The Next Reason I Should Become a Librarian

Has it really been ten days since my last post? Sheesh. What kind of a sad excuse for a blogger am I?

As is the case with most huge gaps between posts, real life was giving me the short end of the stick when it came to having too much to do and not enough time to do it with. These last two weeks in addition to having to prep for my usual four classes, I had to carve out three hours everyday for teacher observation and find time to print and correct forty copies of my Book Arts project. Well, actually, forty copies of one side of my book arts project -- I have to go in next week and print the OTHER side of the sheet now. So that's where all my time's been going. No time for writing, no time for reviewing, and a smidge of time for reading before I went to bed at night. But them's the breaks, right? And I'll graduate in four years, which is fine and dandy because I don't want any more debt.

Teaching observation these past two weeks has been interesting, to say the least. For three hours every day I get to hang out and observe some seventh and eighth graders at a local junior high. I had conditioned myself to fear these two weeks, thinking those crazy preteens and their raging hormones and their ridiculous mood swings would get the most of me.

Truth be told, I'm having a lot of fun.

Seventh graders are fun because sometimes they still remember how to be kids. Give them an art project and they're happy. Ask them to read and eventually everyone will read. They love to tell you things about thier lives they don't think you already know (I got a lecture on how Facebook works after I had already said I have a Facebook) and they enjoy laughing. Some of them have learned already to hate school, but some of them -- some of them! -- are still out to learn. Last week we worked on poetic language, in the form of metaphors and similies, and I was pleased as punch to hear a few students describe school not as prison (although it was mentioned about four times) but as a party, a jungle, and a picnic. (Alliteration was one of the lessons I wasn't there for.)

On Friday I had planned to expose the reluctant reader I've picked out for a case study I have to conduct to ten books I thought she might enjoy. The week before I'd given her a reading interest survey and asked her about what she already enjoys reading (Twilight) her favorite movies (Twilight, John Tucker Must Die) and her hobbies (none)

Using this smidgen of information (and what I'd already observed about her) I found ten books I thought she might enjoy -- Books with strong, spunky female leads, books about vampires (all vetted by me to be better than Twilight, which, by the way, only has a forth grade reading level and a ninth to twelfth grade interest -- yikes!) and books with a healthy dose of comedy in them.  At the end of class on Friday I tried to speak to her about why these books are awesome, using the 'book talk' format. It's a bit like pitching a new product to a consumer base, a commercial for the book, if you will. Well, my reader didn't listen to me, but five other people in the class did, so you know what? I call that a success. Some of them wrote titles down, some of them agreed that the books I had brought were good. I had gone home on Monday feeling like a failure. On Friday I felt like a hero. The Great Momapedia, savior of reading everywhere.

The mental conversation I had afterwards is one I've had with myself a few times this year -- I might not be good at this teaching stuff, but I am really good at being a librarian. I give a version of book talks every friday night when someone comes in without a movie and I find five or six to pitch to them. I love that part of my job.

And let's face it, I love to talk about books.

Ethics and the Internet

Several studies have come out lately analyzing and examining the effect the Internet is having on our ethics, morality, and willingness to voice opinions. The case is being made that the Internet allows us to say things that we wouldn't normally say in public.

Today I experienced just that -- a random writer, whose work I'd never reviewed , set me a rather snarky PM chastising me (chastising is a soft word -- she reamed me out) for leaving what I thought was a friendly reminder review on someone's fic saying "I'm sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, but this shouldn't be on this site; it's listed in the rules as something you're not supposed to post here and I'm reminding you because I want to be nice instead of just reporting you." (I'm not the only one who noted this, either.)

This writer (who did not review the story in question herself) messaged me saying I was an "uptight asshole" for giving this review, no one gives a shit and I should "shut the hell up about it" because "a third of the fics on ff.net are chat-style stories anyway" and "some of them are really good."

(I have yet to read a chat style story that was any good, but I digress.)

I was going to PM the writer and say that I was sorry she thought that way but I thought I was doing something nice by reminding the author instead of just reporting her (as someone had already done on another story, leaving the review "Terribly OOC and against the rules. Reported for using a text format.") At least I gave the first writer the benefit of explaining which rule she was breaking. And I used a complete sentence to do it, too. Interestingly enough, the second author had disabled private messaging.

