MotherReader

Last year I was so organized that I shared my booktalks online, while this year I've been lucky if they are mentally rehearsed before I go into the school. I've had a lot on my mind.

But whether or not I have a graduating senior or need to plan the Girl Scout bridging ceremony for over a hundred girls, our booktalking season is upon us. Quite late this year as our kids are still in school. In fact, that senior doesn't even get to do the graduating part until June 23rd. Crazy, right? It's especially frustrating as other high schools were done yesterday, but we all have to take our turn with the local university facilities and we are last. It's ridiculous.

So far I've gone into two elementary schools to talk about the summer reading program and booktalk some titles, and it's gone well. I had a great partner both times, which really helps. We have different kinds of books, and we can take turns with the introductions and the talking. I'm not thrilled to be heading out tomorrow alone for a four hour stretch with no breaks and seven class sessions. Is that how other public libraries do it, I wonder?

Later I'll share some of the books I talked about this year. My "hooks" weren't as good as usual, but there were definitely some titles that caught their attention. It was great luck being able to pitch a soccer book - Keeper, by Mal Peet - during the World Cup games. Lots of interest there!

Last week I mentioned that I'd be back on the book talking circuit within the first two weeks of my job. And when you consider that I'm a part-time employee, it was really like my fifth day of work. So you might ask how that worked out for me.

Pretty good, thanks for asking. I'd say fantastic, but my throat started to hurt last night and by the end of the second group I was straining a bit. Fortunately, the last group of kindergarteners were a smaller group and well-behaved, so I made it through before my voice gave out. The booktalking itself felt great. Natural even. I love talking about the books and engaging with the kids.

I kept props to a minimum - though I couldn't resist putting a stuffed rabbit on my head for A Boy and his Bunny - and let the stories speak for themselves. I simply read aloud Sharon Creech's A Fine, Fine School, stopping right after the part where the principal decides the kids should go to school all summer long. I showed some of the fantastic pictures from Prehistoric Actual Size and facts from Just a Second.

I started with a couple of easy rhymes and then explained how the artists interpreted them in Nursery Rhyme Comics. Like, what was that mouse doing going up the clock anyway? I paired two easy chapter books with descriptions of each, Jackie Jules' Zapato Power: Freddy Ramos Takes Off and Nikki Grimes' Make Way for Dyamonde Daniel with hints towards the rest of the series. I pulled out an old favorite in Lowji Discovers America reading a passage of how Lowji convinces the landlady to get a cat. Polling the crowd for hamster owners was an easy way to introduce Trouble According to Humphrey, along with the rest of that series. It also introduced me to a bunch of kids who came up afterwards to compare our hamster stories. The third graders were tempted with excerpts from How They Croaked, and they loved every gross minute of it.

I was lucky to start off with just kindergarten through third grade but in two weeks I'll share the books I used with the older elementary kids. I know it's hard to wait, but next Wednesday I'll be at Book Expo America collecting books for the whole summer. Can't wait!

Last week I was speculating on going back to work in the public library system. Now with two work days behind me, I can say that it's all good.

My main worry had been not knowing what I didn't know. Having done the job for nine years, I was aware that subtle but significant changes can take place along over time. Different procedures, new databases, and branch particulars could influence the things I thought I knew. Then there are the things I've forgotten almost entirely, like trouble-shooting the Internet sign-ups and print jobs.

As it turns out, that wasn't as much a problem as I feared. The books, the library, the customer service are all coming back like riding a bicycle. If the other parts keep me a bit off-balance, then maybe it's like riding a unicycle. But either way, it's not stressful. My co-workers are nice, helpful, and understanding. The patrons have been patient, even when I lead them in the completely wrong direction in the library. (Oops.) There are definitely some things I need to learn or relearn, but I'm getting back in the game quickly.

In fact, I'll do my first book talking session in a week! I had been planning to do this as a volunteer anyway, so I did have some books planned. My Fair County puts together a list of books for the Summer Reading Program that used to consist of new titles, but now pulls from years of great books. The good thing for me is that they are titles I've used before, making the work that much easier. Of course, I never write these things down, so maybe not that much easier.

