Review of Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld

Westerfeld, Scott. Behemoth (#2, Leviathan Trilogy). Illustrated by Keith Thompson. Simon Pulse, 2010.

In the follow-up to last year's Leviathan, Deryn (or Midshipman Dylan Sharp of the British Air Service, as she is known) and Alek (who happens to be the heir to the Austria-Hungarian empire) are only on the airship Leviathan a short time together before Alek decides it is time to escape into Istanbul. Deryn, meanwhile, leads a dangerous mission that lands her in the streets of Istanbul as well. Joining forces with a rebel group called the Committee of Union and Progress, they hatch a plan to wrench control of the Ottoman Empire away from the Germans.

There is, as Westerfeld notes in his afterword, some distinct resemblance to events that actually took place in 1914, including the names of German ships, the Orient-Express, the fascinating mash-up of cultures in Istanbul, and much more. But the steam-powered, mechanized Clanker culture of the German-speaking countries and the biological engineering of the Darwinists in Great Britain transform this into an imaginative and glorious Steampunk saga.

I made sure to read this (rather than listen to it as an audiobook, as I did with Leviathan) in order to savor Thompson's intricate illustrations, laden with metal pipes and gears and tentacles. The descriptions of life in Istanbul, which has been partially modernized by the Clankers and so boasts a library with quite an astounding mechanized method of finding and retrieving books (sort of a precursor to RFID technology), are fascinating; rich folks get around in strange steam-powered vehicles that boast six beetle-like legs instead of wheels.

Deryn has of course fallen hard for Alek and is tempted to tell him she's a girl, especially when a gorgeous, fierce rebel named Lilit appears on the scene. She retains her usual bluster and bravery, however, and remains the most vivid and wonderful character. Alek is still very idealistic and upright, but that's okay - we wouldn't want a potential ruler to be any other way, and luckily he has a sense of humor.

Second books in series or trilogies are often maligned as being "bridge books," short on action and long on either filling in the background or setting the stage for the third book. I find them very satisfying, however, because the reader is already familiar with the characters, the setting, and the world, and can immediately plunge right into the story. And so it was with Behemoth, which has so many details to ponder and relish.

The last book in the trilogy promises to take place in Japan, a Darwinist country in this alternate world history.

Sugoi!!

Video break

I'm too busy for a REAL post, but here are a couple videos that made me laugh.

First - the stars of Harry Potter attempt American accents (found on 100 Scope Notes):

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

And now "Gandolf Goes to the World Cup," starring our favorite noise maker (found on Charlotte's Library):

Central Library is the place to be

Really, anytime (except Sundays and Mondays) is a good time to visit Central Library. But here are two reasons to drop by this Saturday, November 20:

1. The Friends of Children and Literature (FOCAL) are selling 2 gently used children's fiction books for the price of 1! Yes, 2 novels for the price of 1 - what a bargain (and they're super inexpensive to begin with). And a bunch of brand-new VHS movies are selling for only $1 a piece. Nov. 20, 10 am to noon, in the 2nd floor rotunda.

2. Hang out downtown for a while (maybe take the Dash to Olvera Street or MOCA), then come back for a performance of Belinda and the Glass Slipper, part of our Performing Books series. You'll hear the book read aloud, but will also see it acted out by 2 ballet dancers, accompanied by a pianist. Performances at 2 pm and 3 pm in the Taper Auditorium on the first floor.

See - could a Saturday get any better?!

Review of A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz

Gidwitz, Adam. A Tale Dark and Grimm. Dutton, 2010.

A brother and sister, Hansel and Gretel, are born to a king and queen (and this is a tale in itself). Their happy childhood is, however, brought to an end when (due to one of those Grimm fairytale dilemmas) their own loving father chops off their heads. They are brought back to life, but, as they can't stomach the idea of having parents who would chop off their own children's heads, they run away.

Their journey is a dark and bloody one, meandering as it does through one lesser-known Grimm tale after another. Even the familiar tales (such as Hansel and Gretel) have an unfamiliar sinister, nasty edge to them, as Gidwitz is basing them on the original Grimm tales and not the sanitized ones that we know (and those can be creepy enough). People die in horrifying ways, including a great many innocent people of all ages, Gretel chops off her own finger, Hansel turns into a were-creature and is skinned alive, and so on. Blood flows, drips, and forms puddles. There is much agonized screaming.

