Boots on the ground

No reading for me today.

It is Buy One, Get One Free bookfair time at the local elementary library I will be at this week. The library does not make any money with this fair; they just want to get books into kids' hands for the summer. As I walked in this a.m. I could see the place was packed with parents and children waiting in line to check out. They had two cashiers but the lines were long.

There is always lots of tension with before school selling. Kids need to get to class and parents are on their way to work. I ran over to one cashier and began bagging and pre-counting money to help speed up the line.*

At book fairs you have different kinds of money. There is "parent money" which is in the form of check or credit card and accompanied by adults in charge. You answer the question, "Who should I make this out to?" so many times that you begin to think of inking the answer on your forehead.

Then there is the "responsible child" money. This is the cash machine denomination that the young one must parcel out responsibly. Sometimes an older sibling also oversees a younger sibling's purchases with "responsible child" money.

My favorite money is "kid money" because it comes from under the bed, from the piggy bank, or from down in the sofa cushions. This is wadded-up, folded-up, scrunched-up and twisted-up currency in bills, quarters, dimes and pennies. It comes through the door in ziplock bags or from inside their shoes.

You haven't lived until you've watched a child shake money out of the toe of their Nikes which they then hand you to count. Damp and fragile dollar bills must be unrolled with the same caution scholars use to examine the Dead Sea Scrolls, all the while you are reminding yourself, "don't scratch your nose!" because now, suddenly, every germ transferring point of your face is beginning to twitch.

Me: "Do you know how much you have?"
Kiddo: "No!"
Me: Well, of course not. "Step over here so we can count it."
Kiddo (shaking his other still shod foot) : "Wait, I've got to check my other shoe."
Me: "Alas, you do not have enough money for the space-telescope-Geiger-counter-decoder-ring-airplane-launcher but you do have enough to buy this book and then you get one free!
Cool huh?"

Finally, the tardy bell rang, parents completed their purchases and everyone collapsed for a few minutes until the first class of the day arrived. Teachers and students came through all day. Their happy smiles and gleeful wanderings confirmed my belief that our national pastime is not sports, politics or watching TV. We love shopping more than anything.

Over lunch I visited with the cashier. We were talking about the books and which ones needed to be reordered. I was impressed with her knowledge and told her so.

She gave me a sort of dismayed look and said, "Since I've been doing this job, I find that the ONLY books I want to read are THESE books! (waving in the general direction of the display shelves) I hardly read regular books anymore, THESE are just so GOOD!"

Sister, join the club.


*Rules for Book Fairs 101:
Rule #3 -- Always have two people at each cash register for "event" selling

Happy Titan's Curse Day

Today is the day! Let the celebrations commence! Kids can now stop giving ME dark and envious looks and flock to the stores to buy their own copy of the third installment of Percy Jackson's adventures. We have been waiting for that Harry fellow, no doubt, but the kids I know are even more excited to get this book in their hands.

There's a nice profile of Rockstar Rick Riordan in the Austin American Stateman today and Riordan will be celebrating with his fans at BookPeople tonight. Riordan dedicated Titan's Curse to Topher Bradfield who has been a booster of the series at BookPeople and one of the forces behind summertime Camp Half-Blood.

Riordan also dedicated the book to Toni Davis, a bookseller in Cornwall, England. Sadly, Davis passed away this past week. He posted a moving tribute to her, "Farewell, My Huntress," on Saturday.

My family has organized our schedule to be at one of his signings here in town this week. We must have a complete autographed set.

I have also discovered a branch of my family, that has not found the series yet.

Bwa-ha-ha.

I'm off to sub today. Oh, I hope 5th grade is coming to the library. I know exactly what book I want to read!!!

The Dangerous Book for Boys

I loved this Meghan Cox Gurdon review of The Dangerous Book for Boys sent to me by an alert reader.

She transcribes the comments of (her?) 10-year-old boy. How fun!

Then the boy explodes into action. Leaping up, he rummages in a drawer for a pad of Post-It notes and vaults back into his seat. And this, transcribed from life, is what follows: "Man! This book has everything!" the boy cries, marking a page. "Sweet! Making cloth fireproof!" He puts in another bookmark. "The Golden Age of Piracy!" There's a pause, and in a lower voice he says, " 'How to Talk to Girls,' that'll be useful ..."

Busy, busy busy

Just returned from a quick trip to see Entling no. 2 receive lovely recognition at her college. Entling no. 1 comes in for weekend visit tomorrow and have not fully checked in with Entling no. 3 to see what projects, tests, assignments, horrors await next week's high school hijinks.

