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#YA #Children’s Fiction Review

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#YA Review

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas My rating: 4 of 5 stars You know they say that reading takes you out of your own experience and gives you the empathy to see life through someone else's eyes? This was exactly how I felt when reading this book, it brought me a lot closer to issues of American racial injustice than the media has. I can't believe that Angie Thomas is a first time author, she has such a fresh voice and the novel is really accomplished. I felt like I was in this world. Starr, the main character, is leading a double life*. She's a black girl from the ghetto, Garden Heights, but her parents have sent her and her siblings to a private high school in a wealthy neighbourhood. She finds it hard to juggle both of her worlds and has friendship groups in both. Her parents have complex feelings about this too, they want their kids to do well but they don't want to abandon their neighbourhood, friends and family to the gangs and poverty that are rife in the ghetto. (*The double school life reminds me of the native American protagonist in YA classic The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. It works really well as it added another dimension to the story and makes Starr's character even more relatable. I have the feeling that THUG is going to become an American classic too and that can only be a good thing.) This comes to a head when she reconnects with Khalil, a close friend from her childhood, at a party in Garden Heights. Starr witnesses Khalil's murder after they are pulled over by a police officer on their journey home. Suddenly Starr is confronted by the injustice of a brutal system that allows innocent people to be killed because of their skin colour. She starts to find it hard to relate to her friends at school and her devastation affects her budding relationship with her boyfriend Chris. This is a brilliant story, with a great heroine and interesting characters but it is also a really important story as sadly, we know that what happened to Khalil and the fallout from this is based on shocking, real life cases. This confrontation of serious social issues gives the book a gravitas that reminds me of really important books like Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and Anne Frank's Diary. I am grateful to Angie Thomas for this glimpse into Starr's world, it is a clever mix of the personal and the political. View all my reviews

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Orla Kiely print uniqlo dress, picked this up in a charity shop in Crouch End for about £12:) Wasn't so keen on it for awhile as it's voluminous but looks good with belts and the fabric helps you keep cool on warm days. Good for reading outside also.

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At home, I dedicate occasional whole days to reading as if I’m a convalescent. The ideal place for this is the bath, where the body floats free. Books go a little wavy, but they’re mine, so who cares.

Rachel Kushner shares her reading tendencies with the Times. Bow down. (via mcnallyjackson)

This

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Cataloguing apps

School software systems don't always work as well as you'd like them to, especially in conjunction with library management systems. Library systems don't always move as quickly in terms of design as other Web 2.0 tools and can be quite expensive . Book social networking sites such as Good Reads have some cataloguing capability but are really limited. A recent app I've been looking into is Libib. Libib is a cataloguing app and website which allows users to create various collections or book lists by scanning their books. It is really easy to use with a simple interface. Collections can then easily be shared via social media. There is the option of added functionality by taking an annual subscription which allows you to an users and gives you the functionality of traditional LMS software at a much cheaper cost. I have decided not to pursue a full Libib subscription as of yet as I just have not heard of anyone using it for school libraries but I have inherited a (small) school library where the collection is organised via genre and I think Libib's simple collection feature might be an interesting way to easily share details of each different genre that we have online, sidestepping the need for an expensive add-ons to the LMS. Do any other school libbies out there use free online tools to enhance or replace your traditional LMS?

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This would be fun on national libraries day!

Bodleian Library wants you to color their collections!

The University of Oxford’s famous Bodleian Library has just released a free coloring book featuring images from their collection. You can download a PDF of the coloring book here.

Source of image

“An opportunity to join in with the current colouring trend and apply your colouring skills to images from our collections. We’ve provided a colouring book to get you started, but feel free to use our online resources to find your own. Don’t forget to share your final product on social media with the hashtag #ColorOurCollections! “

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There's something very otherworldly about these make-up diagrams from an old book in the library. I like them :)

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People are icebergs, with just a bit you can see and loads you can’t.

David Mitchell (via quotemadness)

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I finally read Rebecca

Now I understand the fuss about this novel! It’s used for some Gothic units in the school I work in and as I’ve had this old ex-libris edition hanging around for ages I thought I’d finally give it a read. I started the novel before Christmas and finished it in January and thought it would be perfect for the #ClassicsChallenge2016

I didn’t expect to love it as much as I did. I vaguely remember watching the Hitchcock film version years ago and thought the book wouldn’t surprise me but I was wrong. From the first page the ruins of Manderley mesmerise the reader and draw you into this oddly compelling tale.

Rebecca is the novel which has everything. It’s a rags to riches story, it’s a love story, it’s a ghost story, an ode to the golden era of travel, a coming of age story, a homage to a beloved house, a mystery, an examination of social classes, a tale of murder and contains gorgeous descriptions of the English countryside too.

