Hilarious book song

Here's a fun little song that will not only get stuck in your head, but make others think twice about interrupting your precious reading time...

While the guy in this video is quite scary, as Cathy Nelson shared in her post about this video, he's supposed to be scary so that you don't interrupt him...

Buh Bye Borders, Hello Public Library?

Well, it's official, Borders is closing over 200 stores.  Of course, a normal person might have read about this in the newspaper or seen it on TV, but I read it on one of my favorite blogs:  Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.  Then, a teacher friend of mine informed me today that she'd been over there and bought some of the last books they had.  Ouch.

So the interesting question is, will another bookstore come up and fill in the void?  Honestly...I hope not.  And really, I don't understand why people are willing to pay for books twice.  Yep, I said it:  you all pay for your books TWICE.  You pay taxes in your hometown and some of those tax dollars go to funding the public libraries in your area, then you drive yourselves to the bookstore and pay for books again.  Why?  I'm sure there are lots of reasons that people prefer to go to bookstores, but in our economy, I'd like to make the argument for using public libraries.  Here are my reasons:

1. They're FREE.  If you're good with due dates, using public libraries cost you NOTHING.
2. You can reserve books from home.  I assume you have the internet if you're reading this post - did you know you can look for and reserve books online?  Yep, super easy.  If you need a tutorial, just let me know - I can teach you.
3. Libraries have more than books now.  They have DVDs, books on CD/tape/playaway.  And again, FREE.
4. Public libraries also have awesome programming.  Yes, I'm a little biased in this area - I just spent the last two months putting on technology programs for families at the public library.  But they also have family reading nights, poetry readings, and at the Mesa County Public Library, they have fly fishing lessons (how freakin' cool is that?!?!)
5. If they don't have the book you want, they will request it for you from another library.  Awesomeness.
6. Did I mention the books are free?

There are a few downsides, but, they're minor.  Yes, public library books can be, uhm, germy (read funky).  And some of the patrons in the public library can be...uhm...pungent.  And the intricacies of the Dewey Decimal System can baffle even this librarians mind.  But on the other hand I've had massive trouble finding books in my local bookstore (heck, even the apron-and-earphone clad store assistant didn't know where to look) and using the patron initiated hold system at your public library can make your library visits darn fast (I can be in and out in two minutes flat, it's that fast).

So I beg you, in this time of tight budgets and shrinking pocketbooks, use your public library.

Five Flavors of Dumb

Five Flavors of Dumb

Anthony John

As a school librarian, I can’t read every book in my collection.  So usually I rely on reviews – written by people much cooler than me – about the books I want to add to my collection.  Sometimes I have to read the reviews to decide whether or not the book would appeal to the student body I serve, and sometimes I’m looking for clues as to whether or not the content of the book is appropriate for middle grade students.

Recently the ALA released its list of award winners for 2011, and many of the winners are books that, after reading the reviews, I’m still unsure as to their appropriateness.  So when this happens, I simply read the book.  So far, I’ve read two of these ‘cusp’ books.  One shall remain unnamed because it was not middle school appropriate, and to be honest, I don’t see why it won any awards.  The other was Five Flavors of Dumb.  What a great book!  I’m pretty new to the library profession, so I might be wrong here, but I don’t hear about books written for teens about other teens with special needs.  Five Flavors does, and in its own way it reaches out to every teen – “special” or “normal”.  The main character, Piper is moderately severely deaf (a distinction I didn’t know existed) and she survives in the hearing world by reading lips and generally blending into the background.  When an early morning prank lands her a job as a band manager, she is given the opportunity to disprove all kinds of stereotypes about the hearing impaired and she also learns that stereotypes don’t just apply to the deaf.

What makes the books so great is not necessarily Piper’s journey, but everyone’s journey.  John does an amazing job of creating a cast of characters that allows every reader to feel included.  Everyone feels left or invisible at some point, and within the five “flavors” of dumb (which ends up being about ten flavors by the end of the book) every label you find in mainstream schools is represented and dissected to show that regardless of your label, life is hard.  Everyone in this book is portrayed on both a superficial level and a deeper level.  Whenever I read books for my collection, I try to think of kids at my school who might be interested in reading it.  I can’t think of a single kid who wouldn’t get something out of it.  The length might deter some of my non-book lovers, but if I can get them to start the book, I really think any student who starts reading this book will be drawn in by both the story line and the writing style.

Long Time No See...

Yeah...it's been awhile hasn't it?  To say that my fall was busy is a bit of an understatement.  But I didn't stop reading, I just stopped posting.  My list of books to review is long, and hopefully I'll catch up someday.  But for all of my faithful fans (yes, all four of you) I just wanted to take a second and say, I didn't fall off the face of the Earth (a book I'm going to read soon), I just got caught up in life and love and yada yada.

Thanks for sticking with me though!  I greatly appreciate it!

The Help

The Help

Katherine Stockett

I’m a pretty busy lady, but I definitely like to find those lazy days when I can just sit and read and forget about the world around me.  Sometimes, I come across a book that is so engrossing that I can’t help but become completely absorbed – so absorbed that I forget about my reality and feel like I live in the reality of the book.

The Help by Katherine Stockett was one of those books for me.  My book club chose to read this book, and I was surprised by the choice because the book is very new.  Normally we stick with book club kits from the public library (in case you didn’t know, public libraries = free books, and that fits well into my tight budget), but some of the girls in our group had heard such great things, we all decided to fork over the cash and read it.

What a wonderful story!  The Help is a book about exactly that – the hired help.  Written from three points of view, The Help takes a look at what it was like to be the hired help in Mississippi during the 60’s.  Skeeter is a twenty-something college graduate whose dream is to work as a journalist, but whose parents want nothing more for her than marriage to an acceptable young southern man.  As she spends more and more time at home, she realizes that she does not share the same views as her now-grown childhood friends – especially when it comes to the African-American women who serve in their homes.  And she realizes that these women – the hired help – do not have a voice at all.  So she hatches a plan to share their voice with the world.  Enter Aibileen and Minny.  Both women have served as the hired help for their entire adult lives – Aibileen has faithfully and lovingly served many families, and Minny’s mouth has gotten her fired from many jobs, but her amazing cooking skills have always helped her find another job.  Though Skeeter’s plan will put all the women at risk, all the women know that the stories they have to tell are absolutely worth it.

The Help is one of those books that really makes you think about the world around you.  Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own take on things, we fail to see that there are other points of view, other stories to be told, that are just as important as ours, and that can and do have a profound effect on us.  Some of the characters in the book didn’t have the ability to see the world through the eyes of the people who worked for them.  In a way, I felt sorry for them – it has to be difficult to live in a world where people don’t see things your way.  And though the book deals with race relations in the 60’s, I think this lesson still rings true – and it doesn’t have to apply just to race relations.  The Help encourages us to try walking a mile in someone else’s shoes.