TwentySevenLetters / B

I’m home!

We’re back from Alaska. Now, I do love New England, but there’s much to be said for a place where (a) the temperature maxes out at about 70° and (b) we can climb glaciers.

Pictures!

Pictures of Valdez, Alaska! I'm taking Alexander's words to describe this amazing place, because he's more eloquent than I.

It's funny -- when you're walking around, you're almost completely unaware of the huge snow-capped mountains looming just beyond each end of town. Not because it isn't eye-catching--of course it is--but your brain edits it out of what you see because it's just too implausible. Your brain refuses to believe it's there. And then every now and then you *DO* notice it, and it completely catches you by surprise.

Whoops

Did I mention that Thursday was my last day of work? And then Friday morning I was hoping a plane to Alaska for a week? And I'm here now, after 23 hours of travel (including layovers), during which time I've slept a grand total of about 2 hours, broken into 4 half-hour segments?

There will be pictures. Later in the week, next week, I dunno. Eventually. Right now I want this hotel to magically find a room for me so I can take an honest-to-goodness nap. Whine, whine, whine.

This will probably be my last update for a week or so. (And when I come back, I start the Spiffy New Job almost right away. Can't even think about that right now.)

Last days

I just finished my very last storytime, possibly ever. (I’m not fully ruling out the possibility of eventually getting back to children’s services, or filling in on storytimes, but still.) Because it was my last one, at least for a good long while, I chose my Hit Parade of books: The Enormous Potato, Sheep in a Jeep, Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog, and (my absolute favorite ever) I Lost My Bear.

Unfortunately, all my favorites were wasted on an unappreciative audience. 7 kids, most of whom didn’t really care all that much about the stories. Four years old and they’re already disaffected. It’s hard to do an energetic reading of Jules Feiffer when the kids are just staring vacantly, quiet and jaded. “I lost my bear!” the narrator wails, and the kids just shrug, like, “eh, better you than me; sorry ‘bout your luck.”

At the end of the storytime, one girl, about 5 or 6 years old, whispered in my ear: “I’ve already read the book about the bird and the hot dog. I’ve heard it before.” I told her that I hoped she enjoyed it the second time around.

I don’t think I’m going to miss the storytime.

Displays

As perhaps one last contribution to the children’s room before I leave (on Thursday!), about a week ago I changed our display. Previous themes have been things like National Poetry Month, Women’s History Month, Winter Holidays, or Spring into Summer. The usual backdrop is either colored paper or a nice fabric, with words stapled to it. When we’re feeling really ambitious, we cut pictures from magazines and staple those up, too. It usually looks nice enough.

This time I decided to go all-out. I had an idea and some extra time on my hands, so I changed the display to be fantasy/fairy tale/princess/magic books. And I covered the corkboard with the same theme. Now, okay, I’ve accepted that I’ll never be a professional illustrator in fabric pictures (I’m too geometric for that sort of thing), but given that I had some really crappy scissors and couldn’t cut the fabric all that accurately—all edges are turned under and stapled in place; that’s the only way we got straight lines—I think it looks pretty good.

My coworker has declared that she’ll probably use it as the theme all summer, rather than taking it down.

News

Not too long ago, I posted a newspaper article about the Providence Public Library—specifically, that it’s a sinking ship and they’re still discussing potential branch closings and layoffs.

Well, it’s officially Not My Problem.

At the end of this month, I’ll be starting a spiffy new job up in Wilmington, Massachusetts, as their new Teen Librarian. Not Children’s and Teen, like I am here, but actually full-time teen services. I’m very excited. The library has an established teen audience, and they come to programs in droves, from the sounds of it. (The previous librarian used to host parties at the Christmas break and the end of the school year, and she’d invite several bands to come play, serve bunches of food, give away prizes, etc. There were usually about 75-80 kids at each party.) That librarian left a few months ago, though, to move back to Maine. In her absence, the kids are still meeting regularly for their comics club and their Dungeons and Dragons meetings. Which means there’s a strong geek crowd here, and that makes me very happy.

I’m starting right at the beginning of the summer, though, and that’s worrying me a little. I don’t have the advantage of going into the schools to talk up anything. I don’t know the kids yet, to plan out many programs that would be big hits in the demographic. (I know Geek Stuff, but there’s only so far you can go with that, and I’d like to bring in more than just those same 5-10 kids.) But it’s summer, and I’ll want to do a bunch of programs on a bunch of topics, and I’ll have to start them pretty much immediately. That means I’ll have very little time to plan things. I’ll have to do my best to hit the ground running, as it were, but... phew, I’m beat just thinking about it!

The commute will also be unpleasant for the time being (Mapquest says an hour and 15 minutes, if they’re to be believed), but for now, I have a long mental list of audiobooks I’d like to get through and we’ll probably move in the fall, when Alexander’s finished with the book.

