia so I opted to not read it. I have my own painful and/or cute stories about elderly people and I didn't need more. Then the library read Walking Across Egypt by Edgerton and that was so good that when I saw this book on display I decided to read it as well.
Carl visits his aunt in a reasonably nice nursing home. She wants to go home, but he can see that she needs someone to keep an eye on her - and that she needs to stop driving, but he hasn't the gumption to bring it up. He also has his eye on Anna, the manager and is drawn into the orbit of a preacher who thinks churches/synagogues/mosques should merge with nursing homes so that old people get visited at least once a week. Carl's life is enriched by these people, although caring for his aunt is tiring and writing songs with the preacher comes with the price of having to listen to the sermons. Carl's aunt and the little old ladies get up to all kinds of mischief because of their memory problems and willfulness, which comes off as cute and charming. The aunt's health declines rather quickly and her memory problems become more problematic and it was more depressing for me. Of course, I cried. I always cry all over books, but at least I didn't get angry like I do when I feel like I'm being manipulated.
I think maybe I like Walking Across Egypt better, although that book would easily turn into a tragedy if it went any further. This book was good, though.

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Growing Pains

2010-12-20T15:06:00.000-05:00

We have a brand new library which is just fantastic and I thank people who come into the Children's Room to look everything over for the taxes they pay that helped build the new library and keep it going. I'd say 99.999% of people are impressed and thrilled by the new library.
The Children's Room is the farthest point on the first floor from the entrance but it seems to be the first place people go. For the first two months, the only copier available to the public on the main floor was in the Children's Room and it was around the corner from the desk. We want to discourage adults from wandering in the Children's Room, but we couldn't help it for a while. At last, the copier was moved closer to the entrance to the Children's Room so it could be networked with the children's computers. Adults would walk right past it, though, if they had used it when it was around the corner. That wasn't so bad, because it wasn't that much of an intrusion into the CR. Now, however, there is a copier for public use next to the Circulation Desk. It's not quite obvious - it's on the far side and against the wall. Unfortunately, the people at the Info Desk who greet people as they walk in, don't seem to know about it.
I help adults who want to make copies, but I let them know that for next time there is a copier next to the Circulation Desk so they "don't have to walk so far." I'd consider making them walk all the way back without copies to be Bad Service and I hate giving Bad Service.
We seem to need something to update, not just the volunteers that staff the Info Desk, but all of us about changes. We have the Intranet, but I don't recall seeing a message that there was now an operational copier machine for public use at the Circulation Desk. This is something that everyone needs to know. Volunteers don't have access to the intranet bulletins, so they need something on paper, perhaps in the form of a newsletter. Our Volunteer Coordinator is good about keeping them updated, but she wasn't here today and two different volunteers directed patrons the length of the whole building into the Children's Room to make copies.
We must do better. Doing better, however, will not mean signage. It seems the more signage you put up, the less they read it. They still aren't reading the one that asks them to turn their cells phones off in the library. [Patrons who were in the middle of asking me for help still answer their ringing phones and expect me to wait until they are done with their call.] I think we need to update staff on the intranet about each change and find a way to alert volunteers as well.

"Paradoxides" Bwhah-ha-ha-ha-haaa!

2010-12-13T16:28:00.000-05:00

Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution by Richard Fortey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I don't want to give away who dunnit.
This book made me want to get a little hammer and go out looking for fossils. Okay, I've always sort of wanted to do that, but this intensified that feeling! Fortey might try just a bit too hard to be humorous which might go over well in a class but just made me groan. It is plain that he has had a balanced education he's not letting go to waste, despite the childhood obsession that became his life's work. Fortey weaves literature, personalities, and scandal into the trilobite story. It was hardly necessary; trilobites and all the minutiae involved fascinate me. Oh, and the eyes, their eyes! I have two more Forteys in the stack to read. They take such a gosh-awful long time to digest, but are worth it in the end.
I am also delighted that I too now know that Paradoxides is the "genus of the trilobite of the Middle Cambrian" just like Tim Brooke-Taylor. You have to follow ISIRTA to find that funny.

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Bride of Frankencozy

2010-12-05T16:50:00.000-05:00

Dating Dead Men by Harley Jane Kozak

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I counted 60 characters, all requiring their own names. Well, except the Vons bag lady. The main characters' names are a bit contrived (mostly the Shelleys), but this was a good read. I will definitely continue with the series.
There is a certain amount of amusement with the rush to date 50 men, but mostly this is a Cozy Thriller - if there is such a thing. Wollie is pursued by the mob, assassins, all in the week where her greeting card shop is being evaluated by secret shoppers to see if it's upgrade material, giving Wollie the chance to buy the franchise ... with the down payment money from the dating study. Can she keep up appearances at the shop while her schizophrenic brother, the mob, an attractive ex-con, her funkily dressed assistant, and all her dates conspire to undo all she's worked for? Oh, and let's not forget the ferret.
Good fun and romance. Can't imagine what is left for a sequel.

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The Ordinary Man

2010-11-22T12:24:00.000-05:00

Fifth Business by Robertson Davies

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An ordinary man's life cannot really fit into a paragraph - and Ramsay sets himself to fleshing out a tossed-off tribute in honor of his retirement that offended him by its lack of depth and revelation. He writes his life history to the headmaster of the school for boys where he taught all his adult life. Ramsay is what Davies refers to as "the fifth business": not the lead or antagonist, but a character in dramatic works who carries an essential piece of the plot.
In essence, then, Ramsay's narrative is a tragedy from this fifth business's point of view. He became obsessed with a neighbor's wife as a child because he dodged a snowball that caused a premature birth and the woman's descent into a gentle madness. All his life he is burdened with the responsibility for her child, Paul, and for her. In his eyes she has worked miracles and he comes to think of her as a Fool-Saint. This leads him to research and write hagiographies, although he was brought up as a dour Scots Presbyterian.
I didn't find the saint business that interesting, but Davies does a wonderful job of depicting life in a Canadian town, the horrors of the trenches of WWI, and developing characters. Ramsay is self-deprecating in that stereotypical way we associate with Canadians. His antagonist/best friend, "Boy" Staunton, becomes rich and influential from the most mundane of businesses: sugar. He also takes Ramsay's "girlfriend" away from him, saving him the trouble of dumping her himself - but he is unable to disentangle himself from their friendship. Even amid the tragedies there are some laugh-out-loud moments. I am tempted to continue the series, if only the third book which may pick up where this left off.

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Words of One Syllable Dept.

2010-11-17T09:49:00.002-05:00

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A light-hearted romp through the study of life's most serious business. I picked this up because I enjoyed Stiff so much. Roach writes the same way people chat about things, with wry humor and personal anecdote (Boy, is her husband ever game), which is engaging and yet she manages to keep it informative. I am amazed that these researchers let her anywhere near them, considering the official opinion on their research.

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Oh, Gawwd, Nooooo!

2010-11-15T13:01:00.001-05:00

Ghosts by Paul Auster

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

[Just tossing words out] This must be one of those deconstructed, existential, minimalist detective stories for people who consider the genre beneath them. It spent a whole lot of time going nowhere, which I suppose is the point, and then ends suddenly and Spillainely. Perhaps it is just a send-up of the genre in an artier form for the cognoscente, but the observer/observed and writer/reader confusion was done to death by the 1960s and done by much better writers (Borges, for example). I kept hoping Mr. Blue would get the point sooner and ask Caleb Carr to help him with that Mr. Gold conundrum so something interesting might happen, but alas it was not to be. Mercifully, the book was short, however it took me two weeks to read 96 pages.

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Pre-School Storytime Pattern

2010-11-02T12:21:00.000-04:00

I've been asked to detail my storytime pattern - which is pretty fluid but usually goes:

Opening song (Usually "If you're happy and you know it")
fingerplay/flannelboard
book (the more difficult one)
fingerplay/flannelboard
book (the easier one)
this spot reserved for puppets, creative dramatics, music making, major movement stuff
closing ("Now's the time to say goodbye" or, currently, my goodbye couplets: "See you later, alligator" etc.)
[Handout of some kind]

It's not hard-wired. The usual rule of thumb is Lead with the most difficult.
I've done three books or one book. I usually have more than two books available on various levels so I can adjust by what age I've gotten. Sometimes it's mostly 3s, sometimes 4s. And, if they're particularly squirmy, the whole thing can get thrown out the window. And sometimes I let them decide - for Halloween they had the choice of the funny book or the scary one (and, of course, they almost unanimously went for scary).

Sometimes they want to do something more than once, which is okay for fingerplays but I don't like to do books twice in a row.

There are some flannelboards that I also have Spanish versions of, so I will do it first in English and then repeat it in Spanish, such as "Juguemos en el bosque." As the lobo gets dressed, kids learn some Spanish vocab. These materials were prepared for our foray into bilingual storytimes ... which went nowhere. We might try to revive them as more of our Spanish-speaking population discovers the new library.

The puppetry and creative dramatics go towards the end because they have a tendency to get the kids wound up. The creative dramatics will often follow or be within a particular book - acting out part of it. With the puppetry (I'll have some little story I can act out), it's just hard to put the puppets away. The kids don't like it. And they want to hug the puppets, so it's best to do it at the end when they can get up and hug a puppet on the way out. Puppet can be used anywhere in the storytime, but this spot is reserved for a whole story.

More on puppets: I don't like little hands up my puppets' bottoms. I'm just that way. Yes, they can hug them, but they are characters, not toys. There is a puppet theatre just outside the storytime room that has puppets for them to use.

The handouts can be as basic as coloring sheets or activity sheets, or I have created pages with one of the poems/fingerplays/flannelboards we shared that day. They are either the Add To Your Traveling Flannelboard (the sheet of felt glued into the pocket folder) type where they also got some stick-on felt to make them hang on the felt sheet or the fingerpuppet generator: Five de-colored cliparts of frogs etc. and five strips to cut out and tape to the back of the clipart plus the poem. Presto!

I used to have a Ning where I shared stuff like this, but they went capitalist on me. Heh! If anyone else starts one, let me know.

It's Impossible

2010-11-02T10:19:00.000-04:00

Impossible Major Rogers by Patricia Lee Gauch

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Gauch paints a warts and all portrait of a figure from the French and Indian wars. Neither all good or all bad, Rogers is a fighter and determined, and for that much he can be admired. The book is punctuated with the refrain of his impossibility. By stressing this, Gauch also does not try to paint him too much as a hero. She shows him as a man conflicted by his hatred and admiration of his chosen enemy and as someone at a loss when the fighting is over. At least in war he could fight his way out of trouble.
Although later forced to fight on the British side because the colonists viewed him as a possible spy, Rogers' style of combat (developed from his experience of fighting the Abenaki as well as trading with them and studying them) was what the colonists chose. Rogers' determination could have been interpreted as unscrupulousness and he ended badly. He was jailed, apparently for his enormous debts, for three years and eventually had nothing left but his braggadocio.

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Dance, Dance, Dance!

