Reader response theory

I wrote a Young Adult novel ten years ago. MAKING UP MEGABOY got a lot of attention because of its format (highly illustrated with a graphic novel feel), its point of view (seventeen different voices telling the story), its subject matter (a boy who kills a man), and its end (ambiguous). Reviewers loved it or hated it, and so did young readers. Published by DK Ink, an imprint that no longer exists, it drifted out of stock and then out of print. Persistent potential purchasers -- there aren't many -- may still find a paperback copy of it through Delacorte. Every now and then when there is another nationally publicized incident of a teen or child killer, somebody remembers Megaboy, but it has pretty much faded into obscurity.

I was surprised, therefore, to get a fat pack of letters recently from Mr. Hanson's seventh grade in Sheridan, Wyoming. The students had spent the fall reading and analyzing MAKING UP MEGABOY, and they had some pretty strong reactions. Strong enough that they wanted to write to the author and tell her what they thought.

Most of the students were frustrated and annoyed by the ending, or lack of it, as they saw it. One of the more vociferous readers wrote, "You are a fool though. You could have made a good profit off this book, but you had to write this with wacky mixed up, make your own ending up story. The end was disgusting and made me regret reading it, but why did you write this story this way? WHY RUIN A GOOD STORY? You seemed like you knew what you were doing, but I have my doubts?" Another wrote, "You need to write a second book. It would be nice so people don't get mad. And why did Robby shoot Mr. Koe?" And there were many more in this vein.

Not everybody hated the book. Elizabeth wrote, "This book is exactly the kind of book I like, it is a reallistic story with a bit of fantasy." And here is one of her classmates' letters in its entirety:

"I really enjoyed your book, but at the same time it kind of angred me. The reason it did that was, that I'm a person that likes to figure things out. Although at the same time it was very interesting and I lost many hours of sleep staying up and thinking about it not being able to get to sleep. The reason I liked it was that it just left you hanging there and made me want to read more. And it kept the reader thinking all through it. Thank you for writing that story. I had a great time reading it."

Most of the students also wanted to know WHY I had written the book. When I wrote back to the class, I told them in some detail why I was moved to write about a boy who killed, but I couldn't answer their most urgent question: why did Robbie kill Mr. Koh? I also told them how happy it made me to get their letters, even though most of these letters were critical. I told them that authors need readers, especially readers who take the time to discuss and think about their books.

I've been thinking a lot now about the relationship between writers and readers. There is a lot of literary theory on this topic, theory that distinguishes between "writerly" and "readerly" texts, that speculates about how and why readers respond to texts, that probes texts for what they say about their authors or that insists the writer's experiences and state of mind are irrelevant to the resulting work. My son-in-law who is the drama critic for a local free paper said that he turned down a job writing theater reviews for a start-up online publication because he liked seeing his words in print on paper and knowing that his words are getting into 125,000 households every week. He writes for a living but also for the satisfaction of being read.

This blog is read by a handful of my friends and relatives. I think I am writing primarily for my own purposes, to help me clarify what I know and to chronicle some events in my life. I make no pretense of writing in this medium for a wide audience. I don't expect readers to respond, but it is satisfying -- sometimes even thrilling -- when they do.

Teens, the same only different

When I was teaching classes in Young Adult Library Services in Croatia, I hammered home the twin mantras: "work with not for" and "listen to the teens." In both Zadar and Osijek, we invited local teens to talk with us about their lives; the photos show a panel of students in Zadar and two teens from Osijek. The library school students were surprised at the candor with which the teens shared details about their lives. This last weekend I read 30 papers from my library school students in Osijek, Croatia, and it was evident that they wanted to learn more. All but two of them chose the option of interviewing five teenagers, asking them the classic questions that Elaine Meyers and I posed in our book TEENS AND LIBRARIES: GETTING IT RIGHT.

1. How do you know when an adult cares about you?
2. What are the three things teens need to succeed at home, in school, and in the community?
3. What is the hardest thing about being a teenager?

Judging from the responses, there are some universal aspects to adolescence in Western society. Almost all teens talked about the ambiguity of being neither child nor adult. They realize that they are not grown but don't wanted to be treated as children either. They desperately want to be listened to and taken seriously. Like teens everywhere, Croatian teens complained that their parents make unreasonable (or unpleasant) demands on them and that they don't understand their lives because their own teen years were so long ago when life was so different. Drugs and alcohol are easily obtainable. Sex is definitely part of their lives.

What was different about the Croatian teens was the lack of caring adults other than their parents in their lives. There were some grandparents, but nobody else. No teacher, no athletic coach, no piano teacher, no neighbor, no priest, and certainly no librarian was there to care for them. Every single teen interpreted the adult in the first question as their mother and/or father, as though no other adult might care for them. In spite of their evident chafing under their parents' rules, they also saw the rule-setting as evidence of caring.

Croatian teens were unanimous in their dissatisfaction with school, a stressful place where teachers are cold and boring, where their own interests are ignored, where they must shut up and pay attention.

Like so many American teens, the Croatian teens read very little except when they must as a school requirement. They see the public library as an unfriendly, forbidding place (and all too often, it is -- for teens at least.) They are unaware of the one teen club in the central library in Osijek. The staff in the library's teen club see this as a problem of public relations and marketing.

Croatian teens are not optimistic about their future prospects. They are cynical about their government's ability or will to improve the quality of life in their country. They are gloomy about the economy and what it means for their own future employment. And most importantly, they have little sense of their own ability to improve things.

Social supports for teens are almost nonexistent in Croatia, but young people fill their spare time with all kinds of hobbies. They draw and build models. They write poetry. They sing and play musical instruments. And yes, they play computer games -- a lot. "World of Warcraft" is very big. A few, a very few, read.

