Books I Wish I Had When I Was a Kid

I am a history nerd; always have been. Growing up, I devoured the Little House, Betsey-Tacy and Anne of Green Gables series over, and over and over again. I loved the descriptions of the food and the clothes and I was fascinated with the idea of how special the simple things were in a time of hard work and fewer opportunities. Waking up on Christmas morning to your own shiny tin mug and a heart-shaped white cake, or making a writing desk out of your uncle’s old theatrical trunk sounded magical. When I started working at the library, I started to see all of the fantastic new historical series for kids that had emerged in the last two decades and I knew I would have loved them.

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The Little House series has expanded to include the stories of Laura’s family–from Rose to her great-grandmother, as well as the missing stories between Plum Creek and Silver Lake and Mary in college.

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The Dear America series is the imagined diaries of girls during different points of American history.

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The American Girl series follows along the same lines as Dear America, but AG expands each girl’s stories into their own series. I don’t think I would have been into the actual dolls–too babydoll-ish, but I love the historical costume details. The series has expanded and re-invented itself.

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  Carolyn Meyer is the queen of YA royalty historical fiction, contributing to the Royal Diaries series (below) and her own series. Focusing on queens in different periods and countries, both series mirror the deeper appreciation of world history with the heightened emotion of YA fiction.

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Review: How to Stop Time

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I was expecting an adventurous romp through time, but that is not what this story is about. Unfortunately, I started this book, but then had a couple of holds come in and inherited the running of a book club. So, I had four books to read while I read this one; my attention was a little divided. I read in hour drabs over the space of a few weeks, but still I never felt engaged with the plot or characters until the end.

Yes, part of that was my state of focus, but the other part was the slow burn of the plot with frequent interruptions of the narrative to engage in historical tourism as we discover elements of the protagonist’s past. Add to that my expectations, and I felt disappointed. Tom, our protagonist, spent most of the book either too afraid to live or ready to tell everyone about his immortality. I get that the point was the worth of the risk we must all take to live and love, but the extreme of telling everyone just didn’t make sense to me.

That said, the last quarter of the book was much more engaging as the various threads of narrative came together in some fun ways. All of a sudden, I was interested in what was happening. I wish I could have felt the same through the whole book.

Rupert Giles Patron Saint of Librarians

Forget Marian The Librarian, my go-to representation of librarians in pop culture has to be Rupert Giles from the tv show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Giles is the Watcher, sent to guide and train the Slayer under the guise of the school librarian at Sunnydale High which is conveniently located on a supernatural vortex.

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On the surface, Giles is a stuffy Englishman in tweed  bemoaning the rise of the “dread machine” (aka computers) . But he has a dark past; like his young protégé when she first comes to Sunnydale, the role of Watcher is a calling which the young Rupert rejects. With a group of college friends, he delves into dark magic, calling himself Ripper. After a disastrous summoning, Giles repents his miss-spent youth and returns to his Watcher training determined to stifle the darkness within. But some of his greatest moments come when he allows his mask to slip in defense of his friends.

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Through the rest of the series, he develops a parental relationship with Buffy and her friends, seeing each other through the trials of life and growing up while facing host of monsters, demons and witches. And the series doesn’t end with the tv show; the adventures continue in graphic novel form.

                

            

Ok, so Giles doesn’t have much to do with cataloging books or answering reference questions (at least we don’t see it in the show), but the Scooby gang turn to him and the library for his vast knowledge as they fight to save the world time and again. It’s enough to warm any librarian’s geeky heart. These are a few titles you might find on Giles’s bookshelf.

 

Happy Library Week!

April 8-14 is National Library Week in the US. I got my Masters in Library Science in 2013, but I have been working in public libraries since 2005. I have seen lots of new technologies and ways to reach the public where they live. In this climate of political and economic strife, libraries which serve the people who need them most are the most easily challenged. As I mentioned in a previous post, I don’t get political, but if you want to feel like you can do some good, go to the library. And tell your friends.

If you prove to those in government that those services are important by using them and voting for their support, you can make sure that these institutions continue. One of the comments I hear from many people is that libraries are irrevolent, that nobody reads anymore, that technology and the internet have made libraries and librarians obsolete. Libraries are changing, true; but beyond books, libraries are a haven of services and information and community engagement.

Ok, that’s enough of that. Happy library week.

American Library Association

Library Comic

Unshelved

Gordianus the Finder’s Republican Bookshelf

Gordianus the Finder is an investigator in Ancient Rome who becomes involved with the best and brightest in the last years of the Republic. His journey through the Roma Sub Rosa series takes Gordianus from the slums of the Subura to the Capitoline Hill and the Senate among the similar rise of new men and powerful generals emerging at this time.

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Instead of the cold, detail driven powers of reasoning of Sherlock Holmes, Gordianus has a talent for putting people at ease with his unassuming nature and getting them to tell their secrets. For those he crosses, he is a dangerous man with the power to topple the status quo by the things he knows. For his unusual family of ex-slaves, he he is a loving man who takes risks for the truth. Steven Saylor’s series spawned similar titles of ancient investigators and tales of the end of the Republic.

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Gordianus becomes reluctantly connected, through his adopted son, to Caesar; and through his work to the other great man of the age, Cicero. Now at old age, Gordianus looks back on his life and career in what is likely the end of the series. These are a few things you might find on his bookshelf.

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Writing Wednesday

Writing is a solitary venture. I have no idea if what I am doing is good. The danger is that I will keep picking away at what I have written, trying to get the perfect paragraph when what I have is good enough. I did the same thing when writing papers for grad school; finally, I just had to turn something in and it was fine.

If you are fortunate enough to learn craft in the classroom setting, you get instructional support and the encouragement of your fellow students. But if you don’t have that, you must find a different support system. One of the reasons NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is so successful as a movement is that it creates a community for writers to support and encourage each other.

I started listening to StoryWonk for their analysis of the Starz production of Outlander. They are nerds, and they know how to explain the mechanics of story. There is an incredible backlog of podcasts and classes on story analysis. While Alistair and Lani are no longer working together, they are each continuing the wonk life under their own projects of story analysis and writing instruction.

Some people find a writing group to give them the support you need. In the online environment, it is also not difficult to find a virtual group or form one to meet your needs.

Sometimes it is good to know that you aren’t alone.

Writer’s League of Texas

Writers Digest