Alternative Views of Relationships & Love in YA Lit

John Green & David Levithan signing my copy of Will Grayson, Will Grayson at ALA June 2010. John also signed a copy of Looking for Alaska for me, one of my favorite John Green novels.


We live in a wonderful time for teens. When I was growing up in the 80’s, homosexual relationships really weren’t talked about. I can only imagine what it was like for my friends who are GLBT as they were dealing with their emerging sexuality. No wonder “coming out of the closet” has been such a big deal for so many of my friends! Fortunately things are starting to shift and the bookshelves are starting to gain a vast array of excellent literature that talks about all types of relationships. The thing I like best about all of the authors I’ve highlighted is that they all ultimately send us the message that whatever the relationship and whomever it is with, relationships are about people and emotions. Love comes in many forms and it requires mutual respect.

The Vast Fields of Ordinary
By Nick Burd

It's Dade's last summer at home. He has a crappy job at Food World, an abusive “boyfriend” who won’t publicly acknowledge his existence, and parents on the verge of a divorce. College is Dade’s one hope for escape and a future where he can be himself. Then he meets the mysterious Alex Kincaid. Falling in real love finally lets Dade come out of the closet. But just when true happiness has set in, tragedy shatters the dream.

The Sky Is Everywhere
By Jandy Nelson

What do you do when your sister dies and your life falls apart around you? Lenny finds herself confronting grief with love and romance as she crawls out of her sister’s shadow and into her own skin. Her emotions unfold in lines of poetry as she uncovers how she will move on in a life without her other half.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yqim02tVu3U&feature=related


Will Grayson, Will Grayson
By John Green & David Levithan

I’ve read many John Green books and I think this collaborative effort may just be my new favorite. It is the story of two characters named Will Grayson who ultimately end up meeting at a porn store in Chicago. Green and Levithan regale the alternating Will Grayson perspectives/stories in even and odd chapters. The result is brilliant. The characters are so well depicted that you either want to throw them out a window or become best friends with them. Who wouldn’t love a 300lb gay linebacker who writes musicals, sings, and cries in front of the entire school named Tiny Cooper? In typical John Green style, his chapters are hilarious while at the same time hitting deep into relationships. This is the first I’ve read David Levithan, but his character blends perfectly with Green’s to make an excellent and refreshing novel about relationships and love on many different levels.
http://www.youtube.com/v/nYpyyZwE9Yc

ALA National Conference

Night of the Living Librarians

2010 Pitt Book Cart Drill Team

Our Gold Winning Book Cart

Skeletons From the Danse Macrabe,

Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book

Children's Authors & MC's Mo Willems & Jon Scieszka

Two weeks before my final graduate school weekend at Pitt, I attended my first ALA National Conference. I was lucky that it was held just a few hours drive away in Washington, DC. I had already attended both PALA and PSLA in October and March and was expecting a similar level of excitement. Little did I know just how overwhelming the national conference would prove to be! It was unbelievable how much was packed into one conference. I had fortunately signed up for a fabulous pre-conference workshop presented by children's book artists. It was on a much smaller scale and the discussions and contact with illustrators was terrific. My favorite illustrator was Timothy Basil Ehring who did the illustrations for Kate DiCamillo's Tale of Despereaux and his own book (a personal favorite), Frog Belly Rat Bone, as well as numerous others. He did an illustrated Dr. Frankenstein's Diary that looks as if the Dr. himself wrote it.

Frog Belly Rat Bone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grvNn8sYfqg

The rest of the conference was a whirlwind as I tried to cram in as much as possible. For most true bibliophiles, meeting excellent authors is akin to having rockstar moments and I had many at ALA. I met Salmon Rushdie, MT Anderson, John Green, Libba Bray, Marlo Thomas, this year's Newberry and Caldecott winners Jerry Pinckney and Rebecca Stead, Jon Selcznick, and so many other amazing people. I came home with 50 signed books!

Adding to the rockstar moments, our Pitt Book Cart Drill Team came in first place for our interpretation of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book using book carts, the music Danse Macrabe and voice over from his reading of the book on CD where he describes the dance. Our captain Sherri got permission from Mr. Gaiman ahead of time to use the book and his recording and he did send us an official congratulations on winning via e-mail! I hope to one day meet Neil Gaiman in person. It will truly be one of those author meetings to remember for me!