2010-10-29T16:09:00.000-04:00

The Animal Boogie by Debbie Harter

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a gift from a friend. Just got around to listening to the cd that came with it and reading the text. Oh so cute! This will be a lot of fun at storytime.
Lots of movement and movement vocabulary.
Lots of animals.
This book can be used many ways: just read and sing along with movement, set the book aside and do it again hauling out the appropriate puppets, let kids hold up appropriate puppets (perhaps on sticks - I made a quick sheet of all the animals in a black and white format so they could be colored and either backed with something to use on the home/travel flannelboards (made with 9x12 sheet of flannel on the inside of a pocket folder) that we've given out fairly regularly at storytimes or had a loop of paper taped to the back to make a fingerpuppet, make flannelboard animals to point to, OMG!, and just dance, dance, dance!
Can hardly wait to use it!
The cd has 2 versions: one with Fred Penner singing it and then next one more like a karaoke format that you do your own singing, but will animal noises backing you up. Cuuuute.

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Doesn't Live Up To the Title

2010-10-26T11:20:00.000-04:00

Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter by Phoebe Damrosch

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was living in Manhattan in the early 1980s, eating at diners mostly (or whatever foreign food took my fancy), but occasionally at a fancier place (one time at La Grenouille where I learned what good service is) so I was interested in this book.

There isn't much of a story, except the one about her love life which seems to build up some tension, but in the end she doesn't get fired or anything particularly interesting. I sympathize with this, having led a more-or-less uneventful life. Yes, I moved on my own to Manhattan to pursue acting. I ate some food, had some escapades, but in order to make things interesting, I'd have to embellish. One is almost hamstrung if she has to confine herself to the facts.

The food wasn't anything I would long for, but the service sounds outstanding. [Now, if you could have that sort of dining service with Indian food or Thai or even Mexican (Oooo, think of all the moles!)] I'm afraid I'll have to side with David Rakoff on this - as nice an idea that even the middle classes who are willing to surrender a couple of months' wages on a four-star dinner will receive the same deference as the absurdly wealthy or famous might be, I prefer the stories about exceptional chefs who use their skills in elementary school cafeterias to improve the eating habits of the less advantaged young in this country.

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Rich As Kugel

2010-10-25T18:49:00.000-04:00

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Many years ago, when I was young and willing to read just about anything, I plowed through A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. I knew nothing about the movie, although I may have seen posters. I read ACO because I had read one of Burgess's other books and enjoyed it so I was working my way through his ouevre. The first five pages were rough going because he had invented a futuristic cant and it was difficult to read at first. Once I got the hang of it, though, I went back and started over. It wasn't until I reached the end of the book (in paperback form) that I found the glossary that would have saved me so much time. I'm glad, though, that I had the opportunity to stretch my linguistics muscles instead.
That said ... this book pushed my yiddish to the limit. It was worth it though. Chabon's book is rich in what I can only call wordplay and sly satire of the hard-boiled genre. There is the main character who is an overworked policeman whose new boss is making his life miserable and his job impossible. He has a partner who is his complete opposite. The powers that be are on their case to get off the case. As the story goes on, the main character no longer knows whom to trust. Time is running out. You know the stuff.
It might be difficult for the average goyim (say, ones outside of urban centers) to wade through. I spent a lot of time on this book just savoring the the little twists of language. As far as plot goes, it's the standard hard-boiled fare if you just substitute some species of hasidim for mafiosos, inuit for palestinians, and imagine an almost all-jewish cast. Not having read anything before that was so steeped in the chosen folkways, I was amazed and delighted by little details such as guns being referred to as "sholems" [ha ha! peacemakers!] and phones as "shoyfers" [get on the horn to someone]. And if you are well-versed in yiddish, you might be a few paragraphs ahead in places. Most of the characters are speaking yiddish to each other, but it's expressed as english. "Woe is me!" says Landsman and the wisenheimer can retranslate it to "Vayz mir!" There are many little treasures in this story.
The premise is that, post-holocaust, the jews were unable to take over Israel and instead were offered a temporary homeland in, of all places, Alaska. The time is about to run out and there are some who have made other arrangements, some who listlessly do nothing, and others who have deep, dark plans. Deeper and darker and sillier than you can imagine - but all of it drawn from contemporary headlines with parallels to history. No, really.

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SCLA Part 7 - What We Were All Waiting For: Music and Movement in Storytimes

2010-10-23T16:19:00.001-04:00

Although I let Karen and LeVerne go to the Bouncing Babies session and I did something else, I had to go to this. And we had so much fun, even though I was still yawning a lot. LeVerne showed up with the pillows I'd "won" in the silent auction and the three of us cuddled together and prepared to have a good time.

Parachute for movement activities

It would be nice to be able to play the guitar for programming, but at my age I may have waited a tad too long to start. So much for Strings and Stories. But you can do the same stuff with just singing, which is what I do. They use rhythm sticks (have plenty of those!), boomwhackers (OMG, don't have those!), shakers, scarves, and a parachute with beach balls on it. They use some books we already have and I made note of a couple more I will try to use or acquire.

Boomwhackers (sorry, this picture seems to have disappeared)

This isn't the sort of thing you can describe, because there's not so much talking as there is doing. We need lots more stuff like this going on to make it worth going. Or maybe someone could upload inspirational storytime stuff to YouTube.

SCLA Part 6 - The Dreaded Poster Session

2010-10-23T16:04:00.002-04:00

I got started late because I again had trouble sleeping on the giant marshmallow with no audiobook to listen to - poor planning on my part. But the poster session is just an hour of walking around looking at displays and listening to the spiels of the earnest creators. Not everything is relevant to what I do, but some of the irrelevant is at least interesting!

Amanda was there trying to reach even more people with her StudySC project that was so wonderful.

My av on her plot o' land - she had to wear the bunny suit for a month to earn money for charity.

There was some poor gal trying to promote Second Life (which I know everyone is tired of hearing about) as an educational tool. Her "poster" was pretty darn fancy, unlike the cardboard triptychs most had. Curtis was there thinking it might be worth looking back into the State Library presence in SL, which is running better and faster than it used to. I still think it would be helpful in these days of limited budgets to have SCLA running concurrently in a virtual space that people could reach without the travel costs or the commitment of time (you go to a distant location for one or two sessions and feel you have to attend other stuff to make it worth the time and expense). However, SL is becoming more expensive, especially for non-profits who used to have it easier, so it may or not be worth it. ALA, though, is having virtual conferences there (and charging for them).

There was also an unnamed library that was using certain e-book products probably outside the permitted boundaries as delineated by the suppliers. It was very interesting. They loaded them with genres (romances, Christian fiction, etc.) and were checking them out in-house - and only to people with good library borrowing track records. They held training sessions on the devices so that those less familiar with the technology wouldn't get lost. They found their employees were taking the training and that patrons were taking them just to get a feel for what the devices were like prior to purchase. They will continue to do this until the suppliers send them a cease-and-desist order. Very brave! Anyone interested in me naming the names can come by the Children's Room and I'll blab in person. I have seen an article online about Amazon allowing borrowing between Kindles ... here. This indicates that the ante has done been upped in the e-reader race and perhaps the circulation of the devices might be coming in the future.

There was also some stuff on Teen programming (using recycled stuff - if anyone wants to do stuff with bottle tops, let me know because I've been saving them up for just such an occasion) and then my brain shut down.

SCLA Part 5 - Job Search Products on Discus

2010-10-23T15:33:00.000-04:00

I had already been through one job-search-related session, but I figured another one couldn't hurt. Also, my only other reasonable choice was the one on selecting Christian fiction for children. Well, first of all, I don't purchase books and, secondly, I'm not a Christian, so I'm unlikely to do any programming using this genre. Also, what passes for Christian lit for one group doesn't necessarily work for another group. For example, there's the Left Behind series which is eaten up by one segment of the Christian population and derided vociferously by another segment. In the past we've solved this problem in our area by putting "Christian" stickers on books from the various publishing houses, such as Bethany, and then hiding under the desk.

This was an excellent presentation, and also just in time for my Homeschooler program! I couldn't believe my little eyeballs! The presenter went over the products that we have available on our library's Discus* links that I was totally unaware of.

Ferguson's Career Guidance Center is a Facts On File product. This seems to be mostly useful for those incredibly boring school assignments on careers, which they used to make kids do all the time but I haven't had a request for recently. There is a cool "Career Interest Assessment" test that I'm dying to take. It's 180 questions to determine where your interests lie: are you artistic? nurturing? etc. I can't wait to find out that I should have been an Investment Banker. I'll have to wait until I get to the library because I can't seem to access this from home - it's requiring a username and password. Rats. There is also advice on job hunting skills.

LearningExpress Library requires you to set up an account, but that's so it can save information for you and where you stopped on the practice tests. It was suggested that you could use your library card number for setting up an account if doing this from outside the library - but, dang!, that's a really long number. There is a resume creator and mini-courses on all those things you might be tested on, like math, the GED, ASVAB, SAT, ACT, all those acronyms, and some courses in Spanish to serve that demographic.

The last bit was about the NetLibrary Career e-Book Collection which also requires signing up. Each title only has eight spaces for readers ... so if eight people are trying to read the same book at the same time, the ninth person is out of luck and has to ask for a notice to be sent when a space is available. That might seem to be an unlikely event, but I imagine that those eight spaces are available to the whole state. We used to subscribe to NetLibrary and I had a username, but it got too expensive and the state later provided Overdrive. Anyway, I imagine that username, whatever it was, isn't any good anymore. It would be nice if these things were more dependable.

I think the Homeschoolers group will be very interested in LearningExpress Library and its courses and tests. Okay, maybe the parents will be interested.

*Now with the exciting new SmartSearch which searches all the websites in Discus at once!

SCLA Part 4 - Advocacy Because That Was the Theeeeme

2010-10-23T14:51:00.000-04:00

There wasn't much choice during this set of concurrent sessions, so I picked one advocacy session and Karen picked a different one. I think she did better. There wasn't much here that I hadn't heard before, I hadn't had enough sleep, and the caffeine was wearing off. I hope I didn't distress the presenter with all my yawning.

The usual stuff on partnerships: with mutual benefit comes mutual responsibility. If you're a librarian, you're used to being the one giving service - it might be your turn to receive. Both parties are in it for something, even if it is only to get their logo on an ad or a handout. Partner for a discreet (and short) amount of time the first time. Then check to see if your partner is willing to continue or do it again. [Yeah, we used to get ice cream coupons from Chik-Fil-A for our library card campaign in the schools - but after a while we started getting stories about changes in management, etc. and we let it drop.]
You need to weed programs the way you weed books. Maybe something near and dear to your heart is no longer justified. [Wha-at?!] Demographics are easy to get hold of to assess the current needs of your population (although the most recent are not quite available from the 2010 Census, they will be soon). But also think about other kinds of underserved populations - the invisible ones, such as businesses or tourists.

