No kidding. I was going to redesign my page today but …. Holy Backgrounds, Batman! Why can’t I do what I used to do on look and feel? In fact, why can’t I FIND “Look and Feel?” Am I stuck with this stupid MySpace Wanna Be yuck?! I like my page. I just want to change the colors and the atavar. Crikey! Somebody help!
Later - Oh swell. I am crying to a Winona Judd song. Heaven help me. Time to light a candle and breath.
And so it goes.
I will admit it right up front…. I am horribly behind in my reading. I will catch up. I promise. But meanwhile, here are my reactions to this year’s children’s book awards. These are awarded annually by the American Library Association, to acknowledge and support the very best in children’s and young adult literature. The staff here is happy when the awards are announced on Martin Luther King Day because the library is closed and no one has to listen to me cheer or bemoan the state of the world. I do tend to get rather vocal about the whole thing, hard though that may be for you to imagine. This year the awards were not done on MLK Day so everyone had to hear me and let me tell you, it wasn’t a happy day in Mudville. In fact, it’s three months later and I am still, shall we say, a little tweaked, miffed, displeased, irked, and chagrined. That is not to say pissed. I WAS pissed. I am totally not pissed anymore. Nope. Not me. But let’s begin at the beginning….
The Theodore Seuss Geisel Award recognizes the authors and illustrators of a book for emergent readers and this year’s committee hit it right on the money. Mo Willems, author of Caldecott Winner Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, hits his hilarious best with There is a Bird on Your Head. It made me laugh on a day when I was absolutely certain laughter was a distant memory. Emergent readers and imagination are Willems strength and we love him for it. (P.S. I just spent half an hour playing on his website. It’s worth the time. Honest.)
I waffle back and forth about The Sibert Award. I didn’t read a great deal of non-fiction last year but when has that ever stopped me from running my mouth? Peter Sis’ The Wall garnered the medal here and I understand that. I am not especially enamored of the book, but I understand why a committee might consider it the best of the best. I find the format too busy and too much, but I wasn’t in their chairs or their shoes so I won’t use up my complaining here. Solid choices, all.
I jumped out of my chair and shouted when I read the title of the Caldecott Winner. The Invention of Hugo Cabret is one of the most innovative pieces I’ve seen in a long time and it has the added bonus of being good writing. Even though The Caldecott is awarded for illustration there is a need for the marriage of text and illustration that this book has in spades and hearts and diamonds and clubs. If you haven’t seen this go to your library and just sit there of an afternoon and hang out at the train station with Hugo. The honor books were good choices as well, in my opinion. I could have done without The Wall, but all right. Whatever. I am the only person in the known universe that thinks First the Egg is confusing – really, the ONLY person in the known universe. One of these days I’m going to read it with a group of kids and see its beauty and kick myself for being a dope. Henry’s Freedom Box is just beautiful. If you have not had the pleasure of reading it and absorbing those illustrations treat yourself today. And while you’re at the library take a look at the other books illustrated by Kadir Nelson. Last year’s Moses is stunning and wait until this time next year when I tell you that his newest We Are the Ship has garnered awards in three areas. While sequels in picture books sometimes collapse on themselves, Knuffle Bunny Too (which you discovered while you were playing on Mo Willems’ site) is such a perfect bit of slice of life it is well worth celebrating.
The Newbury Medal Committee did a great job in a year loaded with wonderful work. I would have swapped around the winner and the honors but that’s a matter of taste rather than quality. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Is about as close to living in a medieval village as we are likely to get. What a charming, interactive, interesting read this one is. I don’t think it’s stayed on the shelf longer than two or three days since it arrived. That being said… Jacqueline Woodson’s Feathers is the middle-school book of the year for me. It so gracefully and tenderly covers the understanding and acceptance of those perceived as different and the enormity of what it means to be a child of faith and understanding and compassion. This slim volume flips the coin around and readers are forced to look at the world in an entirely new way. I recommend Gary Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars, another honor book although I suspect this is one of those books adults are going to like better than children, and Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis, a book that made me laugh and cry without feeling in the least bit manipulated.