So I did the next best thing possible.

I wrote a really nice, really constructive-criticism filled review to her story. Her only story. The one where she nicely asked for constructive criticism and said she'd ignore flames. You tell me if this sounds like an uptight asshole. Because if it does, I have a problem; I've been reviewing like this for YEARS.

I don't know that I've ever read anything where a little voice inside someone's head has a name. I like the concept. I also like the little voice, who has a bit of a down-home personality I feel I could get along very well with. I hope you keep her in the story. I also like that you didn't directly come out and say who the immortal parent of your original character is -- that's a great first step towards not writing a Mary-Sue. Using all your clues (like the hissing hair and actually threatening her hairdo to behave) was a great way to introduce that in a way that shows rather than tells.

I'm not sure how much I like using the underlining as a way to denote when Queen is talking; for me it's a little distracting, but maybe that's just me. Apart from that, there's only a few punctuation errors (omitted commas in some places) and a randomly capitalized word (Jacket, in the last paragraph) keeping this from being a really solid beginning to what I hope will be a great story. My only other comment (and you can take this any way you like) is that I prefer my beginnings to be a little longer to give the reader just a little bit more of an idea where the story might be headed.

For a first try, this is very good, and I really am looking forward to see where you take this. (This is also my attempt at trying to prove that I am not, as you termed it, uptight.) Wherever you do take this, I'm sure it will be a good place. Best of luck, and keep up the high quality!

One Big Fishbowl

When teachers need some kind of observable assessment process to see if their students are learning (or have learned) something, we are told we can facilitate the type of discussion known as The Fishbowl, a technique where a small group sits in the midst of a larger group and are told to hold thier own discussion sans teacher guidance or outside class imput. The first two minutes of such a technique are agony for the students who haven't done their homework, as everyone is now watching them fail, which in my mind makes this a very strong motivator.

I've come to realize that my subscription to the "New Stories" thread in the Percy Jackson fandom on ff.net is exactly like me being on the outside of the fishbowl circle looking in.

This story is the third or fourth that I've come across there and it's fascinating to read. I say it's interesting because it's not a story at all, which means that as a violation of site rules that link will probably be broken soon. Rather, it's an open letter to members of the community who are behaving in an anti-community building way (flamers, writers of less than quality fanfic.)

After I discussed the question posed in my last post with a friend of mine, also an education student interested in young adult literature-- (I'm wondering if this narrow-mindness with the Canon is due to the relative youth of the fandom itself or the relative youth of the fans themselves) -- we decided that the PJO participants' adherance to Canon comes from a lack of confidence in thier own creative abilities due to their relative newness to the process of writing fanfiction and participating in the fanfiction community. Harry Potter, being a fandom that recieved a lot of traffic both from younger readers as well as older ones who had grown up with the series (like myself,) produces a different milieu of fanfiction because of the wide spectrum of ages and the length of time the participents have had to grow into the fandom and the writing process.

When in the case of PJO you have such a concentrated body (over 4000 fics) of young, inexperienced writers, it makes sense that from that group there will emerge several slightly more experienced writers who serve as flamers, reviewers who never have anything nice to say but always refrain from saying nothing. I think this happens when a fandom experiences a large growth spurt -- the 'old growth' writers in fandoms like LOTR (which got new life after the movies came out) become resentful of both the movies and the writers inspired by them who don't love the same fandom for the same reasons and so turn to flaming.

The most common response to flamers by young authors like this is to post passionate pleas asking them to stop or refrain from commenting in the first place. It's an ineffective tactic at best -- flamers pick the worst of the worst fanfics, usually the writers who are just starting out, and bully thier  tenuous hold on their new craft into a complete lack of confidence. Asking them to stop won't do anything. (I got lucky in my beginning years as a writer -- I was adopted by a wonderful group of older writers who gave me confidence when I did get hurtful reviews, and...well, I never got many very hurtful reviews.)

This writer, however, takes a remarkably adept approach. In the first part of her essay (that's what we'll call it; diatribe's too strong a word) she speaks to people who flame, but in the second part, she addresses the authors themselves, saying this is a two way street and if they are getting flamed, they have only themselves to blame. I don't know of any beginning writers who have taken that approach before, and I must commend this young person on being so open to the idea that the problem of flames is two sided -- I created something you didn't like, but you didn't give me the help I wanted to make it better. She (or he) offers little in the way of specific improvement strategies, which in this fandom can usually start with "Find someone to teach you how to punctuate your sentences, and learn what a run-on sentence is and how not to write one." Nevertheless, a good effort.