All library employees should have an elevator speech prepared, a three minute or less spiel about the library, its collections, or programs. Just in case, you know, you've got someone trapped. [Me, I've been feeling trapped lately, by people asking me questions about the new library. For two years it was, "Aren't you excited about the new library?" and now it's "Don't you just love the new library?" It's hard to say the same thing enthusiastically again and again. "Ohh, it's so big and beautiful and (sniffing) it's got that New Library Smell!"] Now I tell people that they have to come see it. I can't believe we have this huge new building uptown and there are people who "just haven't found the time." You just want to smack 'em.

Oh, and I have this note that doesn't read like what I thought it was. That you can put a virtual sign/bookplate on digital materials so that if some group has contributed a collection of materials (a garden club, or, at our library, the Mothers of Twins), the catalog can be searched for those items or when someone is browsing the digital catalog, they can see who donated the material. Way cool.

So, in retrospect, maybe it was a better session than I thought. I was just tired at the time.

SCLA Part 3 - Anatomy of a Library Job Center

2010-10-22T20:35:00.000-04:00

If you're from a small library system like me, you can get pretty darned annoyed by what's going on at the Richland County Library. Just when you think you have a brand-spanking-new library to be proud of, you see another over-the-top presentation and slink from the session dragging your tail between your legs.
Well, they're at it again.
They decided they needed to help job seekers and so they went about it with the relentless planning and enthusiasm we have come to know and envy. They plan, they partner, they collaborate, they write grants, they totally redesign their reference area, they hire. Then they make you sit through a mind-boggling power-point presentation and sit and wonder at what on earth you could possibly adapt to your 834 square foot branch in the middle of a massive job shortage.
Well, let's look at some of the easy stuff, such as the self-paced stations. You put out a desk, a chair, and a telephone book with a little tip sheet telling them to look up companies or with a sample work portfolio. You make tip-sheets specific for area companies on filling out on-line applications, which are apparently all the rage.
No money? Partner with area technical colleges, public and private agencies. Have speakers come visit. Hold weekly job club meetings for mutual support.
They have three dedicated job specialists who can sit down one-on-one with a person and help them: create an e-mail account, fill out an online application, create a résumé, practice their interview techniques.
In the end, we were each handed the power point presentation ... on a 2G flashdrive, the same flashdrives they apparently provide to their customers with a completed résumé (and one hard copy on résumé quality paper).
They have job-search dedicated computers, they don't ask to see library cards. And for some reason it was thought necessary to say that the job staff don't answer the phone (but the reference staff helps with job search). They aren't trained.
There was more (and the power point presentation is available on request - but I want the flashdrive back), but - it was just too much to take in.

SCLA Part 2 - The New StudySC Website

2010-10-22T20:03:00.000-04:00

This session came just in time for what could have been a dull Homeschool program next Friday. This exciting new site, StudySC, (up "just in time" - AKA, Just A Bit Late - for the third graders studying the regions of our state) has links to information on South Carolina based point by point on the state's curriculum standards, the best information being chosen and evaluated by teachers. Well, dang!
The site is organized by elementary, middle school, and high school levels, so that each group has access to age-appropriate materials. Within the age levels, the sections are thematic and time-period based. The site is still in beta (and the section on Government is not up yet), but they thought it best to put out what they have and add to it. It was very exciting to see. South Carolina patrons can access this at home - unless, perhaps, they have AOL, which make the site think you live in Virginia and then, of course, you can always drop by your local library.
All of the current material is existing, stable sources, such as museums, ETV, and college sites. There may be a small amount of advertising content. They hope to add their own content at a later date, such as lesson plans, the ability to search the site by the curriculum standards, and maybe a glossary.
Also on the site is a link to information about the current and past SC Book Award winners - some of them with related activities!
I can't say how helpful this is going to be. The first day after the assignment, all our South Carolina social studies materials were checked out except the older reference book. They all needed pictures and information about the regions - and here it was all the time! This is another example of your State Library doing great things! Full marks, y'all!

SCLA Part 1 - Best Books Forward

2010-10-22T19:41:00.000-04:00

The first session I attended was about the SC Center for Children's Books and Literacy at USC where I always knew we could go and preview children's books for purchase ... and then not have to put them away ourselves (Shocking! However would we stop ourselves?!). It does make you want to visit, but it seems so far away.

Ellen Hinrichs was not able to make it, but Nonie Price chatted about the Center and enlightened us about Cocky's Learning Express. The USC mascot travels to elementary schools all over the state (even in the upstate, where he may or may not make an appearance with that Tiger) to encourage children to read. This is a program for children from K4 to 3rd grade and each child is able to take home a book. Must speak to Debbie about this. At the moment the USC students have been doing this for free, but may soon have to ask for mileage and a Kiwanis sponsorship would not go amiss there. They can certainly do a few elementary schools in one trip. Apparently, it makes all the difference if Cocky hands you a book - but one would hope it would not cause any problems in households of the orange persuasion.

Not My Thing

2010-10-19T12:11:00.000-04:00

Aunt Dimity's Death by Nancy Atherton

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is totally a not-me sort of book. Although a fan of cozy mysteries, this type of magical fluff just makes me mad. It has several annoying points - the Cinderella factor and the ghost being the major ones. But the invasion of Americans into my precious British landscape (and I am speaking AS an American), while smoothly handled, ... it's just wrong. Other folks have done it, notably Martha Grimes and Laurie King, and have done it well enough to not annoy me. This just rankles.

I am not as annoyed about the part of the story that takes place in Boston - where I lived for six years and hung out with Harvard-educated lawyers. I was also a temp employee and moved around, sharing apartments. I think I would rather have read about that instead of the fairy tale/romance/ghost story.
That said, the story is quite touching and brought me to tears a few times, which only made me angrier.

The lead character has lost her marriage, her mother, her livelihood and then gets a letter from an attorney that will turn her life around. There is, if not a Prince Charming, at least a Prince Tries-Too-Hard. Lawyers are not only scrupulously honest, but they take you into their palatial home and squire you around in their Rolls. England and Scotland seem to be populated with only the most helpful cast members and the mystery isn't much of one. It is, however, the introduction to a series and the successive books (one of which I have read) get more to the mystery, which Dimity's ghost helps solve. In fact, I will probably read more of them ... occasionally ... when I'm absolutely desperate.

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Major Project

2010-10-02T15:09:00.000-04:00

Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version by Anonymous
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I've been working on this for a few months - a little bit each night, absorbing it as I go. I remember being really annoyed at parts I read as a teen and a proto-feminist. This time I started with the NewT and went back for the Old Testament. I was delighted to find a typo in my edition, someone's son who became king at 49 when his father died at 42 or some such. It was easy to check because the histories are duplicative (and I can't express what a pain it was to read the same info over and over). The son was actually 29. It doesn't ruin the whole book, but it does show I was paying attention. My next project is to mark the sections by author. I have a big box of highlighters. The pages are so thin, though, and I'm afraid the highlighters will bleed through. Fortunately, I have two copies of this edition. Dang, we have so many bibles in this house, most of them in German.
My advice to people: read it all the way through - don't just cherry-pick the good parts, and there are good parts.
My review: The Iliad is better. I'm not saying the philosophy is better, it's just a better and more cohesive story. Babies brains are dashed out in both, so I think it's a fair comparison. They were both written a long time ago and as a window into their times they are very interesting - but I'm not going to live my life based on the philosophy of either of them. All I need to know about life I learned from my mom: Forgive and forget; Never say never; You always worry about the wrong thing; Be nice; All men are creeps in one way or another, you just have to find the least creepy one; and Don't worry, we'll be dead soon and our ideas will go with us. Wish she had been right about that last one - I get the uncomfortable feeling that our greed, pettiness, and hatred just get perpetuated generation after generation and books like this one add to the vitriol.

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It Was 20 Years Ago Today ...

2010-09-12T15:34:00.000-04:00

No, wait. It was only about four years ago and it was 20 things, or something. I've been noodling on the interweb now since 1995 (remember Mirsky's Worst of the Web?), reading articles in PC magazines, trying to find relevant sites. I was navigating Yahoo! on a dumb terminal with ascii characters. But I was determined! I signed up for listservs, bulletin boards, you name it. So, when our whole library attended that Drag You Kicking and Screaming Into Web 2.0 seminar (and, seeing the size of the conference room, headed right for the front and center table), I was all excited. We were lucky (and still are) to have a director who encouraged us to do the 23 thangs that this blog was originally set up to chronicle.

And I may have gone a bit farther. There was nothing on that list about Second Life, but I was so excited to see there was a library there (Thank a lot, Michael Stephens, for introducing me to that time-sucker) and, possibly, librarians, that I logged on 15 September of 2006.

Things are different now. I'm still spread as thin as a 'possum on I-95, but slowly some of my regular sites have dried up. Just recently Ning, where I hosted a ... ning on library programs for children went for the monetized model on me. This was at a time when I no longer had the disposable income to support it as I did when I had to go pay on Flickr to support my burgeoning screen-shot habit. And, besides, that pissed me off. Then Vox collapsed - but offered to transfer hosting to TypePad. Right after that, I received the message that Bloglines was quitting.

Bloglines was a mainstay of my Web 2.0 experience. My daily cartoons were there, and all my blog subscriptions. Bloglines was my Daily. I am very, very sorry to see it close, but I guess "free" is a business model a tad ahead of its time.

I am curious that this is happening at this particular point in time. It's as if some loans have come due at about the same time and Ning opted to try to stay afloat while Vox and Bloglines threw in the towel. Vox was apparently under pressure from WordPress and Bloglines was done in by the ubiquitous and evil Google with the Google Reader. I hate Google Reader. Yes, Bloglines was often down, but I went there so often that I'd catch everything eventually. And it was familiar, like a comfy old shoe. That needed to be thrown away. Oh well.

This is the End of an Era - and who will be next? Hmmmm?

It's Not About Making It Fun

2010-09-09T15:19:00.000-04:00

Educating the Net Generation: How to Engage Students in the 21st Century by Bob Pletka

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The NetGen are even harder to engage than their predecessors, but, aside from adding technology to the mix, what's needed to engage them is less "teaching to the test" and more complex, relevant projects that challenges different skills (language, a subject such as math or history, technology) at the same time. They need to go at their own pace and I know from experience even as an adult that classes only go as fast as the slowest student. Technology can actually help in those instances, because a student can get instant feedback in how they are doing and then get one-on-one tutoring either from the program or the teacher.

I wasn't terribly impressed with the writings of the students themselves - maybe I need to go back and read some of my scribblings (GAH! NOOOOO!!!).

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Cross Posting

2010-09-08T21:48:00.000-04:00

Grizzy has issued a statement on how she plans to commemorate 9/11 this year in SL, and I thought I would go along with it - I have put this picture and the following statement on my profile:

"To show solidarity with my Islamic brothers and sisters who have had their faith vilified as a result of the actions of extremists, I will be dressing my avatar in the traditional Islamic hijab for Tues - Sat this week."

