The Prairie Librarian

The moon and the sunset and even the sea and trees are sort of unstoppable. There is not much anyone could do to make these things not persist, even if they made a really concerted effort. Libraries are unfortunately not in that category - we are in fact kind of the opposite of that category in that actually we disappear frighteningly quickly and easily without constant support.

It worries me a little to see people paint us as anything other than fighting a series of pitched battles to survive. We persist because we're fighting those battles, all the time, but your help fighting them is not just appreciated but specifically and extremely necessary.

Using libraries is a really helpful first step in helping us persist, but at this point, we may need more people to go on to the second step of telling your local municipal politicians about it when you do. I'm not sure where Tumblr got the idea that increased library use translates directly into increased funding for libraries, but that hasn't ever been true in my experience. It's just an effective argument you can make when asking for an increase. And the politicians don't much like listening to us about it, even when we are giving them the Very Impressive Numbers you help us get to by using our services, because when we do it we are usually asking them for money, which tends to make every argument less compelling.

So, your voice has a really outsize impact compared to ours - it really does help! We got our asses saved recently by a group of about 20 concerned citizens just showing up at a council meeting where they were discussing stopping payments for library support. They didn't get to speak or anything, they just sort of showed up and made it clear why they were there and stared down the mayor about it. And they did, in fact, keep the payments going! I cannot overstate how incredibly efficient your voices are, compared to ours.

If we are going to stick around, I think we're going to need the extra oomph that efficiency provides. Please, if you would like libraries to persist... Help us do that.

Sincerely,

https://people.com/jane-yolen-author-of-450-childrens-books-dies-at-87-11996432

If you didn’t become acquainted with the work of Jane Yolen as a student being assigned her famous, award-winning Holocaust time travel novella “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” it’s likely you will once you become a parent, reading one of her many, many, many books for kids. My young boys are especially partial to her “How Do Dinosaurs?” series with its captivating, realistic dinosaur illustrations and snappy, funny text (and yes, there’s a Hanukkah “How Do Dinosaurs” book).

The prolific children’s book author, who was the recipient of multiple children’s book awards and six honorary doctorates, passed away this week at age 87. She was just about to release her 450th book. “Monsters of Fife: Terror Birds” will come out posthumously on July 14.

Yolen wasn’t raised particularly Jewish, and her exposure to religion was mostly at relatives’ homes, she recounted in a piece for the Jewish Book Council. As a teen, she did become fascinated with Jewish texts and traditions, getting confirmed at her local Reform synagogue; she was one of the first girls to read from the Torah on the bimah at that temple. And she minored in religious studies at Smith College.

But it took a while for Judaism to become part of her children’s book-writing career. In fact, she was two decades into her career when she got “noodged” into writing Jewish tales.

It all happened in the 1980s, she wrote in her essay for the Jewish Book Council: “One of my edi­tors, who hap­pened to be a rabbi’s wife, asked me why I had nev­er writ­ten a Jew­ish book. And I had to think long and hard about that. And she noodged. Boy! Was she an expert noodge. The result was ‘The Devil’s Arith­metic.’ And then the Jew­ish sto­ries began to tum­ble out.”

The books that came tumbling out were as gripping and wonderful and magical as the rest of her oeuvre.

There came magical stories about Jews and dragons and golems (co-written with her son, Adam Stemple).

She published illustrated books about Miriam and other biblical women (and even the children’s book adaptation of the famous “Prince of Egypt”).

She came up with her own twist on the tales of the Wise Men of Chelm.

She perhaps became most known for her three young adult tomes that tackle the Holocaust in novel ways. She wrote the “Sleeping Beauty” inspired “Briar Rose” and the “Hansel and Gretel”-esque “Mapping the Bones.” And of course, she penned the Nebula Prize Winning “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” about a Jewish teen who finds herself transported to 1942 Poland, which continues to be taught in schools to this very day, even as one Texas school district pulled it out of the curriculum for AI-detected “DEI content.” The book was famously turned into a 1999 film starring Kirsten Dunst, Brittany Murphy, Paul Freeman and Mimi Rogers.

Yolen also wrote books about Jewish holidays: “Milk and Honey,” and the lovely “Jewish Tale Feasts” (with her daughter, author Heidi Stemple), a book that my Jewish food-loving family adores.

Heidi, Adam and their brother Jason were all by their mother’s side when she “passed gently with no pain or stress,” Heidi shared on Instagram. Adam was playing his music while Heidi read from her mother’s book “Owl Moon.”

