Librarians Help! – With Learning

Uncategorized 0

No sooner did I start this blog series — Librarians Help! — than the people with the really interesting questions started going to my colleagues! Seriously, the questions I took this week tended toward the routine, but I figure it’s just a small case of Murphy’s Law.

Again, I helped a whole lot of people find books, such as:
— A novel for a man to read next
— A Rainbow Magic Fairies book
— A study guide for the AP Psychology test
— Books by Daniel Amen
— Books on painting
— Books for teaching first graders about maps
— The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
— Books on recycling for a preschool class

Other things were mostly routine, like booking meeting rooms and signing people up for programs, and putting books on hold. Virginia taxes were due this week, so all of us did help several people make copies of the forms. I helped someone print a page of the 1940 census. During my time in the Virginia Room it was pretty quiet this week, but in my own genealogy, I traced a line back to someone who helped found Harvard.

One of the more satisfying interactions was helping a person get a library card, and then find materials for learning English, and sign up for English tutoring.

I was called an “angel” by someone who called to see if his co-worker could get a Serbo-Croatian dictionary for a test the next day. This ended up involving checking out a reference book, but since it was for someone who works in law enforcement in a building near us and would be returned the next day, and since there is not a lot of demand for that title, I was able to make sure it happened.

As I blogged last weekend, I went to the US Science Festival on my day off and wore my prime factorization sweater. Once math geeks (my tribe!) found out about it, my site got a flood of traffic to the post where I explain how the sweater works.

But this made me think, again, about how making this sweater, to me, is something wonderfully fitting for a librarian. Because, to me, librarianship is about the fun side of learning, the self-propelled side. When I taught college math, I had to focus on trying to barrel through the syllabus before I ran out of semester. As a librarian, I can say, “Isn’t this cool?” and help provide ideas and resources for people to take off from there.

When I was a Youth Services Manager (and I will be again — some day), I did a program based on the ideas behind the sweater. I showed the math behind the sweater and explained how number bases work and how you can make codes based on that. Then we used foam shapes to make their own messages using these ideas.

It’s the same thing with spreading a love of reading. We can encourage the playful and fun side of learning. We don’t force anyone to learn anything. But we have all kinds of information available, and we’re all about helping you learn whatever you want to learn, whatever age or race or economic status you happen to fall into.

Spread the word! Librarians help!

Review of Edgar Allan Poe’s Pie, by J. Patrick Lewis

Children's Nonfiction Review, Humorous, Mathematical, Poetry 0

Edgar Allan Poe’s Pie

Math Puzzlers in Classic Poems

by J. Patrick Lewis
illustrated by Michael Slack

Harcourt Children’s Books, 2012. 37 pages.

I feel a tiny bit sheepish by how much fun I find in this book. J. Patrick Lewis, Children’s Poet Laureate, has parodied 14 classic poems that children may well be familiar with and has inserted… a math problem.

These problems are not particularly tricky. Though I suppose that depends on the child’s age. (There is some multiplication and division, so this is more for upper elementary grades.) At times it’s not totally clear exactly what they want you to figure out (though that is given in the upside-down answers on the next page). But the parodies are definitely playful.

Could there possibly be a better way to get a kid to do word problems for fun and without fear?

The poems, after the title, list the poem they are inspired by.

Here’s the end of “Edgar Allan Poe’s Apple Pie,” the one inspired by “The Raven”:

I ignored the frightful stranger
Knocking, knocking . . . I, sleepwalking,
Pitter-pattered toward the pantry,
Took a knife from the kitchen drawer,
And screamed aloud, “How many cuts
Give me ten pieces?” through the door,
The stranger bellowed, “Never four!”

Another favorite for me is the one that plays off a poem I love, “Us Two,” by A. A. Milne. Here’s the beginning:

Wherever I am, there’s always Boo.
Boo in the flowers with me.
The size of our garden is eight by two.
“How much wire for the fence,” says Boo,
“If it wraps all around as it ought to do?
Let’s guess together,” says Boo to me.
“Let’s guess together,” says Boo.

