Library & Literary Miscellany

Ingo by Helen Dunmore (2006 US hardcover; 2008 US paperback)

“Ingo’s a place that has many names, ” says Granny Carne. “You can call it Mer, Mare, or Meor…Earth and Ingo don’t mix, even though we live side by side. Earth and Ingo aren’t always friends…”

Despite Granny Carne’s words, in Helen Dunmore’s fantastic fantasy Earth and Ingo do mix–with consequences. Ingo is set partially above ground in modern day Cornwall and partially below the surface of the water in Ingo.

Ingo features Sapphire Trewhella (also known as Saph or Sapphy). Sapphy takes after her father, Matthew Trewhella, in that she has always been drawn to the sea. She recalls, “Dad used to say that the sea doesn’t hate you and it doesn’t love you. It’s up to you to learn its ways and keep yourself safe.”

It’s “Dad used to say” because her father has disappeared. His boat, the Peggy Gordon, was found without him in it, and he is presumed drowned. Sapphy, however, suspects her father’s disappearance has something to do with Ingo. She recalls her father singing, “I wish I was away in Ingo; Far across the briny sea, Sailing over deepest waters; Where love nor care never trouble me…”

Her father’s disappearance certainly troubles her and causes trouble for her family. Her mother is forced to work all the time at her waitressing job and, consequently, her older brother Conor and Sapphy spend much time by themselves.

When one day Sapphy cannot find Conor, she fears that he has disappeared just like her father. She heads out to the cove to look for him, and she finds him talking to Elvira the mermaid. This leads to her encounter with Faro the merman who takes her on a journey under the sea. On this journey, she lets go of Earth completely and becomes a part of Ingo.

Sapphy and Conor are welcomed into Ingo because they each have a little Mer in them (long story that goes into family lore about the disappearance of a previous Matthew Trewhella), but Sapphy seems to have even a little more than her brother. Her draw to the sea becomes increasingly strong after she’s been a part of it. Not-too-subtle warning signals such as a new found taste for salting her water and consuming anchovies begin to alarm Conor while her mother appears largely ignorant of all goings on. With Conor’s help, Sapphy struggles to resist the pull of Ingo.

Yet, despite her resistance, Sapphy continues to find Ingo and Faro seductive. When she’s in Ingo, nothing else seems to matter–not time, not Conor, not Earth, not humanity in general. When she’s not in Ingo but back on Earth, she finds so many troubles weighing her down–she feels in her bones that her father is still alive but he’s made no attempt to contact her, her mother has given up on her father coming back and is becoming romantically involved with a diver named Roger (a diver who’s getting increasingly close to encroaching upon Ingo), and her mother is dead set against her getting a dog (when Sapphy already has the perfect one picked out!).

Ingo takes on the struggle between two worlds, between two types of people, between two ways of life. The struggle between Ingo and Earth has its parallel struggle within Sapphy’s family where the impetuousness of Sapphy and her father frequently clashes with the practical nature of Conor and her mother. This struggle comes to the fore in the latter part of Ingo when Roger decides he wants to dive in areas where, unbeknownst to him, he is not welcomed.

Dunmore’s characters are flawed yet still developing and changing just as the world is flawed yet still developing and changing (the latter we have the privilege to participate in changing). Ingo is top-notch fantasy while also speaking to family dynamics, individual choices, willpower, self-discovery, and imagination.

Ingo–with its tagline “In a world without air all you breathe is adventure”–will likely be popular with middle grade fantasy fans of both genders. Ingo is Book One in a planned tetralogy–Ingo, The Tide Knot, The Deep, and The Crossing of Ingo (the final two are more difficult to attain from within the US since HarperCollins just published the US edition of The Tide Knot in January 2008). For more on the series immediately, visit Helen Dunmore’s site or Harper Collin’s Ingo site (including a video book trailer). The pull of Ingo is strong, who can resist?

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Library & Literary Miscellany links, links, links…

Library

Gearing Up for All Together Now post by Michael at Tame the Web announcing the All Together Now: A 2.0 Learning Experience. This learning experience opportunity looks to be somewhat akin to the Library 2.0 experiences previously offered by the Public Library of Charlotte Mecklenburg County, so if you didn’t get in on those, you might want to check it out.

