Bookathon - Q

 Q is for Quiet time

Of which there is sometimes precious little in a library when there's children around! I think some people have this idea that libraries are hushed places of complete silence where you could hear a pin drop, not that people carry pins these days. Most modern libraries have carpet in them so the sounds are going to be more muffled compared to the days of yore when people wrote with pen and ink and it was the school of hard knocks, and teachers went round with rulers slapping students knuckles when they made a noise. 

I don't think that exists anymore like the number of books under Q in the library you could probably count on one hand. 

The Bear Can't Babysit by Ruth Quayle is one. It's about a bear that has to babysit seven rabbits. Now in what universe would a bear be babysitting rabbits is my first question. The second is try my job babysitting 30 - 70 rabbits. That's what it was like in the library at lunchtime. 

I would be training library monitors, fielding requests for books, reading with those who wanted their book read out loud, giving out pieces of paper to make books, giving out squishmallows, breaking up fights and calming emotional meltdowns, dispensing lego, shelving, giving out chess sets, giving out crayons and colouring in sheets, doing photocopying, printing out things,  and in general, supervising boys playing 'bookshop' and girls making houses out of chairs. Children would sprawl on the floor, reading and leave the shelves in a mess, while at the same time seniors would attempt to study with earplugs stuck in their ears. The boys would be in their little groups and the girls in another. When they did jigsaw puzzles it quickly turned into a competition, and there was not unknown to be a game of 'The floor is lava' going on and children swinging on the banisters. 

I quickly gave up all hope of keeping any order. And besides everyone looked the same as they were all wearing school uniforms, and so every hat and blazer that got left behind I would just hang up at the wardrobe rack in the lobby after I announced 'I'm sorry library time is over' to collective groans. 

I did sort of feel like I was a Quasi Queen of the library if not the school because the library was open for anyone to use. I was ruling benignly and the readers were my subjects. When I walked down the corridors of the school everyone recognised me and I would wave regally.  (I would never call out that would have been un-regal) At assembly the library monitors would receive their library badges as 'Gold Librarians' and it was like an investiture. Actually the year 6's liked the pomp and ceremony, but anyone year 7 and up just wanted me to give their badges and gift books privately without embarrassment. 

Children were rather curious about the Queen and asked me to read them books about her. Then they had to change and sing God Save the King this year. It took some adjusting. Most of my children were 'little emperors' or 'little empresses' at home and already living like royalty with their parents serving them. Didn't Jesus say suffer the little children, let them come to me and do not prevent them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. If the Kingdom of Heaven is  a library, who was I to stop them? 

One can read the Queen's speeches in this book The Platinum Queen which chronicles 75 years of them. I bought that one because it would have been the only time she would have something to say to her subjects. She always wished them well and a Merry Christmas despite all their trials and tribulations and petty wars. Another one for the library shelf filed under Q. 

Please support blind and low vision children this mid-winter Christmas by donating to the Great Kiwi Bookathon. 

Bookathon - P

P is for Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut. Or Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants. Since Margaret Atwood's last name doesn't begin with P, Dav Pilkey wins out this time today.

Dav Pilkey is a dyslexic writer so you have to forgive him for mixing up all genres and doodling in his books. There's 14 Captain Underpants books and they have been a big favourite amongst boys of a certain age, until they were eclipsed by the wild success of the spin off series Dog Man, about a half man/half dog 'superhero'  who is beloved by both boys and girls from 5 and up, as well as cats, dogs, and chickens. They enjoy being read to as well. I have actually read Mothering Heights to my chicken, Martha. She really liked it.

I'm sure Marvel and DC Comics are phoning their copyright lawyers now for having their cherished comics made fun of in this manner. I have to say that I never read Captain America, or Wonder Woman and the only person I could relate to wearing their underpants on the outside was Madonna. Though Superman had a big S on his chest, I'm sure he was imaginary. But if I were to cosplay anyone surely it would be Catwoman, because she was really a Selina (Kyle) in disguise. Dog Man had to spin off again and that's how we got to Cat Kid Comic Club, where the tadpoles make their own comic books to rival Hello Kitty.

I am serious about these books. You won't find a kid in primary school who does not want to pick up a Dog Man book and laugh themselves silly, but the thing is they are READING even if the words are all spelled wrong and back to front and the policeman is half dog and half human. It's crazy and has all these references that only adults will get, because I'm sure the young Dog Man readers will not have read or picked up all the references to the classics Dav Pilkey riffs off in his titles - Mothering Heights, Fetch 22, To whom the Ball Rolls, Lord of the Fleas*, 20,000 Fleas under the sea, and Grime and Punishment. 

