Youth Media Awards Yay!

Anyone who was at the RI Mock Newbery with me knows that I am thrilled Okay for Now didn't win anything. Yay! I think Gary Schmidt is a masterful writer, and it's true, as people said at Mock, that he can sweep you off your feet and through a madcap series of events, leaving you breathless, disheveled, and romanced. But then there's that morning after feeling, when you wonder if it's really right [spoiler alert] to rehabilitate a chronically abusive character and strike the strongest female character with cancer. I mean, cancer! He could have given her laryngitist!

I have a lot of love for Gary Schmidt and Okay for Now. If I didn't, I wouldn't be so passionate about it not winning. I have no doubt Schmidt has a Newbery winner in him, and I sincerely hope that he wins later in his career for a book in which he does not kill off (or almost kill off) the spunky young female!

I'm also happy to see a wordless book win the Caldecott and thrilled that Xavier Garza is getting the recognition he deserves.

Well, I'm thrilled, and I also feel a little like my favorite indie band just got signed by a major label ... but my better angel reminds me that children besides the one in my library deserve to have access to books about luchadors. Because they are awesome.

Oh, and Roger must be patting himself on the back about this one.

My Graphic Novel Selection presentation

Thanks to everyone who braved the weather to attend!

Graphic novel selection

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Richard Peck labors for 40 years and produces a mouse

I just stole the funniest line from Peck's Horn Book acceptance speech for my blog post. But it's not the best line! There are many good lines in his speech. In it he explains that the best way to talk to young people these days is through a book. He seems to say that we can't reach them directly, because they're far away from us, checking their phones and their friends' hairstyles. They live in a different world than adults do. This seems quite true to me.

It was the perfect thing to read (because I agreed with it so wholeheartedly) after fuming about the Nazaryan piece I mention below. (Oh. I think my heart rate just spiked again. Anyway.) However, the speech is not without controversial statements. I also encourage you to read it because of what Peck has to say about attacks from the "family values right" and the "multicultural left." And his comments on Stuart Little's oddness remind me of the time I read the original Curious George to a kindergarten, forgetting about the monkey's pipe-smoking habit ...

In which I attack the attack on Walter Dean Meyers

I love a good polemic, and this one is delightfully hair-curling, so I hope everyone will pop over and read Alexander Nazaryan explain why Walter Dean Myers will FAIL as National Ambassador for Young People's Literature.

Of course, I'm a librarian, so maybe my reaction to this opinion piece just shows that it's a good thing I'm not a literature teacher, but I completely disagree with Nazaryan. I mean, I hardly know where to start.

I also don't know much about what the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature is supposed to do exactly, but the title suggests to me that they are supposed to promote young people's literature. And Homer is not young's people's literature.

Also, you can't read Homer all day long. I want my students to become readers, which means to me that reading will be part of their lives in many ways. I want them to read for pleasure as well as enlightenment, and I want them to be able to read the millions of forms and news stories and emails that will fill their lives. And I don't think you have to put down one kind of reading in order to promote another.

Finally, I doubt very much that Walter Dean Myer's mission, as ambassador, is to promote his own literature. I expect he will promote reading and literature in general to many children, and I would argue that he will succeed in an area that Nazaryan and I will undoubtedly fail: in convincing minority kids that reading isn't just for white people. Or old men. Or nerds. Or plucky suburban school girls with adorable quirks who like to read books about butter churns and sleigh rides.

Anyway, the article doesn't even offer an intelligent critique of Dean's writing. It's just an excuse for Nazaryan to talk about his own awesomeness. Way to go, dude. Seriously. He got kids to read and relate to the classics. But why put down other kinds of reading and writing? What I dread much more than the thought that kids will stop reading Homer is that they will assume that all the important books in the world were written hundreds of years ago by dead white men.

* Edited to add: I just went over to the article and posted a comment, and Sarah Flowers, the President of YALSA comments, too! Let the jousting begin!

“what does it profit them if they read many books and love none?”

So the day after I present at OLIS and make all these declarations about how summer reading programs have changed little from the 1970s, I learn that they have actually changed little since the 1900s! While putting together the powerpoint for the presentation, I stumble upon this blog post from NYPL describing the evolution of the online component of their summer reading program. Sort of interesting.