Hansel and Gretel undergo awful travails, but what is most distressing to them is the constant disappointing behavior of the adults around them, starting with their own parents. Even when adults aren't actively trying to hurt the siblings or someone else, they can't seem to keep anyone from harm or to solve any problems. Hansel and Gretel are forced to take matters into their own hands again and again, while the weight of their bitterness and anger grows even as they become experienced and wise.

Our storyteller introduces these stories to us, warning us that they are dark and violent, and continues to break in occasionally with admonitions to get any little children away before reading the next part, comments on the story, and a couple of pointers on pronunciation. This running commentary is fairly common in both grim stories about children (as in A Series of Unfortunate Events) and in a certain type of fairy tale-derived fantasy (as in Frances O'Roark Dowell's Falling In), and it can be snarky, cutesy, or generally intrusive. Luckily, this particular prone-to-interruption narrator won me over with comments that are amusing, informative, and even insightful.

A reader may wonder what is the point of all the blood, violence, and general unhappiness in these tales and in Grimm's tales. Why must the characters go through so much hell (literally, in this case) to get to a happy ending? Our narrator says in the introduction, "It is the story of two children striving, and failing, and then not failing. It is the story of two children finding out the meaning of things...(I)n life, it is in the darkest zones one finds the brightest beauty and the most luminous wisdom." Life can be vile, in fairy tales and in reality, and it is up to each of us to make our own stories. It's not fair, but sometimes bad things happen to good people. In fairy tales of the grim, Grimm variety, this happens an awful lot, and lessons can be learned.

The fallibility and imperfection of adults, even one's parents, is one of those lessons. Though most kids don't have to learn the way Hansel and Gretel do, it's a shock nevertheless. And children do realize, despite the best efforts of their well-meaning parents to shield them, that nasty things happen in the real world. As readers of Bruno Betelheim know, reading bloody fairy tales is a way to portray a fictional, magical version of our violent world that children can think about and process in a safe way.

Why must the stories be quite so bloody? As our narrator himself asks at the end, "What did all of this mean - these strange, scary, dark, grim tales? I told you already. I don't know. Besides, even if I did, I wouldn't tell you. You see, to find the brightest wisdom one must pass through the darkest zones. And through the darkest zones there can be no guide. No guide, that is, but courage."

I'm tempted to see in these stories an deliberate attempt to thwart our over-protective culture that keeps children inside and away from all danger, real and imagined. The author says in his acknowledgments that he himself had to learn "to trust that children can handle it. No matter what "it" is." Gidwitz may well be saying that children need to be allowed to explore and take risks so that they can grow and learn, something Michael Chabon has written about as well, bemoaning the loss of the "Wilderness of Childhood."

I agree that most older kids will handle these tales just fine. Bloody as they are, they are also imbued with wisdom. Highly recommended for kids ages 9 to 13. (hey - the narrator does warn us repeatedly about the especially nasty parts, so faint-hearted readers have only themselves to blame)

Adult Librarians - a dying breed at LAPL

We're in the midst of a fascinating and unsettling situation here at the Los Angeles Public Library.

Thanks to ongoing City budget woes, we haven't hired any new librarians for about two years, so we haven't been able to fill holes caused even by normal attrition. And then about a year ago, an Early Retirement Incentive Program was approved, which encouraged over 100 retirements, mostly from the supervisory and administrative levels, by May 2010. In June, about 160 LAPL employees were laid off, including 20 librarians.

As a result of this severe pruning of our workforce, we eliminated two of our open nights and all Sunday hours at all agencies last April, and in July we eliminated Mondays as well, leaving us open only 5 days a week.

Here's where it gets interesting. Back before all of this, the professional staff at a typical branch consisted of one branch manager, one adult librarian, one young adult librarian, one children's librarian, and one more half-time librarian (who might be adult, YA, or children's, depending on the branch).

