Etsy does librarian chic

Etsy’s latest theme, “Librarian Chic,” features some not-so-sensible and stylishly hued pumps, vintage shirtdresses, refinished card catalog cabinetry, and the like.

There’s also this photo by Marico Fayre entitled “Summer Reading.”

It’s reprinted here with Marico’s permission.

Chocolatey goodness and a fond farewell

Dale Goldberg, SLJ‘s assistant editor in our book review department and managing editor of Extra Helping, our e-newsletter, is serving her last week on the SLJ staff. We will miss her terribly.

But Dale’s got other cool stuff going on. Her blog, for instance, a “recipe journal,” as she describes it, called The Daley Dish. “I’m looking forward to being able to spend more time on it, and I hope to use it to help me segway into a career in food writing and recipe testing,” she says. “For the short term, though, I just really enjoy doing it.”

With entries like “Fun with Malted Milk Balls,” “Beet Risotto,” “Maple-Chipotle Cashew Chicken,” and “Rich Chocolate Coconut Bars,” (pictured), I see a brilliant career. (and extra hours on the treadmill for me, damn you, Dale).

Good luck! —Kathy Ishizuka

 

Have Pigeon, Will Travel

Our lead story in this month’s technology section featured a project by John Schumacher. The librarian at Brook Forest Elementary School in Oak Brook, IL, takes a summer road trip each year. His traveling companion? A literary character that his students select for the journey.

In summers past, author-illustrator Mo Willems’s characters, Knuffle Bunny and Pigeon, became Schumacher’s travel buddies, while this year, children chose author Melanie Watt’s Scaredy Squirrel (above with a giant stamp this summer) to join the librarian on a trip East.

Above: Pigeon viewing petroglyphs out West in 2009.

We could only fit one image into the print issue. John’s kindly let us share a few more here.

Above: Knuffle Bunny does the teacups at Disney World, 2008.

Thanks, John. You sure visit cool places. Take us next time! 

 

SLJ Seeks Assistant Editor, Book Review/Managing Editor, Extra Helping

 Here’s the job posting:

School Library Journal (SLJ), the nation’s leading publication for librarians who work with children and teens and the largest reviewer of content for young people is seeking an Assistant Editor for its book review department. This individual will also serve as the Managing Editor for Extra Helping, SLJ’s twice-weekly, award-winning, digital newsletter.

As Assistant Editor for the book review, this individual will be responsible for the accuracy of the bibliographic data for the 4,000+ reviews that SLJ publishes annually. In addition, this editor copyedits all reviews and is responsible for managing changes in the reviews through to publication.

As Managing Editor of Extra Helping, this editor organizes, edits, and proofreads all content for the newsletter—which has been produced by other editors and contributors—integrates art, enters the content in our content management system, and works with production staff to deploy the newsletter.

Other responsibilities including providing bibliographic data for features and stories; editing the magazine’s Letters to the Editor; proofreading news, columns, and features as needed; and managing several components of our website.

The successful candidate should be comfortable meeting deadlines, managing multiple projects, and working under pressure. Previous copy editing experience, work with digital publishing, and experience in children’s publishing or library services to children and teens are all pluses.

Please send resume and cover letter to Brian Kenney, Editorial Director, School Library Journal, bkenney@mediasourceinc.com. 

Please submit resumes no later than 07/30/2010.

Still Kikin’

There are step stools and then there’s the Kik-Step. The classic fixture of libraries and offices now comes in a special edition honoring Kik-Step’s 50th anniversary. The “Library Edition” features classic lines from literature molded into the non-skid tread. The basic design by Cramer, however, remains the same: spring-mounted casters that roll with the kick of a foot and lock into place when weight is applied. The Kik-Step now comes in eight colors, from celery and copper to orange zest. $69.

SIGMS Forum video posted #ISTE10

Video of the SIGMS Forum (that’s the media specialist special interest group of ISTE) has been posted. The Learning Tools Smackdown with Joyce Valenza, Gwyneth Jones, et al, starts about 11 minutes in.

