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Category Archives: Reflections

Trifecta

Today is my sixteenth year in education. Fifteen of them have been right where I am today, as the high school librarian.

I have seen one facelift and one major update with the third around the corner– a completely new space to move in to next fall to the facility. I have had more than a dozen direct supervisors, building principals, and superintendents. With a graduating class hovering around six hundred students, I have likely interacted with close to 9,000 teenagers and hundreds of teachers. And whatever each school year brings, it always circles back to the kids. I saved this post to make on the first day of school, but it’s really a post that could have been shared on the last day of school last year. And it’s been sitting with me all summer long.

The three major subgenres of books that were most circulated last year– specifically reflecting why they were the most circulated as I often do at the end of a calendar year when making “best of” lists or the books most likely to be missing from the shelves and of course, when I’m putting new orders together for purchase.

Yes, we still checked out physical books through the curbside pickup method, the small number of students who were physically in the building, and the handfuls of drive-up to their curbside. And then there was the robust digital offerings. I booktalked until I couldn’t booktalk anymore– Google Meets, 1:1, and in-person.

What were they?

Murder
Romance
Humor

Let’s break this down: the three most asked-for books in the library came down to murder, romance, and humor. And then I say, it was 2020. And you nod your head. Of course!

True crime is prevalent in Netflix series and podcasts, books and casual conversation. It’s a thing. And it’s a thing with our teenagers too. Being home with their families rather than playing team sports and attending school every day, I’m sure there was some level of interest in the subgenre because of these massive shifts in daily business. It’s easy to go to a darker place. And books are nothing if not a reflection of inner thoughts and feelings.

We all needed some love. We missed family gatherings and meeting up with friends. And for teenagers, a whole chunk of their socialization went out the window when schools shut down. Really, all they needed was some love. So can you see how a little romance went a long way?

And humor, there is comfort in the familiar. Yes, we have Diary of a Wimpy Kid in our high school library and no I couldn’t keep them on the shelves. They wanted the escape from the seriousness of the news and the pandemic. They wanted to laugh. And who can blame them?

I will remember this past school year because it was the year I lost my co-librarian for the majority of the school year to budget cuts and had to manage alone. It was isolating because staff were scattered and hunkered in their rooms talking to computer screens. But I still saw kids each day and I will remember that all they wanted were some books and those books had to do with murder, romance, or humor. And I replied, well then I’ve got a book for you…

Here’s to 2021-22!

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on September 8, 2021 in Blogging, Fiction, Graphic novels, Manga, Nonfiction, Poetry, Reflections, Short Story, Verse, Young Adult

Tags: #books, #schoollibrarian, #ya, #yalit

“My librarian”

26 Aug

It’s no surprise that as a school librarian you can find me in my school library. But as a reader, it shouldn’t surprise you that you can also find me at my public library and the indie bookstore too.

Several weeks ago, I strode into my indie bookstore while doing errands: I needed to pick up a few books that had been set aside by a bookseller and preorder the eighth volume of Witch Hat Atelier, a delightful adventure manga featuring the upbeat and hardworking Coco.

The minute I crossed the threshold I saw a coworker who paused as I did to greet each other. And what he said next, was worthy of a blog post exploring the topic. He said to the employees behind the counter: “This is my librarian.” Now, I know I am one of the librarians at our high school, yes. But I have also spent several sessions talking to him about his own daughter’s reading and needing recommendations and books to bring home to her, which I have obliged every time. A librarian is like a personal shopper, you can have one of your own who can help guide your choices and select what is best. So when he said that, it felt more personal rather than simply what my profession was. And it felt good. It means I do my job well.

And then I thought, if I’m a librarian, can I have a librarian too? Then I thought, everyone is my librarian because I take recommendations from professional magazines and book websites, bookish Instagram hashtags, and former students.

For the readers out there, who is your librarian and what’s your story with your relationship with them?

For the librarians out there, are you your own librarian curating your reading materials or do you have someone else who is also your librarian?

What identities do you have where you would be considered someone’s something?

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on August 26, 2021 in Miscellaneous, Reflections

Big Macanudo feelings

06 Aug

Liniers is an Argentine cartoonist who creates the Macanudo comic strip.

Several years ago the local newspaper began printing it in the comics section and I was instantly hooked because a frequently-used character is Henrietta who has a sidekick cat named Fellini and also a teddy bear named Mandelbaum. She is a reader and the comics featuring her usually feature her reading (in bed, in nature) and pondering the world of books and mining the depths of her imagination. Last week’s hit me, as it would with many readers, hard with its snapshot of our relationship with reading.

Simply, it’s all about the feelings.

