The Top 10 Songs to Check In Books To

I got to work today... one of my 5-hour shifts that happen on Fridays/Saturdays. I had to be in at 10... after getting home at 4:30 this morning (Yay for OPA and Rose Night and graduating Seniors!). So since I got about four hours of sleep, I made sure that went to McDonald's before work and got a large coffee. It didn't last very long, unfortunately, and I was definitely dragging.

But luckily, I spent the first hour checking in crates and the RPL, and the other four hours were essentially spent in the bomb room. Which worked for me, since, you know, I love working in the bomb room. One of the reasons I enjoy it is since I'm in there by myself, I can put on music. I'll just log into Grooveshark (if you haven't used Grooveshark, you should definitely check it out, it's pretty awesome), pull up a playlist, and rock out. And yes, I will sing along and/or dance around while putting the books on their carts because I'm awesome like that. My top ten songs of choice (at least for today)?

1. "Rolling in the Deep" - Adele
2. "Universe and U" - KT Tunstall
3. "Down by the Water" - The Decemberists
4. "My Moon My Man" - Feist
5. "Heartbreak Warfare" - John Mayer
6. "Dog Days are Over" - Florence and the Machine
7. "If I Die Young" - The Band Perry
8. "The Cave" - Mumford and Sons
9. "Smile" - Lily Allen
10. "Feeling Good" - Michael Buble

A few other random things:

• I had a shelving timing quiz the other day... I had a children's cart that I was supposed to be able to shelve in 45 minutes. (I would have done an hour one, like my eventual test will be, but there wasn't enough material that had come in to make an hour cart, so instead we went with 45 minutes. And these tests are so... not realistic. I mean that because I am supposed to be able to shelve said cart in 45 minutes/an hour without any interruptions. So... no customers asking for help, no shelf-shifting (moving books around to make room), shelf-reading (making sure books are in order), or picking up stragglers that are in the wrong place. All of which I always do when I am shelving because it makes me crazy to have things looking/being disorganized. But I did it in 35 minutes anyway, and got a high-five from B (my supervisor whom I adore, he's fantastic) :)
• About a week ago, I was shelving in the Juvenile section, and heard this man who was standing at the kids' check-out station start yelling, "Hey! Hey! Hey!" and snapping his fingers. I looked over at him (I was standing basically behind him) and saw that his kids had run off, so I figured he was calling for them. He continues yelling a couple more times, and then I hear one of my co-workers approach him and ask, "Excuse me, Sir, do you need help?" And he proceeded to reply that yes, yes he did, and that the check-out system wasn't working. I couldn't believe that he was yelling (1) in the library and (2) in order to get assistance from a staff member! Really?
• GCPL is participating in a contest to win 16oo For Dummies books. Today's the last day to help us out, and all you have to do is go here on Facebook and like the page to help us win! We're in the lead, and want to stay that way, so please help us out!
• A shout out to all of the lovely ladies who told me that they enjoy reading my blog yesterday! It made me feel so happy! (I.e. If you read this regularly, I'd love it if you left comments just to say hi or ask questions or share your thoughts!)

Review - Cinderella Ate My Daughter

So I'm not sure if it's because I'm out of school, or because I'm around them now all the time, or some combination of the two... but my interest in reading non-fiction books is growing. Especially when they're about something having to do with Girls'/Women's studies. So when I heard about journalist Peggy Orenstein's new book Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture, I was super excited and requested it right away. So while I'm not a mom, who I think Orenstein was targeting with this book, I was still interested because I can relate to girlie-girl culture. A lot of what Orenstein talks about started developing when we were around middle school age, such as the rise of the Disney Princess phenomenon.

Orenstein did a fantastic job with this book, of explaining girlie-girl culture and looking at the things that influence how girls grow up in today's world in both a serious and humorous way. The meat of it discusses how the sexualization of girlhood teaches girls that how they

look is more important than who they are as a person. Which, many of us growing up at the time we did, can relate to. And even if you can't personally relate to it, you've heard it covered in the media at some point.

I won't go into detail on everything that Orenstein covered because I could go on forever, so instead I'll give you a list of a few tidbits that I found especially interesting:

• The term "tween" was coined in the mid-1980s as a "marketing contrivance," but "within ten years, it was considered a full-blown psychological, physical, and emotional phase, abetted, in no small part, by the classic marketing bible What Kids Buy and Why.
• "Children weren't color-coded at all until the early twentieth century"... "When nursery colors were introduced, pink was actually considered the more masculine hue, a pastel version of red, which was associated with strength. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy, and faithfulness, symbolized femininity."
• "In the late nineteenth century, industrialization shifted to source of the family income outside the home. Without the need for free labor, middle-class couples no longer felt compelled to have more than one child [...] A few years later, however, President Theodore Roosevelt, who was obsessed with the waning birth rates among white Anglo-Saxon women, began waging a campaign against 'race suicide.' [...] Baby dolls were seen as a way to revive the flagging maternal instinct of white girls, to remind them of their patriotic duty to conceive; within a few years dolls were ubiquitous."