 

 

SLJ Reviews: Digital Resources: Five Top Resources for Fall

By Shonda Brisco

Sure it’s summer, but fall will come all too soon, along with those requests for additional resources, new ideas for lesson plans, and questions about how your library meets the needs of both students and faculty. With budget cuts and increased enrollments, it’s time to make your dollars work smarter. Over the year, we’ve shared some great digital resources to consider for your library, but now it’s time to showcase the must-haves for 2010. Following are my top five resources that school librarians should seriously consider adding to their library wish list.

AWE Early Literacy Station
Reviewed January 2010, pp. 64-66

The AWE Early Literacy Station is perhaps one of the more unique systems available for use by pre-K through second grade students primarily due to the wide variety of instructional games for younger users. In addition to the visual appeal of this child-friendly literacy station is the option to provide the same types of instructional content to bilingual students, making this product a valuable addition to schools with ELL programs.

The flexibility of the stand-alone computer system, which works independently from the Internet, assures teachers, librarians, and even parents that younger students will be working on the task at hand, rather than cruising the open Web. This, paired with the ease of assembly and user-friendly accessibility for students, teachers, and librarians, makes the AWE Early Literacy Station a top pick for educational programs and school libraries.

Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database
Reviewed October 2009, pp. 69-70

For those researching children’s literature reviews, Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database (CLCD) goes well beyond a quick, Amazon-like overview of books. Content within this database includes professional review sources such as Booklist, H.W. Wilson Catalogs, and School Library Journal. While CLCD is commonly found in university libraries and used by education majors studying children’s literature, the database is a good choice for K-12 programs. For large or small school districts serving teachers and librarians interested in locating quality children’s materials, CLCD can be a valuable asset.

Librarians and teachers can quickly locate book reviews, including the review source, publication date, and any other information that might inform the selection process-or perhaps, a case of challenged materials. Reading and interest levels, special awards, and honors are also included for each book, allowing users to easily create their own lists of quality content that can be saved or compiled as an annotated list for selection or review.
Recent updates include the ability to link the library’s holdings to the database content, enabling users to identify which records are currently available within the school’s library.

Library of Congress Teachers Page
Reviewed September 2009, pp. 73-74

For students of history, the Library of Congress (LOC) Teachers Page is a great resource for investigating and exploring the nation’s treasures in the comfort of their classroom or library. New content includes teacher-created lesson plans, thematic units, primary sources, and classroom activities.

Rather than having users wade through tons of resources, the updated LOC Teachers Page offers content that’s immediately relevant and ready to use in the classroom or library. Students in grades 3-12 can easily use the site to explore historical documents, photographs, and even music (available for listening online). Teaching materials, handouts, and worksheets are available in either PDF format or Word, providing instructors with the ideal solution for integrating primary source content into their lesson plans or for creating an entirely new project for the fall.

I had an interesting personal experience with this program. When I attended the teachers’ workshop on using the LOC Teachers Page with students, we were introduced to some of the archived music from the 1920’s (all available for downloading). While we listened to the scratchy sounds of the LP recording, we followed along with the lyrics and tried to determine what the political sense of the nation might have been just after World War I. An image of the sheet music was also linked to the MP3 on the LOC website and we discussed the publisher, the production company, and the songwriter-all of which, presumably, had been long forgotten.

Then about a month later, I was browsing a local antique store where I discovered an original copy of the very same sheet music that we had discussed during the Teachers Page workshop. Immediately, I recalled every point of discussion and observation made during the workshop; it all drove home the value of this material in today’s classroom. As I purchased the sheet music (cost: $2), I was reminded of the importance of primary sources-even if they’re virtual ones.

National Science Digital Library
Reviewed February 2010, pp. 65-66

There are times when you know you’ve discovered something so truly awesome, it’s difficult to actually describe the experience. That’s exactly what you (and your science teachers) will feel when you access the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) online. This absolutely free (yes, free) science resource is a collection of websites, instructional resources, tools, and classroom-related content that directly supports STEM education, as well as professional collaborative partnerships.

