Tag: #sparklinglibrarian

Surprise

B

Hey there! It’s been awhile. I haven’t shown my face here in a long time. I’m not 100% sure why but it could be a number of things. Let’s explore

  • I’ve been crocheting things like crazy
  • I moved
  • I got a different job
  • I was emotionally exhausted from that job
  • I moved again
  • I got a different job than the different job
  • I’ve been exploring how to cook more fully
  • I like learning new things
  • I learned the accordion
  • I had a podcast
  • I have been intentionally traveling
  • I was busy writing a book
  • I was busy editing a friend’s book

These are all legit things that have been happening for me. I have been busy out in the world exploring all the possibilities that were there for me. Then today I did something odd. I went back and I read some of my old blogs on here and I came to a simple conclusion.

I missed you all.

I missed getting to write about books. I missed getting to discuss why books are important. I missed spending so much time thinking about books.

So here’s the deal. I can’t promise I will write on here for forever. I can’t promise I won’t disappear again. I can’t promise I won’t go missing from time to time. But I promise I will be back. It’s good for my soul. It’s good for my mental health. It’s good for all of me.

My current plan to share some of my adventures in self-publishing my first book and maybe give you a few behind the scenes looks at what my mental process was like.

I look forward to chatting and sharing with you all again soon.

Keep Sparkling,

B

To read or not to read? That is the question

B

The amount of independent reading required in schools today is much higher than when I was in school. Often grades are tied to turning in slips that record how much a child has read at home. In my day we were required to have AR points and that was enough of a standard. Now we’ve moved beyond that to having both AR goals and reading minutes. These kids are feeling overwhelmed!

Why are we doing this? I know many students who struggle with reading and getting their minutes in. It may be because they have a chaotic home life. It may be because they don’t have anyone to remind them to read. It may even be that the parents have fought the kids on so many things that day, this just isn’t the fight they want to have.

But I get where teachers are coming from! They are trying to encourage more reading. They don’t want kids to lose these vital skills. Studies show that reading to your child before they go to school can help them be leaps and bounds ahead when it comes to comprehension. This push to get kids to read in this way may be motivator for some, but not for many.

And yet, I’m not surprised. Looking at our society- who still chooses to read for recreation? There are less and less people who value reading as a past time. I know very few adults that tell me that they spend their leisure time reading. Covid has affected that some for my friends, but not many have picked up a book to read.

Now me, I love to read (obviously)! I will stay up late to read a book- to watch a movie… not as likely. But to finish a book- I will stay up for HOURS! I have stopped letting myself read thrillers past 7pm or else I will never sleep because I will HAVE to finish the book! And I encourage you all to pick up this habit of mine. You should all become obsessed readers. Ready-set-go!

So let’s all make a decision. Right here. Right now. Let’s all commit to reading again. Maybe it’s just reading for 5 minutes a day! Maybe you’re choosing to sit and actually read the newspaper today. Maybe you’re choosing to sit and read to your child. Maybe you’re remembering how much you loved that book as a child and it’s time to revisit those happy feelings. Let’s all strive to read more. Every little bit will stimulate your brain.

Go find more happy moments via reading!

Keep Sparkling,

B

Good to be Home

B

It’s good to be home. Have you ever been away on a long trip and as fun as the vacation was, it just feels good to be home? That’s my feelings as I write on here. It’s good to be home. It’s good to be back writing about the things I love and sharing with the people who love them.

It’s good to be writing about books again. Books are such beautiful things! So my first post in over a year- what to share with you all! I could tell you about the books I read last year, the things I accomplished, or the books I gifted to others. I chose something different.

Do you have any books that you like to re-read? Books that just feel like home to come back to? Books that you can read and re-read and still enjoy every minute of? Books that you can practically quote? Books that you can skip from one section to the next because you know exactly where the parts you really want to read are at?

I’ve got those! I’d like to share a few with you.

I love this book. This was one I went into with trepidation and not expecting much but I ended up absolutely loving this fun little rom-com of a read. The U.S. has been broken down and re-built. Fast forward to years in the future when a ruling family now has to find a woman for their son to marry. Picking one girl from each section this read is the Bachelor meets a divided country caste system meets a teenage rom com.

This one is so cute! Fandoms have become a very real part of culture and this book celebrates them! The main character has been writing fanfiction of a fantasy series, think Harry Potter meets Eragon, for most of her teen years. As a new college student she has to discover how she can meld her need to write her fanfiction with her desire to begin experiencing the outside world. Cath is a lovable introvert that the reader will root for from the get-go.

These are my current go-to loved reads! What are yours?

Keep Sparkling,

B

Surprise!

B

Surprise! Guess who’s back! It’s been quite the year. I walked away from this blog a year ago to be a barista. That lasted for about 2 months before I jumped feet first into social work again. It’s been quite the year. Social work in the time of COVID- not a fun feat I tell you.