Libraries are Going to Make it After All video at You Tube (thanks to American Libraries Direct this week for the link)

Library Application Program Interfaces (APIs) post by Roy Tennant providing a FYI list of generally useful library-related APIs

Library Day in the Life Wiki: wiki enabling librarians to share experiences of being a librarian; check it out to see how the experiences of your day compare with others in the same or different area of librarianship (thanks to American Libraries Direct this week for the link)

Web Services and Tech Training presentations post by LibrarianinBlack, Sarah Houghton-Jan including I Wanna Be 2.0 Too!: Web Services for Smaller Underfunded Libraries and Technology Training and Competencies

Literary

Books featuring Child Geniuses post over at the Children’s Literature Book Club listing some titles along with discussion of how the kids starring in these books view the world

If You Like Captain Underpants: Related Books for Students (BOOKLIST) article in Choice Literacy by Franki Sibberson from A Year of Reading with apt suggestions such as Roscoe Riley Rules

Get Ready to Stand on Your Soapbox by Chasing Ray reminding members of the kidlitosphere that next week will be as good a time as any to pontificate eloquently about issues today with the publishing world

Lost Book Club at ABC.com offers a roundup and place for discussion of all the books mentioned throughout the LOST episodes (thanks to Jen Robinson’s Growing Bookworms Newsletter for the link)

No Rich Kids Need Apply by Liz B at A Chair, A Fireplace, and A Tea Cozy digs into issues of class in YA lit

Savvy for Free post at Kids Lit providing links to the e-book of Ingrid Law’s Savvy.

The Publication History of Stuart Little: Fusenews: Anne Carroll Moore Does Not Love Stuart Little* and The Monkey Speaks: Where modern children’s literature (and librarianship) came from and The Shifted Librarian: Corrupting Young Minds (with Books) in the Library (these discussions point to and discuss an article in the New Yorker article The Lion and the Mouse: The battle that reshaped children’s literature by Jill Lepore)

This Week’s Rundown Draft at the Reader’s Advisor Online Blog points to interesting lists such as August’s Indie Next

Miscellany

17+ Things to Do with your Online Photos by iLibrarian includes ideas such as create an Animoto music video or a LetterPop Newsletter

A Look at the iPhone 3G by Elyssa at iLibrarian

Another Article About Those Darn Bloggers by Liz B. at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy pointing to and discussing the article debating print vs. online reviewing Is it curtains for critics? from The Observer

Google Docs has templates (thanks to Nicole at What I Learned Today for the heads up)

The Free Dictionary: a word lover’s delight by Jane over at infodoodads points to a potentially useful reference tool for fielding language and pronunciation questions called The Free Dictionary

How To Handle A Blog Attack at ACRL Log

Five Best File Syncing Tools compiled in a Lifehacker Hive Five post

JibJab Debuts its Election Video Carnival for 2008 embedded by Paul Glazowski with commentary over at Mashable

MMO Games for Change? over at Mission to Learn offers links to a past post about games promoting social change and more commentary on the same

Outlook vs. Gmail The Definitive Comparison in a Lifehacker Faceoff

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The Glass Castle: A Memoir (Alex Awards (Awards)) by Jeannette Walls (2005)

“I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a dumpster.”

Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, may begin with her adult self viewing her mother rooting through a dumpster but much of the book covers the period of her life leading up to that scene. Walls spends much of her youth waiting for her father to build her family the Glass Castle. Finally, as an adult with her father deceased, she ends up just writing about it instead. The result is The Glass Castle–Walls’ story of growing up as the daughter of Rex and Rose Mary Walls with three siblings and multiple homes and relocations and a will to survive.

She relates her family’s migrations from the Arizona desert to the rural mining town of Welch, West Virginia to the urban mecca New York City. She relates her father Rex’s brilliance and passion for life, for learning, for dreaming, for alcohol… She relates her mother’s passion for painting. And she relates the creative machinations she and her siblings (and, on a good day, sometimes her mother) derive to ensure the family’s little income gets spent on groceries instead of alcohol.