With some, like “Robert Frost’s Boxer Shorts,” he goes for silly. “Langston Hughes’s Train Trip” uses some trickier math. “Edward Lear’s Elephant with Hot Dog” is just a limerick.

That should give you an idea of what’s going on here. Some quite silly fun. With math!

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/edgar_allan_poes_pie.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.


Ready to Start My Prime Factorization Scarf!

Mathematical, Prime Factorization 1

My yarn arrived tonight! 26 shades of Plymouth Encore yarn (on sale at yarn.com), so I can make a Prime Factorization Scarf that goes all the way up to 100!

Now, a lot of the shades ended up looking more alike than I hoped they would. But I can always hold those toward the end where they only turn up once. I also didn’t realize what large skeins I was getting — I will need to make a sweater after this, because I’m going to have all kinds of leftover yarn. But I can change the color scheme to keep it interesting.

My mission first: Decide which colors will be most dominant. I’m planning on black for 1 this time, but I’m going to swatch out some different combinations for 2, 3, 5, and 7, to decide how I like it. I was planning on red for 2, but it’s so bright — I might not want that much red in the scarf. And I really like the turquoise blue that came. So we shall see… I’ll make some small swatches before I try the actual scarf.

If anyone wants to play along and make a scarf with me, let me know! It might be a lot smarter to make this as a leftover-yarn project and use up old yarn, instead of buying all the same yarn. I wish I’d thought of that! Anyway, I will think in terms of using the yarn for a cardigan later. For now, I’m looking forward to playing with some swatches!

My posts on Mathematical Knitting and related topics are now gathered at Sonderknitting.

Review of Dodsworth in Rome, by Tim Egan

Beginning Chapter Books, Children's Fiction Review 0

Dodsworth in Rome

by Tim Egan

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, Boston, 2011. 48 pages.

Move over Madeline! If you’re going to take your kids to Paris, New York, London, or now Rome, you need to get these books about Dodsworth and his duck visiting those cities.

The first Tim Egan book I read was Serious Farm, and that was enough to make me love his work. The Dodsworth books are short chapter books (four in this one) with large pictures on each page, showing major landmarks, and a hilarious deadpan storyline.

In Rome, they ride a scooter, see (or don’t see) the sights, evade pickpockets, and participate in a pizza-throwing contest. Dodsworth stops the duck just in time from adding a duck to the Sistine Chapel.

I really wish I had these books when I lived in Europe. It would add some fun to take my kids to the same places Dodsworth saw, making sure they behaved better than the duck.

This is simply a fun story — a perfect choice for a child ready for chapters, sure to help them enjoy reading.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Chilidrens_Fiction/dodsworth_in_rome.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Sonderling Sunday – Chapter Four, Part Two

Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge, Sonderling Sunday 0

It’s Sonderling Sunday again — loosely translated as Nerd Sonntag. Once again, it’s hitting the end of the day, so I’m not sure how far I’ll get. I’m using the German translation of The Order of Odd-Fish, by James Kennedy, as a bizarre phrase book and having fun making conclusions about language and words.

It’s been a crazy day. I wore my prime factorization sweater to the US Science and Engineering Festival yesterday, and apparently the Math community got the word. As of 11:04 pm, my site has gotten 24907 hits today. Yesterday, it got 156. Can I just say that I think a lot of Math geeks like me will also enjoy looking at these translations? So I decided to do Sonderling Sunday anyway. (Mind you, I also think it’s time to start querying agents about the children’s book I’ve written using the ideas behind the sweater to make codes and patterns and messages with math.)

We’re on page 38 of The Order of Odd-Fish and on Seite 52 of Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge.

Here are the first two intriguing paragraphs of the next section:

Jo, Aunt Lily, and Korsakov found their way to the kitchen. It still hadn’t been tidied up: crepe paper hung from the ceiling, dirty and damp, and half-filled glasses and stale desserts scattered the tabletops.

