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Musings: The Disconnect Between What Kids Want and What Teachers Recommend

Table with sign that says "Need a Book? Check out thes authors and titles that Mr. ____ recommends" with a number of books face up on the table.

The reason I went back to school after working as a children’s librarian in a public library was that I noticed that sometime around grade four kids stopped coming to the library, They were too busy, they had too much homework, they had stuff going on. Even programs carefully designed around their interests weren’t attracting those kids.

 

I wanted to reach those kids. And I was willing to quit my job and go back to school to reach them where they were– school– a captive audience I could finally reach. And I did. But even in 2005, the librarians were the first ones to go when the budget got sliced.

 

In grad school and through 2005 I was part of a children’s choice committee for grades 4-6. We had a list of books proposed that we had to read, evaluate, discuss, and eventually choose 20 books for our nomination list. Kids who read at least 5 could vote for their choice for  best book. And the book with the most votes won the award.

Where am I going with this?

I currently volunteer in my kids’ former middle school library.

In early February I was asked to pull teacher favorites for a display. These included many of what would be considered classics- To Kill a Mockingbord, Night, The Call of the Wild, 1984, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Only two of them had been written since 2005.

 

In mid-February, a teacher put a table of best books out on a table These were great choices I would have no problem recommending.  But I recognized almost all of them as books I had read while on the children’s choice committee. Only a few had been written in the last five years. One (Scythe) is taught as required reading at the high school.

 

We are not reaching teachers. They may be tolerating or even accepting horror in their classrooms but many aren’t promoting or providing horror genre titles to their students. And teachers have a huge influence on what gets checked out. It has to be a cooperative effort. The media specialist had a virtual visit with students with Lorien Lawrence in February, but on the day I came in, his books were still on the shelf.

 

I have helped the media specialist pull and promote scary and horror-themed books in the past. At the elementary, there’s time for storytelling to shape readers. But that isn’t enough at the secondary level. How do we reach teachers, especially at a time when giving kids books is so dangerous?  It’s time to think outside the box.

 

Editor’s note: I have had this characterized as a “diatribe against teachers”. It’s not. Teachers have a difficult job that is being made harder by conservative school boards and state legislatures. There is currently an effort to pass a law that would criminalize teachers and librarians for giving students “inappropriate” books in my state. Many school and classroom libraries have been cleared away elsewhere. 

Teachers face the difficulty of finding reading material their students will find relevant and engaging within challenging restraints. 20 years ago I was working to convince other school librarians horror was relevant and had the potential to be engaging to their students. Today there’s a Librarian’s Day at StokerCon: librarians are engaged in collection development  and promoting the horror genre. I am asking, where do we, as members of the horror community, go from here? What can we do to help? 

Posted on March 3, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: And Then I Woke Up by Malcolm Devlin

 

 

And Then I Woke Up by Malcolm Devlin. (Bookshop.org  | Amazon.com)

Tor.com. 2022

ISBN: ‎978-1250798077

Available: Paperbsck, Kindle edition.

 

 

This was an PDF ARC provided to me by Ellen Datlow so changes may have been made prior to publication.

 

And Then I Woke Up has an unreliable narrator, a middle-aged man named Spence, who (we are told) is at a mental facility for people who have been “infected” by a virus that caused a mass delusion that made them believe people around them were flesh-eating zombies, reinforced by a media narrative, and by infected charismatic leaders who emerged from the chaos to take control of small groups of “survivors”.

 

Spence notices Leila, a new patient, is not fitting in. After accidentally seeing a snippet of a news report she decides to break out and Spence goes with her. We learn Spence’s story– or do we? The story he remembers is not the one other infected people remember, or the one the Army reported, or the account in the news, or the one the families of people he attacked remember. And only one of those stories is the one the therapist wants to hear him repeat.

 

Leila wants to return to join her group because it was easier to understand the world in black and white, but needs a different narrative to justify her survival so Spence comes up with one, or maybe a second, or maybe a third– he’s not sure what actually happens, although he hopes her story will be enough to influence the narrative positively so infected, cured, and uninfected can coexist peacefully.

 

But Spence’s imagination will no longer allow him to believe in a single narrative and as he dreams of both past events and possible futures he loses his grip on reality.

 

What’s interesting about Spence is his lack of interest in the media or politics. His reaction to the infection establishes him as a “believer” fully enough that it completely alters his perceptions despite that. Rather than simply a story about a zombie invasion or pandemic, Devlin has written a critique of how narrative can be shaped to influence even people who don’t start out with an interest in it.

 

And Then I Woke Up is a short piece that will appeal to readers who appreciate unreliable narrators, but those looking for a straightforward narrative will want to look elsewhere.

 

There’s a lot about storytelling, narrative, othering, grief, guilt, and what makes a believer. This felt political, but makes its mark on a very personal, heartbreaking, and terrifying level.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on September 8, 2022 by , Reply

Book Review: I Am Margaret Moore by Hannah Capin

I Am Margaret Moore by Hannah Capin

Wednesday Books, 2022

ISBN-13: 9781250239570

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition ( Bookshop.org  )

 

 

In comparison to the other two books I’ve read by Capin (Foul is Fair, retitled Golden Boys Beware, and The Dead Queens Club) I Am Margaret Moore is more experimental, slower- moving, and more pessimistic. Margaret Moore has attended the same naval-themed summer camp with her friends Flor, Nisreen, and Rose for nine years, and what happens at camp is supposed to stay at camp. Margaret breaks that rule when she falls in love with a boy from a wealthy family, resulting in an inconvenient pregnancy. Now there are stories that she drowned in the lake from heartbreak.

 

Her friends have uncovered most of the story, including the name of the boy responsible, who has faced no consequences and is admired in the camp. They decide to tell what they know but it backfires on them. Flor and Nasreen, who are in love, are separated, and the names of all four girls are stricken from the camp records.

 

Margaret’s ghost narrates most of the story and isn’t great at keeping track of time or stringing events together coherently. It is unclear through most of the book how much time is passing until the end (62 years). Figuring out what actually happened is complicated by the changing stories about Margaret the campers tell as time passes as well as the jumping around in time and Margaret’s unreliable memories and interpretations of events.

 

This was not an easy book to read, not just because the characters felt ephemeral, the stream-of-consciousness style of writing or because the topic was difficult and heartbreaking but because it took time to piece together what actually happened and how. In many ways this book is as much about the way we tell stories and how they change as anything. Those readers looking for a fast-paced, straightforward narrative aren’t going to find it here.

 

Margaret and her friends are made to feel small, worthless, erased for the convenience of the entitled white guys in this timely book. The story at the center of the book takes place in 1957. That abortion wasn’t an option for Margaret Moore leads to tragedy. It could not be more timely, with today’s Supreme Court decision at hand.

 

Recommended, for readers willing to take their time.

 

 

 

Posted on June 24, 2022 by , Reply
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