“As you all probably know, she had one of the most brilliant creative minds of our time,” Heidi wrote of her mother. “She has mentored, inspired and nurtured so many authors and illustrators through her words both on the page and off. But, beyond that, she was our mother and grandmother.”

For me, I would say the most common blind spot I run into from would-be children's authors is if the book is written from a place of authority, correction/dogma towards children rather than joy, genuine help/compassion, or curiosity.

For me, the author whose works most exemplify this is Julia Cook. Not only are her book's illustrations ugly as hell, but they heavily focus on correcting bad behavior in kids, usually with an overarching theme of "You're having a hard time making friends because you're loud/annoying,/unable to take responsibility/any number of things that it's perfectly natural for a kid to be because they barely have a concept of self yet, let alone awareness of other peoples' experiences and needs." I feel these books ultimately operate from a place of shame towards their audience and it's baffling to me that so many parents are like "Yes! That's exactly the book my kid needs!" On top of all that I feel like Julia Cook's books are also overly-texty. I think the blind spot here is that a lot of would-be kid's authors think they've figured out an approach to correcting kids' behavior, but they actually haven't been able to separate their own frustrations from communicating more constructive ways for kids to build social and emotional skills, which is how you end up with a book from at first glance makes me (a librarian) ask, "Do you hate kids, or something?"

A better example of a book focusing on social skills and emotional regulation in kids would be the "Big Bright Feelings" series. These books actually center the kids' emotions and experiences and are really compassionate with regard to where these feelings come from. Also, in my opinion, the illustrations are cuter.

Like, Ravi's Roar is focused on anger and emotional regulation, but it takes time to build up all of Ravi's frustrations throughout the day and actually gives Ravi some credit with how much he's tamped down/swallowed up before his anger finally gets the better of him because guess what! Kids are dealing with a lot! So much is new to them! They don't have an emotional baseline for so many of their experiences! It takes time to tell kids that it's okay to be angry, to show the adults reading how to support kids and steer their anger in a constructive way, and the metaphor of Ravi turning into a tiger makes the story feel both more accessible and more broadly applicable.

Another blind spot which I think is tricky is adults like and agree with this book, therefore they think it is up to children's standards. You see this a lot with a lot of well-meaning independently published liberal books (about community gardens, voting, recycling, etc.), and to be fair, how much a kid relates to or values a book can vary wildly depending on the kid and their state of development, but like the above point about dogmatism in children's books, you can tell when an author is assuming a lot about their audience's priorities. And again, with a lot of independently published titles, you often get this combo of too much text and mediocre illustrations,

I love a community garden. I love indigenous ethnobotany. But if you're going to go this high-concept for a young audience, I mean this with all kindness, but you're going to want to get an illustrator with enough of a professional background to be able to tell when their illustration's background is a busy mess.

Sometimes the enthusiasm of the adult reading the book to a child can bridge the gap, but speaking as someone who's done her fair share of story times, kids can absolutely tell the difference between something they want to do, and something adults are trying to convince them they want to do. Again, this is definitely a more subjective blind spot, and some books can make up for text content that doesn't quite land with their intended audience by having illustrations that capture the imagination and bridge that gap--like, I loved the book Weslandia as a kid even though the concept of "This kid created his own staple crop-based civilization" kind of flew over my little head at the time because I was so enchanted by the illustrations and I think there was also the factor of Wesley, the main character, operating a lot on his own curiosity and drive. It's a book of solitude and curiosity and discovery and invention eventually blossoming into something you can share with others. As a kid so frequently distracted by my own imagination that I had trouble connecting with peers, that emotional honesty landed with me even though other parts of it were a little high-concept.

Five and a Half Things You Should Know Going In

This is a post, first and foremost, about burnout. Being a public librarian presents a certain category of problems and attracts a certain type of people - namely, the problems of social aid professions and the compassionate people who go into them. The advice in this post comes from my own experiences as well as wisdom distilled from my parents’ combined 60 years of being in the sister passion profession of teaching.

Here goes:

1) Libraries are not your life. Not your patrons, not your programs, not your advocacy efforts. None of it. Repeat this to yourself, over and over, as many  times as it takes. If you want to survive - or even just be effective - in this line of work, you cannot reduce your identity down to just ‘librarian’. All the advice on work-life balance and establishing boundaries applies here, but don’t forget to think about the ‘identity’ part specifically, too.

1a) It’s going to be really easy to forget 1) when you’re in the warm, righteous, determined rush of feeling needed.

I spend a lot of time explaining things like technology and legislation as someone with a Master's degree speaking to farmwives. One of my personal sparks-to-tinder rage triggers is being condescended to, and so I at first spent a lot of energy not adapting my communication much at all because I feared making everyone hate me.

