Week 1
I loved the assignments this week: designed to be confidence builders, no doubt. Thirty-five years of slinging books paid off in the book cover quiz; I scored 20/20 for adult titles and 16/20 for the children’s books (the pinhole revealed too small a sample for me in some cases…). Cindy Orr’s Golden Rules of Readers’ Advisory Services summarized nicely all the things we try to learn and remember. The genre covers were so typical they were mostly easy-peasy; even surprised myself by knowing the subgenres of Sci-fi. The only cover that really threw me was “Techno”: I thought it was Spy/Espionage, but I guess I have drones on the brain ever since I listened to Rachel Maddow’s scary Drift : the Unmooring of America’s Military Power. The six-year-old guessing the content of classic books by their covers seems to have an infatuation with robots—that STEM indoctrination is paying early dividends….
My constant companion web sites will be Nora Rawlinson’s “Early Word” and “Stop, You’re Killing Me!” I’ve been subscribing to Early Word’s weekly alerts since last fall’s RS Training. I love that it covers adult, teen and children’s materials, the fact that it includes breaking news and media tie-ins, and the understood crossover appeal that is stressed between publishers and libraries. And it covers everything! I love its lists, its spreadsheets, its prominent link to Nancy Pearl, Early Word Kids—even its ads are interesting!
I’ll also follow the mystery site “Stop, You’re Killing Me!” I know the line between Fiction and Mystery can be hazy at times and although “classic” mysteries have always made me feel stupid, I can appreciate a good story, well-told—and so can many of BCPL’s hard-core readers. SYKM looks like a great resource to become more familiar with mystery’s many sub-genres, to refresh my memory with the authors I recognize and to introduce many newer authors that I should know more about. While not as flashy and chatty as Early Word, SYKM looks jam-packed with resources that can help answer What Mystery Readers Need to Know.