The form of the novel was interesting. We start in a dream memory sequence, steeped in nostalgia we meet the house, Manderley and our characters in a mysterious present which is then unraveled as the story progresses. This heightens the sense of nostalgia. The line below reminded me of the places and times that I am nostalgic for myself : “We can never go back again, that much is certain. ”

I love novels in which the story revolves around a (doomed) house. It was amazing to notice the influence that Du Maurier has had on Sarah Waters and her novel The Little Stranger, another ghostly novel with a house at it’s heart. The narrators love for the house always seemed to supersede her love of Maxim.(I read somewhere that there was a real house exactly like Manderley that Daphne Du Maurier was obsessed with and she was able to live there with proceeds from her novels.) 

 The aspect that stood out to me the most about Rebecca was how the novel examined gender and the roles played by women. I was left with the impression that Rebecca was too modern for role in society and that this necessitated her erasure. The unnamed narrator is her quiet mirror image and is complicit in this. I finished this novel mesmerized by the character of Rebecca and Manderley. I’ll be hanging on to my copy because I’ll be back to reread it soon!

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Library themed light installation celebrating Irish writers over New Years in Dublin

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Not perfect but before midnight 😉 today’s #paintingaday… #illustration #reading #books #ileftmyheartinthelibrary and #ihopeyoufindit

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People of Color on YA Book Covers in 2015

We’ve been tracking new releases all year, and as the year comes to a close it’s interesting take a look back and see how people of color have been represented on book covers.

In putting together this collection, I focused on covers that feature photos or illustrations of people who appear to represent the book’s main character(s) of color. I omitted images that were silhouettes that did not seem to speak to race, and images of people from the back or the distance that effectively obscured all their characteristics. I may have accidentally omitted some covers because there were quite a few of them! It’s also important to remember that not featuring a person of color on a book about a character of color is not automatically a negative. There are many evocative covers out there that don’t have any people on them. But if you’re interested in covers that do feature people of color, here is 2015’s batch. (For larger images where you can click through to the individual covers, go to this post on our website.)

You may also be interested in a similar roundup from 2014 and 2013.

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Thing 18; Communicating through Photos

When I originally read through this post a few weeks back I was really keen to start a library Flicker or Instagram account so I set up a Flicker account straight away.  My Sixth form titles don’t get as much attention as they should, especially the new titles so I thought it might be great to use photos to broadcast this and share easily with staff and students.

However I then had another idea..Our school library website is actually a Google blog spot blog. I am a big fan of Google technologies and realised that this photo function would be best served by using Google photos to share my photos instead.

Design is a subject that has been neglected in our non-fiction collection.  We have plenty of coffee table style books that have been there for  years but are not used.  These books are perfect for students looking for inspiration for design projects. I started off by taking a few photos with my library ipad and quickly uploaded them to this list:

Design books

I really liked how easy it was to quickly edit and share the photos.  The privacy settings were also easy to customise which is important for me in a school library. The best thing about Google photos is the layout. It is easy to click between photos and I decided to double up and use it as a quick presentation tool when talking about plague resources to a Year 8 class :)

* I might have another look at Flicker though and use this account to create a compelling library narrative which I can easily share.

** I decided against using Instagram in the library myself for now BUT it is great for inspiration from other libraries.

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Thing 17; Reflective practice

Using reflective practice in the library

This is definitely something I could use more to improve my workflows in the library.  As I work alone and am frequently busy I sometimes end up running around like a headless chicken and forget to reflect on various elements.

It particularly hit me this week as I had my annual performance review meeting and I had not reflected adequately on the previous year's goals before going into the meeting.

Last February I organised for an author to visit our school and talk to our Year 7's about her books and reading. There was a mix up and two classes could not make the event.  I reflected afterwards and tweaked some things.  It turned out it was a bad time of year for the teachers and there were various clashing schedules.  

This week we had a poet in for National Poetry Day and this event was much smoother as I had reflected on our previous event.  The poet reached 460 students which created excitement about National Poetry day and also provided great value for money.  

I need to have a look at my performance review targets using this process. This blog is also a great way of reflecting on various professional experiences in the library.

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Reading Oscar Woa by him at the moment.. I think my Spanish is improving from this :) dios mio!

Drown by Junot Díaz. Laura: “Díaz is a great Dominican writer. His writing is often about being an outsider in a place that should be your home. Drown is a compilation of those kind of stories. I went to a reading of his when I had just moved to New York from Copenhagen and talked to him afterwards.

Keep reading

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This quote is so empowering!

“As librarians we must continue to support each other, to network, to learn from our mistakes, to build on our successes and most of all to share all of our learning with each other. There needs to be cross-fertilization of ideas amongst the different sectors of librarianship, from special to academic, from public to school, from health to legal to corporate. Our combined experience will drive librarianship forward. Public libraries are on the brink of a new era. “

This quote appeared in a post by librarian Aoife Lawton which appeared in the Irish Libfocus blog (I’ve linked it in above). I came across it on @rudai23. It is a beautiful quote (and a beautiful piece on the library in Dun Laoghaire, sounds like my dream lib)  and it’s something I need to hold on to with all my strength.