Then there’s the Printz Award. Deep breath. Sigh. Miffed. Chagrined. Disappointed. Tweaked. And frankly, flat out pissed off – still. I understand that this is not an award for American authors alone so the field immediately becomes enormous in scope and size. I have enormous respect for the amount of reading the committee has to do and the tough choices it has to make. However, respectfully, I disagree with the selections on so many levels I could cry. No one will ever convince me One Whole and Perfect Day is a better book than Mistik Lake. While the former is a lovely little story the latter is an intricate tying of a knot, a macramé, if you will, of woven threads that when pulled tight form a thing of beauty out of what, to the untrained eye, looks like a tangle of yarn and thread. You Own Sylvia thuds while Frida soars off the page and drives one to learn more, to read deeper, to know, to understand. Dreamquake is fine. It’s a fantasy. It stands alone. How is it exemplary? Those are the honor books. Would I have chosen others? You bet your bippy. However, nothing, NOTHING is as infuriating as the one that did not win.
I read the winner, Geraldine McCaughrean’s The White Darkness, and if it had been one of only seven books published this year I would understand the win. But it wasn’t. 2007 was a great year for YA literature. We’ll never know how this book got chosen over anything else but the fact that Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian didn’t even garner an honor frosts my behind and still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. This is a book that brings into stark relief an entire world that is so real and honest and EXISTS right this minute that it cannot help but touch any heart. But forget my emotional/political response for a minute, because that’s not an award criteria, mores the pity. This is a brilliant piece of writing. The marriage of illustration with text is superb and effortless, not in the least contrived. The voice is meticulous. The humor….ah the humor. In a life that is so impossible it drives adults, quite literally, to drink, Junior hauls himself up by the hairs on his head and the laughter in his heart and takes us on his journey. I am not foolish enough to think that any committee overlooked this book. It would be impossible to do that. However, the fact that this novel will not sit on a list of this year’s best book for young people for as long as those lists exist is a damn shame.
And so it goes.
Summer reading looms large on the horizon. As the teachers in the crowd wind down their academic year, the public librarians gear up for the chaos and joy that is the summer. That being said, I have to clean this office and get it to stay that way – the last bit being the operative part of the sentence. No matter how clear the desk is by the end of the day, about this time it is overwhelmingly chaotic. I can’t stand it. There is enough chaos in my life right now. I need order somewhere and it should be here. I want it to be here – where I can create it an maintain it. So this afternoon….that’s where I am – creating order in one little corner of the world.
Really what I want to do is join a convent and sit quietly in meditation for days at a time. No distractions. Just a prayerful life. Not “just.” What is the word here – “only”. Only a prayerful life. That sounds remarkably appealing.
A Day in the Life
It is absolutely remarkable the amusement teenage boys get out of playing with balloons. So far this afternoon, the boys have invented breast pumps that increase and decrease breast size as desired. And to prove that they are not sexist pigs they said they would invent one for penises as well. Yowie!
Then Corey decided it would be fun to put the deflated balloon in a plastic cup and then blow – really hard. He almost killed himself. It was as though an airbag had exploded in his face. Being the bright boy that he is, he decided to try it with the pencil crock and of course nothing happened. He was disappointed. I think he really wanted to knoock himself out – or at least see if he could.
I love these guys.
Book Review
Mary Oliver has a new book of poetry. She is one of my favorite poets. I love the way she finds a connection between all things. I fell into her work years ago and have never left it. Thirst, published in 2006, absolutely carried my heart for months and months. I still return to it. Her latest volume, Red Bird, is just as heart felt and just as real. I should have returned it weeks ago. I can’t do it. I just can’t. I should buy it. This is one of the reasons why:
From Sometimes
4.
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
I love that.
Enough. Office cleaning begins immediately following blog visits.
