Summertime is a bleak time in Elbow. It rains constantly and the kids who aren’t lucky enough to leave are in serious danger of webbed feet!  When Bea notices a photo contest that promises a trip to sunny Florida, she jumps at the chance.  She and Sam tour an old house and discover a dead body, Herman Henderson the Pickle King.  He isn’t just dead, he’s missing an eye.  When Bea takes a picture of the body she believes that his ghost flew into her camera.  This is a ghost story!  When Bea and Sam contact the other kids in town – the school requires they spend time together – the Raintown Convicts are born.  The Convicts set out to discover what really happened to Herman: a bag of Herman’s intestines show up; Herman helps them with some clues, and things turn scary. Suddenly all the adults in the convicts lives are telling them to beware. The Raintown Convicts are led to the garbage dump, renamed Garbage City as it is the home to Elbow’s homeless population.  Oh, and the dump is a soupy sloppy mess.  In the end, the Convicts discover a plot to buy (and kill for) human body parts. It’s very “Frankenstein’s Monster”.  I didn’t even mention the rats, the large rats that chase the kids down a Garbage City chute and end up in their tummies.  Chilling.

This is not my kind of story.  It is both funny and horrible at the same time.  The putrid descriptions of a garbage-filled lake nauseated me.  Bea has a penchant for the word hell, she says it a lot.  In the end this is a mystery with some real danger invovled. Elbow is a community crippled in fear.  I was pleased to see the rain symbolically end at the end of mystery. The danger is over and life can go on.

My rating:

Production:  The narrator, Laurance Bouvard,  did an excellent job of creating her characters.  The brassy tones of spoiled whiny Madison made my ears hurt, but I suppose that was the point…  I suppose the best thing I can say about a narration is that the characters, both good and evil, came alive to me.

My rating:

The Pickle King by Rebecca Promitzer has 404 pages and is for readers in grades 6 – 9.  sh 8.10

Today didn’t start very well.  I lost a contact this morning and spent about 40 minutes looking for it.  Never found it.

9:15 – 10:00 various online updating.  Asked colleagues to keep a lookout for ugly book covers.

10 –  10.30 weeding and listening to Eva by Dickinson.  Eva is really starting to advocate for her chimp friends and companions.

10.45 – 11.30 met with other librarians in dept to go over departmental issues: where to put certain titles, department meeting agendas for the rest of the calendar year, and going over our calendars.

lunch We took a coworker out to lunch for finishing her thesis for her master’s degree.  She’s worked here since high school and has helped us immeasurably through the years.  This last hurdle (finishing her degree now it’s finding a job) is probably the last one she’ll face before she leaves us for good.  But it’s been about a 11-12 year relationship and her finishing her master’s is worth celebrating.

1 – 2.15 Weeding.  I have to finish it!  and I did by 3.55.

2.15 -3.15 While on desk, I’ll helped someone with summer reading prizes who was so proud that he hadn’t been to the library all summer long and just came once to pick up his prizes.  You know what?  I’m not so impressed.  One of our goals is to have kids actually visit the library in the summer. The library is for all kinds of people, even rich ones.  And there are certainly people who have lots of money who use the library.  It irks me that the kid just wanted his stuff.   We’ve had 76 days of summer reading (not including the few days we were closed for Memorial Day, Independence Day and for the GroveFest).  You haven’t been in your community’s library in 76 days?   The end of summer reading does this to me–the people who only come for the loot.  The families you build relationships with–some have come to my wedding or their mom’s are on my goodreads or facebook account, and even the ones who I don’t know but come on a regular basis — those are the people that sustain me on days like today.   Greedy little thing.

Rant over.

4.00 – 5.00 Cleaning of the desk. I know I started week off cleaning my desk but it would be nice to start off August well. On the whole today was interrupt driven.   But, good things were done today … and I fulfilled my goal to have my weeding done by today.  And we left Eva getting her chimp friends ready for a typhoon. Hopefully they’ll abandon the idea of putting them in boxes and killed and let the chimps climb the trees away from the soon-to-be flooded reservoirs.  Scary.

Have  a good weekend and see you next cycle.

At 8:59 I walked into the library and saw the computers were all turned off and realized I made an error.  With someone on vacay, and her sub working tonight, I didn’t get someone to open the department. Oops.  Hope no one needs a museum pass first thing, because there are no computers turned on.

9 – 10.30 Suddenly I’m on desk because the desk schedule is completely, completely, inaccurate.  So I re-work the schedule and work the desk.  It’s pretty quiet today so being on desk isn’t that big of a deal.