The library school students rightly saw that the library might be a positive force in teens' lives by providing young people with a safe place to be with their peers and to develop a positive relationship with at least one other adult, the young adult librarian. However, like the teens, they were also pessimistic about their ability to change libraries enough to create the nurturing places that were needed. I can only hope that these students who have seen the need and crafted a vision to mitigate it will be empowered to do the small things that will begin to transform public libraries into significant suupports for teens.

Home sweet home

There is nothing quite like the comforts of home. Note the flip flop resting on the ottoman. The comfortable chair. The books. Out of the picture but definitely on hand: the TV showing my beloved "Law and Order" reruns, "House", and the network news. Other pleasures that I missed while I was away: cheeseburgers, hanging out with my grandkids, playing the piano, the LA and NY Times, celebrating Obama's sweet victory with friends and family.

Spending a month in Croatia was a memorable experience though. In some ways, it was like being a child again, in that state of simultaneously knowing and not knowing. Most of my familiar frames of reference were missing, making it difficult to read the environment. Some of this was language-related. I could walk through busy streets without knowing what was behind the closed doors unless there were really obvious clues in shop windows. Then there were the unfamiliar cultural phenoma. The first week in Zadar, there was strange and beautiful music drifting up to my second floor room from the banquet hall below. Men were singing in multi-part harmony, without accompaniment, for hours. It sounded live, not recorded. It happened again the next night. I did a little investigating and discovered that these were bachelor parties, attended by men and boys. There is the usual drinking and celebrating at these events, but the singing is also traditional in Dalmatia. It is called klapa. Most men seem to know the songs and seem to be able to sing them in all of their complex five- to ten-part harmony. I now have a CD of this music, and it brings back that strange sense of wonderment as well as pleasure in the sound.

I will also be thinking about the memorial in Vukovar to the more than 200 victims of a Serbian massacre there during the war in the early 1990s, after Croatia declared its independence and Serbia disputed its claims to its borders. The town itself was almost completely destroyed and has been only partially rebuilt. They have left the damaged water tower standing as a monument to the suffering of the town. The memorial to the massacre, however, is at a distance from the town. It stands on the site where the Serbs had taken men and medical personnel from the hospital in town, shot them, and buried them in a mass grave. There is also a kind of museum nearby on which the names and faces of the victims who have been identified are illuminated on the round walls of an otherwise darkened room. While I was there, a busload of Croatians arrived. One of the group spoke in Croatian; it felt like a prayer, but I can't be sure. Then a woman began to sing a hymn which I remembered from my childhood church-going days: "Nearer My God to Thee." Everyone joined in, and the sound was heart-breaking in its simplicity and beauty. Tears ran down my cheeks.

Of course, as a pacifist, I cannot help but be moved by the many destructive faces of war. And like many war stories, this is a complex one. There is some suggestion that the Croatian President Tudgman may have deliberately sacrified Vukovar, withholding the limited Croatian troops as a way of strengthening his portrayal of brutal Serb aggression.

I will also be thinking about the relatively large space given in Croatian public libraries to playrooms for preschool children. Preschool education is seriously lacking in the country, and children don't start school until they are six and a half. So the public libraries have filled the gap with these bright, spacious rooms filled with educational toys. Many libraries hire people with both early childhood education and library degrees to plan and run activities in these centers, as many as three or four hours a day for different ages. I observed toddlers playing with foam blocks in Zagreb and five-year-olds acting out "Sleeping Beauty" in Karlovac. Our Family Place libraries are a step in this direction, but Croatia has outpaced us in this matter.

People often asked me what I thought of Croatia, its libraries, and its people. I had to say that it was a land of great unspoiled natural beauty and a long and complex history. Its libraries have great promise as institutions that can help to promote the skills and values needed in a new democracy. Its people are often cynical as they contemplate their place in the world, but they are also generous, kind -- and great singers.

Eating in Croatian

In an earlier post, I wondered what my frame of reference would be for understanding Croatia. I have now been here for nearly four weeks, and I think I can say that I am looking at this country through its libraries and its food. Today we will talk about food.

The University of Zadar has made my hotel accommodations for me, and they have been arranged on the pension plan, meaning that I eat breakfast and dinner in the hotel. In Zadar and Osijek the breakfasts have been the typical European self-serve buffets: eggs, sausage, fabulous pastries, cold meats and sliced cheese, yoghurt, tomatoes, cereal, and much, much more. In Zadar, there was always fresh cantaloupe. In both Osijek and Zadar, there are locally grown mandarin oranges. It's all good.

My first day in Zadar I strode confidently out to find lunch. I first tried the little cafe near the hotel. No food there -- just coffee and gelato. I walked farther along the beach and found another cafe. Again, just coffee and other drinks -- no food at all. It took awhile before I figured out that the all of these appealing little cafes that said Cafe Bar or just Coffee Bar only served drinks. They are everywhere, filled with Croatians drinking and smoking (but only until March, 2009 when smoking will be banned in restaurants). No Starbucks but lots and lots of other places to drink good strong coffee.

Lunch remained a little elusive in Zadar. I could walk about 15 minutes into the Old City and find restaurants serving food or I could buy a burek ( rich cheese-filled pastry that everyone said is not Croatian at all, but Servian) at the local supermarket. Or I could sneak bread, cheese, and ham and a mandarin from the breakfast buffet. I was not going to starve.

Dinner in the Hotel Kolovare in Zadar was always filling and certainly edible but hardly representative of the best cooking in Dalmatia. For that, you need a good seafood restaurant or a konoba for truly authentic Dalmatian food.

My students and I ate at a konoba on the island of Sali. They tell me that it was typical of its kind. The stone walls, green shutters, white net curtains, wood benches are the standard decor. Food was served family style: black risotto made with squid ink, a cabbage salad, and fried calamari. All washed down with a local white wine.

