Where modern children’s literature (and librarianship) came from

If, like me, you don’t read a lot of the children’s publishing blogs and newsgroups, you might miss a fascinating New Yorker article by Jill Lepore called “The Lion and the Mouse.” It’s about the almighty Anne Carroll Moore of a bygone era, the original grande dame of children’s librarianship, who from her post “behind the lions” of the New York Public Library’s big main building on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, established children’s librarianship, but also, for better or worse, passed judgment on children’s books published during much of the first half of the 20th century.

If you’ve never heard Moore’s story but work with kids in libraries, you should read this piece, because Moore had a big influence on how children’s books were written, illustrated, and promoted, and her influence continues. You can see a lot of the beginnings of children’s literature criticism in the article, too. Here also is the story of E.B. White, his wife Katharine - an early children’s book critic - and his first children’s book, the immortal Stuart Little.

Moore encouraged White to write it, but then ended up offended by the way White had mixed up fantasy and reality. A woman giving birth to an anthropomorphic mouse? Moore asked Harper, its publisher, and White’s editor, Ursula Nordstrom, not to release it. “I never was so disappointed in a book in my life,” Moore said.

It’s definitely worth your time. And there was a quote that caught my eye and drew me away for a few moments on a completely different path. Lepore writes:

Children’s literature, at least in the West, is utterly bound up in the medieval, as Seth Lerer, a Stanford literature professor, argues in “Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter.” Lots of books for kids are about the Middle Ages (everything from “The Hobbit” to “Robin Hood” and “Redwall”), but the conventions of the genre (allegory, moral fable, romance, and heavy-handed symbolism) are also themselves distinctly premodern. It’s not only that many books we shelve as “children’s literature”—Grimms’ Fairy Tales or “Gulliver’s Travels” or “Huck Finn”—were born as biting political satire, for adults; it’s also that books written for children in the twentieth century tend to be distinctly, willfully, and often delightfully antimodern. “The Phantom Tollbooth” has more in common with “The Pilgrim’s Progress” than it does with “On the Road.”

As I wandered around the publisher’s booths at the ALA Conference, I noticed that so many new books are fantasies - and I mean books for children, teens, and adults. (Have you noticed how many vampire romances appeared in the wake of Anne Rice? The Midnight series brought them to kids and teens, but now it seems as if there are hundreds, for all ages.) And have you noticed how little science fiction is being published and read these days? I feel that there’s something in so many modern middle-class Americans these days that longs for a good king who can command something and everyone must obey, or wizards who can wave wands and make wishes come true, and even vampires who can love us and protect us in this raggedy world. Science fiction reminds us too much of the pervasive technology that seems to be slowly strangling us as it daily transforms the world, and that so many people feel they can’t keep up with.

This is why I keep going on about the importance of libraries supporting literacy and the printed word. No medium develops our imaginations and stretches us the way the printed word can, whether we want to escape to a vampire romance or an article about global warming. But I digress.

 

Session at ALA on the future of libraries

Oops… right after I said I wouldn’t write any more about the ALA conference, I read an article on the Library Journal site about a session on the future of libraries that I felt I needed to mention, even if it (superficially) had nothing to do with youth work.

The thrust of the session, which happened when I hadn’t yet arrived in Anaheim, appeared to be that librarians must feel that they’re out of the “books and materials as objects” business, and instead in the “ideas business.” The assertion intrigues me; for the average urban or suburban branch library - I’ve spent most of my career in branch libraries - day-to-day existence is totally wrapped up in books and DVDs and fines and storytimes. Nothing grand at all, and almost all of it more concrete than abstract.

I’ve always believed that libraries are in the literacy business. We don’t teach people how to read, but we do just about everything else that supports literacy and celebrates it. We need to keep that as our focus. Literacy hasn’t gone out of style - it’s more important than ever. As long as we don’t lose sight of that role in our culture, we are about as cutting-edge as you can get.

But I don’t think that these speakers were talking about aiding and abetting literacy. So I’m interested in seeing what these grand, on-the-edge ideas could be. I feel as if the issue surrounding “the future of libraries” - public libraries, anyway - is simpler; we need to learn what our users want in 2008 and provide those things. We also need to learn what the people who don’t use us need in the way of media or services that focus on literacy and do our best to provide those things, too.

I was particularly interested, though, in reading what Stephen Abram of SirsiDynix had to say about librarians, and their drive to remain anonymous:

“If we want to be treated as professionals,” he said, librarians shouldn’t wear badges that say merely “Librarian” without their name. He mocked those who say, “I don’t want to tell anybody my name, I might be stalked,” suggesting it doesn’t occur to workers at Wal-Mart.  If you want to be treated like a professional, you have start acting like one,” he said.

