Fans

Here at abcreads, we confess to a fascination with antiquated social customs, especially those from the Victorian era. Imagine employing the language of flowers in daily life - we can never disparage a gift of carnations now, knowing they might mean "My heart aches for you" (red) or "I'll never forget you" (pink). Or having to use calling cards again, and all the complicated etiquette that that involved. Steampunk has brought us back corsets, bustles, petticoats, and other Victorian finery. There was even a museum exhibit of mourning jewelry a couple of years ago. Personally, we'd like to see fans make a comeback.

There are a couple of books about fans in the library catalog, of particular interest to fashion history buffs. For instance, to quote from the library's holdings, we find that from 1700-1800, "Fans of majestic proportions (à grand vol) balanced skirts held out by paniers. They dwindled to 'imperceptibles' to match the deflated skirts of Revolutionary times. To carry a fan of grand luxe became unfashionable as well as politically unwise"; in the 19th century, there was a "European fashion for articles in the Chinese taste" [chinoiserie], so many fans featured art from the East; and "since 1914, the story of European fans has been essentially one of decline... In the 1920s extravagant feather fans were considered the perfect accessory for a slimline evening dress, but since then fans have enjoyed only fitful popularity..."

If we have piqued your interest in fans, check out:

Fans by Avril Hart and Emma Taylor

Fans in Fashion: Selections From the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco by Anna G. Bennett, with Ruth Berson

Fans From the East edited by Carol Dorrington-Ward 

We would also like to encourage the use of fans in ordinary life. It certainly gets hot enough in New Mexico to warrant carrying one around, and you can get the ones that fold up very cheaply! Plus, you can use them to communicate amongst an elite circle of fan aficionados, using the language of the hand fan (courtesy of the website elAbanico):
 
To hold the fan with the right hand in front of the face.
Follow me.

To hold it in the left ear.
I want you to leave me alone.

To let slide it on the forehead.
You have changed.

To move it with the left hand.
They are watching us.

To change it to the right hand.
You are imprudent.

To throw the fan.
I hate you.

To move it with the right hand.
I love another.

To let slide it on the cheek.
I want you.

To hold it closed.
Do you love me?

To let slide it on the eyes.
Go away, please.

To touch the edge of the hand fan with the fingers.
I want to talk to you.

To hold it on the right cheek.
Yes.

To hold it on the left cheek.
No.

To open and close it.
You are cruel.

To leave it hanging.
We will continue being friends.

To fan slowly.
I am married.

To fan quickly.
I am engaged.

To hold the fan in the lips.
Kiss me.

To open it slowly.
Wait for me.

To open the hand fan with the left hand.
Come and talk to me.

To strike it, closed, on the left hand.
Write me.

To semiclose it in the right and on the left.
I can't.

To hold it opened, covering the mouth.
I am single. 
 

Alex Awards: Recommended Adult Books for Young Adult Readers

Do you know a teen (ages 12-18) who is ready to read at an adult level, and is looking for titles? Are you an avid young adult book reader looking for a change of pace? Look no further than the Alex Awards, administrated by YALSA [Young Adult Library Services Organization].

The Alex Awards are named for Margaret Alexander Edwards (called Alex by her friends), who was the administrator of young adult programs at Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore for over thirty years. In the middle of the 20th century, she was one of the first librarians to recognize that "adolescence was...a distinct age different from both childhood and adulthood" and reached out to local young adults via "booktalks" in high schools to establish programs for teens and to make teens aware of services and materials available to them to them in the public library. She even rented a horse-drawn wagon to bring library collections to those who couldn't get to the library!  You can read excerpts from her book about her experiences, The Fair Garden and the Swarm of Beasts: The Library and the Young Adult, online.

The Alex Awards were born in 1986 as the "The School Library Journal Young Adult Author Award/Selected and Administered by the American Library Association's Young Adult Services Division". The Alex Awards are given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18, selected from the previous year's publishing. The award has been annual since 1998.

The purpose of the Alex Awards is to identify those adult titles that have the most interest and appeal to teens. The titles were selected by the YALSA Adult Books for Young Adults Task Force from the previous year's publishing and were  part of the Adult Books for Young Adults Project, which explored the role of adult books in the  reading lives of teenagers and was funded by the Margaret Alexander Edwards Trust. In 2002, the Alex Awards were approved as an official ALA award, and the Task Force was superseded by the Alex Awards Committee. The task force decided to select ten titles annually, and also decided to select a top ten list rather than a single title or a long list because of the popularity of the concept and because it parallels the Top Ten titles selected by the Best Books for Young Adults and Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers committees. The task force members also believed that selecting more than one book provided a greater variety of titles, whereas a longer list would be less selective than desired. A top ten list also allows for a more balanced list—fiction and nonfiction, as well as various genres.

