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.