The book spans a wide period, from Jeannette’s earliest memories to her adult life. At the age of three, Jeannette burns herself badly while boiling hot dogs by herself. She calmly rationalizes the incident to an incredulous hospital staff:

“It was easy…You just put the hot dogs in the water and boil them. It wasn’t like there was some complicated recipe that you had to be old enough to follow.”

Even at three, Jeannette affirms her self-sufficiency, her strong will to survive, and her defense of her parents despite their questionable actions. These trends continue as she grows from a resilient child into a resilient woman. Interspersed with the nuclear family issues are the stories of abuse and trauma outside the home–caused by bullies, other relatives, poverty in general.

Years pass as the Walls family waits for Rex to place his family before alcohol and to build the Glass Castle he has promised them. They have all seen the masterful architectural plans that he has drawn up. When the family settles in West Virginia, Jeannette and the other kids further display their faith in their father by digging a hole to serve as the foundation for the castle.

Over time, instead of becoming a foundation for the Glass Castle, the hole becomes the Walls family’s private landfill in lieu of paying money for municipal garbage removal. And over time, the family’s faith in Rex similarly gets trashed. By the day Jeannette embarks for New York, she admits to herself and to her father that she doesn’t believe he’ll ever build The Glass Castle. She can no longer answer “No” with any conviction to Rex’s repeated question, “Have I ever let you down?”

The Walls children find that life in New York is not without its challenges (particularly after Rex and Rose Mary follow them there and embark upon a life of chronic peripateticism and periodic homelessness, conditions which their children work to mitigate normally to no avail). Yet, through it all, they stick together even as they continue to develop as individuals.

The Glass Castle is a striking memoir of human imperfection, human strength, and familial bonds. Page-by-page Jeannette Walls paints a picture of a flawed family whose love for each other somehow remains true. For her memoir’s masterful blend of individuality and community, of love and disgust, of despair and hope, of fallibility and perseverance, The Glass Castle has deservedly won an Alex Award and more than a few admiring readers (of which I am one).

If you’re looking for other memoirs that look deep into individual and family identity, a few suggestions include: Debra Marquart’s The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere: a Memoir, Francine du Plessix Gray’s Them: A Memoir of Parents, Julia Scheeres’ Jesus Land: A Memoir, J. R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar, Mary-Ann Tirone Smith’s Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club: A Memoir, Nicole Lea Helget’s The Summer of Ordinary Ways: A Memoir, and Rick Bragg’s All over but the Shoutin’.

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Here’s the Library & Literary Miscellany Links for the Week…

Library

5 Things You Should Read about Copyright and Sharing Instructional Materials post by the Distant Librarian summarizing the first of ACRL’s Five Things You Should Read About… series (the first being 5 Things You Should Read about Copyright and Sharing Instructional Materials)

Build the Open Shelves Classification by Tim Spalding over at Thingology stirring up discussion regarding library classification systems and the future

Gaming Gone Wild by Jenny Levine over at the Shifted Librarian compiles a library-related gaming round-up with links to many wild resources

How much longer will libraries need librarians? by Walter Minkel over at The Monkey Speaks. Here’s a brief excerpt: “We need to be offering programming that pulls literacy together with the materials in our collections. Youth librarians need to be offering “literacy counseling” to parents who come in and ask us questions about the best materials for their children. We need to be more than the greeters that some public libraries seem to be moving their staff toward. ”

LA: Essentials of Listening Advisory by Joyce Saricks over at Booklist Online discussing the similarities and differences (and importance) of providing RA with audiobooks

Ten Years of Learned Helplessness Coming to an End by Lori Ayre over at Tech Essence exhorting librarians to jump in and help improve open source ILS systems

What Librarians Can Learn from Starbucks Fall by Designing Better Libraries reiterates the importance of the personal touch and identifying/maintaining/bolstering core services

Literary

2008 Notable Books for a Global Society Booklist sponsored by the Children’s Literature and Reading Special Interest Group, International Reading Association (thanks to Jen Robinson’s Growing Bookworms Newsletter for the link)

Book Review: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by the A.V.Club rockets this one to near the top of my reading pile (and then I may not even need to review it myself since Donna Bowman did such a brilliant job)

Booker Talk: BBC’s How Do You Win a Booker Prize followed up by Rushdie Wins Best of Booker Prize

