Awesome stuff I've found at the library: part I

The other day, a mom was looking for the Beverly Cleary book Henry and Beezus.  I went to the shelf, and looky at what I found:

Some little kid had checked the book out and replaced the original jacket with her own hand drawn version!   Even the plastic book jacket cover had been put back on!  Now, obviously vandalizing library books is not ok, but this copy, in my opinion, has been transformed into sort of a one-of-a-kind treasure.

This has been part one of "Awesome Stuff I've Found at the Library" in a possible continuing series, if I keep finding neat bits like this (as opposed to awful things, like books returned with a banana peel being used as a bookmark).

Persepolis: One Book?

The community of Sarasota is voting on its "One Book" selections, and this year, the candidates were a nice mix of young adult and adult works, such as The Hunger Games, In Defense of Food, Fahrenheit 451, Nickeled and Dimed, and more.  For those of you that are unaware, the "One Book, One City" concept, which started in Seattle and has since spread worldwide (and has also spawned mutant offspring on Twitter), essentially turns the town into one giant book club.

It's nice to see that in a community so heavily skewed towards the retirement demographic, there are so many choices that are accessible to a younger audience.  In fact, if I had my druthers, Persepolis, the acclaimed graphic novel, would be in the running next year.  This is not so far-fetched: aside from being an intimately-told and elegant personal history, Marjane Satrapi's book is timely, relevant, and grants an insider's view into the troubling recent history of Iran.  Among its zillion other accolades, Persepolis has won the Printz Award, an honor given to books that are written for adults but that also appeal to young adults.  And the chances for Persepolis as a potential Sarasota One Book are bolstered by the fact that there is a precedent: this graphic novel has already been the choice of a major metropolitan library system.

So yeah, I love Persepolis,  I love the movie it was turned into, and I'd love to see my town adopt it for it's big book club.

George Washington has a whopper of a library fine.

Last month, an examination of historical ledgers revealed that George Washington, this country's first president, had checked out a copy of The Law of Nations from the New York Society Library, and the scofflaw NEVER RETURNED IT.  According to the ledger, which also showed the borrowing records for Aaron Burr, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and others, borrowed the work on international law on October 5, 1789.

Well, good news, friends!  After being delinquent for a mere 221 years, the staff of Washington's home in Mount Vernon have replaced the missing volume, bringing the Founding Father's library fine up to... $300,000!

Reading Rainbow returning?

This is a bit of good news. LeVar Burton has announced on Twitter that he is working on resurrecting his classic children's literature show, Reading Rainbow:

In February 2009, Burton wrote, “Want y’all to know that I’m seriously moving forward with an idea for a new version of a Reading Rainbow like show. Webisodes for adults.”

Many have forgotten his tease but this week, Burton wrote about reviving the show again, saying, “You heard it here first… Reading Rainbow 2.0 is in the works! Stay tuned for more info. But, you don’t have to…”

Webisodes for adults?  Sounds interesting.  Thank to Ryan Sawyer (of Tasty Bacon fame) for the heads up on this!

The Enemy Pie Chart

Watch your back, Skeletor.

Boston's own Necronomicon

Speaking of Lovecraftian books...

On my Boston vacation last year, I missed my chance to see one of the weirder artifacts on display in an an American library: The Athenæum's Narrative of the Life of James Allen, The Highway Man, the autobiography of a robber, written in prison and bound in the author's own skin!!!

This book was penned by James Allen (alias George Walton), "a most thoroughgoing scoundrel" who was sentenced to prison for robbing a man at gunpoint. The victim, John Fenno, courageously fought back and was shot by the criminal, who ran off, leaving Fenno for dead.  The victim survived and the highwayman was captured, and was to spend the rest of his days behind bars.  From the Athenæum's website:

The odd part of it was that, during his last confinement, the unusual courage of Mr. Fenno seems to have struck firmly in his mind. So great was his admiration for the man who had worsted him, that Walton directed that a copy of his "memoirs" be bound in his own skin and presented to Mr. Fenno as a token of esteem.

That's right, he bequeathed his grisly book to the man he had robbed.  Super-creepy.

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu Sarasota wgah'nagl fhtagn"

Rick Dakan, famed indie author of the G33k Mafia series, is dipping his toe into the slimy waters of the Lovecraft mythos with his new novel The Cthulhu Cult.  Set in Sarasota, Rick tells the creepy tale of a friend who returns to town, transformed into the guru of his own bizarro religion.  In his retirement community on Siesta Key, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming!  Seriously, though, Rick is gonna mess your world up when he shows you the secret non-Euclidean architecture of this sleepy little tourist burg.

On a related note, the props department of Cthulhu Lives! is offering a free downloadable library card for the Arkham Public Library.  Their special collections are guaranteed to drive you insane.

Teenage Wildlife

I was tapped as one of the young "guybrarians" (man, I really don't like that combo word. Worst. Portmanteau. Ever.) to do some outreach to the local polytechnical high school. Together, myself and two others made a presentation to several classes over the course of the last two days. My piece of the show was a demonstration on how to download audiobooks; showing them the OverDrive iPhone app actually seemed to get many of them interested and engaged. When several of the kids whipped out their iPhones to try it, you could see how it made the teacher, clearly from the old school of confiscated devices, a little twitchy.

