About this time, the tags for book trees (a lit up tree made from books) or Jolabokaflod, the Icelandic book flood, come fast and furious. As they should because they’re traditions just like building a gingerbread house is for my family and making pierogies on Christmas Eve.
As for book traditions, there is one that I’ve done for years. On the last day of school, I take our boys to the indie bookstore and let them buy whatever they want– they’re reasonable and bookish, so it all works out. It’s a way to celebrate another school year gone by and usher in summer reading outside.
I have a tradition for the end of one year and the beginning of another. It’s simple but ‘a thing’. By December I’ve usually picked my last book of the year and the first book I’ll read in the new year– usually to end and begin on a high note– selecting a type of book that I traditionally enjoy or have heard all good things about.
And while I don’t have one for the winter itself as a family, I might try to build a tradition in the vein of Jolabokaflod though it’s complicated by the fact that we are at family’s on Christmas Eve. But it can be whatever we make it. I think I’ll take some recommendations over the next month and see what we come up with.
The day before Thanksgiving I turned the page to chapter 40 (a bookish pun I couldn’t resist). Coming up on the day, I thought about the fun little things I could do to make it special because I was excited about moving to another age bracket. So I came up with a list of 40 books that I would reread this year– generally books I own because books I own are books that I had previously read and knew I needed to own.
But I admit that I rarely reread books. It’s either a committee assignment that forces a book reread, an upcoming author visit, or in the case of Saga, a comfort read during the pandemic. It’s still rare. Yet, I wanted to recapture the feelings I had years or decades ago with this retrospective over the course of this upcoming year.
These books have changed my thinking, warmed my soul, or hearken back to another time in my life. I’ll be updating my journey periodically on Instagram. Here were the books I settled on.
Waking up today will be my first full day turning the page to chapter 40. It also happens to be Thanksgiving.
I am thankful for being able to live another year.
I am thankful for good food and drink whether it’s at a beautiful new restaurant or from my own kitchen.
I am thankful to be able to run a Turkey Trot this morning with my nuclear family, two teenagers and a husband before spending time with extended family to share in some turkey, stuffing, and cranberries (don’t forget dessert!)
I am thankful for authors, books, and being surrounded by the power of words.
Tomorrow my colleague and I will be visiting classes in a separate building to begin a conversation about reading for self-identified non-readers. These are students who are in specialized classes in iterations of 15:1:1 and 8:1:1 setting whose teacher wants to encourage a connection to reading which has been largely absent from their academic pursuits.
Years back I attended a training that used the term undiscovered reader rather than reluctant reader or nonreader as it changes the mindset to an ownership for the adults in their lives who are just as important to the process of them discovering an appreciation for reading as the student themselves. It often only takes one book.
My first memory of a book that I wanted to read over and over and over again was Avi’s The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. That was early enough on in my life that I was always a casual reader and could find books to read when I wanted. While I don’t have a specific person that I can point to that helped me appreciate reading, Mrs. Preston, my pint-sized Dr. Seuss loving elementary school librarian did love her job and I do remember that about her right down to her stereotypical outfits and glasses with the chain to hang around her neck when she pulled them off.
I’m hoping to channel a little of that energy tomorrow when we visit their classroom. Books can be friends, companions, portals to learning, a break from reality, entertainment, and so much more. We’ll break up the time with some booktalks, a book tasting, some bookmark coloring, and a tutorial on Sora. The goal is to provide a non-threatening environment to encourage exploration and possibly check out a book digitally or in print that they could spend time reading. No quizzes, no homework, no journaling. Just reading. I applaud the teacher for taking this step in breaking down the barriers to access and providing a safe place to books to exist.
Who knows, maybe we’ll be able to move a few of them from undiscovered readers to readers.
Last year a teacher approached us to collaborate on a new school activity- an Open Mic Night where kids could come stand in front of an audience in a coffee shop-like atmosphere and perform. I said absolutely, sign me up. It was another opportunity for students to participate in an activity that celebrates creativity and uses our beautiful new library as the backdrop.
Because the teacher is a performer himself, he led the charge to sign students up and emceed the night, which included fantastically goofy segues. I would set the scene with snacks and hot drinks, atmospheric decorations like glowing tea lights, and advertise the heck out of it.
Last year’s Red & Black Open Mic Night
Last year we hosted several and we’re on track to do three this year. Wednesday night was the first and as is with last year’s, I am awed by their capacity to perform. This session included all singing and a few instruments, but we have seen spoken word and poetry. One student performed an original song and a duet spun the fast-moving Hamilton track, “The Schuyler Sisters” to finish out the night and blow our minds. Whether they were doing karaoke or embodying Elvis, it’s all just words… words in different ways and whether we’re reading words on a page as a book or listening to a song, it’s worth thinking about all of the innovative ways words can be arranged and affect us.
Local indie bookstores are the best. It’s a place where community events celebrate reading culture, books and tangential reading items can be purchased for personal delight or as a gift, and everybody knows your name? Yes, well there are a few booksellers at my local bookstore that I’ve known for years both in a professional capacity and a personal one.
