Picture This!

I missed the boat when it came to responding to THE article published by the New York Times which pointed to the demise of the picture book. The article, Picture Books No Longer a Staple,  created outrage in circle I run in – librarians, writers and children were flummoxed by the assertions. Bloggers wrote rebuttals, listservs buzzed, the first thing said when I met other librarians was “Did you see the article?”

Frankly, I had trouble keeping up with the pace of the responses. I sometimes have the tendency to wait until I’m up to date reading the comments of others before making my own response. I don’t want to say what someone has already said, usually with more panache than I would. This has been a recurring theme for me this year. One I hope to correct in 2011.

Not only that, I’m still trying to process what I heard and learned at the MSLA annual conference in October. There I heard the visionary Stephen Abrams speak about how technology is speeding up and how changing format will drive how our libraries look in the near future. I found myself wandering around in fog over the next few days trying to make sense of what I had heard and how I felt it might all play out in children’s services. Specifically, if the change in format means a real shift from book as a physical artifact to a digital resource, what will that mean for picture books? What about the future of the Caldecott Medal in a digital world? I had not resolved these questions in my mind when the New York Times article appeared. Stephen Abrams had warned us that the changes facing us will be many and of rapid succession. The luxury of understanding one thing before facing the next will be just that, luxury. Those who can quickly respond in clear, concise language their thoughts will certainly be ahead of the rest of us who are left standing in shock trying to catch up. It occurs to me that the skill of responding quickly to new information might be a very important skill to instill in our students.  I need to practice the skill so that I can model it.

This morning I came across the CBS article Expert: Picture Books Do Still Work for Kids. 

While I could have wished for a title with more positive spin, the article is quite solid in outlining how children benefit from picture books. It also encourages parents to add books to the holiday bounty. More than anything, the tone of the article is a calming force. Rather than voicing outrage, the article is reassuring and soothing like a story before bed. Make mine a picture book.

SCBWI - Clicking the button is like saying it out loud

I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I’ve looked at the website. It seemed like it was time to make a commitment. And so a few weeks ago I did it. I joined the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI). It is true that anyone who wants to support children’s books can join. As a school librarian I already had all the credentials I needed to join.

Still, while it felt exhilarating and exciting, it also felt scary. I could sign up as a librarian and let it go at that. I didn’t, though. When I had the chance to check off

Author

Illustrator

Or

Other

I put a check mark next to author. Ever since I’ve been feeling like I told a whopper. I feel like a truth bender, exaggerator, like I’m playing fast and easy with the facts, like a snake oil salesman.

The other day when I arrived home, the package from SCBWI was on the table. The light fell across it and illuminated it. I felt as if I was reaching for the holy grail, as if the moment I touched it my life would be different. I felt as if the contact between my skin and the package would set a set of events in motion that would change my life forever. I looked down to see if I was still middle aged or whether I had been transported to the natural state of my being – garbed in robes of flowing silk and scads of lace.

Funny enough, I do feel like my life has begun a transformation. The transformation happens when you begin to identify yourself as being something. Writing is not something I hope to do some day, but an act I do now and have been doing. I may not be good. I may not be ready to share what I write, but I am writing. Unlike the vision, it doesn’t happen in a flash of an eye. Rather it takes it’s time, pencil lead, notebooks, computer files and plenty of words. 

Nominations – Mock Caldecott

Last Monday we had the meeting at which we were to offer up three titles for nomination. Just three. Did I mention that we were only allowed to nominate three? Who came up with this idea? Me?

In the morning people came into the library grumpy. As far as I could tell there were three reasons for this:

1.     Getting back from break is never a good time to have a deadline.

2.     People were behind in reading and felt that they had to catch up by the meeting.

3.     Choosing was too hard.

When people told me they couldn’t choose, I admitted that I hadn’t chosen either. I had narrowed it down to my top fifteen! I found it difficult to narrow it down to six by the end of the day.

Once people gathered at the end of the day, however, the tension seemed to melt a bit. I think finding out that other people also had difficulty in choosing their nominations made it much easier. I think for those of us doing this for a first time, it seems like everyone else is having an easier time/is more competent/is better able to make the critical judgment.

People showed up for the meeting half an hour early. Some of them tried to fit in a book or two, but others were happy to start talking about the books.

While no one really wanted to be the first, they all joined very calmly. It’s funny how people who had admitted they didn’t know which they would pick in the morning did not hesitate to make nominations. Everyone had well thought out explanations of why they chose the titles they did.

