Tales from a Loud Librarian

On Wednesday, BRiMS , the middle school book group, enjoyed pizza while discussing Kenneth Oppel's book Airborn . I have been so busy reading books with deadlines for reviews that I did not finish the book until Tuesday night. If I had finished the book sooner, I would have known that serving mangoes would have been a more appropriate snack. However, none of the kids complained about the pizza. We discussed what time period we thought the book came from. The students all felt there were elements of the past and the future. Someone mentioned that the book reminded them of steampunk, and I was surprised that the 6th graders knew that term. I agreed this book definitely has steampunk elements. They also felt that they would want to follow the captain's orders that were given to Matt, but Kate was very persuasive, and they probably would have succumbed to her determination to go back to the forest to find the strange winged mammal. All agreed it was a good story.  T...

I started a book on April 19th. I know this because I logged it in on Good Reads . I just finished it on Sunday. Whew! I was off for a week during that time. You would think that I could read a young adult book faster than that. I liked the book, but my life got in the way. I will spend lots of my free time reading, but when visitors come in to town, and the festival season starts in New Orleans; it is hard to curl up with a book. When I attended the AASL conference in October, a member of the YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults committee told me that she reads a book a day. I love to read, but I want to savor a book, so racing through it in a day will not allow me to enjoy or internalize it at all. I can never remember character names now. If I read a book a day, then reading the book would be useless to me because I would not remember how the book made me feel or allowed the book to get under my skin and change how I think. Right now I have some reading deadlines looming over me....

When I was at the AASL conference in October, I talked to a university professor who is on YALSA's Best Fiction for Young Adults Committee. She explained to me that she reads a book a day. Wow! I did know that all members of the BFYA committee are expected to read over 300 books a year, but I just couldn't finish a book every day. I love to read. I love reading YA titles, but I just don't think that I have the time to read that much. I average 50 titles a year. I admit that some days I just don't feel like reading. Other days I read for several hours. I am going to start reviewing books for Library Media Connection and School Library Journal. I hope that I can meet their deadlines. This is the time of the year when everyone seems to be making best of and worst of lists. I tried to avoid it because I did not want to be cliche, but I like to reflect. Even though I probably mentioned some of these titles in this blog over the year, I want to give another plug to some of ...