I am on quite the rampage lately.

This just makes me boggle. Yes, I know it's old for a blog post, but I just saw it so here I am. It damn near made my head explode.

You know, I don't even write original fiction, and I know that most of it requires some degree of research. If I write a book that's set in a hospital, I'm going to visit hospitals. If I'm writing a novel in which the main character extols the virtues of In-N-Out Burger, I'm not going to set it in New Jersey. And one would think that if I wanted to write an urban fantasy novel, I'd read some urban fantasy and get a picture of the genre. Regarding this blogger's recent reading of YA, I'm shocked by the "I'm shocked" factor, too. Maybe that's my emotionally disconnected librarian talking, but the stuff of YA novels does not faze me. It all stems from SOME reality. Yes, it's easy to make smaller truths into huge issues in a book, or on TV, or in a movie, but I really think that's okay. That's the point of art, isn't it, to make us think differently?

This passage: Now, I was not expecting Nancy Drew. But... surely this sort of behavior isn't very common? Is it something you'd want your ten-year-old reading? (YA is supposedly for 12-15-year-olds, but in fact younger kids who are good readers consume most of it.)

just shows ignorance.

1. No, if it were common behavior the book would be really boring. Who wants to read books where common behavior happens?

2. I've never met anyone who recommended Valiant to a ten-year-old. If you have, please send them my way so I can smack them one.

3. Younger kids who are good readers consume most YA? First, define "younger." Second, where did this statistic come from? It's not like Nielsen Bookscan asks you for your age when you buy a book. I can only speak for the libraries I've worked in, of course, but I found that most of the people checking out books from the YA section are, um, teens.

4. YA is supposedly for 12-15-year-olds? Geez, you better tell YALSA, then, because their "Ages 12-18" service plan is all wrong and most of the books on BBYA are too old. Also, please send that memo to John Green, M.T. Anderson, Nancy Werlin, Robert Lipsyte, Chris Lynch, Sonya Hartnett, and all those other authors that write YA for the 14-and-over age range. Clearly, no one is reading their books and they need to quit writing.

So my question overall is: Why on earth is this writer talking about putting together a proposal for a YA novel when she doesn't read YA and hasn't kept up on the genre in years? How could you even think about writing YA fantasy and not know blackholly's work? The number of adult authors writing YA is climbing every day. In some ways this is good: We got Sherman Alexie, Carl Hiaasen, Alice Hoffman, Nick Hornby, Benjamin Alire Saenz, and other authors who have remarkable talent and wrote terrific teenage voices. But on the other hand, we get people like James Patterson, who I'll discuss in Part II: Stop Biting the Hand That Feeds.

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In other news, this is just wrong. Way to ruin my childhood. Sometimes movies are best left alone. You know one thing about Hollywood I never could stomach? All the damn sequels.

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Today in a meeting, someone's cell phone went off. Instead of silencing the phone immediately, she picked it up, answered it, and proceeded to have a short conversation. In front of a very crowded room. Those of us with manners damn near had heart attacks.

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ANTM: I know this makes me unpopular, but TEAM LAUREN! (Not opposed to teams Katarzyna, Claire, or Aimee either.)

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Who wants to beta the SPN fic I'm writing for heidi8's belated birthday? gwendolyngrace? titti? emmademarais? Anyone? Bueller?

Tags: i work with crazy people, rants, ya
126: cranky

Admittedly, my primary reason for not becoming a school librarian seems illogical: I am not a morning person. But trust me, you wouldn't want me trying to teach your kids anything at 7:30 in the morning. I haven't been to bed before midnight in quite some time, and I usually don't function very well before 9 a.m. Ever since I was a little kid, I've been a night owl, and even though school librarians are often paid better than public librarians, public libraries open at nine or ten in the morning.

Circadian rhythms aside, while booktalking last week I was again reminded of why I made the right decision (for me) to work in public as opposed to school libraries.

I met with a group of school and public (but mostly school) librarians last week for a booktalking session. We all read 2-5 books, write up reviews, and share them. These meetings are great because they're a chance to look through books you might only have seen reviews for, and to hear about new titles. It's also a chance for public and school librarian interaction, which there's never enough of, imho. No bad here, really.

