Introducing Myrtle Jane

Never having run an online chicken-naming contest before, I took my responsibilities in this regard quite seriously and made two lists of of entries to peruse: one with the names of the entrants and one without. I printed out the one without names to avoid being unduly swayed by the identities of the entrants, and looked at it and looked at it.

And to my surprise, the name that seems to match this chicken wasn't attached to a particular literary figure; it just felt right.

So, herewith, I introduce to you the official book, book, book mascot, hereafter to be known as... Myrtle Jane Chicken, Literary Maven.

"Myrtle" was Susan's suggestion, so she wins the prize! Susan, send me your street address and I'll pop Father's Arcane Daughter in the mail to you.

By rights, Liz deserves a prize too, for contributing the felicitous phrase "Book Maven" which I altered only slightly. I just have one copy of the book, but Liz, if you email me your address too I will gladly send an alternative.

"Jane" is my own addition, to weight down the name and in honor of Chicken Jane, a character in the PBS TV show "Between the Lions". But as no one from PBS actually entered this contest, they don't get any prize.

I have to admit that as a longtime Muppet Show fan I was sorely tempted by the name "Camilla," after Gonzo's longtime hennish love, when I read it in Little Willow's list of literary and pop culture poultry characters, but in the end Myrtle was a Myrtle and that was that. She is a kindly chicken but will brook no waffling.

For your reading enjoyment, here is the complete list of entries, with participants' names and entries' literary antecedents:

*********************

*From Kathy:

Henrietta (SuperChicken)
Babs (Chicken Sisters)

*From Genevieve:

Minerva Louise (Stoeke stories)
Henrietta (Hoboken Chicken Emergency)
Pouletter (Hen Lake & Peeping Beauty)
Lottie (Mathers books)
Rosie (Rosie’s Walk)
Chicken Little
Philadelphia Chicken (Boynton)
Chicken to the Rescue!
Hen (Little Bear)

*From Anonymous:

Billina (Oz books)

*From Liz:

Henny Penny

*from Alkelda the Gleeful:

Maxine Synecdoche

*From Zeelibrarian:

Desdemona
Ophelia (Hamlet (I love that farmyard Shakespeare idea!)
Marjorie
Babs (Chicken Run)
Ginger (Chicken Run)

*From Liz again:

Hazel Hen, book maven
Ms. Hazel Hen, Research Librarian to the Stars

*From Susan (who claimed to have "nothing to add," which just goes to show you)

Marian
Myrtle

*From Tricia:

Poulet Bibliophile

*From Little Willow:

Bawk Bawk Book
Poultry in Motion
Book Chick

*Also from Little Willow, a long literary list from Wikipedia, including:

Camilla

*From cloudscome:

Ms. Pecknote

*From Vardibidian:

Darles Chickens
Hen Carey Thomas
Henny Dreadful
Information Hen (Between the Lions)
Helena Henway

*From Slim and Slam:

Helen
Helen the Chicken

*From web:

Queequeg

*From Barbara Bietz:

BibliOphelia

*From HipWriterMama:

Library Chick
Ms. Chickels Peckaway

*From anonymous:

Chicken Little(rary)

*************

Many squawks of thanks to everyone who entered! I'm honored to peck around in the yard with such a creative and well-read flock.

Bookbk’s First Meme

The vicissitudes of life, tax season, and the preparations for two successive family visits have slowed down both the blogging and the Chicken Naming Contest results. I don't want to do something so serious and permanent as naming a chicken while my head is spinning with car rentals and seder food orders, but fortunately I have been tagged with a meme by the impressive Kelly Herold of Big A little a, who challenges her tag-ees to list five non-kidlit blogs they read. That, I think I can handle.

I read a fair number of personal blogs; here are some of my favorites:

The Wait and the Wonder, a ClubMom blog by Moreena, whose 6-year-old daughter, Annika, is currently waiting for her third liver transplant. This blog is thoughtful and occasionally heartbreaking and also not incidentally falling-on-the-floor FUNNY. I mean, funny like the funny that you laugh when you're up till 3 in the morning because you're all so worried and fried and scared and don't know what else to do. But also funny like the parent of two kids who seem to have their respective careers of Goth Fashion Designer and Potty Training Counsultant all picked out.

