Category: Parents
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What I Have Learned in Dog Training
Maybe everybody does this. I am always trying to relate something I learn from one area in my life to the other areas of my life. The thing I’ve been doing lately that has been one big learning experience is dog training. But relating that to other areas of my life is, well, rude. People…
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Not-Disappearing Print
I want to pass along a couple of interesting pieces that both relate to whether print books will continue to be needed and loved. While I like ebooks and was pleasantly surprised when I had one to review that I didn’t miss the print format, it’s a very different experience to read on a screen.…
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The Worst Children’s Books
I love classical music, but I don’t love ALL classical music. Some kinds of classical music–the pieces I think of as “circus music”–make me change the channel when it comes on the radio. I don’t love Sousa. I don’t love Strauss and the whole Viennese waltz thing, either. Give me Bach and Purcell and Satie…
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Reading rewards…for some
Many of my memories of being a mother to young boys are wonderful. Not all, mind you, but many. But someone recently posted on Facebook something that brought one of my least favorite memories back. Here’s what Paul Hankins wrote (which I am borrowing with his permission): Ooooh. . .I don’t come out swinging often.…
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New Pew Report: Families Use Libraries
Children’s librarians will find the new Pew Report Parents, Children, Libraries, and Reading very reassuring. As we have long suspected, the children’s department brings families into the library, and while they’re there, the adults use the libraries for themselves as well as for their children. They come in the first place because they believe the…
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Getting through the sorrow and the horror
When I was a little girl in the sixties, I remember seeing on television that people were setting their city on fire. It was baffling and terrifying to me. I remember standing out in the backyard, feeling the sunshine and seeing my mother’s beautiful flowers, and feeling that terror intensely. After that, whenever my family…
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All awards are not equal
I worry sometimes about the proliferation of book awards, particularly the ones that enable a publisher to slap a shiny seal on the front of a book. There are the longstanding, very meaningful awards like the Newbery and the Caldecott. There are some newer valuable awards, like the Printz and the Geisel and the Sibert.…
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If you build it, they will (or won’t) come
Last night, I attended the annual Zena Sutherland Lecture at the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago. It was, as always, a delightful occasion. This year, the author speaking was the brilliant and very funny Mo Willems. And that was kind of the problem…I’ve been going to the Sutherland Lecture for years, and some years…
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Picture books in bins
I’m reading Libraries Designed for Kids by Nolan Lushington (Neal-Schuman, 2008). It’s mostly practical and interesting, but it repeats the same ridiculous opinion several times. I hear library directors (not my own, fortunately!) repeating it too. Here’s how it goes: 1) Children choose books by their covers 2) You can’t see picture books enough to…