Shelf Space - Friday, October 17, 2008

Shelf Space
Booksellers and Librarians talk about what's in their reading room and what's on the horizon.

Friday, October 17, 2008

You know you are in a literary city when the taxi driver starts waxing poetic as he drives past the public library. There aren't many cities where libraries inspire such passion, but Seattle is one of them.

I recently spent a weekend in Seattle, and when I visit the Emerald City, I always stay at the hotel right across the street from the new Central Library because there is something wonderful about looking out of my window at night, through the glass facade of the library building and into the quiet stacks of books.

Seattle's Central Library has its share of detractors, to be sure. A year ago, when I visited the library for the second time, they were replacing the flooring in one section because it had already worn out. (While the expense and hassle was probably a distraction for the staff, can you think of a more wonderful problem for a library to have? Too many visitors!)

If you aren't familiar with the Seattle Main Library, you should know that it is an architectural marvel--all glass on the outside and bright colors and big spaces on the inside. The books are shelved on a single continuous spiral, which allows a patron to walk through many floors of books without ever resorting a staircase or elevator. That's a grand idea, though I found constantly walking up and down the slope to be a bit tiresome when I spent an afternoon doing research.

Still, what I admire about the facility and Rem Koolhaas's design is that it attempts to reinvent every part of the library. The architect and the planning committee threw caution to the wind and aimed to build something extraordinary. If they didn't always succeed with the details, they did succeed in building a monument to books that is a real object of adoration in the community. I've sat on enough government committees to know that taking any risk at all is rare for an organization like a library or city government. At the Seattle Central Library, it's hard to find a single aspect of the facility that was a safe choice. I am amazed at the risks they took.

Like many book lovers, I worry about how book culture is going to remain strong in the face of so much digital competition. The Seattle Central Library shows us that we need the audacity of hope and that courage matters. When the taxicab driver is proud of his library, I feel reassured that books still have a place in our culture.

[With apologies to the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates for borrowing from the titles of their books.]

Photo credit: Seattle Public Library

Posted by: Scott Brown

Libraries

posted on Friday, October 17, 2008 4:49:08 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [1]

Friday, October 10, 2008

A Battle of Hearts and Minds

One summer evening, two young girls ran into my bookstore and thundered up the stairs. Pretty soon they began calling out dates. “1887,” cried one. “1876,” the other replied. I soon realized that they were playing a game—looking for the oldest book in the store. Now having two ten-year olds pulling fragile volumes off the shelves to check their dates is not my idea of a good Friday night. But I resisted the temptation to scold them (or their father, who arrived in the shop ten minutes later, coffee in hand). Here, after all, were two kids having fun in an antiquarian bookstore. They were interested in old books and already knew enough to spot nineteenth-century books, which we shelve right alongside modern editions in our literature section.

As I thought about what to do, something Chuck Rozanski wrote came to mind. Rozanski started out thirty-five years ago living in his car with his inventory of comic books. Today, his company, Mile High Comics, is the biggest dealer in comics in the world. Like book lovers, comics fans worry about the future of their hobby. Sales of comic books have declined and comic-book stores have closed perhaps even faster than bookstores. What I admire in Rozanski is his belief that the situation is not inevitable. He recently put the challenge to comics fans everywhere:

I would ask you to consider what you are personally doing to try to save the comics world. I realize that there is not a single one of us who can have any measure of a significant impact solving this kind of dilemma alone, but I do fervently believe that great numbers of people working toward a common goal can create an astonishing level of positive change. To be a bit more specific, I would ask what kind of outreach you have done of late to try to bring new readers into comics?

Change comics to books in the above statement and we have a challenge for every person concerned with the future of the book. Are we going to let the culture of the book dwindle in the face of video games, iPods, and reality TV? Or are we going to do something about it? To use the language of our current politics, are we, as passionate believers in books, going to knuckle-down and implement a book surge, or are we going to raise the white flag of surrender?

I'm not ready to give up, and as the girls’ footsteps thudded above my head, I grabbed the oldest book in the store, a 1563 edition of the ancient physician Galen. I went upstairs and handed it to one of the girls. I showed her how to open an old book carefully. Her eyes grew wide. Her sister leaned in. I showed them the date, written in Roman numerals, and the text printed in Greek. I took them downstairs and let them hold a leaf from the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle, which is the oldest item in the shop. Then it was time for them to go, and they dashed out of the store as fast as they came in, excitedly chattering about holding a piece of paper printed the year Columbus returned from the New World (a concept they only barely grasped, but they knew it was very old).