There were a lot of cool kids in the group. One of the girls was wearing a faux vintage Labyrinth t-shirt, which I commented on after the presentation was over. She says to me "Oh yeah, I love David Bowie, even though he's, like, 70 YEARS OLD."  Ha!

I know it's popular to bag on Hot Topic, but I tell you, when I was in high school, there seemed to be absolutely zero pop cultural memory (outside of the rare punk), so I think it's pretty awesome that contemporary 14 year olds are sporting Bowie and Velvet Underground tees.

Delicious, but difficult to shelve.

From Cake Wrecks, one of the best blogs on all the of the internets, comes this post about cakes dressed up as classic kids' books.  Included in the entry are The Neverending Story, Where the Wild Things Are, a stack of Harry Potters, and more wildly creative treats. Click the above link for more.

Vhere's Valdo?

One of the world's great directors, Werner Herzog, gives his take on the classic children's book Where's Waldo.

"We search for Waldo, but what is Waldo searching for?  Perhaps he's not searching at all, but running from something.  Does this man even want to be found?  Or, in searching for Waldo, did we really find ourselves?"

Hyuk hyuk hyuk.  Ok, so it's probably not really Herzog, but it is an entertaining and pitch perfect take on (presumably) the narration of Grizzly Man.  Werner (or the same clever prankster) also does Curious George, Madeline, and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.

I hope next up is a reading of Shel Silverstein, with Herzog portraying his best fiend, Klaus Kinski, as the Giving Tree and himself as the little boy.

Tasty Bacon

Remember "SOME PIG," that famous phrase that Charlotte the spider spun in her web to convince the farmer not to butcher her beloved piggy friend Wilbur? I know that the author of the all-time bestselling children's book Charlotte's Web, E.B. White, thought that brevity was the soul of wit, but don't you think "some pig" could easily have been taken to mean, I don't know... anything else?

That's the concept that my good friend and artist extraordinaire Ryan Sawyer (who goes by the nom de 'net "absinthetic" and who has also given us some incredible steampunk creations, like the "chronotheric fluxing capacitron") was working with when he made this awesome, horrible HORRIBLY AWESOME t-shirt "Tasty Bacon."

You can pick up one of these super cool tees at Ryan's Etsy shop, where he also has a bunch of other amazing shirts.  I've got one, it's one of my favorites, and every time I wear it, I get amused comments from people that love Charlotte's Web and a sharp pop culture reference.

...and dark humor.  Dark, dark humor.

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bookmobile

This week is Children's Book Week, and the web comic Shelf Check has put out this clever little riff on Mo Willem's modern classic Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. 


Click the image for a better resolution.

Corrupting America's Youth

This month's School Library Journal carries a great article by children's author Dan Gutman, entitled "How I Corrupted America's Youth," about angry letters from parents and dealing with attempts at censorship.

It begins with just such an angry letter from a dad who was incensed by the contents of Gutman's book Mr. Granite Is from Another Planet, from the "My Weird School" series.  The letter writer takes issue with the book's surly protagonist (""My name is A. J. and I hate school"), and declares that it "is poison for young minds, and I will do everything in my power to get these books off the shelf."  Some form of the word "depraved" appears in the short note no less than four times, and the apoplectic pop throws in "abomination" once for good measure.

I don't want to cavalierly dismiss parents' concerns, but intellectual freedom and freedom of information is an important principle in librarianship, and these freedoms extend to young people.  Too often, folks will attempt to decide what's appropriate not just for their own kids, but for the whole community.  Gutman's fellow author of children's books, Bruce Coville, puts it bluntly: "Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship."

Case in point: Orlando mother, Tina Harden.  After flipping through her daughter's library book It Girl (a spin-off from the popular Gossip Girl series) and seeing references to marijuana, Tina confiscated the offending material and hid it in her closet.  Refusing to return the books, she racked up an $85 fine and tried to hold the library hostage by demanding that, if returned, the novels would be made inaccessible to young people.  After deciding she had gotten enough attention, Harden acquiesced and gave them back.  Not before the library was flooded with plenty of sympathy donations to replace the stolen YA novels, though.

Some of our greatest works of literature have been challenged.  The Lorax has been challenged.  Heck, even the dictionary has been pulled from classroom shelves because of moral panic. 

The dictionary!  Corrupting America's youth, and improving their Scrabble game!

Cheezburger

Zombies can make even Hi & Lois funny.

Making sport of the anti-comic Hi & Lois is becoming a pasttime here.  A friend of mine took a bit of Walker and Brown's "commentary", and turned it into this:

Come on, Neil!

I like Neil Gaiman. I think he's kind of a hero in many ways, and he was the honorary chair of this year's National Library Week.  But I don't think he's totally immune from criticism regarding the $45,000 speaking fee he recently charged a Minnesota library.  True, he's got a good reason for such high rates, and true, he does plenty of pro bono work for many libraries, but 45K is a bit much to comfortably stomach when libraries across the board are struggling as they are.