Jo opened all the windows to clear the air. She was too shaken to think straight. A package falling from the sky, a talking cockroach, Mr. Cavendish’s head flying around, and now this . . . Aunt Lily stood at the window, looking shell-shocked, and Colonel Korsakov openly wept, overflowing his chair, panting and wheezing.

Here’s how that reads in Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge:

Jo, Tante Lily und Oberst Korsakov erreichten schlie?lich die Küche. Sie war noch nicht aufgeräumt worden; Krepppapier hing von der Decke, schmutzig und feucht, halb volle Gläser und Schalen mit abgestandenem Dessert stapelten sich auf den Tischen und Ablageflächen.

Jo öffnete alle Fenster, um frische Luft hereinzulassen. Sie war zu erschüttert, um einen klaren Gedanken fassen zu können. Ein Paket, das vom Himmel fiel, eine sprechende Kakerlake, Mr Cavendishs Kopf, der durch die Luft flog, und jetzt das . . . Tante Lily stand am Fenster und wirkte wie vom Donner gerührt, und der Russe weinte ganz ungeniert, während er versuchte, seine Körpermasse auf einen Stuhl zu bugsieren. Er keuchte rasselnd.

Some fun things to notice:

Krepppapier is a real word with three p‘s in a row.

“stale desserts” = abgestandenem Dessert (Basically these desserts have been standing there.)

Hmm. A little discrepancy. In English these stale desserts are just scattered on the tabletops. In German, they’re piled (stapelten) on the tables (Tischen) and shelves (Ablageflächen).

I like that there’s one word for what the air’s supposed to do, and it describes it well. “Jo opened all the windows to clear the air.” becomes Jo öffnete alle Fenster, um frische Luft hereinzulassen. She opened the windows so the fresh air will hereinzulassen, be let in here.

“shell-shocked” = vom Donner gerührt (“from thunder stirred”)

“overflowing his chair” is translated versuchte, seine Körpermasse auf einen Stuhl zu bugsieren, which as far as I can tell means “tried, his body mass on a chair to tow.”

“panting and wheezing” is translated keuchte rasselnd, which Google in turn translates as “gasped rattling.”

Now I’ll go on a little farther and try to limit things to the especially interesting bits and the ones that are fun to say.

Here’s one for the fun-to-say category: “There was a shuffle of footsteps in the hall.” = Im Flur waren schlurfende Schritte zu hören. (“In the corridor were shuffling steps to be heard.”)

“sauntered” = schlenderte

“crop duster” = Düngeflugzeug (“fertilizer flying thing”)

“be neighborly” = mache einen Nachbarschaftsbesuch (make a neighbor-business-visit)

“exterminating” = Insektenvernichtung (“insects destruction”)

“generous piece” = gro?zügiges Stück (“big rapid piece”)

“scoundrel” = Schurke

“knave” = Schluft

“rapscallion” = Halunke

“rogue” = Ganove

This calls for one last paragraph to finish off the section:

“A cur, a reprobate! A blackguard, a villain, a rascal! No, silence! There is nothing more between us, sir, but honor and the sword. As for now — I must find my partner.”

In translation, I think you can pick up which word stands for which:

“Ein Schweinehund, ein Taugenichts! Ein Lump, ein Bösewicht, ein Schlingel! Nein, schweigt! Uns beiden steht nur noch eines offen, Sir, Ehre und Schwert. Jetzt jedoch muss ich zunächst einmal meinen Partner finden.”

There you have it! Lots of ways to insult someone in German. I think my favorite may be the easily understandable Schweinehund (pig-dog).

Perhaps the most practical would be saying, “No, silence!” by shouting Nein schweigt! Don’t you think that will get people quiet?

It’s hard to pick favorites from this section, so I think I’ll go with the “Sch” words: schlurfende Schritte, schlenderte, Schurke, Schluft, Schweinehund, Schlingel, schweigt, Schwert

Tune in next week for more fun! And let me know what happens if you shout, Nein, schweigt!

