Two Great Adult Reads

One of the things keeping me busy these days is a course I’m taking on South Asia. (India, Pakistan & Bangladesh). It’s not a typical course in that it is not taught by a professor. Instead we are following the collaborative learning model. Led by a coordinator, a group of people who are interested in a particular subject agree to study and report on various aspects of that subject. For this particular course, we are also reading novels and viewing films about the countries of South Asia besides doing the research for our presentations to the class. The experience is further enriched by guest speakers who are native to the area, one a college professor and two others who are writers.

I’ve been enjoying the reading so much that I wanted to share two of the books with you. The first takes place in modern day India and tells the story of the interwoven lives of a wealthy Parsi widow and her Hindu maid. Their common experiences as women in unhappy, even abusive marriages, their care and support for each other over the years, and their sincere love for each other’s children cannot in the end overcome caste/class and prejudice. It’s one great story with the added bonus of providing insight into the complicated social system of India today. The Space Between Us by Thrity N. Umrigar.

The other book I recommend is A Golden Age by Tahmina Anam. This is the story of the Bangladesh war for independence from Pakistan in 1971-72. It centers around a young Muslim widow, Rehana, trying to protect her 17 year old daughter and 19 year old son, both swept up in the rebellion. Beautifully written, the novel describes Rehana’s secure life suddenly thrust into chaos and her slowly evolving acceptance of the risks and sacrifices required to save her loved ones and redeem herself. This emotional story has a lasting impact.

If you want a satisfying read and you’re in the mood to learn about an exotic culture, you can’t go wrong with either of these books.

The Sibert and Me

I came to the enjoyment of informational books in my adulthood. I was very much a typical ‘girl reader’ as a youngster ….. fiction, fiction and more fiction. I loved reading and I loved stories. But as I look back at my childhood and adolescence I find the seeds of my interest in nonfiction. I envied the chemistry set my brother got one Christmas and played with it more than he did. That interest followed me through high school and into college where I considered chemistry as a major before settling on Latin and ancient history, two other favorite subjects in high school. I was fascinated by the ancients and their ‘dead’ language and planned to share this fascination in the classroom. But by the time I graduated, Latin teaching jobs were disappearing.

My interest in becoming a librarian grew from my experiences as a substitute teacher in public and private schools wherever we lived during my husband’s Navy days. After his service concluded and we were settled in a community where we expected to stay, I got my first job as an elementary school librarian. I was inexperienced and just beginning to work on my library masters degree, but I got that job because my academic background meshed with the focus of the district’s gifted program. To serve the needs of my students and of the curriculum, I began to read more and more children's nonfiction and as I did, my interest in adult nonfiction increased. My adult reading expanded to include biography and American history, and the reading interests of my students led me to read books about other subjects I never expected to enjoy. The result is that my reading choices in both adult and children's books are eclectic.

Thus, first among my reasons for wanting to serve on the Sibert committee is that I enjoy reading informational books, and I especially enjoy the variety of ways today’s authors employ to convey information. Second, I believe I have the expertise to be an effective member of the committee and the temperament to work cordially with others without surrendering my responsibility to champion a book I believe in. Next, I have the time. While I am a very busy retired librarian, I have the luxury of allocating my time as I wish and committee work would be a priority. Lastly, I think it would be fun to meet and work with colleagues from other parts of the country with different professional experiences.

It may not be easy to understand why someone who already reads a lot would want to take on the task of reading so many extra books next year, but I hope I have explained myself well enough that you will consider voting for me and telling your colleagues about me and this blog. I’d be happy to respond to your comments or answer the questions you may post. Thanks for visiting.

Sibert Committee

With the ALA elections opening within the week, it’s time for me to tell you why I’m interested in serving on the 2011 Sibert Committee. That’s the group which chooses the most distinguished informational books for children published in a given year. I hope that those of you who are ALSC members will consider voting for me.
My credentials are pretty typical … a lifetime of service to children, mostly in school but also in public libraries. In addition I worked as a school collection development specialist for Baker & Taylor, creating collection lists for new elementary, middle and high school libraries in all parts of the country.
During the course of my career the importance of informational books for children steadily grew. This growth began with the whole language reading movement (remember that?) which used materials from the library collection to extend and enhance learning in the classroom. Because of such demand, more and better nonfiction titles and nonfiction series were published making it particularly challenging to spend a limited library budget. Supporting the curriculum on a budget was not the only reason I needed to become a discriminating children's nonfiction buyer. Equally important was satisfying the needs of the students who didn’t like to read fiction without compromising quality. Those kids were constantly on the look out for books on bugs and snakes, dinosaurs and sharks, monster trucks and bats, jokes and riddles, UFOs and vampires, sports and crafts etc. Thankfully my professional career spanned a time when it became easier to find nonfiction that combined accurate content, exciting writing, stunning illustrations/pictures and helpful glossaries and indexes. Today there are so many wonderful nonfiction books published each year that it is a daunting task to choose the Sibert award winner and honor books. Now that I’ve told you why I think I’m qualified to be a member of the Sibert Committee, I leave for my next entry the reasons why I want to be a member.

Home Again

For the second time in less than 2 weeks I found myself using my map skills as I looked out the plane window and tried to determine which state we were crossing. After a much too quick visit to Baton Rouge where we enjoyed Mardi Gras, a tour of LSU where our daughter teaches and way too much cajun and creole food, we spent a few days visiting friends in Dallas and then winged our way home. It was hardly warm in those southern states but we did have a few days in the 70's ... much appreciated when we hit the 24 degrees and 8 inches of snow outside the airport here!