Truly, though, I think the people that deserve the lambasting are board of the taxpayer-funded Legacy Fund, the foundation that approved the fee.

UPDATE - 05/13/10
So a friend filled me in on a few details that I had missed, such as the fact that the money used had been budgeted by the Legacy Fund specifically for bringing in a high profile speaker, and if Neil hadn't accepted the cash, it wouldn't have rolled over into a future budget and would have expired in a month.  Also, Neil turned around and donated the proceeds to charities, including his long-time fave the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.  He comments at length on the brouhaha on his own blog.

So! I guess Neil's hero status has been restored.

Wham! Zot! Ka-POW! Free Comic Book Day Returns!

The following is a quickie article I wrote for our internal staff newsletter.  As such, the prose isn't incredibly zingy, but you get the gist of what Free Comic Book Day is about.

For the fourth year running, the Sarasota County Library System will be participating in the annual Free Comic Book Day. This exciting event started off as a modest collaboration between North Sarasota library and a small local business, and has since expanded to become a popular system-wide happening that introduces kids of all ages to the comic book art form.

Free Comic Book Day started as an independent promotional event in 2002 at a California comic shop. In the years that have followed, the event has spread nationwide. These days, several major and indie comic publishers (including Marvel, DC, Bongo, and Dark Horse) have jumped on board to create dozens of special giveaway issues that are handed out by the armload on the first Saturday in May. The event is often tied to the release of a summer comic-themed movie, such as this year’s Iron Man II.

Educators and libraries sometimes partner with a local business to spread the fun even more. Our partnership started with Pop Comics and Games, which has sadly gone out of business. The collaboration continues, however, with our enthusiastic new partner, The Dark Side Comics.

We all know how important graphic novels have become in the publishing industry. Lists of the best comics and manga are regularly featured in Library Journal and Publishers Weekly, while superhero-themed movies have become annual blockbuster events. Free Comic Book Day continues the excitement, bringing in kids and parents on the first Saturday in May for a great time and a bag of free books!

That was written just before the big day, and the event turned out to be an enormous smash hit.  At my library alone, to say nothing of the other libraries in the system that participated, something like 350 people showed up, more than doubling last year's attendance.  We got a lot of pre-event coverage, such as my multiple appearances on the local news, so that helped.

All told, big success!

Take that, Hi & Lois!

For anyone that has had all of the joy sucked out of them by the anti-comic Hi & Lois, here's something of a unicorn chaser for you, in the form of the fantastic Nancy. No nonsensical disses on libraries here!

Medieval Book Curses

In ancient and Medieval times, there were no security gates tripped by discreetly hidden RFID tags. Some of the more valuable books were chained to the shelves, yes, but another low-tech security device was employed to dissuade the superstitious and cowardly lot: Book curses!

Some examples of book curses:

He who steals this book
may he die the death
may he be frizzled in a pan.

Steal not this Book my honest Friend
For fear the Galows should be your hend,
And when you die the Lord will say
And wares the Book you stole away?

For him that Stealeth a Book from this Library,
Let it change into a Serpent in his hand & rend him.
Let him be struck with Palsy, & all his Members blasted.
Let him languish in Pain crying aloud for Mercy,
Let there be no Surcease to his Agony till he sink to Dissolution.
Let Bookworms gnaw his Entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not,
When at last he goeth to his final Punishment,
Let the flames of hell consume him for ever & aye.

Too bad the last one is apocryphal, because it's pretty gnarly.

As Bookcarts Go By

Keith Richards: legendary guitarist for the Rolling Stones, notorious party animal, and amateur librarian! Richards, in his new autobiography, writes:

“When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is a great equaliser.”

Keef has considered "professional training" as a librarian, makes a habit of lending his books, and even has attempted to organize his collection according to Dewey.

OverDrive comes to the iPhone

For all of Apple's alienating practices (inaccessible batteries, devices locked down with crippling DRM, stifling authoritarian control of their app store, partnering with a liberty-trampling and generally crummy telcom), I still love me some iPhone.

I also love me some library services, including OverDrive, which allows patrons to download audiobooks to their computers and portable devices. Sarasota rolled this service out last year, and an app for the iPhone has finally hit the iTunes app store.

Hoorah!

Update - 05/12/10

I'm reviewing OverDrive for a presentation at a high school next week, and as part of that, I just downloaded the iPhone app.  Works pretty nicely: upon checkout of a title at your library's OverDrive site, the app is automatically launched, where you have the option to download individual parts (or the whole) of your audiobook.  I selected The Sword Thief, part six of the 39 Clues series.

COMIC FAIL

Via the ever-excellent Comics Curmudgeon: the strip Hi and Lois makes the hilariously boneheaded assertion that pinko libraries destroy private industry, totally ignoring the fact that libraries have long existed side-by-side with mom and pop bookshops. Furthermore, I would assert that by encouraging literacy, libraries and book stores help each other, not to mention the fact that someone just dying to get their hands on the latest novel from the James Patterson factory isn't going to wait months for their name to rise to the top of the hold queue. Not when they can just pop down to Borders for a copy off of the giant floor stack.

Is there perhaps... anything *else* going on these days that might account for little shops going under?

Cutting libraries in a recession