Tales from a Loud Librarian

Last year, I had planned to take members of Bookmarked to Baton Rouge for the annual book festival. The predicted rain storms kept us away which was a good thing because the festival closed early due to the rain, and the book tents had ankle deep water. For 2016, I again planned a trip to Baton Rouge for the festival , and the day was glorious with sunshine and warmth. Cooking Demonstration Tent  Four students met me on the steps of the State Library of Louisiana to begin our day. We started in the cooking demonstration tent where Shelly Rushing Tomlinson was reading a story from her cookbook. She is a humorist, but I don't think her funny family stories were appreciated by the teens. They did eat her crackers and pimento cheese, though.  Susan Vaught and Rita Williams-Garcia   Next we went to hear authors Susan Vaught and Rita Williams-Garcia . This was so cool. We walked into an almost empty room where Susan was sitting and waiting to begin. When ...

On Monday, October 26th, the members of Bookmarked were treated to a skype visit with author Geoff Herbach . He, like Jen Calonita , is published by Sourcebooks. I took advantage of the publisher's offer of free skype visits for libraries and classrooms as long as you purchase some of the authors' books. I chose Geoff Herbach for the high school book group because we seem to have so many female authors at school. Though the group is made up of a majority of girls, I figured all of the students would enjoy talking to Geoff. I was right.  He speaks without a filter, and the students loved his humor and willingness to address anything that they threw at him. Since he began the skype visit with a story about his son and puberty, one of the older girls asked him if he had difficulties during his own puberty. He told them that being a teenager was not easy for him. All agreed that it is not easy for anyone.  Another student asked him what was up with two o...

Senior, Destiny Burnett and her mentor, Susan Larson I am writing this post to brag about the president of Bookmarked and share some links showcasing her wonderful writing skills and ability to offer insightful reviews for the books she reads. Destiny has been in the high school book group since she was a freshman, and she is an avid reader and reviewer. Bookmarked members have been writing reviews and nominating books for YALSA's Teen's Top Ten since 2010. The group also reviewed books over an 18 month period for SLJTeen . During that time Destiny had six book reviews published as well as an author interview which you can read here .  When I heard that Destiny was looking for a mentor for senior project, I knew just the person, but there was a problem. Destiny wanted an internship with an anthropologist. Lucky for her we couldn't find someone like that to mentor her. I have known Susan Larson a long time, and I knew that the two of them would make a connection. S...

picture by Tom Lowenberg of Octavia Books It all started when a librarian in my district contacted me when she heard the Dark Days Tour was going to visit New Orleans this year. Five authors would be speaking on the panel:  Veronica Rossi ,  Tahereh Mafi ,  Sophie Jordan ,  Kiersten White  and  Claudia Gray .  The librarian was hoping that one of the authors might be making a school visit. The tour is a grueling week where the authors make appearances in four different cities. A school visit was not going to happen. (My colleague couldn't even attend the event herself because she was needed as a chaperone for her school's band that was marching in one of the first Mardi Gras parades of the season.) When I talked to Judith Lafitte at Octavia Books , where the event was to be held, she mentioned that she needed a moderator. I suggested one of my students (Paris Evans) could do it. She is the head of Bookmarked and is willing to jump into any...

Find the reviews here All three teen reviews in this edition of SLJTeen were written for books by established authors. Many of the teens have favorite authors that they will read regardless of the quality of the book, but it is nice to hear that the students enjoyed these books by Sarah Dessen, Francesca Lia Block and Jaclyn Moriarity. Click here to read the reviews .

Here is a link to the  February 20th edition of  SLJTeen  with reviews  by three teen members of the high school book group, Bookmarked.  Open here to read the reviews

Cory Doctorow traveled straight from the airport to PFTSTA today to speak to the 135 members of the high school. I was thrilled to have an author who would be interesting to the boys. He has a wonderful talk that he has given at all the previous stops on his tour, but that did not deter him from letting the students see how passionate he is about technology, privacy, freedom of information access and a whole slew of Internet issues that weren't even in our consciousness twenty years ago. Some of the students said that he really didn't talk about his books. In essence he did. All the issues that are real to him including his stories of schools that issued laptops to students then spied on those students at home, companies that rented laptops then spied on their customers in compromising positions, and the US government prosecuting citizens who violate the computer fraud and abuse act are all included in his fictional novels about Marcus Yallow in some way. His books...

