My Day Job

Quick. Name the first, best job that pops into your brain when you think Aspiring Children’s Writer. Okay, bookseller works. Mom. Scout leader, camp counselor.

But I’m thinking about my own day job. The best job in the world. I was a school librarian.

I started my career in fifth grade at the Hill Demonstration School in Cleveland, Mississippi. Our school library filled up a small room on the first floor, across from the principal’s office. I was invited by the principal and my teacher to be the librarian. I don’t know who the real librarian was. I don't think we had a librarian most of the time. I spent no time cataloging, ordering, or even reshelving books. My fifth grade position entailed reading and recommending. 

I read the books with winning stickers on the covers, but I’m not ashamed to say I read every single Nancy Drew book and most of the Childhood of Famous Americans “biographies” (which have since been mostly discredited as true biography. Or true anything.). Perhaps because they were shelved directly behind the Librarian’s Desk, that great, solid piece of bulk where I sat, wielding power with the little rubber date stamp.

I went on to become a Jr. High Library helper and even a high school library volunteer. 

My career path was pre-destined.

After college, when friends fretted over what city to move to, what boyfriend to follow where, what school to teach in, I calmly chose the graduate school that specialized in children’s work.

I won’t bore you with my entire school library career. (Boston, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Baltimore, Summit, NJ). 

But here’s what prepared me for my current career as writer of both middle-grade fiction and book reviews:

I’ve read almost every Newbery-winning novel ever published.

I know the answer to the question “Can I have the yellow book with monkeys on the cover?”

I can talk about a 250-word novel in three sentences or less.

I know when the little girl who loved the Dear America series might be ready for Lois Lowry.

Recently, a writers’ listserv shared a letter from a young Indiana girl. She’d sent this to the newspaper:

Dear the government,

I don't like that you're firing our school librarians. I am a first-grader at Childs school, and I think that Ms. Williams is a great librarian. She reads wonderful stories, and her voice goes up when it is supposed to and down when it is supposed to.

She helps me find books and makes me interested in reading and makes books

exciting for me. Ms. Williams makes us feel special. She knows each kid's name.

Childs school will never be the same without Ms. Williams in the library.

Why are you firing our school librarians?

Anna W.

If libraries are not staffed by professional librarians who know their stuff (books), love kids, and have time to connect the two--not to mention realize what parts of the story need a voice going up-- what a tremendous loss to girls like Anna.

I left the library world to write full time. But I still hang out in libraries. Researching facts for historical fiction, finding a quiet place to write, chatting with the librarians about what kids are reading. I can't even imagine what those kids without librarians do. Even in my Kindled/ Googling/ Facebooking world, I need my library.

LIBRARIANS ROCK!

Augusta Scattergood blogs about reading and writing at her own blog: http://ascattergood.blogspot.com/

Her first middle grade novel, GLORY BE, is about to launch in January from Scholastic.

Guides for Wandering Readers

by Cathy Pickens

One cold Saturday afternoon, I was browsing the aisles of my favorite local used bookstore when I overheard a young man approach the owner.  “I’m interested in reading some classics,” he said.

My ears perked up.  The way he said it hinted that he was just starting on this adventure.  I too had, not too long before, set about filling some of the embarrassing holes in my reading, so I appreciated the thrill of his search—and how daunting it could be.

He was dressed in jeans and a “Navy” t-shirt bulging with muscles, his hair close-cropped.  Home from deployment?  He came around the end of the stacks to where the owner had cheerfully directed him, and he stood there, staring at the shelves.   He didn’t pull a single book off the shelf.  He shifted from one foot to another, one hand jammed deep in his pocket, just staring.

After a while, he wandered off to another part of the store.  Then he left without a book.

I felt as though I’d failed a fellow seeker because I didn’t offer to help.  But I was just another reader, a seeker myself.  Who was I to intrude?  I had started with Jane Austen (because C.S. Lewis said she was the best) and suggestions from Jane Smiley’s 13 Ways of Looking at a Novel.  How could I know what he’d like to read?

But it broke my heart.  I’m still haunted by that reader who didn’t find a book.

So how do readers find books?  Would-be readers are inundated with overwhelming abundance.  How to know where to begin? 

It got me to thinking about how I find books.  I spend far too much time in bookstores and libraries, for one.  I pay attention to recommendations from friends (particularly from other writers) and reviews from trusted sources in newspapers, magazines, and online—people whose tastes I’ve learned mesh well with mine and whose judgment I’ve learned to trust.  Shelf-talkers or displays in bookstores are other sources. 

But some of the best guides are librarians, those who’ve turned putting the right book in the right reader’s hands into a life calling.

That day in the bookstore helped precipitate this year’s Sisters in Crime Publishing Summit Report.  A SinC team met with librarians and those who provide books and services to libraries to learn some of their magic at the 2011 American Library Association meeting in New Orleans.  [The 2011 Summit Report is available now on the website: www.sistersincrime.org]

From Nancy Pearl, Joyce Saricks, Neil Wyatt, and others, I learned how to talk about “appeal factors” in books as a way to guide others to books they might like.  What experience is the reader looking for in a book?  How fast does she want it to move?  Does he prefer the tone dark or humorous?  Are deeply developed characters or beautiful language important?  Or do particular settings attract?

I learned what questions to ask, to guide my own reading and writing as well as to discover what others like.  I learned it too late to help the guy who was ready to read the classics, though.  I just hope he found someone to guide him … 

Which leads me to ask: So, what are you reading?  What would you suggest for others who share your tastes?

Planning a trip to Australia, I picked up one of Kerry Greenwood’s Phyrne Fisher mysteries and Arthur Upfield’s classic The Bone is Pointed, to soak up some atmosphere.  And I just finished Carson Morton’s first novel Stealing Mona Lisa, a caper set in 1911 Paris and based on the real theft.  How about you?