My Scholastic sales rep says without a doubt this series is the biggest seller of all. And for most of the appeal is that these books are published in hardback, are in full colour, and contain flip-o-ramas. What's that? You'll have to borrow them to find out and no you cannot have the same experience with an e-book. 

*I don't recommend the actual Lord of the Flies. Please don't read that book it gives me nightmares and shouldn't be assigned high school reading. Especially for high schoolers who actually came from the remote Pacific Islands that those horrible British boys were supposedly stuck on playing out like a bad episode of Survivor and the worst of colonialism. How about the reverse -  a series where islanders try to survive in the city? 

Funnily enough Dav Pilkey's other series, Ricky Ricotta about a futuristic sci-fi mouse and his side kick robot does not attract readers at all and is left languishing on the shelf, and I think its because Geronimo Stilton has the mouse's share of fabumouse books in his long running series that makes use of every mouse pun possible in all languages (the original stories are translated from Italian). 

Otherwise P is a very popular letter. 

I have written about Sylvia Plath in another blog post. And this whole business of Pride (and Prejudice) is surely rather strange. If I were to get people really thinking about what the word Pride means, as well as Prejudice and how it goes before a fall...I would give them a copy of Marcus Pfister's book The Rainbow Fish. 

Please humble yourselves and support the Great Kiwi Bookathon this month, blind and low vision children may not be able to see, but they CAN read with our generous support. 

Bookathon - O

 Oh no, I am halfway there. Already. I wonder if, this Bookathon is keeping me out of trouble or landing me more in it. I have an inkling that some people don't like others who read too much. We could actually be up to something while turning those pages. Our brains are firing. This makes world takeover by the Zombie apocalypse near impossible, because our brains are already in use. They'll only pick on the mindless people who watch tv instead. 

Today's letter is O and I have to pick George Orwell.

I can say I read the same story my mum read in school because she had a copy of Animal Farm too, and kept it. Later on in Form 5 I remember it being an assigned text for School Certificate. However most of our class didn't know it was about the Communist regime because none of us had ever lived in a place that had one. Most thought it was a tale about a farm, not unlike Charlotte's Web. We all cried when *spoiler* Boxer got sent to the knackers. 

 There WAS a regime at school however, it was quite clear that the grown ups were in power and the students were not.  We didn't have slogans like 'Four legs bad, two legs good' though. We just had 'the Massey Way' which I recall was 'Keep your hands, legs, feet and objects to yourself' . In other words, no touching, sharing or holding hands, or kicking each other. It didn't say anything about kissing. However this only lasted about five years because after that your time was up and you were free to leave and kiss whoever you liked. 

I also read 1984 about this time too, when I was 14 and it was 1994.  It was not an assigned text, but I was curious to read it. This was before the tv show Big Brother and smartphones and webcams and blogging and internet. The world it described was rather upside down, but I was also getting used to political correctness. Then the Sky Tower went up around 1996 so, we now had our very own surveillance for Auckland. Everything in the novel was becoming true. Scary! Maybe our tvs would start watching us instead of the other way round. Well now they do, it's called Zoom. 

George Orwell wasn't bothered because back in 1948 when he wrote it the world was already a scary place, and he'd been through several wars. It just seemed the twentieth century was the most bloody yet, and he didn't think it would get any better. He was the original investigative gonzo journalist though, and I do recommend reading his other books, The Road to Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia, and my favourite Down and out in Paris and London, in which he chronicled his life working as a dishwasher in those dirty rat infested restaurants. Anthony Bourdain would later do a similar thing with his memoir Kitchen Confidential, but then he was an actual executive chef working in NYC, whereas George Orwell was just slumming it and was always going to be a writer.

Back then, the working class people (in his words, 'the proles') just did not write books. Firstly they didn't have the time, and secondly, they didn't have the education to read and write, and thirdly who would publish them  anyway.  Orwell wrote a famous essay called 'Why I write' in which he wrote his reasons, most often political, and then one about the craft of writing in which he wrote 'Good prose should be like a window pane'. I've never forgotten it. If ever the 20th century needed an author, George Orwell was going to be the one who wrote Truth to Power,  as back then power was like a big jackboot crushing and silencing the little people. 

The ironic thing was later on George Orwell repented of his polemic and claimed he wanted a quiet life tending roses in his garden. However I am glad he wrote all these books for us to read  instead of Gardening with Old Roses. 