Ruta Sepetys spent an hour entertaining the juniors with stories of her life before she became an author and after when she spent years researching the historical background of her two novels, Between Shades of Gray and Out of the Easy . The students were an enrapt audience as she told each funny and harrowing tale that she experienced.  Initially, Ruta, wanted to sing opera, but found out early on that she was no good at it. So with her finance degree, she figured out a way to combine her love of music with management and build a career. She began her career in Hollywood as a music manager and spent 22 years as a manager.  We are so lucky that she finally ditched that job and chose to write. Her first book is based on her family's history in Lithuania. The students were riveted by how she applied the "method acting" that she experienced in Hollywood to her research. She spent hours locked in a train car that was used to transport Eastern Europeans to the Rus...

I must have been crazy when I planned our return to school from Mardi Gras break.  On Monday, Bookmarked will be skyping with Corey Whaley , the author of Where Things Come Back . Corey recently moved back to Louisiana but in the northern part of the state. I was hoping that we could get him to visit us in person, but his schedule just wasn't going to allow it. He agreed to the skype, and I think that the students in Bookmarked will probably enjoy that visit almost as much.  Open here to listen to interview with the author on The Reading Life Then on Tuesday, I was able to schedule Ruta Sepetys , author of Out of the Easy, to come visit us. She is making a world tour for her book, and her time in New Orleans is really tight. However, this book is set in New Orleans, and I had several students who read it and loved it. I thought it was one of the best books that I have read in a really long time. So I knew that I wanted her to visit Patrick Taylor. Unfortunate...

  I hope that I am not going to give myself an impossible goal, but I would like to blog every day about one of the books nominated for YALSA's Teen's Top Ten (TTT). I have read many of the titles but not all. I figure that I can find something interesting to say about all of them because I know that for every title I can find at least one student who has read it.  I am going to start with Hourglass by Myra McEntire . I started this book the other day, but I haven't finished it yet. Though I got a good chunk of it read this afternoon as I waited in the room for the doctor to arrive.  Anyway, Myra McEntire is going to be our first author visit of the year. She will visit PFTSTA on September 17th. Over the last three years we have had many author visits both face to face and virtually on Skype. Almost every visit has been a big hit--though I will never schedule a visit on the last day of school again. I did that twice, and I think that I have finally learned ...

I had a blast at ALA. I was kept busy from the time that I landed on Friday, June 22nd until I left for my vacation on Tuesday, June 26th. I began my Anaheim adventure by having lunch with a former student who I had not seen since she graduated high school in 2003. She was in first grade when I first became a librarian, and now at 28 she hopes to illustrate children's picture books. I sure hope that she can find a way to fulfill her dream and maybe some day I will be standing in line for her to sign her book at ALA. One of the things that I like to do most at ALA is get some face to face time with many of the authors that I enjoy reading. It was really cool that I got to meet three authors with whom the students at Patrick Taylor had communicated with through Skype. Here are some of the authors that I had a chance to meet. All of them were delightful and took the time to chat with me.  On the first night I went to a dinner hosted by Penguin for three dystopian queens:...

Two weeks ago, Bookmarked, the high school library book group at Patrick Taylor Academy was introduced as the new review teen team for SLJ Teen. Reviews will be published twice a month for the next year. Anyone can subscribe to this free newsletter. So open here to complete the form for subscription, and you can get a copy of the teen's reviews in your inbox every two weeks.  Open here to read this edition's reviews . Click here to read the reviews

Our last day of school was May 25th. I have been a reading fool since the end of May. Boy, does it feel good to get my reading groove back. This happens every year. The end of the year is extremely stressful. I may have a book going, but reading is not a priority. My priority is getting the seniors through graduation and closing the library with only a few lost books and no students left on the library indebtedness list. I accomplished my goals, but some of the books that I was anticipating had to sit quietly until I could find the time to sink my teeth into them. Here are the highlights of what I have been reading over the last couple of weeks: A couple of the books I had to read because I was asked to review them. I read  Ghosts of the Titanic  by Julie Lawson. I can't reveal what I thought until the review is published in  Library Media Connection , but I am always looking for titles to recommend to middle school students. This one is for the Titanic fanatic...

Click here to watch the book trailer On Friday, January 20th, the 9th and 10th grade students were treated to a talk by Andrea Cremer . She has written a trilogy called the Nightshade series, and she is also a history professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN. I was fascinated with her explanations of how she used her knowledge of the early modern era of history (1500-1800) to flesh out the elements of the fantastical world that she builds. She talked about her upbringing in a very rural area of Wisconsin. This fostered her love of nature, the woods, and wolves because of her proximity to the outdoors. She knew that if her characters were going to change into wolves, then they needed to be beautiful not horrid. As she found the real wolves that she encountered as a child to be beautiful. It was a horse accident one summer that got her on the road to writing. She was bed bound for 12 weeks and wanted to spend her time doing something that she always dreamed of d...