A Lesson In Understatement

2010-08-27T12:29:00.000-04:00

They Were Strong and Good by Robert Lawson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Lawson's illustrations sometimes undermine the reverential tone of this book. When he says that his mother's mother did not like sailing on the sea, he provides a drawing of her very expressive backside as she hangs forlornly over the side of the ship.

Despite the stereotypical representations of mammies and indians, this book would make an excellent model for kids to do their own family biographies in the same simple declarative style. I know I was bored by my parents' old time-y stories. Surely, today's youth can recall some of the stories they themselves have endured.

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Suspect Sympathy

2010-08-25T09:59:00.000-04:00

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

People's imaginations never cease to amaze me. Perhaps "amaze" isn't the exact word. Terrify? Stun? Disgust? Repel? I'm sure there are really bad people out there, even without Larsson providing statistics. But, you know, I don't have to read about what they do. The book was well-crafted (although the series of photos showing the girl's change of expression was pretty hokey) and kept you interested. I liked the lead characters - they were fully conceptualized and realistic. Larsson manipulated the reader beautifully, alternating between plot lines to build dramatic tension that really got my blood pressure up and me to want to read on and on and on into the night (but I didn't - I set it down right at a most critical point, the sentence ending in "hell," and let Malcolm Gladwell lull me to sleep reading from one of his books).

But I don't think I'll be reading another one of these.

The nice thing about mysteries, in general, is that there is a rent in the universe and someone repairs it, somehow, by the end. All is restored to normal. It's a safe thrill. I just don't want to get my thrills from stories about the abuse/torture of women, children, or pets - especially when it gets graphic (I guess I must think abusing men is fair). This is where I start worrying about people's imaginations.
I just think people enjoy writing or reading about abuse too much. Even when they add retribution - especially retribution in kind. I can't blame those long, dark, Swedish winter nights for Larsson's imagination when the real life tortures of the "Disappeared" in Argentina are thrown in the balance. What does it take to imagine torture or abuse and then write about it? I don't have an answer. I guess I just don't have the imagination.

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And I Thank Hitch For This Book ...

2010-08-16T12:59:00.000-04:00

Hitch 22: Confessions and Contradictions by Christopher Hitchens

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was an e-book from Jasmine Overdrive.
Why I had not heard of Christopher Hitchens before being introduced to god Is Not Great is beyond me. I read gING in a day (staying up all night with my heart in my mouth because he was not pulling any punches) and suddenly Hitchens is on my radar. In this memoir, Hitchens exposes his life, owns up warts and all, with more modesty than apology. In fact, he takes as much pride in his communist/socialist past, it seems, as in his newly minted American citizenship, which required a Bosnian Muslim cabdriver in the US to knock him off the fence.
Hitchen's life makes one (by that I mean specifically me) feel like they have gone nowhere, seen nothing, met no one, and accomplished buggerall. And I moved to Manhattan and tried to break into theatre.

Hitchens was a journalist who actually used English and I'm sorry I was not exposed to it soon enough. I don't totally agree with him in the gING book - although I am a fellow atheist, but I could have used that sort of writing on other topics to put some besom in me at a younger age.

Now suffering from the same cancer that killed his father, Hitchens is a figure of quiet and, if not steely, perhaps platinum composure. I wish him the best.

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When Is a Curtain Not a Curtain?

2010-08-16T11:13:00.000-04:00

The Lion and the Stoat by Paul O. Zelinsky

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Now that the poetry thing is over, I can start back putting my reviews here. I'm sure you all missed them.
Zelinsky has put together (having adapted some of it from Pliny the Elder's Natural History) a fine story about competition, ego, and art. The lion and stoat are artists who compete with each other on three separate occasions. In the end they decide to not compete with each other any more ... at least not in art. The illustrations are charming as well - especially the "nude" tigers.

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Vengeance Is Mine

2010-08-11T11:33:00.000-04:00

Verdi With a Vengeance: An Energetic Guide to the Life and Complete Works of the King of Opera by William Berger

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An entertaining book - both light-hearted and serious by turns, this book shows a real love for the "King of Opera." I have to admit that I read this whole thing just to get to the material on one of my favorite operas, Falstaff, which would be his last one. The historical information on Verdi himself was an easy read, but the in-depth review of each and every opera dragged out, especially over operas I was not familiar with. Although I am familiar with quite a few Verdi works and can picture them in my mind's eye or ear when reading about them, there are still plenty I've never heard, much less seen. This, therefore, is not a book for sitting and reading through the whole thing as I tried to do. I recommend reading Verdi's background and then dipping into the operas as needed. This would require purchasing the book to have on hand.

Berger also recommends some recordings and has some pointed (but amusing) remarks to make about how some opera singers perform or, perhaps, how fast some conductors move it along, but I'm afraid that regardless of what anyone else says, the first version of any opera you see or listen to will almost always be your gold standard and rarely will you find any to surpass it. [And I will grant you that Maria Callas was an outstanding actress and a great singer - but she still sounds like she's singing with a mouthful of fruit which, to me, means she is singing for herself and not us. She did not sound like that on her earliest recordings, so I can only imagine that she developed that muffled, fruity sound later when she was an undisputed diva and no one had the nerve to tell her what it sounded like because she was beautiful and talented. Then, of course, she also proceeds to do what she likes with her roles. Thus endeth the rant.:]

I love operas the way I love cats: with a passion that allows me also to laugh at them. This, I am sure, has caused some not slight consternation from Baltimore, MD (Where I was the only one laughing at Bardolpho - I suppose everyone else was reading the damn supertitles) to Newberry, SC (where my husband and I almost hurt ourselves when don José polished his rifle and then his sword to Carmen's Habanera). Books like this key into my need to study and laugh. Perhaps I should just buy the damn thing.

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Elizabeth Bishop

2010-08-05T16:09:00.000-04:00

"In the Waiting Room" - something I can relate to again, with just a long succession of unsettling imagery: a dentist office, the dead man in the National Geographic ("long pig" being a euphemism for a cannibal's treat), pain, war, and the painful recognition of the conflict of your individuality with womanhood or even general humanity. We are not just ourselves, but we are everyone else as well - for good or bad.
A dentist office is just the worst setting I can imagine for a poem, putting anyone's "teeth on edge." The familiarity and adventure in National Geographic are made eerie with the dead man - and then the yelp creates a confusion of Self with Other. It was very unsettling ... but in a good way!

Rex Libris

2010-07-30T15:10:00.000-04:00

I, Librarian
This is just soooo much fun!

Langston Hughes

2010-07-19T12:28:00.004-04:00

Oh, what pleasure! Simple and comprehensible! Moving because there is something deeply emotional to say. Six line verse blues poems. Music from the heart's blood. Thank you, thank you, Langston Hughes. Where do I start? I loved all of them. Some are funny (Morning After) and some are brutal (Song for a Dark Girl), but they're good and they're plain-spoken and meaningful.

iPads 'Stead of Libraries

2010-07-12T12:12:00.003-04:00

This was an interesting idea ... close down the public libraries and give the library card holders a free iPad. The contributor says that all the books are then free. Perhaps that's not quite accurate, but even if they were, is it a good idea?

It was from the UK, but I thought about it for our library here in the US. We have about 30,000 users in our county (times $499 for an iPad) which would run us almost $15 million ... for a one-time purchase? That's more than the new library would cost, but perhaps Apple would give us a deal on the massive order. And I imagine a huge run on library cards if holders got a free iPad.

Now, what about on-going costs? The iPad runs on $15/mo. The public library ... oh, that's tougher. We used to get $2 per capita/yr, but now it's about half that. I don't have the figures in front of me, but my 1300 sq ft house contributed $13/yr to the library. It said so on the bill.

And the library comes with human beings you can talk to (if you haven't annoyed us too much) in real time about what book or information you really need. We don't run on batteries or the mains (but cookies help). And we have printers and a fax machine. Try to run that off your iPad.

Nice try, but until these devices and their support get cheaper, the good ole fashioned library is still a better deal.

Hart Crane

2010-07-08T11:13:00.002-04:00

I chose the Rip Van Winkle section from The Bridge for no real good reason. It's sad when a poet has to write copious notes about his own work to make it understandable. I found Walt Whitman's description of America much easier to follow. Rip Van Winkle carries happy childhood memories for me, so I risked having it ruined. But the mention of hurrying off to school with Pizarro and Cortes reminded me of my sister's favorite school poem: "Where we walk to school each day/Indian children used to play." And we are off on a time travel into Crane's past where lilacs provide a switch for his father to whip him and he recalls a fleeting smile from his mother that was never shared with him. Yikes! The Catskill daisy chain in May that is now Broadway was nice. Bits of this make you think Crane has potential, but wading through the whole of The Bridge is just too much of it.

Note of shameless self-promotion: My husband's last cd, Back In the Day, used Rip van Winkle as a theme. Buy it here!

T. S. Eliot

2010-06-28T18:15:00.004-04:00

Oh great, the footnotes for this contain more material than the verses! Sheesh, and I thought Moore was annoying. Needs more cats. The Waste Land seems a pastiche of ... of ... well, I was going to say of other poems, but it seems to be a hodge-podge of imagery, memories, conversations, etc. that cry out for the sort of "close reading" that they now claim turns young people off from the enjoyment of literature entirely. It put me in mind of the aftermath of the Great War. That might not have been his intention (although I gather death was the inspiration), but that's what pops up in my little mind (probably the reference to the arch-duke and the expectation of the man returning from the army - Poor Albert!).

Marianne Moore

2010-06-28T17:31:00.003-04:00

Gosh, how I wish we were back to Walt Whitman. What the introduction of the editor calls "wide-ranging diction" I call academic esoterica - I was particularly annoyed by the reference to "Bach's Solfegietto," although I liked the sound of the poem. The meter of "To a Prize Bird" was nice as well. I think I like the sounds of her poetry better than the imagery. I was all prepared to really like "A Jelly-fish" and in the end I was disappointed it didn't sting the author's arm ... good and hard.

I marked a few as being of relative interest for content. "The Past Is the Present" was marked for the description of unrhymed Biblical verse, which I will try to keep in mind as I traverse the Old Testament. "Hebrew poetry," I quote her quoting someone else, "is prose with a sort of heightened consciousness." I try to be aware of the aspects of verse in a foreign language that have been translated and may have lost their original beauty in the interests of accuracy. Translation is a tightrope walk.

Before I Get On To

2010-06-21T12:46:00.002-04:00

... Marianne Moore, I'd like to quote some Billy Collins. Can't help it. I just enjoy his stuff so much:

Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin by beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

This reminds me of when I was teaching Spanish and the beginning students were still stumbling through the idea of conjugation (of which there is precious little in English). "Just keep stumbling around in the dark room," I told them, "soon your eyes will be accustomed to the dark and you will see a crack of light around the door. Grope around and find the handle! Then you can open that door and step out into the light and it will become clear to you!" And they laughed at me.
One day, one girl said, "Oh, Profesora! I think I see the light! I think I see the light!" and started getting all excited. Or maybe she was just kidding.