He asked how many attendees offered pictures of the staff on their library web sites? Few raised their hands. “Since when is the value in libraries in the books, not in the people?” he asked. “I want to see our whole profession where everybody’s Nancy Pearl on steroids.”

If you work in a library, you know how controversial what he said is. I note that Abram is male, which in this context is critical. Nor does he work with the public. I wonder whether more than a minority of female librarians would support what he says above.

I have witnessed several fellow librarians harassed by “weird guys” who are regular (um, too regular, if you know what I mean) library users, and spoken to many more who have suffered earlier in their careers from a little too much attention. Public libraries - particularly their adult services departments - are filled with  customers who haven’t been taking their meds.

On the other hand, I totally agree with Abram - we do need to have our names out there in front of the public (and yes, on the library Web site, too), and be proud of who we are and what we do. We do need to be more professionally assertive. I’ve always worn my full name on my badge proudly. But then, I’m male and I’ve never been harassed.

The fact remains that we’ll be most successful if we step away from anonymity. “We need to think bigger,” several of the speakers agreed, and I think so, too. Librarians - especially those who aren’t children’s or YA librarians - tend not to want to make too much noise or attract too much attention to themselves, but we need to change that. Children’s and YA librarians need to repeat the words, “We make literacy fun!” over and over. “Can’t find the information you want? We can!” is good, too.

We need to show everyone in every city and suburb and small town what we can do to make kids want to connect themselves with literacy in all its forms, but especially with the printed word - whether that printed word is online or on a page. We need to say it and show it a thousand different ways. That’s the best kind of future for all of us in youth work.

 

My first 24 hours of ALA Annual

It’s hard to find much time to blog while you’re running around ALA Annual, but I did want to post a couple of things I heard in sessions. Last night I went to the Odyssey Awards program that Booklist puts on to honor youth audiobooks. The winner was Live Oak Media’s version of Walter Dean Myers’ Jazz. Children’s author and audiobook producer Bruce Coville was pretty funny giving us a mini-history of kids’ audiobooks.

He told us how American educators have long been of two minds about audiobooks, because Americans expect kids to be working hard to get their literature, and listening to an audiobook seems kind of, well, cheating, especially now in the era of No Child Left Behind: “Teachers and librarians ask, ‘Is that child suffering enough? Working hard enough?’ Teachers are being told not to read aloud so much these days.” Coville, on the other hand, wants families to listen to books read aloud, and it sets his teeth on edge when kids are constantly watching DVDs in the back seat: “Every time I see a family going down the road with a damned DVD player in the car,” he said, “I know it’s wrong.”

Instead, Coville pushes hard for us to listen together: “Every great teacher knows the story is the most important thing. We’re a vast and diverse culture in the US, in danger of flying apart at the seams. Stories help us understand each other, and audiobooks are a way to get more stories in our lives.”

He also joked about his experiences driving across the country with his then-14-year-old daughter, saying “when you’re driving through Kansas, I learned that Pride and Prejudice is riveting.”

Today I attended several sessions, but the one that sticks in my mind the most is the one about Maricopa County (AZ) Library’s Dewey-less branch library. Instead of “973.2,” the label on a book’s spine says simply “History.” During the questions, one librarian sounded a little hot under the collar when he asked why the library couldn’t simply put the Dewey labels on the books and put them into a section marked “history,” but the librarians from Maricopa County replied that their users didn’t know Dewey and didn’t understand Dewey.

The feeling I got was that in the era of Google, Dewey wasn’t necessary any more. If people came to the library and were looking for a subject for an assignment, they’d find it more easily in a face-out display of newer, shinier, subject-related books. They say it works for them. The name of the session, by the way, was “Dewey or Don’t We?”

 

Flooded Cedar Rapids (IA) Library will be gutted

If you haven’t seen the news about it yet, take a look at the news about the flooded Cedar Rapids (IA) Public Library. The Iowa floods have been all over the news lately, but nothing brings it home for us library folks like seeing the first-floor stacks in several feet of water.

The CRPL goes on, though. As you can read in the story, the library building has no power, even after the water receded. The staff just held a summer reading program in an empty, closed-down shoe store. The adult collection on the flooded first floor has been pretty much destroyed and will probably have to be discarded, but the children’s collection on the unflooded second floor may still be in danger from humidity, mold, and toxic chemicals. This quote is from Library Journal’s Norman Oder’s interview with the CRPL’s Marie DeVries:

Obviously the water didn’t get up there, but every day that passes is a problem. The humidity is incredible. You can hardly be there without a mask for 15 minutes. The muck left behind by the river is filled with who knows what. We have a lot of industry in downtown Cedar Rapids. They all are located along the river, and they’ve all been compromised, so many of the chemicals they had in storage are in the river. And, of course, [there’s] raw sewage.

