Blog Archive: June 2009

This post from the always-amusing blog (The Customer Is) Not Always Right amused me: An Offering to the Literary Gods.

You know, I could do with a nice, crusty loaf of bread right about now. Patrons? Hello?

But skip the flowers. My allergies are driving me crazy as is.

Overheard in the chapter book area...

Child: Oh NO!!! Ricky Ricotta's robot won AGAIN!!! I HATE that!!! Why does Ricky's robot ALWAYS win??? These books are STUPID!!! I'm NEVER going to read another one again!!! I mean, SOMETIMES I want Ricky's robot to win... but not ALWAYS!!!

[And so on for several minutes...]

Mother: You're taking this awfully hard, dear. Why don't you pick out some other books instead?

Another cool thing about being a children's librarian? Sometimes they let you do things like this:

This is the booth we use in our Summer Reading Club. Here, kids report on their books to teen volunteers. We're using the Illinois Library Association's iRead theme this year, "Read on the Wild Side."

The booth structure is the same from year to year, but I did all the decorating this summer. It was fun to paint the animals and incorporate 3-D elements including bulgy eyes, books, leaves, flowers, and butterflies. (There is only one tissue paper flower because it turns out my talent does not lie in making tissue paper flowers.)

Usually the library staff artist decorates the booth, but she wasn't able this year. I was thrilled to step in. It ended up being a more stressful task than I'd bargained for, but I'm pretty happy with the results! I just hope everything doesn't fall off.

This 10-ish year old kid just came up to the desk, all smiles.

"Have you signed up for the summer reading club?" I asked.

"Of course!" said he.

"Good man. I see you're reading Foxtrot. Nice."

"I love Foxtrot. Sometimes I take two books. I check one out and hide the other one here for next time."

"Oh, really?"

"Yup. I've got a special hiding place behind one of the shelves. It works, too! I came back three weeks later, and it was still there."

"I see. So, now when I can't find a book, I'll know who to blame."

He had the good sense to look guilty.

"You know," I said, "you can reserve a book, if you want to make sure it's here for you. As a librarian, I have to tell you, I can't get behind book-hiding."

"Oh. Oh. Okay."

Several minutes passed, and the boy walked by with his mother and another Foxtrot book. I overheard the boy say, "Should I hide it, or hold it?"

His mother, bless her heart, said, "Don't hide it!"

I called over, "Don't hide it!"

"Awwwww..."

I did find it rather sweet that he trusted me, the authority figure, to appreciate his nefarious secret. Sweet, but stupid.

At least he loves to read!

For GLBT Month, Book Chic is running a series of guest blogs by and interviews with authors and advocates of queer teen literature. It's interesting, thought-provoking reading!

• Jeannine Garsee, author of Say the Word (Bloomsbury 2009)
• Saundra Mitchell, author of Shadowed Summer (Delacorte 2009)
• Lee Wind, blogger extraordinaire at I'm Here, I'm Queer, What the Hell Do I Read?
• Josh Aterovis, author of the Killian Kendall mystery series
• Malinda Lo, author of the forthcoming Ash (Little, Brown 2009)
• Brent Hartinger, author of a zillion books, the most well-known being The Geography Club
• Alex Sanchez (Part 2), author of a zillion-and-one books, including the Rainbow High series—Sanchez shares a number of letters he's received from young readers, and they are truly moving and inspiring.