Island Girls - by Nancy Thayer

Like Thayer's A Nantucket Christmas this is a story of family drama and redemption. Three women (Arden, Jenny, and Meg) all daughters of the same man (Rory Randall) but three different mothers must spend the summer together in his Nantucket home in order to inherit it. The three have reason to distrust each other, and when an old family mystery is solved their three mothers are also invited for a completely awkward family reunion.

While not the location of any of the action in the book, the Library is has its role as a place of escape. It was a place that Meg retreated to as a young girl after an altercation with her step-mother, and the three women clearly still appreciated the comfort and proximity of the library as adults as they continued to use it for books and movies all summer. Renewing her library card and checking out a mystery were some of the first things Arden did upon arrival on the island.

This was a simple escape novel. I do like that Thayer brings the women together in the end, rather than going for the cat fight.

Artemis Fowl - by Eoin Colfer

I'm not sure whether I liked this one or not. To be sure, the characters were rather unlikeable. I didn't really sympathize with any of them. I do, however, like a book with a lot of twists and turns, and one that doesn't always have a neat ending in which everyone gets what they deserve.  I also liked that the story hinged on getting and decoding a book (much the same way Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore did). It brings together my two passions of books and languages.

In this work, young Artemis Fowl, a prepubescent mastermind, finagles the fairy code book from an alcoholic gutter-dwelling fairy, and uses his new found knowledge to kidnap fairy Holly Short. The resulting negotiations involve centaurs, dwarves, trolls, and "a ton of gold".

Libraries were mentioned twice, although there were no actual libraries in the book. The fairy from whom Artemis procures the fairy code book originally tells him that she is a healer and has no book. "You want book, go to library" she admonishes him.

The other use of library was as a unit of measure. While it is not usual for a library to be used as a metaphor to denote a large amount of information (I write about this in one of the earliest posts on this blog), I have never considered that there would be a specific measure of this. But, it appears that magical folk have indeed created a system of measurement using libraries as a unit. Specifically we learn that 10 gigabytes equals "half a library." It would of course follow that 20 gigabytes of information is "in paper terms" a full library. So now we know.

The Public Library : A Photographic Essay - by Robert Dawson

Dawson's breathtaking photographs show both the good and the bad of public libraries. Pictures of economic disparity and closures are contrasted with those of  hope, whimsy, innovation, and determination. From the historic Carnegie libraries, to the large modern buildings that also serve as art galleries, to the trailers, to shared post office spaces these photographs show the importance of the public library to its community. Accompanying essays written by those who love libraries support Dawson's visual work. Stories of early colonists who burned books considered blasphemous, and librarians who guarded material, rather than allowing free exchange of ideas are balanced with those who keep libraries open despite shrinking budgets, ensure that all have access to books, and introduce young people to new ideas.

A visually stunning book.

Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key - by Jack Gantos

My husband and I are renting a house by the water for the fall and are spending our weekends there in blissful quiet and beauty. While walking in my temporary neighborhood last weekend I discovered a "Little Free Library" set up on one of the front lawns. I had heard about the LFL movement (and even "liked" one on Facebook) but had not before encountered any. I could hardly pass up an opportunity to take some new reading material, and was pleased to find Gantos' book, which I took back to my rental and read before the afternoon was over. A quick easy read about a boy who can't keep still, and gets in a lot of trouble. (Really, you shouldn't run with scissors)!  Joey very much wants to please his teachers, and can't understand why they think he's such a "pain". After all, he explains

...most of the time [he] wasn't even in the classroom. [He] was in the principal's office, or with the nurse, or...helping out in the library (emphasis mine), or cafeteria, or running laps on the playground.

Certainly, if he helps out in the library he can't be all that bad!

Little Free Library - Planter's Island MA

Fun Home - by Alison Bechdel

                                        

Banned Books Week 2014

I first read about Bechdel's book earlier this year when I learned that the South Carolina State legislature was planning to cut $52,000 from the budget of the College of Charleston for using this work in its freshmen "College Reads" Program due to the homosexual themes of the work. Eventually a compromise was reached which allowed the College to keep its budget, but in a truly Orwellian move, the legislature required that the $52,000 be spent on materials that taught about the Constitution. More about the controversy and other attempts to ban this graphic novel can be found here.

Bechdel's graphic memoir tells of her childhood growing up in a funeral home in Pennsylvania with a closeted gay father. It also tells of her own awakening as a lesbian in college. Libraries played an important role for her. Bechdel tells both of working in her college library (putting bar codes on books) and of finding solace in the public library. She compares the lure of the books in the library to Odysseus' siren song. And learns that in the public library she can get the information she seeks without judgement. This may also be the first book I read that contains a poem about a library.