Night of the Living Librarians; 2010 Pitt Book Cart Drill Team at ALA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruvd9nzdiKs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUlVQm0Whc4&NR=1

Student Teaching -- Remembering What It Was Like To Be A Teen

Please Remember to Use Your

INSIDE VOICE in the Library

Media Center!


Other people shouldn't have to cover their ears.

I've been student teaching for the past 5 weeks in a local high school.  I absolutely love being in the school library everyday.  The kids are great and the library is filled with everything that I love.  Teenagers will be teenagers, however, and we have a very busy library!  When the crowds pick up, so does the noise level.  I just am not much of a yell and scream kind of girl -- unless I have a migraine and it's my own kids not responding to the 10th round of "knock it off guys..."  I prefer a more humorous tack most days. For the most part, I try to place myself in the students' shoes -- after all, we were all teens once.  

In an effort to cull the recent surge in noise level, I created posters and put them up as gentle reminders to our teens to remember their elementary school manners.  My next post will be on the table tops to remind them to clean up after themselves.  My mother used to tell us that "Doris the Maid" was on strike when we weren't pulling our end on cleaning up around the house.  Doris is going to go on strike in our LMC next week.  We'll see if our students start to change their behavior!

The Perfect Storm

I was browsing an educational website today and came across this study done by Educational Testing Services(ETS) complete with a video presentation. It is excellent and well worth a look. They've done some compelling work to back up my argument for a move toward a national education system!

(Click on the title to see the video.)

Sam Squirrel Becomes Dinner Entre As Cooper Hawk Dazzles Westchester University Students With Definitive Dive-Bombing Skills In Central Campus

Nature does as nature will do and to hell with housing developments, universities, and flocks of on looking students. After all, a hawk’s gotta eat, doesn’t he? And so the fate of poor Sam the Squirrel, who thought life was safe on campus among his peeps, where predators tends to shy away, came to a sudden and rather unexpected end on this fine October evening. Sam was whiling away the late afternoon putting away some food for the upcoming scarcity of the cold to come and having a generally happy time. Little did he know that eyes were on him from up above. And I’m not talking about the Lord. These eyes had a gourmet meal in mind. Sam, being a vegetarian and living next to the campus Starbucks that meant rich supplements of cookies and muffins to his diet, had little thought of such skyward gourmets.

Meanwhile, Cooper was making his mark. Within seconds, he had his aim lined up and BOOM! Sam was a dinner entre. Students were stunned. They stood their distance and watched as Coop began his meal. Now you might think that the common human reaction would be disgust. Repulsion. Fear. Quite the opposite for the most part. Oh a few walked past and muttered the odd “awwww” or “ewwwww”, but for the most part Coop garnered respect and reverence. Hundreds of students passed as he partook of his gourmet feast and all steered clear, or were politely steered clear by those watching, since he was so quiet many couldn’t see him, and most stopped to have a look. Seeing this beautiful almost 1 ½ foot bird with razor sharp claws and beak eating his catch and, for the most part, ignoring all of the people passing by seemed incredulous. It was as if he was putting on a show and he was the star.

Library Mania

I made it through my first official librarian conference.

When I told my brother back in September that I was going to be spending three and a half days at a librarian conference in mid-October surrounded by hundreds of librarians from all across the state of Pennsylvania, he just looked at me and said, "great Liss, 'yawn'!" When I tell people I am studying to be a librarian, half the time I get this look and then people will usually say something along the lines of "but you just don't look like a librarian..." Somehow I think most of the world still seems to be under the impression that librarians are these quiet little old ladies that hang out in cloistered little stacks of books with their natty cardigans, glasses, and stern glances. The librarians I know just don't fit that image. We're an eclectic bunch of well-read, fun-loving, tech-savvy and often slightly crazy folk known to be the loudest group in the bar. At least that's my experience! Needless to say, I feel right in my element!

It was slightly dangerous letting me loose at a librarians conference. Little did I know I'd be tempted right off the bat by a discount book sale. Of course I just couldn't walk away -- and proceeds went to support the Pennsylvania Librarian Association. Yet more justification for my diseased habit of acquiring literature. The gift shop was filled with more books, also profiting PaLA, and most of them were showcasing authors who were speaking at the conference. I picked up several as gifts for the kids. I then toured the floor of the exhibits and found some unusual book publishers -- and bought a book for Elena which I had signed by the author. Lucky me, I also won $100 in free books from the Junior Library Guild -- one of my favorite vendors! Once I am a librarian, I hope to use them as their titles and reviews are awesome.