According to Wikipedia, only one author, Neil Gaiman, has made the list twice. Here are the books that made the list for 2016!


All Involved by Ryan Gattis

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates 

Bones & All by Camille DeAngelis 

Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong

Girl at War by Sara Nović

Half the World by Joe Abercrombie 

Humans of New York: Stories by Brandon Stanton 

Sacred Heart by Liz Suburbia 

Undocumented: A Dominican Boy's Odyssey From a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League by Dan-el Padilla Peralta 

Unraveling of Mercy Louis by Keija Parssinen 

 

Links

Alex Awards on the YALSA website

Alex Awards on the ALA website 

YALSA's Teen Book Finder App for Android & iOS

Maps and the Fruits of Exploration

World Map 1636. Photography. Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 17 Feb 2016.
http://quest.eb.com/search/139_1946129/1/139_1946129/cite

We have written on the blog before about our fascination with maps, even though they don't always reflect the reality of the globe we're spinning on (hence the True Size website, which is a pretty fun tool). But maps can be more than an atlas, or a piece of paper that's really hard to fold up once it's unfolded, or an app on your phone. We've assembled some quotes from authors about the diverse qualities of maps - how maps affect people, stories that maps tell, the personal geographies that our lives become - and would like to share some books about maps and geography from the library catalog that we hope fit the tenor of the quotes.

Map People

There are map people whose joy is to lavish more attention on the sheets of colored paper than on the colored land rolling by. I have listened to accounts by such travelers in which every road number was remembered, every mileage recalled, and every little countryside discovered. Another kind of traveler requires to know in terms of maps exactly where he is pin-pointed at every moment, as though there were some kind of safety in black and red lines, in dotted indications and squirming blue of lakes and the shadings that indicate mountains. It is not so with me. I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found, nor much identification from shapes which symbolize continents and states.
~John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Map: Exploring the World edited by Rosie Pickles and Tim Cooke

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World by Tim Marshall

The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps by Michael Blanding

Maps of Our Private World

Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear. More precious, though, are the unpublished maps we make ourselves, of our city, our place, our daily world, our life; those maps of our private world we use every day; here I was happy, in that place I left my coat behind after a party, that is where I met my love; I cried there once, I was heartsore; but felt better round the corner once I saw the hills of Fife across the Forth, things of that sort, our personal memories, that make the private tapestry of our lives.
~Alexander McCall Smith, Love Over Scotland

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing

The Mystical Backpacker: How to Discover Your Destiny in the Modern World by Hannah Papp

Mapping it Out: An Alternative Atlas of Contemporary Cartographies edited by Hans-Ulrich Obrist

Story as Map

A story is a map of the world. A gloriously colored and wonderful map, the sort one often sees framed and hanging on the wall in a study full of plush chairs and stained-glass lamps: painstakingly lettered, researched down to the last pebble and participle, drawn with dash and flair, with cloud-goddesses in the corners and giant squid squirming up out of the sea...[T]here are more maps in the world than anyone can count. Every person draws a map that shows themselves at the center.
~Catherynne M. Valente, The Boy Who Lost Fairyland

Plotted: A Literary Atlas by Andrew DeGraff 

The Forbidden Worlds of Haruki Murakami by Matthew Carl Strecher

The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking by Olivia Laing

No Compass

Amazing where your life can deposit you before you know it. One, two, three, and you're on a completely different road than the one you'd always expected to be on at this point in your life. There is no compass when such things happen, no rules and no maps to guide you, and no one who cares if the sun is glaring or if the asphalt is melting beneath your tires.
~Alice Hoffman, Blue Diary

Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies by Alastair Bonnett

The Trivia Lover's Guide to the World: Geography for the Lost and Found by Gary Fuller

The World's Weirdest Places by Nick Redfern [eBook] 

How the States Got Their Shapes Too: The People Behind the Borderlines by Mark Stein 

Atlas of Cursed Places: A Travel Guide to Dangerous and Frightful Destinations by Olivier Le Carrer, Sibylle Le Carrer
  

