I could blame my lack of blogging on the stresses of being a parent and holding down a job and just general life. But if I really had anything to write about - and that I wanted to share publicly - I could find time to blog. It's just that I haven't had anything I wanted to talk about in front of the entire world. Privately, yes. I guess I'm just kind of over having my personal life and philosophy laid out for all to see and critique.
However, today something happened that's got me connecting a few dots and, yeah, I want to share my conclusions.
When I'm on the reference desk, I get TONS of questions from people. Some are straightforward: Can I help someone find Book X or Movie Y? Can you help me with the printer? Where's your copy machine? Where's the bathroom? Some are a little more complicated, like how to check out an ebook or use the online Consumer Reports database. All fairly manageable and routine. (Though anything that involves calling the police, I hand over to the Librarian in Charge - thankfully those instances have been few and far between in my experience.)
And some are simple on the surface, but then they stick with you all day and makes you worry just a bit.
I had a mother bring her teenage daughter to the library today. Nothing out of the ordinary - lots of parents escort their kids to the reference desk looking for books. But this mom was out to prove a point to her child. The first thing she asked me was if there was anything "like Stephen King in the teen section, but not Stephen King." Meaning something that could be classified as horror, but that wasn't overly graphic in terms of language, sex, and violence. She kept bringing up Stephen King, which clued me into the fact that her daughter liked reading Stephen King, but the mother strenuously objected to it.
Already, I can tell that I am not the librarian this mother wants to take on this task. Sure, Stephen King isn't exactly my cup of tea, but that's not to say he's a horrible writer (just in some cases). He certainly has his fans, nothing wrong with that. But this mother wants me to play the finger-wagging scoldy librarian who will introduce her daughter to the wonders of dusty old "classic" literature that only the high and mighty ever understand (in the service of irony, have a link to an article on that subject). Or at least squeaky-clean literature where no one ever, ever says a bad word or has dirty thoughts and no one ever dies in terrible, violent ways.
If I could have shown this mom the contents of my Kindle, she would have passed out on the fainting couch.
As is my habit in these cases, I turned to talk to the girl. If I had to guess, she's probably 14 or 15. Certainly no younger than 13. I asked her what she liked to read. She didn't want to answer. Okay, maybe a reluctant reader, this is not my first rodeo. What about her favorite TV show? Her answer? Supernatural. Got it - that's something I can work with. What does she like about that show and would she want to read something similar?
I had to pry these answers out of this girl. She looked like she would rather be anywhere else than in front of me with her overbearing mother. Because at this point, Mom jumps in with "But not Stephen King. None of that - ew - gross horror stuff."
(Here I started thinking "I didn't bring up Stephen King, lady. You're the only one mentioning the guy.")
Mom suggests a few titles that I can tell the girl is not going to like. All teen paranormal romance titles, which Mom thinks the girl is going to like because there's vampires and spooky magic stuff in them. The girl is annoyed, but doesn't say anything. Looking back with the benefits of hindsight, it seems this has been a point of some contention and the daughter is tired of trying to make her point.
In the interests of being the helpful librarian (see also: my day job) - I come up with a few ideas. I first bring up Maura McHugh's Twisted Fairy Tales and Twisted Myths, which are both anthologies of traditional fairy tales and classic myths, respectively, with a horror twist (not a far stretch in most cases) that I read during Halloween and enjoy for their macabre atmosphere. Mom put the kibosh on those on the grounds of "That looks too scary."
Okaaaaay... how about the Dresden Files? The girl says that she likes Supernatural because the guys investigate things like ghosts and otherworldly creatures. (I can honestly say that I couldn't think of a damn thing in the teen area because it's all Twilight and Hunger Games love-triangle knockoffs.) I even describe the scene in Dead Beat where Harry resurrects a T-rex skeleton in the Museum of Natural History and rides it into battle. And I swear, the girl's eye lit up like a frickin' Christmas tree.
BINGO.
