New Worlds

A coloring sheet I drew for my last library storytime. The  Muppet lineage is probably obvious...

Although it seems premature to talk about details, things in my writing life have accelerated to the point where my wife and I decided it was time for me to give full-time writing a shot. (Admittedly this is "full time" to the degree I can do it while looking after the kids -- but I'm going to love that aspect of it too.) So, I have left my job as a children's librarian at Campbell Library.

I've been extremely fortunate to have a "day job" I loved, and I can imagine many scenarios where I would return to library work. (In fact, I'm already scheduled to do a little volunteering.) It's been tremendous fun, and very rewarding. There are few things as gratifying as getting the right book into a kid's hands. And then there's storytime, where I got to ham it up while reading picture books, gradually overcoming my stage fright. Plus the way that reference desk time always teaches you something new every day. And then there's all the drawing I got to do...

My library colleagues have been hugely supportive of this change, and I will miss working with them. Thanks, everyone.

I also have to emphasize how much I owe my wife. She has always looked out for me -- all the way back to the '90s when it first started looking like I might get somewhere with writing. That was a lot of typing and coaching and beta-reading and idea-bouncing and hand-holding ago. I think only a writer's partner can fully appreciate how much work that can be. Thank you, Becky.

I hope I can fill this blog with more specific news in the months ahead, but I can say that things look promising from here. Onward!

All Hallow's Read and the Box of Doom

Neil Gaiman is promoting All Hallow's Read, his most excellent idea of making book-gifting part of the Halloween tradition. As a tie-in, our library is planing a kids' book prize drawing. Details are still being worked out, but we have the box. It's dirt-simple to make -- GRAVE dirt simple, bwahahaha...

What you need:

A cardboard box.
Contact paper with a wood-grain appearance.
Black construction paper.
Construction paper of other colors.
Dot stickers (optional.)
Markers (optional.)
An old black sock.

Tape up the box so it's nice and solid, then cover it with the contact paper. (The contact paper I used was eager to stick to itself, so you might want to peel it slowly.)

Now create "shadowy gaps" in the wood with jagged pieces of black construction paper. You can glue or tape these on. Then you can use construction paper of other colors, or white paper and markers, to create weird glimpses of Things inside the box.

The tricky part is putting a hole in the top of the box. I decorated first and then cut a hole, which is probably not the wisest method, but it worked. Cut a hole in the top big enough to get your hand through. Take an old black sock, preferably one you don't want to wear anymore, and cut it above the bend. Now staple the cut end to the box, like so. (Be careful, I got bloodied in this step. How many more staple wounds will you inflict, accursed box, how many!?) I used a craft stick to blunt the staple ends poking through on the inside.

Now it's ready to go, and you can drop in tickets or trinkets or eyeballs or whatever. Speaking of eyeballs, here's another side of the box. These eyes are just pairs of yellow dot stickers, of the sort that proliferate in librarians' desks. A little black marker adds pupils and boo! more haunts for the box.

Thanks to Marlene Iwamoto and Karen Armor for ideas.

Shiver Me Bookshelves

A drawing I did for a storytime inspired by International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

John Joseph Adams Interview

Over at the Santa Clara County Library blog, there's the text of an interview I did by email with Hugo-nominated editor John Joseph Adams. He edits the online fiction magazines Lightspeed and Fantasy, and was an assistant editor at Fantasy and Science Fiction for many years, but mainly the discussion's about his themed anthology series, beginning with Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse. I hope you'll take a look.

National Volunteer Week

National Volunteer Week starts today. (If you live in Santa Clara County, you might consider the volunteer possibilities listed now on the Santa Clara County Library website, including an adult literacy program.)

I've volunteered at various times at libraries, our daughter's schools, our church, and a homeowners association. The experiences have been pretty positive, all in all. I think volunteerism is some of the grease for society's wheels; without it, things might grind noisily to a halt.

I should also add, though, that you are the best judge of what you can give. Volunteering may not be for you, at least at this time. Knowing when to say "No" can be as important as knowing when to say "Yes." Be good to yourselves -- even as you take a moment to say thanks to a volunteer.

Speaking of Libraries

Image credit: Lin Kristensen, New Jersey, USA

A while back, C.C. Finlay, author of the Traitor the the Crown series, "The Political Officer" and "The Political Prisoner," and much other good stuff) put up an amazing blog post on his connection to his home town library. 

I can't add anything to the post, except gratitude he shared it. But I do want to follow up on something he added in the Comments:

"Every generation needs new books. They're like a life preserver tossed out into the dark sea -- you don't know who will need a particular book but you can be sure that someone will."

One of the important concepts that a recently retired colleague (see this post) taught me is that we keep some books, not because they are popular, but because they are game changers for certain people. Circulation statistics can't tell you which books they are, unfortunately. Identifying them is an art, one that I don't think I've learned. Finlay's essay is, among many other things, a reminder to never let it all be about the numbers.

For Not All Tears Are An Evil

Today there was a retirement party for a librarian who's been with our system since 1977. She had worked beside or supervised everyone in the room. She was responsible for hiring a lot of us. It was an emotional few hours.

In 1977 I was ten years old. Jimmy Carter was president, and I was starting to pay attention to the news. I saw the original Star Wars for the first time. It lit a fire to experience more stories like that, and for the most part the place to find them was books. I was exploring the school library, absorbing books of fantasy, science fiction, space, science, and the weird. The Caldecott Medal winner that year was Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions, with art by the Dillons. I would see a lot more of their art in the future, but that was one I missed.

One of the gifts our colleague got was a copy of Ashanti to Zulu. Another was a beautiful shadow box made up of notes she had written to different librarians over the years, notes of praise or sympathy or encouragement. She always made time for personal touches like that.

The librarians remembered things about her. How she made wonderful felt board stories. How she conveyed her advice on weeding the collection in the form of a recipe card. How she was tough and had the backs of librarians facing criticism for the presence of this book or that, on a shelf or at a storytime.

At one point talk turned to money being tight, and priorities being different. One of the retired librarians present had been the mentor of the librarian retiring now. She said that things always changed -- and that one day they would change for the better again. There was something in her voice that was even better than hope: the clarity of experience.

Another gift was money the group put together to help our colleague and her husband get a good start on traveling. She said she wanted to see the country, since she mostly saw places on library conference trips. She said they might settle in Vermont, a beautiful place, which incidentally has the largest number of public libraries per capita of anywhere in the U.S. (Now I'd like to visit Vermont too.)

She was asked to make remarks. She said it would have been easier to get the words out in email. But she said she'd never have taken back being a children's librarian. And she said that what it came down to was, "What we do matters."

In 1977, sponging up wonderful crazy books, I had no idea I would someday get to use what I was learning that year, to do something that matters.

"Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil."

-- Gandalf, in Return of the King