Join me in The Great Kiwi Bookathon, and I would recommend reading Animal Farm out loud, it's a great story. 

Bookathon - N

 N is for Nobel Prize, Newberry Award, Notable Books

Surprisingly there are very few N authors I can name that stand out for me. So if you are thinking of a possible pseudonym, consider starting it with N. 

One book that the children love that even blind and low vision children will appreciate is The Book with no Pictures by B J Novak. 

Don't judge a book by it's cover, or it's pictures, judge this book by the silly monkey voice you have to put on when you read it out loud. As far as I know, he hasn't written a book called The Book with no Words, though there ARE wordless books around. For those ones you have to make up the story as you go (which I've heard some teachers actually do, because they can't read). 

My book with no Pictures is one that you write in yourself. I am all for writing your own books, if you can't get to a bookshop or library and you've run out of Reader's Digest condensed fiction. No, we never won any of the sweepstakes they used to send us either. 

Otherwise you mostly have a choice between Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov or the Borrowers by Mary Norton. I don't really recommend Reading Lolita in Tehran. You can if you want, but Tehran is a long way from New Zealand. Lolita is one of those books that have you squirming in horror that there are men out there who 'love' underage girls and underage girls that fall for them. Readers seem to love true crime and murder mysteries but when it comes to child abuse (Lolita is 12 in the novel) nobody seems to bat an eye. However there are worse books you could read that haven't been celebrated as literary masterpieces.

The Borrowers is about a family of tiny people who inhabit the houses of big people, like mice except they are people. They sleep in matchboxes and feed off crumbs the big people drop, and nobody really knows they are there, for if they are found out they may be banished and lose their squatter's rights. I've always liked books like these about Little People, Big Dreams, or Stuart Little, the Baby-sitter's Little Sister and even Little Women. I think little people are underestimated and often ignored by big people, but when the little people win out, everyone cheers. 

I am also a borrower, so if you are one too, I recommend borrowing these books. You might have to ask a Big person if the book is out of reach, though when I work in libraries I always make sure the little people can reach the little books on the bottom shelves, because little people have their lives to live too and shouldn't have to live at the mercy and whims of the Big People. 

Support little people by donating to the Great Kiwi Bookathon

Bookathon - M

 Margaret Mahy. Katherine Mansfield. Margaret Mitchell.

It doesn't matter so much what *I* like to read. When you are reading aloud to an audience, the most important thing is to read what they like. Or in that mythical bedtime story session that I never really had as a child. If that ever happened, I don't remember it. I only ever remember one time I was sick and couldn't sleep, I asked the nurse if she'd read me The Secret Garden. 

This was because my parents never read to me as a child. We had TV to entertain us at the touch of a button.  We had radio. What was the point of books?

However I still remember those old school cassettes that had stories on them and made a bell sound when it was time to turn the page. 

Books are meant to be shared, especially picture books. I've never got why reading has turned out to be such a solitary activity, but then introverts like me take to it like a duck to water. 

I digress. Who's the M author today? Margaret Mahy is well loved and still up there with the best. She was a  librarian who wrote at night when her children were asleep. She's the original word witch, and anytime you read a Mahy book something out of the ordinary will happen, whether it's A Lion in the Meadow or a Great White Man Eating Shark. My favourite was Nonstop Nonsense. She could make a story out of anything, pulling words out of a dictionary like a magician pulls a bunny out of a hat.

Another Margaret - Margaret Mitchell only wrote one novel, the 1036 page Gone with the Wind. I must mention it because I've read it several times and the ending always gets me. Tomorrow is another day. When you've lived through a civil war, you have to be glad you survived. For me, the book is a talisman for facing the worst case scenario. What would Scarlett O'Hara do? This book was turned into the classic 1939 MGM movie. It's only about 4 hours long, but it's epic. Reading it may take more of your time, but it's totally worth it. 

Katherine Mansfield is one of our own who left these shores for her OE and never returned. However The Garden Party and The Aloe have become our very own short stories that Kiwis have taken to heart. 

But what of picture books? Well two M authors today have honorable mention. Dawn McMillan's I need a new Bum! has actually been controversial (in the US, a teacher was fired for reading it in class) but it's too hilarious to be kept hidden in the teacher's resource cupboard. Every child loves it even the poker faced ones who claim it's too juvenile. But you know what? You are never too old for fairy tales or rhyming stories about bums. 