I was delighted during a recent visit that Cheryl remembered my love for the manga series Witch Hat Atelier and she mentioned that the spinoff series Witch Hat Atelier Kitchen was coming out. She said she’d order one for me if I wanted. Absolutely!
Fast forward to yesterday afternoon. In chilly upstate New York weather I drove on over after getting the call and I’m now the proud owner of the first volume in the new series.
Thank you to The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza for being a friend! Plus, for the cheap seats in the back, local indie bookstores are the best.
People can have their Halloween Octobers and their Christmas Decembers, but I’ll take November with its waning colors, chillier mornings, Thanksgiving, and certainly my birthday doesn’t hurt either.
While I’m not going to start penning my novel, it is NaNoWriMo so I’ve decided I’ll blog each day for the month. I’ve done it in the past and have love the mini rush of writing each day. So cheers to a month of sharing! There will be plenty of talk about books, reading life, librarianship, and maybe a few about my other loves– cemetery walking, baking, and dresses.
More than a decade ago, I took on our high school’s Anime Club not knowing much more than I loved many of the students since they were library regulars and needed an advisor. This is when it was simply a club of otakus watching anime and needing a place to hang.
It has morphed more times than I can count over the last fifteen years including a name change last year to Japanese Culture Club. We were watching less anime and spending more time on other pursuits such as drawing, attending cons, and gaming. But there were years with plenty of Pokemon and others where we borrowed the gym to do some epic cosplay. We even survived a year and a half of virtual club during the pandemic (hello, Among Us).
During this time, my reading life morphed as well, as it does with most readers over time. I was reading more nonfiction for sure, but also diving headlong into graphic novels and manga mixed with YA fiction and children’s books. I have always enjoyed manga more than anime and like the best attempts at making a movie out of a fantastic book, I often do not watch the anime of manga I love for fear of the same issues that rear their head with books to movies. And in presentations with other librarians, I talk heavily about giving manga a chance for those that just “don’t get it.”
Enter my teenage son, Max. Both of my teen sons are bookish, but in different ways and this is evident in their divergent reading choices. Newfound friends, his love of origami, and a more popular culture lean toward anime and manga have driven him to copiously consuming both. He’s borrowing stacks of volumes of manga and squeezing in episodes of his favorite anime. He’s buying tshirts with iconography from his favorites as he moved into high school this year. He attended a Comic Con last year when I was there with a group of my Japanese Culture Club students. He wanted me to take pictures of our library’s manga collection to see if there are series he hasn’t read. He sought out the manga section of all thirty-six libraries that we visited this summer as part of a local expedition challenge in our area. And he’s definitely got thoughts on his high school library’s selections.
What matters the most are the conversations he and I are having about what we’re reading. If I borrowing a first volume of a series, I usually slide it over to him before I return it. He’s doing the same for me. And it benefits me in more ways because my clientele at school is now my son, just at a different school. I am indebted to him for making me look cooler than I am because he’s borrowing manga that I am now being asked to buy for my library. Plus, it’s the shared moments of dinner time or random conversations about plot, character, romance, or gore that I’m discovering more about him than I would simply by asking him how his day was.
I don’t have one picture from the last two weeks of school and that’s a good thing. It’s been an energetic few weeks that included basic preparations for the beginning of the year, last-minute great ideas for opening day festivities, and getting down to business with classes by the end of the first week– all about books!
Between introducing freshman classes to the library with a mini-orientation and scavenger hunt to get to know the library, it was also about them getting to know the books. And it was also time to talk books with our tenth graders who have a persuasive book project to do for the first quarter.
With those two specific groups coming in over a week and a half, that means that the shelves were a hot mess and book checkout was through the roof.
Give me all the days where I can talk about the library and books with high schoolers.
Summer has always been a nice balance of work and pleasure, which luckily for me go together like peanut butter and jelly as my pleasure activity is reading which includes the requisite organizing of TBR book piles, interlibrary loaning books, and scouring websites, webinars, and booklists for my next read. Yes I do have other hobbies, but we’re not talking about those here.
Every year I say I won’t join the public libraries adult summer reading program and every year I fall headlong into the discussion, posts, and reading anyway because I’m a sucker for summer reading!
My city’s public library is small so it revolves around documenting my reading and committing to a certain number of reading each day (no issues there!) this year. Last year, we were challenged using a BINGO board.
Then, the city library for the school district I work in is large with multiple branches and a committed group who run an online summer reading program for adults that features weekly themes and recommendations while encouraging participants to chat with one another online. So, read a certain number of books, get a tshirt. Well reader, I am in possession of that tshirt!
Either way, in the summer I’m reading… A LOT, so I might as well see what everyone else is reading and share it as a participating member of my local library and adopted library. Being curious about what other people read is what makes reading a community activity. And as the saying by Edmund Wilson goes “no two persons ever read the same book.” So asking questions and hearing about what they valued in a book helps deepen our connection with one another and provide opportunities for agreement and civilized disagreement.
Why do you participate in summer reading programs (or why don’t you)?
Readers Be Advised 