Pretty book cover!

Hurray! It's in production -- and just look at the pretty cover. SO much better than the last ALA editions I have published.

Writing and thinking about family-friendly libraries

This weekend I am working on a report for the California State Library about Family Place libraries. The State Library plans to award grants to libraries around the state to implement this service initiative. I have been asked to look at the existing Family Place libraries in the Los Angeles County Public Library system to anticipate implementation issues and to develop some evaluation strategies. This comes after another recent report on the Early Learning with Literacy initiative, another State Library project that focused on helping public libraries become family-friendly destination places, where parents and caregivers and children would come and spend quality time together in a safe and welcoming public space.

It has been a revelation to see how some public libraries have been able to generate a real change in their service culture when these family-friendly policies have been embraced by the entire library staff, from directors to security officers and custodians. It has also been a revelation to see how the good intentions of librarians in some locations are undermined by lack of administrative support and/or by policies that actually run counter to their efforts on the ground.

One librarian talks about how the library in which she works, an otherwise beautiful new facility, is an acoustic nightmare, with ordinary conversations between children and their parents echoing loudly in the adult area. "Couldn't they have designed something more friendly to children?" she asks. "Did they even think about this?" Another branch manager said that she asks her children's librarian to tell the parents attending a morning story hour when the library is about to open so they will know to keep their toddlers quiet.

Food is an issue when a library starts inviting parents to bring their toddlers to the library and stay awhile. The librarians at one location in Roseville say, "Raisins and Cheerios come with the territory." They encourage mothers to clean up after their kids but don't get uptight about it. The same branch manager who is concerned about the noise level in her library when it opens to the public makes it clear that food is absolutely not allowed.

And here is a horror story. A mother of two little boys, ages three and one years, was in the habit of taking them to the public library where a friend of hers works. I know these little boys, and they are actually unusually quiet and self-possessed children. However, the branch manager ordered the children's librarian to tell this mother that her baby, the one-year-old, was banished from the library because of his loud and boisterous behavior! I can't imagine what this child did -- or how I would feel in the mother's place. Outraged? Defensive? Unwanted? The mother won't complain because she doesn't want to get her friend, the children's librarian, in trouble. She now takes her boys to a different library where the environment is more welcoming.

It is true that very small children and adults use libraries very differently. Their needs may conflict. However, I have observed adults working on computers with total concentration while toddlers dragged stuffed animals around the children's area just a few feet away. I have seen senior citizens smile indulgently at the babies pawing through a basket of board books. I have also heard librarians telling less indulgent and child-tolerant adults that they would find the library to be less noisy if they came at a different time of the day.

I have often talked and written about the important role that libraries can play in the creation of a web of support for families, who need all of the support they can get in these tough times. Libraries also play an important role in defining communities and in creating communities where many generations can come together to experience the benefits of literacy and information. This only works, however, when ALL of the library staff understand and support that mission.

A new chapter

I started this blog originally in order to document the creation of a new edition of Children and Libraries: Getting It Right. There were a few digressions along the way, but that was certainly the focus. I finished the manuscript and dealt with the many changes and queries raised by a fastidious copy-editor. I understand I'll receive page proofs very soon. The final title, generated by the marketing folks, is Twenty-First Century Libraries for Twenty-First Century Children, I think. So this chapter of my writing life is pretty much over until I have to face the prospect of reading reviews, and there didn't seem to be anything relevant to post on this blog.

Until today.

This morning I received an email from Stephanie Zvirin at ALA Editions telling me that the proposal that Elaine Meyers and I submitted to revise Teens and Libraries: Getting It Right has been accepted. Writing a book with a collaborator is a very different process from the lonely work of a single author. Elaine and I still need to talk about how we're going to approach this one; the proposed chapters don't divide up neatly into our different areas of expertise. We want this edition to have more of an administrative and policy focus than the last one. Working title: Teens and Libraries: Managing to Get It Right.

The one element we have agreed on is a series of profiles of real teens that will be sprinkled through the book. We've designed some interview questions that we think will make these kids pop off the page.

So watch this space.

And MORE page proofs

I've been on the road pretty much non-stop this month, traveling to Philadelphia and northern California to collect data for various evaluation projects.  I've blogged before about writing in hotel rooms; it can be a strangely liberating activity.  There is something about being in a sterile environment with few distractions that unfreezes the blockage we writers fear so much.

