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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

Sepetys’ Magic

05 Jun

Precious.

Ruta Sepetys’ words are what amazes and captures the readers just as vividly as her characters, situations, and history in her soon-to-be-published, Salt to the Sea.

It’s 1945, the world is warring and there are many who are fleeing their homelands in the hope of a rebirth elsewhere. Joana is a nurse with a desire to escape her self-imposed brand as a murderer, Florian is a Prussian who holds secrets that can potentially kill him, Emilia is a Polish girl who’s devastating circumstances have left her needing a savior, whom she finds in Florian, and Alfred is a self-involved but insecure German soldier looking for glory. The four of their narrations brings the book together to share their and others’ fates. Just because others in the story including the cobbler poet, the runaway boy, and the giantess woman are not telling their story, doesn’t mean they are any less a part of the devastating survival tale that is fraught with lies, ambition, sentimentality and longing for the past or their homeland.

There is a painful arc to the story as the characters escape imminent death in one way and find themselves on a collision course for it a second time when they end up on the ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff, as it’s torpedoed by the Russians and thousands perish.

The bond readers develop with the characters as they suffer their fates both death and life are shocking, tragic, and uplifting. The last chapter made me cry. Sepetys is a gifted storyteller weaving the tales of the true experiences and while I appreciate the publisher’s comparisons in the summary, the only one I can agree with is Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See in it’s depth. There is an accessibility that only Sepetys can do so well targeting both young adults and adults with a tale rich in detail. Images like the pink hat and the amber swan coupled with dead families in their rooms and children being tossed helplessly onto a ship too high to be reached will stay with any reader for a lifetime.

It begs to be re-read.

Snow Day Reading

02 Feb

Watching the snow fall outside, makes you want to curl up with a book. Mine certainly wasn’t a cuddly, hug-y kind of book. Instead, it was C. Desir’s Bleed Like Me. Like the first book of hers I read, Fault Line, neither will leave you feeling like all is right with the world. Instead, they both paint realistic pictures of girls in crisis. A current and more heart-breaking version of Patricia McCormick’s contemporary classic, Cut, Amelia Gannon is a cutter, using this pain to comfort her invisibility in a family that went from three to six when her parents decided to adopt three young boys living on the streets of Guatemala. And when she meets, Brooks, who has been raised in foster care and runs drugs, she follows him down the path of dangerous love, feeling like she could belong to him and feel loved, instead life becomes more hopeless with dead-end jobs and taking drugs that numb the pain.

I’m checking of Desir’s book as my “book written by a female author” on my 2015 Challenge. What did you read this snow day to check off your reading challenge list?

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on February 2, 2015 in Miscellaneous

Tags: #books, #ya, #yalit