But the blog post links to this master's thesis: A History of Youth Summer Reading Programs in Public Libraries! Fascinating! In the early literature, some librarians accuse other librarians of doing summer reading programs just to increase circulation. How funny, when these days I don't think anyone would be abashed about trying to get their numbers up.

But what really got me were the excerpts from an attack on summer reading programs written by one librarian Latimer (his or her first name isn't mentioned) in 1923. That's where the title of this post comes from. According to the thesis:

This was the first negative response encountered to summer reading programs. It raises the issue of incentives used for reading, one that is still debated. It is critical of creating an atmosphere similar to school during the vacation, when children should be on a break, and creating a negative connection with the library and reading by forcing children to read. In the article the first mention is made of a private company, Gaylord, publishing materials, available for purchase, to support summer reading programs in public libraries.

I can't decide if it's encouraging or discouraging that people have questioned the distribution of prizes and the emphasis on quantity of summer reading for almost 90 years. It's encouraging that other librarians (dead librarians, probably, but whatever), agree with me. It's discouraging that these questions have been raised for so long, but still prizes and logs are default parts of summer reading. Prizes and logs can be used to support specific goals, but I feel like in some cases, they have replaced the goals.

Some questions I think everyone could ask while planning their summer reading program:

• How does this fit into my year-round relationship with children and schools?
• How can I bring new people into the library community this summer?
• What is necessary for children to have positive reading experiences? (Think really basic, like a place and a time to read.)
  

My Summer Reading presentation

Today I presented some of my summer reading research at the state children's librarians' meeting. It was magical to be surrounded by so many librarians! I love professional development.

Summer Reading Research and Public Libraries

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The complete citations for the studies I mention are:

Dominican University (2010). The Dominican study: Public library summer reading programs close the reading gap.” Retrieved from http://www.dom.edu/academics/gslis/imls/ClosetheReadingGap/

Heyn, B. (1978). Summer Learning and the Effects of Schooling. New York: Academic Press Inc.

Kim, J. S., & Guryan, J. (2007). “The efficacy of a voluntary summer reading intervention on reading activities and reading achievement.” Journal of Educational Psychology 99, 505‐515.

McTague, B., & Abrams, B. (2011). “Access to books: A scaffolded program creates readers.” Reading Improvement, 48(1), 3‐13.

Book Review: Marvel Origin Story Picture Books

I picked up three of the Marvel Origin Story picture books at Borders for about $4.50 each. I figured they'd fall into the category of "books with high kid appeal and questionable literary merit." That said, don't ask me why Marvel picture books bother me less than Disney books. I never buy Disney books.

So I read them (The Mighty Thor, The Amazing Spider-Man, and The Uncanny X-Men) and I thought they were solid choices. They're written like fables--all narrative and no dialog. I did feel like there was a huge missed opportunity there. I mean, these are stories from comic books. Why not add some word bubbles to the art? The readers would understand Spider-Man's character better if they got some of his witty banter.

Without the dialog, the characters seem very serious. There's a surprising lack of humor in the stories. But that's not exactly a complaint. You do get a sense of the epic-ness of these comics, which works particularly well with Thor's origin story.

The main thing Marvel got right was the amount of text on each page. Unless you're Patricia Polacco, you can't get away with too many words on the page anymore. At least, not if you want to appeal to 7-year-olds. These are the right length for read-alouds, even if they are 48 pages rather than 32 (wow, I just counted and that surprised me), except for maybe the X-men story. I feel like they could have cut that one off earlier. They tried to cram a lot in.

The way that these work well in a school is that they give you so many opportunities to talk about character traits. Again, the Peter Parker and Thor stories are all about how those characters developed into decent people who took responsibility for their actions, and for their community. Obviously, the Thor story also gives you an opportunity to talk about mythology. In case it isn't obvious, the X-men story is the weak link. I don't really know what you'd do with that. Science? Mutations? Tolerance? The story skims too much. It doesn't give you a lot to work with.

There's also a Captain America Origin Story, but I didn't find that at the Borders where I was shopping. I bought these partly because I already have Ralph Cosentino's picture books about Batman, Superman, and Wonderwoman. I love them, because the art has this really retro vibe. They capture the feeling I imagine 1940s kids having when they read the original Amazing Stories, etc. These Marvel Origin Stories are much better, in my opinion, than the easy readers Capstone is putting out there (although I may buy those, too).

And basically, I'm a fan of introducing kids to this American mythology. People try to say Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed are our mythology, but I believe it's comic books.