Picture Book are Not Just for Kids! Part 6

To tie up this little series, I thought I would go back to childhood.  Comparing my taste in books now to my taste when I was a child has surprised me!  I remember the library* books that stood out to me the most when I was a new reader were those that captured my imagination and took me beyond what I could experience in normal life as a little kid.  Today I enjoy books that are clever, funny, and beautifully illustrated, but many of my first books don't really rank with this criteria.  I do still enjoy books that spark my imagination, but maybe (it hurts me to admit!) I need a little more help starting up my imagination than I used to - I certainly use it less these days.  In any case, here are a few of the books, and book series, I loved as a child that wouldn't necessarily make my favorites list if I had discovered them today.

Eloise: A Book for Precocious Grown Ups by Kay Thompson
Why I loved it: I thought this book was so much fun.  It still is, actually.  I loved how Eloise had such an active imagination, and how the things she imagined up appeared as illustrations in red outlines.  I also loved the fact that she had a pet turtle that lived with her and her pug.  In fact, I named my childhood turtle Skipperdee, after hers.  I envied her independence, and the fact that Eloise had a live-in Nanny.  I think I sometimes even imagined the apartment complex we lived in during my elementary years was a fancy hotel because the idea made me feel glamorous like Eloise.  So basically, Eloise made my childhood much more exciting than it actually was, and that was a good thing!  We also have a version that includes an audio CD, Eloise Read-Along.

Animalia by Graeme Base
Why I loved it: This book provided hours of entertainment and challenge for my young mind (plus my sister and I could look at it together without fighting - mostly).  It never got old, no matter how many times I had looked at it or for how long.  Each page is an illustration for one letter of the alphabet and contains innumerable items beginning with that letter.  It is also accompanied by a caption made only by alliterations of words beginning with that letter.  For example, "lazy lions lounging in the local library" accompanies the L illustration.  The goal, at least when I read it, is to name as many items in the picture as possible.  I remember this being tricky, because sometimes I didn't know what an item was, so I couldn't name it, and especially not using a word beginning with the correct letter.  (Last year I discovered The Eleventh Hour by Base and spent several happy hours solving its puzzles.)

Andrew and the Wild Bikes by Allen Morgan
Why I loved it: This book made me fall in love with my bicycle.  I could not stop thinking about what my life would be like if I came across a herd of living, furry bicycles, and got to catch one and tame it.  Imagining that I had done just that, I would tear up and down our street on my own bike.  The idea of this story was so intriguing that the feeling of it has stuck with me all these years, and although the book is not so much attractive to me any more, it still inspires me and takes me back to the excitement of my childhood dreams.  (Sadly, there is no picture for this one in the catalog!)

Frances books by Russell Hoban
Why I loved them: Frances is such a distinct and likable character, with her little ditties and sweet quirks, such as sitting below the sink and avoiding any food aside from bread and jam.  Her habits and ways of thinking so accurately represent the behaviors of young children.  Which, of course, I didn't realize when I was a young child reading the Frances books, but I'm sure the fact still improved my relationship with her.  As an adult reader, I love how Frances' parents don't try to change her or force her to behave, but rather, they patiently guide her as she works things out on her own.

Strega Nona books by Tomie DePaola
Why I loved them: I recall that an elementary school librarian read one or more of these to my class for storytime, which was a cozy, happy time of my week at school.  Therefore, I think I loved these (and still do) because of that warm association it created.  I remember especially loving the look of the illustrations of these books - the colors, the consistency, the texture.  I liked the magic in each of the books, each of the unique characters, and the little snippets of Italian sprinkled throughout.  I still get the same warm, fuzzy feeling whenever I pick up a Strega Nona book.  My favorite is Strega Nona Meets Her Match.

I will never stop enjoying picture books, but I'm done sharing them on the blog for now.  I hope you enjoyed the tour!

*My Grandma always took my sister and me to Tony Hillerman - where did you go when you were little?  Do you remember any books that caught your imagination?  Please share in the comments!

March in Review

I wanted to try something new with blogging. Instead of just talking about topics in youth literature, I want to talk about the books I'm reading. I love reading reviews of the books I read (after I finish them), so part of what I want to do is write mini-reviews for the books I've read in the past month.

Here's what I read in March.