A writing activity that does NOT lend itself to hotel rooms or indeed any venue outside of my messy office, however, is dealing with page proofs.  Since most of the author queries I get involve citations, I need to be able to consult my files and reference books.  It is even easier to check URLs when I can spread out the paper pages and make notations on them while I am looking at the online screen.   

So I've spent this afternoon -- when I would have much preferred to be outside -- sitting at my desk and methodically working my way through page after page of the copyedited manuscript for the book, which I think the marketing department at ALA has decided to call Twenty-First Century Libraries for Twenty-First Century Kids.  I'm not done, but I've made a good start; and I'll be able to finish before the deadline they've given me.

Much as I dread this task, I am consumed with gratitude for the copyeditor.  She catches every silly typo and fixes my syntax and makes sure that there is an entry in the reference list for every citation in the text.  I am truly humbled by how many things she finds to fix in my deathless prose.  Thank you, Ms. Crabtree, for your attention to detail and your respect for my writing style. 

Page Proofs

Oh, dear.  It's been more than a month since I posted anything.  Here's where I should provide a rundown of all of the activities -- writing, literary, and other -- that have filled up the days since March 12.  Unfortunately, I've just been living my life.  There was a trip to Philly and a birthday, some library visits for an evaluation project and two strange post-modern opera productions of Das Rheingold and Die Walkyrie.  Stuff like that.  

But now things are moving again on the writing front.  I've got page proofs for the long article on "Library Services for Children" for the new edition of the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science.  I felt good about this piece.  Given the constraints of the genre, it was both informative and literate.  There were relatively few of those dreaded author queries, and most were easily handled.  Yes, citation number 32 was the same as reference 8.  Yes, the photo captions were correct.  It was easy enough to provide the full names for the acronyms IFLA and IMLS and to correct one URL.  But then the production guy -- located in India, thanks to the wonders of editorial outsourcing -- wanted me to confirm the page numbers for the reference to William I. Fletcher's classic 1876 report on library service to children.  Everybody cites this, including me.  But do they include the page numbers?  No, they do not.  It took an hour or more of googling and checking sources before I finally found another citation with the page numbers I had used originally.  Yes, I know.  I should request the original book from remote storage at the UCLA Library and eyeball it for myself.  But I can't make myself do it.  Surely it's right there on pages 412 to 418, just like I said the first time.

In other publishing news, ALA Editions has sent my ms. out for copyediting.  And the marketing department has decided on a title:  Twenty-first Century Kids, Twenty-first Century Libraries.  I'm not sure what I think about that.  In some ways, it would have been a better title for the first book.   I'm hoping they can do a better job with the cover than they did with the two printings of that one.

 

Reading and writing 24/7

Sometimes I stop working at the computer and go outside.  The door is just six feet from my chair.  If I turn left, I go along the side of the house to the front yard through the archway in this photo.  I might check to see if the mail has come, or I might pull a few weeds.  I would definitely stop to admire the wisteria that looks for a few weeks in spring like that famous Tiffany stained glass window.  If I turn right, I would go into the backyard.  I might do a little maintenance gardening, or I might just sit on a bench and read for awhile, enjoying the sun on my face and the words on the page.

Three writer friends and I have an ongoing email correspondence.  The content is wide-ranging, from grandkids to recipes, gardening, movies, and of course, reading and writing.  We keep each other updated on writing projects, and we share book recommendations.  I was surprised to learn recently that all of the other three make it a practice to avoid reading during the daytime and feel guilty when they do.

What's up with that anyway?  

Even when I was a practicing librarian with a regular 9 to 5 Monday through Friday job, I sometimes read during my work hours and only felt a tiny bit guilty.  I never intended to just sit and read a novel in my office; I was more likely to just go through a pile of new acquisitions or review copies to see get familiar with them.  I still remember the day, however, when I picked up Bridge to Terabithia from the new book shelf.  I started to read the first page and looked up an hour later, tears streaming down my face, to find a huddle of children outside my open office door, all staring in wonder at the weeping librarian.

As a professor responsible for teaching and researching children's literature, I have always felt that reading children's books and critical works about them was part of my job.  Lucky me.