The World's Most Dangerous Job

2010-05-26T10:39:00.007-04:00

If there is any way to judge the value of a poem, it's probably the reaction it provokes, by imagery or emotion. It would be easy to find a poem by Robert Frost that reinforces the idea of the idyllic life of a farmer. Even easier is finding a poem outlining the horrors of rural life. Small wonder he gave it up and moved to England.

I can't even read this again, it was so powerful. It's called "Out, Out -" [on page 247] of the Major Voices and Visions anthology] and I wasn't even able to finish it, but the imagery clung to my thoughts and disturbed me the rest of the day.

It makes no sense, however, to mention a poem affected you profoundly and then not talk about it because it's just too painful to think about, so I'll add some tiny bits I gleaned from other Frost poems.

Frost seems to like the phrase, "the long scythe whispering to the ground" - which he used twice, just in this book. I have to say, I like it too. It has a nice cadence that calls to mind the swinging action and sound of the scythe (my dad used used one and the scythe does make this shushhhhh-shushhhhhing when it swings through the grass, very much like a whisper - a nice change from the gas-powered machinery prevalent today).

Another phrase was final line from "The Wood Pile," "the slow smokeless burning of decay" - which I also found evocative. It called to mind piles of wood chips that "cook" even in winter and give off steam. Something that I like about Frost is that he often has a story to tell, and I like a good story. In the case of "The Wood Pile" it's a conundrum. Why was this neatly stacked pile of wood left behind? Even better, it's a mystery story! Why does the farmer's wife just run off in The Hill Wife? Boredom? Is it related to a poem printed earlier (but not from that group) about the couple breaking up over the difference between how they handled the death of an infant? What was Frost's married life like? Inquiring minds want to know!

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening - this photo always reminds me of that title:

Okay, that poem wasn't in this collection, but every time I see this photo I think of it. Anyway, that's all for Frost. I have lots to do and miles to go before I sleep.

A Narrow Fellow

2010-05-26T10:19:00.002-04:00

It's all I can do to not mention That Song in reference to Emily Dickinson's poetry. I read an article in Vanity Fair decades ago and shortly afterward got into an argument with a roommate who said all of Dickinson's poetry could not be sung to That Song. Then I proceeded to sing all the examples she dug out to That Song. Consequently, I have happy memories of Ms. Dickinson and go around singing "Because I would not stop for Death he kindly stopped for meeeeee!" But the same might be said about Edna St. Vincent Millay ... or José Martí, and about as accurately. In other words, not terribly.

Still, I have trouble relating to the content of Dickinson. I did see a lovely one that resonated with me immediately:

986

A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides -
You may have met Him - did you not
His notice sudden is -

The Grass divides as with a Comb-
A spotted shaft is seen -
And then it closes at your feet [Yipes!]
And opens further on -

He likes a Boggy Acre
A floor too cool for Corn -
Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot -
I more than once at Noon
Have passed, I though a Whip lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone -

Several of Nature's People
I know, and they know me -
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality -

But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone.

I think that concludes rather nicely - with that flash of iciness at the ribs (in my case, anyway) that suddenly coming upon such a "narrow Fellow" brings. The meter is irregular and takes some fudging to sing to That Song, stretching that final "Aaaaaand" to it's chilling climax. Great fun!

Song of ME ME ME!

2010-05-17T11:09:00.003-04:00

Walt Whitman was slow going. As much as I understand that his use of the first person was to represent America, the "Song of Myself" still reeks of a towering ego (and he does refer to himself in it as "Walt" so I think the "It's Really About America" dodge doesn't hold water). You'd need a towering ego to think you are speaking for an entire country, even in reference to its diversity.
I also needed a dictionary to read this, as he seems to mix esoteric language with childishly made-up terms ("omnific" versus "foofoos"). His spelling is bad ("extatic") and he has a tendency to exaggerate, especially with numbers ("decillions" "sextillions" "quintillions"). So the words egocentric, hyperbolic, and epigrammatic spring to mind. "Song of Myself" is an onslaught, but I was still able to tease out little bits that I liked.

I guess the grass is itself a child .... the produced babe of
the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

...

Whoever degrades another degrades me .... and whatever is
done or said returns at last to me.
And whatever I do or say I also return.

...

I hear the trained soprano .... she convulses me like the
climax of my love-grip;
The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,
It wrenches unnamable [sic] ardors from my breast,
It throbs me to gulps of the farthest down horror,
It sails me .... I dab with bare feet .... they are licked
by the indolent waves ...
[Hmmm, they're starting to pall on me now. I like the euphemism of the "love grip," which I find funny while it probably horrified his audience, but I totally agree about the trained soprano.]

...

And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of
heaven...
[The blackberry is the rose that bears fruit. It lives on the fringes and brings sweetness to life, as well as a touch of bitter. There's no bitterness, though, that a touch of salt can't assuage.]

...

I think I could turn and live awhile with the animals ....
they are so placid and self-contained.
I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long,
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied .... not one is demented with the
mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived
thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

Yeah, I must have dropped my tokens, too, Walt, speaking as one who is demented with the mania of owning things - and not even real things anymore. I don't have room for real things. Now I own virtual things and fritter hours of my time searching for more.

I would enjoy this more if it weren't so ponderous. I'll continue to read Whitman, but I'm relieved to be able to get on with Dickinson and sing all her poems to "The Yellow Rose of Texas."

They Call Me "MISS Coraline"!

2010-05-08T16:41:00.002-04:00

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Nicely drawn. Good story. I was just reading some graphic novels today and saw it hiding behind Beowulf Glad I saved it for last! Heh, I have some button eyes in Second Life that I think are cute (see above picture), but now they seem a bit more sinister. Good thing I read this in the daytime! I've been acquainted with Russell's artwork (in collaboration with Gaiman) in Neil Gaiman's Murder Mysteries, a very very very creepy book, especially the framework story! This story brought all that horror back to me.

Coraline is bored with her parents and her life, but when presented the opportunity of a life of endless amusement and devoted and doting parents, she chooses the chance to be bored on occasion. The mirror existence turns nightmarish and she embarks on a mini-quest to escape her "other mother," the Beldam. She will submit to having the button eyes sewn on if she can't locate her parents (in a rather obvious place, I thought) and the souls of three other children who were duped before her. All she has to help her are her courage, the cat, and a talisman: a rock with a hole in it. Oh, and those three kids.

And I wonder if that well is deep enough ...

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POST Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

2010-05-03T19:14:00.001-04:00

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book has all the elements of the usual mystery story, but somehow seems to surprise. I didn't yell at this book once. The only quibble I have is that, unless someone in the de Luce family was an insane horticulturist that brought a sprig back as a specimen from a trip to North America, plants that produce urushiol don't grow in Britain. Okay, maybe it was a mango tree, but it sounded very much to me like it was poison ivy.
Aside from that, it was great fun! Flavia, the 11 year old chemist, is confronted with a mystery when she finds a man dying in the cucumber patch. [Note: I thought that type of poisoning was supposed to be instantaneous.] She must solve the mystery because her father has been detained, helping police with their inquiries and being fitted up. He, in turn, is covering for someone else.
Can Flavia exonerate her father before either the real murderer or one of her sadistic older sisters gets her? Read on!

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What's the Point?

2010-04-29T12:20:00.002-04:00

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I am in the position of having two interests that need marketing, my job and my husband's business. When I started doing programming at the library, we couldn't do enough. Storytimes were increasing to satisfy demand. Now, there are times when no one shows up. There are a number of reasons for this, one of which is, unbelievably, that there are still people out there who don't know what the library does despite newspaper, radio, and posters. All this talk of viral marketing seems like the last hope - but none of it seems to work. And Gladwell's book seems to explain why.
There are just three factors to tip something over the edge: the influential few, stickiness, and context. There was some context we had no control over. The rules for transporting children changed and became much more stringent. Home Child Care people were no longer able to bring their charges to a storytime. We still had a few of the larger corporate facilities that could transport, but fewer came. If the smaller ones can't afford it or aren't able, you cut out a huge audience. And if the kids can't say they went to the library that day, the parents stop thinking about it. We are doing outreach to the bigger groups, but it isn't the same.
We finally have someone in our department who is a connector. This can help. I'm not sure what could be sticky about library programming.
This book started off being exciting, but I lost that interest as I went on (and it's not that long of a book). Eventually, I was only vaguely interested on how demonizing cigarettes and other drugs has absolutely, positively not worked and just glanced over the rest.

Thinking further about marketing needs here, while a new library will raise our profile, that's a factor that will lose its sheen after a while. [I'm still annoyed by the patron who said, "No offense, but this is the most depressing library I've ever been in." I've been in lots more depressing libraries than this. I thought our children's room was pretty colorful and had lots of interesting features!] If the general public is anything like me, they go home and stay there. It's just too exhausting to go out again. If their kids aren't lobbying to go to the library, very few will venture out of the cocoon. While we have an annual library card drive for the youngest kids in school, how many of those actually come in once they've received their card? We have anecdotal stories of parents being dragged in by a kid that's just gotten a card, but if all the kids who received library cards since I've been typing them up have come in, why are there any books on these shelves at all?
It's stickiness. We need to work on that.

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Early Literacy Re-Training!

2010-04-17T11:59:00.003-04:00

When I signed up for this, I was sure it included some Mother Goose On the Loose training, which I hadn't had, but was glad to have some of the Every Child Ready To Read re-training in any case. MGOTL was not in evidence, but a worthwhile day was spent on ECRTR. This is at least the third time that I have been trained in this and I think it's great stuff. It's nice to have it refreshed and because you have new people with you, you get more ideas on how to use it than just a presenter can provide.

The class was presented by Susan Bard who was very energetic. I'd have been more energetic myself if some of the songs and movement things we did weren't making me dizzy. I had dinged my forehead on the bathroom stall door (something another librarian also did shortly after I was settled down with my feet up and a bag of ice on my head) which served mostly to keep me awake all day.

ECRTR is designed to make it easy and palatable to share early literacy tips with parents and caregivers during storytimes. Bite-size, manageable pieces of information are coupled with modeling during the storytime so that parents are "indoctrinated" in best practices practically without realizing it. The resources are also available online (also in Spanish) for those who didn't have a throbbing forehead to keep them awake - but, honestly, these classes are so much fun you don't want to miss any of it.