Also, I wanted to make sure to mention the following: "Around the time the Spice Girls broke, something called 'girlie feminism' was also on the rise. [...] It held that women's traditional roles and skills (whether scrubbing floors, nurturing relationships, or knitting) had intrinsic value; that sexual equality need not require gender neutrality; that painting your nails and wearing a PORN STAR t-shirt were, if not radical acts, at least a woman's right, a viable form of self expression and personal pleasure."

For those of you that know me, you may know that this is the form of feminism that I believe in. I do love clothes, makeup, dressing up, reading bridal and fashion magazines, Disney princesses, etc., but that doesn't make me any less of a feminist. It's your right as a woman (if you are in fact, female and reading this) to do those girly things, to want social and professional equality, but to at the same time embrace your femininity.

I loved this book. I thought it was fantastic, even if I wasn't the target audience. I definitely recommend that if you have any interest in girlie-girl culture, if you have a daughter or plan/hope to one day, or you're just woman wanting to understand the things that may have shaped you growing up, that you read Cinderella Ate My Daughter. I give it 5 (out of 5) stars!

Review - The Mockingbirds

So for those of you that somewhat know my reading tastes, you'll know that I'm into teen/young adult fiction. There's little difference, at least in my opinion, between the two, but they are shelved in different parts of the library. Essentially, the difference between them is the level of subject matter as it relates to sensitive issues (i.e. sex, violence, drug use, etc.), the young adult books (which are shelved in with the adult sections) being more mature than those placed in the teen section. So if you go into your local library (at least if it's a GCPL library), you'll find something like the Twilight series in the adult section, and the later books of the Harry Potter series in the teen section.

Anyhow, the real reason for this post is I wanted to put up my first book review post on the debut young adult novel by Daisy Whitney, The Mockingbirds. I just finished reading this book yesterday, and that I found it to be one of those books that I didn't want to put down - it was really very compelling.

The novel centers on high school junior Alex, who wakes up in the bed belonging to water polo-playing jock Carter, not remembering how she got there. She slowly remembers details of what happened, and comes to the realization that she was drunk and date-raped, twice, that night. However, Alex and Carter attend Themis, a prestigious academy where the faculty think their students can do no wrong, and therefore have basically no justice system in place and ignore the issues that happen at the school. So instead, Themis law is enforced by an underground student group called the Mockingbirds (yes, the name comes from To Kill a Mockingbird and there are clever references to the classic throughout the book). After some persuasion from her best friend and sister, Alex approaches the Mockingbirds for their help, and, as the novel unfolds, Alex remembers more and more of the details of what happened that night.

The novel was well-written, especially for the age-level it's targeted to. It was a good and interesting read, and offered a very blatant and honest look at the issue of date-rape. However, the one problem I really had with it is that I personally didn't feel emotionally connected with Alex. Especially near the end of the story and at its climax. I wanted to feel more, wanted to know what she was feeling, not just what she was thinking and why (which Whitney does do a good job of explaining). With a novel about a situation such as this one, I feel that the author needs to be extra concerned with connecting with the reader. Whitney herself was date-raped in college, so I have no doubt that she herself connected with the story, but I think she could have done better getting her reader to really understand.

Basically: The idea, plot, and characters were interesting and well-developed, but the level of emotional investment I had in them was lacking, so overall, I give The Mockingbirds 4 (out of 5) stars.

Wait... They Wrote a Book? Pt. 2

Hello dear readers. I apologize for my absence, but the library hasn't really been very busy or eventful lately. I'm working on a more interesting post, but in the meantime, here are more children's books written by famous people. Having shelved in children's a lot recently (I'm preparing for my 6-month evaluation, in which I'll have to shelve a children's cart in an hour... which I can do... when I don't look at all the books), I've seen a lot of books written by people that I recognize, even moreso than before.

Anyhow, here are 5 more!

Madonna (she also wrote a Juvenile book, I discovered today)

Jimmy Fallon

Julianne Moore

Mike Huckabee

... and Joy Behar

If you missed, check out Pt. 1 here!

Wait... They Wrote a Book?

For those of you that don't know, this week is "Love Your Library" week. We've been "celebrating" it at our library, and we've had sheets of paper next to the check-out stations that ask "What do you love about your library?" My favorite answer so far went something like, "The [Library Name] people are the BEST people!!" :D So make sure to show some love to your library and librarians!