British Book News by Tasha Saecker over at Kids Lit providing links to some articles in The Telegraph that cover children’s literature

Did Fleming Rescue Churchill? over at Literate Lives discussing a new book that may prove to be a useful and more interesting way to introduce youngsters to the research process

Good News for People Who Love Bad News, and Vice Versa by Kier Graf at Booklist Online’s Book Blog with links to and discussion of, well, some bad news and good news for booksellers and book lovers

Carry-On Books To Take You Up, Up And Away by Nancy Pearl over at The Morning Edition suggesting books for your in-flight reading pleasure

The ‘New Classics’ post by Nora Rawlinson over at Early Word points out the book display potential inherent in Entertainment Weekly’s lists such as the selection of the 100 “New Book Classics” and the 25 New Classic Book covers

Stephenie Meyer: Inside the ‘Twilight’ Saga by Karen Valby at Entertainment Weekly provides an inside scoop on the making of the Twilight vampire empire

Upcoming Movies Based on Kids/Teen Books By Tasha Saecker includes some screenshots and links to the IMDB entry

Miscellany

Virtual Worlds: 20+ Tools for Creating 3D Graphics and Environments: suggestions from Sean P. Aune over at Mashable

57 Useful Google Tools You’ve Never Heard Of by College @Home pointing to some familiar resources such as Google Docs, Google Scholar, and Google Book Search and some less well-known tools such as Goog-411, Cooking with Google, and GrandCentral

Dictionary adds new batch of words at CNN.com-including pescatarian, mondegreen, and more (I find mondegreen to be particularly enjoyable as I’ve experienced more than a few of these in my time)

Free Sounds to Relax Your Brain Or Improve Concentration Levels post about I Dose Sounds that are available for various purposes by Digital Inspiration

Getting Started with Social Media - A Guide and Resource List a how-to posted over at Technotheory (thanks to iLibrarian for the link)

Google Launches Lively to Create a Virtual World Across Social Networks Mashable’s take on Google’s new virtual world offering

And, yes, I realize the new iPhone 3G was released this week, but you can read news about that from a plethora of other sites should you so choose…

Enjoy the day!

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Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen (2007)

* reviewed based on an advance reading copy

“Generations of Waverleys had tended this garden. Their history was in the soil, but so was their future. Something was about to happen, something the garden wasn’t ready to tell her yet. She would have to keep a sharp eye out.”

Claire Waverley surmises that her life is about to change, and she is correct. Her sister Sydney is about to return to town. Regardless of how hard they have or have not tried, the Waverley women-who in the time span of this story consist of Claire, Sydney, Bay, and Evanelle–have not escaped their heritage as Waverleys. In small town Bascom, North Carolina, the Waverley family has always been viewed with suspicion for their odd prescience and for the mystical garden with the equally foresighted apple tree growing in it.

Each infamous Waverley woman has coped with public suspicion in her own way—Claire through closing herself off from others, Sydney through leaving, Bay through ignorance of anything amiss, and Evanelle by embracing it. As Garden Spells opens, many years have passed since Sydney’s flight from Bascom. At Sydney’s return to Bascom (with her five-year-old daughter Bay in tow) following her flight from an abusive husband, the Waverley women slowly begin to rebuild their relationships with each other and with the outside world.

It takes prodding from Evanelle, the eldest remaining Waverley, and from Bay, the youngest to help the two sisters Claire and Sydney to let go of their past hurts and their fear of public scrutiny and to embrace their special skills. Claire’s skills run to cooking and creating dishes that have powerful affects on people’s emotions and lives. Sydney’s gift is cutting hair.

Claire exerts careful controls over every aspect of her life, her love-life included. She’s afraid of letting herself love. She reasons that in loving she opens herself up to the possibility of getting hurt if those she loves end up leaving (like her mother and then her sister did). As Sydney says, “She just doesn’t like when she can’t control things. Some people don’t know how to fall in love, like not knowing how to swim. They panic first when they jump in. Then they figure it out.” Both Claire and Sydney spend the book figuring it out with the help of family, friends, neighbors, and other miscellaneous Bascom denizens (including, in Claire’s case, one particularly handsome and persistent neighbor).