Here are some other foods that are unique to Croatia that I relished: palacinkes (crepes filled with chocolate or in Zadar with marascino cherries -- incredible), cevapceci (spicy meatballs served with a pepper and tomato relish and onions), krafna (donuts!), calamari salad, amazingly fresh salads with simple lettuce and tomatoes, burek (flaky cheese-filled pastry), velvety prosciutto, and sheep's milk cheese from Pag Island. And drinks: honey grappa as an ice cold aperitif, slivovics (plum brandy), and a home made cherry liqueur.

I was told that the food would be completely different in Osijek -- more meat and potatoes. I've been here for four days, and you couldn't prove it by me. Again, I am eating in the hotel restaurant which is a much more elegant place than the dining room at the Hotel Kalovare. (I heartily recommend the Waldinger if you find yourself here.) On my first day, I had unwisely ordered the "chicken tortilla" at the Gallija Mexican and Steak Restaurant. Well, how could I not? Wouldn't you be curious? OK. It was a mistake. So to compensate I tried to order something called "Slavonian plate" for supper. It seemed to be an assortment of local dishes. "You don't want that," said the waiter. "It's too heavy." "Oh," I said. "What do I want?" "Fish," said the waiter. And he was right. It was a lovely river fish -- perch, I think -- perfectly prepared with a mound of roasted vegetable. And they have insisted I eat fish for the past two nights as well. Very tasty but not the meat and potatoes I was prepared for.

This would not be an easy place for a vegetarian, but for me, it's been good eats.

Field trip

Yesterday my students and I took a field trip to Sali on the island of Dugi Otok (Long Island). An hour and a half from Zadar, this village attracts tourists from all over the world during the summer season. Now, at the end of October, Sali has been mostly returned to the people who live here year-round, except for the occasional day on which they are invaded by thirteen library school students, a research assistant, and a visiting professor from the U.S.

We had gone to Sali to see its public library, part of the Zadar library system. We were met at the dock by Ante, the unconventional librarian for the island. Completely bald, wearing a black opera t shirt (from a performance of Wagner's Ring in Amsterdam), plaid cargo shorts, and black combat boots, he took us the few steps to his library which is small in physical size but gargantuan in its aspirations and energy.

Every inch of space is filled with something interesting to look at or do -- books, of course, CDs, DVDs, a flat-screen TV, piano and telescope (!), four computers, trophies, a few ratty armchairs and a sofa. Children's books are crammed into a closet. The walls and even the ceiling are covered with a crazy collage of pictures: the cast of the Lord of the Rings, old movie stars, historical photos of Sali, astronomical charts, photos of library events and library users -- anything and everything. When the weather is fine, Ante moves the library outside and hosts all kinds of events: pancake parties (pancakes, palacinkes, are very important in this part of the world), movie showings, pot luck dinners, talent shows, rallies before Croatian soccer matches (for one of which Ante's bald head was painted with the distinctive Croatian red and white checkerboard logo).

Ante seems quite cavalier about the infamous library "standards" which emanate from the Ministry of Culture and is happy to operate on a remote island far from bureaucratic oversight. He doesn't charge fines for overdue books and just assumes that the books will come back one day. They usually do. Once a couple of Swiss backpackers missed the boat back to Zadar. Ante let them sleep in the library. He hasn't waited for funding to come for a "Bibliobus" -- that's a bookmobile for those of you who don't speak Croatian. He just rigged up a kind of shelf in the back of a station wagon and used that to take books to the farther settlements on this long, narrow island.

Ante was born and raised on the island, living still in his boyhood home, a traditional Dalmatian house made of stone with a red tile roof. The students and I had an interesting discussion about whether anybody else could have achieved what he has done on the library. Do you have to have his insider knowledge and his larger than life personality? At first they thought that those were necessary prerequisites. But as we talked, we arrived at the conclusion that all that was necessary was a conviction to make the library an essential and organic part of the community -- and with sensitivity and commitment, any of us can do that.

Dalmatians tend to romanticize their islands where life is slower and more traditional than it is on the mainland. However, the opportunities to make a living on the islands are very few. Aside from tourism, which is seasonal, and a little fishing, there is not much to keep a young person in Sali. They must even commute to Zadar to attend high school.

Two of the students had connections on Sali and were able to get one of the traditional Dalmatian restaurants, a konoba, to open just to serve us lunch. We had the classic black risotto, a cabbage salad, battered and fried calamari, and local wine. We ate upstairs in a room with stone walls, the traditional green shutters and net curtains, wood beam ceiling. We ate and talked and toasted librarians everywhere.

Ne gevorim Hvratski

No, I don't speak Croatian. Not that I really need to say that sentence in Croatian; it is instantly obvious when I try to say anything, even the simple words of politeness -- hvala (thank you), molim (please), dobar dan (good afternoon). My accent is really very bad, no matter how I try.

So this post will be a musing on getting along in another country when you really, truly don't speak the language. I was told before I arrived that "everybody speaks English." Not true. Almost everybody speaks a little English but not always enough to really facilitate a conversation. When the Croatian working at the market stall speaks as little English as I do Croatian, we need to improvise. I pick up an apple and hand it to him, smiling and silent. He weighs it and puts it in a bag. In the torrent of unintelligible language from his mouth, I think I can make out the words "dva kuna." I fish around in my wallet for the 2 kuna coin. "Da?" I ask, not being absolutely sure I heard him right. "Da," he says -- and a whole lot more. "Dobro," I say, pleased that we have conducted this transaction successfully. "Bravo!" he says, laughing at my lame effort to speak his language. But it is a kind laugh, not a mocking one.