I read plenty. I also know plenty of readers and in discussing books find that their ability to remember details (like the plot) are much stronger than mine. I usually remember the details that resonated with me and always always the feeling when I finished it; awestruck, quiet, emotional, frustrated, and the list goes on.

Coincidentally, I’ve been engaged in work with my school district through Yale’s RULER, which is a systemic approach to social emotional learning that begins with the staff and then works its way down to the students. What I’ve learned is that I don’t know much about emotions. And like one participate shared yesterday, the kids are actually better at it than the adults are. I’m learning every day to be able to be that “emotional scientist” takes work especially in being able to appropriately name the actual emotion that you might be feeling at a specific moment. It’s hard work but I’m here for it.

Somehow I think Henrietta is a pretty good judge, as her little girl self, with feeling her feelings especially when they come to books. I would like to think that she, like me, has bookshelves upon bookshelves that are there for very specific reasons because they elicited very specific feelings from them. The Virgin Suicides by Eugenides? Epic sadness with a twinge of desperation and longing. Challenger Deep by Shusterman? Deeply moved by Caden’s internal struggle.

Are you like Henrietta and me and remember the feelings from the books stronger or are you the type of reader that remembers the plot, setting, and characters primary and the feelings secondary?

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on August 6, 2021 in Blogging, Miscellaneous, Reflections

At what speed do you read?

16 Jul

I listen to quite a few audiobooks, preferring to listen in the car, while doing housework, getting ready in the mornings, and when I walk the dog. I’ve recently borrowed 30-hour audiobooks (an Ernest Hemingway biography) and last year the 24-hour Moby Dick. Then there was Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s newest called Notes on Grief that was a little more than one hour. I know I move through audiobooks quickly because I am a reader and I can always find time to read, but I also set the speed to 1.25 and sometimes (if I can get away with it depending on the narrator and topic) 1.5. It’s been too long since I’ve listened at 1x speed. At what speed do you read?

Plus I read quite a few books too. It’s kind of the reason I have this blog, to talk about books, reading, and school librarianship. So that shouldn’t be surprising. I move through picture books, middle grade, YA, and adult with fluidity based on mood but also out of necessity as I’m current on an award committee that has a strict reading requirement, but I also review for professional magazines, and obviously for readers advisory for my students. Some books are comfortably formulaic and don’t require as much effort. I find myself reading shallowly with some so that I can indulge more languidly with others. Yet, I still read more than the average person. Most notably, during the pandemic (of which I’ve written about here), I read at least one book a day for over a year. It adds up to quite a lot. And it’s not to compete with others, it’s simply how I like to do my reading and feel on top of my game. There are times that others have commented about how much I read and my usual response is something along the lines of we make time for what we love and value. Their comment is usually followed by what a slow reader they are and my response to that is so what? Which led to this post and this question: at what speed do you read?

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on July 16, 2021 in Blogging, Miscellaneous, Reflections

Five lessons from a pandemic school year

25 Jun

Have a series of things that allow you the room to be happy outside of school; as simple as a delicious smelling bath salt for a Sunday night soak or a bevy of plant babies that make your living space feel like a walk in nature.
Support your colleagues. You might want to scream but others are already and your support supports others and then in turn makes you feel supported as well.
Smile. I believe in faking it until you make it and it starts with a smile.
Work is not the only thing. Yes, my identity is absolutely wrapped up in my being a school librarian, but it is not the only thing. That means not answering an email at 9pm (or sending one either) or leaving on time.
Remember the good things. And that means keeping a work gratitude journal or creating a folder to save congratulatory or thank you messages in which people sing your praises or having a folder to put in student work given to you in appreciation. And then go back and revisit it. As often as necessary.

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on June 25, 2021 in Miscellaneous, Reflections

Peanut butter finds its jelly, again

12 Apr

In September, I didn’t write about the horrific blow that was dealt– the loss of my co-librarian, partner-in-crime to budgetary cuts due in part to the pandemic. The 2020-21 school year would have been our sixth year together making magic in the library with our high schoolers.

I didn’t write about it because it was a painful experience which didn’t happen directly to me and I wasn’t going to write her story. Maybe a future post will be a guest post of hers.

I’m writing about it now because tomorrow the reset button will be hit. She will be back in the building, in the library, and with me. It will look different because we’ve lost of our teaching assistant, all of the students are not back in the building, and there are serious renovations happening right outside the library as part of a massive construction project projected to finish in another five years.

Though we will fall into the same routines of planning, prepping, teaching, and booktalking because we’re peanut butter and jelly, Bert and Ernie, pen and paper, thunder and lightning (you get the idea)– better together. For our students. For our professional selves. Personally.

But I will also be different.

