BACK TO SCHOOL LIBRARY BULLETIN BOARDS : part 2

"TIME TO TURN YOUR BRAIN BACK ON"

     Since I'm struggling to get my OWN brain re-focused on school stuff (weh), I figure it must be even harder for the kids. Anyway, this is my slogan, and I think David Sedaris is a great example of a smartie-pants thinking person. Plus I put up some articles on the enduring popularity of print books even in this era of (relatively) affordable ereaders and free ebooks.
     I used the Bone poster because it's not like graphic novels are DUMB, right? Represent.

"TIME TO TURN YOUR BRAIN BACK ON" detail

     I just Googled "brain" and "light switch" images and pasted them into a Word doc, one on top of the other, then printed it on nice brainy pink paper.

"BIG IDEAS MAY COME IN SMALL PACKAGES"

     For both of these boards I also Googled "light bulb" images, and printed them out in varying sizes. Easy and cheap, like yer mom.
     Fuchsia is a cool color, but the spelling of the word is seriously f***ed up.

ALA ZINE PAVILION : Nobody told ME about it.

     Back in June I spent one really frantic yet fun day at the American Library Association Conference in nearby Anaheim. I picked up a copy of ALA Cognotes, and just now finally had a chance to leaf through it while I'm working my Library station during registration for the new school year.

     I came across THIS picture:

The Zine Pavilion on the ALA Annual Conference exhibit floor

     Enraged that I had missed out on this opportunity to promote my OWN zines, "Library Bonnet," and "Disenchanted Moue," I Googled it and discovered that it was this awesome conference-long exhibit with a bunch of events taking place at different times each day, such as raffles, group zine-making, etc. Sounds totally FUN, and I'm really pissed off.

     How did I miss that booth?! And why didn't someone tell me about it AHEAD of time, so I could have participated?! My friend Julie and I did 8 issues of a zine called "Library Bonnet," for f***'s sake, we would have been PERFECT for that. We should have been special featured guest stars of the Zine Pavilion, worn crowns and/or tiaras, and arrived on diamond-studded library carts, drawn by miniature ponies.

     Or not.

     Anyway, I was sitting here gritting my teeth with chagrin to have missed out. That picture is killing me, I wanna know what other awesome zines were there! I'm pouting about it, but there's nobody to see me pout. Except for the students and parents who come in to register for school, but as soon as the door opens I drop the pout because... well, it would be too much to explain, and they probably wouldn't care anyway.

     Now I'm DOUBLE-pouting.

Read more about the Zine Pavilion here:  http://www.alaannual.org/content/zines

BOOK REVIEW : "Psychos: Serial Killers, Depraved Madmen, and the Criminally Insane" by various authors, edited by John Skipp

Get Psychos, edited by John Skipp, from Amazon HERE.

     I got an advanced e-copy of this book through NetGalley. This anthology is edited by John Skipp, and collects a very wide selection of stories involving murderous psychos from various perspectives, some humorous, some chilling. Authors include classics like Poe, Bradbury, Gaiman, Thomas Harris, Lansdale, Bentley Little, Elizabeth Massie, Robert Devereaux, Kathe Koja, and others. 
     To me the absolute chills-down-the-spine standout piece that made the whole anthology worth it was "All Through the House" by Christopher Coake, an author I was unfamiliar with. Skipp gives a brief intro to each story, and in numerous places "warns" the reader how freaky the upcoming story is going to be, but "All Through the House" was one of the only ones that really lived up to that for me. It focuses on a mass murder mainly from the viewpoint of the murderer's best friend, who suffers tremendous survivor's guilt. But the genius of the story is the way it creates a truly haunting (and haunted) sense of history about the location by slipping back in time before the murders, then moving forward to even after the house is burnt down, then backing up to before it was burnt down and a true crime writer was visiting to exploit the event for her own purposes. 
     Another stunningly horrid (in a good way, for a psycho anthology) story was John Gorumba's "Mommy Picks Me Up at Day Care," written very believably from the viewpoint of a little boy. The boy's mother "snaps" and the author is unflinching in the way he shows this young child's mind trying to process and cope with the situation in his limited way. Meanwhile, as the reader you're able to translate the child's perceptions, so you realize what's really happening. Very clever. 
     Included in the appendix is a very thorough and thoughtful afterword about psychos in popular culture by Cody Goodfellow, and then the actual letter sent from cannibal murderer Albert Fish to the mother of one of his victims. It's not for the squeamish. 
     I feel the book as a whole is pretty well done, the second half being more rewarding than the first. The "centerpiece" of the book is a novella by Adam-Troy Castro called "The Shallow End of the Pool," but unfortunately for me it was one of my least favorite in the book. That might just be because it wasn't what I was really hoping for, based on the theme. For other people it might be very worthy precisely because of that, since it's not what you would expect.