Since I'm starting with a kindergarten through third grade, my focus is on picture books today. Sharon Creech has written the perfect booktalk title with A Fine, Fine School about a principal who thinks school should go all the time because he's so proud of his students and teachers. Reading about keeping school going all year long is so much fun to do in a room full of kids days before summer break. I'm also looking at Bark, George as a read aloud, because it's first title I ever booktalked. Yup, really. I already have a stuffed rabbit to wear on my head to introduce A Boy and his Bunny, which I'll pitch as a beginning reader as well as a picture book. I'm also looking to the wonderful Steve Jenkins for Prehistoric Actual Size and the new Just a Second. Of course, it wouldn't be me if I didn't bring the magic of Mo Willems to my booktalk with the Elephant and Piggie series. I'm still pinning down my early chapter book selections, so I'll save them for next week. Stay tuned.

For many years our public librarians went into the schools to promote the summer reading program. Due to budget cuts, they stopped the practice for a couple of years, and are now bringing it back using volunteers to supplement the paid staff. Loving booktalking as I do, I jumped at the chance to help.

While in flush times the library system ordered new books just for the summer program, now they are pulling from previous titles to make the suggested reading list. This works out for me, because I’ve read and booktalked many of these selections before.

One that jumped out at me as a favorite was The Gum-Chewing Rattler, written by Joe Hayes and illustrated by Antonio Castro L. I love this book, from its engaging cover of the snake blowing a bubble to the last page, where the artist describes his technique in capturing his realistic subjects. An older man is telling a bunch of kids a story from back-in-the-day. He always was chewing gum, and always kept spares in his front pocket — even though that practice wreaked havoc on the laundry. One day in the desert he stepped on a rattlesnake and that gum saved his life in a tale that no one can believe. This is a great picture book for a past-preschool crowd. I’ve read it to a third grade class and they loved it. In fact, they might have been the first grade to really get it for the modern tall tale that it is. The pictures are very realistic in style and capture the feeling of the book, amusing and fun.

In my younger-grade booktalk, I’ll pair this title with Lisa Jo Rudy’s Snakes! Maybe I’ll bring in a rubber snake prop. I’m also looking at sharing Bats at the Beach because it’s such a fun summer story. I’m also drawn to the sweetness — plus bonus origami! — of Lissy’s Friends. It’s exciting to be thinking about this again.

Thanks to everyone who submitted booktalking suggestions the other day. I only used one recommendation — this time — but that doesn’t mean that the others weren’t valuable. They just didn’t meet one of my four criteria:

1. I’ve read it.
   
2. I liked it.
   
3. We have it in the library.
   
4. The hook inspires me.
   

Some of the titles I’ll be looking into for next time, and I do think that there will be a next time after today. Last time I recorded the booktalks, I felt awful about them, but I’m feeling pretty good about today’s taping. It’s still not Me In Person good, but it’s definitely getting better. Here’s my total list so far:

1. Black Duck, by Janet Taylor Lisle
   
2. An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore
   
3. Tracking Trash, by Loree Griffin
   
4. Yellow Star, by Jennifer Roy
   
5. Happy Kid! by Gail Gauthier
   
6. The Book of One Hundred Truths, by Julie Shumacher
   
7. Into the Wild, by Sarah Beth Durst
   
8. Blue Lipstick, by John Grandits
   
9. Sarah’s Ground, by Ann Rinaldi
   
10. Money Hungry, by Sharon Flake
    
11. The Adoration of Jenna Fox, by Mary Pearson
    

I wouldn’t have been ready to do Jenna Fox if Little Willow hadn’t given me her hook: “Jenna was left comatose after a tragic accident. One year later, she awakens to a life she can’t recall, a body she doesn’t recognize, parents she doesn’t know, and a house she can’t leave.” Total booktalking gold!

I don’t know when these puppies will be posted on YouTube, but I’ll only point you to them if you promise not to judge me for my first attempts. In fact, I’ll put the reminder in rhyme form, in tribute to Poetry Friday, hosted at A Year of Reading:

Dressed in black,
Cut me some slack.
Dressed in blue,
Okay to view.