And so it goes.
It’s been too long. I have been very far away without ever leaving home. I don’t know that I have completely returned but I know that it Is time to get back to my planet – changed, morphed into a same/different self. Hard truths have had to be faced. Dealing with them is not a matter for overnight or even months. After all, messes that get made over years cannot be cleaned up in a matter of moments.
And I miss the writing and the sorting out. And the learning. I learn a lot here. It’s good.
So….
LADYBUG GIRL
David Soman and Jacky Davis
Penguin
2008
“Lulu’s older brother says she is too little to play with him. Her mama and papa are busy too, so Lulu has to make her own fun. This is a situation for Ladybug Girl! Ladybug Girl saves ants in distress, jumps through shark-infested puddles, and even skips along the great dark twisty tree trunk—all by herself. It doesn’t matter what her brother says, Ladybug Girl is definitely not too little!”
http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780803731950,00.html
I love this book! A ladybug superheroine created by a husband and wife team who gets it. The end pages are absolutely marvelous as Lulu decides who she will be that day and the litter of the identities not chosen wind up in a heap on the title page. Lulu is a little girl with attitude who will not be defeated by busy parents or older siblings. She builds her day with her trusty dog Bingo, who echoes Lulu’s mood as any good pal should. (I am especially fond of Bingo’s flopping tongue.) The marriage of illustration and story is just delightful. I hope Lulu returns, but if she doesn’t I, for one, am perfectly satisfied joining her: “Feeling big as all outdoors, Lulu stretches out her arms and flies down the hill with her wings bobbing behind her.”
MAX’S DRAGON
Kate Banks
Boris Kulikov, Illustrator
Farrar, Strauss, Giroux
2008
http://us.macmillan.com/maxsdragon
When we first met Max – a couple of years ago now, I think - he wanted a cool collection like his brothers’ and started collecting words. When I was five I would have married Max because I think collecting words is about the neatest thing since sliced bread. Now I will just have to revel in the fact that I share Max with everyone I know who loves words.
So now, it’s a couple of years later and Max is older and his brothers are still….well…his brothers and Max is still collecting words. This time however, Max has gone on a quest with his dragon and they are collecting words that rhyme. Banks does clever things with the language and will have readers, young and old, rhyming all day long. Kulikov’s illustrations carry us right along on Max’s quest and I swear I got wet in that rainstorm. You will too.
And so it goes.
…I will be glad when these holidays are over. My real break will occur next week when there are no programs, no festivities, and and NO SCHOOL! There are at least a couple of days to scour out this office and be brutal about it, set up the new story hour programs, and generally pretend I actually work here.
I have recovered nicely from the sleepover. This really is a great group of kids. They laughed and talked, played Apples to Apples, watched movies, and a couple of them read through the night. Very cool. There was minor drama, but nothing unfixable and everyone left as friends in the morning. I then slept most of yesterday and am feeling human at the moment.
I am off to prepare home for the return of the Daisy and presents with the grands. While I am excited beyond words, I will be oh so glad when it’s over!
And so it goes.
There are several times during the year that I fall off the face of the earth. Vacations are one when I honestly try to stay away from computers and remember what the real world feels like. Summer Reading puts me in a catatonic state that rivals … well, I don’t know what it rivals having never been in a real catatonic state but it rivals something. And then there are holiday programs. It gets a little goofy around here during that time. There’s the first Saturday in December when we make ornaments. This year I got smart and took a sabbatical from glitter. The ones in the picture are made with tissue paper and white glue. They are actually quite lovely. In addition there’s banner making the week after Thanksgiving. I am changing that for next year because the numbers are dropping off. I need to think of something cool to fill that slot. The next week is gift making, a fun little tradition in which the children make gifts for someone special. I think my favorite was the year we decorated plain white boxes and then each child “blew the love in” his or her particular box and the box was sealed tightly. There was something magical about that. This year we made key chains and they were fun too and actually almost looked like something when we were done. Of course the final chaos is the Gingerbread House Extravaganza. This involves washing milk cartons for a week after which I begin to look and smell like Elsie the Borden Cow. Shopping takes about two days since I have finally begun to do it on library time rather than my own and getting out of here is always iffy right before a break. More about that in a minute. Once all the parts are assembled all we need are the kids and they come in droves. I wish I had that many for story hours. Sigh. I lost count somewhere in the evenings, which were packed. I think we had between 100 and 150 but there could have been thousands for all I know. It doesn’t matter except to the bean counters. The kids have a great time. I have a great time and every gumdrop squished into the carpet that requires a scrub brush is worth it. (Nope, it doesn’t help to cover the floor. In fact the mess is worse and the kids slip and slide around. You figure it out.)
