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