About a month ago I recorded some booktalks for My Fair County. And they sucked.

I think I’m pretty good at this booktalking thing, but when it hit me that I couldn’t walk around and talk to an audience, I realized I was totally screwed. But the show must go on, so they say. I did my best, even after a terrible thunderstorm delayed the taping and made me worry about my kids getting home from school and then lighting had to be adjusted and I wasn’t holding the books up the right way and I didn’t have notes because I never have notes and I was talking so slowly — it was an awful experience. My guess, from the parts that I saw, is that the booktalks aren’t humiliating per se, but they look like something any boring librarian would do. And. I’m. Not. Boring. Goofy, chaotic, untidy, moody, even shrill at times, but not boring.

So next week I’ve got another go at it and I’m asking for your suggestions. I don’t need just titles. I need a one- or two-sentence hook, because a lot of my best hooks require an audience. For instance, I toss a penny, dime, and nickel into the room to introduce Money Hungry. I let someone explain the exceedingly gross way a mummy is prepared before introducing Mummies: the Newest, Coolest, and Creepiest from Around the World. I live off the gasp that goes through the seventh graders when I introduce Uglies by saying, “Everyone under the age of 16 is ugly,” and then pause before mentioning it as the premise of the book. (Okay, that one might work on camera.)

What I need are middle-grade or young adult books — newish, but not more recent than early spring 2008. I’ll need to have read it, of course, and have liked it. It needs to be pretty clean — no Nick & Norah. You suggest a good hook to get the talk going, and I’ll fill in the rest. It can be your own book, a friend’s book, or simply a favorite book. The reward? You may see it on YouTube. And hopefully it won’t suck.

Yesterday’s booktalking session went well. Fast. Definitely fast. When it was over I realized that I’d talked about ten titles in about thirty minutes. I added a book when I got there, Vizzini’s It’s Kind of a Funny Story, because I happened to see it on the shelf. It’s good that I did, because otherwise I would be plagued today by the knowledge that I did nine books instead of ten. I’m very attached to things in tens — or sometimes fives — but never nines. Nine. Yikes. Gives me the shivers just thinking about it.

Come to think of it, this tiny obsession with the fives times table is one component of my general tardiness. I leave for work about twenty minutes before I’m on the schedule, but on a bad red-light day, I’m more like twenty-two minutes away. But I can’t think in an odd number like twenty-two. The only other choice would be to think of my work as twenty-five minutes away, and then that feels too far. I can’t admit to myself that I spend twenty-five minutes driving to work when there is another branch of the library three minutes away. And because that library is exactly three minutes away, I’d think of it as five minutes and I’d always be two minutes early.

Anyway, back to the topic. I really enjoyed sharing the books with an interested group of high schoolers. I didn’t get a particular feel from them about one title versus another, but it was fun talking to kids who really cared about reading.

Yesterday I said that it freaked me out a bit when the librarian mentioned that several of the book group members were Mormons. I want to explain a bit. You see, I don’t work for a conservative county, but it is a very careful one. I’ve found that mentality slipping into my own suggestions, or at least making me very conscious of the “issues” in a book — a concern that came to the forefront when the librarian specifically mentioned religion.

I remember going to a teen booktalking class with a well-known presenter and being very impressed by the books that she was sharing. Someone asked, with humor, how she could get away with talking about some of these controversial books in schools. Basically, her answer was that she didn’t ask if she could, she just did it. In this era of lawsuits and challenges, it seemed so... brave. What do you think?

This afternoon I’m going to talk to a high school book group about some newish titles. I don’t want to go too new, because I suspect that the high schools here are even farther behind on ordering than the public library. The talk will be much more casual than when I went to the middle school last week because it’s a much smaller group. The librarian said I can pretty much suggest anything, but then she mentioned that a lot of the book group’s members were Mormons.

I feel like that Seinfeld episode where his agent told Jerry that his airline pilot was in the audience and not to freak out. So while it wouldn’t have mattered, now that he’s heard that statement, he freaks out and freezes on stage.