I am sad to be leaving my current library behind. I certainly won’t miss the politics, but I’ll miss some of my coworkers. I particularly feel for my coworker here in the children’s room, who will be left alone (mostly, I guess; I don’t know what sort of coverage they’ll provide) to implement all my bright ideas for the summer reading program. I’m trying to write up all my notes about which books and websites I was taking ideas from, and a rough schedule of events and activities. But that still means there will be just one person to make it all happen. I do feel badly about that… but not badly enough to stay, of course.

The other aspect I’ll miss? Some of the kids here. Three, in particular. All three have been here within the past couple of days, so I’ve told them that I’ll be leaving here at the end of next week to go to Alaska for 10 days, and I’m not coming back here afterward. Two immediately said they’d miss me, and gave me their email addresses. One is a 14-year-old girl who drops in to say hello at least two or three times a week, and usually stays about an hour. She vents about her family (she’s the eldest of 9 in a conservative Jewish family) and her school, talks about her short- and long-term goals (right now, pass her math final, and by extension, the tenth grade), and is just a very fun, interesting person to talk to. I’m looking forward to her emails. The other is the 12-year-old I’ve been calling Helper Girl—she’s the one who asks what projects I’m doing, and what she can help with. She checks in books from the return bin, puts new labels on books, straightens up the room, hangs signs, whatever I can think of to give her. She’s also the one whose mom told me how glad she is that her daughter has me to talk to, as an adult who isn’t her mother. I think this is the girl I’ll miss the most. She’ll be in Serbia for the summer, so I hope she emails some pictures while she’s there.

The last of my three favorites—my 11-year-old voracious reader, for whom I find piles upon piles of books on the off chance she hasn’t read one or two of them—gave me a hard time about how I couldn’t leave here, because she’ll still need books, and she doesn’t care what sorts of opportunities await. I told her I’d miss her, too, and that I’d email my coworker lists of titles for her periodically. It won’t be a perfect system, but it’s the best I can do. She’s disappointed, but I think she’ll manage. I’m not as close with her as I am the other two—she’s far less likely to make personal conversation and mostly wants to know about new books and what I’m reading—but I’m going to miss the challenges she presented, all the same.

This is the problem with working with the public, I guess… while some of them really make me want to shoot myself, I’ve gotten attached to some of the others. I know I’ll meet new people in the spiffy new job, but I’d really love to take these three girls with me. I’ll be lonely without them, even after I get to know some new kids.

Immortal inscriptions

Found in the donations bin and subsequently added to the children’s collection: a copy of D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, in practically brand-new condition. The inscription reads, in an impressive calligraphic hand:

Alana,

May your heart always be filled with love, and may your spirit seek out the adventures of knowledge.

All my love,
Peter
December 18, 1990

I want desperately to know the circumstances of the donation, especially in such pristine condition. Obviously she didn’t read it much. Is Alana not sentimental? Is she dead? Is he, and the book brings back painful memories? Did he give her the book just before she changed direction on a thesis project? Or did Alana reject Peter’s expectations of adventurous academia altogether?

And this is why I’m not much for inscriptions: they make it impossible to part with the book, and if you do manage it, it leaves a number of unanswered questions for the next owner.

Lazy Sunday Review

Okay, okay, it took me two weeks to finish Jonathan Franzen’s Strong Motion. But it’s 500 pages, with small print and narrow margins, and even Amazon.com admits that there are 11,000 words to the ounce on this one. So, no regrets. If you liked The Corrections—or just want to support a realistic-fiction author who had mixed feelings on his inclusion in Oprah’s book club—pick this one up. It’s just as good as the other, with the added benefit of being set in eastern Massachusetts, so I have some idea of the geography. Yes, that's a selling point for me. Yes, I'm lame.

But once I finished that book, I finally picked up the new S.E. Hinton book, Hawkes Harbor. This one’s a library book, and has been sitting on my desk for the better part of a month. Now that I’ve read it, though… I could have skipped it with no hard feelings. It wasn’t at all what I’d expected. I’d expected something in keeping with her earlier books—maybe not the same 1960s urban gang plots, but still something fairly realistic and gritty. What I got was a vampire story.

Because this is a lazy Sunday for me, I’m going to let a friend do the hard work of the reviewing for me, and just say What Kurtis Said. Particularly when he says it was interesting to think about but not a completely pleasurable read. I think that, the way the book is marketed and promoted, it’s going to disappoint a lot of readers who aren’t expecting a modern-gothic vampire story.

It all falls into place, though, on learning that this was originally supposed to be a Dark Shadows novel. I know exactly nothing about Dark Shadows beyond what’s on this page, but I do wish I’d known in advance what I was getting into.

Overall review: eh. I’m glad I read it, if only for professional reasons—at least now I know another book I can put on my upcoming horror booklist. And I know not to hand it to kids who enjoyed The Outsiders.