Kate Rothwell. The subtitle of Kate's blog is "Mostly about writing romance and selling it," and I don't even read romance (barring the odd Meg Cabot book), let alone write it or try to sell it. Doesn't matter. I like Kate. I like her witty and occasionally obnoxious sons, I like her take on various prejudices, I like her contests. Basically (hmm, I'm sensing a theme here) she cracks me up.

Milkbreath and Me. By Rachel Hartman, creator of The Nameless (but not for long) Chicken, and fearless wrangler of a preschooler, a YA-novel-in-progress, a number of other projects cartoonish and not, and the cathartic Moron Mondays. Also, funny.

Woulda Coulda Shoulda. One of the great things about personal blogs is the way they can open this little screen-sized window into someone's life on a day-to-day basis. And when you read them over the years, people's lives change. When I started reading Woulda Coulda Shoulda almost three years ago, Mir was a recently-divorced single mom of two young kids, struggling to find a job in a field she didn't particularly love. Oh, and she was obviously an incredibly sharp and talented writer. Now she's the about-to-be-remarried mom of two bigger kids, getting ready to move halfway across the country...and she's working as a full-time freelance writer. It's hard not to love her story, or her blog.

Peter's Cross Station. Another blog where I came for the writing and stayed for the story and because I'd come to care for the blogger. Shannon started writing "Waiting for Nat" when she and her partner were waiting to adopt a baby. Now Nat is a toddler and they're on the list for a second baby. This is probably the most political blog I read regularly; I'm hooked on the personal anecdotes, but Shannon's posts about adoption politics, racism, and other big-world topics are always thoughtful and often articulate things that had never occurred to me.

Whew! That was harder than I thought. In fact, it took so long that most anyone who wants to be tagged is probably tagged by now. If you're not, and you're reading this, I tag you!

Click!

I tried not to blog about The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. I did. I figured enough folks were trashing it, and my reasons for hating it were about the same as many other peoples', and I didn't have much to add, so why waste everyone's bandwidth?

Then the darned thing won the Irish Children's Book of the Year award, and Fuse #8 wrote about it, and I followed her link to Bookshelves of Doom's post on the matter, and...well...I guess I just don't have that much will power, because suddenly there I was, commenting away, refuting points and hitting the caps lock key and generally frothing at the mouth.

The point has been made several times that calling something a "fable" isn't enough to excuse inaccuracies and mawkish writing, but the truth is that as I was reading Pajamas all that didn't bother me so much. It was only after I finished it that something started to nag at me. The book reminded me of something; what was it? Then it hit me: it reminded me of many of the books reviewed in A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children.

I've been wanting to write about this astonishing resource for a while, but haven't known where to start. At its heart, it's a collection of reviews of hundreds of books with Native American content. There are chapters covering books about Raven, books about Thanksgiving, books about the Indian Residential Schools... on and on and on. And, no big surprise, most of these books--including many written by really big names in children's literature, writers whose work I know and love--are dreadful from a Native American perspective.

It's a little overwhelming to read, especially for someone used to thinking of most of these books as basically unobjectionable. I have to admit that more than once I felt a defensive, argumentative reflex while reading the reviews."Aw, c'mon," I wanted to say, "maybe the author got a couple of details wrong, but basically it's all about our common humanity, right? How bad can it be to take a few liberties with the facts, if you get the feeling right?"

Then I read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and I heard a little click in my head. Oh...right. People aren't metaphors. Historical events aren't playthings for writers who want to make a point. Details matter, especially to the relatives and descendants of those to whom those details happened. Native Americans aren't handy symbols for the Vanished West, or Our Lost Connection to Nature; they're people with an actual specfic history. And the Holocaust isn't a symbol for universal evil; it was a horrific historical event. And in either case, it doesn't really help to stick on a preface (or afterward) discussing the deep feeling you have about whatever the book is distorting.

It's hard to tell the difference if you don't know the facts. Lots of people know the facts about the Holocaust, so The Boy in Striped Pajamas is getting rightly slammed from many quarters (though you'd never know it to read the majority of Amazon.com reviews). Fewer people know that, say, there were no Indian schools in Michigan as depicted in Gloria Whelan's Indian School, or that The popular version of The Rough-Face Girl, used in Cinderella units in many schools (including mine) smooths out and romanticizes the original Mi'Maq (not "Algonquin") tale (which, if I read the review correctly, was itself a conscious retelling of the Cinderella story and not an independently occurring folktale) to the point of changing its meaning.

