So, I’m home this week on doctor’s orders, battling what feels like the umpteenth case of bronchitis I’ve had in the past year. Another barrage of steroids, cough medicine, inhalers, Vitamin C, fluids, and chicken soup. So this is what I’ve been doing while confined to the couch this week:
Archive: July 2008
The trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Not sure how I’ll make it to November 21st.
Last week The New Yorker published an excellent piece by Jill Lepore called “The Lion and the Mouse.” Anne Caroll Moore pretty much created the children’s librarian profession in New York City, first at Pratt Institute (my grad school alma mater) and then with the creation of the children’s department of the New York Public Library. She was hugely influential in the world of children’s books; she essentially began the critiquing of children’s books as literature. But she was also considered humorless and rigid about what makes good children’s literature. This article explores how she kept her influence until she tried to block publication of E.B. White’s Stuart Little because, basically, it wasn’t childish enough. It’s an excellent look at two approaches to books for children that are still debated today: those that shelter children from anything unpleasant, and those that feel children can handle a lot more than adults give them credit for.
Here is my disclaimer: If you are even slightly squeamish or scare easily, do not read this book! It is disgusting, creepy, gorier than a Stephen King/Clive Barker mashup, and actually made me queasy more than once. Now I know I spend most of my days wandering through children and teen lit, but I do like to come up for air with the occasional adult thriller. And this is a very adult thriller.
Perhaps you have asked yourself what librarians do on their days off. Do we clean our eyeglasses? Practice making those tight buns in our hair? Catalog everything in our homes according to the Dewey Decimal System? This librarian spent her Friday off with ABBA. I went into the city for lunch and the movie version of Mamma Mia with my friend Maggie, and in the evening I met more friends for a Björn Again concert with Rockin’ the River Cruises.