Specific instructional content for grades K-12 is available for teachers to easily access and use in the classroom. Audio content, including podcasts by scientists in the field, as well as video clips can be accessed in the classroom or you can provide links for students to access NSDL content through the teacher’s website. With thousands of resources available within this digital library, science and math instructors can easily supplement any lesson plan using NSDL.

This project, funded by the National Science Foundation, provides a trove of instructional material aligned to national standards in math and science. As a resource that can only improve as additional content is added, this database providing instructors, students, and librarians with quality instructional materials deserves to be at the top of the wish list for the coming school year.

PebbleGo
For a free trial, visit this page.
Reviewed July 2009, pp. 57-58

Amidst all of the databases available for elementary students, the dearth of similar products for the preschool level remains an issue. Unfortunately, databases for our youngest students have been difficult to find, until now. With the release of Capstone’s PebbleGo database for reading and research, pre-K through second grade students can now investigate a variety of topics from animals to earth and space science, as well as practice online research using a database, just like their older siblings.

PebbleGo’s leveled text, along with its science-related content activities and entertaining videos make this database a great learning station for the classroom, as well as an introductory tool for teaching younger students how to do research (as well as cite their sources). Read-along text accompanying each article helps struggling readers as they work independently and encourages students to practice their reading skills as they research their favorite topics.

Shonda Brisco is assistant professor curriculum materials librarian, Mary L. Williams Curriculum Materials Library, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater.

The Last Word: Dictionary evangelist Erin McKean taps the best word resources online

Go look it up. That’s what students who have questions about words are often told. But where should they go? Depending on the question, some resources are better than others, and some aren’t very good at all, no matter what the question. Finding the most helpful word resource for students can be a challenge, especially now that search engines often return millions of results for almost every English word. Here are my picks for the most useful sites arranged by the kinds of questions they try to answer, and for the kinds of questions they may inspire students to ask.

How do I pronounce this word?

Mispronouncing a word can be terribly embarrassing. It’s no wonder that “how do I say this word?” is the third most common use of dictionaries after meaning and spelling.

Any major dictionary site, such as Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online, or my own site, Wordnik, will have both text pronunciations (using proprietary diacritical systems or the International Phonetic Alphabet) and, at least for some words, audio pronunciations. If students have trouble with the written pronunciations, sites should provide keys to explain the symbols. (Because these symbols can be so difficult, Wordnik uses a mouseover technique: roll over the symbols and an explanation pops up.)

Another site, Forvo, offers only pronunciations for words in dozens of languages, including English. Forvo (and Wordnik as well) allows students to record their own pronunciations, once they’ve figured them out, which can be highly motivating.

For a student who’s completely stumped by a pronunciation (especially of a very new or a very old word), there’s a neat search-engine hack: limit your search to books or blogs and use the search “[your word] pronounced.” Remind students to check more than just the top result.

What’s its history?

Etymology can be fascinating, but it’s not an exact science. Students are frequently disappointed to learn that a word’s history is unknown, or that a favorite “just because” story of a word’s origin is merely a good story and not an uncontested fact. If your local library has access to the online Oxford English Dictionary (OED), that’s always the best place to start to find the earliest known use of a word. (Remember that the earliest known use of a word is just that, the first one that has been found, and that since the OED is in the process of a revision that started at the letter M and is now only up to R, words before or after those letters may not have been revised to show newly discovered, earlier uses of a word.)

Google Book Search and Archive.org are two great places to find uses of a word using the search by date functions that might be earlier than those listed in the OED or other dictionaries. Students should be alert for OCR (optical character recognition) errors and possible misdating of sources, which can lead them to the wrong word in the right year or the right word in the wrong year.

Two books about word histories (both from Oxford University Press) might be good additions to a high school library. First there’s Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends (2004) by David Wilton (who also runs the excellent WordOrigins.org website), which debunks the most common untrue-but-entertaining etymologies. Word Origins and How We Know Them: Etymology for Everyone (2005) by Anatoly Liberman explains the process by which etymologies are researched and written, with considerable information on the history of the English language.

What if there’s a word history question that can’t be answered by dictionaries? Check out the American Dialect Society, which has a mailing list where members can help track down the earliest uses of words. If a student’s question is interesting enough, and the student has exhausted other resources, asking a question of the mailing list can be very productive. (However tempting, list members should not be considered to be a homework helpline.)

