Today was a great day for conversations with the littlest tots at the Children’s desk. For instance, a red-hatted little boy, age 3, came up to me with a very serious face, his caregiver nearby, choosing books. And we had this conversation:

“I like numbers,” he announced. (Our Children’s desk has illustrated numbers, one to ten, right at his eye level.)

“Me too!” I said. “Which is your favorite number?”

With no hesitation, the very serious reply came, “My favorite number is five.”

“Five is a great number! Do you want to count to five together?” He nodded. So we counted out loud, one, two, three, four, five, then he walked away to join his caregiver. 

A few minutes later, my number-five-loving friend was back. “I like nine too.” 

“That’s awesome!”

Non sequitor: “Can I sign up for the computer?”

“Sure,” I said, “What’s your name?”

He stood silent, just looking at me. His caregiver came around, and was surprised to see her young charge, signing up for the computer, all by himself. She watched him watching me. “Tell the librarian your name!” she urged.

“Nine.”

“Your name is Nine?” 

“Yes.” Again, a solemn nod, but there was a not-quite-sure look in the eye.

“Okay,” I said, and I started to write down “Nine,” but the caretaker urged again. “Tell her your name. Your name is not Nine, is it?”

I smiled encouragingly at him, waiting to see what number he might come up next. But he surprised me.

“Santa.”

“Your name is Santa?” I asked.

“Your name is Santa?!?” asked his caregiver, amused yet really wanting him to give his name.

Solemnly, Santa nodded. “Yes, my name is Santa.” 

“Are you really Santa?” I asked him, my eyes wide.

“Yes,” he was sure he is Santa. 

“Do you really like giving gifts to people?” I asked.

“Yes, especially the number five, and the number nine,” Santa answered.

And so there you have it, folks. Santa is about three years old, and he loves giving numbers as gifts. And he visited the library and signed up for the toddler computers at 12:30 pm today. For proof see the photo I took of the computer sign-up sheet below!

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[PS – You can see where I erased, “Nine.” :-) ]

That’s what it says in my new 5 year old library friend’s notebook — which she ran to get from her mom to show me after we bonded over Elephant and Piggie books.

Heart melting.

I like to read

Needless to say, I had to meet this mom (which is how I got permission to take this picture.) She was, like her daughter, a pleasure to speak with. And now we may have another attendee for our programs! To quote my new friend from the photo above: <3 <3 <3

 

A little girl came in, looking for computer time at the AWE computers, just now. In her hand was the biggest, shiniest red lollipop. “It’s hollow!” she told me, cheerfully. I asked her if she’d like to see a book about another girl who had a big red lollipop. Big-eyed, she nodded and her caregiver beamed. We walked over to the “Kh” section in picture books. When I handed  her Big Red Lollipop by Rukhsana Khan, illustrated by Sophie Blackall, her eyes got even bigger and her smile wider.

This is the type of moment that makes my day.

lollipopcover

Though the holiday of Thanksgiving is over for this year, my “Happy Thanks Reading” display in the Children’s section of my library is still up. And I’m finding it’s one I wish to share, as I spent a lot of time thinking over the words that accompany the display. They are simple words, but it took a long time to try to encompass everything I meant by the coined phrase. Below I’ve put up several images of the words, as well as images of the display itself, which consists of blank book templates which children (and other visitors) are invited to fill out with the book titles and authors for which they are thankful. Thank the universe for books!

thanksreading-whole

Today, on an unseasonably warm Thursday late afternoon, we celebrated Diwali (belatedly) at the library by making Rangoli (designs) right outside the library, in a courtyard near the Children’s Entrance. Children (and their grown-ups) enjoyed making Rangoli by using sidewalk chalk to outline designs and drawings, and then filled up the spaces with colored sand, to make the colors really pop! They seemed to love that sensory 1, 2 experience, of the difference in feel of the chalk and the sand, and some did color mixing exploration as well.

One young entrepreneur, having mixed some of each color of sand into what he termed Rainbow Sand, tried hawking it at 10 dollars a bowl, but eventually the price was lowered to half a dollar and then just given away, as he discovered the nature of supply and demand. A true New York experience!