I deliberately cited in the above paragraph two books I personally like and that were generally well-reviewed. I'm not trying to slam them, or the reviewers who lauded them. But what I know about Native American culture would fit in the tiniest of cheesy tourist dreamcatchers. I know I wouldn't have enough background to assess the accuracy or offensiveness of any such book if I reviewed it; how many reviewers would?

Anyway, that's the story of how I came to hate The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and simultaneously to cast a slightly squinty eye at a big chunk of the contents of my library. (You should see A Broken Flute's review of Walk Two Moons. And though I can't unlove the book, I do see the reviewer's point.)

For more along these lines, check out A Broken Flute contributor Debbie Reese's blog American Indians in Children's Literature.

Name that Chicken!

When I started this blog a month or so ago, it felt a little bare around the top. As I can't draw animate objects for beans, I begged my friend Rachel (and I feel sort of name-droppy saying "my friend Rachel" as she is in real life a brilliant cartoonist and the creator of the lovely Amy Unbounded comic-book series. But also she's my friend!) anyway, I begged Rachel to draw a chicken reading a book. And she very kindly came up with the literary fowl that you see up top to the right there, just above the "About" sidebar .

Immediately I felt more settled into my new blog home, with the companionship of this contented bookish coffee- (or maybe tea-) drinking chicken. (Rachel and I had a brief discussion about whether it was okay for the chicken to drink coffee in the library, and eventually agreed that she has checked out the book and taken it home to enjoy. In case you were wondering about that.)

She needs only one thing: a name. A literary one would be nice, but my mind is a blank; I can't think of a single literary chicken. But really, any name that just seems right will do.

So I am throwing this burning question open to the public, and officially announcing the book, book, book Name That Chicken Contest, to run from now through, oh, let's say March 24.

To enter, suggest a name for the chicken in comments below. If I choose the name you suggest, you win...a book! A completely non-chicken-related book called Father's Arcane Daughter, which is one of E. L. Konigsburg's lesser-known works and one of my favorites. It is sadly out of print, so I've been stockpiling copies and have an extra.

How often do you get the chance to name a chicken and win a copy of this family mystery about a funny, obnoxious, angry, sad boy and his two sisters, neither of whom may be as they appear?

P.S. Thanks to everyone for your thoughts below on the Amazon linking dilemma. You might have noticed that I'm still begging the question. Will write a real follow-up soon.

Updated to clarify: It doesn't have to be a literary chicken's name, though those are welcome. Just gaze at the chicken...look deeply into the chicken's eyes...and toss a suggestion in the comments.

Two Good Things

I was all set to write a wussy apologetic post about how the Scholastic Book Fair has eaten my brain and sapped every bit of my writing energy, but then the Three Silly Chicks completely made my day by declaring me a winner! Such excellent timing. If there's one day a year when I could do with winning something, it's book fair setup day. Many thanks, chicks!

Plus, the book fair seems to have sent us much less utter crapola than in previous years. And I hid the Bratz books (cleverly positioned on the bottom rack of the pre-stocked cases Scholastic sends, for maximum kid-accessibility) under some Dora and Diego ones.

There's some excellent stuff in those cases, too. Even in the frantic haze that setup induces in me, I spotted The Invention of Hugo Cabret, among several others that I plan on snagging with my book fair credit.

So, not that bad a day, in retrospect.

Amazon Links: The Devil's Handiwork or A Boon to Readers? Discuss.

Once again a post at Fuse #8 has springboarded me to a post of my own. Actually it's the comments that have me in a tizzy.

As a lone librarian at an independent school, in charge of 12+ classes a week, reference, school-wide events, collection development, the works, I frankly rely on Amazon.com for quick reviews. Gone are the days of paging leisurely through SLJ: if I hear about a book, I look it up on Amazon and see what the consensus is. Some years ago I bit the bullet and started an Amazon Wish List for the school library, so parents can donate books in honor of kids' birthdays and the like.

But when I order a book for myself or for a gift, I go independent. I've worked at two different independent bookstores (one sadly defunct, one still cheerfully hand-selling away right in my neighborhood) and can't stomach handing my own money over to the behemoth that helped kill the Red and Black Books Collective. I've occasionally stepped into a Bunns & Noodle to spend a gift certificate (all hail Alison Bechdel for inventing that nickname) but always feel guilty and furtive when I do.