As the girls left, I wondered if either of them would become passionate readers? Maybe not, but it’s a lot more likely now than if I had shooed them out of the store. The future of the book comes down to a battle of hearts and minds, and in many cases, it's hand-to-hand combat, winning converts a person at a time.

Posted by: Scott Brown

Book Stores | Reading | Used Books

posted on Friday, October 10, 2008 11:20:57 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [3]

Friday, October 03, 2008

We Were Robbed

As the founding editor of Fine Books & Collections magazine, a publication for book collectors, I’ve discovered that writing about book theft is the one sure way to get our readers riled up. In fact, one blogger—Travis McDade—writes exclusively on the subject and another, Philobiblos, covers cases and sentences most every week.

Most thieves strike libraries, purloining valuable books, slicing rare maps from atlases, and slipping signed letters and documents from large archives. E. Forbes Smiley, the high-end map dealer whose name sounded as Upper East Side as the address of the office he kept for a time on Madison Avenue near 75th Street in New York, is probably the most notorious recent thief. You may remember that Smiley was caught at Yale’s Beinecke Library when he dropped an X-acto blade on the floor, and he went to prison for stealing something like 100 rare maps from libraries.

I’ve always understood that libraries walk a fine line between access and security: The more access a library grants, the easier it is to steal from it. That point was hammered home this week when four antique logging photographs were stolen from the bookstore I own. I paid roughly $400 for the pictures, which for us is a significant loss.

I went next door to the jewelry store that is owned by a retired Navy Seal who has an extensive surveillance system that catches the front entrance of my shop. I watched his video of the thief walking in bookstore early in the afternoon and dashing out 24 minutes later. The thief arrived during the lunch hour, when our regular weekday employee was out, and I was covering the store alone. The thief struck me as odd, and I was trying to keep an eye on him. I turned my back at one point and immediately heard a rustling sound. I turned to see him walking out of the building. I crossed the floor to where he had been standing and realized what had happened. By the time I reached the door, he had vanished. The surveillance footage showed the shoplifter dashing outside and into a nearby store. No wonder I couldn’t see him when I went outside to look.

I felt awful for the rest of the day. Telling and retelling the story to the police and the owners of nearby antiques stores, didn’t help. I started to understand how so many merchants end up bitter and suspicious. One nearby shopkeeper told me he lost $15,000 in merchandise during one particularly bad year. Another said he budgeted 8 percent for theft. A third planned 10 percent.

I woke up at 5 a.m. the next morning with a clear head. I have never liked bookstores with locked “rare” book rooms or locked glass cases. They make me feel like I’m distrusted from the moment I walk in. But now I understand the logic behind them, but I don’t agree with it. Something like 10,000 people have walked into my store this year, and only one has stolen anything of note. Does it make sense to spend all my effort deterring the one in 10,000 or serving the 9,999 honest customers?

Libraries face the same question. Like many shopkeepers, a lot of librarians feel under pressure to improve security. But I think we have to be cognizant that many efforts to deter theft also deter legitimate visitors. The safest store or library is one that allows no one inside.

I resolved to stay focused on the honest folks, while keeping in mind that there are people who will steal me blind if given the chance. A stock phrase from twenty-five years ago suddenly had more relevance—Ronald Reagan’s old saw, “Trust but verify.” I never really understood that comment. It always seemed like a contradiction in terms. Now I see that it has everything to do with intentions. I can keep an eye on customers and engage them in conversation because I’m interested in them and what they do in my store. If that allows me to observe or prevent theft, great—as long as I don’t think of them as thieves.