You will probably not be surprised that my food-related vocabulary has grown the most since I have been here. The menus in most restaurants list their offerings in Croatian, Italian, German, and English -- but not always and not always in the most perfect English. Swine cutlets, anyone? Anyway, one can just point to the menu entry and count on getting approximately what you thought you were ordering. I TRY to say the name in Croatian, much to the amusement of most waiters. This is not an easy language for the English-speaking tongue to master. All those consonants! All those diacritical marks!

I have dinner every night in the hotel because it is a full board arrangement, with a self-serve breakfast buffet and dinner included in the rate. The waiters tease me and try to help me learn a few new words every night. So far I have mastered the words for ice cream (sladoled), fish (riba), water (voda), soup (juha), salad (salata -- one of the few easy ones).

I am teaching my class in Young Adult Library Services in English. All of the students knew this when they enrolled, but they vary in their competency and comfort in expressing themselves in English. Some of the other faculty warned me that they might be shy or reticent, but they do their best to participate in the discussions that I require. I can tell, however, that they are relieved when I break them into small groups and tell them to feel free to speak Croatian.

As for me, it is a challenge to remember to speak slowly and clearly and to use language that is simple and relatively jargon-free. I worry that we are all missing some of the subtlety and complexity that we could enjoy if we were all fluent in the same language. In fact, some days I worry that I am losing my fluency in English!

I gave the students the task of teaching me how to say the word for library in Croatian -- a notoriously difficult word to pronounce. It is spelled knjiznica, with a diacritical mark over the Z. And the word for librarian is knjiznicar, with a different diacritical mark over the C. I can say it almost every time now and be understood, even if the accent is still very bad.

The only English language programming on TV is CNN and BBC World News and the occasional really dumb reality show on one of the German language channels, shown here with subtitles. I have never heard of some of these programs; perhaps they are exported directly to the European market. I miss my beloved Law and Order reruns, but I will survive.

First impressions of my first public library visit in Croatia

Martina is a doctoral student at the University of Zagreb, working as an assistant at the University of Zadar. She is passionate about public libraries and how they can transform communities and has wonderful stories to tell about how they did this in Zadar. Today she and her husband and one-year-old son Luka took me to Sibenik to see this beautiful old coastal city and to visit its public library.

Like many Croatian public libraries, the Sibenik library occupies a converted army building. Unlike many, it is in the center of town. The renovation results in a modern building of glass and steel. There are some oddities due to its former use. In the basement, for example, a former bowling alley has been turned into a storage space with compact shelving. For the most part, however, its former military function is not apparent. And isn't that a nice symbolic transformation? From a military operation to a library! I like that.

I wish Jonathan Furner had been there to help me make sense of what they called their scientific collection which to me appeared to be just nonfiction (books on winemaking, origami, and many other miscellaneous subjects). It used a classification scheme that originated in some Croatian academic setting. Because of this, the public was not allowed into this room but had to have books paged from here. When I asked if this worked for them, the librarians said it did. OK. Whatever.

There was a pleasant preschool corner filled with blocks and soft cushions and picture books. There was a children's computer lab crowded with boys using the computers the same way they do everywhere -- for games in noisy packs. There was another bank of computers with special software for children under the age of 8.

The collection looked like a collection anywhere, with books written in Croatian and others translated into Croatian. Harry Potter is still very popular, and the librarian showed me a scrapbook documenting a whole series of Harry Potter programs. Lots of children in wizard hats.

More impressive to me was a program on children's rights. Children from the ages of ten to fourteen had participated in a discussion -- or maybe a series of discussions, I'm not sure -- about rights and then produced their own Bills of Rights. They translated one of them for me, and it seemed very wise and also very childlike. This child included the right to eat candy along with a child's right to know his father and to visit both parents.

This library also hires an artist to work with the children on various creative visual arts projects. While I was there, the project was creating bookmarks; and the results were lovely. In an earlier project, the children had looked at incunabula from the cathedral library that is just a block or so away and then created their own illuminated alphabets.

There was so much to admire about the library and its staff who obviously care about the library, about their patrons, and about their city. What is missing? Teen services! After the age of fourteen, young people are "sent upstairs" to the adult section. There is no teen collection or programming.

Before I had come to Croatia, I had only read travel guidebooks about the country and the nonfiction accounts written by Rebecca West (BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON) and Robert Kaplan (BALKAN GHOSTS). I wondered in my last post how my impressions of the country would differ. In 1938, Rebecca West seemed to see this part of the world through a Freudian lens in which sex and death seemed to color her experiences. Robert Kaplan was influenced by Rebecca West and by his conviction that history dominated the present.

Yes, this country has a colorful and important heritage and a history that was often terrible. (My friend Ivanka's 96-year-old mother says she has lived through three wars and doesn't want to live through another one.) But there is something quite wonderful about a country that can turn its army bases into libraries and universities and recognize that its children have rights.

When I left the Sibenik Public Library, the librarians said they had a present for me. They gave me a gift bag. Inside were a children's picture book about a wonderful inventor from Sibenek who had devised the first parachute a very long time ago, a book the library had published about its beautiful old cathedral -- and some local brandy in a bottle that had been decorated by hand by one of the librarians. There is something quite wonderful about a country that produces books, inventions, and brandy.

Changing focus

I've been in an alternate universe for the last six weeks. I've been crazed with the effort of trying to finish up a number of projects before I leave for Croatia on Sunday. I've also been strangely apprehensive about that trip, resulting in some oddly obsessive behavior. I finally declared a vacation from all things Croatian until tomorrow, when I pack and discover that I really don't have enough luggage space for a month's worth of clothing, medications, toiletries, etc. Thank heavens for the Kindle; that takes care of my leisure reading material!