The apple tree’s life force makes the herbs around it more potent. Also, consuming its apples has unprecedented effects on what one is able to see, bringing some knowledge to light that before eating the fruit had not been apparent (in other words, the apple tree in the Waverley’s garden has some parallels to the age-old tree in another garden in Eden). Together, Claire and Sydney learn to appreciate the garden’s magic and their own skills, and they discover anew how much they love and need each other.

And that’s pretty much Garden Spells in an apple seed (as opposed to a nutshell). I figured it was about time I reviewed this one since I picked up the ARC at ALA 2007 Annual and since Sarah Addison Allen just released a new book The Sugar Queen.

Other books involving cooking and magic and/or sisters and magic include The Wishing Box by Dashka Slater, Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. For more relating to family myth/history, estrangement, and (more and less successful attempts at) reconciliation, try The Aguero Sisters by Christina Garcia, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards, or The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.

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Hoorah, hooray for holiday weekends and for freedom itself! I hope everyone enjoyed the day yesterday and that you find some of the following Links of the Week stimulating, useful, or at least worth looking at:

Library

Dot-Mania: ICANN Opens the Domain Door by Barbara Quint at InfoToday (thanks to Librarian in Black with her dot-library or dot-lib…which do you like better? post for the link)

Keeping Your Computers Running Session posted at the LITA blog summarizing an ALA session on a topic near and dear to all our hearts (by necessity, if not by nature, anyway)-technology maintenance and troubleshooting

LibGig Your Career Your Community is a networking site for librarians and includes sections for careers, schools, and community with a bit of fun on the side such as the recent 6 Books we’d recommend to Batman post (thanks to the post at OPL Plus (not just OPLs anymore) for the heads up)

Mashing Up the Library by Beth Gallaway provides a summary of OCLC’s Library Mashups session

Thoughts on EBSCO 2.0 by The Krafty Librarian…like it or not, EBSCO 2.0’s coming soon and The Krafty Librarian discusses some of the features

Top Technology Trends for Libraries to Note: Sarah’s Top Technology Trends - Virtual Presentation for ALA 2008 by Sarah Houghton-Jan at Librarian in Black and Virtual Karen’s Top Tech Trends by Karen Coombs at the LITA blog; pointing to issues such as APIs, mobile devices, open access, and more

Literary

Comprehension is Not a Commodity presentation by Angela Maiers discussing reading comprehension and the importance of creating a deeper appreciation for reading (as in beyond extrinsic rewards); Maiers has made available other reading-related presentations on Slideshare as well

The Books That Changed Your Lives compilation of opinions over at Lifehacker (list includes the Bible, works from Ayn Rand, Douglas Adams, and many more…also many more opinions are proffered in the comments)

Ancient Plots: the Mystery in History (Part I) and Dark Age Detection: Historical Mysteries (Part II) by Sarah Weinman whose regular blog is Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind; this multi-part series is a fun and informative read for all who enjoy historical mysteries (which I do )

Ultimate Teen Reading List at Teenreads.com has been recently expanded and updated

Miscellany

10 Essential Sites for Tips and How-To’s recommended by Palin Ningthoujam at Mashable

10 Great Software Programs You Can Get Gratis by Peter Grad over at TechNewsWorld lists software recommendations such as OpenOffice and 7-Zip (thanks to iLibrarian for the link)

Common Craft Video: LinkedIn In Simple English embedded in a post over at Digital Inspiration (or view at the Common Craft site)

Keep Rocking: 30+ Sites for Free & Legal Musicby Sean P. Aune overat Mashable

Once Nearly Invisible To Search Engines, Flash Files Can Now Be Found And Indexed: Washington Post Article by Erik Shonfeld from Tech Crunch discussing how swf files have been made search-engine readable

Thing 63: PDF Form-topia PDF Form-filler Freeware by Learning 2.1: Explore…Discover…Play explores the use of Fox-It Reader as “a tool to add to your PDF arsenal” for filling in non-editable PDF forms

The Ultimate Guide to Special Needs Teaching from Teaching Tips offers more than 100+ resources and links pertaining to various special learning needs

What They Play–video game information for the rest of us over at Infodoodads points us to resources to help us move beyond our n00bs status

