Banned Books Week

It is the start of Banned Books Week, which raises awareness of challenged and banned books, and celebrates the freedom to read.

Public libraries are places for people of all walks of life to come together, and thus must cater to a wide range of interests, reading levels, and upbringings. What is right for one family might be offensive to another. The important thing is that public libraries do serve everyone and it is up to individuals to choose for themselves and their children what to read and watch, and not force their choices on the rest of population. To paraphase my father, if the library collection doesn't have some items that offend you and/or that you wouldn't want to read, then you aren't doing your job. Our freedom to choose what we want to read and to have access to it is one of the benefits of living in a democracy, and one that librarians continue to fight for.

From the ALA website here's the “10 Most Challenged Books of 2007” which reflect a range of themes, and consist of the following titles:

1) “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group

2) The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence

3) “Olive’s Ocean,” by Kevin Henkes
Reasons: Sexually Explicit and Offensive Language

4) “The Golden Compass,” by Philip Pullman
Reasons: Religious Viewpoint

5) “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain
Reasons: Racism

6) “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language,

7) "TTYL,” by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

8) "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou
Reasons: Sexually Explicit

9) “It’s Perfectly Normal,” by Robie Harris
Reasons: Sex Education, Sexually Explicit

10) "The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

The ten most frequently challenged authors of 2007:

1) Robert Cormier
2) Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
3) Mark Twain
4) Toni Morrison
5) Philip Pullman
6) Kevin Henkes
7) Lois Lowry
8) Chris Crutcher
9) Lauren Myracle
10) Joann Sfar

Some authors and their books that didn't make the list this year that are frequently challenged that you may have read:

J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter

Madeline L'Engle and Wrinkle in Time

C.S. Lewis and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Dav Pilkey and Captain Underpants

Katherine Paterson and Bridge to Terabithia and The Great Gilly Hopkins

Barbara Park and Junie B. Jones

Summer movie rundown

I've been going to see a movie every weekend lately. Which is nice (though expensive) as I saw like three movies in theaters last year.

Iron Man- Best superhero movie of the last year or two, though way more violent. Marvel is laying the groundwork for something big. Robert Downey Jr. is the perfect Tony Stark. Go for the theater if possible, and remember to stay through the credits.

Get Smart- A fun film, not great but funny. Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway make a nice team, though the chemistry isn't quite there. Dwayne Johnson and Masi Oka are fun. A good rental, but if you don't know the original show, you might not get some of the jokes.

WALL-E- Definitely the best of the bunch. Check out my full review. Go see this in theaters.

Wanted- I don't really like violent movies or movies with really stupid plot devices, and this movie unfortunately is both. Four words: Mystical loom of fate. It wants to be Kill Bill or the Matrix, but it would need better writing. Rent if you like mindless violence filled movies with Angelina Jolie. Rent Beowulf if you like Angelina Jolie, violent and intelligent movies.

Hellboy II- Good movie, fun characters, lots of action and humor, and a gaping plothole. However the huge fight happens so soon after the plothole that you won't have time to consider it. Great creatures throughout, though some appear to be Pan's Labyrinth leftovers. Del Toro is good at combining humor, action, and scary stuff, so I'm quite hopefully about the Hobbit. If you liked the first Hellboy go see this one in the theater, it deserves the big screen.

This weekend is The Dark Knight, which looks very promising.

Summer Reading is upon us

6/9/08 (not posted earlier due to lack of time at computer)
Across the country libraries are either beginning Summer Reading or finishing up their first week or two. My library has begun today, and is off to quite a start. With schools out and temperatures in the 90's-100's, families and groups of teens seem to be flocking to our air-conditioned library. We've got over 60 kids and 30 teens signed up for the Reading Program at the main branch, and who knows how many at the other branches. The children's librarian told me that she'd be out at the desk signing youth up all day. I am lucky enough to have teens volunteering and doing sign-up at the moment.

Teen volunteers are a great thing to have in libraries, though I fear somewhat underused and unavailable. We have use volun-teens mainly during the summer, though I'm trying to get them to work during the school year too. They currently say that they to busy to do anything more when school is on, but I'll try again in the fall.

Summer Reading is a definitely a mixed blessing for libraries. Our circs, door counts, program attendance, and reader's advisory go way up. Earlier we had at least six families in the children's area reading, looking for books, playing games, making puppets eat each other. It is chaos and it is kinda the most wonderful thing.