I pulled up the catalog entry with all of Jim Butcher's stuff and the mom asked "Is there bad language and violence?" At most, the Dresden Files contains a handful of swearwords, and very rarely the most objectionable. But even that explanation didn't fly here. Honestly, I probably should have lied and said that Harry Dresden is a paragon of the moralest of moral virtues and never says anything worse than "shucky-darn" (though his best friend, Michael Carpenter, certainly fits that bill - and he's also an awesome badass bonefide paladin soldier of God who owns a magic sword that contains a nail from the Cross. Oh man - and the relationship between his wife, Charity, and their daughter, Molly, would have probably hit home for this girl. Maybe she'll pick up the series on her own. I sure hope so).
This whole back and forth was really frustrating for me, and I could tell the girl was getting upset too. I so wanted to tell this girl to come back later without her mother and we'd talk. Or that I could have told Mom to go peruse the parenting aisle for a few minutes while I helped her daughter find something that she'd be interested in reading. As it was, I managed to find a kind of compromise with "The Last Apprentice" by Joseph Delaney. At least it was in the teen area.
And here's the deal - I can pretty much guarantee that this girl is going to read and watch what she pleases behind her mother's back. I know because I did that (the statute of limitations has far run out on these "crimes"). I had Sailor Moon on recorded VHS tapes and Animorphs books that I bought with my own money and that I had stashed away in a bottom drawer and in the back of my closet. Now, I wouldn't say my parents were overbearing about my reading habits - but there were a few things they didn't quite approve of at the time. But if I could do that in a time before the internet was ubiquitous and smartphones and ebooks weren't even a thing, what are today's teenagers going to get away with? And spare me the pearl-clutching, panic-inducing, scare-tactic, click-bait, pop-up-ad-riddled articles proclaiming this app or this website is going to eat our children in one painful swallow. While your concern is appreciated, your gullibility is less laudable. Correct it.
(Apologies to Lois McMaster Bujold with that last sentence.)
Here I come to where I start to connect the dots - I subscribe to a philosophy that more ideas, not less, is the ideal. Let people - adults, teens, kids - learn about things for themselves. True, you have to take into account maturity levels with certain subjects and materials. You can be a responsible adult and allow kids to experience these ideas and still do it in a safe and controlled (note, not controlling) environment.
But this Puritanical moral guardian panic attitude helps precisely no one. It didn't work in the '80s when parents groups were freaking out about D&D and saying that a game of make-believe is going to lead to their kids worshipping Satan. It didn't work in the early 2000s when parents thought Harry Potter was going to lead their kids to worshipping Satan. It's not working now when social justice scolds think a mention of Native American culture in a kids' book is going to lead kids to turn into bigots and worship... whatever their shitty version of Satan is.
I don't have to like everything that I put in a patron's hand. There have been times where helping a patron find a particular book has pissed me off so badly because I hated the book that they were looking for and my instinct was to warn them away from it. But by damn, if that's what they're looking for, I will help them find it and let them read it. I will save my internal rants for when I get home. There should be something in every public library that will piss off at least one person. If we tried to keep our libraries free of inoffensive content for everyone, we wouldn't have a damn thing on the shelves.
People probably associate me with the ultra-conservative religious right as far as politics go. In some ways, that is true. However, there is a lot that has caused me to diverge more into the small-l libertarian ways of thinking (and before some jackass starts, I really have no opinion about legalized pot one way or the other, so don't even ask). Meaning, you leave me alone, I leave you alone, and you can do as you wish as long as you don't steal from, injure, or kill somebody. Pretty straightforward.
(An acquaintance once characterized it thusly: "I want my gay-married neighbors to be able to protect their pot garden with AR-15s.")
And yet, there are people who not only want to police what they themselves say, do, and think, but they want to make rules for what we ALL say, do, and think. I used to be a little more secretive about the media I enjoyed, but that made me feel like some kind of criminal (or at least a junkie that had to indulge her bad habits on the sly). But I've come to a point in my life where I don't give a crap if people know that I read trashy romance novels or watch anime or read books with violence and bad language, but have interesting stories and well-written characters. If they want to scold me for my choices, that says a lot more about them than it will ever say about me.