What does it mean?

“What does it mean?” seems like the most straightforward question a student could have about a word, but meaning is just one aspect of understanding a word and sometimes the least useful. Every teacher has seen students read dictionary definitions and still make complete nonsense when asked to use the word in a sentence.

In fact, “use it in a sentence,” the perennial refrain of teachers attempting to instill vocabulary, is something that should be asked of dictionaries, as well. Since traditional dictionaries, even those online, are based on print works, their entries are often highly compressed and lack any example sentences at all, or they don?t show enough example sentences to help students who need to be able to confidently use the words themselves.

One of the motivations for creating Wordnik was the desire to show as much real context around words as possible since we understand words better in context than we do in isolation, even with the best possible written definition. Wordnik shows as much context as possible for as many words as possible, so even if there’s no traditional dictionary definition, readers should be able to learn about the word naturally, from real examples. Wordnik even shows tweets, so that readers can see the most recent context for any word. (Note: Wordnik is intended to be used by adults, so no content is filtered, and it changes constantly; teachers and librarians should supervise use by younger students.)

I need another word for?

The thesaurus is quite possibly the most abused reference work in any library (or online). Students often run into trouble when they use near-synonyms without taking context into account. Many teachers recommend the subscription-based Visual Thesaurus site because the nonlinear layout puts a hurdle in the way of students who want to pick the longest or fanciest-looking synonym they can find in the shortest amount of time.

Wordnik also offers synonyms, antonyms, and other related words (in the “Related Words” section, which is undergoing a redesign). One interesting feature for students is the “Used in the Same Context” word list. This shows words that are not necessarily synonyms, but which show up in the same kinds of sentences. For instance, for the word “myriad” Wordnik shows “countless * various * multiple * diverse * lesser * numberless” as words that are used in the same contexts as “myriad,” giving a wider picture of the kinds of ways that word can be used.

Students searching for related words should also investigate the “lists” function of Wordnik—”Myriad” appears on 123 lists to date, including a list of words from Greek, a list of units of measurement, and many “beautiful word” and personal word lists.

Now that I know this word, how do I remember it?

Most students will be motivated only to finish their assignments and move on. For those with a more lasting interest, Wordnik allows logged-in users to mark words as “favorites” and to assemble lists (see above) of words for easy reference. (Disorganized students might appreciate being able to make lists of words for assignments right inside the dictionary).

Wordnik word lists are visible to all users, but can be open (anyone can add a word) or closed (only the creator can add a word). Many users keep one list of their words and then make topical lists as their interests develop.

Am I the first person to use this word?

Students love to make up words, and at Wordnik, we like to encourage them. Wordnik shows as much information as we’ve found for any term, even words that have only been used once! (These are often called nonce words.) Students who enjoy making up words can tweet them and see them show up on Wordnik immediately, without being signed in. (The information only becomes permanent if more data becomes available, though.) Signed-in users can leave comments explaining their word and add pronunciations, too.

Older high school students might also enjoy checking to see if their new word has been entered at The Urban Dictionary, although much of the content on that site is not school-appropriate.

Another site for new word information (also intended for adults, but safer than Urban Dictionary) is Paul McFedries’s Word Spy. Word Spy covers new words taken mostly from magazines and newspapers, and provides citations with references.

I?m interested in language: Where can I learn more?

Advanced middle school and high school students with a serious interest in language should check out the “On Language” column of the New York Times (previously written by the late William Safire, and now a biweekly column from The Visual Thesaurus’s Ben Zimmer), and “The Word” column in the Boston Globe, which I write every other week, sharing it with Jan Freeman. Language blogs—mainly intended for adults, but accessible to motivated students—include the landmark Language Log (whose contributors include Mark Liberman and Arnold Zwicky), Literal-Minded (whose author, Neal Whitman, occasionally also writes about language development and children), and Language Hat.

One thing to remember: no word site, however engaging or informative, will help students if language-related tasks are used as punishment. As a favor to students (and dictionary editors) everywhere, please don’t make them look up words, copy them, or create lists of words as a consequence of bad behavior.