BACK TO SCHOOL LIBRARY BULLETIN BOARDS : part 1

Coming Soon in late 2012...

     So, I'm back at work after summer break.
     Things feel a little grim because the district is in such dire financial straits, and they followed through with their threat to eliminate all but ONE of the credentialed Librarians in our district. Which means all of us Library technicians will be running our libraries single-handedly ALL the time, rather than just half the time. It's a sad joke to expect ONE credentialed Librarian to manage 18 libraries.
     As of this writing the district hasn't even told our lone Librarian where she's supposed to report on her first day, whether she'll have an office at the district to work out of, or if she's supposed to just float between all 18 campuses, or what.
     Anyway, at least I still have MY job. For now.
     7th grade orientation is this week, likewise registration for all students, so I realized I needed to get something up on all the bulletin boards and display areas in the Library.

Ray Bradbury memorial wall

      One of the students asked me in mid-June right before school was out if we could do some sort of tribute to Bradbury in the Library, and I felt bad that I didn't have time right then to get something together. Better late than never, right?

Vintage Muppets library-themed poster featuring Kermit and Miss Piggy

      My site Librarian who just retired (since she would have been eliminated anyway), brought in this awesome old Muppets poster, which had a little bit of mold damage on it, but I carefully used some Windex and then laminated it. I love the Muppets and this old poster is great because there's absolutely NO nod to any current obnoxious trends. I'm guessing it's from the late '70s because of Piggy's outfit.

James Patterson article, plus "Maximum Read" poster, and various Patterson book cover images

      The now-retired Librarian was always bringing in book- and reading-related articles from the newspaper (the actual print version!), and I tried to use them around the library when possible. I figure it's a good idea to visually remind kids of various formats, and that it all counts as reading. Know what I mean? Print-rich environment, etc.

New book posters, plus My Little Pony calendar

      Behind the circ desk I did a simple board with some free book posters the Librarian and I grabbed at ALA in Anaheim this summer.
     We have a lot of Asians at this school, and I predict that the Koreans, Vietnamese, Chinese, etc. will make some snipey comments about the poster that proclaims, "THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE."
     (I would)

"BEWARE: QUIET READING TIME IS SACRED." "A Library is for Peaceful Reflection..."

     Since the Librarian is now officially retired, not to be replaced, her old office was just sitting there, and even though it felt a little weird... Well, it's MINE now.
     To put some of my stink on it, I took an old Sweeney Todd movie poster, printed out my own slogans, and glued them over the original wording. Now it's a threatening library poster complete with a straight razor!
     I love working with the kids, and create a welcoming environment and stuff, but seriously- when it comes to my breaks, I want my book, a cup of coffee, and SILENCE.

OFF-TABLES : I knew it.

     One of the first things I do every morning when I first come in and open the library is patrol the very back shelves, looking for out-of-place books the students might have stashed back there at the end of the previous day. They're always easy to spot.
     Then I go through the rest of the room and grab any books left lying on tables, or otherwise out of place. I then scan them in "statistics mode," so our circ system will know that they've been used, even if not officially checked out. I also do this after any period of heavy library traffic, once things calm down. This is important to show the REAL usage some of your library's books are getting, since when it's time to evaluate books with weeding (discarding) in mind, one of the factors you look at is how many times they've been checked out. If you did NOT scan the "off-tables," a book such as "The Period Book," about girls' reproductive systems, might appear to have never been used. But if you have done off-tables, then you might see that "The Period Book" had actually been used about 3,000 times in one year. But no one's been brave enough to actually check it out.
     Anyway, a while ago we received a batch of free books from Disney Press, which included the super cheesy and disposable, "Wizards of Waverly Place: the movie: the junior novel." It's a horrid 123 pages of dreck and movie photos.