Some of the Parts by Hannah Barnaby

I actually didn't think I was going to like this book. I thought it was going to be too similar to Jessi Kirby's Things We Know By Heart. I was wrong. Some of the Parts was less about finding organ recipients and more about grieving, and it was beautifully written. I'm so glad I decided to give this book a chance; I almost didn't read it.





The Siren by Kiera Cass

Confession: I didn't love The Selection series. I liked it well enough to read the first three books, but I haven't read the others. Because of that, I wasn't sure I was going to read The Siren, but I haven't read many books about sirens, and I love the ocean, and plus: THAT COVER. It's so pretty that I couldn't resist it. Needless to say, I adore this book. It is so much better than the books in The Selection series: the story is more interesting, the writing is fantastic, and basically everything about it was so good that I wish there was a sequel. Or a whole series. Anything that will let me stay in the world Cass created for a just a little while longer.

The Distance From Me to You by Marina Gessner

When you're a couple chapters into a book and you say, "This is reading like a packaged book," and you turn out to be right, it's probably not a good sign. That's what happened when I started reading The Distance From Me to You, and I ended up not enjoying the book as much as I would have liked. I love the idea of it: a teen decides to hike the Appalachians on her own, which could lead to so much self-discovery and learning how to be self-sufficient. At the end of the day, this book was more of a romance than a coming-of-age story, and that's why I was disappointed in it.

The Love That Split the World by Emily Henry

I had high hopes for this book. I love the cover, and a friend of mine liked the book. Unfortunately, the book didn't work for me, partly because of the instalove and partly because I just got bored about halfway through the book. I liked the idea of having Native American mythology in it, though, I enjoyed reading those myths, though there are some people who feel like the author didn't represent the mythology well. Overall, for me, this was an okay but not great read.

The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson

I adore Morgan Matson. And I liked so much of this book. That being said, it is way too long for a contemporary novel. Halfway through the book, I said, "So, the story is over, then?" because it seemed like everything had been wrapped up nicely. I loved all the subplots of the book, but I felt like there was too much filler, which is why the book was too long and felt like it was over when I was only halfway through it. Overall, I liked the book, but it takes some patience to get through some of the less-interesting parts.



All the Answers by Kate Messner

I've been trying to read more middle grade fiction, and I thought this book would be good for when I visit schools to talk about our summer reading program. While I liked the story well enough, I thought the book was flawed in how it dealt with Ava's anxiety disorder. I don't want to say too much about it, because of spoilers, but I think how other characters responded to Ava's anxiety disorder could have been handled better.





Next month, I'm supposed to read poetry, short stories, plays, and screenplays for the reading challenge my sister and I are doing. So far, I'm planning on reading Buried Child by Sam Shepard, Our Town by Thornton Wilder, The Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, and Black Hawk Down: The Shooting Script by Ken Nolan, and I want to re-read Flying at Night by Ted Kooser. I have to admit, though, that I might sneak some YA and middle grade fiction into the mix, especially since I'm trying to read things that I can talk to kids about during my summer reading program outreaches.

Did you read anything you loved (or hated) this month? Tell us about it in the comments!

Diverse Voices in Mystery

"I wanted to tell a story that hadn't been told," [Walter] Mosley said in an interview at the book festival, which is sponsored by The Times. "It's a whole period that's not talked about, not related to. It was harder then to be black. There was no upward mobility, until recently."

One of the elements altering literature, Mosley said, is the hunger for a broader range of American experiences from the reading public--a shift he applauds.

"In America, black history is American history," Mosley told his audience. "We're looking at our fellow Americans."
~Anne-Marie O'Connor and Julie Ha, "Diversity Shines at L.A. Festival of Books"


The We Need Diverse Books campaign's vision is "A world in which all children can see themselves in the pages of a book." But why stop there? The library hopes to "promote literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people", and readers of all ages! We are mystery fans here at the blog, so we thought we'd begin by showing you some diversity in that genre.

Mystery authors such as Walter Mosley and Barbara Neely brought mainstream success to ethnically diverse mysteries in the 1990s, paving the way for increasing amounts of non-white detectives. Here's a smattering of the diverse detectives you can find in the library catalog.

