Wednesday, April 30, 2008

library helpers


Alberto and Juanita were my helpers today which means they stamp the due date in the book. One hands the other the book and the other stamps. They seemed to be playing store. Thank you for shopping at Lincoln Library, they said each time they handed a book to a child. They took all the bookmarks and created a display on the counter so each kid could choose the one they wanted: the dog one, the cat one, the Garfield- in Spanish- telling- you -to read one.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

a school librarian thinks about Earth Day


How can the kids figure out how to take care of the world we're leaving them if they can't take care of their dang library books? This is one of the philosophical questions I wrestle with. Eventually I work my way into a big guilt trip for kids who lose or destroy books, but when they are little, when they are five years old, I go easy.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

internalizing repression


Today I posted the first page of my new manuscript, Watching Rhonda Honey, on my website. The first page is about being raised Catholic. I'm glad I was raised Catholic, let me say that right now. It did three things that I like. It made me psychologically complicated, which is useful for a writer. It gave me a sense of shame, which is not a bad thing, I realize now as I've gotten older. And, best of all, the Catholic church taught me that, when you strip everything else away, at heart it's all a big mystery.
Along with the first page of the novel, I posted a photograph I took in a Catholic Church in Mexico. It's a picture of Jesus' bloody, nailed feet. I think it's a sign of the repressive times we live in, and the way in which we've internalized that repression, that I hesitated: would someone be offended? Was it in bad taste? Was I being disrespectful? ---I hesitated, even though I knew that it it was right image, that if I could take a picture of what it felt like to be a little Catholic girl, it would be that picture.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Trying Not to Preach



April is Poetry Month so yesterday I read poems to the third graders: Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams. I read the Red Wheel Barrow poem and I read the beginning of Sharon Creech's novel, Love That Dog, about a boy who is forced to read the wheel barrow poem. Sometimes I look at the kids, sitting on the floor around me, and I think of the world we are giving them-- how can it not break your heart? So much depends on a red wheel barrow and so much depends on them. I shut the book and talked about poetry and the importance of words. I told them that maybe, because we have so many books, it's easy to forget that they are important. I talked about the fact that it used to be illegal to teach slaves to read, and that's because reading makes us powerful. I talked about a country (the old Soviet Union) where, when a new book of poetry came out, people stood in lines that reached down the block to get a copy. I told them that there a country where, when a poet published a new book of poems, the government had an emergency meeting, in order to decide what to do about it. That poet was Marmoud Darwish. Usually I try not to preach to the kids. Much of the time, I read them funny books—they especially like Dav Pilkey and Jon Scieszka— but sometimes I can't help myself.
I was glad to see that when it was time to check out books, some of them chose poetry.

Saturday, April 05, 2008

Three Cups of Tea


When it was first published a couple years ago, I heard David Oliver Relin talk about his book, Three Cups of Tea. Three Cups of Tea, if somehow you haven't heard, is the true story of David and his friend, Greg Mortenson, building schools for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I thought it was the kind of important book that gets overlooked, that falls to the wayside, that publishers don't think to promote, that reviewers ignore, that stores don't stock. I thought I'd never hear another word about it. Was I ever wrong. Yesterday it hit #1 on the NY Times Best Seller list. Congratulations, David Oliver Relin.