But I realized something. I missed you all. I missed my readers. My loyal community of people who wanted to talk about books and diversity. My amazing group of people who cared about how to grow through our reading.

For the last year I’ve been writing on “Sparkly Musings of Illogical Proportions.” This will continue as I’ve discovered this to be an amazing outlet for me. On that blog I challenge people to do little things to grow more. To be more kind or to do more for others.

But I’ve missed writing about books. I’ve missed exploring what I’m reading with others and sharing what I see going on in the world of books. So I’ll be back!

Starting January 2021 I’ll be back with more books to discuss and more joy to share. I’ll be limiting it to every other week due to writing two blogs now, but I promise more sparkling content is coming. I encourage you to join me on Sparkly Musings of Illogical Proportions also. The two blogs will be coming out on opposite weeks so fun content will be available readily. I can’t wait to start this new adventure with you!

Keep Sparkling,

B

The Things I don’t Know

B

“You don’t know what you don’t know until you know.”

There’s a lot I don’t know. I will be the first to admit that. I don’t know how atoms really make everything up. I think I get the concept but I’m not actually sure I know how it works. I don’t know how to build a house. My Dad does. He’s a contractor. I know the basic concepts but I don’t know the execution.

There’s something that makes me super aware of what I don’t know. That would be a big two word thing. A big thing that makes lots of people uncomfortable. Here we go- Political Correctness.

I try hard to be politically correct. I really do. But there is always something changing! There is always a new correct term. And besides that- there’s always someone waiting to be offended. Some people have genuine reason to be upset but sometimes the language changes. And sometimes people just have different preferences.

My sister has dark skin and she told me she prefers to be called “brown” and not “black”. One of my friends from college has dark skin and they told me they prefer to be called “black” and not “brown”. So which is it? What do I do?

Here’s the key to all this- having grace for those that don’t know what they don’t know. There’s a lot I don’t know. There are a lot of things I don’t get. It can take me awhile to catch on to a joke, which means it can also take me awhile to know that something isn’t politically correct. Since things change so quickly, politely correct me. That’s all it takes. Jacqueline Woodson’s audiobook Harbor Me has a very interesting conversation at the end. She discusses having grace for those who don’t know what they don’t know. She suggests that we have grace and politely correct others, instead of choosing to be offended at their lack of knowledge.

This is one of the reasons I love to read books about people who are different than me. They have different experiences and I can learn from them! I don’t have to be them to learn from their mistakes and their experiences. I have never been a dark skinned man. But I can learn about the experiences of a dark skinned man in the books that I read. I have never been a woman of Latino descent, but I can learn a lot about what it is like to grow up as one from reading a book from that viewpoint. Yay Diversity in Literature!

We are all just trying our best here. Let’s learn to have grace and politely correct each other instead of choosing to be offended.

Keep Sparkling,

B

Stop Giving me Details. I don’t want them.

B

Stop giving me details. I don’t want them. I promise! I have an imagination. I can fill in some of the gaps myself!

So many books you find want to give you every. single. detail! It is exhausting to read! If a sentence takes 45 words, I probably don’t want to read it. “The waning moon shown its soft, serene, quiet light upon the sleeping world that had not a sound but the low, hooting of an owl as it perched on its branch as if it was watching all the world slumber, ready to defend it to the end of the line.” That’s nice once in awhile, but three pages of descriptions gets a little long.

When I was growing up my dad often said to me, “Give me the short version.” I loved to give details! I loved to be able to tell you every important moment of the story. I even left out some really good ones! Eventually, I came to realize that those details weren’t as important as I though they were. They were nice, but not necessary.

One guy I knew, when telling someone how he knew me, wouldn’t just say, “We were involved in ministry and our paths crossed.” NO! He had to tell people who it was that invited him to an event and what he was involved in with this person previously and where the event was held and who he rode there with and how he came to no other events like this and how he was talking to this person when I walked up to talk to someone else and then that person’s dad introduced me to someone else… and blah blah blah! It was exhausting! A 5 second explanation worked just as well as the 5 minute one he wanted to tell.

I recently read Eragon for the very first time. I slogged my way through most of the book. Then I got to the last hundred pages, things started moving, and now I want to read the rest. But it shouldn’t take me that long to know I want to keep reading. Paladini is awful lucky I don’t like not finishing a book I start.

In one of my college writing classes my professor talked about what was important in your story. I have no idea who they were quoting, and I can’t find the quote for the life of me, but it went something like this.

“If a person is hammering a nail into the wall at the beginning of a story, they should be hanging dead by it at the end.”

Wow. That would allow me to eliminate so many unnecessary details! That kind of writing would take such intentionality!