Then of course I move into holiday madness with the family. Miss Daisy is in Germany with friends this year – a bittersweet thing, really. She is having a great time so that’s all that matters. She has called and allowed that while she is not homesick, exactly she misses being home at this time of year. I miss her but understand full well that fledglings must do what they do when they do it. The grandchildren were at their dad’s for the first time ever on Christmas morning. I am selfish and admit it but this is the first time I have not had them in MY living room on Christmas morning and that was hard. Change is just change, though, and while this may take some getting used to it was not a bad thing. We are celebrating on New Year’s Eve and they will open gifts and make noise and create chaos in my living room then and that will be a lovely thing. Oh yes it will. The sick and twisted side of the Normans was in full bloom this Christmas morning as we adjusted to the absence of little ones. Thomas bought the dogs giant rawhide chews – HUGE rawhide chews – bigger and heavier than Winston, the dachshund/beagle and really too large for Bonnie and Clyde. Winston attempted to lift his and get it away from Bonnie and Clyde. Clyde, of course, ripped into his with all the primitive fervor of his ancestors with a deer leg. Winston managed to get his under a living room chair and get thoroughly stuck. He was extricated by Lady Sarah, the soft of heart. Bonnie, after about five minutes of lugging the damn thing around, dropped it in my lap as if to say, “You guys are weird!” and lay down to watch her brothers be stupid. I swear she rolled her eyes and muttered, “Boys!” under her breath. We, being the sick family that we are, were laughing hysterically through the whole thing.
Today is the Annual Boxing Day Sleepover. Me, 25 teenagers and a closed library. What can possibly go wrong? It is grand fun. This crowd sleeps which is a blessing. I have banished Guitar Hero but other video games will be on hand. Hopefully someone will actually read a book. Complain though I may, I look forward to this every year. It’s a time to get to know the kids a little better and at a different level. I like it.
Lest you think I have been lounging about eating bonbons this entire time, I read two memorable books (and a bunch that weren’t so much).
Keeping Corner by Kashmira Sheth takes place in India in the mid-nineteen hundreds. This is a beautifully drawn novel, rich in character and sense of place. For those readers with a penchant for historical fiction, this is a must read. I am a huge fan of Deepa Mehta’s Elements Trilogy, I really appreciated this different look at the treatment of widows in India. The fact that a child is betrothed at two, married at nine, widowed at eleven and her life is considered over boggles any modern sensibility. This is an extraordinary look at an experience that baffles the Western mind.
In the chaos that is Christmas, it is not often that I stumble over a book that makes me want to leave the tinsel, the ribbon, the wrapping, and the bows and just keep reading. Billie Standish Was Here is such a book. There is an honesty and openness to the writing here that I have not experienced in a long time. The characters are absolutely complete whether they are drawn with one sentence or twenty. Billie’s heart is right there. She is trusting us, as she has trusted only two other people in her life, and it is incumbent upon us to enter her world with sensitivity and care. The point of view is perfect. The sense of place flawless. This is a brilliant piece of work and one of my top five for the year.
And so it goes.
Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the most inexorable loneliness. It seems silly, really, surrounded as I am by kids and family and friends that I love dearly. What I have discovered though is that you just have to live it. There is not point trying to analyze it away or rationalize it. You just have to live through it, not unlike plowing through a snowdrift. There are plenty of things that help – hugs, good books, laughter, crying, holding hands, prayer – but the bottom line is one must keep on shoveling to find the metaphorical pony. There is a sadness that accompanies the loneliness. A melancholy feeling. Ah me. Where the hell did I put the shovel? Always there are things to do that fill up the day – book orders, story hour plans, research classes, washing out milk cartons for gingerbread houses, buying supplies for gingerbread house. No time for navel gazing or feeling sorry for yourself, my girl. Get to it and start digging!
In the world of picture books….one of my favorites of the year, At Night by Jonathan Bean, got a Hornbook Fanfare nod which makes me feel really bright and smart and, you know, validated. Make sure you take a look at the others on the list while you are there. Good ones all, although I am not a big fan of the Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County and I positively hate The New Policeman. Don and Audrey Wood have been among my favorite author/illustrators for a really, really long time. Audrey Wood does a solo act with the new A Dog Needs a Bone and it is funny as all get out and right on the money as far as canine characterization. The pooch’s expressions will delight every dog lover in the crowd and the illustrations are grand – crayon on brown paper bags! I have ordered copies of these picture books for friends for Christmas – adult friends, I might add.
I have been avoiding the news like the plague for weeks now. I don’t want to know. I don’t care about the stupid election any more. I don’t want to hear some lame and furtive attempt at last minute peace-brokering that sounds as insincere as it is so that W’s place in the history books will not be indexed under “loser.” However, since I have been driving around quite a bit of late and since the radio is playing the same twelve Christmas carols over and over again, and since I feel guilty if I don’t listen to NPR, I have been subjected to furtive peace brokering and stupid election nonsense. This of course leads to an evening of West Wing – pick any episode or any season – so I can watch my ideal administration run the country. So far pretty typical and nothing new. There are moments, such as when Bartlet and company design a Peace-keeping Doctrine that commits us to protect the folks in some war-torn African nation and the shot of the gang marching off to fix the world is just too wonderful, that I cry – even though, yes, I’ve seen it twelve dozen times. I was saying to the family that this was the kind of president I wanted – one who would admit his mistakes, one who’s oratory is so beautiful it makes you weep, and one who could tell you the world was going to hell in a hand basket but that he would take care of it and everyone could go to sleep feeling safe. Again – nothing new. So there I am, the following day, toddling off to buy coffee and John Edwards is on the radio and I started crying because here was a man saying “I don’t know,” and “I think America wants to help and heal,” “I can’t do this by myself, but we can do this together,” and “No, not all the money can go there. Some of it has to go here. But a lot of it can go there.” I want this man to be president so badly I could spit.
And so it goes.
It’s that time of year – one of my favorites. No, no, no, not Christmas. (I am trying really hard this year not to loathe Christmas but I still don’t like it very much.) This is the time of year when I actually have a legitimate reason to go to…THE OFFICE SUPPLY STORE! Next to a library and then a bookstore, office/school supplies are my favorite things to buy and now, oh joy, oh raptious day, I need a new planner, and desk calendar, and highlighters, and round pencils. So yesterday, after work, in a rainstorm and howling winds, I went to Staples. Ah. I bought my maroon, month-at-a-glance calendar and new highlighters. I was all set to buy a new desk calendar when I stumbled across this nifty pad that is as big as a desk calendar but it nothing but blank pages! This is perfect for me because after five minutes at work I can’t see my desk calendar anyway and most of the time it serves as a doodle pad, a place to make a quick note, and a coaster for coffee cups. This blank pad is just delightful. Then I went on the pencil search. I do not like mechanical pencils (the points are never quite right) and I do not like hexagonal pencils (they make weird ridges in my fingers) and I do not like round pencils that are coated with a thin paper of glitter or illustration or smiley faces (they do not sharpen correctly). What I love, love, love is a plain old round wooden, plain or painted #2 pencil. I use pencils when I am writing poetry, planning story hours and generally doing written work that requires thought and that I can’t do on a keyboard. Staples had no round pencils. I was distraught. Rats! I wrote to Dixon Ticonderoga this morning. I asked for 500 round wooden pencils – no imprint. We’ll see. I was just disappointed that I could not get them at Staples. Pah! (NB – I just checked my email and have already received a reply from the Dixon-Ticonderoga folks who do not sell retail but will send me a list of area distributors. How cool is that!)