Her/His style is very elementary, jumping from viewpoint to viewpoint with a lot of hopeless-to-follow mess in between coherant points (a style I believe might come from watching cartoons; it bears some resemblence) but her/his intent is admirable. A little beta polishing and a better place to post this would do wonders.

At the very least, it's teaching this writer-teacher once more that observing what your students produce outside of class may be the very best way to direct your instruction inside of class.

Grammar, here we come.

Percy Jackson, Time Thief

Friends, I've been to the land of Young Adult Literature, and I've come back bearing wonderful treasures. Behold, a Percy Jackson addiction!

There aren't too many young adult books I hound my librarians for. Percy has become an exception. I read the first book in the five part series two or three years ago and remember not being terribly impressed -- I didn't like the main character, the language was simple...

Just me being an elitist jerk of a reader again, in other words.

After news that the movie was going to be starring two of my favorite leading men:

I gave the books another try. I wasn't disappointed this time. I went with a totally different approach and a drastically different set of expectations, wanting a young adult book that might be appropriate for reluctant readers and might also be great for a unit on the greek gods and perhaps mythology in general, and I found all I wanted. Percy was nicely snarky and pre-teen and perfect for any students I might have who deal with ADHD. In my true fashion, I stalked the library and devoured the first three books in a matter of a week and a half. Now I'm waiting for returns on books four and five and I'm still excited.

To make all this age-unappropriate fangirling even worse, I carved out part of my Monday afternoon two weeks ago to go and see the movie. Sean Bean and Kevin McKidd aside, I was more than a little disappointed. So much of the material that I had really enjoyed in the books wasn't there. I realize that sometimes film has to cut material to keep time manageable. Observe Lord of the Rings. But re-writing the whole plot so you don't have to cast someone as Ares, introducing some teen romance and topping it all off with lamentably poor fight quality? Poor show, Chris Columbus, poor show. My movie-going buddy Mal and I enjoyed ourselves, though, because we hadn't gone to the movies to see a top-quality, oscar winning film; we'd gone to see a tween movie. That's exactly what we got. (We also got the whole theatre to ourselves -- BONUS!) Mal hadn't read the books, so she didn't have anything to be disappointed about. (She has also been woken up to the wonderful realization that Kevin McKidd is VERY good looking, so there were no complaints on the car ride home about that.)

After all this, I've also starting following Rick Riordan's blog, and I have to say, he sounds like a wonderfully approachable fellow. He's in the middle of writing another Percy-Jackson universe book and another series, based in Egyptian Mythology, is coming out this year. I read the first chapter and I'm not going to deny that I'm excited.

Riordan's PJO universe has sparked a few fanfic ideas, one of which I've already started playing with about a semi-major Greek deity he left out of his universe, the sea-goddess (and wife of Posiedon!) Amphitrite, and per my usual, I've begun following the incoming stream of fanfic on FF.net to get a handle on what kind of audience exists out there for this kind of thing.

Friends, that audience is big, it's bad, and it's all under the age of fifteen and incapable of writing anything other than Mary-Sues. It's scary and exciting at the same time -- I want to know what happens when someone introduces something that's not quite Canon (and hopefully better written) into the fandom pool. (All these Mary-Sues also make me want to send in Thursday Next and some Reality Rounds, but that's a fanfic for another time.)

On the subject of Canon, one of the other things I've noticed about Percy Jackson's fans is that unlike some other genres of young adult literature (Harry Potter comes to mind) PJO people are VERY concerned about adhering to Canon. We're talking "almost to the point of insanity" concerned. If you don't ship Percy-Annabeth, they don't want you there, period. I've read the books, and just as in Harry Potter, I know that a case for Percy being romantically involved with any number of other female characters could be made and written very well. I'm wondering if this narrow-mindness with the Canon is due to the relative youth of the fandom itself or the relative youth of the fans themselves. More observations might have to be conducted for me to find out.

Anyway, that's all that's new from the Wordsmithy.