 

Erin McKean is CEO and cofounder of Wordnik and the former editor in chief for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press.

Illustration by Phil Wrigglesworth.

Born to Be Wild: Meet Libba Bray. Rocker. Rebel. Printz Award winner. Our July cover.

By Betty Carter

One cold day last January Libba Bray decided to check out “Who Shot Rock & Roll,” a photographic exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. No surprise there. This is a woman who spent a good amount of her teenage years dancing and singing into her hairbrush, hoping to become the next Jimmy Page or Robert Plant. So it was fitting that as Joey Ramone stared down from a poster, Bray’s phone rang and she suddenly learned that her latest novel, Going Bovine (Delacorte, 2009), had won the Michael L. Printz Award as the year’s most distinguished title for teens. For a moment, at least, as the members of the award committee offered their congratulations, the universe’s stars seemed in perfect alignment.

Since the publication of A Great and Terrible Beauty in 2003, Bray has captured the imaginations and loyalties of a host of teen readers. This initial entry in a trilogy—which includes Rebel Angels (2005) and The Sweet Far Thing (2007, all Delacorte)—introduces Gemma Doyle, a young girl living in the repressive Victorian Era who discovers she can enter a spirit world that holds power and danger. Going Bovine departs from these historical Gothic novels and Bray’s chilling short stories, such as “Bad Things” and “Nowhere Is Safe.” Fueled by Don Quixote and led by the ethereal Dulcie, a modern counterpart to Cervantes’s Dulcinea (with pink wings, no less), Bovine’s hero, 16-year-old Cameron Smith, a victim of Creutzfeldt-Jakob (aka mad cow) disease, begins a journey of epic proportions. Cameron and his video-game-addicted dwarf friend Gonzo set out to connect certain random incidents (particularly those described in tabloids); find the parallel world of Dr. X, who is the only hope for curing this terminal disease; and, in the process, save the universe.

These days the 46-year-old author lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Barry, their 11-year-old son, and two cats, Squeek and Cocoa. Although Bray believes that Tex-Mex should be a required food group, on a more serious note, she vigorously defends the need for strong libraries in her speeches and on her blog. In turn, librarians vigorously defend the need for strong books—like Going Bovine.

Tell me about your teen years, growing up in Denton, TX.
I was a big goofball. And a smart-ass. And rebellious. I occupied that space that a lot of teenagers—and especially teenage girls—understand, which is a push-pull between wanting to be liked and being a pleaser and needing to form my own identity.

I was also a dichotomy. I was serious about school and understood that an education was important. I did like to learn even if I was sometimes an idiot about it. I really applied myself in the classes I liked, i.e., English, writing, drama, and art. And the classes I didn’t care so much about—like math—I didn’t put forth much effort.

How about science?
I took physics, which I loved, but didn’t have the math background for it. It was a sixth-period class and one day I skipped. I went to the bookstore, and who should come up but my physics teacher, Mrs. Gilbert, God bless her. Now I had ditched her class, and I’m clearly not throwing up or anything.

I said, “Hi, Mrs. Gilbert.”

“Hello, Libba.” And then she said: “What do you want to do with your life?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think something artsy, maybe be a filmmaker.”

She looked at me and said, “I’ll bet you’ll be great with that.” And then she put a hand on my shoulder: “Honey, let’s face it. You’ll never be a nuclear physicist. Why don’t you just drop my class before you fail it entirely?”

Little did she know that one day you’d write an award-winning book that addresses string theory and the physics of time and space.
Well, yes, but I felt dumb as a box of rocks trying to learn that stuff.

Did you get into a lot of trouble as a kid?
I got up to my share of no good. I had a wild friend who lived in Dallas. Jeanie. Her mother said we had the perfect kind of relationship: Jeanie got us into trouble and I got us out. And that was a push-pull as well.

I think for women there’s always that element of push-pull.
I agree. I think it’s because women are more tribal. There’s that sense of needing the community. We are always our mother’s daughters, wanting to please our mothers, not wanting to be like our mothers, and inevitably being like our mothers.