I decided to read this book for Banned Books Week since the focus this year is on graphic novels. When I searched for it on the iBooks store I discovered that it was only available in electronic format in Spanish. I was just about ready to look for a hard copy instead, and then I remembered that I speak Spanish! Some of the vocabulary presented a challenge for me, but I wasn't sorry to learn some interesting new words!

The Giver - by Lois Lowry

Banned Books Week 2014

This book is among those most frequently challenged according to the American Library Association's Top 100 List for the 1990s (#11) and 2000s (#23). It is the story of Jonas who is selected to become his community's "Receiver of Memories" and discovers that the perfectly controlled world he lives in has some dark secrets.

In researching why this book has been so often challenged I discovered this article which uses both the terms "utopian future society" and "dystopian future society" to describe the world of "sameness" created by Lowry. It is a world without poverty, hunger, or war - the "utopia" we see at the start of the novel. However, it is also a world devoid of color, sex,  love, or libraries - the dystopia we see as the novel progresses. I found it especially ironic that one of the objections to the work was that it includes a theme of  "sexual awakening" since the response to any sexual feelings in this dystopia is to squash them immediately. Depictions of euthanasia, and suicide, and "selective breeding" also are cited as reasons for challenging this book.While it is true that all of these things are treated in the work, they are secrets, clearly not things that are meant to be celebrated.

While there are books Jonas' world, each household only has the same few. Only the "Giver" and the "Receiver" know that there are others with much more information than anyone else can imagine.

...the most conspicuous difference was the books. In [Jonas'] own dwelling, there were the necessary reference volumes that each household contained: a dictionary, and the thick community volume which contained descriptions of every office, factory, building, and committee. And the Book of Rules, of course.

The books in his own dwelling were the only books that Jonas had ever seen. He had never known that other books existed.

But this room's walls were completely covered by bookcases, filled, which reached to the ceiling. There must have been hundreds -perhaps thousands- of books, their titles embossed in shiny letters.

This information is withheld from everyone else in the community, in order to protect them. This paternalistic belief is common among those who would ban books.

Lowry has this to say about banning The Giver

I think banning books is a very, very dangerous thing. It takes away an important freedom. Any time there is an attempt to ban a book, you should fight it as hard as you can. It’s okay for a parent to say, ‘I don’t want my child to read this book.’ But it is not okay for anyone to try to make that decision for other people. The world portrayed in The Giver is a world where choice has been taken away. It is a frightening world. Let’s work hard to keep it from truly happening.

Well said.

Watch Jeff Bridges, star of the movie The Giver read from Lowry's book in this Virtual Read Out for Banned Books Week

All the Oz books - by L. Frank Baum

It took me a bit over a year to read all fourteen "Oz" books. Each was actually a pretty quick read, but I read other books in between. I immediately began to see certain similarities between this series and the Harry Potter books, beginning with the fact that both Harry and Dorothy live with their aunt and uncle and sometimes travel to a magical place. Both Harry and Dorothy encounter, and overcome, evil. A century after the Oz books were written we can also see a parallel in the anticipation that surrounded the publication of each of the Oz book with excitement that came with the release of each of J.K. Rowling's stories, and both sets of books have the same wide appeal across genders, and ages.  It is especially interesting to note the wide appeal of the Oz books as they were written as fantasy stories in which girls (Dorothy, Ozma, and Glinda) were the protagonists and the leaders, providing cause to question the conventional wisdom that boys won't read stories about girls. Even the wizard learned all his magic from Glinda.

While the only library in the Oz books was Glinda's personal library, it is noteworthy in that she had one especially important work : the Record Book "on the pages of which are constantly being printed a record of every event that happens in any part of the world, at exactly the moment it happens." She uses this for good only, but I really saw her, and her partner Ozma, as benevolent dictators. In conjunction with the Record Book, Ozma owned a "Magic Picture" in which she could see anything happening anywhere whenever she wanted. Only Glinda, the Wizard, and Ozma were legally allowed to make magic in the land of Oz. Others knew how, but were not allowed to use it. Whenever Ozma found out about someone else using magic she immediately went to quash it, with faithful Dorothy along to help explain the laws.

In the 1960s there developed a theory about these books, that they were a populist allegory. Although there does seem to be ample evidence of this, it is probably not the case. It was most likely written simply as a fairy tale, although I must say that Ozma's spying and Glinda's data collection seemed to predict some contemporary news stories as well!

One other similarity between the Oz books and the Harry Potter books is that both series had their censors. (Read my Harry Potter Banned Book post here). In a true twist on book banning, however, it was librarians themselves who often kept the Oz books off library shelves until the 1960s, believing the fantasy aspect of the books was "unhealthy" for children.