Everybody's doing it...must have my own daemon.


Everybody's doing it: Visual DNA

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Blogging Reviewers

Finding Neverland has an excellent toon on the topic of blogging reviewers. It cuts to the chase!

I have had a chuckle reading the discussion at Roger Reads about the role of blogger reviewers vs print reviewers (currently 63 comments and climbing.) The comments evolved into a multifaceted conversation about the motives of blogging reviewers and swag and cupcakes.

With family members who are journalists I have been aware of the supposed tension between the "news professionals" aka "journalists" and the "amatuers," aka "bloggers in pajamas" for some years now. (I am fully dressed thank you, although, I am wearing Ugg slippers, oops!)

So the question of professional vs amateur (DO pronounce it with a French accent) their motivations, agendas, and gushings etc. have been well hashed out in other blogging realms.

This has been fun to read though and there are many very thoughtful posts and comments about why we kidlitospherians do what we do.

As usual, Roger made a point in the discussion that resonated with me.

I'm guessing that most blog reviewers would say, "I review what I want to review." That's fine, too, and attractively anarchic. But I find, anyway, that those reviews tell me more about the reviewer than they do about the book. And I hasten to say I've met some pretty interesting minds this way.
8:35 PM, April 17, 2007

This comment is exactly why I enjoy kidlitosphere reviews. They do tell us about the voices in this community. I have never heard any of their voices, (well, actually , I have the voices of Chris Barton and Cynthia LS and Fuse #8 (on NPR) but Miss Erin's perspective is different than LizB's and MotherReader makes me laugh and Jen is often focused on literacy and reading and Kelly always has an insight that never occured to me and Indefatigable Kelly just does it all.

Michele is who I would probably be if I had been born in Angleterre and Sheila always finds a book my girls and I need to read as does Susan . There are new blogs and voices to add to my blogroll everyday.

A few years ago, there was a big push to teach 4th graders about "voice." Fourth grade is the writing test year here in Texas. The teachers were always in search of novels with a strong "voice." Well, ok. I don't know what the writing pedagogy flavor of the month is this year. I daresay it is something new.

I asked a student once if they could tell me what "voice" was and the child answered, "It is the sound I hear when I read a book."

I do hear the "voices" of the kidlitospherians when I read their reviews.

TLA Librarians

One of the wonderful things about TLA is the chance to meet and talk with other librarians from far away school districts (and in Texas, districts can be VERY far away.)

---- ---- ---- ---- ----

At the Children's Round Table breakfast I met a librarian from Corpus Christi who is planning a Percy Jackson party to celebrate The Titans Curse on May 1. She has preordered the books so the kids can get them that day! There is going to be a whole lot of reading going on at that school that day.

I thought the idea of hosting the celebration at the school library was splendid. I hope she sends the photos to RRR. I would love to see them.

---- ---- ---- ---- ----

As different as school districts and libraries are, we all have so much in common. Had a very thoughtful conversation with a librarian who had recently been through a book challenge with the book Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn. We discussed the parent's objections to the book (subject of abortion) and agreed that it is ironic that students are asked to examine the "deeper" meaning in the books they read but book challengers are not. Abortion is not presented as a happy outcome in this story at all. Did the parents want a story where it was a portrayed as something to party about?

I have pointed out that there are parents who have sincere and honest concerns about the books their kids are reading. I continue to applaud their interest in their child's reading life.

I do have a test question about book challenges: who did the parent go to first about the book--was it the librarian or the principal?

Ah, in this case they went to the principal first.

Sorry, folks, this pushes you a little closer to the "nutter" category. If a child is having trouble in school, do you talk to the teacher first or do you go straight to the principal, blustering and threatening? If you go to the principal first, without talking to the teacher, then I'm thinking it is not really about your child.

---- ---- ---- ---- ----

Finally, Grace Lin has a link to a Robert's Snow project at Hancock Elementary School in Houston. What a beautiful idea librarian, Heather Jankowski had to involve her students.
Do not miss this! <-- (Soul-Sister Alert!)

Movie: The Lightning Thief

Fuse #8 has a link to the news in Variety about The Lightning Thief movie. Looks like Chris Columbus will direct. Let's pray for a great screenplay!

RRR mentioned the screenplay was being worked on during his local school visit a few weeks ago.

