Bedside Reading? Check!

Does your kid's nightstand look like this or is my kid just more weird/geeky/awesome?  I had the idea for this post a couple weeks ago and snapped this picture.  Then I got caught up in getting ready for holiday travel and forgot about it.  Then a couple days later I went in and wrote down everything on her nightstand and now I see there are some differences.  I can see in the photo she has Smile and a Bad Kitty book that had been finished and replaced by the time I wrote up my list.  As you can see, it's ever-changing.

Here's what I scribbled on the notecard:

Lost and Found: Egyptian Mummies and Other Discoveries

JLA: Justice for All (a Justice League of America collection)

Captain Underpants: Attack of the Talking Toilets

The Boxcar Children: Schoolhouse Mystery

National Geographic Kids magazine

National Geographic Kids 2012 Almanac

American Girl magazine

Ladybug Girl

and Miss Rumphius.

I like this wacky mix!  Fiction, non-fiction, reference, picture books and magazines.  And that doesn't include the books in the basket next to her potty, the books she keeps stashed in both of our cars and whatever we happen to be reading aloud to her.  I love this kid!

This Book Is Overdue!

And the TBR Dare begins!  My favorite book blogger, C.B. James over at Ready When You Are, C. B. is hosting a reading dare (rather than "challenge") in which your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read only books you already own between January 1 and April 1.  I decided to start early and may go late since I'll be mixing in some book club books as well.

You ever enter a book blogger's book give-away contest?  I did!  I won The Book of Lost Things from C.B. last year and since he knew I had recently become a school librarian, he added an ARC of this book in the package.  So I decided it was the perfect book to kick off me TBR Dare with.

The whole title is This Book Is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson.  She seems to be one of those magazine writers who now also write books.  Like Jon Krakauer, Mary Roach, and Susan Orleans.  I really like that kind of writer and this was no exception.

She uses the metaphor of the frontier to get things kicked off and returns to the idea with a library on a literal (if former) frontier, Deadwood, SD to the virtual frontier of Second Life.  In between she follows online blogging librarians, and primarily reference librarians and archivists.

I especially enjoyed the chapter on the Connecticut Four.  This would be the Connecticut librarians who, "in 2005, received a national security letter from the FBI demanding information about who had used one of their computers on a particular day" (p. 71).  What followed was a bizarre Kafkaesque years-long court case that was a prime example of why the Patriot Act is a bad idea.  But of course the participants in the case were not permitted to discuss the case until after that lovely piece of legislation had already been renewed.  Moly Ivins and Lou Dubose covered this case in their book Bill of Wrongs in 2007, which I also recommend.

The thing that you get from this book is a sense of optimism for the profession.  Yes, things are changing fast.  Formats and information needs both.  But as the Occupy Wall Street librarians show, along with the amazing translators and archivists and specialty librarians (the Kennel Club has their own library, and it's a doozy!) covered in this book; librarians are here to stay and will help us find exactly what we need.

Thanks, C. B.!

Under the Christmas Tree

So one day a couple weeks ago my daughter had an overnight friend.  I was here at my desk and noticed it was quiet.  Maybe too quiet.  So I thought I better check on these girls.  I poked around and didn’t find them until I noticed these under the Christmas tree:

See them?  Those are their feet.  I leaned over the couch in the living room to get this next shot:

Yup.  That’s them.  They had tucked themselves under the tree and even gotten pillows so they could be down there reading for a while.  I think Harper had instigated this activity because she wants her friend to catch up with her on the Sister’s Grimm series.  One day when I picked her up from her friends house I asked her what they’d been playing.  “Sister’s Grimm,” she said.  “But we can only play from the first book because that’s the one she’s on.  I don’t want to give anything away.”

They’re nuts, but lovable and mostly harmless.

Somebody Really Likes Me

Well at first I thought they can't have very high standards if they let me win one, but then I see that I somehow sneaked onto a list with the likes of Cathy Jo Nelson, Buffy Hamilton, Travis Jonkers, Mrs. Yingling, Leigh Ann Jones, Mr. Schu, Diane Cordell, and Jacquie Henry--mentors and teaching ninjas all.

I don't know who came up with the list, if there was voting or if they're just hawking their teaching degree site but it's always nice to be recognized and it's an honor to be listed in such high company. Lately I've found myself more interested in writing about my reading than my librarianship, but I'll endeavor to correct that in the upcoming year. I usually write my more librarian-related stuff on the GLMA website who has an amazing stable of contributors you will learn much from.

So thank you for the honor, whoever you are, and I will now walk out of my office to accept the challenge of an even bigger honor--helping kids find the right book to read and getting to be their school librarian.

Thanks,
Jim

The Object of Debate

We are having the staff holiday luncheon in the school library today (don't get me started).  There's a table set up for people to set some desserts on.  This lovely and crafty item showed up and my clerk asked me who brought it in.  I didn't know.  She said, "Well, whoever it was, they're white because we [black people] don't do that kind of thing."

True or not true?

I've asked most people that have come through today and so far most people agree with her.

Honestly I'd never thought about it before but it's definitely sparking hilarious conversations.

Cutting the Cable

So I mentioned in my last post that we cut the cable.  It's true.  We had a bundle of TV/phone/and internet.  I switched the phone to Vonage's most basic plan since we mostly use or cells anyway.  Then I took back the HD cable DVR box.

It's not like we don't watch anything.  I got a new Blu-Ray player that streams so I have Netflix streaming and Amazon Prime videos plus whatever I feel like renting from Amazon (my daughter and I watched the Muppet Christmas Carol on there for a couple bucks last weekend).

I also still get Netflix discs in the mail.  I upped our account to three-at-a-time.  I know a whole gob of folks got their panties in a twist about their price hikes and such, but I still love them.  I didn't sign up with them in the first place for the streaming and when it came for free it was nice, but not that robust.  Of course they would up the price so they could get more content.  What they probably should have done is split the companies before the price hike, then it would have made more sense to people. (But that whole "Quickster" thing was plum dumb.  Just keep "Netflix" and call the other one "Netflix Instant" or something.  Sheesh.)  I don't know what's going to happen to them now that the mail service will be slowing down.  Guess they'll definitely be pushing more for the streaming side.  Which seems to be constantly improving, by the way.  We definitely like their new "Just for Kids" area.  And no commercials!

Whatever.  We did it mostly for cost reasons but it's had the added benefit of us cutting back on television watching.  We have to actively decide to sit down an pick a show.  No more just "seeing what's on." I've also been playing more Wii with my daughter.  (She beats the snot out of me most of the time.)

And more time for reading! Many nights if we've sent discs back and there's nothing in mind to watch that night we'll just read out loud longer before the tuck-in and MLB and I will just knock off early to read.

Still pay for the cable internet, though.  Gotta have that, especially now that we're all carrying around more wi-fi devices all the time!