Recommendations of great storytime picture books and audio abound. Those I particularly noted were:

Cha Cha Chimps by Judy Durango
Shark in the park by Nick Sharratt
Dinosaur Roar by Paul Strickland
Pío Peep by Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy
Flower Garden by Eve Bunting
Bark George by Jules Feiffer

Audio
Diaper Gym
Whaddaya Think Of That by Laurie Berkner
Toddlers Sing Playtime (actually, recordings of toddlers singing creeps me out)

Babies have 100 billion little brain cells to work with when they are born. They develop connections (synapses) primarily through sensory experiences. They will make more of these connections with higher seratonin levels, which come about from pleasurable experiences. Connections are inhibited by cortisol, which is released under stress, such as neglect and abuse, but they can also be stressed by the unreasonable expectations of the parent, childcare provider, or even the crabby librarian with the big lump on her head. Little kids have short attention spans and are apt to try to get up and walk around. It doesn't mean they aren't still listening. We need to let parents/caregivers know at the start that a little wiggle is okay. If a child gets bored, he can be removed, but he can also come back if he's settled down.

Kids get all these sensory experiences and then the ones that aren't experienced over and over are eventually pruned, which helps organize the brain. Those paths revisited can be early literacy skills that the child will need to learn to read and read with ease later. Before you can read, you need to know the words; the more words the child hears, the more will be recognized when seen printed, so talking to the child is important. Before you can read, you need to recognize shapes, because letters come in shapes. Shape recognition is good for babies. Letter recognition can begin with toddlers. And all this needs to be fun, not drills with flashcards. You don't need to be able to read to provide these early literacy skills to your child. You don't need to speak English - because all that knowledge is commutative from one language to another: hearing separate sounds/phonemes, connecting sounds with the shapes of letters, how a book works, etc.

The parents are the first and best teachers. They spend the most time with the children and the children model their behavior based on the adults they see the most - for good or ill.

None of this synapse connecting can wait for school. These are skills a kid needs to know before she gets to school:

Print Motivation - enjoying books and reading
Phonological Awareness - hearing the distinct sounds in words and being able to play with them
Vocabulary - hearing the words so when they are seen in print, there is recognition
Narrative Skills - knowing stories have a beginning, middle, and end; following sequences; describing an activity
Print Awareness - recognizing print in the environment, being familiar with books
Letter Knowledge - recognizing one letter as distinct from another and knowing it can have more than one form (upper/lower cases, for instance).

Alphabet knowledge at entry into Kindergarten is a strong predictor of reading ability in 10th grade. Children from lower income groups have 25 hours of contact with picture book reading compared to over 1,200 hours for middle income children. 60% of kids are going to find learning to read difficult. As librarians we are in a position to make that process more fun by providing great materials and modeling best practices for the benefit of the caregivers. Encourage the parents to allow the children to pick out their own books and be sure to let them choose some non-fiction books as well as story picture books.

Now, that's all the general stuff. Let's get down to specifics that I needed reminding on!

Remember, only one early literacy skill per storytime! And just mention it briefly, paraphrased from the "What Can I Say" list in your own words, about three times during the storytime. That's all you have to do. It helps to write it out ahead and practice it.

Talking uses four parts of the brain and in a small child this can take some time because the neural pathways are still being built. Be sure to give 5 seconds response time to a young child. If there are older siblings, they might want to butt in, but let the young one finally get the answer out.

Use dialogic questions - you know, the ones that don't have yes or no answers. This isn't the best idea during a story if you have a group, but works well one on one. With a group you can ask that kind of question at the beginning or the end of the story, as in Bark, George - you can ask What happened, Why is George saying hello instead of barking, Where's the vet?!

Read to kids the books you like. Read books the kids like. Read books with movements. Be a Fierce Dinosaur! Be a meek dinosaur.

Never substitute an easy word. Use the "rare words" - and define them as you go along. If it's an object, point to a picture of it. If it's an action, act it out. Give a synonym: That's another word for _____. Let parents know, "You may have noticed there were some rare words in that story ..."

The early literacy skill of the week could be put on a handout that they take home after the storytime (the one, maybe, that you have the song lyrics and fingerplays on so that the caregivers can sing along) and/or that sits out for the general public all week. Remember to invite the caregivers to take part at the beginning of storytime so that the shyer children will feel secure in participating (and so they won't sit gossiping in the back, which is sometimes a problem in my storytimes).

Here's a nice way to start: hold up a picture of a clock and say, "Thank you for coming on time!" And remind them to turn their cellphones off. Do this each time to be consistent.
I have a little song I sing:
I went to the storytime [can substitute "puppet show"] with my mom
But she left her cellphone on.
The cellphone rang and she took the call.
Now we're not allowed back in at all!
Then I have the kids pretend to turn off their "cellphones" and put them away in their pockets. They actually enjoy doing this and there's usually an adult who goes "OH!" and scrambles for the cellphone. There is hardly anything more annoying than someone whose phone rings, she answers it, and says, "Oh, we're at storytime at the library!" and keeps talking.

There was a nice sheet on Challenges and Problem Solving, but there was nothing in there about the distraction of a child throwing up and then a clean-up committee coming in to take care of that. I decided that I didn't have anything more interesting than that prepared so we watched them until they were done and then went on with the storytime.

If anyone has a chance to attend one of these workshops, I highly recommend it. I even recommend going again and again.

Top 100 Children's Books

2010-04-13T09:33:00.003-04:00

The Top 100 Children's Books list from the School Library Journal poll. I tried linking, but my HTML was not accepted.

I've bolded (hee, is that a real verb now?) the ones I have read. I've only read half of them! There may be a couple more that I missed. I may have read Pippi Longstocking as a child, but have forgotten. I thought I'd read all the Roald Dahl children's books, but the plot to Matilda escapes me. Some of these I'm interested in reading and some I have absolutely no interest in (like the Laura Ingalls Wilder stories). In any event, what I great job I have that I can sit around and read fun books with impunity! Wheeee! Take that, Wall Street!

100. The Egypt Game - Snyder (1967)
99. The Indian in the Cupboard - Banks (1980)
98. Children of Green Knowe - Boston (1954)
97. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane - DiCamillo (2006)
96. The Witches - Dahl (1983)
95. Pippi Longstocking - Lindgren (1950) may have read ... got the idea anyway.
94. Swallows and Amazons - Ransome (1930)
93. Caddie Woodlawn - Brink (1935) Planning on reading at some point.
92. Ella Enchanted - Levine (1997)
91. Sideways Stories from Wayside School - Sachar (1978)
90. Sarah, Plain and Tall - MacLachlan (1985)
89. Ramona and Her Father - Cleary (1977) I've read 2 or 3 Cleary books. They all slur together.
88. The High King - Alexander (1968) Read The Book of Three and Lost Interest.
87. The View from Saturday - Konigsburg (1996)
86. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - Rowling (1999)
85. On the Banks of Plum Creek - Wilder (1937) Bleagh, no thanks.
84. The Little White Horse - Goudge (1946)
83. The Thief - Turner (1997)
82. The Book of Three - Alexander (1964) Ho hum. Don't need to read any more of them.
81. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon - Lin (2009)
80. The Graveyard Book - Gaiman (2008) Literally broke down and cried when I heard this won the Newbery. Not sure why. I hadn't even read it. Just happy for Gaiman, I guess.
79. All-of-a-Kind-Family - Taylor (1951)
78. Johnny Tremain - Forbes (1943) I keep looking at this thinking I should read it.
77. The City of Ember - DuPrau (2003)
76. Out of the Dust - Hesse (1997) A novel in verse? I thought this was going to be ghastly, so I started 1/3 of the way in (the way I handle books I think I won't like - get the exposition out of the way. I can always go back and start over) and immediately realized I would have to ... go back and start over.
75. Love That Dog - Creech (2001) Hmm, may read.
74. The Borrowers - Norton (1953) Will put on To Read list.
73. My Side of the Mountain - George (1959)
72. My Father's Dragon - Gannett (1948) Grew up with these books.
71. The Bad Beginning - Snicket (1999) Read a few of these, that was enough.
70. Betsy-Tacy - Lovelae (1940)
69. The Mysterious Benedict Society - Stewart ( 2007)
68. Walk Two Moons - Creech (1994)
67. Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher - Coville (1991) Read some of his other books ... will think about it.
66. Henry Huggins - Cleary (1950)
65. Ballet Shoes - Stratfeild (1936)
64. A Long Way from Chicago - Peck (1998) Can't recommend highly enough. Wish I could grow up to be Grandma Dowdel.
63. Gone-Away Lake - Enright (1957)
62. The Secret of the Old Clock - Keene (1959) Of course!
61. Stargirl - Spinelli (2000)
60. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle - Avi (1990)
59. Inkheart - Funke (2003) Mmnnnrrrr, I don't know. Read The Thief Lord and wasn't that impressed.
58. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase - Aiken (1962) Love, love, LOVE Joan Aiken's stuff! Must read. The library didn't have it back 14 years ago when I was reading The Stolen Lake.
57. Ramona Quimby, Age 8 - Cleary (1981)
56. Number the Stars - Lowry (1989) Can't read Holocaust stories - they give me nightmares.
55. The Great Gilly Hopkins - Paterson (1978) Looks harmless enough.
54. The BFG - Dahl (1982)
53. Wind in the Willows - Grahame (1908)
52. The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007) Very imaginative and able to spark more imagination.
51. The Saturdays - Enright (1941)
50. Island of the Blue Dolphins - O'Dell (1960)
49. Frindle - Clements (1996)
48. The Penderwicks - Birdsall (2005) Listened to the audiobook and nearly vomited through the whole thing.
47. Bud, Not Buddy - Curtis (1999) Nothing can hold a candle to TWGTB-1963. It was okay.
46. Where the Red Fern Grows - Rawls (1961)
45. The Golden Compass - Pullman (1995) Read the whole series. Phew!
44. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing - Blume (1972) Might have read this.
43. Ramona the Pest - Cleary (1968) Might have read this as well.
42. Little House on the Prairie - Wilder (1935) Forget. It.
41. The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Speare (1958)
40. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - Baum (1900)
39. When You Reach Me - Stead (2009)
38. HP and the Order of the Phoenix - Rowling (2003)
37. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry - Taylor (1976) Should read.
36. Are You there, God? It's Me, Margaret - Blume (1970)
35. HP and the Goblet of Fire - Rowling (2000)
34. The Watson's Go to Birmingham - Curtis (1995) After reading this I thought it was a crime that it didn't get the Newbery ... until I realized it was up against Holes. That must've been a hard, hard decision.
33. James and the Giant Peach - Dahl (1961) The first book a librarian ever recommended to me that I liked. In fact, I loved this book.
32. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH - O'Brian (1971)
31. Half Magic - Eager (1954)
30. Winnie-the-Pooh - Milne (1926)
29. The Dark Is Rising - Cooper (1973) I had to listen to the audio of this because reading it was too intense an experience!
28. A Little Princess - Burnett (1905) Read this every month for years and cried my little heart out. Prefer The Secret Garden now. Don't need any help crying.
27. Alice I and II - Carroll (1865/72)
26. Hatchet - Paulsen (1989) Read Paulsen's accounts of his real life experiences and it made me terrified of moose attacks. Think I'll pass.
25. Little Women - Alcott (1868/9)
24. HP and the Deathly Hallows - Rowling (2007) Too long. Too much wandering around in the woods.
23. Little House in the Big Woods - Wilder (1932)
22. The Tale of Despereaux - DiCamillo (2003) Mnyeh.
21. The Lightening Thief - Riordan (2005)
20. Tuck Everlasting - Babbitt (1975)
19. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Dahl (1964)
18. Matilda - Dahl (1988) Thought I'd read all of these.
17. Maniac Magee - Spinelli (1990)
16. Harriet the Spy - Fitzhugh (1964) Not sure what the point of this book is.
15. Because of Winn-Dixie - DiCamillo (2000)
14. HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban - Rowling (1999) My favorite of these.
13. Bridge to Terabithia - Paterson (1977)
12. The Hobbit - Tolkien (1938)
11. The Westing Game - Raskin (1978)
10. The Phantom Tollbooth - Juster (1961)
9. Anne of Green Gables - Montgomery (1908) My sister's favorite book. Also an Anne with an "E."
8. The Secret Garden - Burnett (1911)
7. The Giver -Lowry (1993)
6. Holes - Sachar (1998) Excellent story. Movie didn't ruin it either (helps for the author to write the screenplay).
5. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - Koningsburg (1967)
4. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - Lewis (1950) Not much value as a story and a bit hit-you-over-the-head as allegory.
3. Harry Potter #1 - Rowling (1997)
2. A Wrinkle in Time - L'Engle (1962)
1. Charlotte's Web - White (1952)

Oy! It's Raining Mrs. Danvers!