A couple months ago, Jody at Raising Weg wrote a cogent, convincing post about the value of the big chains, especially in areas that hadn't had any bookstores before. It almost convinced me that objection to chains was an elitist stance. Then I read posts like this, and I rebel: no one person should have that much power over what gets published (Clamouring Hour, anyone?*). I realize that brick-and-mortar chains and Amazon aren't really the same thing, but from my independent-bookstore-loyalist perspective they're two of a kind.

As this is a book blog, I expect to be discussing many (wait for it) books. And I expect that the odd reader or two might want to buy a title they see here. A link to Amazon will hook up those readers with a passel of editorial and reader reviews, plus referrals to other similar titles. If I link to Powell's, they get none of that, but they might buy from an independent. Lots of people I admire in the kidlitosphere link to Amazon and even have Amazon stores on their pages, so I guess I could, too. But I haven't been able to bring myself to.

Truth is, I feel a little silly twisting myself up over this moral dilemma when the readership of this blog numbers in the low two digits, and when I use Amazon all the time as a book-information source. But if you think this is tortuous, you should've been there for some of those bookstore collective meetings.

In any case, advice and opinions are welcome. So far I've been begging the question by not linking anywhere, but that seems like cheating, no?

*Gratuitous Fly By Night reference

All of them. Even "The Story of Mankind."

Genevieve asked below if I can post about the Newbery unit when I teach it, and I will for sure, if we even get to it-- I'm trying something new with this class, an individual author study project cribbed and modified from Planet Esme, and what with interruptions for assemblies and topical one-shot lessons and vacations and snow days, it is taking a long, long time. A weekly 45-minute library class seems like plenty until you're actually trying to get something done, and then it is as a blink of the eye.

I hope against hope that by the time they do their presentations they're not all heartily sick of their chosen authors.

In the meantime, check out The Newbery Project, a group blog whose members are reading all the Newbery Medal winners and posting about it. I like the Newbery trivia and the tangential questions like "are there any children's books with adult [human] protagonists?" Fun.

Two last words on hot-button words

Before the Great Scrotum Kerfuffle (and if that's not a word-lover's word, what is? Kerfuffle! Scrotum! It's been a great week for great words, all right) fades into history, here are two late links that highlight the best in the world of adults who write for kids, and who write about kids' books (thanks to Big A, little a for the links):

Cynthia Lord and her fellow Newbery Honor winners have spoken out in support of Susan Patron and "The Higher Power of Lucky," on LiveJournal, The Random House website, and other fora. Lord's Newbery Honor book, Rules, is about a girl who learns that rigid rules are less important than standing up for her family and friends; its author obviously walks that walk, too.

If there were an ALA or kidlitosphere award for thoughtful analysis of a big media mess, pixie stix kids pix should totally win it for this post. I'm especially fond of her "anatomy of a kerfuffle" chart graphing hyperbole against time.

Out of Print, Not Out of Mind

Fuse #8's "Out-of-Print Crimes Against Humanity" list (on her right-hand sidebar, scroll down a bit) spurred me to thinking about all the books I love, or just want for my library, that are also out of print. Of course, many of them are quite old. But even newer titles don't stay in print long; it's just not the publishing trend.

Yesterday, a teacher came by to return the copy of Welcome to the Ark that I'd recommended to her-- it's a dark, intense, thought-provoking YA novel featuring four telepathic gifted kids in a dystopic terror-ridden future, and I figured if she read it she'd know just the Middle School students who can handle it.

She loved the book, and had already looked up Stephanie Tolan's website and discovered that it was the first in a trilogy. "Do you have the next volume?" she asked, quite reasonably.

We didn't. A minute's poking around on Amazon and we found out that the sequel, Flight of the Raven, is out of print. It was only published a few years ago, but the reviews were mixed, and the publishers just let it go.

Another anecdote: George Shannon is coming to visit our school next week. I called the bookstore today and asked if they could send over a copy of his book This is the Bird with the other titles we'll be selling during his visit; I've read the public library copy to a few classes, but our library doesn't own it and I wanted to buy one.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," the bookseller sighed. "It's out of print."

"Really? Oh, it's a lovely book! The kids really liked it, and the pictures are great, and it ties right into the curriculum-- they read The Keeping Quilt in 3rd grade every year-- and--"

"I know," she said. "It happens faster and faster. Really, it's a shame."