One of the books I booktalked was Black Duck by Janet Taylor Lisle. This book is in my ten favorites of the year, I think. It's about a boy, Ruben, twelve years old, living in a small Rhode Island port town during Prohibition. Because his town is easily accessible by water, it becomes a hotspot for rumrunners. Eventually, the town becomes ruled by organized crime, and Ruben doesn't know who to trust anymore. There's action, a great look at a shady side of American history (and a time that is very much glossed over in schools), the tiniest bit of guy romance, and grit. Reviews have been muchly favorable, and it's a book I think I'd like to use with a summer reading group. As part of my booktalk, I mentioned that this was a book for approximately sixth through ninth graders, based on the storytelling and the age of the main character.

When I got done booktalking, one of the school librarians said to me, "Do you really think that book would be appropriate in a middle school? I'm worried about the rum."

I assured her that the main character never drank the rum, and yes, there was kidnapping and offstage murder, but no drinking or sex. I think it's a book that fans of the Stormbreaker books (that's another story altogether, not for this entry because I shouldn't comment on books I haven't finished) and other action or historical titles would enjoy.

"Are you sure?" she asked again. "Well, maybe I'll have to check it out."

I respect school librarians very much. They have to go through a hell of a lot of training and continuing education in order to support their teachers and curriculum. But I could never, never do it. I am too addicted to books that have sex, drugs, and rock and roll and love recommending them too much. I couldn't pass over Theodora Twist because of the sex scene, knowing there's so much in that book to discuss. I do understand where the school librarian's concern comes from. I know it's real, and from working with school librarians I know it can be hard to develop reading lists and recommend books. I'd just rather not have to worry about it on a daily basis.

Sort of ETA: I started this entry yesterday morning, and yesterday afternoon I read a LTTE in School Library Journal from a school librarian who was outraged that SLJ's starred review of Black Hole by Charles Burns did not explicitly mention the nudity and sex scenes in the book. The reviewer's response was that he did describe a mature, frightening graphic novel using words like "dark" and "unsettling." The book is about a sexually transmitted disease and the isolation it brings to those infected. The reviewer, btw, works in a high school, just like the person who wrote the complaint. The two letters made me think even more about the different collection development views between school and public librarians. Neither is wrong, of course, but each has vastly different audiences and purposes to consider. Being a reviewer is a constant battle of the middle: To spoil or not to spoil? Is nudity worth mentioning? How explicit does sex have to be to warrant a mention in a review? I don't know the answers to either of these questions (although really, if the ending of a book sucks, please tell me so I don't buy it and then have kids returning it and whining about how much the ending sucks), and the reviewer of Black Hole handled his criticism with far more grace than I probably would have.

I am ITCHING to talk fandom but I can't right now. But have a link, all those who like to write by Evanescence: What's the saddest song ever? Science knows.

Tags: books, i work with crazy people
126: tired
780: I'm the narrator and this is just the prologue

Last week, I had dinner with four other librarians, one of whom is a school librarian. The five of us had just come from a panel discussion on which the school librarian participated. One of the subjects that the panel didn't get around to talking about (they ran out of time), was the perception of YA lit by teachers and school librarians vs. the perception by public librarians.

"I did a survey among my kids," said the school librarian over dinner, "and a lot of them feel that because modern YA literature is so graphic and gritty and real that they feel like they now have license to go out and do the same things the character did in the book because it was described in so much detail."

I am still open-mouthed over this. I didn't know how to respond without sounding like a huge bitch. I wanted to say, "Do teens today really have such a difficult time separating fiction from reality? Do they think it's all right to do everything they see in an episode of The O.C.? If not, why is TV different from books?" I wanted to say, "Please tell me I misunderstand what you just told me, because if I'm not, either your students live in Bizarro World or I do."

I can't be interpreting her words correctly. I can't. I can't believe that teens would think it's all right to go out and run away to Mexico to help an abused friend just because they saw it in a book, or shoplift, or take a friend's Ritalin. Do teens do these things? Yes. But I have to believe that they do it for reasons other than "I read it in a book, so I thought it was okay." Teens are smarter than that. Most PEOPLE are smarter than that, regardless of age.