10.30 – 12 I worked with my volunteer while weeding.  My volunteer finished labeling the new textbooks for the non-circulating textbook collection.  He filled out his volunteer evaluation and stated that the worst part of volunteering was “Lack of depth” [in the tasks I suppose].  The volunteer application clearly states that the tasks will be mundane and uninteresting–I guess he thought I was kidding.

lunch and after in which I discover the desk schedule, even the re-worked one, is possibly still wrong.  Fixed.

1 – 2.30 Weeding.  I’m almost done with my 25 shelves.  While weeding my office mate and I have been weeding while we listen to the audiobook of Eva by Peter Dickinson.  Listening sort of makes me focus on weeding.

2.30 – 3.15 on desk and weeding.  Had some summer reading prizes to give away as well as some RA.  I have a regular patron who has read every book I can think of…I think she’s ready for Anne of Green Gables so I gave her that.  I think Anne is often given to girls a little young, they may be able to read and even comprehend the text, but not appreciate it.  For that you have to be in middle school (in my opinion, of course).

3.15 – 5.00 off desk and more weeding.  While in the Hughes I came across a book so horrid that I decided to change the focus of my posterous account.  It will now focus on horrid book covers.  So I set that up and finished a third shelf of weeding.  I have two more to do tomorrow to meet my deadline.

I took Wednesday, July 28 off.  In my absence they caught a really big mouse.

9:00 – 9:30 Wow.  More things packed into that half hour than all day yesterday.

1. No electricity in my office.  Overhead lights were on, but nothing else so I call the office who tells me that the SAM server is down.  He’ll figure what is going on in a minute.
2. Manager tells me the main extension phone rings once then hangs up.  I go out and forward all calls to a different extension.  That works.
3. I find someone to work for me Wednesday so I can take the day off. (check)
4. I find someone who can be in charge for me Wednesday so I can really take the day off (check).
5. I go into office to tell them I found an in charge person on Wednesday.  Not there, but I talk to the director about my office.  He comes and checks on it and we discover there is electricity out in one of the computer rooms.
6. Suddenly we think the phones are working so I take them off forwarding, email the in-charge changes and get a phone call …
7. The Brainfuse salesman was here for our meeting

9.30 – 11.00 Two other library staff members (from the Reference Dept) and I met with Jack the salesman from Brainfuse.  I liked the product.  I think it will depend on whether we can afford it or not.

11.00 – noon Came back to my office where there is electricity and log-on to officially start my day.  Somewhere along the way I get called to the desk to help with the line forming.  The rest of this hour has been in scheduling work: getting someone to work Friday to take a colleague out for lunch for finishing her masters and sending in-charge hours to the office for August.

Lunch

12.45 – 2.30 On desk   Between prize pick up duty, I have been completing my j/fiction weeding assignment.  There are five of us weeding the fiction section and we each get 75 shelves.  To break up that quantity of work, my manager broke the assignment up to 25 shelves every 2 months. I have Tuesday, Thursday and Friday (I took off tomorrow) to finish six shelves.  So,  I have the H’s and I’m now working on Horowitz. I’m here to testify that Every Horowitz Book Has Gone Out In the Last Twelve Months!!!  Even the one from 1985: Night of the Scorpion. That book has checked out 102 times (the other circs I have on it in had gone out 65 times by 11/92 and by 2/99 it had gone out 71 times… It’s in pretty good shape but needs a new plastic cover.)

2.30 – 3.15 Off desk. Time for a break, update this posting, and when I got back to my desk I noticed some new Playaways that have just been processed.  I handled that… then…

3.15  -5.00 Back on desk.  More weeding and J/F/Horowitz facts: of the 63 Horowitz books we own (not including pb/j) 30 of them are checked out.  Spent the last twenty minutes on desk continuing my Booklist ordering from Monday.

That is it for me… I’m taking Wednesday off and I’ll be back on Thursday.

sh 7.10

I just remembered I signed up to do this! This week is also the last week of our summer reading club, The Great Reading Experiment. We went with mad science this year and it’s been fun and well received… mama’s love their science! 

9:00 – 12:15  My day was spent cleaning off my desk.  I did some scheduling conflicts and spent time on twitter.  This October we’ll be holding a children’s literature bracket and we brainstormed some villains and their taglines: White Witch, always winter no Christmas; Cruella DeVil, puppy killer; Voldemort, out to destroy all mankind.  She came up with twenty names… we’ll whittle that down for our bracket voting.  it should be fun.