Thanks to our leaner workforce and shortened hours, that professional staff has been cut back - now the typical branch must have just one branch manager, one young adult librarian, and one children's librarian. A few larger or busier branches might have a bit more staff, including perhaps an adult librarian, but in general the adult librarian positions have been eliminated, as well as almost all the half-time positions.

Ah, but there are still plenty of librarians inhabiting those eliminated adult and half-time positions!

Bluntly put, those adult and half-time librarians must make a change.

• If there is a children's or YA vacancy in their own branch, they may choose to take that position.
  
• If there isn't a vacant children's or YA position but the adult librarian has seniority over the children's or YA librarian in that position, the adult librarian may "bump" that librarian. The bumped children's or YA librarian must then interview for a vacant position in another branch.
• If adult librarians don't wish to remain in their previous branch, they may interview for a vacant position.
• Same thing goes for half-time librarians - except that since they aren't allowed to become full-time right now due to the hiring freeze, they must inhabit half of a position, leaving the other half vacant and available for another half-time librarian.
  

What all this means is that a bunch of adult librarians have bumped children's or YA librarians in their branches, a bunch of children's and YA librarians have been displaced and will be interviewing for children's and YA positions in other branches, and some adult librarians will also be interviewing for positions (children's, YA, and the very few adult positions available).

Interviewing will take place through the end of this month, selections will be announced in the beginning of December, and all librarians will start in their new locations and/or positions on January 3.

Now - if you were a life-long adult librarian who became an adult librarian precisely because you did NOT want to be a children's or YA librarian, would you be happy right now? Probably not. I'm figuring that there are at least a few worried, scared, annoyed, and downright angry and resentful adult librarians out there in LAPL-land, dreading January 3 with all their souls.

On the other hand, there well may be a few adult librarians who are thrilled (or at least cautiously optimistic) about the prospect of joining the ranks of dedicated children's and YA librarians. After all, it is undeniable that we have the most fun (even if we do work the hardest as well). And if I do say it myself, our Youth Services coordinating office pretty much beats the pants off all the other departments.

Still, I have to acknowledge that there will be a bit of unwillingness, some negative attitudes, and quite a bit of ignorance about early literacy, teen advisory groups, manga, storytime, and on and on. I'm rather worried that some of these soon-to-be children's and YA librarians don't even seem to like or understand kids and teens.

My challenge is to provide these librarians with the training, the resources, and the motivation to do their new jobs well. The skills and knowledge are easy to impart, but the enthusiasm and missionary zeal that we dyed-in-the-wool children's and YA librarians feel about our jobs will be a harder sell. I don't want a bunch of half-hearted librarians serving this City's children, teens, families, teachers, and caregivers. Good service matters, now more than ever.

I plan to draft all our excellent, experienced children's and YA librarians (at which ever branch they end up after the Great Migration) to help me train, mentor, and encourage their new youth services colleagues. It's going to be an exciting and energizing challenge.

Bring it on!

Iron and steam

I haven't yet managed to get to Scott Westerfeld's Behemoth, the sequel to his 2009 Leviathan - but this sweet Steampunk post whet my appetite.

A few weeks ago, NPR aired a segment on Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl's duo The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, in which Ms. Muhl named the Victorian age and the Steampunk aesthetic as being major influences on the themes in their songs.

Steampunk's influence is everywhere. Cakes, songs - and miniature trains at the LA County Fair.

The Dominican Study - valuable, but not enough

In the November issue of School Library Journal, Carole Fiore and Susan Roman summarize the findings of the Dominican University's Graduate School of Library and Information Studies 3-year study on library summer reading programs. Called Proof Positive: A New Study Shows That Summer Reading Programs Boost Student Achievement and Combat Learning Loss, the article states, "...we can confirm what many librarians have log suspected: students who take part in their local library's summer reading program significantly improve their reading skills."

There are several wonderful aspects to this study. First of all, it followed students from 11 schools in 8 states, giving it a more universal flavor than many similar studies. Second, it tested the students (all going into the 4th grade) with the Scholastic Reading Inventory assessment tool both at the beginning and end of summer to determine if in fact the students' reading skills rose, declined, or stayed the same.