Finally, a coworker I really looked up to, an absolutely brilliant high-powered former kindergarten teacher, took me aside and told me, as one teacher to another, that I needed to slow down. It helped a lot that she'd vented to me before about resenting becoming the "little old lady" everyone talked down to as soon as she walked into a phone store; she wouldn't be telling me this if I were in danger of condescending. It felt a little like permission. She was insanely good at her job.

Over the next 5 years, I gradually figured out that I could turn what felt like condescension into a much more natural-feeling curiosity towards other people's mental models and skill sets. In fearing condescension, I'd taken things too far in the other direction and started assuming everyone had my background knowledge... But both of those problems have the same root cause, which is skipping the step of taking the time to figure out where someone is at before you launch into explanation.

I developed scripts for it, as I got better, and it's certainly easier to develop those scripts as a response to someone asking you for an explanation, rather than trying to change someone's beliefs on the fly. But leading with genuine and genuinely curious questions, I find, rarely leads me astray. What does this person already know? What's the story they tell about it, if asked to explain it themself? What do they find practical and applicable about this information - what parts of this subject do they think they'll use?

"The 'God Made Trans People' billboard is stupid! God didn't make me! I'm an atheist!" Okay. The billboard sits along a major highway in Kansas. We can deduce that the target audience is not you—it's the centrist evangelical Christians driving along that road who could probably be persuaded to become allies as long as we choose our words carefully and don't make them feel attacked for not already knowing everything about trans rights issues. Another one I see a lot is, "We shouldn't be talking about how right-wing legislation catches [privileged in-group] in the crossfire when [marginalized out-group] suffers far more!" I know. I agree with you. Which is why you and I are not the intended audience of this argument!

The entire point of rhetoric is to win over someone who doesn't already fully agree with you. In this case, let's say that someone is Jennifer, the moderate center-right mom in your neighborhood who doesn't really know or care about transgender issues but would be absolutely horrified by the idea of her teenage daughter having to submit to an invasive inspection of her body just to be allowed to play soccer. Tell her, "Banning trans students from sports will inevitably subject all student athletes to invasive gender-policing," or "Legal restrictions on gender-affirming care will make it harder for you to access the hormone replacement therapy you take to treat menopause symptoms," and she is more likely to question her existing beliefs and listen to the rest of what you have to say than if you lead with leftist talking points that she already has a calcified opinion about or which she thinks do not personally affect her.

CHAPTER 1

“It sucks that I understand Time Cube and as such cannot avoid becoming a genocidal dictator,” young Paul Atreides said to himself. “For me. Moral complexity is such a burden.”

CHAPTER 2

anything for you darling

CHAPTER 1

“The fact that I will commit unspeakable genocide and lead a holy war across the galaxy is very bad,” said young Paul Atreides. “For me.”

“I too feel morally conflicted by my role in a ruthless eugenics program,” admitted his mother, the Lady Jessica. “Does that make me a bad mother? Who can say….”

At that moment the Duke Leto Atreides returned home from a grueling day churning out propaganda to convince his troops that he was worth dying for. His regal face was lined with deep moral complexities. “It’s tough when you’re me and everybody wants to fuck you so so bad,” he said. “But that’s the price I must pay for the future well-being of my ancestral house.” He sighed, deep and melancholy. When was the last time he’d thrown around the old pigskin with his boy? Would he ever get the chance again…?

That’s fully-manual ascetic space feudalism for you, he thought libertarianally.

Paul looked around the room and was struck by the sudden and horrific realization that he was the smartest person to ever live, and that even his own loving mother and father could never hope to understand Time Cube.

But that’s a problem for another day, Paul decided, not for the last time.

CHAPTER 2

“It’s a beautiful day to be grossnasty, don’t you think?” said the Baron Harkonnen homosexually as he surveyed the ravaged landscape beyond the window. Acid rain pelted against the glass and melted the flesh off the shrieking peasants below.

“Sure. Whatever,” said Feyd-Rautha, not looking up from his sketchbook, upon which he had scrawled the words ‘I love killing and maiming’ in large bubble letters.

“A-h-h,” said the Baron. “That was a trick question: every day is a beautiful day for being grossnasty. You must learn this lesson well, nephew, if you ever hope to get anywhere in life. Piter, what are you doing over there with that huge and evil brain of yours?”

The mentat violated the Hays Code six times in the few seconds it took him to reply. “I’m calculating a mathematically perfect slur for orphans,” he said in a gay voice. “Just as you requested.”