One of my favorite things about the days that I work over in the children's section is the wide selection of awesome books that I come across. Sometimes I'll come across one that was one of my favorites as a kid. Sometimes, I'll find one that is new that looks really fantastic, and I have to take a couple of minutes while shelving to read through it, or just check it out for later. And sometimes, and the theme behind this post, I'll come across a book that was written by a celebrity, and have a "Wait, what?" kind of moment.

So without further ado, here's a collection of children's books that have been written by people that you know (and may love):

Steve Martin

Tori Spelling

Cal Ripken Jr.

Weird Al Yankovic

I have to say that I love this book. It's fantastic, especially since it has the same fun language as many of his songs (written for children, of course).

Bob Dylan

Julie Andrews

And Mr. Billy Crystal!

The Questionable Way that Books are Made

Today was another pretty uneventful day, consisting of working in the bomb room, checking in the crates we received from the other branches (containing the books that people have requested), and working on the claims return list that I've had for the past week and a half.

The claims return list is made up of books that customers have said that they have turned in, but for some reason the book can't be found. Sometimes this is an error on our part (the books miss the check-in, they get discarded improperly, get shelved in the wrong place) or on the part of the customer (they only think they turned it in, have lost it, etc.). But basically when the book goes on this list, it stops accruing late fees and goes on a list that we in turn use to go hunting for the books. We do a branch one once a week, and at the beginning of the month we do an entire system-wide list. The list looks something like this:

And for some reason, this month the list was 14 pages long. So I have been working on half of it, and finally reached the last page today. And I managed to find 2 books (they're the only 2 that I have managed to find off the whole thing, it's ridiculous).

While I was looking for them, I was sitting on the rolling bench we use, and the cutest little boy came over and just stood next to me. He was probably about 2, and had blonde curly hair and dimples. Adorable. And he was like, "Hi!" to me and I just grinned and said hi back, and tried to ask him what his name was but he laughed and ran off instead of answering me. He came back a few minutes later and we repeated the routine, but I still didn't get a real answer from him. Oh well, he was still a cutie.

What I really wanted to share tonight was a book called The Wonderful Way that Babies are Made by Larry Christenson. Yes this is a real book. And it gets circulated way more than I think it should, which is a testament to the area that I live in. This book is essentially a childrens' book (although it's shelved in adult non-fiction) for parents to read to their children when asked the classic, "Where do babies come from?" question. It is an extremely Christian-centric book, some parts are written so they rhyme (at least for the younger children) and each page has a corresponding section that goes into more detail (for the older kids).

So after giving a long back story about creationism and Adam and Eve, it goes into talking about sex:

"When a sperm from the father comes together with an egg from the mother, a new baby starts to grow. God made a wonderful way for the father's sperm and the mother's egg to come together. It's something Father and Mother do that is called making love. When husbands and wives make love together, they kiss and tough and lie close to each other; for God made their bodies to fit together so the sperm from the father can swim into the mother. Making love was a wonderful part of God's plan when He made the very first woman and man. It's His beautiful gift just for husbands and wives to bring them happiness all of their lives."

And from the "older kids" section:

"Making love is one of the wonderful things God planned for husbands and wives." And "Intercourse is a very special and wonderful experience that a husband and wife share with each other. It gives them pleasurable feelings in their bodies and a sense of love and closeness to each other."

I suppose if this is your kind of thing, then this book is a pretty good resource to explain sex to younger kids. I take issue with it because of it's single-mindedness. The author makes a point of repeating over and over again that sex is between husband and wife, and condemns those who do not fit this standard, going so far as to say/imply that those who don't are terrible, horrible people. Granted, I'm aware that many people feel this way, but I don't. I like to subscribe to a more open-minded way of thinking, and I try not to judge others for their actions. Therefore, I just have to cringe when I see a book aimed at children that essentially teaches them to judge others for the things they do. There has to be a better way to get the author's message across that you should wait until you get married to make love than to say that all of those who don't are lesser and worse people than you.

P.S. Thanks for the idea for the title of this post, J! :)

Books Your Kids Could Read Someday...

Today was a rather uneventful day comprised of shelving, hunting for books, and working in the bomb room, so I decided to share a few childrens' books I've come across that I find amusing...

This is a board book based on a childrens' book called Underwear! I think it's slightly creepy that Zachary the Zebra looovvesss underwear. I have a feeling that Zachary is going to grow up having a couple of issues...

In case you can't read the little part in the corner... this gem is brought to you by the adventures of Marshall and Art. Clever.

Yeah... this one's self-explanatory.

The Adventures of Monkey Boy

Most of the time, one of the biggest reasons I enjoy my job is due to my interaction with the children that come to the library. For example, one of my favorite things is when I'm working in the bomb room, and a little kid will pull back the flaps covering the book drop and peek through to see where it is exactly that the books go. If I'm working back there and I see them, I'll usually smile and say hello. Sometimes they'll say hi back, or ask where the books go, but most of the time, the flaps drop back really quickly when they realize they've been caught peeking into what I assume they think of as a hidden, top-secret place.