Some of the books I was bringing may or do have some sex and other high school issues. The librarian reassured me that I can bring any books, but I’m feeling more self-conscious about it now. Also, since it’s a new school year, she doesn’t know who will be in the group for certain — leaving it wide open for age, gender, religion, and interests — or how many teens will even be there.

I’m bringing a bunch of books, and I’m just keeping it real. I’ll mention:

• Just In Case, by Meg Rosoff
  
• Beige, by Cecil Castellucci
  
• The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl, by Barry Lyga
  
• The Wizard, the Witch, and Two Girls from Jersey, by Lisa Papademetriou
  
• An Abundance of Katherines, by John Green (Hah! Author’s response to my “interview”!)
  
• Evolution, Me and Other Freaks of Nature, by Robin Brande
  
• Rules of Survival, by Nancy Werlin (Huh, I didn’t review this? Weird.)
  
• The White Darkness, by Geraldine McCaughrean (This either.)
  
• Girl at Sea, by Maureen Johnston (I didn’t review this, but I just finished it last night.)
  

If it all goes well and I don’t choke on my tongue or curse unnecessarily, the librarian may have me back to talk to this group again — or even better, to larger groups in the high school. So, here’s a toast to me not freaking out today.

So, how did my booktalking session go? It went fine, thank you for asking. I didn’t bring my A-game — I have to admit that right now — but I did well. I had planned on talking about all these great new books that are out there, but I didn’t have the time or energy to prepare new talks. I went with reliable hits from the past couple of years, with a smattering of newish titles. My other motivation in using previously owned booktalks — other than not having to find new things to say — was to promote books that would already be in their school library. My public library is pretty far behind in getting new books, but the school library is way behind.

The kids were generally good and reasonably attentive. One session we ended early because the scheduling was off, and the kids came up to look at the books and ask questions. I’ve always talked right up until the end, but I think I’ll try ending a little early next time and see if the same thing happens. It’s always been overwhelming to think about giving the teens any free time at the end, because there are seventy of them in the lecture hall, and we can’t handle all of them at the front of the room. But now I think that only a few would probably come up, so it may be worth a shot.

Plus the teachers make them applaud if you end early.

I don’t feel like doing the links, but these are some of the titles — literally, the titles and just the titles — I shared:

Happy Kid, The White Darkness, Wild Man Island, Rash, Sarah’s Ground, Leap Day, The Puppet Wrangler, Sister Slam, The Diary of Ma Yan, Keeper, Beware Princess Elizabeth, Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love, Pick Me Up, Squire’s Tale, Twilight, Dreadlocks, and Crossing the Wire

I was pretty wiped out today. I had plans for a take-charge kind of day, and it ended up more like a sweatpants kind of day. Some loose ends were tied up, including a gift for a special person, and some reading was accomplished, mostly outside. Oh, and I cut down a tree. A big, dead tree. Technically, I’m not sure if I can say that I cut it down, since mostly I chopped at the roots and then rocked it, and then pushed it really, really hard. There was a scary moment when I realized that I should probably have done this job with another person, but those are the times that build character. Or so they say. Anyway, the dead tree is down and I was ultimately responsible and it felt good. Like manly good, but for, you know, a woman.

I’m booktalking today to middle schoolers, and thought that I would share with you an article of my hints that was originally in The Edge of the Forest. (Check out the original article for an abbreviated sample booktalking session.)

---

If you were to ask a librarian whether she would prefer to talk about books to a room full of seventh graders or walk into a cage with some tigers, there would be a short pause. Then the inevitable question: “How many... tigers?”

It’s not that you think that the students are judging you. You know they’re judging you. The very thought transports you back to middle school when some boy pulled up your skirt in the school play and everyone called you Susie Underpants for the rest of your school career. Or maybe that was a Friends episode.

In any case, you do not need to be afraid. You will probably be judged, but it will be less frightening than you thought. They’ll laugh if you mention that the book Plastic Man made your car smell like rubber, but they will then move their mental attention to the topic of whether Madison really kissed Tom after the game and will Evan pound Tom or instead make a move on Annie? Important stuff.