As a writer too, I feel that reading is part of my job.  Reading the best of what other people write stimulates me to write better.  I blogged recently about how a poem in Margarita Engle's magnificent Surrender Tree gave me the insight I needed to finish my book about children and libraries.  

Of course, I not only read at any odd moment during the day or evening.  I also work at all hours.  This was the biggest change for me when I left the public library and started my job as a professor.  There were no longer regular work hours or even time sheets!  UCLA didn't seem to care when or where I did my work as long as I showed up for scheduled office hours, classes, and faculty meetings.  Occasionally I would try to keep track of the hours I spent on those activities plus course preparation, research, writing, and the other criterion for promotion:  the poorly defined "service" component.  It was always considerably more than 40 hours a week, but the bliss was that I could put in the hours whenever it suited me.  This left occasional mornings free for grocery shopping or the gym and afternoons for movies.   I could spend time with the grandchildren when they got out of school.  I did all of my writing for publication in my home office, at any hour of the day or night, with the freedom to take a break and work in my garden or stir the stew that was simmering on my stove.  

Maybe this is why I read any time and any place I can.  Yes, books nourish my mind and my soul and distract me from the cares of the world.  I need to read as much as I need to work and eat and drink and love.   I don't compartmentalize any of those activities.  On good days, they all merge into an organic whole.  So yes, I read in the daytime; and I write at night and on weekends.   These are the rewards of a literary life.

Spring fever

On Monday, February 16, I sent every last word of the Book ms. electronically to the editor.  Wow, what a feeling!  Is this why we write?  Because it feels so good when we stop?  I know it's not quite over yet; there will still be those grueling author queries from the copy editor.   But for now it was time to celebrate.

This is what I did over the next week:  saw four movies (in preparation for the Academy Awards ceremony), went to a concert at the Disney Hall, enlisted my teenage granddaughter to help me do some serious gardening, and hosted an intimate Oscar party.

It was sheer giddy bliss.  This was what I had THOUGHT retirement would be like.

Even the weather is cooperating.  It is sunny and warm, and everything is blooming, even the flamboyant amaryllis that was just a bulb in a pot when I got it for Christmas.  When it finally flowered this week, the stem was more than three feet tall, and it was so top-heavy that it kept capsizing.  I finally had to cut it off and put it in a vase.  

The daffodils are nearly finished, but the wisteria vine is beginning to dazzle with its purple

 flowers that are so glorious for their brief life each spring.  

I even tackled the rampant bougainvillea in the backyard, hacking off diseased limbs until the green recycle bin would hold no more.  

And today I committed to another writing project.  I'll be doing an article about library teen employment programs for Library Trends, using my work with the LEAP program at the Free Library of Philadelphia as a kind of case study. Flowers want to grow.   Words want to be written.

Hogamus higamus

I think it was Dorothy Parker who reportedly woke up in the middle of the night with an inspiration.  The words that came to her were so brilliant and insightful that she instantly wrote them down, certain that she had unlocked the key to a wise and wonderful poem.  She woke up the next day and read what she had written:  "Hogamus higamus, men are polygamous.  Higamus hogamus, women monogamous."  (My friend Theresa has had a similar experience, but that is her story to tell.)

I felt like I was channeling Dorothy Parker last night.  I had finished everything but the last chapter of the Book, which I had optimistically titled "Claiming the Future."  When I sat down to put words to that title, I suddenly realized that I had no idea what to say.  It was one of those paralyzing moments we writers come to dread.  Sometimes we know what we want to say but don't know how to say it.  That we can manage.  That's all about writing and rewriting until you get it right.  But this is worse:  not knowing what to say.

I closed the Word file.  I listened to some music.  I ate supper.  I finished reading The Surrender Tree by Margarita Engle.  I tried not to fret.  I went back to the computer, opened up Chapter 6 and read those words again:  "Claiming the Future."

Words from the powerful, evocative poetry of Margarita Engle that I had just been reading came flooding back; and suddenly I knew that it wasn't up to librarians to claim the future as I had been thinking (and somehow knowing it was wrong).  It is the children who must claim the future, and we librarians who give them the support to do so.  