An apology is in order. I posed the question about women and power and then disappeared. Sorry, everyone! It is not that I was uninterested it’s just that life – pesky old thing – got in the way. We had to send a certified letter to a patron advising him that he was no longer permitted on library property – the first EVER. He threatened me verbally and it was not a good feeling at all. I wrote a post about it but it sounded scary even to me so I didn’t post it. It’s all over now and things are as back to normal as they ever are around here with a boss who can’t schedule and trillion holiday programs in the offing.
Speaking of holiday programs….The annual festival we call Harbor Holidays was a rousing success throughout the village. Of course I never get to wander because I am ensconced here making ornaments with the children. We had almost 100 children make ornaments this year. It was grand! In the past I have purchased round, colored, glass ornaments and the children have glittered them. Glitter is a mess. Last year we decided we were taking a glitter sabbatical. But, the dilemma was posed: What shall we do for ornament making? This year I bought clear glass ornaments and the kids tore colored tissue paper and glued/decoupaged it on the ornament. They are lovely. I made a couple myself and they really are pretty. And there was virtually no mess and the easiest clean-up ever. I will link pictures as soon as they get up on the website.
And so it goes.
Most conversations with my children occur in the car these days. They are grown now, and bedtime cuddles have given way to “Mom, may I borrow five dollars?” thus I rather relish those moments when I have each alone to know where their heads are or what they are thinking about anything and everything.
Listening to the news while driving with Sarah to get coffee or some such thing yesterday, we were talking about men and power and the result generally, but not always,
being that they boff (in some form or fashion) anything that will stand still long enough. I then raised the question “What do women do with power?” Sarah allowed that she felt they expressed it differently, that they do not express their power sexually. While I think some
might, I can agree that this is a fairly accurate analysis. We then agreed that women in power manipulate. Is that all? Seriously – how do women express power? We can’t all be do-gooders who attempt to save the world, can we? If the adage “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” is true and we have seen the manifestation of that corruption in many male world leaders, how does it manifest itself in women? Was Golda Meir corrupt? Indira Ghandi? Thoughts?
And so it goes.
Thanksgiving was lovely. I cooked too much. We all ate too much, but not enough since the stores of leftovers in the refrigerator could feed a small third world country. The day was a lovely one of family and food and warmth. My favorite holiday. Perfect.
I don’t know which is worse knowing you have to return from vacation and actually doing it. Wow! My desk looks like some weird pen factory blew up on it. The only pens NOT on my desk are MINE – the ones I buy myself because I am outrageously picky about the pens and paper I use. I will go on a search. My pens exist on someone’s desk and I will find them and return them to their rightful little basket. Kidnapping dogs!
It took most of today to wade through the 300 emails. I can respond to most in a bulk listing of what needs to happen next or my thoughts on various books hither and thither and about. Some actually require thought, for heaven’s sake. Ha! Like that’s going to happen.
Then there’s the desktop. What the hell IS all this crap? Did I LEAVE this when I walked out the door a week ago? Piles of detritus everywhere. Yeesh. It’s kind of scary, actually.
The good news is, waiting for me at the desk when I got here today was the two disc set of Yo-Yo Ma Inspired by Bach – Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. Ahhhhh. It’s like taking off your shoes after a long day in heels. Not the most poetic image, perhaps, but fitting nonetheless.
And so it goes.