Posted by: Scott Brown

Book Stores | Libraries

posted on Friday, October 03, 2008 10:52:13 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [2]

Monday, September 29, 2008

Pop Culture Memoir

Is it possible to critique (and disparage) the production and consumption of contemporary youth pop culture without sounding like a crank, a grandfatherly gadfly, a curmudgeon, a technophobe dandy fop contenting herself with a blank room and a Victrola, who speaks only from a perspective of just-not-getting-it and the power of a certain age and class? Does it matter—does my crankiness distort my meaning and message? There are sharp distinctions among the owners, the creators, and the consumers. Many teens create their own media and meanings, which are sometimes owned by corporations. I think there is more of a perception of democratic production than a reality. Throughout, my voice will be lamenting, rambling, nostalgic, self-righteous, aged, I know. I come to this as a not-quite-recovered teenager and someone who spends my workday with young people. The dangers of “those kids today” conversations are well documented. Every generation distrusts and despises the one after it, they say; either we are on a treacherous path of cultural deterioration or we are unable to lucidly view youth culture from the distance of our old age. Is there cultural superiority of my—or anyone’s— youth? Does my ownership of time and experience invest the past with unearned personal meaning?

However, my disdain is well-worn attire, not a new pose. I had disdain for ‘90s mainstream culture as a teen, and craved weird subcultural corners. This seemed to me a rebellion against conformist oppressive middle class status. I didn’t realize at the time the oppressions by punks, radicals, indie rockers—that culture jamming was enacted by the sons and daughters of the system, the recipients of all kinds of privilege. Counterculture teens weren’t interested in ending the game—they just wanted to upend it and assert their dominance and superiority of the underclasses. I place myself here, hidden by a black wing and not being smart enough to end the hierarchy but to win the subcultural version.

Through the passage of time, even mainstream culture in its obsolescence adopts a patina of cool (see the obsession with “old school” and “vintage” everything). There’s the shambling clutch of cassette tapes and pay phones and water fountains—these things that have been taken from us. I recently saw Liz Phair play her “Exile in Guyville” show, an objective failure that was really meaningful to me because of how her music sparked feelings of feminism and pale defiance of nose thumbing (no rock in a cop’s face) in my high school years. Is this narcissism? “Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence”? http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html.

Listening to “Exile in Guyville,” reading eBayed Sassy Magazines, watching My So-Called Life—even as I now realize their poor little white girl failings—still resonates adolescently with my eternal internal outsiderness, unrealized ambitions and my ineffable hopefulness about the future. Megan judged people’s worthiness by their shoes and we all judged people by their music taste. Growing up among mostly white middle class suburban Christians, we separated out by stylistic minutiae. Where it wasn’t always safe to proclaim your political beliefs, we asserted them with hair color and safety pins, which carried their own risks. Remember, this was in the late 1990s when students wearing trench coats (the former uniform of the 1950s white collar worker) were suspended for their subversive murderous dress.

I’ve killed my TV and home Internet access and I listen to music mostly on a blue Hello Kitty walkman or record player (hoping this doesn’t sound annoying even though it’s true...) and therefore have a tenuous grasp of what mainstream teens like. It’s weird to be personally uninterested in mainstream culture and yet work a job that requires this knowledge. Countercultural aesthetics that once signified ideals, values, identities, and affiliations have been commodified. We live in shallow vagueness and shadows. How to know what people really mean when irony and gossip rules? David Foster Wallace wrote precisely about the problem with irony: "Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy the cage. This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It’s critical and destructive, a ground-clearing.”

Earnestness, enthusiasm, reverence, and seriousness are obscured by irony, gossip, and the pose of rebellion. I remember in the '90s people took selling out a look more seriously. The Internet has further commodified countercultures. Finding information on Riot Grrrl and buying green nail polish were challenging. Zines were traded like samizdat (perhaps a risky hyperbole) and while the underground was lively, it wasn’t as accessible as it is now, in its weakened state. The democratization of the underground opens up subcultural expression to disadvantaged socioeconomic classes but also to poseurs.

Intersections among politics, interests, affiliations, identities, and aesthetics have faded until they simply reinforce social hierarchy and class superiority. Fashion does not offer many points of resistance in the US. While I fondly remember late ‘80s and early ‘90s music and fashion, this era represents the beginning of the end, when youth counterculture for the first time was sold simultaneous with its production, where the hype became mediated by products and not substance, as Naomi Klein points out. Our postures and styles are now substitutes for meaningful action. We can’t wear our activism or correctly identify our politics with our aesthetics. Everything has been sold.