1:00 – 3.00  On desk.  It’s a beautiful day in suburban Chicago so I imagine most people are at the pool.  We only have six days til the end of summer reading.  Mysteriously, I was just given the May 2010 copy of Booklist so I am ordering books while talking villain talk and helping with SRC prizes.

While on desk, I was asked for happy CDs for an infant which I took to mean non-lullaby CDs.  both Raffi’s Singable Song CDs were checked out.  So, Barenaked Ladies Snack Time, Best Toddler Tunes vol. 2, Rhinoceros Tap by Boynton.  I also had a RA question (normally we’ll have quite a few in one day — it really is nice out). A fourth grader looking for the next great book.

She most recently read and enjoyed:

1. The Meanest Doll in the World by Ann B. Martin
2. Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
3. The Eragon trilogy by Paolini which she liked the most.  When asked why it was the adventure (common in all three titles), but really liked the length of the Paolini books — I think long is the new genre in children’s literature.  She was able to conclude that she likes long books because she can take her time reading them.  It’s a good reason.

After a few more open ended questions, we settled on the Charlie Bone (aka Children of the Red King) books by Nimmo.

3.00 – 5.00  With the evening crew here, I handled a few more scheduling questions and then settled into more journal reading.  I had VOYA and a few others I went through.  (Didn’t finish Booklist though, I must have done more talking than I realized…)  That’s it for me for Monday, July 26.

sh

Genevieve Welsh and her family are going to a working farm (and living the life of Wyoming settlers lived in 1890) for their summer vacation.  Gen’s mom is the only one who is excited about the trip.   When they get to Camp Frontier, participants must surrender everything they bring with them—no iPods, no cell phones, nothing that wasn’t available in 1890.  They must even wear 1890 clothes, a confusing mix of layers and wool stockings.  When Genevieve learns her mother bought her a cell-phone to bribe her into a good attitude this summer, Gen finds a way to slip the phone into Camp Frontier.  Throughout her difficult time at camp—outhouses, laundry, beans at every meal, milking the cow—Gen sneaks her phone out and sends text messages to her friends.    These friends just happen to be taking a computer class and use her text messages to fulfill their blog assignment.  Through a series of blunders, the over-zealous owners of Camp Frontier and other campers discover Gen’s cell-phone. The Welsh’s could be kicked out of Camp Frontier—just as they were starting to love it and really bond as a family.  When it’s discovered her blog is a national success, things get even more confusing.

Oh the horrors.   I would not have been successful at Camp Frontier, not as a kid and not as an adult.  I can closely identify with Gen’s experiences.  I would not have wanted to be there and would have done what I could to get out of it.   The cast of characters made the whole camp experience believable.  Gen meets friends she wouldn’t have related to at home.  There’s even a cute boy.  Even Camp Frontier is better with a cute boy.  I really enjoyed the modern take on getting back to nature.

Little Blog on the Prairie by Cathlenn Davitt Bell has 276 pages. I would recommend it for 6 – 8th graders.  sh 7.10

I’m up for a challenge, I think.  LiteraryWife is reading the 100 Juvenile Fiction titles that Elizabeth Bird compiled.  She challenged others in a very eloquent post about success.

Amber suggests these books be read in a year.  I will give it the old college try.  I need to decide the following: 1) do I re-read the books I’ve already or skip them?  2)will they all be audiobooks?

I think I will try and read/re-read them all.  This may mean I miss the July 1, 2011 deadline.  We’ll see.  I will try and get most of them on audiobooks.  The problem is that I have to read for my job over and above 100 books (boo-hoo, right? that’s what makes it a challenge).

I will keep you posted. First up?  The Egypt Game by Snyder (I hope it’s in.)

I chose sleep over Scott Westerfeld.  In other words, I’m done.

I read another 45 minutes last night to finish Crunch and to add that to my total hours of 21.5…

My finish time is: 22.25 hours.

I read a total of 6 books and my favorite books this weekend were: As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth by Lynne Rae Perkins and Lynn Visible by De Villers

I feel like I read enough to save a heron or egret!

Thanks for joining me.

I’m normally not a philanthropic sort.  I’m really not, but yesterday I saw a picture of a bird coated in Gulf Oil and it sort of made me sick to my stomach.

Many bloggers are donating their reading time and turning it into cash.  As I was just washing dishes with Dawn detergent, I thought what kind of Reading Chick would I be if I didn’t help birdies in trouble?  [Answer: a cold hearted one]

I am going to turn every hour I read into $2.00. My goal is to have enough money to adopt an egret/heron.  You are welcome to help me save some birdies at  the International Bird Rescue Research Center.