Related to this, the results of the YALSA Teens Top Ten are in, and only one of them is modern realistic fiction. Five of the remaining nine are grounded in reality but have fantastic elements. The other four include three "regular" (non-urban, not set in modern times, etc.) fantasy and one historical fiction. Since the Teens Top Ten is actually picked by teens, I'm throwing my hands up. Who's reading the realistic fiction? Or maybe it's just that a higher percentage of fantasy readers are inclined to vote. I don't know.

Editing to add: Over lunch, I read the books chapter of Packaging Girlhood by Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown, and it turns out that I am wrong. I am disillusioned in thinking that teens, especially teen girls, can separate fact from fiction. I am not in the know about the marketing that goes into messages of femininity and popularity in books. Woe is I, for I suck at my job.

Posts on this book will follow. It's...interesting, I guess, but I have some serious problems with the chapter on books, starting with the fact that the only fun, interesting, smart, brave girls they name in YA lit are all in fantasy novels. NOT ALL TEENS READ FANTASY, YO.

In happy news, my former boss, Violet, just got a New York Times Librarian of the Year 2006 award. She rocks. Oh, and also I am reading Cures for Heartbreak by Margo Rabb and that rocks, too.

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merry_smutmas fic well on its way toward done. YAY.

Tags: i work with crazy people, ya
126: disheartened

Today, a twelve-year-old (she looked older) girl came into my teen section and picked up a copy of Meg Cabot's All-American Girl. Since it's on a required reading list for the local junior high, I asked her if she needed help finding other required books. No, she's okay, she goes to a different school with a suggested reading list. Note that there is no parent around. This is important.

Girl asks me if we have Girl, 15, Charming but Insane by Sue Limb, and I take a look at the shelves and it's not there. It's pretty popular, so I tell her that it's probably checked out. Does she want another book like it?

Okay.

Enter the mother.

I'm still working with the girl at this point, so I start conducting a reader's advisory interview. One of the first questions I always ask is, "What are some books you've read that you like?" This question helps me to learn two things: 1) the reader's general taste 2) what books NOT to give them, since they've read them already.

Girl says, "I liked Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants."

Okay.

I start pulling books. I say to the girl, "What I'm going to do is get a whole bunch of books for you to look through, and you can choose from them. Picking out books is like trying on jeans: Sometimes you have to try on ten before you find one that fits."

Based on her reading tastes, I pull One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies, Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, Vegan, Virgin, Valentine, Dunk, Sweetblood, Feeling Sorry for Celia, The Year of Secret Assignments, Planet Janet, Thwonk, Confessions of a Not It Girl, A Mango-Shaped Space, and...a few others I don't remember. But you get the point. Interesting female characters, strong female friendships, etc.

I start booktalking. I'm one hell of a booktalker, if I do say so myself. I compare some titles to Sisterhood..., and the whole time I'm trying not to slap the mother, who keeps repeating now, "She's only twelve, she's only twelve." Leave me alone, lady, I can do my job.

So the mother and daughter are looking through the books and the mother starts talking.

"Are all these books for twelve-year-olds?" she asks, indicating my entire YA section.

"No," I reply. "This section encompasses sixth through twelfth grade."

"Oh! So are these high school books you gave her? Because we don't want books for high schoolers. She's only twelve. We need books with good values."

At this point I'm thisclose to asking her if she's read Sisterhood, but I don't really need to. I know the answer's no, because Bridget has sex in the book and she'd freak. So I tell both mother and daughter that all the books were very different, but they were all from good writers and had interesting characters. Some had older characters and some had younger characters. In none of the books did the characters have sex on every page. I don't know of any YA novels like that. (Note, zeisgeist, that I artfully didn't mention Doing It, which is checked out anyway, as was Contents.)

"But do they have good values?"

Thoroughly confused and a little ticked off, I say, "Everyone has different values. I can't make that decision for anyone regarding exactly what they should read. I can suggest books, but every reader has to make his or her own decision."

"Right, but you know what I mean? We don't want books for high schoolers. Which of these books are for high schoolers? We need books with good values." (And Sisterhood is...)

Sigh. I point out that Vegan Virgin Valentine has the oldest protagonist, followed by Sweetblood, but I said, "You can't judge all the books by the age of their protagonist. For example, there are no bad words in Dunk, but the main character is a high-schooler with typical high school worries. When I think of a high school book, it's not always about the content, but the language. The language in Dunk makes it especially appropriate for...maybe 8th, 9th, 10th grade. But it's really a terrific book and remember, you can always return it if you don't like it."