Posted by: Kati Nolfi

Technology

posted on Monday, September 29, 2008 2:33:57 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [0]

Monday, September 22, 2008

Where is the Library?

It’s election time—time to pretend to care about children and education! Young people are the largest disempowered class in our country and their rights are systematically violated and neglected. Youth issues are feminized and minimized, since women do most of the work caring for and about children. Women’s work is frivolous and sweet and children are cute and certainly none of this is radical or tough or important. “Oh, what about the children?!” cry the folks who really don’t care, who don’t work to end homelessness, hunger, poverty, illiteracy, and the prison industrial complex.

While listening to NPR’s Fresh Air I learned of Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone and started getting irritated. Terry Gross talked of how “good” teachers and schools are insufficient; at the end of the day kids are returning to violent communities that “don’t value education.” How does she know what “they” value and what does it look like to value education? From what I caught of the conversation, there was no discussion of community activism and organizing, of the structural and institutional disadvantages faced by poor people of color, of the historical tragedy of separating children from their families and communities in the interest of uplift and success building—away from the community. The blame and burden are placed on disadvantaged communities, not on a racist and classist capitalist society. And as always there was no discussion of the library’s role in the community and education.

Public library staff know that public libraries are de facto after school programs.
Libraries are hidden. Libraries are inessential. Library budgets are slashed with ease. And yet libraries function as free childcare for many caregivers and a seemingly safe place for kids to go after school. We are the silent babysitters. After school programs are mentioned in education plans with never a nod to the work that libraries are doing already, to the void we must fill because the system fails so many.

People I meet tell me my job sounds “nice and quiet.” They seem to have archaic notions of early 1900s libraries with long tables, dusty tomes, and austere silence. But the truth is that libraries have a loudly beating heart. Library patrons come to us for their divorce papers, swim trunks, tax forms, free satchels (?), fax machine, restroom, batteries, condoms, voter registration, childcare, Safeway application, money, phone calls, help getting their really bad manuscript published, candy, lunch, bus passes, a marriage proposal, resume help, and yes, books and internet access. Some of these are obvious and wonderful and some are ridiculous but it is what it is.

I have a feeling that libraries had a more clear identity in the early days. Now we are a shelter, a recreation and community center, a day care, a coffee shop, a Claire’s Accessories, or a sacred piece of book heaven. We are everywhere and nowhere. Maybe this is because library patrons are not the media creators and our role in culture is therefore vague and undefined, invisible. Doing library work can be a meta mind swirl. You know there are people who need your services. You feel like “library” is a third place and a public good, an integral part of a functioning democracy, an essential institution like a bank or a grocery store. They have money and food. We have ideas. However libraries often appear only in library publications. I think that’s why the Sarah Palin librarian kerfuffle was important to a lot of library workers. For once we were in the news!

Andrew Carnegie—the scamp—believed libraries were an important part of education, that they were a unique place for people to “share cultural opportunities on a basis of equality." Libraries need to be part of the conversation on education. What can we do and why are we here?

"Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries." —Henry David Thoreau

Posted by: Kati Nolfi

Education | Libraries

posted on Monday, September 22, 2008 8:59:07 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [1]

Friday, September 12, 2008

Gossip Girls and Ghetto Girls

Why are so many librarians—advocates of the uncensored right to read anything on all points of view—panic-stricken over teens reading street lit? As Amy Patee wrote in the July 2008 issue of School Library Journal, “There’s no getting around it: urban fiction forces many of us out of our comfort zones—and some librarians worry that by simply offering street lit, they’re endorsing its unsavory actions.” I don’t quite understand this. As librarians we are never endorsing anything that is on our shelves. We are providing free access to myriad ideas through information. Why would street lit be any different?

The moral panic over street lit/urban fiction reminds me of the panic over gangsta rap in the 1990s. Sure, there are critiques and analyses to be made about the harmfulness, context, and value of these media but most commentary seems to come from the perspective of the inherent aspirational goodness of whites and the inherent moral flaws in the black community. And definitely not all, but a lot of the hand wringing and pearl clutching comes from whites ignorant of the black community, white people who are not qualified to moralize on the reading habits of teens. There are also sensible critiques from inside the black community about street fiction being damaging in its literary merit and its moral messages. I can speak only as a (white) young adult librarian who serves a population composed mostly of black teens. We need to select the books they want to read, the books that speak to them and reflect their stories.