Here are three of the findings of the study, quoted from the executive summary:

• Students who participated in the public library summer reading program scored higher on reading achievement tests at the beginning of the next school year than those students who did not participate and they gained in other ways as well.
• While students who reported that they did not participate in the public library summer reading program also improved reading scores, they did not reach the reading level of the students who did participate.
• Students who participated in the public library summer reading program had better reading skills at the end of third grade and scored higher on the standards test than the students who did not participate.

This sounded great to me when I first read it, because it seemed to prove what I wholeheartedly believe - that children who read not only don't suffer reading loss but actually make gains, and that library reading programs can play an important part in encouraging children to read over the summer.

But then I read this in Fiore and Roman's SLJ article:

"Parents of summer reading program participants used the library more often, had more books at home, and offered more literary activities at home (such as reading with their children, visiting the library frequently, and providing Internet access) than parents whose kids didn't sit in on summer reading programs."

Library summer reading programs are fabulous, but of course they didn't necessarily cause parents to read more to their children and so on. In fact, it's findings like this one (and also the one above about summer reading club participants scoring higher on tests than their non-reading club peers at the beginning of the summer as well as at the end) that diminish the overall usefulness of this study.

As the authors of the article note in a section at the end called "Study Limitations," the participants of the study were self-selected. That is, there was no control group. Or to put it in the words of the study itself:

The design of this study was causal comparative, which is that student participants were not
randomly assigned or randomized between attending/not attending public library summer
reading programs but instead independently decided to participate or not participate. The
treatment condition of program attendance was not manipulated by the evaluation team. The
treatment condition of the study was the exposure of student participants to the public library summer reading programs at the partner public libraries, as selected by participants’ families.

I would argue that kids who take part in the summer reading program are already predisposed for the most part to be readers. Their parents encourage them to join the club and to stick with it, and while I am certain that reading programs might well spur them on to greater feats of reading and that they are obtaining fabulous books to read that they wouldn't necessarily have access to if they weren't in the reading program, it's possible that these "library kids" would read even if they didn't join the summer program. Their parents believe in the importance of libraries and have made books, reading, and libraries part of their lives. It's a no-brainer that those kids score higher on tests both before and after summer reading club. This study does not prove that summer reading programs cause a rise in reading scores; rather, it proves that library users tend to have higher reading scores in general, and that could well be because they belong to families that value reading and so have books in the home, bring their kids to the library, read to their kids, and so on.

Which of course points to the important role that libraries play for these families. And there is no doubt that libraries, by providing a literature-rich environment for all families, rich or poor, can and do play a role in leveling the playing field.

What I would like to see, however, is a study that follows children who are NOT library users and have never joined a library summer reading program. One half of the kids would continue on as they always have and not join the program, while the other half would join and participate for the first time. One assumes that the test scores for both groups would be much the same at the beginning of the summer. The question is - would one summer of library reading program make a difference in reading scores at the end of summer?

Libraries' role in raising reading scores is much greater than just encouraging reading during the summer. To have the greatest effect, we need to reach families when their children are very young, or not even born, and convince them of the importance of making books, reading, and the library a part of their children's lives from birth on. If parents read to their babies, toddlers, and preschoolers regularly, those kids will take to reading like ducks to water and will come to the library over the summer, not because they need to be encourage to read but because they need fuel for their book addictions.

The Dominican study is important, but it doesn't go far enough in the role the library summer reading program can have for NON-library users. I agree with all of Fiore and Roman's "calls to action" in the article, and most particularly with the statement that librarians need to team up with teachers to "...identify nonreaders and under-performing students, reach out to them, and draw them into the library," to reach out to families and caregivers, and to spend special attention on creating programs that attract boys.

In addition, there are no doubt summer reading programs that are more effective at encouraging reading than others. The study purposefully didn't address this, but it would be a fascinating basis for a study. What works? What doesn't? Immersed as I am in designing our 2011 program, I'd love a little research on this.

One thing is certain. The more you read, the better you get at it, and you're more likely to read if you can find a book you enjoy. So there you have it - a worthy role (one of so many) for librarians to play all summer and throughout the year!