Prime Factorization Knitting Revisited

Mathematical, Prime Factorization 4

Yesterday I went to the US Science and Engineering Festival in DC, and made sure to stop at the Mathematical Association of America booth. I knew they’d be there because every day I make sure to do MAA Minute Math.

I was hoping it would be cool enough (weatherwise) to wear my prime factorization sweater (For the explanation, follow the link!), and to my joy it was. I was happy to get a picture taken at the MAA booth.

Well, that got the attention of many more math people, and today I found four new comments on my blog post about the sweater and a page about me on Hacker News!

Now, the good people at Hacker News did misread my age, so I will post something I just realized that will be true this year after my younger son and I have our birthdays. (I was so delighted when I realized it, I ran to tell my son, not realizing he’d just gone to bed.)

My age will have five prime factors.
My oldest son’s age will have four prime factors.
My youngest son’s age will have three prime factors.

A picture of the three of us should enable you to narrow it down. (I am not 72, and my youngest son is not 8.)

I’ll add one more cool set of facts to definitely set our ages:

In the year my oldest son was born, my age had four prime factors (as his does now).
In the year my youngest son was born, my age had three prime factors (as his will this year).

Let’s see. My youngest son’s age is still ambiguous. So I’ll add the clue that there are only three distinct prime factors in all the expressions above. That should do it.

So, all this establishes that I was thinking about prime numbers yesterday. And, yes, I think it’s time to make a prime factorization cardigan, which I can wear in warmer weather.

Some have said I should sell these. But let’s be honest. Having to buy all those shades of yarn costs around $100. Then it was definitely not my only knitting project, but it took me more than a year to knit. (Fun time, but not worth spending if it were for monetary gain and not for the fun of it.) Then it took me more than a month just to sew in all the yarn ends. Granted, if I made more with the same color scheme, that would spread out the cost. But by the time I finished, I’d had quite enough of the project. It has taken ten years for me to be at all interested in doing anything similar, and I’m NOT going to use the same yarn and color scheme as before; you can be sure of that.

With a cardigan, you wouldn’t have room for a chart on both sides. So I was thinking about how else to express it. Last night, I ordered some Plymouth Encore yarn from yarn.com to make a scarf.

Why Plymouth Encore? Well, first, it’s on sale right now. Needing 26 different colors to go up to 100, any savings per ball helps. I also decided that my cotton sweater (the original was made in Cotton Classic), while soft and comfortable, is a little bit droopy, and wasn’t the greatest choice for the intarsia work. Wool by itself risks being too scratchy. Most of all, this had enough colors, which I hope will be distinct.

This is my plan this time:
I think I’ll use a black background this time. I don’t look good in black is the one reason I didn’t use that on my sweater. (The original partial picture of a blanket that gave me the idea used a black background.) But in a scarf, the background won’t be as prominent.

I’m thinking I’ll use garter stitch, with two rows and one ridge for each factor. I will probably put two stitches of black (one) along the sides, in order to (I hope) hide the two and three factor colors being carried along the edge of the sweater. (I absolutely WILL sew in ends as I go this time. I will. I WILL!)

So here’s how it will work. I’ll start with however many rows of black looks good at the beginning. This is 1. Then I’ll choose a color for 2 and knit two rows (one ridge) in that color. Then I’ll do two rows of black. That represents a factor of 1, and also tells you that we’re starting on a new number. 3 will get two rows of a new color. Then two rows of 1. 4 is 2 x 2. So 4 will be expressed with four rows (two ridges) of the 2 color. Then two rows of 1. Then a new color for 5. Then two rows of 1. Then 6 = 2 x 3, so two rows of 2 directly followed by two rows of 3. Then two rows of 1.

Get the idea? Numbers with lots of prime factors will take up more space than prime numbers.

Mind you, I’ll swatch it out, with some different color choices, and see what looks best. (You definitely want your favorite colors as 2 and 3.) I will post pictures when I get there.