Perhaps there is a fear that the messages in art and commerce created by black people will infiltrate white children, as there is a long history of cultural appropriation by whites. With street fiction, young readers are experiencing their lives on the page—which some libraries fail to offer all segments of the population—or they are escaping through literature, reading about experiences they don’t have (don’t we all—street fiction and non-street fiction readers alike—do this? Wasn’t I doing this when I was reading the Beats as a teen? William Burroughs didn’t turn me into a junkie.) Libraries must legitimize and validate all of our patrons’ reading interests and their place in the community with titles they crave.

Why aren’t librarians and parents reacting the same way to white books like Twilight, Gossip Girl, The Clique, The Au Pairs, Pretty Little Liars, and The A-List as they are to street fiction (of course I use the words “white” and “black” very crudely; readers of all genders, races, ethnicities, cultures, sexual expressions, backgrounds, etc. read all kinds of materials—not just the ones marketed to them, the ones with their faces on the cover. And the terms “white” and “black” can refer to the creators and the characters and desired readers of the material.) While there have been criticisms of these books, they are not framed in moral panic terms. Critics minimize the racism, sexism, violence, cruelty, homophobia, materialism, and narcissism in white teen books and indict the black community for urban fiction’s isms and brutality, extrapolating from a genre to generalize about all black people. As if books for white teens aren’t execrable, injurious, and offensive. As if oppressions haven’t been created, sold, reinforced, and expressed by whites. As if black readers lacked critical thinking skills that whites are magically endowed with.

Street lit doesn’t occur in a vacuum. It can be seen as social commentary, strands of hip-hop, 1970s pulp fiction, and gangster and blaxploitation movies, and indie capitalism—many street fiction titles are self published, sold on the street or on the Internet. It is cruel to criticize these books without realizing they are partly a response to the social and economic issues created by white people.

Not only does street lit speak to teens, but it fills the near-void of teen lit with black protagonists. Sure we have Coe Booth, Angela Johnson, Sharon Draper, Sharon Flake, Walter Dean Myers, Jacqueline Woodson, and others writing great non-street fiction with black characters for young people. But most of these authors have been at it for a long time and they are outnumbered by white authors. Young people need to see themselves reflected, especially if we want them to read.

I recommend Megan Honig’s article “Takin’ It to the Street: Teens and Street Lit”
and Margaret Hartmann’s article “Word on the “Street”

This piece was inspired by Latoya Peterson’s wonderful article “Feminism, Race, and Sexist Dating Guides”

“Ghetto Girls” in the title is a reference to the books of the same name by Anthony Whyte.

Posted by: Kati Nolfi

Libraries | Street Lit | Young Adult Books

posted on Friday, September 12, 2008 12:20:35 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [3]

Friday, September 05, 2008

It's Like, Totally Radical!

On a recent trip to my friendly neighborhood anarchist bookstore I bought three books for young people and found a topic to write about. The intersection between my favorite subject areas-radical thought and literature for children and teens-is my rare joy so I was happy to see these three relatively new titles: A Young People's History of the United States adapted by Rebecca Stefoff from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States; As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Stay in Denial by Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan; and Hey, Kidz! Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People by Anne Elizabeth Moore and Megan Kelso.

I am interested in independent booksellers' selections for kids and teens, especially when libraries are clearing away dusty old dandelions in favor of plastic roses. Public library collections may still have some out of print and weird old volumes but they more and more tend to exclude radical and esoteric titles in favor of middling bestsellers. While indie booksellers' selection of politically leftist titles may be better than most public libraries, the titles tend to be more sneakily subversive or liberal than brazenly revolutionary, such as the quite good books on this list:
http://radicalseeksenlightenment.blogspot.com/2008/06/radical-childrens-books-reference-list.html

And why are there so few radical books for young people? And what does it mean that booksellers provide more materials on marginalized topics than the supposed repository of free information on "all points of view on current and historical issues" (according to the Library Bill of Rights)?