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Here’s what caught my eye on the Web this week…

Library

• Discovery Skills Versus Evaluation Skills by Librarians Matter: discusses whether we are focusing too much on teaching discovery of information resources to the detriment of providing instruction on strategies for evaluating said resources
• ALSC’s Kids @ Your Library Public Awareness Campaign: see especially the tool kit which includes sample materials and activity suggestions
• Recent Library Presentations compiled by iLibrarian: provides links to myriad recent presentations from notable presenters such as Steven Abram, Sarah Houghton-Jan, David Lee King, and more
• Reference Question of the Week by Swiss Army Librarian is not actually a reference question from the week like it usually is; instead, it’s a compilation of links pointing to other places where reference questions are archived

Literary

• Booklist Online: Top 10 Biographies for Youth
• Futuristic, Speculative, Science Fiction and Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults over at Jen Robinson’s Book Page is a thorough list to which many contributed, making it diverse list with a lot of substance
• June carnival of Children’s Literature - Fathers in Children’s books: from Susan Taylor Brown at Susan Writes offers a meaty overview of contributors’ posts discussing, well, fathers in children’s books
• June edition of the Edge of the Forest (after June, you’ll want to check the archives to view this edition; you may want to check the archives anyway to view past editions); as per usual, it is full of interesting interviews and reviews making it a sound destination for maintaining current awareness of kidlit world happenings
• Times Online: Critics choose their most-loathed book (thanks to Fuse #8 for the link)
• Summer Books Season at Worth Reading includes links to a plethora of booklists (USA Today, the Telegraph, Library Journal, Wall Street Journal, Salon, etc.) for your summer reading pleasure (the USA Interactive is particularly fun if you’re looking for an interactive means of choosing adult fiction or nonfiction for your summer reading)
• Last week I pointed to Fuse 8 Production’s Newbery/Caldecott predictions. A couple more I found this week (although they aren’t from this week) are from Literate Lives: Newbery/Caldecott Short Lists and Anokaberry: Anokaberry 2009 Short List
• Still More Booklists over at Semicolon provides links to a variety of timely summer booklists that provide reading suggestions for fiction, nonfiction, writers of faith, etc.

Miscellany

• 101 Photoshop Tips in 5 Minutes by Deke McClelland (thanks to Digital Inspiration for the link); if not perhaps useful in the sense that much of it is likely to be retained, it’s entertaining nonetheless
• Library Thing: Member Home Pages: Tim Spalding writes, “The basic idea was to give members a ‘center’ from which to visit the rest of the site.” Library Thing just keeps getting better and better!
• Tech’s 15 Turning Points by Neil McAllister at InfoWorld (not technically from this week either, but it was in American Libraries Direct this week)

And to all those who are fortunate to be at ALA this week, have a blast!

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The Collaborative Summer Library Program (CSLP) chose Catch the Reading Bug (kids) and Metamorphosis@Your Library (teens) as the 2008 theme, and it’s now in full-swing (it almost being July after all). A couple of recent posts I particularly enjoyed relating to the CSLP are By the Cover: June Bugs at Proper Noun (which also links to a longer insects booklist at Mindy’s Book Lists wiki) and Speaking of Crafts and Bugs at Library Voice (includes multiple images of some really fun looking bug crafts and displays).

A few sites offering related resources include:

• A to Z Kids Stuff: Bugs–songs, crafts, snack ideas mainly for bees, ladybugs, and caterpillars/butterflies
• Librarian’s Internet Index–Insects and Arachnids links
• LibraryPalooza–this is the site that I was led to the link to download the 2008 theme song that you hear in the videos by Billy Gorilly
• NetState.com’s Official State Insects list
• Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s 2008 SLP Training Workshop–includes display ideas , myriad downloadable breakout session handouts, and more

So you can see that there’s a plethora of buggy fun and/or information out there, but I thought I’d add a couple of 30 second promotional videos in case anyone needs any more ideas. I created them using Animoto just like my previous Mysteries at Your library video.

Animoto’s simple and it’s fun, although the Animoto shorts don’t allow for quite as many pictures as I’d like. But for the cost of free, it’s a great resource to spark creativity and create content for a variety of purposes.