Land of Shadows by Rachel Howzell Hall

Black Water Rising by Attica Locke

Sex, Murder, and a Double Latte by Kyra Davis

The Dewey Decimal System by Nathan Larson

Land of Careful Shadows by Suzanne Chazin

Follow Her Home by Steph Cha 

The Last Confession by Solomon Jones [eBook] 

One Red Bastard by Ed Lin 

Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup

In the Heat by Ian Vasquez

Slow Burn by  Eleanor Taylor Bland

Summer of the Big Bachi by Naomi Hirahara

The Salaryman's Wife by Sujata Massey 

Bitter Sugar by Carolina Garcia-Aguilera 

Deception On All Accounts by Sara Sue Hoklotubbe 

Indian Country Noir edited by Sarah Cortez & Liz Martínez

In the Heat of the Night by John Ball [LP] 

Plain Brown Wrapper by Karen Grigsby Bates [eAudiobook]

 

 

Links

Not Your Usual Suspects - Genre Spotlight: Mystery [Library Journal]

Mystery Detective Novels by Women of Color [Goodreads]

Diversity of Series Character [Stop, You're Killing Me]

'American Indian Mysteries': A Crossover Genre Not Quite There [Dancing Badger]

Picture Books are Not Just for Kids! Part 5

I'm discovering that most picture books I love are funny.  These three are not particularly.  In fact, I would label them as tear-jerkers.  (The fourth is more heartwarming and less sad, but I'm including it anyway).  I often avoid reading this kind of book at storytime because there is the distinct possibility that I will start crying right there in the middle of it all and upset the kids - and probably the parents.  But these three are good enough that I haven't been able to help myself (and I succeeded at not crying during storytime - barely!).

The kids like these books, too, but I think they must experience them differently than we do as adults.  As I started pondering this, I felt at first that these bittersweet stories introduce children to concepts of friendship, loyalty, loss, etc, rather than offering something a child can relate to already.  When you are only 5 years old, you don't know what it is like to have a lifelong friendship, or have your life saved by a friend.  But young children do certainly feel those intense, longing feelings of love and loss - with parents, siblings, and the rare, super close childhood friend - whether they totally understand them or not. 

Amos and Boris by William Steig
Why I love it: It is a great vocabulary builder compared to many contemporary books, with words like phosphorescent, ambitions, mote, and abounding.  It is long and descriptive, so the characters - a whale and a hardy mouse who meet by chance - are well-developed by the end of this beautiful story.  It is an illustration of friendship that goes much deeper than your average picture book story, with bittersweet themes of mortality, and earned trust, admiration, and respect between friends.  It has that  feel of a classic book that captures the human spirit in a timelessly powerful way.

Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen
Why I love it:  Not only is it set in a library, but it also stirs the imagination because the main character is a real, live lion.  The characters in this story have some nice depth to them, which, in part, causes the end to be really satisfying: a tragic misunderstanding of sorts is resolved and important lessons are learned - namely that one can respect the rules without blindly following them. I like that lesson, and I think it is important for children to understand because it can make them critical thinkers, help keep them safe, and even give them the voice they deserve to gently question. 

Lion and Bird by Marianne Dubuc
Why I love it: It makes me cry every time I read it!!  It is a simple, slow story of companionship and change that is sad, bittersweet, heartwarming, and gentle all at once. This quote captures its essence: "And so it goes.  Sometimes life is like that."  Part of what makes this story slow and sad is that the scenes are drawn out in the illustrations.  One sentence on a page will describe simply how the seasons turned, or the birds flew overhead, but the illustrations on the next page carry on that sentence without adding to it and cause the reader to feel the passing of time and the sinking in of the emotions Lion and Bird stir in us.  What a beautiful book!  I can also heartily recommend other creations of Marianne Dubuc.

Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle
Why I love it: Because preschoolers love to make noises, and this book is full of them.  Make that rhyming noises that create a great plot.  This one has a bit of a moral at the end, which, as I have mentioned, I only like sometimes.  Many children's books teach that children must earn kindness and acceptance by proving themselves to those who don't at first accept them, or that being on one's best behavior is the only way to be loved.  Little Blue Truck, however, serves as a great example of being kind to those who have not been kind to you - a message of unconditional love that can go both ways - sometimes you are giving to someone who doesn't deserve it, and sometimes you are the receiver who doesn't deserve it.  Basically the message I get from this story is that it's not becoming to be ill-behaved, but even badly behaved individuals need love - and often, kindness will turn a person toward better behavior more effectively than shunning or punishment will.

What do you think about how children experience bittersweet stories and the emotions they evoke?  Any favorites that fall into this category?  I'd love to know!