So much literature for young people is didactic and moralistic to inculcate values in our malleable and pigtailed- to grow them up right. Depending on our politics we can construe a particular pedagogy as refreshing or poisonous. So even if the reader agrees with the agenda it must be gracefully delivered without being cringeworthy and heavy handed. In one of his earlier books, Herbert Kohl wrote about his students' resistance to attempts to radicalize them. For me, anarchism's inherent anti-authoritarianism is about acknowledging the agency of everyone to come to radicalism without paternalist teachings. Becoming a radical activist or developing any political feeling happens when life experience and education coalesce, usually around young adulthood. In this spirit, I wonder if subtly progressive books like Where the Wild Things Are or Mole Music are more effective than more overt titles like The Little Squatters' Handbook. While I am desperate for more radical titles, I sometimes find that children's literature that instructs counter to the dominant culture is in danger of sermonizing or congratulating, either by scolding hopeful converts or offering secret handshakes.

I wonder if the current political climate is breeding titles for a young progressive and activist readership. There are graphic novels: Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman; Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History; and A People's History of American Empire and there are books on animals, the environment, and peace: Tin Lizzie, Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion, Wild Animals in Captivity, and Why War is Never a Good Idea.

Do these books collectively herald the uselessness of adults to solve these problems and the concomitant burden on young folks?

Of the three radical books I bought, As the World Burns may be the most accessible as it looks like a Powerpuff Girls' presentation of Anarchism 101 (with a healthy dose of primitivism). While the illustrations have been criticized for their, um, primitiveness, I love Stephanie McMillan's twee but still fierce style-reminiscent of Hope for the Flowers- with a multitude of animals and identifiable villains. The text is sometimes repetitive and sloppy and too many words are used when pictures would suffice. I found this title to be life changing for me, but it is problematic, seductive, glamorous and simplistic; our questions are left unsatisfied. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if life were this simple, the problems we face so easily solvable? Every cell in my body wants for recycling to save the day, wants for shorter showers to save enough water for the rivers to run free…we will go quietly, meekly, to the end of the world, if only you allow us to believe that buying low energy light bulbs will save us," laments Jensen. These are significant thoughts.

The end of the book is messy and the animal uprising is more than a little ridiculous. There is also no serious race/class/able-bodied privilege analysis. How will folks without privilege fight the revolution with their bunny pals? This is however an apt satire of books like Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming and the kid's version of An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming which cheers kids to "save the world" (really…all of it?) by bullying their parents into recycling and changing their lightbulbs. As the World Burns untidily unravels the liberal truths of lifestylism and pacifism and refocuses on the guilt of industry and corporations.

I confess that I bought Hey, Kidz! Buy This Book because of the glorious Megan Kelso. The pictures here are illustrative of the book's theme and are also darn cute but there are only a few and the book generally sags from too much text and too many appendices and useless cluttered sidebars. Moore's tone can sometimes be too pandering and snarky. But! The message of media literacy and critical thinking is a crucial one for young folks navigating through the sea of logos and brands and advertising. Moore writes of kids' vulnerability and manipulation by big media. Her analysis of the harmful influence of ads (they "flatter, confuse, emulate and research" kids) and marketing and the suffocation of indie and DIY media is spot on.

While the "Try This At Home" sections are awesome, her methods for solving the problem of intrusive media are mostly ineffective. This is always the failure with this kind of book. Voting, consumer choices, and writing letters to congress people won't get the job done, I'm afraid. But she does cover the many means of activism from graffiti to pirate radio to street theater and zines. And she also does not feel shy about advocating semi-illegal acts.

A Young People's History of the United States is an attractive little volume and a good choice for adults (ahem) who had difficulty getting through Zinn's original inspiration for the adaptation. The images are in an unfortunate sepia color and there are not many of them. Unavoidably perhaps the text is dry and I cannot imagine many teens reading this if it is not assigned. It would be a great alternative to high school history texts. Zinn's message of history, community, racism, heroism and anti-colonialism is so important for people of all ages-especially young people-to learn and relearn.

Our next step is to purchase these flawed but necessary additions to radical kid lit for our library collections!