I hope to blog from Zadar and Osijek and Zagreb, but it probably won't be about writing. I have as my inspiration the travel journal/political screed that Rebecca West wrote during her travels in that part of the world in the 1930s, BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON. That book is remarkable for its length (1100 pages!), its penetrating observations that are filtered through West's particular world view, and its rather florid prose. Here is a representative passage. She was in the hospital recovering from an appendectomy when sh heard that the King of Yugoslavia had been assassinated. She asks the nurse to switch on the telephone so she can call her husband. "A most terrible thing has happened. The King of Yugoslavia has been assassinated."

"Oh, dear, she replied. "Did you know him?" "No," I said. "Then why," she asked, "do you think it's so terrible?"

West goes on: Her question made me remember that the word "idiot" comes from a Greek root meaning private person. Idiocy is the female defect: intent on their private lives, women follow their fate through a darkness deep as that cast by malformed cells in the brain. It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy: they are so obsessed by public affairs that they see the world as by moonlight, which shows the outlines of every object but not the details indicative of their nature.

West made plans immediately to travel through what was then Yugoslavia with her husband. She was convinced that understanding that part of Europe was essential to understanding her own future as an Englishwoman. She was, of course, very much a creature of her time and place -- as we all were. It will be interesting to see how my experiences and observations differ from hers. I hope that I am neither an idiot nor a lunatic...

What I'm doing when I'm not writing

I've been doing a lot of things: big things like visiting family in Minneapolis, preparing for my trip to Croatia in October, doing work for the Free Library of Philadelphia. Little things like hassling the UCLA bureaucracy in order to get my emeriti parking pass, organizing my collection of scrunchies, weeding my collection of flip flops. Ongoing obsesssions like reading and working on several needlepoint projects. Here is an update on all of them.

The family: kids are cute as ever. Gabe's into all kinds of sports, both as a fan and as a participant. He scored the only goal in his team's first soccer game. Natasha is a Junior Otter, a member of the Y's swim team. She hopes she won't have to compete in swim meets "but will do it if she has to."

Croatia: scary. I have now mastered about five phrases in the impossible Croatian language, tried to learn about the country's impenetrable and complex history, and prepared a syllabus for the course I'm supposed to teach. I have my flight reservations and a tentative itinerary. I think I need to buy a bigger suitcase; there's no way I can get enough clothes for a month in the one I own now.

The Free Library: my latest project was to develop a kind of all-purpose early literacy manual. The biggest challenge was finding good multicultural books for little kids. There are so many distinguished picture books with African American characters or themes for school-age children but almost nothing for two- to four-year-olds. Somebody please fill this gap!

Parking pass: the single most difficult issue of my retirement. Social Security and Medicare were a breeze. My UCLA pension payment came right on time, as did the 403B check. But just try to get an emeriti parking pass! It took me more than two months, one $45 parking ticket, many phone calls, and one trip to Parking Services -- but I think I am now set.

Scrunchies and flip flops: a case of too many objects in too small a space. I've got a plan for the scrunchies; the flip flops are hopeless.

Reading: The Kindle is a fabulous way to organize reading while traveling. (Now, if I could just put my scrunchies and flip flops in an electronic storage unit...) I've read several mystery novels now on long flights and in hotel rooms. Now why isn't the new Ian Rankin available through Kindle????? I have also read Robert Kaplan's "Balkan Ghosts" in preparation for that Croatian trip. The subtitle is "a journey through history", and it really does seem as though history is a living presence in that part of the world. I'm looking forward to experiencing this myself in less than a month.

Needlepoint: This has gotten a little out of control. In the past, I have scrupulously finished one project before starting another. Lately, however, I have left some projects nearly done in order to start another one. For example, when I went to Quebec in August, I needed a project that would keep me busy for a whole week so I started a brand new one. Anyway, I find myself now with three canvases in their final stages and one finished and ready for framing. I know; this is boring.

The Book? You want to know about The Book? I heard from Stephanie Svirin, the new ALA Acquisitions Editor. That was good news; I will like working with her. I confirmed the renegotiated deadline -- February 1. I might even get it done by then.

What I'm writing about

I've written a lot in this blog about the process of writing. Today I want to shift gears and write about content. I am deep into chapter 2 of The Book, in which I reconsider the legacy of library services to children. I needed some kind of organizing principle to do this, and I settled on the identification of three sets of principles or themes.

The first set of five principles are the values and ideas that have come down through more than a hundred years of library service to children. I proposed that these principles are:

1. Reading good books contributes to a good life.
2. The individual child is the primary user of children's library services.
3. The library's children's room is an important element in promoting reading.
4. Children's librarians are the appropriate specialists to best deliver library service to children.
5. Children's librarians are advocates for library service to children.

The second set of principles has emerged more recently:

1. Libraries provide children with information as well as pleasure reading.
2. Library service to children can be optimized through partnerships and collaborations.

And finally I consider two principles that have waxed and waned over the years as social conditions and perceptions of the role of the library have changed:

1. Library use is a civic activity.
2. Americans and American libraries have a responsibility to look beyond their borders and to adopt a global perspective.

So far this works. It is a useful framework and encompasses much of what I want to say. I'm a little puzzled about where to put storytelling; that may end up back in the first set or principles.

I have written before that writing often helps me to clarify what I think or know or believe. Writing this chapter, I have been surprised at how filled with admiration and respect I am for the founding mothers of children's librarianship. Before I began, I expected to be more critical. I had thought to take the position that our legacy was an albatross around the neck of the profession, dragging us down and preventing innovation. I don't believe that any longer. Frances Jenkins Olcott, Anne Carroll Moore, and the other women who were creating -- and implementing -- a vision of library service for children more than a hundred years ago have handed down some timeless truths that together form a solid foundation for the work we do today.

And this brings me back to the business of writing. We only know what they thought and tried to do because they wrote about it in books and magazines that are available to us today through the wonders of interlibrary loan. I wonder if one hundred years from now some children's services coordinator or library educator will be looking back on MY words and reconsidering the legacy of twenty-first century children's librarianship. What a responsibility!