The other day I got to show a little girl and her younger brother how to use their library cards to check out their books, they were so adorable and so excited, and another little boy got excited when I brought him a Batman book. Little kids' excitement over books is awesome to me and I love to see kids who are genuinely interested in reading. Like I said, it's these kids I enjoy and make me enjoy my job.

So that brings me to The Adventures of Monkey Boy. MB was probably about 3 years old. He came in one afternoon with a guy who's a regular at the library (the type of regular who comes in just about every day to use our computers). I have a feeling he had gotten roped into babysitting for this afternoon and wasn't really into it. So he comes in, and lets MB loose in the children's section while he sits at a computer somewhat nearby, but still pretty much out of sight of the majority of the children's section.

I was shelving books, and he was just kind of moseying around, being a kid, looking at books, etc. He was pretty cute and tame, so I didn't really have a problem keeping an eye on him. So I continued on shelving. A while later, I noticed he had sort of latched himself onto a family that was visiting. The mother had brought in her son and daughter, and was trying to sit the two of them down with her at a table for some reading time. Instead, MB was engaging the son, getting him to run around with him and climb on the furniture. I looked over and noticed the mom getting a tad exasperated, but she was still doing her best to keep her children to themselves.

Then MB decided that books = footballs. To prove this was so, he started picking books off the shelves and drop-kicking them. I glanced over at his "babysitter," who was sitting oblivious at his computer, then hurried over to MB and told him that we didn't treat books the way he was treating them. By this time, the mom was looking particularly annoyed, so I went to B (one of my supervisors) and told him what was going on. He came over and just watched for a bit to witness MB misbehavior himself, and when he started climbing on a chair, to the point that he was on the back of it, he went and got Mr. Oblivious, who took him back over to the computer where he was.

Mom was grateful, and the children's section was peaceful again.

Until a few minutes later when I looked over at the self-check in the children's section. MB had grabbed the bottle of hand sanitizer, and proceeded to use about half of it in 2 minutes. His hands were the cleanest little kid hands in the library, I'm sure, and about half of the counter and card reader was probably extra-sanitized, too, from the amount of hand sanitizer he had managed to get everywhere. I went to B again and told him what had happened (a/n: the reason I go to B instead of directly taking care of the kid myself is that that was what I had been told to do in the case of misbehaving children... let someone higher up than me take care of it). He came over to the station and cleaned up and spoke to MO again, who brought MB back to his computer, again.

I went back to shelving. And of course, MB reappeared, and started running through the children's section, and then decided that the the baskets for books (like the handheld one in the grocery store) are for sitting, standing, and jumping in. By this time, I think B and I were just like whatever, and he eventually tired himself out and passed out under the computer of MO an hour or so later.

But like I said. Kids are one of the reasons I love my job.

Okay Sure, I'm a Librarian

Hello everyone! I've been thinking about doing this for a while (starting a blog about my librarying and such) but I've finally decided to actually do it!

So here we are, at my first post...

For those of you who don't know, my official title at my job is a "library services assistant" (LSA). So technically I'm not an official librarian, but when you say you work at the library, that's what people's minds jump to, so it's just easier to go along. Officially, my first priority is to get materials back out to customers, i.e. I do a lot of shelving and checking books in (see picture below). I'd say that these tasks make up about 85% of my job, with random other tasks (shelf-reading, pulling books that have been requested, searching for "lost" books, helping customers with basic requests, etc.), thrown in sometimes.

Okay, so you're probably thinking by now how boring and unglamorous my job sounds. And it probably is, but I enjoy it. A lot. Sure, the work gets tedious sometimes, but I don't have a day where I don't see something amusing or learn something. And as I love to read, working in a place where I'm surrounded by books rocks. Plus, I work with [mostly] awesome people, and they make it enjoyable too.

So on this blog, I plan on posting a couple of things, the main thing being funny or random events that happen throughout my time at work, books that I find that are awesome or ridiculous, and maybe even some sharing as to what I've been reading lately. Enjoy, and please comment if you feel so inclined. I like feedback :)

*Also, a note about the picture above... it was taken in what is called the Bomb Room. It's a room in the back where the books go to when customers return them. When they drop the books into the crates that catch them (which are made of metal), it sounds like a bomb is going off. The walls are covered with things that have been left inside of books. A lot of which are hilarious. The picture was taken on Feb 5 after the Bomb Room had been unattended for too long, and I took all of the books and stacked them on the counter to see just how much I had to check in.

And so dear readers, I'll leave you with this, my favorite thing that I've ever found inside of a book:

Yes, that says, "I'm a bobey lady," and that is a picture of what you think it is. Oh kids...