I've sure come a long way from that scared kid trying to navigate middle school and endure snotty comments and snide looks from her classmates. With any luck, this girl that I tried to help will also learn some valuable lessons along the way.
Sigh... I can only do so much. Which is why I plan to let my kid's friends come over and read whatever they like, especially if it's something their parents give them crap about. I'll even provide the snacks. Probably won't make me popular with the adults in the neighborhood, but I'm starting to learn that social sphere is kind of overrated.
However, today something happened that's got me connecting a few dots and, yeah, I want to share my conclusions.
When I'm on the reference desk, I get TONS of questions from people. Some are straightforward: Can I help someone find Book X or Movie Y? Can you help me with the printer? Where's your copy machine? Where's the bathroom? Some are a little more complicated, like how to check out an ebook or use the online Consumer Reports database. All fairly manageable and routine. (Though anything that involves calling the police, I hand over to the Librarian in Charge - thankfully those instances have been few and far between in my experience.)
And some are simple on the surface, but then they stick with you all day and makes you worry just a bit.
I had a mother bring her teenage daughter to the library today. Nothing out of the ordinary - lots of parents escort their kids to the reference desk looking for books. But this mom was out to prove a point to her child. The first thing she asked me was if there was anything "like Stephen King in the teen section, but not Stephen King." Meaning something that could be classified as horror, but that wasn't overly graphic in terms of language, sex, and violence. She kept bringing up Stephen King, which clued me into the fact that her daughter liked reading Stephen King, but the mother strenuously objected to it.
 |
| Maybe this is more like what she expected to get? I dunno... |
If I could have shown this mom the contents of my Kindle, she would have passed out on the fainting couch.
As is my habit in these cases, I turned to talk to the girl. If I had to guess, she's probably 14 or 15. Certainly no younger than 13. I asked her what she liked to read. She didn't want to answer. Okay, maybe a reluctant reader, this is not my first rodeo. What about her favorite TV show? Her answer? Supernatural. Got it - that's something I can work with. What does she like about that show and would she want to read something similar?
I had to pry these answers out of this girl. She looked like she would rather be anywhere else than in front of me with her overbearing mother. Because at this point, Mom jumps in with "But not Stephen King. None of that - ew - gross horror stuff."
(Here I started thinking "I didn't bring up Stephen King, lady. You're the only one mentioning the guy.")
Mom suggests a few titles that I can tell the girl is not going to like. All teen paranormal romance titles, which Mom thinks the girl is going to like because there's vampires and spooky magic stuff in them. The girl is annoyed, but doesn't say anything. Looking back with the benefits of hindsight, it seems this has been a point of some contention and the daughter is tired of trying to make her point.
In the interests of being the helpful librarian (see also: my day job) - I come up with a few ideas. I first bring up Maura McHugh's Twisted Fairy Tales and Twisted Myths, which are both anthologies of traditional fairy tales and classic myths, respectively, with a horror twist (not a far stretch in most cases) that I read during Halloween and enjoy for their macabre atmosphere. Mom put the kibosh on those on the grounds of "That looks too scary."
 |
| "Polka will never die!" (It makes sense in context. Pic from here) |
BINGO.
I pulled up the catalog entry with all of Jim Butcher's stuff and the mom asked "Is there bad language and violence?" At most, the Dresden Files contains a handful of swearwords, and very rarely the most objectionable. But even that explanation didn't fly here. Honestly, I probably should have lied and said that Harry Dresden is a paragon of the moralest of moral virtues and never says anything worse than "shucky-darn" (though his best friend, Michael Carpenter, certainly fits that bill - and he's also an awesome badass bonefide paladin soldier of God who owns a magic sword that contains a nail from the Cross. Oh man - and the relationship between his wife, Charity, and their daughter, Molly, would have probably hit home for this girl. Maybe she'll pick up the series on her own. I sure hope so).