As I’m sure she will be. Changed by a pandemic, institutional choices, money.

How have you been changed by the items above? What stories do you have to tell?

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on April 12, 2021 in Miscellaneous, Reflections

Dolly, country music, and books

21 Mar

Before it went defunct, I contributed to the local newspaper’s books blog online and had shared my recent audiobook recommendations under the title Audiowalking. This title sums up when I’m often listening to audiobooks as was the case today with Dolly Parton, Storyteller: My Life in Lyrics. I don’t think there could be a better way to engage with the book other than the audiobook spoken by Dolly herself. But this post isn’t only about recommending the audiobook but my realization in listening to her explain her life’s experiences and turning them in to poetry and songs that the reason I’m a reader and a country music listener is for exactly that reason: it’s all about the story.

Yes my first exposure to country music was from my parents, but I loved it all the same. And, I was an avid reader from the get-go remembering fondly my insistence in re-reading Heidi, the American Girl books, and The True Adventures of Charlotte Doyle. And, I also started my first two books when I was in fourth and fifth grade- one about a pirate ship and one about an Indigenous girl and her younger brother. Then I became a librarian. And all of these have a commonality- storytelling.

Even now when I read, I often take pictures of the text or Post-it a passage to keep in a folder on my computer to revisit when the mood strikes me because words have power. But the story the words create is stronger. Dolly knows it. Country music creates it. I get lost in it. Dolly’s audiobook re-centered my gratitude to authors and songwriters for being able to weave the magic of words into the stories that embed in our lives. Aside from asking everyone to listen to her audiobook, I’ll also leave you with one of my favorite country songs. You be sure to let me know if you missed the story in this song.

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on March 21, 2021 in Adult, Authors, Nonfiction, Poetry, Reflections

With all those books

15 Mar

Yesterday’s post was a celebration of reading at least a book a day for 365 straight days. I’ll continue though the rigidity will likely wane, but not today where I was able to finish an audiobook and read two additional books. It got me thinking, how many books did I read over 365 days? That answer was 852 which meant I averaged 2.3342 books per day. What were my favorites? See below. How to you find the time? Well, I have my ways. Therefore, a summary post was in order because I like a good listicle. Here are some mini-listicles about “my year of reading a book a day”.

Locations for reading

Car (audiobooks, people!)
Wherever I have to wait– an office or a long line for example
Anywhere in the house from the kitchen table to standing by the stove waiting for my hot water to boil but also most definitely when I’m cleaning or cooking
The lunch table at work (I often post with the hashtag #literarylunchbox)

Twenty favorites (in no particular order)

Punching the Air by Zoboi
You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why it Matters by Murphy
Poisoned Water: How the Citizens of Flint, Michigan, Fought for Their Lives and Warned the Nation by Cooper
Witch Hat Atelier by Shirahama
Skyward by Henderson
The School of Essential Ingredients by Bauermeister
All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team by Soontornvat
The Girl from the Other Side by Nagabe
My Life in Dog Years by Paulsen
The Midnight Library by Haig
That Way Madness Lies edited by Adler
Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World by Parker
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Baum
Sigh, Gone: A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In by Tran
My Life in France by Child with Prud’Homme
The House in the Cerulean Sea by Klune
Fighting Words by Brubaker Bradley
Jane Against the World: Roe v. Wade and the Fight for Reproductive Rights by Blumenthal
End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy by Swanson
Up All Night: 13 Stories Between Sunset and Sunrise edited by Silverman
The Beauty in Breaking by Harper
Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius by Holiday
A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Brown
Chicken Every Sunday: My Life with Mothers Boarders by Taylor
Fangs by Andersen

But how did you do it?

Read (and by reading I mean eyes on a page or ears open) every day
Always have a stack of books in the house or in a queue online
Sometimes reading won out over straightening up the house, for sure
Encourage a household of readers (because it’s easier to read yourself when everyone else is doing it too)
Participating in events like the Dewey’s 24-hour Readathon and the #24in48 readathon

What genre or category do you favor? (but really this is like asking me to pick a favorite child)

Nonfiction
- Food memoirs
- Animals especially histories, discoveries, and celebrations of
Young Adult short story collections
Verse novel and graphic novel formats
Fiction
- Historical
- Realistic

Who were your cheerleaders? (whether they knew it or not)

Stacey Rattner, a school librarian colleague who I often co-present with at conferences with her own blog and the co-host of the pandemic-inspired Author Fan Faceoff with Steve Sheinkin
My kids, readers in their own right, who read at the table for almost every meal and so many other occasions and places too
Reading communities big and small

Was there a question that I missed? If there was, ask me in the comments.