Enjoy and feel free to remix, embed, or create your own (Video Production: Animoto; Songs: Billy Gorilly). Also feel free to leave comments if you have any feedback and/or resources to share relating to enticing people of all ages towards libraries and summer reading. Without further ado, here are the video shorts for kids and teens respectively (you’ll notice that I chose the instrumental version for the teens video : ))…

Catching the Reading Bug

Metamorphosis @ Your Library

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Here we go again with Library & Literary Miscellany links from this week…

Library

• The Actionable Blog by David Lee King speaks to the idea of intentionally creating content enabling/requiring action (his example of an actionable blog that requires action is his library’s posts titled “What’s in Your Top 5?” where the library begins the conversation and then patrons add their own ideas)
• Information Overload: the Problem (Part 1) and Information Overload: What Can We Do (Part 2) by Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb
• More libraries using delicious by mélange: Angela has added to her libraries using del.icio.us list; the list links to numerous library-created Del.icio.us accounts, thus, providing examples of ways Del.icio.us has been used (and perhaps stimulating ideas for how it can be used in the future) in a library setting to enhance library services and guides
• On the Information Experience: An ALA TechSource Conversation with John Blyberg by Michael Stephens: discusses Blyberg’s Library 2.0 Debased article from months back and delves further into these ideas (particularly interesting is the notion of hiring 51% employees–49 % skills, 51% intrinsic desire to serve and to create fulfilling customer experiences)

Literary

• 2008 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards for Excellence in Children’s Literature: announced June 18, 2008 for the categories of Fiction and Poetry (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, illustrated by Ellen Forney), Picture Book (At Night by Jonathan Bean), Nonfiction (The Wall by Peter Sís), with a Special Citation (The Arrival by Shaun Tan); click the link to view the honor books as well
• 2009 Newbery and Caldecott Predictions - Halfway Mark by Fuse News where Elizabeth Bird moves beyond 2008 awards to offer her ideas regarding the best Newbery & Caldecott eligible titles of the year so far (from all that I’ve heard The Underneath by Kathi Appelt must have quite a shot at the Newbery. I’m quite looking forward to reading it)
• 12th Bookworms Carnival: posted over at Things Mean a Lot this is a wonderful summation of a bunch of posts about the month’s theme–fairy tales (the next theme is relationships for those who are interested in submitting posts to be included submit posts via her contact page by July 11 to Jenn at Mixed Metaphor)
• Great Early Elementary Reads: The Association for Library to Children (ALSC) bibliography Great Early Elementary Reads, features recommended book titles for children who are just learning to read and beginning to read on their own (featured in American Libraries Direct this week)
• What’s the Deal with all these mice? by Library Voice with a follow-up over at Lisa Chellman’s blog with a post entitled Mice Are Nice: these are library and literary really since they pertain to patron interaction and children’s literature; you may find yourself able to relate to the first post and you may also find some nice mice reading recommendations in the latter post
• YA is Awesome: post over at YA Fabulous! with links to a great many recent  reviews of YA books from across the kidlit blogosphere

Miscellany

• 4+ Ways to Quickly Create Excellent Presentations Online by Corvida over at ReadWriteWeb; the post discusses Zoho Show, Google Docs, 280 Slides, and SlideRocket (with brief mention of reZentit, Empressr, and Preezo).
• Boston Globe: How to Nap (thanks to Lifehacker for the link)
• Totlol: provides access to the kid-friendly YouTube content while omitting the rest (thanks to Lifehacker for the link)
• College@home: 57 Useful Google Tools You’ve Never Heard Of and 100 Useful Niche Search Engines You’ve Never Heard Of
• Thing 62: PDF Form-Topia: PDFEscape.com at Learning 2.1: Explore…Discover…Play–discusses PDFEscape as a useful tool for filling out locked PDFs (e.g., for a job applicaton)
• Zoomii.com - The “Real” Online Bookstore: Zoomii presents Amazon books on shelves as if viewing books in a real bookstore. The mouse zooms in/out and left/right to peruse different shelves.

Does anyone have any thoughts on any of the above or anything else you’d like to share that you found to be useful/interesting/worth passing on this week?