Were there any early hints as to your future career?
I was always interested in the theater and very much a dreamer. I lived at the community theater, building sets, acting in plays, and goofing off with my friends. I loved it. That was a great place to be.

Weren’t you a playwright for a while?
Yes, but not a very good one.

I heard that after you moved to New York in 1990, you worked for a book packager.
I did. I wrote three books for them. The first was Kari: Sweet Sixteen #3 [Harper, 2000]; the second was The Nine Hour Date [Bantam, 2001] written under the pseudonym Emma Henry. The last one was for a series that was never published.

What did you learn from that experience?
It was a great experience. I call it boot camp for writing because you learn that you can outline, break something down into scenes, and write to that outline. I’ve never done it since, but in theory you can do it and you can write a novel in two months. It was good discipline for somebody who didn’t have any idea about how to write a book, because it forced me to think about story and not get lost in the writing. My first editor was Ann Brashares. She was very generous and good about helping me keep focused. I also realized that writing is a job, that someone is paying you to write a book, and you better show up and put your fingers on the keys.

I’m really surprised you don’t do outlines. I just assumed that Going Bovine was the product of a flowchart from hell.
You would think. Unfortunately, that flowchart lived in my brain, which meant that there were times when the keys were in the fridge and the milk on the counter. I wish I had a better way of writing than through chaos theory, but I swear to you that’s the way my brain works. And that’s why, for me, revision is so important. I think of it as active re-imagining.

You’re very good at dropping hints for the reader, as though you know precisely where the story is going.
I don’t to begin with. So often I’ll find myself in that proverbial corner with a just-painted floor, going, “Oh, there’s the door. How am I going to get to that door?” But I trust my unconscious and the connections keep coming through. I rewrite and rewrite and rewrite and start pulling the pieces together. For me that part is fun, like jazz. My synapses are going wild and I’m thinking, “Oh, now I get it! I need to bring in Virgil here or make a reference to Don Quixote.” It’s like Jackson Pollack slapping paint on a canvas and waiting to see what’s going to emerge.

Is Cameron’s search for randomness a case of art imitating life?
Pretty much. Holly Black, who is a really disciplined and linear writer (I call her my guru of structure), was helping me with my new book and asked why Going Bovine was so much easier for me to write. I told her it was because that’s the way my brain works. The novel has a loose framework in that it is a road trip, so the narrative is inherent; you are always moving forward because it is a journey. But everything branches off from that journey in an episodic, circular fashion, always looping back to what happens in the beginning.

Was writing Going Bovine your way of returning to the 21st century after the “Gemma Doyle” trilogy?
I wrote Going Bovine between books two and three of the trilogy. I wrote it for Cynthia Leitch Smith, who had invited me to a wonderful writing festival in Austin, TX. But I was late submitting Rebel Angels. I was supposed to turn in a complete manuscript to Cynthia by May 1 [2005], and in February I thought, “Oh, Lord. What have I gotten myself into?” So I called her up and said, “Cyn, can I have like a partial?” And she said, “No, Ma’am. Beginning, middle, and end turned in by May 1. I’ll see you then.” As I jokingly say, “Miss Cyn does not play.” And, thank goodness, because I needed that push. I had this idea for Going Bovine in my head for three years, but I just didn’t know what it was going to be about. But keeping it in a drawer for three years gave it plenty of percolation time.

Now that you’ve finished writing the novel, would you say it’s about life or death?
Yes.

Are today’s adults, like the grown-ups in your story, trying to build a Church of Everlasting Satisfaction and Snack ‘N’ Bowl for their kids, where there are no losers, only winners, and everyone is gratified all the time?
I’ve thought about this a lot in terms of being a parent. You want to protect your children, yet you want to be realistic, and sometimes that’s a struggle. I’m often concerned about being too critical. My mother is an English teacher, so that red pen is never far from her hand. In her generation, you showed love by criticizing your children and constantly letting them know how they could be better. So I didn’t want to be that way, but understood it also has a purpose.