While the kids learned just a bit about the nature of Diwali and what the Rangoli signified, and were given sample pictures of Rangoli to look at for inspiration, this was more of a process-oriented creative program rather than an end-goal oriented one. And this showed in how and what the kids made: these were modern interpretations of the ancient art of Rangoli, besides the more traditional designs of peacocks, geometric flowers and lamps, kids created a pokeball, a dinosaur, a kid playing baseball, a rainbow and some freeform abstract art.unnamed-2dsc_0135 dsc_0128

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Book: Carry on by Rainbow Rowell
Genre(s): Fantasy, Alternative Reality
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Publication date: 2015
Hardcover: 528 pages

 

I hardly needed inspiration from the title. This book was one that I could not Stop carrying on reading, till I breathlessly reached the end, and looked up, blurry and bemused, wondering what all might have transpired around me for the 3 days it had me in its magical thrall. Did Rainbow Rowell cast a spell on me via the written word, as Baz or Penny might have through speech?

 
Lest I get too cloying with my enthusiasm, let me proceed in a different vein. This book, to me, was everything I wanted the later Harry Potter books (and Lev Grossman’s The Magician) to be but weren’t– a YA book that allowed the reader to fall into a magical yet real world with real complexities and problems, with shades of grey that were real but neither debilitatingly nihilistic (Lev Grossman) nor facilely annoying with its “chosen one” ideology (JK Rowling’s later Harry Potters). I am talking in generalities here because I don’t wish to write down spoilers, although this is a book wherein, if you have already read Fangirl by Rowell, there are inherent spoilers that are already in the back of your head. Don’t get me wrong; there are plenty of faults with this book too — the main one being the overly hit-you-on-your-head descriptive romantic and physical tension between the main characters. Another one being, why oh why does it seem to be fashionable for well-known white authors to write in an Indian (east) character into their book and call it a day in terms of diversity? Are we the flavor of the year? Did Aziz and Mindy make us cool and likeable? Does inserting Indians (who I would argue have much more inherent privilege than many other ethnic groups) satisfy that itch for color? I would really like to sit down with Rainbow Rowell, Rebecca Stead, and E. Lockhart, all authors whose books I love, and yet make me want to tear out hairs from my head in frustration at times, to figure this out, and to give them some guidance: If they insist on writing Indian characters, please Do. The. Research. Like for example, Rebecca, don’t give an Indian family the uber-Gujarati (એકદમ સખડ Gujarati?) last name Patel, and then insist on having the parents follow the custom of Karva Chauth, which is Not a Gujarati Custom. And also, if you are going to gratuitously give a Hindu-observant family’s children French names, PLEASE explain why so your Gujarati Hindu readers don’t drive themselves cross-eyed wondering what was going through your mind. But I digress. And anyway, Rainbow was too smart for me, heading off my would-be criticism, by having Penelope (the Indian-British character in Carry on) herself dare Simon to challenge her on why she shouldn’t have an Indian name. BUT. I digress!

 
Regardless of my rant above, all in all, this is one book that I simply could not, for the life of me, put down. And lately, that’s saying a lot, as even with my favorite books, I seem to (of late) belie my own self-given nickname by being reluctant to pick them up and only too ready to lay them down for any and every distraction. All this blustering is to say, I think many people will enjoy this book. Who, you ask? Who exactly do I think will enjoy it? Well, I will lay it out for you in the next section of this post which is not so much a review as it is a stream of thoughts about this book, in (perhaps) an effort to exorcise its effects from my clouded brain, so that I can get on with my day and with my week. Here goes.

 

To whom will this appeal?~ 
Carry on will appeal to fans of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, Robin McKinley’s Shadows, and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. It will also appeal to those looking for books with boy on boy sexual tension, for books written about magic and good and evil in a nondidactic white and black kind of way, for books about love between friends, between family, for books which have amazing vampire characters that don’t make you want to throw up. It will appeal to readers of the usual famously successful white authors of smart books for teens (John Green, Scott Westerfeld, E. Lockhart, David Levithan, etc). (Yeah, I wish it was not just white authors who got this kind of attention, but I’m just calling a spade a spade at the moment.)

 
Mostly, it is funny and insightful in a way that adults will enjoy, but it is definitely a YA book, with teen characters whom (I believe) teens will be able to identify with, and through whom teens will be able to enjoy vicarious magic and love.

 

Recently at work, our BookMatch committee was asked, “What was your favorite book of 2015?” I loved being asked this question in a work setting, as it motivated me to actually decide on some favorites (I quickly decided there had to be more than one!) Below you will find my list of faves, out of books that were published in 2015. What are yours? Click here to post it to a google form. which I will then report out in a blog post later this week! My only request is that they be books that were published in 2015.