Now, neither of these books are incredibly popular, and neither got stellar reviews. But they're both perfectly solid titles by well-known authors, published within the last ten years. It just feels intuitively wrong that they should be out of print so quickly.

I know that more and more children's and teen books are published every year, and it stands to reason that publishers don't keep up the backlist for as long as they might. And of course there's always abebooks.com, the great used-bookseller clearinghouse, if you really really want to find that favorite childhood title.

I just hate the feeling that books are becoming like magazines, and that if I don't buy the latest ones now, in a short time it'll be cleared off the shelves to make room for the next issue.

The Higher Power of Libraries

Two separate relatives have already emailed me the NY Times article about the controversy over the word "scrotum" in Susan Patron's 2007 Newbery award winner, The Higher Power of Lucky," and it's all over the Interwebs, too. So how can I resist? I just tried to leave a comment on Jessamyn's site. It got eaten by the spam detector, but that's okay; halfway through writing it I realized that it should probably be its own post anyway.

Here's the thing: Parents and community members challenge books all the time based on a single word, or phrase, or image, in the book. At my own library, I've had parents informally express concern about books containing one disturbing illustration, or one paragraph they think is inappropriate. The Catcher in the Rye regularly tops most-banned-books lists in large part because of four (count 'em, four) repetitions of the F-bomb. And I don't know how many times--but it's a lot-- Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen has been banned, challenged, or simply not purchased on account of one image of a naked little boy crowing on top of a milk bottle.

I'd be lying if I said I'd never passed up on purchasing a book because I anticipated complaints from parents, not just because of overall themes or subject matter, but due to one or two words or phrases that might trigger some parent's anxiety or fear or anger. I have to admit that when I opened up my library's brand-new copy of The Higher Power of Lucky the other day and read about the dog's scrotum right on the first page, my first thought was "Oy. Okay, maybe not pushing this to the 2nd-grade crowd."

But if I allowed those first admittedly cowardly reactions to dominate my purchasing decisions, where would it end? With pulling Number the Stars because it contains the word "damn?" Or what about the word "anus" (also in regard to a dog, interestingly) in Gail Carson' Levine's wonderful The Wish--what if someone was offended by that? Lots of parents complain about the improper English that Junie B. Jones uses in the series by that name--maybe it doesn't have a place in our library either? I mean, hey, we have a small collection! We're in loco parentis! Where's my responsibility to those easily-influenced children and their concerned parents?

On my better days, I know exactly where my responsibility lies: it lies with the kid who's looking for the book that will open up their world. Even if that book might irk some other kid's parents.

I'm no First Amendment martyr. I hate trouble as much as the next person, and I like my job. When I decide to buy a book that I know might be controversial, it helps that I know my community, know the kids I work with, and have been at my job for eight years now. It also helps that I have a solid Board-approved collection policy behind me.

But it burns me up that so many librarians appear to have absolutely no compunction about dismissing this year's Newbery Award winner out of hand, without even waiting for a parent or community member to complain, based on one little word.

My favorite commentary on this whole kerfluffle comes from an anonymous commenter on the As If! site:

" Maybe only males have a scrotum, but anyone who censors a book out of fear has no balls."

First Squawk

Welcome to Book Book Book!

At college they taught me to cite my sources, so if I don't start with a link to the original joke from which this blog gets its name, I'm sure to be haunted by the ghost of M. Carey Thomas. I heard it on the Prairie Home Companion joke show about ten years ago; then a professor in a library class told it; then it was everywhere.

Several years ago the joke was expanded into a picture book by Deborah Bruss. I read it to kindergarteners at the beginning of the year. They liked it pretty well, though it hasn't been received with the avid hysteria of my other September library class kick-off title this year, Once Upon a Cool Motorcycle Dude (which has nothing to do with chickens, but what the hey; if you ever have to read a book about writing or fairy tales or sex roles or collaboration to a group of elementary-school-age kids, and have them rolling in the aisles as a bonus, this is the one. I swear I've never in nine years had so many kids begging me to read a book again.)

Speaking of chickens and kids' books, old M. Carey will also come after me if I don't acknowledge another kidlit blog with a chicken-related title: the fabulous Chicken Spaghetti. I don't know the author and have only lurked on the site, but it's as comprehensive a children's lit review as you could hope to see. And I totally covet the chicken picture on the masthead.