It looks as if the CRPL, which was very close to the flooded Cedar River, will need to be gutted and reconfigured. And, ironically (for those who believe that the Internet means than we don’t have to deal with the real world), among the things lost in the flood was access to the library’s servers. The library’s Web site is currently unavailable. The nearby Hiawatha Public Library’s site is up, though, with FEMA information and announcements of canceled summer kids’ programs and shortened hours.

 

Massachusetts not fond of its libraries just now

I would not want to be working as a public librarian in MA just now, because it appears that the citizens of that state are not feeling particularly positive about their public libraries.

The Hubbardston Public Library is closing down June 28 (that’s the HPL there on the left), after a property tax limitation measure passed and citizens voted against restoring its cuts. The tax limit cut its budget so much that it can’t survive. (I originally said it was the Worcester PL - I’ve corrected the error.)

And in Saugus, MA, the public library’s budget is being cut by $75,000, with that money being given instead to the city’s schools, to hire two reading specialists. (Two reading specialists for that little money? Wow, I hope they’re able to pay their bills, since I’m assuming that the $37,500 each will receive includes their benefits, too.)

The debate at Saugus’s town meeting was pretty intense. The Saugus Public Library had already lost its certification with the state library commission. Library folks pressed hard to keep the library staffed, while the school supporters, living under the shadow of No Child Left Behind, pressed for support for helping poor elementary-level readers:

“The $75,000 would make it possible for people to keep working in the library, and back up the reading programs in the schools,” said resident Martha Clouse. “It will bring us a step closer to recertification.”

Town Meeting member Barbara Malone, a former School Committee chairwoman, countered that the schools must produce strong readers.

“What is the point of having a library serving children who can’t read?” she said. “I’d just like you to think about that.”

It’s a tough decision. Both schools and libraries need better funding, but conservative voters, especially those without kids in school, don’t want to pay taxes. I’ve seen it happen all over the US, and it will not be easy - especially in these hard economic times - to convince a lot of voters otherwise.

 

Kids say they still want books around - hooray!

Take a look at this new Scholastic-funded study described on CNNMoney, which I heartily endorse because (hooray) it verifies something I’ve known for a long time. It says that “75% of kids age 5-17 agree with the statement, ‘No matter what I can do online, I’ll always want to read books printed on paper…’”

We library folks know this, and we always have. We see kids checking out books every day. But I don’t think the average American who doesn’t spend his or her day around kids sees it quite as clearly. What I find especially interesting are these core findings:

One in four kids age 5-17 say they read books for fun every day and more than half of kids say they read books for fun at least two to three times a week. One of the key reasons kids say they don’t read more often is that they have trouble finding books they like — a challenge that parents underestimate. Kids who struggle to find books they like are far less likely to read for fun daily or even twice a week.

The 2008 Kids & Family Reading Report also found that parents have a strong influence over kids’ reading. They overwhelmingly view reading as the most important skill a child needs to develop, but only about half of all parents begin reading to their child before their first birthday. The percent of children who are read to every day drops from 38% among 5-8 year olds to 23% among 9-11 year olds. This is the same time that kids’ daily reading for fun starts to decline.

Again, not news for us librarians who know kids. But it’s reassuring to read it all the same; it’s a good antidote to all the stuff we keep seeing about how people are reading books less and Googling the Net more. Yet I sure wish that the researchers had also asked these kids whether they went to the library and asked the librarian for help finding great stuff to read.

 

In Kansas City, libraries still must beat the stereotype

Have you seen moms bringing their children into the library and stage-whispering to them, “Shh! This is the library! You have to be quiet here”? When I see this happen (and I’ve seen it surprisingly often), I always think, “Geez. What planet is she from?” I like to think those old stereotypes of the silent library and shushing librarian are long gone. But I guess they aren’t - not with everyone.

(I’m always tempted to keep a big brass gong behind the ref desk and whang it hard when I hear someone saying that, and announce in a loud voice, “It’s 2008. So it’s okay to make noise in the library.”)

For the most part, I see families coming in and making plenty of noise, which is (at least I think so) the way it should be in a library these days. But the media still loves the old stereotypes. Here’s a good example from the Kansas City (MO) Star: “It’s not rocket science, it’s library science, and it’s broadening in scope with new offerings.”