Writing in hotel rooms

I got my first computer in 1990. It was one of those chunky little Macs with a tiny screen that didn't even display a whole page of text. Never mind. I loved it. It was much easier than I thought it would be to make the transition from writing in longhand on yellow legal pads and plain white paper on the kitchen table to processing words on the screen. I never looked back. I find it difficult now to compose a sympathy card or a post card message because my handwriting has deteriorated to the point of illegibility, and I am much too accustomed to the delete function on my computer to craft a sentence in one draft. Two of my good friends who write extraordinary fiction start their drafts in long hand. I am awestruck.

I also have become habituated to writing in my home office. I like my Aeron chair and the easy accessibility of snacks. I like working with the door open five feet from my chair, and I like being able to walk outside when I need a break and even more fresh air. I like having my reference books and source documents right there where I need them. I like being able to spread out to the living room when the piles of documents and files threaten to take over every inch of floor space in the tiny office. Anyway, it's where I have produced every single word that has been published in the last twelve years.

I travel a lot for work and for family. Sometimes I bring my computer -- still a Mac but now a sleeker PowerBook G4 laptop. I mostly use it for email and sometimes to transcribe my notes when I'm collecting data on the road. So today I am engaged in a brave new experiment. I am working on the Book in my hotel room in Quebec City. I am here for the IFLA Conference, which stretches on endlessly for those of us who are delegates to Standing Committees. There is a lot of down time, which I am determined not to waste.

Here is what I like about writing in this new environment. Because I obviously couldn't tote a bunch of books with me, I am writing without access to the many sources that will eventually be cited. (Not everything I need to know is on the Internet.) I am accustomed to stopping frequently to check a citation or to look up a fact. Where did Anne Carroll Moore publish her book review column? When did she communicate her dislike of Stuart Little to E.B. White? What is the correct name of the Geisel Award for easy reading books? That kind of thing.

Somehow not being able to stop and fact-check as I go along has feed me to write in broader brush strokes and to focus more on the overall narrative flow. I have written in an earlier post about how I have struggled to find an authentic and personal voice when writing within the conventions of academic prose. It is also a struggle to find the narrative arc. It is all too easy to get bogged down in a series of disconnected facts. I admire writers like Jim Murphy whose impeccably researched informational books read like stories. I may have learned today, writing in my hotel room, the first lesson in how to do that.

The writer as introvert -- or extrovert?

Whenever I've taken one of those Meyer-Briggs-type personality tests, the results have been consistent. I seem to have equally strong needs for stimulation from social interaction and from solitude. My two careers -- librarian and professor -- have met those needs beautifully. There was ample opportunity for reflection and the solitary activities of reading and writing and also for the ferment of classroom discussions, conference attendance, and rewarding relationships with students and colleagues.

So this past month and a half has been an interesting one for me, being much more heavily weighted to the introverted side of life. I've been home and except for a few diversionary activities which I have dutifully recorded here, I have severely limited my face-to-face social interactions in order to write. And it's been good.

However, I had the opportunity this past Monday to spend the whole day with a group of bright, engaged librarians from Philadelphia. I was facilitating a planning process for a Pennsylvania Library Association Committee that is charged with implementing the association's flagship initiative related to early learning. The discussion was both focused and wide-ranging, as the best conversations often are. As usual, I learned a lot about what was going on out there on the front lines of public library service and about myself. What I learned about Pennsylvania public libraries will find its way into the Book, I am sure. And what I relearned about myself is that I can't write in a vacuum. Sometimes I need to get out and mix it up a bit with my colleagues who are doing the work in libraries in order to prime my pump. So all of those good, reflective librarians out there are also part of this writer's community, along with my writing friends and those implied readers who are always with me.

I'll be going to Quebec tomorrow to spend nine days at the IFLA Conference, where I expect that my interactions with children's librarians from all over the world will stimulate more thinking and help to drive the global perspective which is the underpinning for much of the Book. I'll bring my computer and try to find time for introspection as well as socializing.

No more whining

My friend Elaine sent me an email this morning in response to my last blog post about the decline in reading. Her effort to comment directly to the post had been eaten in cyberspace. (Does anybody know why this happens?)

In her email, she basically accused me of whining and looking for excuses to avoid writing. Guilty as charged! This week, I have spent one afternoon at the Getty with a granddaughter and another at the movies. I have even done some of the kind of house cleaning and organizing that is the classic writing avoidance activity.

So what's going on here? I'm trying to get started on the second chapter of the Book, in which I go back and look more critically and analytically at the tradition of library service to children. It means challenging some of the most cherished values and practices of our profession -- or at least putting them under the microscope for a closer look. Elaine and I did a little of this in our book on "Teens and Libraries," and it wasn't always well-received, for obvious reasons. I don't think I am being faint-hearted about confronting either Anne Carroll Moore or the old girls of ALSC, but I do recognize the need to do it as well as I can. I am daunted by the skill that is needed for this task.

Elaine tells me to doodle it or play it on the piano or whatever it takes -- just write the damn book. Yes, maam. I'll try.

Where are the readers?

We write for many reasons. I have written, for example, to prove my scholarly credentials for tenure considerations, to share my hard-earned expertise with other professionals, to communicate with friends and relatives, to entertain children, and to confront for myself the demons lurking inside young people who kill.

My father started writing a kind of memoir when he was in his seventies; it seemed to be an exercise in remembering as well as a historical record for those who came after him.

I have read many Holocaust narratives that are testimonials to horror, written to bear witness so that no one would forget what happened to the millions who died.

My son-in-law, a drama critic for the Twin Cities City Pages, writes for a living, as do many journalists and successful authors

In THE MIDNIGHT DISEASE, neurologist Alice W. Fleming writes about writer's block and its flip side, the compulsive desire to write that can keep people hunched over a keyboard for hours,unable to stop the words from spewing forth.