Of fifteen people, eleven were present. After all the nominations were sorted for duplicates it turns out we have a solid twenty-two titles to look at. These will be the ones we review over the next few weeks. 

Using YouTube to Enhance Appreciation of Picture Books

When I started this blog as a project associated with the 23 Things course, I set up a YouTube account, played with it and dropped it. From time to time I thought about the account and how convenient it would be to get it back up and running. It would be a lot easier to tag the videos I enjoy and have them all in one spot. So this evening I logged back in and worked on my channel. While it is really in the infancy stage, I hope that I can use this channel as a resource that people can go to to find videos connected with children's literature.

The main thought I had this evening was to collect trailers for book which we have looked at for the Mock Caldecott. These trailers sometimes give insight into methods used for creating the illustrations, the inspiration for the story or other interesting details. I think that our Mock Caldecott participants will enjoy using this. While I was at it I thought of several other applications such as author/illustrator interviews, and trailers for movies made from books. I will be adding to this resource. If you are interested in looking at my channel, you can find it at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/purpleglassesclub

Mock Caldecott, ambiguity and making decisions

On Monday, the participants in the adult version of the Mock Caldecott will meet to nominate their top three books. A list of these books will be compiled and we will all read these titles. I expect chaos to ensue. In fact, I’m looking forward to it.

Last week people kept saying to me “I’m still looking for THE ONE.” I can sympathize. They want one that blows them over, knocks them over the head and has a label that says “This is the one.” No one wants to be wrong.

This is part of a trend I’ve been seeing for a while. People want to know the right answer. They are afraid of getting it wrong. Standardized testing doesn’t do much to alleviate our fears. We are trained to pick “the right answer” from a group of four possibilities. Frankly, life isn’t much like that. There’s so much more ambiguity.

Just think about it. Making choices in health care is seldom a clear-cut experience. You have to weigh the pros and the cons and make your best guess. Even gathering reams of information won’t help you make a decision that is definitely the correct one. There is room for error. You have to make your best guess based on what you know. It’s a leap of faith.

Our current political and economic environment doesn’t help. There’s plenty of ambiguity facing people in personally significant ways. People who have lost jobs, homes, cars and hard cold cash in the economic downturn must feel the need for answers. There are certainly many, many questions. Finding a silver bullet remains elusive.

Choosing a career, a spouse, a home, even a vacation are all matters of weighing the pros and cons. The career may be the wrong one if a field dries up. Think about people who continued making buggy whips after the motorcar was invented. A spouse can have a mid-life crisis. A hurricane can whip through your vacation paradise. No one can be sure that the decision they are making is the only “right” choice. But we want to feel that there is, out there somewhere, a correct choice to choose.

Life just isn’t that certain.

So participating in an activity that is fraught with ambiguity is at times uncomfortable. Fear of inadequacy, incompetence and failure haunts us.  Sometimes we hope that the right answer is there, that we will somehow miraculously choose it. Then that feeling of discomfort will pass away.

To enjoy the process of the Mock Caldecott you have to let it go. It is much more enjoyable to me to listen to others and learn from them than to think I know the answer. Though it’s not something I’m proud of, I must admit it has taken some effort for me to get to that point. It hasn’t come naturally.

Naturally, I would like to pick the winner. I still remember what it felt like to tell students that I had chosen Jerry Pinkney’s The Lion and the Mouse as my pick for the medal. How glorious it felt to be right. My dear students applauded when they heard the news. They were so proud of me. Will I choose it again this year? Maybe, but maybe not. That’s not the point. This year, I’ve moved beyond that. It is not whether I am “right” or not. It’s really more about the process and who I become through the process. I’ll choose a contender – a really fine book.

I anticipate that there will be participants who come to the meeting on Monday who have not yet made their decisions as well as some who feel confident. No doubt about it, I’m anxious to experience this part of the process.

Am I going to tell you which books I choose? No way. I might be wrong.

Mock Caldecott for Students

As we were looking at so many great new books, I began to think it made sense to extend the project to our students. Naturally, they can read neither the number nor the range of books we are reading. They can, however, have a limited number read to them, discuss their relative merits and make a decision based on the criteria given to them.

So a couple weeks ago I started going through the selections I had read to pull out the titles I thought age appropriate. Ten books seemed like a reasonable number to have students be able to read and think about. So we are compromising between the many I’d like them to read and what I think optimal and going with 15 books.