The story seems to be based on ALA President Loriene Roy’s “State of America’s Libraries” report, about a month and a half after National Library Week. But oh well:

Sharon Moreland, director of the Tonganoxie (KS) Public Library, knows some library patrons worry that an institution once perceived as a citadel of learning is now viewed as, “Oh, yeah; we’ve got books, too!”

“But it’s not the reality,” Moreland said. “As our door count has gone up, our circulation has gone up, too. … The best libraries being designed now take both the traditionalists and the more modern way of thinking into account. They’ll have both quiet reading areas and places for teens to congregate and just be teens.”

Still, salsa dancing? If it brings people in, yes, indeed, said Sonia Smith, spokeswoman for Kansas City Kansas Public Libraries.

The writer, throughout this piece, seems to believe that average folks will be shocked that libraries might feature an Ethiopian cooking program or a salsa dancing class. But I suppose that we should all be glad every time a local newspaper runs a story about how libraries have moved away from a century-old stereotype and actually attempted new kinds of activities that might appeal to those of us in 2008.

 

An utterly cool and demi-godly T-shirt

If any of you are fans of the Rick Riordan Percy Jackson series, the way I am, you’ll want to visit the Boys Rule Boys Read! blog run by a couple of guys at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County (NC) Library to read the story of a program they’ve done to celebrate the series. Anyone attending the Percy Jackson Summer Book Club program will get one of these utterly cool T-shirts that say (in case you can’t read it on the photo) “Demigod in Training,” and if you know the Percy Jackson series, you know what that means.

What’s even cooler is that these T-shirts were donated by a Charlotte local who wanted to help out the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County staff. What a great thing, what a great shirt, and what a great help that is for the library. I hope everyone who reads this has someone in their community who is willing to do cool things like this for the library and the kids who use it.

 

Teachers in UK aren’t using children’s books well

A recently released study from the UK Centre for Literacy and Primary Education (CLPE - is this group a rough equivalent of the American IRA?) reveals that many teachers aren’t using children’s books well with their classes. The CLPE has been running a study called “The Power of Reading” since 2005, with the goal of “enhanc[ing] teachers’ and children’s pleasure in reading and rais[ing] children’s achievement through developing teachers’ knowledge of literature and its use in the primary classroom.”

The study of the first two years of the project tells us that plenty of teachers don’t know children’s literature well, and aren’t using it knowledgeably with their classes. I have a fairly strong feeling - based on what I’ve heard over the years from public children’s librarians across the US - that things aren’t that much different in this country. We can only guess about this, of course, because I haven’t heard of a recent similar study in the US. Elementary teachers here aren’t required to take coursework in children’s literature, and often don’t keep track of what’s new and interesting in children’s books.

And many states, filled with school districts that are sweating to pay for their classroom teachers under No Child Left Behind, don’t require elementary schools to hire certified media specialists. That means, of course, that plenty of teachers don’t have someone to advise them about what’s new and cool in children’s books - except for the local public children’s librarian.

And it’s hard to make contact with local classroom teachers - unless we pick up that phone and call the schools around us.

 

Did a book traumatize you, once upon a time?

Here’s an interesting piece from the SFGate.com site - “Books that traumatized you as a child,” by Peter Hartlaub, who also wrote about movies that traumatized kids. Hartlaub doesn’t seem to have actually been traumatized by a book (in my experience, books don’t send most kids into terror and anxiety the way that visual and sound media - namely movies and TV shows - do).

But he does write that he doesn’t understand the appeal of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are.

I think part of the problem was it was introduced to me when I was really young, and had never seen anything more challenging in content than a Richard Scarry book. While I completely respect the artwork and Maurice Sendak’s story, the image of a little boy in his pajama-looking wolf suit wandering around without dinner in a spooky monster-filled woods was too depressing for me to enjoy.

It’s interesting, though, to see the books listed in the comments. Those who wrote in hated, or were frightened by, Bread and Jam for Frances, The Red Pony, and Where the Red Fern Grows. The last one, at least, is completely understandable, but I think that the books (and media) that bother or scare us as kids are often completely peculiar to our own experiences. Once, in a library where I worked years ago, there was a child who attended storytime weekly who was not only scared of insects of any kind, but he couldn’t bear to hear any story or song with bugs in it. If he heard “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly,” for example, his eyes grew wide, he’d start whimpering, and his mom had to scoop him up and take him out.

I hope he grew out of it.

Did I book ever traumatize me? I can’t really remember. I thought Where the Wild Things Are was an extremely cool story, myself. For me, it was scary TV shows. There are still a few episodes of Twilight Zone that I remember scared the bejezus out of me when I was eight or nine…