This whole back and forth was really frustrating for me, and I could tell the girl was getting upset too. I so wanted to tell this girl to come back later without her mother and we'd talk. Or that I could have told Mom to go peruse the parenting aisle for a few minutes while I helped her daughter find something that she'd be interested in reading. As it was, I managed to find a kind of compromise with "The Last Apprentice" by Joseph Delaney. At least it was in the teen area.
And here's the deal - I can pretty much guarantee that this girl is going to read and watch what she pleases behind her mother's back. I know because I did that (the statute of limitations has far run out on these "crimes"). I had Sailor Moon on recorded VHS tapes and Animorphs books that I bought with my own money and that I had stashed away in a bottom drawer and in the back of my closet. Now, I wouldn't say my parents were overbearing about my reading habits - but there were a few things they didn't quite approve of at the time. But if I could do that in a time before the internet was ubiquitous and smartphones and ebooks weren't even a thing, what are today's teenagers going to get away with? And spare me the pearl-clutching, panic-inducing, scare-tactic, click-bait, pop-up-ad-riddled articles proclaiming this app or this website is going to eat our children in one painful swallow. While your concern is appreciated, your gullibility is less laudable. Correct it.
(Apologies to Lois McMaster Bujold with that last sentence.)
Here I come to where I start to connect the dots - I subscribe to a philosophy that more ideas, not less, is the ideal. Let people - adults, teens, kids - learn about things for themselves. True, you have to take into account maturity levels with certain subjects and materials. You can be a responsible adult and allow kids to experience these ideas and still do it in a safe and controlled (note, not controlling) environment.
But this Puritanical moral guardian panic attitude helps precisely no one. It didn't work in the '80s when parents groups were freaking out about D&D and saying that a game of make-believe is going to lead to their kids worshipping Satan. It didn't work in the early 2000s when parents thought Harry Potter was going to lead their kids to worshipping Satan. It's not working now when social justice scolds think a mention of Native American culture in a kids' book is going to lead kids to turn into bigots and worship... whatever their shitty version of Satan is.
I don't have to like everything that I put in a patron's hand. There have been times where helping a patron find a particular book has pissed me off so badly because I hated the book that they were looking for and my instinct was to warn them away from it. But by damn, if that's what they're looking for, I will help them find it and let them read it. I will save my internal rants for when I get home. There should be something in every public library that will piss off at least one person. If we tried to keep our libraries free of inoffensive content for everyone, we wouldn't have a damn thing on the shelves.
People probably associate me with the ultra-conservative religious right as far as politics go. In some ways, that is true. However, there is a lot that has caused me to diverge more into the small-l libertarian ways of thinking (and before some jackass starts, I really have no opinion about legalized pot one way or the other, so don't even ask). Meaning, you leave me alone, I leave you alone, and you can do as you wish as long as you don't steal from, injure, or kill somebody. Pretty straightforward.
(An acquaintance once characterized it thusly: "I want my gay-married neighbors to be able to protect their pot garden with AR-15s.")
And yet, there are people who not only want to police what they themselves say, do, and think, but they want to make rules for what we ALL say, do, and think. I used to be a little more secretive about the media I enjoyed, but that made me feel like some kind of criminal (or at least a junkie that had to indulge her bad habits on the sly). But I've come to a point in my life where I don't give a crap if people know that I read trashy romance novels or watch anime or read books with violence and bad language, but have interesting stories and well-written characters. If they want to scold me for my choices, that says a lot more about them than it will ever say about me.
I've sure come a long way from that scared kid trying to navigate middle school and endure snotty comments and snide looks from her classmates. With any luck, this girl that I tried to help will also learn some valuable lessons along the way.
Sigh... I can only do so much. Which is why I plan to let my kid's friends come over and read whatever they like, especially if it's something their parents give them crap about. I'll even provide the snacks. Probably won't make me popular with the adults in the neighborhood, but I'm starting to learn that social sphere is kind of overrated.