But back to maps. I love them. There's something about matching what I see on the ground with the memory of the maps I study that really appeals to me. I'm pretty sure we crossed directly over the Chesapeake Bay, the Delmarva peninsula (which we used to drive on trips home from Norfolk in our Navy days) and then over the Delaware Bay with a great view of Cape May, NJ. We flew straight up through the heart of New Jersey and I spotted NYC off in the distance to the east. It was a quick half hour up the Connecticut coast and inland along Narragansett Bay to our destination. I've been able to identify beaches and bridges and lighthouses ect. for many years now but the bird's eye view is still a delight. And sometimes the trip is even more wonder full. On the last leg of our earlier trip we flew from Philadelphia to RI just after sunset. It was a clear night with a full moon rising over the Atlantic. Absolutely spectacular! Every body of water and there are many in this little state, reflected the moon's light in flashes of silver. The string of lights from bridges and rotating lights from lighthouses dotting the shoreline added there own special effect. As often as I have made the trip over the bay before, nothing can compare to this one.

Kids Who Don't Like to Read

I had a break through of sorts on our visit to our grandkids in London. My oldest grandson(7),a reluctant reader(to use an out of fashion term), read one of his reading books to his 3 year old adoring brother and he actually enjoyed it! As I listened to his effort, I was reminded of the many children, mostly boys but some girls too, whom I tried to help through their learning-to-read days. We librarians know the secret to growing readers .... find the books they want to read. But just because we know the secret doesn't mean it's easy. Believe me, I've had some hard nuts to crack so to speak, and I certainly wasn't successful in every case. Those of us who didn't struggle to read probably can't even remember how we learned to read, so somehow we think it shouldn't take as long as it actually does to reach fluency. As in all things, success begets success and those children who start out slowly (I'm not talking about the kids with learning problems here)can get discouraged pretty quickly. There's no way they get better at reading if they don't practice reading. That's where we librarians come in. The first step is to find out their interests. My grandson loves all things Star Wars so I had bought him a few of the DK beginning reader books about the subject. We spent a fun half hour making a list of the books he wanted from the titles on the back of those books. We ended up with 32 titles! Intermingled with the expected space adventure type books are a few surprising ones .... Born to be a butterfly; I can swim!; A trip to the theater. But are they surprising for a boy whose other Grandma raises butterflies, whose aunt and uncle are actors and who loves boogie boarding? Now my job is to bundle up some of these books and send them off to London. I'm going to start with the easier reading level titles in the hopes he will read to his brother again. And I'll be sure to have a number of other titles from his list scattered around the house when he is here in April. I'm hoping he'll become a reader before he knows it.

Travel

We’ve been in London this last week and it may be for the last time. Strange to think of it that way. My son and his family have been living here for five years so we’ve visited often. Two summers ago I came and stayed for 6 weeks to help out when our third grandchild was born. London feels very much like a second home to us. But this summer the kids will be moving back to the US and we’ll have no more reason to make the trek. Of all the experiences you gain when you become a parent, sharing your children’s adult lives is not the one you think much about or even expect. When we married, we ventured a state or two away from home. Not so our children’s generation. And the upshot is that not only has their world expanded but so has ours. When we return to RI next week, we’ll be anticipating a visit with our daughter and her husband in Baton Rouge. They moved south last July and this will be our first trip there. I expect it’s quite different from New England or London. My husband and I both look forward to discovering another place we never could have anticipated would be a significant part of our lives.

By the way, last Monday London ‘enjoyed’ the biggest snowstorm they’ve had in 18 years…. 6 inches. The kids had two snow days and made a snowman on the patio. Yesterday (Thursday) the snow was gone and we’re back to the usual rain.

And the winner is......

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman wasn’t even on our Mock Newbery radar. I think the main reason was that we thought of Mr. Gaiman as a Brit and therefore ineligible, but now that he is a US resident his eligibility status has obviously changed. I did read his book and enjoyed it quite a bit and there is no doubt that children will love it. (Guess it’s been on the best seller list for some time.) I especially liked the humor and the characterizations of the all too ‘human’ ghosts in the graveyard. I’m just not sure it’s “the most distinguished contribution to children’s literature” this year. It is a coming of age story like no other and be warned ….the opening scene is pretty scary stuff, not for the sensitive child prone to nightmares.

As for the Honor books, we didn’t read After Tupac and D. Foster (Woodson) or The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom (Engle). I can only imagine how many books Newbery committee members read ….. many, many more than our mock committee did. We did read Savvy (Law) and The Underneath (Appelt). While Savvy was discussed, there wasn’t much enthusiasm for it in our group. I think the magical realism aspect of the story was off-putting to some but there is much to admire about it. Character, setting and voice ring true and are memorable, and the idea that everyone has his/her own special savvy to be cherished and shared wisely may set a young reader on a journey of self-awareness. The Underneath is an entirely different matter. All of us found the plot to be difficult … both confusing and very dark. It is true the language is lyrical, the characters engaging and the setting a palpable presence. These are the novel’s strong points and strong they are. But the story is hard to follow as it jumps through time and space and the cruelty of several characters will be (or should be) disturbing. Yes, it all turns out well in the end but I wonder how many young readers will get that far. One of the biggest problems in my opinion is the adorable cover art by David Small. Many teachers and parents will think the book is a sweet animal story ….not!

So, the only title that I mentioned before which showed up on the winners list is Waiting for Normal (Connor). It is the middle school Schneider Family Book Award winner for books that embody the artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences. This and the other books mentioned in my previous blog about the Newbery I recommend without reservation.