Book Club Fall Fun!

Once again our university is coming together with One Maryland One Book to get the campus and students involved. The book pick this year is a YA choice by an established writer. Sherman Alexie's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian," with illustrations by Ellen Forney, is this year's read. It's about a Spokane Indian kid trying to hang on to a little bit of hope in world that's stacked against him. It was a really great read. I've been reading Alexie for years and managed to catch him speak at ACRL 2009 in Seattle. He had me giggling then, and I'm sure he will again. He'll be speaking at various locations around Maryland and of course at the Baltimore Book Festival. His spot this year will be at 2pm on Saturday, September 24th. Despite addressing heavy topics in his writing and his talks,  Alexie never fails to bring a great sense of humor.

But what are we doing? Getting Alexie was pretty much a near impossibility. He's a big name and movie star, after all. So I'm super excited about Towson's unique involvement this year. Not only is it required reading for the Honors College, and not only will we have a book club discussion, BUT, we're also bringing Ellen Forney, the illustrator, to campus! How cool is that? The kid in the story wants to be a comic book writer and Forney lent her talents throughout the book in making the narrator's talents a reality. It's so cool to have the narrator talking about something and then, on the next page, there's a hilarious comic depicting the same scene. It's like the kid is using your novel as his sketchbook. I actually had to remind myself that a teenage boy hadn't actually drawn the doodles and comics. 

Ellen will be gracing our campus with both a talk AND a workshop. I truly hope our art and writing students don't miss this awesome opportunity. What a great way to participate in One Maryland One Book this year! I'm already psyched!

Week O' Fun

I had an awesome week.  Busy, but awesome.  Luma Mufleh, the coach highlighted in Warren St. John's book, "Outcasts United," spoke at Towson to an audience of about 300. Faculty and students from not only the University, but also the the surrounding communities came. And, lots and lots of young and old soccer fans. More about Luma in a sec.

I had a good time with my fifth graders in Cherry Hill and got to attend a regional residency meeting at Rutgers.  Getting together with fellow residents is always such a great time and being able to do that on the Rutgers campus was really neat! They just started a Diversity Research Center at their Dana Library that is the first of its kind in the nation. And it sounds AMAZING. The center will chiefly work on developing and carrying out research in the study of diversity. It was truly exciting and inspiring to hear about. I can't wait to see what they do.

About Luma -she is fantastic! Her stories about growing up in Jordan were beautiful and some of the anecdotes she told about the Fugees during the Q & A had me cackling.  (It's Halloween, I cackle this time of year.) The book, "Outcasts United," leaves out a lot of the humor that Luma seems to encounter with the kids fairly frequently.  One story she told exposed the differences the Fugees feel in contrast to the teams they often play against.  They are sometimes called not the nicest of names by opponents and their parents. They get taunted for being black, muslim or having accents, or for having a woman as their coach, among other differences. The Fugees have adjusted to this, but once after a game where the taunts had been more stinging than usual,  the kids asked Luma, (who is fair-skinned and almost accentless), "What if they knew the truth?" 

Luma asked, "The truth, what do you mean the truth?"

They said, "That you're an Arab AND a Muslim!"

Sarcastically Luma replied, "Oh, God! What would we do then!"

Here's some press about the Fugees.  And, I encourage you to join their Fugees Family Facebook page to keep on top of updates and happenings with the kids. Enjoy and Have a Great Week!

Grounded in Book Club

If you don't know by now, I love books.  I did NOT, however, go into librarianship so that I could sit around and read books all day. But, once in a lucky while reading can actually be PART of the job.  Say for instance, if a position involves RA (readers advisory) where recommendations are part of what the librarian does, or as is the case at Towson's Cook Library, when you are part of the book club!

Our Book Club is promoted and attended by those all over campus and usually runs in tandem with a community event.  So, in October, we read "Song Yet Sung" to accompany the Maryland Art's Council's activities with One Maryland One Book.  I lead the discussion following Dr. Ali's enlightening contextualization of James McBride's novel and feel it was a great learning experience for myself and all those that attended. (See previous post.)

Yesterday Book Club met for the second time after our reading of Sonia Nazario's "Enrique's Journey."  There were even more people in attendance at our discussion and Dr. Lea Ramsdell also gave an enlightening contextualization of the true story of how a child makes the deadly trip from Honduras to the United States to find his mother.  Development librarian, Joyce Garzynski, did a great job of leading the subsequent discussion. This story broke my heart and I feel makes crucial points in the examination of immigration to the U.S. The book was chosen in tandem with Sonia's arrival to Towson University to discuss; the dangerous job of writing this story, Enrique, the focus of her book, and how we can help.  I'm sure it will be highly attended.

So, while most of the time I am stuck in meetings and then writing follow-up emails, or doing the technical service work of my current rotation (original cataloging is hard!), it is a wonderful change to read, research and attend events related to our greater outside world.  It not only allows me to meet more people in the University community, I think it helps keep us all grounded.