Printz and Newbery award books

I just finished listening to "Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy" by Gary Schmidt. It is the winner of both the Printz Award and a Newbery Honor, which is a pretty big honor. Now this is also tells you some things about the book with having even seen it.
-The main character will be between 11 and 14 years old
-It will very likely be historical fiction
-It will almost certainly be realistic fiction
-There will be some sort of death
-There will be issues
-It will be depressing in at least some parts
-It will likely not circ great at my library

Now I haven't read all the Newbery books or even all the Printz ones. I'm certainly making some generalizations here, but there are definite trends to be observed in the winners and honorees. Of the 2008 Newbery books, all four are historical and realistic fiction, and all deal with race, religion, or class issues. The 2007 batch brought us two of historical and two contemporary, with the issues of families and disablities thrown in. Only about 12 fantasy or sci-fi books have won the Newbery Medal going book all the way to 1922. And that is including the ones that are fantastical because they are about and told through the point of view of animals.

As my father said when I spoke to him about this the other day, the depressing nature of the books and the issues like racism, classism, and religion are things that real youth are experiencing and helps them connect them to the book.

The Printz Award is definitely edgier, but still it is fond of historical fiction, issues, and depressing bits. But they at least chose winner and honor books with good amounts of humor and interesting characters and narrators like Death, demons, the Monkey King, and ghosts.

My current bet for a Newbery this year is The Underneath by Kathi Appelt. It appears to have all the requirements, other than historical. Looks like it has some strong fantastical elements at least.

In the case of the Printz, I haven't a clue. It seems to be the book no one predicted in the past couple of years.

Summer Reading Countdown

Summer Reading is a great, wonderful, fun thing for kids, teens, and libraries. But preparing for it makes me pull out my hair.

Here's a piece of my To Do list:
- Choose movies
- Screen movies
- Choose crafts
- Make sample crafts
- Book program space
- Buy prizes
- Photograph prizes
- Write up prize descriptions
- Create bulletin board
- Make fliers for schools
- Use up all the copier toner
- Make packets (will be done as soon as more toner arrives)
- Visit schools
- Website
- Prepare a book list for visiting 4th graders
- Make drawing bins
- Print sign-up sheets

Writing it up actually makes me feel better.
Getting close to the end!

Reading lots, but not writing

Summer Reading is hurtling towards us, and I feel sort of ready. I'm trying to get a lot of things going with the Teen Advisory Board too. They have agreed to make posters promoting Summer Reading, and the review blog is finally getting off the ground. I'm very pleased that it is finally happening, so I hope it continues to grow.

We are talking about meeting at Barnes and Noble to do some end of the fiscal year shopping, as there is always money that needs to be spent quickly in May or June. The TAB has been asking about a field trip and this might be a good opportunity. I'm always asking them for purchase suggestions and understandably they have trouble thinking of specific titles. The nearest bookstore that carries teen books is about an hour away, so they aren't as easily exposed to the newest titles.

Might get a couple reviews up later.

PLA rundown

I really enjoyed PLA. There were good programs, good company, and good food. It is nice to be able to go to a conference where I actually had to chose between programs every session. Highlights included:

Reader's Advisory for Teens program- Helped confirm that I'm doing things right, and gave me some new hints.

Game Studio program- The Minneapolis Library is using a really cool program called Scratch. It is a free program that you can use to program/make some things of various types, i.e. games, videos, or other things. It uses some of the same code that the old Logo programming language used, but now the scripts are written in blocks that the user just has to select and stack. Projects are uploaded onto the Scratch website, where there's an online community like YouTube or Flickr. People can download projects to look at the coding. Minneapolis Library has a regular program where they have teens teaching other teens how to use Scratch.

Dealing with Teens Virtually- Respect the teens and respect their use of the net. Don't make the teens always come to you and your space, go to them in their's. Those two sentences sum up most of the important stuff from this program, though we also talked about ways to reach teens. Meebo, texting, e-mail, Flickr, blogs, and MySpace are just a few of the things we talked about.

Those are just a few of the programs I went to, and a very few of the ideas I picked up. Lots more to think about, consider, and do. I've gotten permission to start a blog for my teens to review books, movies, and music in. Maybe an online book group will happen as well in the future.

In a side note about PLA and to the organizers: If you are going to have a "paperless" conference, stop the daily newspapers or print them on demand, and even more importantly, don't give everyone books they don't want. This is one of three like it at the end of the conference.