Librarians are so not scary!

"You see, I don't believe libraries should be drab places where people sit in silence, and that's been the main reason for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians." ~~Monty Python

We thank Colette Eason, Librarian, Marsalis Elementary School, Dallas, Texas for the above quotation. It's beyond excellent!

Classmate Ellen Booraem, debut middle grade author of THE UNNAMEABLES, has a story about librarians who really know how to woo skittish library patrons.

My partner, Rob, was a childhood victim of one of the Old School of librarians, the ones with real-life “shushing action.” He and his peers called the guy Snagglepuss. Giggling in the stacks was strictly forbidden, and books were sent home with a long list of handling instructions. Heaven help you if brought one back late.

We moved to Brooklin, Maine, which has the world's warmest and loveliest library, with matching librarians. Rob, an avid reader, refused to pass the library’s doors. The then-librarian, Gretchen Volenik, met him frequently at the post office and general store, and did her best to persuade him that he could giggle in the stacks all he wanted. But he persisted in hunting for reading material at yard sales rather than borrowing it from the Evil Place. He wouldn’t even read library books I brought home for him, fearing that he would mistreat them in some way.

Then he became addicted to books on tape, which he played all day long as he painted (he’s an artist). The yard sales soon ran out of fodder. Gretchen saw her chance, and started sending me home with audiobooks she knew would interest him. Sometimes, she would send him donated tapes that hadn’t even been catalogued yet, with no scary due date at all.

Today, Rob’s in the library at least once a week, checking out audiobooks and faithfully returning them on time. A month or so ago, the current librarian, Stephanie Atwater, entrusted him with a box full of uncatalogued tapes and CDs, carrying on the tradition. Take that, Snagglepuss.

The lovely Stephanie Atwater, Librarian, Friend Memorial Public Library in Brooklin, Maine.



And now for some great quotations sent to us from librarians across the country.







From DaShannon Lovin, Library Media Specialist, Blanchester High School, Blanchester, Ohio:

"I really didn't realize the librarians were, you know, such a dangerous group. They are subversive. You think they're just there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn't mess with them. "~~Michael Moore

And from Angela Sanders, Librarian, Augusta Elementary School, Augusta, Arkansas:

"My test of a good novel is dreading to begin the last chapter." ~~Thomas Helm

"Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book." ~ ~Author Unknown

"You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend." ~~Paul Sweeney

Librarians touch our hearts

Classmate Lisa Schroeder, author of the Young Adult I HEART YOU, YOU HAUNT ME, shares this about her childhood library:

It's hard being the young child of divorced parents. My life was pretty chaotic for awhile. And that's probably why I loved going to the Salem Public Library in Salem, Oregon with my mom during the summer vacations of my elementary school years. As soon as I walked into the children's area, I instantly felt welcomed and at home. Everything was in its place, and just as it should be. What a comfort this was to me at the time, and I can't even describe how much I loved our bi-weekly trips to the library. When I walked in, I knew right where I could find my good friends Betsy and Star, Encyclopedia Brown, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, and more.

I remember one summer, when they had a reading program going on, they had a detailed map on a big board sitting horizontally, and each child had a little marker he/she moved around the map. I can vividly remember sitting and admiring that map every time we visited, and it made me so happy to move my marker around as I read books that summer.

I'm so thankful to my mom for taking me to the library, and to the librarians at the Salem Public Library who did such an awesome job making the children's area a fun, welcoming, and friendly place.

And here's a little history from the Salem Public Library's website:

Salem Public Library was founded in 1904 by a group of determined volunteers from the Salem Women’s Club. The first library was housed in a corner of the City Council Chambers for the City of Salem . The library was operated by the Salem Women’s Club until it became a department of the City of Salem in 1912.


Erin Fitzpatrick-Bjorn, a librarian in Gresham, Oregan shares this about her middle school library:

A few years ago I was working on a poetry unit with fifth graders. They came into the library and we looked at great poets and poetry, and they did some of their own writing. Here's a favorite poem I have that a student wrote that year modeled after "i live in music" by Ntozake Shange.



I live in the library
By Kaylie

i live in the library
is this where you live
i live here in the library
i live on fairy tale street
my friend lives on mystery avenue
do you live here in the library
pages fall round me like snowflakes
on other folks
books touch my face
warm as fire and
cool like the winding air
thinking they waz fairy tales
i got fifteen chapter books where other
people got hips
and a thick book for both sides of my heart
i walk around in pages like somebody else be walkin’ on sand
i live in the library
i live in it
sleep in it
i could even hear it
i wear books on my fingers books
fall so fulla words ya cd make a river
where yr arm is and hold yrself
hold yrself in a book.

Librarians touch our hearts.