     But I decided to go ahead and put it into our collection. Here's why:
     Our school is a college-prep academy with an entrance exam and extremely high standards. BUT... our students are still kids. They may argue philosophy and do quantum mathematics in their sleep, but they also watch cartoons and play video games. I was dying to see if any of them would be bold enough to check out the stupid Wizards of Waverly Place book, in between the David Sedaris and Sartre.
     No one has officially checked it out. But FINALLY, this morning after the before-school rush of kids, when I went around and collected off-tables, THERE IT WAS. The lame-ass Wizards of Waverly Place book. And it was lying on a table near the circ desk, and there had NOT been raucous laughter coming from that table. That table was quiet. Which means whoever had been looking at it or reading it had NOT done so in a mocking fashion.
     I KNEW it. Everybody needs their deep dark guilty pleasures, even young geniuses.
     This does not mean I would ever want to PAY for something so stupid, but if it's free and gives a hard-working kid a few moments of freedom from serious thought, then why not?

BOOK REVIEW : "Existence" by David Brin

Click HERE to see/buy the book on Amazon.

     This book is a treasure-trove of ideas! It's set hundreds of years in the future, when humanity experiences "first contact." But of course it's not what anyone is expecting, and there are revelations and hoaxes and twists galore. 
     The scope of the book is so huge and complex it's hard to summarize it, but one of the major themes is trying to figure out and avoid the many possible fatal pitfalls of advanced civilization. One idea I found VERY interesting is that many people (politicians and extremists on both sides of the spectrum) become addicted to self-righteous indignation, which keeps them from rational discourse. And our society tends to just feed into that and make it worse, rather than realizing an addiction for what it is: the enemy of a mature and rational society.
     This is the kind of book you sort of wish everyone HAD to read because there are a lot of clever and "important" concerns and ideas. I love the idea that diversity is vital to the survival of a species, that it brings "hybrid vigor." 
     I swear this book is very entertaining, too! Not just concepts and causes. There's a lot of great artificial intelligence stuff, genetically-engineered smart dolphins, extreme future sports, virtual reality Matrix-type mind trips, etc. Lots of adventure! Hopefully humankind won't self-destruct in any of the creative and plausible ways detailed in this book, but instead survive and thrive. 
     The ultimate message of the book is very hopeful and enlightening.


NOTE: Existence is slated for a June 19th, 2012 release. I was lucky to get an advance e-copy for review through NetGalley.

LIBRARY PRODUCT OF THE DAY : Demco Clear Book Pockets

The picture from Demco's online catalog

     Discovering these clear book pockets was like a revelation. Typically, the book pocket goes on the front inside cover of a book, but what if there's a MAP there, or some other really cool thing that you don't want to cover up?! How do you deal? Even if it's just a list of the rest of the books by that author, someone might want to KNOW that. It might be IMPORTANT.
     Normally I put the pocket on the back of the following page, but then there's always the worry that some other well-meaning library worker will come along and think there is no pocket, and possibly apply a new one OVER whatever the cool visual thing on the endpapers is. This is not acceptable. It would ruin EVERYTHING. You don't want to ruin everything, do you?
     The solution I had come up with before the life-changing discovery of clear book pockets was to place a label on the front inside page noting that the pocket was on the FOLLOWING page. This is not ideal, but at least it's better than covering up awesome endpapers, such as you find inside Scott Westerfeld's "Leviathan" series.

(Ugly white label reads: "NOTE: card pocket on next page")

     But now that I have the clear pockets, I can breathe easy, knowing that on a book like Sy Montgomery's biography of Temple Grandin, the book pocket can be exactly where it needs to be AND not obscure Temple's totally rad map.

Where's the card pocket? I assure you, it is there...

See? I told you.

     In case you are interested, here's the link to the product page on Demco's website: http://www.demco.com/goto?BLK94694