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Splat the Cat by Rob Scotton (July 01, 2008)

“If I hide from the day, maybe it’ll go away, he thought.”

Splat the Cat has an extreme case of first-day-of-Cat-School nerves. He lays wide awake with his tail wiggling “wildly with worry”. After a sleepless night, he tries to hide from the new day, but his mom rousts him with her “Time to get up.”

Splat tries every trick/excuse/rationale in the book to get his mom to let him stay home, but his mom has an answer for everything. A sample:

“I’m having a bad hair day Mom. Maybe I should go to school tomorrow instead?” said Splat.

His mom combed his hair. “Purr-fect!” she said.

Splat begins to see that opting out is not an option, so he determines to make the best of the whole Cat School thing and to pack reinforcements. Reinforcements, in this case, means that he packs his pet mouse (yes, that’s right, Splat the Cat’s pet mouse) Seymour into his bright yellow lunch box, and off they go.

There are a few more hitches and glitches on their way to school (for example, the gate won’t let go of his fingers and the lamppost gets in his way, don’t you hate it when that happens?). But eventually Splat, his mom, and the smuggled Seymour arrive at school. Mom leaves with a, “You’ll be fine,” but popeyed Splat’s eyes tell us he’s not yet convinced that his classmates won’t eat him alive.

Interestingly, Splat’s the only unclothed cat in the story, perhaps referencing the classic nightmare of standing in front of the class naked with everyone laughing at you. Splat’s fears, however, prove baseless as the class welcomes him warmly. Splat quickly begins absorbing the fundamental competencies of being a cat: Cats are “amazing…cunning, clever, and quick…” and “cats climb trees, drink milk, and chase mice…”

All is going smoothly, too smoothly, until lunchtime. Bedlam erupts when Splat opens his lunchbox and Seymour bursts out. Having recently digested their cat characteristics lesson, the other cats begin to do what cunning, clever, and quick cats do–they give chase.

Splat is momentarily nonplussed, but, fortunately, Mrs. Wimpydimple and Seymour both apply their own wits to get things turned around. By the time Splat’s mom arrives to pick him up at day’s end, he’s flying high again and, the next morning, he finds his tail wiggling wildly again…with excitement.

Splat the Cat joins the ranks of useful books for helping to alleviate the first day of school jitters. The story’s not word heavy, so it makes a fun read aloud that will fit well into back to school storytimes. Through speaking to the first day of school nerves, the story unobtrusively and wittily touches on fundamental fears of childhood and life in general such as fears of the unknown, of not fitting in, and of change. New lessons are learned as age-old modus operandi are altered. The class concludes, “Cats don’t chase mice…”

As for the illustrations, the cumulative effect of the detail work–from the mouse slippers, fish table, and bookshelf full of books such as C is for Cat in Splat’s bedroom to the fish wallpaper in the other rooms in his house to the menu in the window of the Cat Cafe (fish fingers and cream anyone?) to Mrs. Wimpydimple’s chalkboard drawings–is a fancy feast for the eyes.

Colors are capably employed as well, what with Splat’s black fur standing out (and sticking out) amongst the greyness of the other cats. With so much grey on the pages, Splat’s bright yellow lunch box and equally eye catching red school bag also draw the eye to him. But beyond just his black color, it is Splat with his big eyes and expressive, wiggly, constantly-kinked tail who page-after-page draws readers into his emotional highs and lows and adds the most merriment to the tale.

Splat the Cat springs from the mind of Rob Scotton (who is also the creator of another insomniac and equally demonstrative character, Russell the Sheep). To enjoy this tale, you need to be able to buy into the Splat/Seymour strange friendship. For those who do, Splat the Cat may help to create some future ailurophiles, or at the very least, some Splat the Cat lovers as Splat is a most winsome cat. I already found two new fans as I tested this story out on my niece and nephew; re-readings were immediately requested and procured. Splat was a hat…I mean, Split was a hit…that is, Splat was a hit (consider the phonics fun to be had ).

Visit Rob Scotton’s website to find out more about his works (select pages from Splat the Cat are available for viewing). HarperCollins Children’s also has a 13 page PDF available for Splat the Cat that comes complete with activities and downloadables.

Note: Advance review copy provided by Harper Collins Children’s Books.

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