Introducing the project to the kids was even more rewarding than I anticipated. They were very excited to have a chance to pretend in school and to have a chance to vote!

We reviewed what the medal is for, who awards it and who receives it, the shape and color of the medal, as well as the various elements of the design on the medal. Kindergarteners who had just learned about the medal last week proved to have impressive memories. First graders who had the lesson last year impressed me with their ability to recall the design elements.

Some people have questioned whether learning the elements on the medal is important. My response is a resounding YES! After students have learned about the Caldecott Medal they are very enthusiastic to find one in the library. In their excitement to find one, children will bring me copies of books with the Pura Belpre Medal, the Geisel Award, the Newbery Medal, Parent’s Choice Awards, The Golden Kite Award and even the spectacularly differently shaped Coretta Scott King Award. It seems as though as long as it glitters it is a Caldecott in their minds. I remind them to think about what is on the Caldecott Medal. Then they are instructed to compare what they are looking at with what they know to be elements of the Caldecott Medal.

I outlined some basic things we were looking for in the illustrations:

-       Do the illustrations match the story?

-       Did the illustrator use the kinds of colors that would make the story more understandable?

-       Did the shapes match the feeling of the story? (Sharp objects being scarier. Round objects being more comfy.)

-       Was the illustrator good at his/her job?

Students did a remarkable job of responding to these questions. They are challenged to evaluate whether they think a book will be happy or sad by looking at the cover. Then they are required to give an explanation.

The adult group found it very difficult to separate their feelings about the story and the illustrations. If the story was heartwarming they overlooked inconsistencies or lack of prowess with the artistic medium.  It took several weeks and plenty of coaching for the process to become more natural.

Interestingly enough children fall into two camps on this skill.

1.     Some students are completely unable to separate their thought about the book based on text, illustrations, theme, etc. One student thought the illustrator had done a very bad job on the book. When I asked why he stated that it was “because the book is sad.” This tendency is not likely to be a surprise as we are used to thinking of children as being less sophisticated than adults.

2.     Some students have little to no trouble separating the illustrations from the text. In fact, they treat them as two separate items. I would postulate that this is because they are used to experiencing books in this way. I am working with very young children who are in the process of learning to read. Some of them have very little ability to read a book on their own. These children primarily experience books by flipping through the pages and “reading” the pictures. Recently when I introduced the “5 finger rule” to a class I saw a student with his 5 fingers up “reading” the book making up his own story as he went. Not so amazingly, all five of his fingers were still up at the end of the book. This is how he envisions the reading experience.

Running the Mock-Caldecott, or the Fake-Caldecott as one student calls it, with students is well worth the effort. Students are really enjoying it and it' interesting to see the experience through a different lens.

PiBoIdMo and the Proliferation of Thinking Chairs

I am taking part in a writing challenge this month called PiBoIdMo or Picture Book Idea Month for those of you Acronym challenged folks. PiBoIdMo is the brainchild of Tara Lazar whose blog Tara Lazar: Writing for Kids (While Raising Them) is a place to visit if you are interested in children’s lit. The idea is that you come up with and file one idea for a picture book each day of the month of November. She has lined up an amazing set of guest bloggers to post inspirations for the journey and some pretty nifty prizes. 

The real value, though, is the chance to “meet” some inspiring fellow writers and bloggers. I am enjoying the communal aspect of it, the inspiration and the fact that I have at least one idea on file for each day.

Before the challenge began, children’s writer, artist and blogger Dana Cary posted her preparations for the month on her blog Up in the Attic Lately. In this post she shared her idea for the creation of a “thinking chair” including information about how she pulled it together. Check out her idea. 

I was not alone in reading the post and feeling a need deep in my heart to have a thinking chair of my own. So I pulled out the camp chair I usually take to Elizabeth Park, draped a floral quilt over it, plunked a silk flower arrangement in the drink holder and topped it with a fuzzy pink blanket with pom pons and VIOLA!, my thinking chair was born. Then I got the idea to add a pink fuzzy bean bag chair topping an exercise ball as a foot stool. The ideas come quickly when sitting in this very relaxing chair. Great ideas for picture books, ideas for school and relaxing thoughts which make the end of the day a pleasure.

Where do you do your best thinking? Will you be setting aside a corner to do your thinking?