For most of us, however divergent our motivations may be, there is the hope that our words will reach readers. It was unnerving, therefore, to stumble during the past week on three different arguments for the decline of reading. Nicholas Carr asks in the 2008 July/August Atlantic Monthly, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google. (Sorry; I haven't learned yet how to create links.) He notes that because of the ubiquity of text on the Internet, we may actually be reading more than ever, but it's a different kind of reading that may involve a different kind of thinikng than the extended reading of longer works of prose requires. He quotes Maryanne Wolf, a developmental scientist who wrote PROUST AND THE SQUID: THE STORY AND SCIENCE OF THE READING BRAIN, who worries that we are losing our ability to interpret text and to make the mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction.

A front-page story in today's NEW YORK TIMES (7-27-08) focuses on teens' abandonment of books for the Internet. The photo accompanying the story shows a family in their living room. Mom is reading a book; Dad is reading a newspaper. The two teens sit on the sofa with their laptops. The author points out that gleaning information from Internet texts requires the kind of critical thinking that we in the library world know as information literacy skills. However, the kind of Internet reading that most teens do for pleasure apparently requires little more than a lexicon of emoticons.

The third article to cast gloom on the future of reading was review in today's LA TIMES by Davaid Futrelle of DISTRACTED: THE EROSION OF ATTENTION AND THE COMING DARK AGE by Maggie Jackson. This is another diatribe on the consequences of digital telecommunication devices -- "the beeping Blackberries that we tote to the beach instead of the giant books we used to pretend to read." The reviewer isn't crazy about the book; he finds that ironically it lacks focus. However, it is one more piece of evidence that the cognitive demands of modern life may not lend themselves to reading the kinds of books that many of us want to write.

I'm not sure what to make of all of this. I spend a lot more time reading Internet texts than I used to and still find myself capable of sinking deeply into more literary prose. Admittedly, I write these days for other educated adults -- not for media-mad young people. But sometimes I wonder: am I blogging while Rome burns?

A writer's community

When I was studying for my PhD in Public Administration at USC in the early 1980s, I was part of a scholarly movement that defined itself as being in opposition to the prevailing market-oriented approach to government. Instead of running a government organization -- a library, say -- like a business, we proposed a more community-oriented approach. The particular strategy I was advocating was called coproduction, in which the organization would involve its users as coproducers of the service they were receiving. It was a bottom-up strategy in which the professionals and their clients were seen as having equal power in determining the kind of services that would be provided.

There was much discussion then of different kinds of communities. I remember in particular talk about sodalities, communities of interest. I understand that this term is most commonly associated with the Catholic Church, but we extended it to include fellowships of all kinds in which participants joined together informally because of mutual interests. I can't remember now who it was -- Barbara Bader? Jacalyn Eddy? -- who talked about the sodality created by Anne Carroll Moore and other like-minded women in the early part of the nineteenth century. They were bound together by their mutual passion for children and books and for the new institutions that were forming to bring the two together.

This has been a week in which my own sodality, a small community of writing women who care about each other as well as about children, books, and/or libraries, has been an enormous boost to my own productivity. It was a week in which my writing languished as I dealt with errands and tasks, both mundane (going to the post office) and glorious (acquiring my new digital piano and finding the right headphones after three trips to Radio Shack).

Do you know how hard it is to get back to the manuscript when you've been away for a week? You can't remember where you were or what you were thinking when you abandoned it. The learning curve seems impossibly steep. I was stuck, and even lunch with my writing friends Susan and Theresa just seemed like a pleasant distraction, not the usual stimulus to be the best kind of writer I can be. I was well and firmly stuck.

Then Theresa shared a midnight inspiration with Susan and me. She called it "meanderings" but it was a brilliant essay on yearnings and desire and what these powerful emotions have to do with the art of writing. My heart answered, "yes, exactly." As if she also knew just what I needed, my friend Elaine sent a long message (see the third comment under the previous post about historical gaps.) She triggered my thinking again about both the content of the chapter I was working on and about the whole process of writing. I spent much of yesterday back at the computer, doing some good revision and moving the Book along.

It sometimes feels so solitary. But there are friends out there, members of the sodality who are there when we need them. Thank you.

Historical gaps

I really thought I was done with Chapter 1, the history and tradition of library service to children in the U.S. I had tracked down those pesky PLA service responses and navigated through the controversy surrounding the Benton Foundation report. I had integrated Abigail Van Slyck's insights on the children's rooms in Carnegie libraries and Jacalyn Eddy's account of the influential "bookwomen" who helped to create children's book publishing and library services in the first part of this century. Enough!

Then the discussion lists started to buzz with news of a New Yorker article about Anne Carroll Moore. Is there anything more to be learned about this formidable foremother of library services to children?

What I really want to read is an article about a children's librarian serving the kids in Topeka, Kansas, in the 1920s or working in a segregated library in the South in the 1950s. Or the memoir of a new children's librarian terrorized by the indomitable ACM. I want to know what the children's librarians in Minneapolis or San Francisco thought about Stuart Little; I really don't care any more that ACM was disappointed in it. I want to know how children responded to those legendary story hours at NYPL back in the early days. I want to know what children checked out from branch libraries in Los Angeles and New Orleans at different periods in time. I know that summer reading programs have been around since about 1900. What were they like? When did themes and tangible reading incentives become part of the programs?

So much of what we know about library history is the story of great women. Where are the "little women?" Where are the children?

Laying down the bones

I wish I could say that I had increased the word count on the manuscript significantly. That hasn't happened, but I've done something almost as important. I have finally laid down the bones of the book. I guess you could call it the outline. When I was a doctoral student, professors talked about creating a conceptual framework for our scholarly writing, and that's another way to think about it. But it feels to me like the skeleton, just waiting to be fleshed out.