In Eragon a lot of the description of places could be greatly shortened if he stopped and thought about how things would connect in the long run. Now I know Paladini was young when the books were published and I applaud him for being accomplished at a young age. It’s his publishers that I would like to have a little chat with……

But there is an art to writing. It involves the imagination. If you give every single detail or descriptor of a place, you eliminate much of the need for imagination. I feel like Hemingway said it well when he stated, “If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written. “- Ernest Hemingway

So let’s take some time to hone our art that we call Writing. Let’s focus on intentionality in our descriptors, not just slapping them on a page.

Keep Sparkling,

B

Is the hype around Graphic Novels Legit?

B

Graphic Novels are all the rage in the Junior Book reader world. I have patrons come in who only want to read graphic novels. Initially my thoughts are “great! More readers!” Picture Book readers are transitioning into chapter book readers because of Graphic Novels. Yay! Kids reading longer books. BUT- I see a lot of these kids that are unwilling to transition out of Graphic Novels into novels without pictures.

Wait – you want us to read something in which we won’t have pictures?!?!?! Yes, Yes I do.

Now some authors are giving us good stepping stone books such as Dork Diaries, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, My Life as a YouTuber, Stick Dog, and the Middle School Series by James Patterson. Taking away the blocking and just adding some pictures throughout, giving the kids a higher word count. This is great! But still, I struggle to get many of these readers to transition into books without pictures on every page.

Beyond the fact that many of these readers are not transitioning into long term readers of fiction, I struggle with some of the intentionality in the layout of a graphic novel.

The blocking, or panes, of graphic novels lead to a natural flow of the book and the story. When done correctly, this is fluent and seamless without unnecessarily breaking up the story. But this can also be a great tool to break up the action and the story! Yay for versatility!

I have seen a larger number of graphic novels that are being published lately that are dealing with heavier subject matter but these books are aimed at Junior readers. A lot of people seem to be of the opinion- as long as it’s a graphic novel it’s fine for my young child to read because it’s basically a picture book. WRONG!

Nope! Not correct. Very different mediums of art and book!

A lot of the heavier subjects that can be discussed with Junior book readers are getting graphic novels, which can be a good thing. But we need to be on guard. Many of the graphic novels dealing with heavier subjects, such as sexual orientation and juvenile delinquency, move through things at a very rapid pace. The friction of people disagreeing with their actions and the conflict is often very quickly resolved. If this happened in a normal novel, the writer would be harassed for not fulling fleshing out the problems and creating characters that are two dimensional. And yet, in graphic novels I see it happening often.

May I suggest a solution? A simple one? Take more intentionality in the graphic novels you are writing. When there is a big moment of conflict take more panes to describe it. You have to be aware to slow down the action. Adding panes draws out the conflict. You as the author may not read it quickly and keep moving, but most kids will. Most kids are not reading it to get every nuance. They are just trying to get their reading minutes in and want the action.

Don’t hear me wrong, I love graphic novels! I absolutely love them! I think they are great tools! I adore Ben Hatke’s work (I honestly wish I could frame some of it for my house!). Hatke does a great job of taking the necessary time to discuss the action and taking as many panes as needed to get his point across. I greatly respect this man as an author.

As Authors, let’s make sure we take our responsibility seriously. We have the ability to shape minds by what we publish and what we create for others. Let’s not take this lightly.

I was going to add “let’s not take this lightly, especially those of us who write for children and teens” but I realized something. Everyone is affected by what they read, not just the young minds that are still being molded. We are all affected. Let’s do ourselves a favor and write with intentionality no matter what we write.

Keep Sparkling,

B

AR and Lexile levels- the death of the Recreational Reader

B

In my small town I have seen the deadly grip of AR on the hearts of my students. I see less and less students reading because they enjoy it and more and more hating to read.

I have a theory on why this is happening. I think it can be partly attributed to the fact that electronics have become so readily available to our students in their free time. What kid doesn’t want to play on a tablet? I know that I am continually telling my nieces and nephews, “Is this your phone? Then why are you trying to look at it?” when I am responding to a text.

Growing up I would never have attempted to look over my parent’s shoulder at what they were doing on the computer. That was not for me. That was my parent’s domain, not mine. But there seems to be this idea that “If it’s on a screen I HAVE TO LOOK AT IT!” or “It’s on a screen? It’s for me!” among many of the young patrons that come into my library, as well as the children in my own family.

But even more so than that our school system uses the Accelerated Reader program, or AR. Children are tested to see where their reading level is at and encouraged to read at that level or above. Is that a good thing? Yes! Is challenging kids not read things just because they will be “easy” a good thing? Yes! We should challenge kids to read hard things!

But here’s the thing- the kids are given a range like 4.5-5.2 and they can only read books within that level….. Yep. We have taken the vast unlimited supply of stories that is the library and told our students “Nope. Pick from these 150 books. Sorry if you like the Ranger’s Apprentice Series, it’s above your reading level. Sorry if you want a quick light read like Junie B. Jones. It’s below your level. No more enjoyment of those for you!”