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on March 15, 2021 in Blogging, Fiction, Graphic novels, Manga, Middle grade, Nonfiction, Reflections, Short Story, Upcoming Releases, Verse, Young Adult

My year of a book a day

14 Mar

People will be writing posts about one year of the pandemic. I will be writing a post about one year of reading at least a book a day. And I’m damn proud of that. As a school librarian, Friday, March 13th wasn’t about teaching, it was waiting to see what New York State would say about schools come Monday. By 5pm, they told everyone to stay home. By Saturday morning, I challenged myself: read a book a day. It would keep me focused on a task when the future was unknown.

I didn’t make any specific rules other than that I would share what I read on my bookish Instagram account reserved for my reading life (and dresses). It wouldn’t matter whether it was a picture book or audiobook, a graphic novel or poetry. Whatever I finished that day would be ‘the book’ for the day and if I read more than one, well that was a bonus; there were plenty of bonus days.

The formats varied. I downloaded galleys from Edelweiss and Netgalley and I borrowed digitally and brought home books from my public library and school library. There were stacks of graphic novels and digital holds for popular picture books. Audiobooks were in abundant supply and listened to while housecleaning, baking, or walking. I participated in my favorite readathons. Reading was never in short supply because the books were never in short supply. On any given day I have a stack of physical books at least five deep. And there’s an equal if not larger number waiting on my devices.

Some planning was necessary (at least in my mind) because I wanted celebratory reads for specific days. For instance, recently I waited to read The Three Mothers: How The Mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation by Anna Malaika Tubbs until my sons’ birthday. Or Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall on International Women’s Day. Or the need to finish the book I was reading, My Life in France by Julie Child with Alex Prud’Homme, on August 15th, Julie Child’s birthday.

When others couldn’t focus on reading, I celebrated the victories each day varying the formats and audience since I read widely anyway. It kept me from getting stale and it certainly saved my eyesight. I learned about American buffalo and Stoicism, but entertained myself with horror fiction and Dorothy and her friends Tin Woodman, Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow. Often one book would lead to another– Philbrick was telling me about the Essex survival tale when I decided I would finally read Moby Dick.

Challenges are an internal motivator be it making every sandwich in Deering’s book or reading twenty-four hours in a forty-eight hour weekend for a reading event. And this is what I learned:

I love books!
I appreciate the authors that write those books and the illustrators that create the artwork
Audiobooks are a gamechanger and I prefer listening to nonfiction rather than fiction in audiobook form
If I had to buy every book I read, I wouldn’t have a roof over my head or food in my belly- thank God for libraries (and it’s not only because I work in a school one, but that helps)
George R.R. Martin’s quote “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one” is truth. My life has been fulfilled in ways that can only be felt for the adventures I’ve been on and the things I’ve learned through books
It was as much about the books as it was about finding a purpose during pandemic
Everyone should read what gives them pleasure be it celebrity biographies or fairytales simply because it gives them pleasure. Plus that passion is infectious and a model for others to do the same and never feel shame for it
It doesn’t matter the time of day, the beverage you’re drinking, the outfit you’re wearing, or the location itself, reading is always fashionable, timely, and necessary and therefore goes with anything

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on March 14, 2021 in Reflections

He spoke to me

03 Mar

The local newspaper this weekend featured a human interest story about a horologist. For the uninformed, including me until I read the article, a horologist is the someone who studies time as it relates to watch and clockmaking and repair.

This slice of life story made me stop and think about all of the ways that people contribute and what they find worthwhile, including creating a career out of it. And he made a comment

“I restore memories and that’s an awesome thing. Bringing back someone’s cherished memory means I’ve contributed something to this other person’s journey. That makes me feel like I matter.”

Aren’t we all looking for that opportunity to contribute to one another’s journey and feel like we matter? And yet I was also silently smiling a little as a school librarian when the article writer explained,

Once in a while, he’s had to deliver some brutal honesty, informing a potential client that what they’ve got is beyond repair or just not worthy of the cost.

I felt this. Because I spend some portion of the year pulling books off the shelf to donate to a location that might have an audience that would appreciate them or truly pull them off the shelf and discard them. That’s a hard conversation with others who see the books in the recycle bin or trash and want to save them. I have my ready-made reply that both understands where they’re coming from but explaining that everything must come to an end, even a book’s life.

Are horology and library science the same? No, but there are connections to be made. Emotions to be had. Feelings of the books from your childhood that you want to preserve. I shared the epic moment on Instagram that I gifted my boys with my copies of Calvin and Hobbes that I had been collecting since I was a child. What are those items– clocks or books– that have cherished memories?

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on March 3, 2021 in Articles, Reflections