Librarian of the Day -- Ann Wagner

As you may (or may not) know, this week is National Library Week. In celebration of this (AND to celebrate National Poetry Month), blogger Tina Nicholas Coury has an interview of Ann Wagner, youth Librarian for the Santa Monica Public Library Main Branch.

You can read this interview at Tina's blog, Tales from the Rushmore Kid.

Enjoy. -WendieO

Authors and more Authors

My writer friend, Katie Davis, periodically posts podcasts (which she calls, Brainburps) on her blog. For National Library Week she has a real goodie. She describes it like this:

"On Monday (today) I'll be posting my Library Love episode - an homage - for Library week. In it I have the authors below talking about how libraries or librarians did great things for them as children, and how it helped them grow into authors.
There are songs, jokes (Mordicai Gerstein tells one that cracks me up every time) and it's just a great homage to librarians, who are so slammed right now."

So click on over and enjoy. Or, if you want to tweet it, please use the hashtag #LibraryLove.

Thank you!
Katie DAvis
http://www.katiedavis.com

(Here is a list of all the authors featured in this Podcast. If you click on over to Katie's blog, you'll see that she has set up each of these names with links to THEIR blogs or websites. It's an author lovefest!)
 Laurie Halse Anderson
 Kathi Appelt
 Sarah Aronson
 Jeannie Brett
 Diane deGroat
 Sarah Dillard
 Erin Dionne
 Jan Donley
 Jody Feldman
 Judy Freeman
 Mordicai Gerstein
 Deborah Heiligman
 Amy Huntington
 Lita Judge
 Jarrett Krosoczka
 Sarah Darer Littman
 Eric Luper
 Ann Martin
 Wendy Mass
 Anne Mazer
 Jenny Meyerhoff
 Jenny Moss
 Bernard Most
 Micol Ostow
 Laura Ruby
 Peter Sis
 Hope Anita Smith
 Tanya Lee Stone
 Kyra Teis
 Leslie Tryon
 Kristin O‚Donnell Tubb
 Linda Urban
 Ned Vizzini
 Nancy Werlin
 Karen Romano Young
 Sara Zarr

Louis Armstrong, as told by his Horn

Weinstein, Muriel Harris. Play, Louis, Play! Illus. by Frank Morrison. New York: Bloomsbury, 2010.

This biography of Louis Armstrong seems to be narrated in a conversational tone by the very first horn he played. Since I also have had a biography of Louis Armstrong published, and this book has been placed in the biography area of libraries by Library of Congress catalogers, naturally I was immediately upset at how it seemed to break some basic rules of writing biographies.

With a talking horn, the book seems to be more fiction/ fantasy than real biography -- especially because it also seems as if the author has inserted a lot of made-up conversations and thoughts. However, when I checked the bibliography in the back of the book, I noticed one book that had not been published when I was writing my own biography of Armstrong. It’s possible that the author got these quotes and thoughts from that collection of Armstrong’s words. However, without footnotes, the reader can’t tell what is true from what is made up. I also noticed a few mistakes. For instance -- Armstrong didn’t blow a ‘toy’ horn while working on the Karnofsky’s rag cart. It was a long ‘tin’ horn. A perfectly decent horn used by peddlers and carriages to warn pedestrians that they were coming through.

The author is an award winning poet who uses language brilliantly, but I can’t help but wonder if the conversational, jazzy language the horn is supposedly using is anything like that spoken among jazz fans in New Orleans. “Louis’ heart cracked like an old clamshell.” Lovely use of words, but since there aren’t clams in the Gulf, would a New Orleans’ horn use such a simile? Actually the writer overuses similies on every page.

Remember earlier when I talked about historical fiction versus true nonfiction? Well, this is the book that I found so disturbing. Once you've read this book, I'd love for you to come back and let me know what you think. -wO

First Picnic of the Year

I've been inspired by the book, As Always, Julia (letters from Julia Child) to include more food in my blog entries.

Yesterday, while the weather was sunny and almost 80 degrees, the 11-year-old wanted to have a picnic. So, she set up the picnic towel near the bench at the end of our yard. While I cooked hamburgers, she prepared a relish dish (attacking the celery stalks with karate chops of the knife), and we all carried our food out there.

It was lovely. She lay back on the picnic towel (a huge towel with its own carry handles) while we ate sitting on the bench. We talked about the plants and trees at this end of the yard -- what used to be there and what's growing there now -- and simply had a lovely time.

Then the clouds rolled in, signifying the approaching cold front and rain that poured last night.

I think I should have titled this post -- making memories with kids. Or simply, making memories, because we'll always remember this picnic.

-wo

Spring has sprung

Spring has sprung

the grass is riz.

I wonder where

de boirdies iz?

Anybody remember that? probably from the comic strip, POGO.

It's almost 80 degrees out there -- just lovely.

Of course, it's supposed to crash back down into the 40s again for some weeks, but we're enjoying the warmth while we can.

-wo

Last day of work

As of today, I am a retired librarian.

I am a working writer.

and

a mom

and

a grandmom

and

owned by cats

and

hmmmm. I'll fill in more blanks, later.

-wo

Nonfiction Monday--Zoo Borns!

Zoo Borns! Zoo babies from around the world by Andrew Bleiman and Chris Eastland. NY: Beach Lane Books, 2010.

Full page photographs of newborn zoo babies accompany a few short sentences about each animal. But these are not common American animals -- they're from around the world.

Most confusing to me was the difference between the Aardvark, which I had always thought was an anteater, and the anteater, otherwise known as a Tamandua. Ah, at the back of the book is more information about each animal. The Aardvark eats termites and the Anteater eats ants.
OOOOOh-kay.

Adorable photo of a baby white tiger on the cover!

More Nonfiction Monday posts can be found at Practically Paradise. Click away and enjoy.
wo