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Linkity Links: Monster Kids, Scary Stories, Fifty Shades, and Maurice Sendak

First, I’ve learned about a couple of cool Kickstarter projects. We received an email telling us about a documentary about “Monster Kids”- the kids who grew up on classic creature features and horror movies and became the next generation of artists, moviemakers, writers, and actors. From Rose Fox at Genreville, I learned about Nightmare Magazine, soon to be presented by Creeping Hemlock Press, and edited by John Joseph Adams. The lineup for the first issue is impressive- it includes original short stories by Sarah Langan and Jonathan Maberry, among others. Both of these projects are still in need of funding, so if you’re intrigued I encourage you to check them out.

Not that long ago, I wrote about an excellent reason to read the classics– Harry Clarke’s illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination At the time, I had seen them only in an article from io9, but now, those who would like a full scale experience (and don’t have the book) can go here to the book design blog 50watts.com and see how disturbing they really are when they fill the entire screen.

And, over at Agnostic, Maybe, Andy Woodworth discusses why the Brevard County Library System’s quandary over Fifty Shades of Grey should lead to pairing Banned Books Week with “National Update Your Collection and Challenge Material Policies Because You Probably Need To (No, Seriously, Do It)” week. Apparently the Fond du Lac Library in Wisconsin declined to purchase it as well, but at least they made the decision, based on their selection policy, BEFORE purchasing the book. Not that the average person who wants to check out Fifty Shades of Grey will care whether the reason it’s not there is because of selection policy or because of censorship, but librarians are going to have to take a position, because it affects them now, on a practical level. It’s going to be an interesting Banned Books Week this year, no matter what.

Finally, Maurice Sendak and his impact on children and children’s literature (and me) can’t be summed up in a couple of paragraphs here. When I went to Amazon.com to look at children’s bestsellers, up at the top was Higgelty Piggelty Pop!  I was a little surprised, since I don’t think of it as being as well known as many of his others. It’s an odd little book, with a lot of story devoted to eating (and being eaten, by a lion). This afternoon one of my kids said “I don’t care” in response to something, and the other said “Well, you’ll be eaten by a lion”. They were referring to Sendak’s Pierre, in which a little boy who only responds to his parents with “I don’t care” is, in fact, eaten by a lion. And then there are the Wild Things, who scream to Max “Oh please don’t go! We’ll eat you up, we love you so!”  And so I was glad to have this article come my way. It does an excellent job of expressing why Sendak’s nightmares and bizarre fantasies are so powerful for so many. And maybe also why he wrote so much about being eaten.

And that’s all for now! Whew!

Posted on May 10, 2012 by , Reply

Not The Apocalypse?

I have to admit that the announcement and grand opening of Amazon’s new Kindle Lending Library made me a little cranky at first. This monopolistic corporation that refused until recently to release any Kindle ebooks to libraries suddenly decides to take over the function of a library, but with a gigantic inventory of titles, and announce it like they invented the model on their own? Grr.

First impressions are just that, though- and a closer look at what Amazon is offering shows that really, it’s not that great. There’s a great analysis of it  by Andy Woodworth at Agnostic, Maybe, where he assures us that the Kindle Lending Library is NOT the apocalypse. Whew. You’ll have to forgive me if I seem to be repeating some of what he said, but it seems like we noticed some of the same things.

Here’s the thing. Not everyone has a Kindle or can afford one, or even wants to read ebooks. The big six publishers aren’t happy about it- some of them don’t even sell ebooks to libraries. And the Kindle Lending Library is not available to just anyone. You have to be a Prime customer- meaning you shell out $79 a year to borrow one book a month. That’s more than I pay for my PLAC card(that’s a public access library card), which allows me to check many, many books (including ebooks) out of any library in the state. They might not be Kindle books, but at the rate I read, they’re in and out of the house pretty quickly (well, unless I lose them).

At a time when people are claiming it’s too costly to fund libraries with their tax dollars (and many libraries in this state are in danger of closing their doors) how many of them are going to happily shell out the money for an ereader and a Prime membership for the privilege of “checking out” one relatively obscure book a month? If you already have those two things, and the program expands a little, I guess it could be a nice perk, but I don’t see Amazon driving libraries out of business with this. As alarming as it seems at first, the Kindle Lending Library is not the end of the world as we know it. Yet.

Stay tuned.

Posted on November 12, 2011 by , Reply

What’s The Big Deal About Seth Godin?

A writer named Seth Godin wrote a blog post called “The Future of the Library” .  Honestly, it didn’t say anything new. He wrote that the model of the library as a warehouse for books isn’t working anymore. In a lot of places, it isn’t. That doesn’t mean libraries shouldn’t or won’t have print books. It’s just not enough. Why do you go to the library? Do you go sometimes to check your email, play World of Warcraft, or write up your resume? You need a computer for that. Maybe you’re one of the few people who don’t have a DVD player- you can find VHS tapes at the library. Going on a long drive? You could pay awesome amounts of money for an audiobook you might listen to once, or you could go to the library. Librarians are working hard to get publishers to allow them to offer ebooks because there are taxpayers in their community who demand it.  Have any of these other formats made paper books obsolete? I don’t think so. Offering new ways to consume (and now produce) information isn’t going to change that.  Libraries already do that. Okay, maybe they don’t arm the librarians with soldering irons.

In the school library, and that’s where I worked most recently, the kind of librarian he describes is the kind we aspire to be. The kind who encourages kids to become subject experts who can share new information with not just their peers, but with everyone.  The kind who gives kids tools and time and opportunity to create YouTube videos and Scratch programs. The kind who collaborates with teachers, parents, administrators, and kids to create the best learning environment possible. The kind who integrates digital and media literacy into the curriculum.  School librarians and public librarians are in different environments, but no matter what the environment, the job we have is to support our community’s needs by giving them all kinds of access to the kinds of information they want and need.  Part of that is flooding them with books to create engaged, literate readers, but that’s the beginning, not the end.

At Agnostic, Maybe, Andy Woodworth offered a response that I think did a better job of addressing the issues in Godin’s post. He wrote,

“We are in tune with an emerging sharing culture. We strive for information access for our constituent communities. We work to put books in hand, answers at fingertips, and ideas in minds. And we’ll dance with The Devil to make it possible. “

Darn right.

Honestly, I don’t think Godin knows much about what’s actually going on in libraries today. His vision of the future library is not radical- it’s already happening in a lot of places. In fact, a futurist came to a donors’ event at my own public library and said many of the same things (I didn’t like him much, but he’s already proved to be right on some things). Whatever errors or annoying remarks Godin made (I am not a “data sherpa” or “conceierge”, thank you very much) his final point, which he repeated multiple times, but which I think was lost in the shuffle, is one that I really appreciate, especially now as librarians are actually on trial for their jobs (see below for my post on that)

“We need librarians more than we ever did. What we don’t need are mere clerks who guard dead paper. Librarians are too important to be a dwindling voice in our culture”.

So there.

Posted on May 19, 2011 by , Reply