So I wrote in one of those white heats of inspiration in which the words flow like lava.  I referred to Engle's book.  The Surrender Tree is a book of poems that tells the story of Cuba's wars for independence from Spain, fought from 1850 to 1899.   The dominant voice is Rosa's, a slave who escaped to the forest and joined the freedom fighters there.  She becomes a legendary healer, using her knowledge of medicinal plants to ease the pain and suffering of wounded men on both sides of the fighting.   A young girl named Silvia  escapes from the reconcentration camps established by the Spanish government to control the peasant population on the island.  She joins Rosa, who has grown old while the wars rage on endlessly.  Rosa teaches Silvia one cure at time.  She introduces the girl to the Simple Verses of Jose Marti, the poet who first inspired her to hope; and she watches as the girl becomes a skilled healer in her own right.  Rosa thinks that she and her husband are like the rock-hard wood of the guayacan tree, so heavy that it cannot float while young people are like the wood of a balsa tree, light and airy.

Young people drift on airy daydreams.

Old people help hold them in place (p. 113).

That was it.  I had the beginning of the final chapter of my book.  I saved my work, sent a copy to my friend and colleague Elaine for her feedback, shut down the computer, and withdrew into a video of Devil in a Blue Dress.  When I woke up this morning, I was afraid that I might have had my own "hogamus  higamus" moment last night.  I was fearful about reading again what I had written, but Elaine's email was encouraging.

I took a deep breath, opened the file, and read what I had written.  It worked.  I decided that this was an occasion for "less is more" and just wrote enough to wrap it up and to clarify the idea that librarians can be the anchors for the next generations dreams and dreamers, not holding them back but lifting them up.

Now all I need to do is figure out some way to add a little sparkle to chapter five, write an introduction -- and I'm done with this puppy.

Comfort

It's another cold, rainy day in paradise.  The Book is nearing completion.  I should be happy that the weather does not tempt me outdoors.  Why not glue myself to the Aeron chair in front of my computer when most other options involve slogging through the rain?  Still, when the writing doesn't go well and I feel like I'm pushing my way through molasses with nothing to show for it but treacly, gooey prose, I need comfort.   Actually, I need comfort even when the writing is going nicely.  And comfort usually means food.

I was especially stressed this morning.  The good news is that I wrapped up the all-important chapter on re-imagining childhood.  This is really the heart of the book,  and it required a lot of careful thought and precise language so I was feeling pretty good.   The next chapter should be relatively straight-forward.  I'll be using the model of outcome-based planning and evaluation described in Dynamic Youth Services through Outcome-Based Planning and Evaluation by Eliza Dresang, Melissa Gross, and Leslie Edmonds Holt to suggest a more intentional way of delivering library services to kids.  I reached for my copy on the shelf where it should have been:  no book.  I looked to the left of me.  No book.  I looked to the right of me.  No book.  I even looked up into the tree.  No book.  Not even any monkeys.  I looked EVERYWHERE.  

I checked the LAPL online catalog:  not there!  Why didn't they buy this book?????  I checked the UCLA online catalog:  checked out.  Finally in desperation, I logged onto Amazon.com and ordered a copy to arrive overnight on Saturday with some insanely high delivery charge.   Then as I was walking from my office to the kitchen to make lunch, I spotted my copy of the book wedged between American Children's Literature and the Construction of Childhood and Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children.  I had looked there in my panicky search but hadn't seen it. 

Oh, well.  After tomorrow I will own two copies of this useful book.  But for now I needed comfort.  There are some foods that ooze comfort.  Chocolate is one, of course.  But when I need a comfort lunch, I revert back to childhood pleasures.  These are meals that would cause a foodie or someone on a low-carb diet (that would be me) to run screaming from the table:  potato patties made with mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese or grilled cheese sandwiches made with Velveeta, Campbell's cream of tomato soup served with so many saltine crackers that it should more accurately be called saltine crackers soaked in cream of tomato soup.  All of those meals have comforted me in the past.  Today I made one of my mother's favorites:  a scrambled egg sandwich with ketchup on white bread.  She sometimes added onions or green peppers and called it a Denver Sandwich.  

I prepared it.  I ate it.  It was delicious, and now I am fortified for another afternoon of writing.

Deadlines

My editor emailed me this week and asked how things were going since I had committed to a February 1 deadline to complete the manuscript.  I allowed as how I might be a little later than that and suggested that February 15 might be more reasonable.  Actually, June 15 would be even more reasonable.  But never mind.  I am now working at a feverish pace to try to finish this book sometime reasonably close to that February 15 date.