My book habit just continued to be fueled as I met author after wonderful author at the conference. I bought books from all of them and had them signed. All but one were Pennsylvania authors. It was so exciting to see such talent right here in PA! As I read these wonderful new additions to my collection in the coming months, I'll post reviews and share them. Hopefully I won't garner so many yawns -- and maybe some of you will even be inspired to read a few!

A Children's Book -- Take a Break And Gaze At The Clouds

Last night we spent some time in my creativity and teaching class going around meeting each other and looking at our homemade nametags. I neglected to do my homework this week…mommy overload. My prof let me off the hook. One of my classmates, Erika, had a cute nametag cutout of her name and on it were glued some of her favorite things including some of her favorite children’s books. A book title caught my eye because I’d never heard of it before. It’s unusual for someone to have a favorite children’s book I haven’t heard of. It was called It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles Shaw.

Naturally I couldn’t help myself -- I stopped in the school library this morning and borrowed a copy when I dropped the kids off at school. What I found was a delightful little book published in 1947. It is a simple book with simple illustrations. The entire book is written and illustrated in navy blue and white. It is this simplicity that makes it so delightful.

We live in a time complicated by information overload. Our schedules are jam- packed. Shaw’s simple story brings us back to lying down in a field staring up at the sky gazing at the clouds. He brings me to memories of lazy days with my friends laughing and having fun. Through this quiet little story we can share those times with our children and perhaps allow them a break in their overloaded days to gaze at the sky and see a little spilt milk.

Nasturtiums and Herbs on the Garden Wall

Last year I started growing Nasturtiums on the back wall in the garden. I love Nasturtiums because they remind me of San Francisco where we lived when I was little for a few years. They grow wild in Golden Gate Park. My Mom and I took a walk in Golden Gate Park more than a decade ago when I was on a trip out west with my parents before buying my house on Jackson Street in Wilmington. We picked seeds from the flowers. This years the plants have bloomed beautifully on the wall. I've got pots of herbs growing up on top of the wall and the Nasturtiums are dwarfing them! Cleo the affectionate barn kitty) isn't able to knock the pot of catnip off the edge anymore.

Summer Lilly Garden

The Queen of Green Clean!

Few of my friends know of my neurotic passion for green cleaning supplies. It started with my stepdaughter’s allergic reaction to laundry detergent when she was just a wee thing. She had terrible eczema and so we switched to All Free and Clear. When I got pregnant, I couldn’t be around cleaning products because of all of the terrible chemical ingredients. I began looking into green cleaning products that were better for the environment and safer for all of us to be around. I tried several of the brands at Whole Foods (then Fresh Fields), but found them expensive and not all that great. I used Dreft for the baby clothes and that, of course, was also expensive. I tried Shaklee for a while and found that OK, but also wasn’t crazy about how well most of the products cleaned.

Then one day I was setting up my Silpada jewelry at a fall market next to a woman selling Melaleuca. Her name was Marsha Bove (marshabove@verizon.net) and we have since become great friends. She, like me, has the philosophy of let the product sell itself. Both of us were bored out of our skulls at the market, so I started looking at her booth. She had two jars with pieces of fabric in them and what looked like laundry detergent. One looked absolutely disgusting and the other looked brand new. She told me they were both a year old and one was Tide, the other was Melaleuca detergent. It was pretty easy to tell the Tide by the familiar blue color. It was the disgusting one. The fabric was disintegrating.

What interested me most, however, was that Melaleuca products are green. They are based on tea tree oil. The laundry detergent is safe for people with eczema. I decided to give them a try. I have been a loyal customer now for years.

Now with my background story told, let me tell you about my darling little 6-year-old who decided to do her nails in a pair of adorable designer jeans that I was SO proud of having found for a bargain price in a consignment shop. She had worn them exactly three, yes, THREE times. My little love spilled purple and yellow nail polish on said jeans. Oops! Nail polish remover would probably take the color right out of the jeans. She through them in the laundry and Daddy promptly washed and dried them. Permanent stain I thought.

I decided I’d give it a try anyway and tried Melaleuca’s Solumel on the stain plus a shot of Pre-Spot and scrubbed. Wouldn’t you know it, I saved the designer jeans! They look beautiful again. I feel like the Queen of Green Clean again! I am amazed at the stains I have removed -- even permanent marker on occasion.

Yes, I am moved by the little things in life.