Then there's Kyle Mewburn's Kiss! Kiss! Yuck! Yuck! You have to read this one out loud. Whaea Selina says so. Read them in bed, read them on the stairs, read these books on chairs. Read them on the loo, read them in a hammock, read them on the train to Britomart, and read them walking up Lincoln Road without crashing into anyone. 

Don't forget to support our blind and low vision children in the Great Kiwi Bookathon this month.

Bookathon - L

 L is for Library, Love Letters and Literature

I found L a particularly hard one to choose just one author. I went to the Hard to Find (but worth the Effort) bookshop today that had floor to ceiling books in numerous rooms. I would have been in a librarian's heaven if only I had the budget but that didn't stop me from my favourite activity, browsing the shelves. 

It seemed lots of people like to give the Hard to Find Bookshop their well-read copies of Doris Lessing novels because they occupied an entire shelf of Ls. Unfortunately I have never read any of her books. 

I have however read these ..Les Liasions Dangereuses by Pierre Charderlos Laclos, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka, and The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin.

I would recommend all three, the first because it's terribly decadent novel where the characters all get what they deserve in the end, the second for being hilariously funny as fish out water situations are, (and nothing to do with the present day war)  and the third because there is nothing more terrible than being a vapid desperate housewife. I recall they all turned out to be robots in the end.  Ira Levin also wrote the chilling horror Rosemary's Baby. 

You don't have to read just the L books in the fiction section though. The L books that the children loved the most in the library picture book section are the ones written by Andy Lee. I have had whole classes in uproar when I read Do Not open this Book, Do Not open this book (Again!) and Seriously, Do not open this book (or else). 

Warning they contain, amongst other things, nudity, kissing and making fun of old people. All things children love. 

I am a rebellious librarian though, I open these books and put terrible ideas into children's heads. I don't listen to what the teachers tell me to read, I look at the pictures and make up stories sometimes when the words don't make sense.  I read books that are too hard for me. I read banned books. I read the Bible. I read other people's love letters, and I read their secret diaries too. I read out loud when I should be quiet, and I read in places where you are not meant to read, like on the loo. At University, I didn't really *study* anything, It was just an excuse to read all the books I wanted to read in the library. I also read books when I was supposed to be working but ssh don't tell anyone. 

Please support my terrible reading habit by donating to the Great Kiwi Bookathon, now I've been banned from the library

Bookathon - K

 Stephen King. Jeff Kinney. Sophie Kinsella. Marie Kondo.

I can't recommend Stephen King unfortunately, the one time I tried to read  The Stand, and I was getting through it, I really was, the paperback fell apart I got near the end and found that the last chapters were missing, possibly because it was fished out of the recycle. I had to bury the book again and never went back to Stephen King. He crops up every now and then when young boys borrow horror books in hopes of scaring the librarian, and claim they have read Stephen King when really they have only read the title but have seen the movie (or played the video game, as in the case of Five nights at Freddys). 

Another video game addict is the anti hero of Jeff Kinney's books Diary of a Wimpy Kid, about middle schooler Greg Heffley now onto his 16th volume. His game of choice is Twisted Wizard and throughout the series he's always trying to corrupt his best friend Rowley Jefferson into playing it when he's not allowed. Rowley got his own spin off books and a Spooky Stories one that is was one of my favourites which to me was better than Stephen King. Plus these books have pictures. 

But I think Shopaholic Series by Sophie Kinsella takes the cake as the most addictive series of chick lit ever written because it plays on the ditzy femme stereotype of a woman with a lot of money/credit and no sense. Rebecca Bloomwood is annoyingly a marketer's dream because she's constantly scheming of being the girl with the George and Denny scarf and her financial mishaps land her in a lot of hot water. Sometimes it's just fun to read about complete idiots, it makes you feel so much better about yourself. 

Which brings me to Marie Kondo. Where she had been all my life, I don't know, but I was a self-confessed Messy Person until I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Also available in manga. Marie Kondo is a Japanese minimalist apartment dweller who has perfected the art of folding her socks. No truly she is a real person this is not a novel or work of fiction - it's self help! I did not know that the best thing to do was chuck everything away, and start over, keeping only the things that 'spark joy'. 

Of course I have applied Marie Kondo's philosophy and tidying up system to the library with mixed results. Maybe she will get into feng shui next, I don't know. Because once I started tidying up the library, the Principal didn't like it and chucked me out when it started sparking too much joy in the children. So I left it for her to tidy up so she too can experience the joy of putting over 9000 books in alphabetical and dewey decimal order. 

Thanks for reading and don't forget to donate to the Great Kiwi Bookathon this month 😍