It drives me nuts! And students have to reach a certain amount of AR points each semester! So they take a test to see how much information they’ve retained from the book and they have to get enough “points” to get a better grade in their Language Arts classes. Really? They can’t just read the book to enjoy it?

No wonder students don’t want to read recreationally anymore! We are raising a generation of children who love movies, not books. They like movies because they can just enjoy the action and the movement of the story. There is no stress for them. They aren’t going to be tested on it.

I think AR can be a good tool but we can’t keep limiting our students to only reading within a small level. I have seen reluctant readers become voracious readers over Rick Riordan. But when they get older and Riordan publishes new things, they aren’t allowed to read it anymore and my voracious reader becomes a begrudging reader.

Let’s re-commit ourselves to teaching kids to love reading, not following some pre-determined standards of what they “should” read. Let’s put great books into the hands of kids, not just books that they will know every word. Let’s challenge our kids!

Keep Sparkling,

B

Motivation- aka doing hard things

B

Who here needs motivation to get out of bed sometimes?

Who needs motivation to clean their house?

Who needs motivation to continue to adult some days?

Me too! Most days the excitement of getting to tell kids about new books is motivation enough to go to work. But some days it’s not…. And on those days what I would really love is someone to say something like this

In fact if I had Neil Patrick Harris telling me this, it probably would be motivation (insert laughing emoji). But seriously. We all need motivation.

One of the best things that I love that my Dad says is that when he goes to work and he doesn’t want to, he’s fundraising. What is he fundraising for? Life! He’s fundraising to pay the bills and provide food. But he’s also fundraising for things like vacation and getting to be generous with others.

That shift in focus can totally change what you believe you are capable of. When you start to do hard things because they will benefit more than just you, they become so much more doable.

So next time it’s a Friday and you think, “I can’t get out of bed” just remember

So go enjoy your weekend, but put in a hard days work first. Fundraise. Change your perspective. Find a reason to get out of bed. Find a reason to go work. Find a reason to go bless others. Go change the world.

Keep Sparkling,

B

Problematic Programming

B

Programming. Problems.

That’s a big way to start a post isn’t it?

Maybe I should have started this way-

“Programming causes problems” or “Problematic Programs” or maybe just, “Programs. AHHHHHH!!!!!”

Programming is the cornerstone of Libraries. It’s how we get people through the door but it’s also SO. MUCH. WORK.

The patron may attend a half hour story time that includes songs, stories, and a craft. Sounds simple right? But each of those crafts have to be prepped. Each of those books have to be found on the shelves and picked. Each of those songs that match the themes of those books has to be practiced, written, or discovered. And that’s just for a “simple storytime”!

We’ve not even delved into the depths of “Evening Programming” or (Insert Horror Music) “Summer Reading”. Hours of activities. Unknown number of crafts to be prepped. Clever Snacks to pick, buy, and possibly create. Songs to go with the themes. Books a plenty. PLUS! Most patrons will want to check out books before they leave….. Welcome to crazy town.

No matter what you do, it is crazy. You can plan for everything and have ideas ready to go any time but things will ­still go wrong.

So I present to you a list of ways to survive programming! My fellow Children’s Librarian and I jokingly came up with most of this list recently and I thought I would share with all of you.

Top 10 Ways to Survive your Programs

1. Have something special at home to celebrate when you survive. (I suggest cake)

2. Never expect the food to stay in the designated area. People are terrible at following your guidelines

3. Plan for everything to go horribly wrong. Then when something goes right, you are pleasantly surprised!

4. Don’t clean up the food before the program is over! Communicate this well to your volunteers. Your volunteers may think they’re being helpful but experience shows that people will be late and will be upset if they miss out on food.

5. Protect appendages when children are cutting crafts. I have been in danger of almost losing fingers on more than one occasion. Someone asks you a question while you are helping a different child and all the sudden the kid you were helping has cut your finger.

6. Don’t expect non-children’s department employees to get your vision. If they’re not part of the children’s department their ideas of how things should go will be very different. For example, they may expect quiet.

7. Designate someone to make your Santa, Elf, Speaker, etc. presentable. People very rarely realize what they actually look like and having someone there specifically to help them be where they need to be and looking how they need to look is very helpful!

8.People will congregate in the doorway. No matter how you set up a room, people will congregate in the doorway. If possible, set up the room so the doorway is in the back so when people come in late, or try to congregate there, they won’t be distracting during the program.

9. Enjoy singing at the Children, this is the only time it is socially acceptable to do so.

10. More Cake. You’ll need it!

I hope you laughed during this, if you’re a Librarian, because I’m sure you’ve probably experienced all of this at one point or another. You’re doing great friend! Keep going!

Keep Sparkling,

B