Merci beaucoup to librarians everywhere!

We're calling on one of our very own 2k8 classmates, Kristin O'Donnell Tubb, debut author of the middle grade historical AUTUMN WINIFRED OLIVER DOES THINGS DIFFERENT, to spill about her cool librarian story. Think wrinkles and clocks, dear blogger friends. Okay, taaaake it away, Kristin.


When I was in sixth grade at City Park Elementary in Athens, TN, our librarian, Sheila Rollins, held a school-wide reading competition. The prize? The winner got to interview Madeleine L’Engle by telephone! As soon as I heard that, I started flipping those pages, and sure enough, I won! I remember sitting in a tiny conference room that only the teachers were allowed to go into (hee-hee!), and a box the size of a Kleenex container sat in the middle of the table. It was a speaker phone, the first I’d ever seen, and I just knew that this was going to be a memorable day. But honestly, I forget most of what happened. The one thing I do remember, however, helped define my life. Toward the end of the interview, I told Ms. L’Engle that I wanted to be a writer. “Good for you!” she answered. “Keep reading and you can do it.” So thank you to Madeleine L’Engle (forever!) for the great advice, and thank you to Shelia Rollins, SuperLibrarian, who always knew what reading could achieve.

And here's another example of how librarians can affect a life. Thanks for sharing, Shelly Kraal, Librarian, Universal Academy, Flower Mound/Coppell.

I am the librarian at a K-12 charter school. Recently, there was a scheduling snafu and I had a class of 6th graders added to my schedule every day. This has created a magical moment for my kinders and 6th graders. On Mondays and Fridays they are book buddies. Only this past month I discovered just how cathartic that time is for one of my 6th graders. He lost his little brother (who would have been a kindergartener) over the summer. James' mother approached me and told me that the book buddy time is actually helping James to get over the loss of the little brother to whom he read on a daily basis. It just melted my heart to discover how my makeshift solution to having two classes at one time in the library met the needs of one young man who was really hurting inside.

Merci beaucoup to librarians everywhere!

Shameless Saturday

Oh, but we have been busy this past week!

(left to right) Zu Vincent (THE HAPPY PLACE), Barrie Summy (I SO DON'T DO MYSTERIES), Stacy Nyikos (DRAGON WISHES), PJ Hoover (THE EMERALD TABLET) and Courtney Scheinmel (MY SO-CALLED FAMILY) spoke about "Turning Old Writing Tricks into New Reading Treats" at the California Library Association's annual meeting last Monday. They were amazing and awesome! If we do say so ourselves. (Courtney is missing from the picture.)

There was a time when kids went outside to play, made up imaginary games evoking historical characters and aliens from the future, families went on road trips in search of gold, radiation was still a new treatment for cancer, and cancer was still mysterious. In THE LUCKY PLACE by Zu Vincent, families are becoming visibly dysfunctional through the eyes of Cassie, spanning ten years from age three to thirteen...There are complex relationships rich with emotion, told from a soft, gentle, very human perspective. This book will capture the attention of 5th grades and up.

Read the entire review by Lyda At Tales from the Treehouse.




Ellen Booraem loves Kirkus Reviews, which included THE UNNAMEABLES in its Best Children's Books of 2008 special section. The section recommends 50 kids' books for the year. THE UNNAMEABLES also is on the Indie Bound Kids' Next list for Winter 2008/2009. This is 59 books recommended by independent booksellers.

Wow! Go, Ellen!




From Portrait Magazine: SWIMMING WITH SHARKS is a captivating tale that brilliantly portrays the cruel world of teenage girls. Despite the things she does, Peyton is still a character the reader can relate to and empathize with and the reader is taken on a convincing journey with our heroine and narrator as she finds herself in various challenging situations, leading up to a very dramatic and satisfying conclusion.

There are lessons to be learnt about bullying and prices we all pay for it in this strong second novel from author Debbie Reed Fischer. Definitely worth checking out.

With shushing action!

Barbara Gopas Gubbins send us the perfect quote for these troubling economic times.

"Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money
will get you through times of no libraries."

How true is that! We can’t even imagine a time with no libraries. The horror. But it might make a great topic for a great dystopian ya novel.

We're so thankful to live in a place where the following anecdote is possible. Where a librarian in a school with little funds still manages to put books on the shelves! Thanks Sandi Jones in Arizona for sharing!