How else have your parents influenced you?
As the daughter of a minister and an English teacher, of course I see the world in terms of symbolism. There’s a New American way of thinking that I call the Unrealistic Happiness. When my son went to preschool, he could not bring any superhero action figures because they held unattainable powers. The thinking was that such toys would somehow make the children feel less than. This culture tries to negate aggression and unhappy feelings. Of course, we’re in the business of civilizing our children; that’s our job. But we have all these uncomfortable, icky feelings that we have to work through as human beings. To repress them is just not honest.

There’s an awful lot of pressure on kids these days and a lot of life they have to figure out themselves. Certainly one of the valuable experiences of my life was living through a horrible disfiguring car accident because no one could protect me from that. Parents can’t make everything right. That’s not the way life is. The true measure of a person is being able to get back up.

When there’s a moment of crisis, your mother’s not always there. You’re alone.

As one friend says, “The hand you hold the longest is your own.” There’s an existential condition, a loneliness, we fight against all our lives. On occasion, when we read a book or see a movie or piece of art or have an epiphany, we come face to face with that. And it’s hard, painful, and necessary. You don’t have to live there, but you have to tear down all the nuggets and get to the truth. We can’t shop it away or blog it away or create crazy elaborate constructions to try and avoid that truth. And it’s really hard, but it’s what it means to be human.

So tell me, what was it like walking the streets of New York City dressed like a Holstein cow to promote Going Bovine?
I was walking from Random House to Times Square talking to my husband, and I noticed people were staring. I’m thinking: “What’s their problem?” And then I remember I’m in a cow suit. The cow and I had become one.

I would think that cow suit would allow some anonymity.
As it happened, I had blogged about shooting the video, and this woman and her daughter, Katie, were in town and they recognized me. Apparently I’m born for the cow suit.

You have an enormous online presence. Do you think authors need to blog?
A Great and Terrible Beauty came out in December, at the end of 2003, and I started blogging then. Certainly publishers would like for you to blog and readers really enjoy the chance to communicate with you in that way, but if it doesn’t suit who you are then it’s probably not a good idea. I’m also a mother, so I’m anchored here. And because writing is an isolated experience, being on the Internet is a way to be able to communicate, and I really enjoy that.

Music has always been a part of your life, and now you’re the lead singer of a band called Tiger Beat. How did that come about?
The band is the brainchild of Dan Ehrenhaft [guitar] and Barney Miller [drums]. Dan wanted a YA version of the Rock Bottom Remainders. Dan recruited Natalie Standiford [bass] and then, after a night at a karaoke bar, he asked me. We get together in a crummy old rehearsal space in Manhattan. It’s fun being part of a group, but Tiger Beat is just plain joy.

You seem to be part of a very tight group of young adult authors.
A lot of the credit for that goes to David Levithan. A couple of years ago he started YA Author Drink Night. So once a month authors would get together and hang out at this one bar. It is great fun and a way to foster community because, as I said, it is a lonely thing to write. When you’re in the trenches and stuck on something, you can turn to another author and say, “Ya know…,” and she will say, “Oh, honey, I do know. I’m moving away all the sharp objects and here’s a chocolate thing.”

There is a closeness. I think some of that is because writing for teens has been marginalized for so long. We support each other and read and enjoy one another’s work.

How did you feel when you found out you’d won the Printz?

Wow. What a rush. This was the book I had to write even though part of me thought it would be career suicide. To have someone validate the book that was a piece of my soul was lovely. The Printz certainly makes up for the mean girls who stole my pet rock collection in sixth grade. The mean girls may have my pet rocks, but I’m not bowed.

Former classroom teacher and school librarian Betty Carter reviews for The Horn Book and contributes to the online database Books and Authors.

 

Photograph by Matt Carr.

Text in the City

An enterprising health service is reaching teens where they live—on cellphones. A program of New York City’s Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center, Text in the City (TTC) answers teens’ questions via text. In just six months, TTC has logged 260 unique users and a constant stream of questions, over 400, says Katie Malbon, MD, a fellow in adolescent medicine at Mount Sinai. “We believe it’s filling a gap for many of our patients and allowing them to get the health education they need within just a few hours.” 

Photo by Zawezome.