It came in a flash, while I was emailing my friend and sometime co-author, Elaine Meyers. We had talked a lot about the shape of the book when we were both in Anaheim at the end of June so it seemed right to try it out on her. So here it is:

1. Where we came from -- the tradition of library service to children
2. The legacy reconsidered
3. The children we serve -- ways to think about childhood, from the reading child of Anne Carroll Moore et al to a notion of the child as agent with rights as well as needs.
4. Creating the library for the children we serve -- or maybe, getting it right in the library for the children we serve (using an outcome-based planning and evaluation methodology for the smaller bones)
5. Claiming the future.

Now I need to pick up the pace, since I am just now finishing chapter 1, and I'd really like to get this done before I leave for Croatia in mid-October.

Drudgery

So here I am in the hot weather version of my scribbling suit: baggy t shirt and baggy shorts. Bare feet. Hair up in a scraggly pony tail. And I have spent nearly two hours engaged in the worst form of informational writing drudgery: cleaning up my references.

Chapter 1 is nearly done, and it is probably the most heavily documented piece of the whole book since it deals with the history of library service to children. Much of this was already cited in the earlier edition. Dealing with those references was easy, if boring. All I had to do was print the chapter, go to the original bibliography, and type in the references (hoping that I had gotten everything right the first time), checking them off as I worked my way through. More challenging were the new bits that I had added. In many instances, I had the source at hand -- easy peasy. In too many cases, however, I didn't want to interrupt the narrative flow to look up the citation. So sprinkled through the manuscript are the dreaded words: "check cite. " Or even worse: "add more." For example, I wanted to list the new PLA Service Responses. Do I have a copy of the latest edition of the Service Responses? No. I've got my fingers crossed that they are on the Web someplace; otherwise, I'll have to request them through ILL and go back to fill this part in much, much later.

See: It's even boring to read about it.

Sorry. I'll get through this hump and have something more interesting to say next time. Maybe I'll even follow Cindy's example and wear something more attractive. (See her comment on my last post.)

What not to wear

I wonder how many of us writing women identified with Jo in Little Women. I just reread the book, and Jo is still my girl. Meg is too prissy; Amy, too spoiled; Meg, too good to be believed. But Jo -- strong-willed, impatient, and driven by her need to write -- now there's a heroine to admire.

I'm sure you remember where she wrote while she lived at home, tucked away in the upstairs garret, munching on apples. But how many of you remember her "scribbling suit"? "Her scribbling suit consisted of a black woolen pinafore on which she could wipe her pen at will, and a cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow, into which she bundled her hair when the decks were cleared for action. This cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally to ask with interest, 'Does genius burn, Jo?' They did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap, and judged accordingly. If this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on, in exciting moments it was pushed rakishlyh askew, and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off, and cast upon the floor. at such times the intruder silently withdrew, and not until the red bow ws seen gaily erect upon the gifted brow, did anyone dare address Jo" (Barnes and Noble Classics, p. 260).

I am so grateful that I live in a time and place in which woolen pinafores are not the norm. When I am writing in my home office, I wear leggings or sweat pants and a baggy t shirt, the same clothes I wear to the gym. My feet are bare nearly year round.

And you? What is your scribbling suit?

Inspiration or perspiration

My two children's books, "Hi, Pizza Man!" and Making Up Megaboy, were written in the incandescent heat of inspiration. Each one was a gift from the writing gods. In fact, I didn't so much WRITE Making Up Megaboy as channel the voices I heard in my mind on to the computer screen. There was little conscious thought or effort. It gives me chills to remember it.

I have tried many times since then to find the source of that inspiration. There was one summer when I cleared my calendar and tried to write every day, as my serious writer friends advise me to do. "Never mind if it doesn't go well," they say. "We all produce page after page of useless prose. Just keep at it. Revise, revise, revise. And don't be afraid to just chuck it all in the trash. Eventually the right words will come."

It didn't work for me. All that came of that summer of persistent literary effort was page after page of labored prose -- trite, banal, and definitely uninspired -- and a conviction that my earlier children's books were flukes. I certainly didn't want to bring another mediocre mid-list children's book into the world. So I stopped trying to write the great American children's novel or picture book.

I turned back to the kind of writing that my day job demanded anyway -- scholarly or professional books and articles. "Publish or perish" is not just a catchy turn of phrase. It is gospel at a major research university like UCLA where I was able to survive by publishing enough to satisfy the dreaded Committee on Academic Personnel. It became a challenge for me to find an academic writing style that had a personal voice as well as appropriate content. This kind of writing owed very little to inspiration, however, and much more to perspiration. Just sit at the computer and do it.

So here I am again, writing a professional book, hoping for the inspiration that will allow the words to soar from the page but knowing that ultimately this process owes nearly everything to perspiration and discipline.

Day 3

I have had a contract for more than a year now to revise a book that was published in 2001, CHILDREN AND LIBRARIES. I've thought about it a lot and fretted even more, but until July 1 not one word existed in the new manuscript. I have now started writing in earnest. This blog will be the place where I write and fret and think about the process.

I started with the easiest chapter, the historical overview of library service to children. This is the only chapter that I can just revise; all of the others will be brand new, written from scratch. I've had to retype the whole thing -- what on earth did I do with the original Word file? But this has been good because it combines a kind of mechanical process with reflection. I've been revising as I go along, mostly adding new information.

I'm almost at a decision point. In the earlier edition, the second chapter was a kind of assessment of the current status of library service to children. I am considering now whether to fold some of that information ino the historical overview as something like the "recent past." We'll see how that goes.

Reflections: 1. As painful as it is to get started on a big writing project (or even a little one), it is not as painful as fretting about NOT writing. 2. I don't know what I know until I've written it down.