"I’m a firm believer in the power of a good book collection. When I started working in my current high school library in a poor rural district two years ago, the fiction section had an average copyright date of 1980. Needless to say, teens couldn’t relate to the books on the shelves, and there were hardly any titles of interest to our diverse student population. One student actually asked me how I could stand working in such a lonely boring place! Seeing the need for change, I became determined to replace all those dusty, never-circulated titles with hot bestsellers. Soon after I started ordering books, a shy senior walked through the door one day and began checking out books. A few weeks later, that same senior—by then a regular patron—admitted in three years of high school she’d never been inside our library.
Today, my favorite part of my job is when a new box of books comes in the door and the students attack the carton like vultures. Kids hang out in the library at lunchtime because they want to and enjoy browsing the shelves. I’ve been told that the "boring" place is the heart of the school now."


DID YOU KNOW!!!

Librarians have their own action figure.


This librarian superhero is based on real life librarian Nancy Pearl and caused a bit of controversy amongst librarians keen to change their image. But anyone who loves librarians knows they are so much more than shushers!

I think Paula Poundstone said it best. "It's funny that we think of libraries as quiet demure places where we are shushed by dusty, bun-balancing, bespectacled women. The truth is libraries are raucous clubhouses for free speech, controversy and community. Librarians have stood up to the Patriot Act, sat down with noisy toddlers and reached out to illiterate adults. Libraries can never be shushed."

I Brake For Librarians!

This week two librarians remind us what a difference books can make.
Pat Vaninwagen in Connecticut says:

"I have been a school library media specialist for going on 4 years but I
will never forget my first year and the boy who showed me that I can make a
difference. He was a second grader and arrived in the library in tears
because his teacher wanted him to take out a book to read during quiet
reading time. "Why are you crying?" I asked. He replied, "I just don't
know what I like to read." So we spent a few minutes talking about what
kind of books he liked and I took him to my favorite author, Dick
King-Smith, handed him Billy the Bird and encouraged him to read it.
Imagine my delight when he arrived in the library the next week, waving the
book and calling out "Have you got any more like this?" He had discovered
the joy of reading and I was reminded that a good librarian can help anyone
find a book that suits his or her style."


And Michelle Yu in Wisconsin tells us her favorite quote by Maya Angelou

“When I look back, I am so impressed again
with the life-giving power of literature.
If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of
myself in the world, I would do that again by reading,
just as I did when I was young.”

Thank goodness for school libraries and media centers. What would we do without them?

DID YOU KNOW???

Of the over 130,000 libraries in our country, nearly 99,000 of them are in schools, both public and private.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans have library cards!! Yay! But some of the most frequent users of libraries are parents with young children. Double yay!!

There is a national library symbol/highway sign.


Now all we need is a bumper sticker.


Thanks to ala.org for all the great statistics!

The Perks of Being a Librarian

We all know that being a librarian has its perks, but here’s one not many get to experience.
From Cheryl Beatty in Fairfield, CT:
“I usually learn of the Newbery Award winners via a press release. Not so in 2003. That was the year that I got a personal announcement from a winner whom I’d never met. Patricia Reilly Giff called my school library saying that she’d just won the Newbery Honor for Pictures of Hollis Woods. She wanted to share the good news with her grandson who was a sixth grade student. A former teacher herself, Ms. Giff was afraid the school office staff would be unwilling to pull the child out of class, but she knew a librarian would. She was right!”

Wow! Thank goodness she didn’t hang up, thinking it was a prank call!
But hearing from students can be just as exciting as hearing from famous people. Check out this great story from R. Jean Gustafson in Washington. (No pun intended!)


"With only two grades I do not worry about remembering names as much as making connections with my kids. I do not remember the initial meeting with this student, (knowing me, I probably saw her choice and said you don’t want that, try this!) I do remember by the time she left my campus she was a happy teen with a group of friends and not one bit afraid to talk. [This is a letter she sent me.]

'Mrs. Gustafson, when I was in Jr. High we both know that I read more books in a day then talked to people. Books were my escape and you were the mysterious stranger come to direct me in the right direction (That’s not redundant at all!) You opened the door of Fantasy, from Tamora Pierce to Jack Whyte; you have solidified my love for that genre.
Words are not enough to express my gratitude but they are all I have to give, those and this picture. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll be recommending a book to a shy timid student, written by me!'

We never know what students we will reach; many won’t say thanks as she did. Her picture and message sit proudly on my treasure shelf!"

Librarians are changing lives on a daily basis!
But did you know?????
!!!!It's time for LIBRARY FUN FACTS!!!!

Say the word library and most of us picture a cozy building filled with books. Sure there are computers as well, and magazines. Some libraries even have a fireplace. The building might be sprawling or cozy, but really we’re just talking variations on a theme. All over the world, however, some libraries have gotten very creative. Here, we’ll show you what we mean.

Here is a library train in Thailand.

This donkey pulled library wagon brings books to readers all over Kenya.

This library boat travels the world.

This space age library looks like it's from the future, but it's really from California.


What's the most unusual library you've ever visited?