At this point, I break away to help the girl's brother. He wants illustrated classics. I help him at my desk, and just as we're finishing the daughter comes by with Dunk and Confessions of a Not It Girl. I tell her she's made excellent choices and to come back and let me know what she thinks of the books.

Later, I got to thinking about the "values" thing. Here is what I value: As many opinions and views as I can afford. But what would this mother have said to me if her daughter had picked out One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies, where the main character's father comes out to his daughter? It's a beautifully written, heartfelt book, and the daughter still loves her father despite his keeping such an important secret from her for so many years. But would the mother have bitched to my director about giving her daughter a book with a gay character? What about Sweetblood, in which a guy tries to seduce Lucy through a chat room and giving her creepy gifts? Lucy is a smart, takes-no-shit character who doesn't allow herself to be taken advantage of, but is this a "good value" or is it cancelled out by Draco? I like to think that I'm pretty impartial...well, humanly impartial, anyway...in my job, that I try to have a diverse collection available and not make moral judgments. I'm very much a believer in "you can only please some of the people some of the time," and I really do try to match the book to what the reader wants/needs. Sometimes, though, I feel like there's not much choice but to let my prejudices shine. At least I try to be prejudiced in favor of good writing, I guess.

It must be the end of July, because I'm feeling the weariness of dealing with the constant stream parents who never read YA lit but whine to me nonstop about all the "heavy," "depressing" books on the summer reading lists. Right. Which one of us has read 85% of what's on that list and helped pick out a good percentage of the books? Yes, Skellig is on the list (and thank your deity of choice for the seventh-grader who was sitting at a table reading it when a mother was complaining to her daughter about how it was too dark and serious and oh you wouldn't like it, who said, "It's really good! I'm really liking it."). But so is Swords for Hire. So is Heir Apparent.

Other YA lit news: Just finished Margaret Peterson Haddix's Turnabout. Margaret Peterson Haddix is not a good writer. Next review: Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie by David Lubar, which was ah-mazing. Next book to read, dammit: Pretties by Scott Westerfeld, since I now have my very own copy. Also, Rhymes with Witches got a 2Q in the new VOYA. Color me unsurprised. Started I am the Wallpaper, which I'm enjoying, but not to be confused with i am the Messenger, which should be held up as an example of how to voice characters.

Dish time.

Mary J. Blige - Family Affair

Tags: books, i work with crazy people, libraries
126: hot

Dear Patron Who Annoys Me,

You're in the library, so I assume you can read. See that sign on the door of the periodicals archive that says "EMPLOYEES ONLY?" Yes, this means you. I don't care what you're looking for and what wasn't cited and what your friend sent you. Five minutes of you in there could take us the better part of a week to straighten out. Next time I find you in there, I might not be so nice.

Love, Cedar

And whoever let this patron in the periodical archive on Sunday is going to get it.

87 books to go. Am freaking out. Shouldn't have had caffeine this morning.

Tags: i work with crazy people
126: hyper

Happy birthday,
ashfae

Tomorrow I'm swapping friendslists with affectedmangoo, so everyone be good. I think I will bore her heinously with the many LIS feeds, though.

Censorship link of the day: The Giver challenged in Kansas City. This I love:

Although he could not speak specifically about The Giver, Peter Sprigg, a senior director with the conservative Family Research Council, said parents should speak out if they find something objectionable.

“It is not that children can't be exposed to opinions and cultural values that are different from their family, but there are limits,” Sprigg said. “Free press, free access to ideas, are adult concepts. When dealing with children, a different standard applies.” Blue Springs eighth-graders don't have to read The Giver.

1) It's a kids' book. How long would it take him to read it? An hour? An hour and a half?

2) Children can certainly be exposed to opinions and cultural values that are different from their family, as long as the people in those opinions aren't gay, Jewish, Catholic, Middle Eastern... (that was sarcastic)

3) Free access to ideas is only for adults? Where have I been? Sure, I understand that not every child has to be exposed to every idea out there, and that children mature at different rates and are ready to accept new concepts and ideas at different times, but silly me, I thought that's what parents were for (and to a smaller extent, teachers and librarians).

No fandom here. Move along.

Tags: censorship, i work with crazy people, rants
126: cranky