I have not been booktalking at middle school for long, but I can share what I have learned to make your experience successful. Or perhaps convince you to give it a try.

1. Dress Down
   
   While it would be unwise to wear layered tanks and pants with “JUICY” across the butt, it would also be unwise to dress in a tailored suit with a flowered pin. While not drawing attention to your clothes, you want to look like a person who enjoys young adult books. Actually, you want to look like the kind of person who wouldn’t use the phrase “young adult books.” Start with the assumption of flat-front khakis, black V-neck T-shirt, and decent black shoes as the perfect outfit and work from that point.
   


2. Work the Crowd
   
   Comedians and rock stars have a warm-up act to get the audience ready for the show. You just have... well, you. If you are in an auditorium where kids are filing in, try to make a little conversation. I’ve asked kids about the shirts they made for a school project. I’ve asked if they’ve seen the latest hot movie. I’ve said hello to kids I’ve seen at the library. I’ve encouraged them to move closer to the front. All of this gives the kids a chance to warm up to me a bit. If I were coming into a class, I might not have this same chance. But I might start my booktalks with one that asked a question of the class, or ask about any projects displayed in the classroom.
   


3. Identify the Problem Spots
   
   Walking around also pinpoints the kids who might mouth off. I’ve subtly asked teachers if a kid will be a problem, and they’ve sat with him. I had one kid try to shock me by telling me that when he played soccer he would get hit in the balls. I said, “Wow, you must not be very good.” Snap. Then during my booktalk, I asked that kid to explain to the group how mummies are made, using his need to be noticed for good.
   


4. Quick Introduction
   
   I usually go to the middle school at the beginning and the end of the school year. I introduce myself, and talk about the library services for teenagers or the summer reading program. I do this quickly, walking the front of the stage and making lots of eye contact. If I see talkers, I give them a little extra eye contact.
   


5. Beg for Tolerance
   
   After my quick intro, I take a long pause. Then I say, “Talking in front of all of you guys is not the easiest thing librarians do. I hope that you’ll pay attention and hear about some great books. But if you can’t listen, just please don’t talk. It’s very distracting, and makes it harder for me to keep it interesting for you. Thanks.”
   


6. Jump Right In
   
   Lead off strong with your clearest winner. Mix up your booktalks with types of books and types of talks. I usually do one book where I ask the teens a question. Then maybe I do a straightforward booktalk. Then maybe one with a little gimmick. Then maybe I read from a book. Keep it moving and keep it fresh.
   


7. Show No Fear
   
   After my little “No Talking” speech, I can usually keep things quiet with steady eye contact on the talkers. If that doesn’t work, I walk near that person and talk directly to them until they get the point. My last strategy involves a completely innocent tone. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did you have something to say about the book? No. Then do you mind if I finish sharing it with the class? Thanks.” Then I move right on. Only once has someone responded with, “This is boring.” I responded, “Yeah, I can see how you would rather be writing a report. I’m sure your teacher could arrange that if you prefer.” “Nah, I’m okay,” I heard next.
   


8. Drink Water
   
   If you’re talking a lot, you’ll get thirsty. Enough said.
   


9. Bring Your Best Game
   
   Full booktalking days generally give me a headache. I take Advil before I even leave home. Do what you need to do to keep your energy up.
   


10. Time Your Closing
    
    When the bell rings, those kids are gone. I’ve learned to time some of my booktalks for right at the end. Know what time you’re got and actually work with it. This is my favorite ending booktalk: “You’ve all heard of book banning, right? Generally, it’s the content of the book that is in question. But this is the first time I’ve ever heard of a movement to have a book banned based entirely on the title. [Tell about the story.] Now, do you want to know what is this title that is so destructive to today’s kids? [Here’s the reveal of the book.] Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love.” As the kids go wild about me saying the word “sex” in school — if I timed it just right — the bell rings.

You have the tools, you have the knowledge, and you have the love of books. You can do it. Go out there and face down the tigers. I mean teens.