2010-04-05T10:53:00.002-04:00

First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was hard to follow. I think the Nursery Crimes stories are more linear. Well, you get into time travel and everything goes arse over bristols, dunnit? There are so many minor plots going on, just like one of them tv shows with all the interweaving plots that are supposed to be making us smarter. I guess I just haven't been watching them.
Thursday's troubles are legion in this book: a teenage son who resolutely behaves like a teenage son and not the chronoguard genius he grew up to be that she met in other stories; she's mentoring both of her fictional selves at Jurisfiction, book reading is declining fast and the fictional world only has crackpot ideas for reviving it; apparently history is going to fold up on itself and time as we know it will end because they've neglected to invent time travel and have been merely accomplishing it on the strength of it having been invented at some point; and, Where's Jenny? Also, everyone's trying to kill her as usual.
It's just so nice to see a 50+ female character with a family and a nice job laying carpet (ha!) so active!
Am still listening to the audiobook, which is okay, but doesn't have the characterization to it that, say, Nigel Planer brings to things.

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Lovejoy Is For Real!

2010-04-05T10:40:00.001-04:00

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The jury is still out as to whether this book is not about what it says it's about or it's not about what the reader interpreted from the cover that it was going to be about. Phew! Say that five times fast! Sorry about that, been reading too many Pauline letters.
The title might mislead one into thinking it's some sort of self-help book: the power of thinking without thinking. Hmmmm. What it shows is that there is a difference between expert opinion developed over years of study that sums up a new situation in a blink and what is patently just stereotyping out of ignorance. Black person [blink!:] baaad! Lovejoy (fictional antiques "divvie" and crime solver) looks at something from someone's basement [blink!:] genuine treasure!
The lesson here is that you can override your best instincts if you want something to be true or you can overcome your worst instincts and make the world a better place. You choice is being gulled into buying hugely expensive but worthless stuff and killing innocent people. It's all up to you! Take your pick.
The author also discovered that, despite his black heritage, he carries the baggage of negative associations with being black. You can't help it when you are immersed in what is predominantly white culture. (I pulled a quote on this when I was reading that should show up.)

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Confessions of a PDR

2010-03-21T15:00:00.001-04:00

The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Fforde again injects silliness for its own sake into what this time is a typical Ken Follett tale. DCI Jack Spratt is taken off a case before it even starts, which queers his bid to enter the Guild of Detectives. He is on forced medical leave until it is determined he's sane enough to continue ... in a job where a little insanity helps. The case is the escape of the same serial killer he captured previously - who will certainly want his revenge, right? But there's much more than that - National Security is involved and, worse yet, his wife doesn't know he's a PDR, a person of dubious reality. What if she finds out? Who is killing champion cucumberistas? How are those bears getting their paws on controlled substances, such as ... porridge? Where's that Dorian Gray guy who sold Spratt his car?
There were so many characters that actually appeared (as opposed to mentioned or referred to or already deceased) in this book that I filled a whole 8 1/2 x 11" sheet of paper trying to keep track of them! I'm wavering between 3 and 4 stars, but hey! The piece about Pippa's pregnancy is just so precious!
Fforde sends up so many thriller/detective story conventions in this story that you wonder what's left to skewer in the sequels!

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Virtually Good Read!

2010-03-18T11:16:00.001-04:00

Virtually Dead by Peter May

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
My heart is still hammering! Stayed up to 1 am to finish and then couldn't sleep. I like this book so much because I'm familiar with Second Life and I can relate to a lot of it on that level (by alternately going, "Oh, yeah - that's sooo SL!" and "You Can't Do That!" It's as exciting as seeing your home town featured in a book. It's like going to see "Ghostbusters" while living in Manhattan and watching some of the filming. My SL quibbles are all minor. There's not enough bad spelling in the chat dialogue (which I always think adds to the fun if not the realism - but I can see why you don't want to put out a book full of typos), if any. There was some lipservice paid to the abominable English perpetrated by otherwise very clever builders and scripters, but it just doesn't give the savor of the Real SL experience - "LOL" - that I find so delightful and that I, too, mine for humor.
So now I have to pull myself back and look at it as a "thriller" (because apparently women write mysteries but men write thrillers). It certainly has all the elements:
betrayal - check!
false identities - check!
switchbacks -check!
"dead herrings" [personal in-joke:] - ... umm, check!
transgenders - check!
and cybersex - wowza!
(okay, that last one wasn't typical thriller material). The protagonist definitely has his share of agony: emotional, personal, financial, and professional. (On top of it all, his co-workers have a sick, sick, sick sense of humor.)
May was also forced to use the rather hackneyed Villain Monologizes To Explain What Happened, but that's a tough one to get around. The chase scenes inside SL and Michael's struggles outside were exciting, the Villain's Master Plan was needlessly but delightfully convoluted, and the ending was sweet.
In short, it was good enough that I wish there was more of it, and, good thing my therapist doesn't make me walk through pools of blood!

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The Cat Sat on the Mat ... And Took Notes.

2010-03-15T11:15:00.002-04:00

Cat Breaking Free: A Joe Grey Mystery by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Once I get past the problem of talking cats: talking, crime-fighting housecats ... come to think of it, maybe I can't get past that. This is definitely a series for cat lovers: soppy, anthropomorphizing cat lovers. Okay, I pretend my cats talk, but I don't go much beyond "Why don't you feed me?" and "Pet me, damn you, pet me!" and "I. Hate. You." I don't imagine some rich, inner life wherein they can reason, read (how does a cat learn to read when human children take years to learn and develop fluidity?), discuss clues, or call each other on cell phones.
I mean, try to imagine a cat manipulating a cell phone. I can hardly punch those buttons and I have opposable thumbs!
But once you get past that ...
And I also had trouble with the names of characters. Murphy has a tendency to give lead female characters masculine names: Ryan and Charlie. I'm still not sure about Scotty. Might be a woman, might not. This makes keeping track of people very confusing, even with the list I made of people and the names of their pets. It's a rather extensive list.
But once you get past that - no, really. It was an interesting mystery about, gosh, real crime! Real crime like burglary! Oh, and some murder. It might have been interesting as well if some humans were actually involved in detection! More than, say, informing the cats. Let's just be glad that these cats don't have opposable thumbs or they'd be running southern California.
I think now I'll read something more sensible, like Fforde's The Big Over Easy.

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Put It All Together, It Spells MADRE

2010-02-28T16:23:00.001-05:00

Gator A-Go-Go: A Novel by Tim Dorsey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Florida's manic son and America's most fun-loving serial killer, Serge Storms, is at it again. This time he is making a documentary of the Spring Break tradition in his beloved state. On the way, he becomes lovingly entwined in an organized crime family vengeance. I thought it wasn't much of a mystery and had that dejá vu feeling one gets when stories get repetitive and old characters resurface. I was over a third of the way in before it seemed to take on anything different.
But that's why I read them: the mayhem, the inventive gruesomeness of it all that makes me really wonder about Tim Dorsey. Now, I think I saw another one on the rack ...

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Sell No Crime Before Its Time

2010-02-27T13:15:00.002-05:00

The Critic: The Second of the Enzo Files by Peter May

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is my first mystery by Peter May - a mystery for die-hard oenophiles that takes place in France's Gaillac wine country. This was good stuff, if you don't mind the tastings with the vanilla from the oak barrel and the raspberries and other drivel they put on the wine label to lead the witness. You do learn more about making wine than you might be inclined to know.
Enzo Macleod is a mostly believable sleuth with the most incredibly bad luck in women. May blends the gruesome with the very amusing quite well. I had a flashback to my juvenile experiences with John D. MacDonald, but this was better - more grown up. Travis always had babes, and had a lot more success with them. Enzo is the hapless sort that can have feast and famine at the same time, and isn't the tantalizing frustration that much more entertaining?
This book also answers the time-worn question of "What is worn under the kilt?"
I am looking forward to reading the Virtually Dead book.

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The Name's Fandolin - Erast Fandolin

2010-02-25T10:06:00.001-05:00

The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
My opinion on this went up one point when I got to the discussion questions at the end. I had searched in vain through the review blurbs on the back for any mention of humor. Now I am willing to accept that the author meant for some of this to be funny, not just naive.
The lead character, Erast Fandolin, is young, credulous, and, while intelligent, he jumps to conclusions and acts impulsively without thinking things all the way through. Lucky for him that he has trained himself to hold his breath and his vanity causes him to wear a corset or he would be dead several times over. He's a bumbling but very lucky 19th century James Bond (which his experience at a game of "stoss" [remarkably like baccarat:] only reinforces).
The incident of two young men playing "American Roulette" leads to a conspiracy of global proportions, taking Fandolin out of Mother Russia where he discovers that civilization has spread beyond those borders. It's also lucky that his family used to be wealthy and he had learned fluent German, French, and English. The book is chock-full of period atmosphere of the highly stratified Russian imperial society, making it quite refreshing from the usually western european mystery adventures.
The more I think of it, the more amusing it was. And now that I'm prepared to think of these stories as humorous as well as suspenseful, I think I could read another one of the series.