Works Cited

Burns, Loree Griffin. Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam and the Science of Ocean Motion
Cordelia and Ziggy. The Little Squatters' Handbook
David, Laurie and Cambria Gordon. Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming
Drummond, Allan. Tin Lizzie
Jensen, Derrick and Stephanie McMillan. As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can
Do To Stay in Denial
Laidlaw, Rob. Wild Animals in Captivity
McPhail, David. Mole Music
Moore, Anne Elizabeth and Megan Kelso. Hey, Kidz! Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People
Paulus, Trina. Hope for the Flowers
Pekar, Harvey and Gary Dumm. Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History
Rudahl, Sharon. Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman
Sendak, Maurice. Where the Wild Things Are
Walker, Alice and Stefano Vitale. Why War is Never a Good Idea
Zinn, Howard and Mike Konopacki. The People's History of American Empire
Zinn, Howard and Rebecca Stefoff. A Young People's History of the United States

Posted by: Kati Nolfi

Children's Books | Librarianship | Young Adult Books

posted on Friday, September 05, 2008 10:53:14 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [1]

Friday, August 29, 2008

Technically, I Read It: In Praise of Skimming

We've probably all been cornered by someone enthusiastically waving a new book in our face, excitedly asking, "Have you read this?!" Our gut tells us we should just nod and lie, but instead we hand over the truth about the poorly written, uninspired, yet strangely popular book. With a shrug of our shoulders, we mumble, "Eh . . . I skimmed it." Inevitably, we get the "you skimmed it?" look. The look that lets us know we have violated an unwritten rule of reading—readers read; they don't skim.

We may be guilty of the violation, but should we feel guilty?

My answer, as a proud and unabashed skimmer, is a resounding, no.

In How to Read a Book, Mortimer J. Adler outlined skimming as a method of reading through which we quickly and superficially glance over a text in order to glean important information. We then use that information to decide if we should continue with the text and move into more advanced, deeper levels of reading.

In today's technological environment of news feeds, blog feeds, feed readers, email updates, listservs, forums, message boards, life casting, twittering, and micro-blogging (to name just a few), this method of information screening through skimming has become invaluable. We often find ourselves inundated with information we could never realistically wholly digest, and much we probably needn't even taste. Skimming has given us a method through which we can quickly assess the mountain of information that makes its way into our various inboxes.

The most skilled skimmers can simply read a title/subject line, glance over the body of the text, read a few select lines, and make a solid judgment call as to whether the post/article/message warrants further reading. Without the well-developed skill of skimming, we would find ourselves unable to parcel out quality information and would instead be limited to what information arrived first, and how much of it we could actually read in a day. It is skimming that allows us to process the wide world of information and select the really important bits to read, assimilate, and conceptualize.

Now . . . lets get down to the nitty-gritty of skimming. After all, it isn't our skimming of blog posts and news articles that gets us the look; it's when we decide to give the skim treatment to an actual book . . . and worse yet, a popular or revered one. Skimming, for most of us, is a utilitarian tool; we use it when we need it, not as a practice. The fact is, we're busy people, and sometimes we just don't have the time to give a book the love and attention it deserves. Perhaps truer still, the new book du jour just doesn't interest us enough for a full reading. So rather than ditching the book altogether, we get a feel for it. We get the gist. We get the bare bones. We skim. Because . . . well . . . we like talking around the water cooler too.

On a professional note, a colleague of mine once had a wall hanging that read "Librarians who don't read should be sued for malpractice." I believe this. As a public librarian, it's my professional obligation to be well-read in in a wide range of genres and subjects. Unfortunately, I just don't have the time to read all the books I should in order to become and stay proficient. It is in my attempts to read through the influx of new and core titles that I turn to skimming. Skimming the descriptions and reading the dialog in fiction, and reading the table of contents and select chapters in nonfiction is the only way I'm able to read through the massive pile of books I should be reading in order to be an effective public librarian. Skimming gives me a way to quickly read books I should be reading and more time to read the books I want to read.

I'm not suggesting you should skim the 75 page training manual you have to give a presentation on next week or the newest book by an author you love. On the contrary, there are certainly some texts which will always warrant deep reading, but there is also a ton of text out there we just need to give a good solid taste; 'cause sometimes it's apple pie, and sometimes it's mud pie and it's nice to know which before we take a big ol' bite.

I hope you've enjoyed this post. Though chances are, you just skimmed it.

Posted by: Sarah Lovato

Reading

posted on Friday, August 29, 2008 9:39:02 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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