Here are some of my favorite reads, in four different categories:

Picture books:

The Bus Is For Us by Michael Rosen

Bright Sky, Starry City by Uma Krishnaswami

Children’s Fiction:

Blackbird Fly by Erin Entrada Kelly

The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead

Young Adult:

Symphony for the City of the Dead by M. T. Anderson

Adults:

Why not me? by Mindy Kaling

Music for Wartime by Rebecca Makkai

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Recently, I had the honor of being asked for my thoughts on the We Need Diverse Books campaign and on related topics. The askers, Estelle and Magan, from the Rather Be Reading blog, were conducting an ongoing series of posts devoted to diversity, called Dive into Diversity, and as part of this, they decided to interview several librarians for their ideas and opinions about WNDB. I thank them for their astute questions which encouraged me to delve more closely into my thoughts about the need for books about diverse characters, especially for those written by authors who represent that same diversity. Below I have copied my portion of Estelle’s post as featured in their blog:

SAY HI TO A FEW LIBRARIANS | DIVE INTO DIVERSITY

Bookish has been a librarian for 8 years. She has previously worked in college admissions and as a middle school teacher.@bookish & her blog.

On what’s changed since the WNDB campaign became “mainstream”: When I first got into librarianship, if I brought up the need for diversity in YA or kidlit, I’d get uncomfortable silences on listservs and in conversations. Only a few brave souls would answer. There was a deafening silence from the rest. Now that the WNDB campaign is more “mainstream,” many more people are willing to at least listen to the need for diversity.

Diversity in books doesn't just mean slapping a POC into a book. Diversity also means fostering books BY writers of color FOR readers of color. That part of the message is at times missed. It is not enough to give lip service to the idea of diversity. It is important to actually think about why this need is there, and to fulfill the spirit of the need.

(Diverse) books and authors you’ve been recommendingGrace Lin, Zetta Elliott, Jacqueline Woodson, Neesha Meminger, Yuyi Morales, Uma Krishnaswami, Mitali Perkins, Janine Macbeth, Misako Rocks, books published by Lee & Low press, Corduroy, the list goes on and on and on!

Patrons and their quest for change: Young parents of color…are keenly aware that they didn’t get to see themselves accurately and genuinely reflected in books as they were growing up, but that they want their kids to have this important connection to literature, in a visceral way. This generation of parents of color are already clamoring for books that represent their lives, their realities, so that they can share these with their children.

On what needs to happen next: …this push for diversity is mistaken as needing to be fulfilled by getting already well-known mainstream white writers to write diverse characters into their books. Don’t get me wrong; this trend is definitely a step in the right direction, for the most part. But what would be WAY more heartening is to see publishers taking chances on a LARGE number of first-time writers of color, to allow the diverse stories to be told through diverse authorial voices.

Note: The original blog post in which the above appears is called Say Hi To a Few Librarians: Dive into Diversity. I also encourage you to check out the rest of their Dive into Diversity challenge, which went from January through December of 2015, and which provides lots of great food for thought as we close out 2015. I also want to give a shout out to Emma at Miss Print, for introducing me via the interwebs to Estelle! :)

This evening, a father came by the children’s desk, just to reminisce and to thank the library. He indicated a group of children and said, “It makes me so happy to see children at the library, using the library.” Needless to say, this made me happy. And so it goes.

This evening whilst working the late shift at the Children’s Desk, a young father came and asked me for what I first heard as the Aqua Kid (a book for kids, he said it was). After we established that I initially misheard him, and that what he actually said was Awkward Kid, I looked it up, to no avail. “Hmm,” we both thought. Upon seeing the one record that I did find, called simply Awkward, he said no, that was not it, but, you know, he could say for sure that the word “kid” was definitely in the title, and the other word was something like awkward, but maybe a similar word, not necessarily awkward? And that it’s a very popular series?

That was it. I snapped my fingers and asked, “Is it Diary of a Wimpy Kid” that you are looking for? Yes, he cried, and we shared a good laugh. Unfortunately all the Wimpy Kid books were checked out at the moment, but I was able to show him one of the books in the Big Nate series, which he happily took to read out loud to his daughter.

Next time I hope he lets me put Wimpy Kid (aka Awkward Kid) on hold for his daughter!

 

Awkwardness abounds in the Wimpy Kid series
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