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Things That Keep Me Energized

2010-02-04T10:12:00.005-05:00

There is a certain amount of talk here about "burn-out." Clinical depression and grieving aside, I find I need inspiration of some sort to get me excited about a job I've had for 15 years - and that's where classes come in. It doesn't matter what kind they are; they could be the repetitive ones on customer service or communication. They could be on storytimes, early literacy, puppetry. Even if I've been through it before, attending some class or seminar always gets me inspired and willing to try new things or dust off some of my old skills.
I used to look at each year as an opportunity to add something new to my repertoire: puppets, music, creative dramatics, more puppets, etc., but as time wears on it becomes harder to do and there are fewer classes to take. (Of course, it doesn't help when I show up all excited at a class and the instructor says, "What are you doing here? You know all this!") One can blame the economic situation, I suppose. Our state used to have great stuff for children's librarians. There used to be an annual weekend retreat where we could go and have people from our own state as well as "foreign" experts revitalize our programming. Of course, that was way back when ... way back when we had a state Children's Librarian. Regional librarians used to get together and share ideas for the summer. I have no idea if they still do.
There used to be good sessions at the state library conferences. I think I found one two years ago (Donna Washington and storytelling) but this past year I didn't see anything. Recently we've been sneaking over to the state next door for their offerings (I think every contiguous state to ours has more money than we do, even these days) but the Children's Literature Conference seems more school oriented and it's harder to get money as well as time off for overnight trips.
Classes like these are critical in motivating both the new and the veteran librarian, but there are other ways to inspire and one of them is sharing what you know. To this end I started a Ning on library programs for kids. Having a new idea, reworking something tried-and-true, or just seeing someone else working their genius and sharing that with others also gives a librarian a warm feeling. Feeling the enthusiasm coming back from or having your work acknowledged by your peers fans the fire, but it's hard to come up with the fuel all on your own.
In summation:
We can't work in a vacuum.
Economy be darned-to-heck, we need frequent release from regular duties to be re-enthused.
If the sessions/classes/seminars aren't available in this state or nearby, we need to make them ourselves.
What the heck's the internet for if not to network with Our Kind on social sites or in real time? And, do I have to organize this all by myself? 'Cause I'm tellin' you, I'm just plum wor' out.

Miss Garnet's Bad Gay-Dar

2010-01-11T12:57:00.001-05:00

Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I went into this with all my warning lights flashing: it's gonna be spiritual (and I'm not), "oh god, there's gonna be romance" (ew); and "she's gonna see angels, isn't she?" This was probably unfair to the author, but that hasn't stopped me before.
Miss Julia Garnet is a rather stupid woman who becomes fascinated by a story from the Apocrypha when she could be enjoying the endless art of Venice. She also has very bad "gay-dar." Vickers tries to interweave these two stories but as the outcome of the older one had already been laid out for the reader, I wished it would just go away. I've read pseudo-biblical novels and actually enjoyed them (The Red Tent by Anita Diamant) because they were saying something interesting on two levels: this is the way it was, this is us looking at it from behind the screen of the laconic biblical version.
In the end, I think this is someone who actually does write better than Dan Brown trying to write something similar to The da Vinci Code or such, but running up against the same problems: the straining of credulity chief among them. While I welcome this in cheezy mystery fiction, I expect something better from this sort of book.
The angel business is telegraphed all over, Miss Garnet (not sure if I can blame the author directly on this) makes a silly error over the usage of "Signore" [no, my dear, they aren't calling God by the homely title of "Mister" - Signore means "lord" and it and mister/master have been watered down to apply to all men], and the Apocrypha story contains such an egregious ball of lard as: "In your language, if you spell dog backwards ... well, you are not stupid, I guess, or you would not be reading this." So, this Jew in Assyrian exile knows English? Wow, how magical is that.
And I think: really, am I not stupid? Why am I reading this? Because I was ordering "Barbarella" from amazon.com and this would only be another $2.22?

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The Book That Came To Dinner

2010-01-07T11:49:00.003-05:00

The Portable Woollcott, by Alexander Woollcott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a compendium of over 700 pages of essays, legends, true crime, radio transcripts, reviews of plays and books (supplying me with some new reading material!), which took me a couple of months to finish relishing at bedtime. It includes an old favorite, "Entrance Fee" wherein a cadet at Saint-Cyr wins the pool to spend the night with France's most desirable (and expensive - to the tune of 5,000 francs) femme and when learning of this scam, the woman, delighted by the compliment and stricken by the expense for a poor student, graciously "returns his money." Wonderful story! I remember laughing at it at a surprisingly young age - perhaps 13.
Also in here is the Holy Grail of the "Believe It Or Not"s - perhaps inspiration for that Indiana Jones thingie, an essay on how in his own land the architect/philosopher gets no respect - "The Prodigal Father," "I Might As Well Have Played Hooky" - about success without formal education (and Harpo's first and only harp lesson), "Perfectly Gone" - a paean to youth's wide-eyed wonder, and the story of "The Sage of Fountain Inn" that intrigued me because I live quite near a town of that name - only to discover that it was that self-same town!
All of this is in Woollcott's sweetly tortured and antiquated prose that lends a mellifluous nostalgia to the whole biz. Does anyone write like this anymore?
I return this musty and fragile volume to the library, fearful that it will get the axe for not being pretty enough, never to be replaced, and our town will lose a (if tattily) beribboned box of bon-bons that continues to satisfy even if you get one of those horrid coconut ones I always hated. Ummm, block that metaphor.

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What Me Cognitive Dissonance?

2010-01-04T20:28:00.001-05:00

Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I forget, was there some evolutionary advantage to this? We choose our parties and then adapt our philosophies to fit it. Maybe this is all a part of Belonging to the Group.
Reading something else very much interested me in cognitive dissonance and this is the book to read for us lay folk! Don't try to change what someone believes, they're only going to cling to their beliefs more tenaciously. Me, I think I'll take Ben Franklin's lead and borrow a book from someone who disagrees with me vociferously and then return it promptly with a nice note. See, then that person will think, "Oh, I did marfita a favor - it must be because she's a nice person" and let it go from there, like the noise cancellation on a helicopter (that I wish could be transferred to dental drills). And I will do this over and over again until everyone thinks I'm a nice person and that my ideas must also be okay and then I can manipulate them. 'Ya think George W. has a book I can borry?
The book was very entertaining as well as informative, but I don't see anyone with some serious cognitive dissonance issues looking inward just from reading it.
Me, of course, I don't have any CDIs. Heh!

This was read in the Kindle edition. There was a typo somewhere.

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Under the Magnifying Glass

2010-01-04T20:23:00.001-05:00

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Wha-at? You mean there was no Carolyn Keene? As a child I devoured the Nancy Drew books, like most girls, re-reading them and demanding more (to my mother's horror - she wanted me to go to a library and get them, but how could you read and re-read as I did with books if they weren't right there on your shelf? I have solved this problem in adulthood by working in libraries!). I remember hearing that there was a woman behind them, or maybe a man who started it and his wife (turned out to be his daughter) who ground them out under the name of Keene. After that I lost track of the whos and wheres and now have learned that there was a hard-writing, tough woman reporter in the midwest who did the fleshing out of book outlines provided. The syndicate then edited them or suggested edits.
This book is certainly more than one would want to know about the making of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and other older series books. I guess you could then call it "thorough." It's disheartening to read about family squabbles over money when your associations with these books hearken to mythologies like the Easter Bunny. Harriet's sister Edna married and bowed out of the day-to-day running of the syndicate, but managed to pinch pennies from a distance. Having had a sister, I can just imagine ...
I was also right in preferring the oldest versions, the blue books with the orange print on the outside. Later editions of Nancy Drew were dumbed down, eviscerated for political correctness, and even later reduced to advertising for the shallowest of consumerism. The love of the oldest versions led me to historical fiction and period mysteries. I now prefer a little more distance in my reading. Also, the educational bits in the books (which I actually noticed as a child reader and appreciated, "Oh! I'm learning something, too!") were intentional insertions.
Disdain for series literature started early and still exists, but the nay-sayers still don't learn the lesson: kids enjoy reading them, want to read them, and they actually help young readers develop the fluidity of reading, which prepares kids for the meatier stuff they will also have to read. Whether they go on to enjoy more serious "litticher" later is up to them, but they will already be hooked on the printed word.
The book climaxes in a courtroom smack-down (if the meeting of the two long-separated, elderly ladies can be so described) when the original writer (Mildred Wirt Benson) and the Stratemeyer Syndicate head (Harriet Stratemeyer Adams) face off while Harriet attempts to defend her split from Grosset and Dunlap. They each believed themselves to be the originator, the writer of the Nancy Drew stories. Harriet went so far as to refer to Nancy as her daughter. Grosset and Dunlap had stupidly mined the Syndicate's catalog and resisted sharing even a little bit more of the gold with the Syndicate. Harriet left them for a better deal with Simon & Schuster (who virtually raped and pillaged the Nancy Drew franchise after Harriet's death, relentlessly launching watered-down series after watered-down series and never achieved the same 50 year success of the originals).
The "original" Nancy Drew series (as well as Hardy Boys) have been published in facsimile form by Applewood Books, and Good on 'em!
Long live the Nancy Drew in all of us, the real one, the one that captured our hearts in our youth, the time when our hearts were there for the taking.

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To Consume Is Human

2009-12-29T12:40:00.001-05:00

Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are by Rob Walker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Starting with investigating his own relationship with his Converse Chucks and his rejection of Nike (who now apparently owns Converse), Walker debunks the received wisdom of Old Advertising that consumers are manipulated into needing things they had hithertofore lived happily without. Advertising now seems to just validate what the consumer had already decided. Besides, who actually makes conscious decisions? Doesn't your brain just decide and then you spend time rationalizing?
Walker was in at the inception of the Red Bull (never quite understood that) craze and describes the "new" advertising where products are just put out there and the consumer decides what it means. Sometimes that is done intentionally (Toyota's Scion) and sometimes the manufacturer wrestles with it before finally giving in (Timberland).
The people in your own neighborhood with the secret pitch are outed. Did you realize that people are hired to talk up products and brands by stealth? And, what's more, they will do it for free - without pay and without any reinforcement other than being the first to know. Stunning!

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Falling Slightly FLATulent

2009-12-07T12:15:00.002-05:00

Finger Lickin' Fifteen by Janet Evanovich

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
For 14 books I have resisted the urge to eat TastyCakes and donuts despite the "product placements," but this time I started getting a craving for chicken.
Lula, after having witnessed a decapitation, decides to become a prize-winning barbecuer. Don't ask how we got there. I would have thought one decapitation would turn you vegetarian for at least a week if not forever. I am a little disturbed by the scatological (well, maybe not "scat" per se, but flatulent) turn in this book. Does Evanovich run these stories past any of her african-american friends (assuming she has any)?
This is another round of the same-old same-old that makes you wonder why you read them, but then you start picturing Stephanie's grandmother with her gun and a reluctant smile starts to form. How many cars can Stephanie have burned up in one book? you ask yourself. I lost count on this one. Yes, it's still funny. How much longer can the sexual tension/love triangle go on between Stephanie, Joe, and Ranger? Oh, Steph, just sleep with Ranger already! You don't have to describe it to us, but who really believes the reasons you give for not doing it? I mean, you already have. Why all the tsimmis?
Evanovich will keep writing this fluff-with-a-tendency-toward-violence and I will keep reading it and eating bon-bons. Who am I kidding?

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