But when I am not sitting at the computer, I have been thinking about deadlines.  All kinds of deadlines.  We all know about April 15.  At the end of each quarter at UCLA, I have faced a deadline to turn in grades.  There have been deadlines to turn in grant proposals and to get the early bird rate for conference registration.  So many deadlines.  They are mostly hateful things, generating a lot of stress.

I have also been reading Marguerite Yourcenar's magnificent "Memoirs of Hadrian."  The elderly Roman Emperor is reflecting on his life and writing a kind of testimonial for the young Marcus Aurelius who will succeed him.  Hadrian doesn't know the exact date of that ultimate deadline -- death -- but he knows that it is inevitable and that it may be close at hand.  As he assesses his life, he seems content with what he has accomplished.  He regrets most the untimely death by suicide of the young man who was the great love of his life. 

While Hadrian is sometimes harsh in his judgment of other old men, especially those whose minds seem to have hardened along with their arteries, he seems sanguine about his own aging.  He acknowledges the increasing physical weaknesses with some dismay, but of course, he has a host of servants to massage his aching limbs, lend an arm, make him comfortable, or even carry him if necessary.  

I haven't finished the book yet so I don't know if there are any last tasks Hadrian wants to complete before his final deadline with Death.  At 65,  I certainly don't feel that I am at Death's door.  I am aware, however, that I am closer to the end of my life than to its beginning.  I have retired from not one but two careers that were immensely rewarding to me, but I still work.  I write.  I teach.  I consult.  I think.  

I can't remember exactly when I stopped reading job announcements and fantasizing about other jobs I might tackle.  I do have a "lifetime to do" list that I compiled about ten years ago.  I've checked off some items:  attending another performance of Wagner's Ring, being promoted to full professor, and growing  a wisteria vine.  I'm looking forward to achieving one more this summer -- visiting Italy.  And just this week I thought of a professional project I would like to initiate:  a movement for children's library rights.  I'll be writing about that in the book that I just might finish by February 15.  I haven't set a deadline for the children's library rights movement though.

A change in the weather

I know I'm a weather wimp. Living here in the paradise that is Venice, California, I have become accustomed to temperatures that don't deviate much from the 70s, and I like it that way. So I have been suffering lately with night time temperatures down in the forties and daytime temperatures in the high 50s.

My Minnesota grandkids were just here, and they thought it was positively tropical. They ran around with bare feet and no jackets and pooled their walking-around money to reach a total of $130 which they they offered to their mother as a bribe to move the family here. Their dad said he'd consider it if they added a few zeros to that sum.

Anyway, I've been cold. My house is not designed for cold weather. There is a wall heater in the hall. It gets the hall nice and toasty and leaves the rest of the house pretty chilly. A little heat seeps into the living room but none reaches my drafty office. And now we finally get to the point of this post. It has been too cold to work comfortably at the computer. My keyboard keys are cold. My fingers are cold. My brain is cold.

And this brings me to the image at the beginning of the post. That is Henry Hagglyhoagly, the romantic hero of one of Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories. I loved these stories as a little girl living in Minnesota, and I love them still.

Henry Hagglyhoagly was in love with Susan Slackentwist, and he was walking down a country road to court her. "Why is it so bitter cold weather?" Henry Hagglyhoagly asked himself, "if I say many bitter bitters it is not so bitter as the cold wind and the cold weather." Fortunately he had his good wool mittens on. At last he gets to Susan's home and prepares to serenade her with his Spanish Spinnish Splishy guitar.

"And now," he asked his mittens, "shall I take you off or keep you on? If I take you off the cold wind of the bitter cold weather will freeze my hands so stiff and bitter cold my fingers will be too stiff to play the guitar. I will play with mittens on."

Which he did. Susan Slackentwist listened and opened her window and threw him a snow-bird feather. And for years afterward many a sweetheart in the Rootabaga Country told her lover, "If you wish to marry me let me hear you under my window on a winter night playing the guitar with wool yarn mittens on."

I actually TRIED typing with my gloves on. Not a successful effort.

Fortunately, the weather man predicts a change in the weather, with a Santa Ana condition bringing temperatures up in the 80s to LA by the weekend.