Librarian-ing

I've been subbing at an elementary school this week. I've had "fun" cataloging "kits" with big books, and assorted storytelling items for each book. Basically had to decide, do I do a separate entry for each item or list them all on one line with commas. Example: small toy moose to accompany If You Give a Moose a Muffin. I suppose I should have measured the moose and entered it in a 300 tag a: 1 moose b: plastic c: 10 x 15 cm. and then measured and identified all the other small doo-dads that were with the book with individual 300 tags. I didn't. I just listed them all on the 300 a line, separated by commas and measured the bag they were in for c. Time was short and I wanted to finish all of them for the librarian.

That does not mean a thing to you if you do not "enjoy" MARC records. Over the 3 days I was there I cataloged or cleaned up records for 189 items. Not too shabby.

I also enjoyed doing bird research with first graders in the afternoon. The librarian had arranged for two wonderful 4th graders to come as "helpers." We had some very nice easy nonfiction (I think they were Bridgestone) books about birds for our resources.

One table had the parrot book, one had the ostrich etc. The kids listened to or read the book and then filled out a little booklet with an interesting fact, what the bird eats, what the bird looks like etc. On the back there was a place to cite the book as a resource.

It was fun to help them begin thinking about research. The most fun was after the class left and the fourth graders looked at me in exasperation and said, "Those kids sure get off track a lot!" They were amazed that recording the fact that a heron eats crabs could lead to a conversation about Red Lobster. They were sputtering.

I just cracked up. I suggested their own teacher must feel this way too when the kids go "off task."

They came back to help the next day though and both of them asked me if they could have extra booklets so they could show the kids what to do. "We are going to do it along with them," they said.

I think they are natural teachers!

Next TLA report will be on Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier.

The one that got away

When I look at this lovely stack of ARCs and signed copies I tell myself that it is churlish to gnash one's teeth at the thought of the book that I did NOT buy but, there is is.

Humans are never satisfied

Saturday morning, I was holding War Horse by Michael Morpurgo in my hand at the Scholastic booth and I was debating purchasing it.

I have friend who loves horses and this story of WWI might even tempt me even though I swore off animal stories as a child. I had read one too many books where the poor horse's tongue lolls, where the dog limps on raw and tender paws, where the car hits the rabbit, where the poor kid has to kill his dog to become a man ... I always identified with Gordan Korman's character Wallace Wallace in No More Dead Dogs.

No wonder I turned into a fantasy reader. Give me a sharp orc thwacking sword any day!

The cover of War Horse was beautiful though and I was reaching for my money when ... Mo Willems walked by.

He was on his way to the author signing area having just finished his very entertaining breakfast speech and I had been debating whether or not to stand in line to get a signature.

I had a boffo RRR signed t-shirt for the nephew and had made a point to acquire a pigeon t-shirt for the niece. I had been dithering but when he walked by I put down the book and followed him.

Happy, happy! The shirt is so cute!

Sunday morning, Treebeard drew my attention to this Houston Chronicle article by Gregory Katz about ... Michael Morpurgo. He is currently the writer-in-residence at the Savoy Hotel in London.

Being based in London has given Morpurgo time to meet with filmmakers and theater directors, including the ones who are producing one of his earlier novels, War Horse, on stage this fall at the National Theatre.

"It's the sort of thing you dream of," Morpurgo said. "It's very, very exciting."

The much-loved novel tells the story of World War I as seen through the eyes of a horse. Like many of Morpurgo's works, it is aimed primarily at children but also has a following among adults, including many of whom read it first in childhood and have revisited it decades later.

It is a sign.

If you love London, read the whole thing!

TLA -- 1

Walking the cement floors of an exhibit hall is hard work and makes your feet hurt, no matter how bouncy your new sneakers with the pink swooshes are.

On day 1 of TLA, I was staggering under the weight of a backpack stuffed with new books. The overflow bag in my left hand was slowly dislocating my elbow and separating my left arm from its shoulder socket when I heard someone call my name. It was Chris Barton. He was instantly familiar to me because I've seen his photo on his blog. I hide behind Dragon online because more kids know him than me.

How in the world? I was surprised and amazed when Chris told me that he had recognized my sneakers!

My equilibrium was restored with a cup of coffee and good conversation with Mr. Barton. I also had a chance to talk with Austin authors Julie Lake, Brian Anderson, Don Tate, Cynthia Leitich Smith and GregLeitich Smith: such nice folks, all of them.

I have always lived by the motto, "I read therefore I am" so the chance to actually converse with people who put those words on the page is a heady experience.