Once I have a scarf done? Well, what I might try with a cardigan is a chart like the old sweater on the back (in new colors and yarn) and maybe stripes as in the scarf on the front sides. Or maybe I’ll be sick of it and give it a rest for awhile.

Based on the new comments, it’s time for me to design a t-shirt! Stay tuned. I have written a children’s book which I called Colors and Codes that talks about using these ideas to make cyphers and patterns using colors or shapes combined with math. As part of the book, I made several charts on my computer. I will see how hard it is to transfer these charts to a t-shirt in Cafe Press.

By the way, I haven’t tried to sell this book yet. I had been working on selling a middle grade novel, and lately I’ve been letting both efforts rest while I dealt with some medical issues. But if anyone knows of an agent or a publisher who’d like to take on something a little unorthodox but extremely cool to math geeks, let me know!

It’s been about ten years since I designed and knitted the sweater. (So I was WAY young then!) Let me stress that the idea of visualizing the prime numbers through colors in knitting was not my own. By all means, spread the word! The article I read (and I should definitely track it down. It was in Interweave Knits in the late 90’s or 2000 or so.) talked about how the blanket that had been made inspired kids who didn’t think they were good in math. As I say in my book, you can attach the numbers to the letters of the alphabet and use these ideas to knit or color messages into things. The sky’s the limit, and it’s lots of fun.

Once I have some swatches, I’ll take some pictures and post the results!

Edited to add: I found the inspiration! It was an article in the Fall 2003 issue of Interweave Knits, called “geekchic” by Brenda Dayne, regarding the work of Pat Ashcroft and Steve Plummer. They have a fabulously cool website at woollythoughts.com. Here’s what the article said about an afghan they created:

“Across the Atlantic Ocean and far from the research laboratories and hallowed halls of Academia, a young girl, age thirteen, stands mesmerized in front of a knitted afghan displayed at the annual North-East Math Fair in Lancashire, England. Constructed of one hundred brightly colored squares, the intricately striped fabric is the creation of Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer (www.woollythoughts.com). Knitters, teachers, mathematicians, and partners, Pat and Steve have found that basic mathematical principles make for beautiful knitwear designs, and that knitting is an excellent way of explaining complex theorems to their students.

“Vibrating with color, and reminiscent of African Kente cloth, the Counting Panes afghan is so beautiful it’s hard to accept that it was created as a teaching tool. Within its one hundred brightly colored squares, in ten columns and ten rows, however, lie lessons in multiplication, division, pattern, and numerical relationships… If a square contains yellow, it contains a number divisible by two, if it contains red, then the number divides by three. The more colors in a square, the more numbers it divides by.”

Now, they only had a photograph of a very small part of the afghan, so I couldn’t see how it worked. That part would not work on my sweater at all — there are several squares that appear to just be dark blue, and it’s stated elsewhere that green always appears with baby blue. So maybe that quilt is just showing factors of numbers, and not the prime factorization? Maybe beyond a certain point primes don’t get new colors?

But anyway, having the fondness for math that I do, that much information made me realize that I could knit a prime factorization chart. But I wanted to wear it, not just look at it! I still can’t make sense of what, exactly, their afghan was doing, but they are the ones who gave me the idea behind my design. I graphed it out, figured out how many stitches across I needed, and then found a basic sweater pattern from the book Picture Knitting to use as my canvas. Thank you so much for the germ of the idea!

My posts on Mathematical Knitting and related topics are now gathered at Sonderknitting.

Librarians Help! – Report after Week One

Uncategorized 0

So, last week, I decided to start keeping track of the ways I (and other librarians) help people and start blogging about them. (*If anyone out there is graphically talented, I’d love some kind of logo for this!*)

This is my first week’s report. It’s not terribly impressive. But I never said that librarians help in big, impressive ways. (Though sometimes we do get to do that.) We get to help people in small, everyday ways.

This week, I didn’t work on the desk too many hours, with a couple of doctor appointments and things like that. (I think the scheduler is going easy on me as I think I had a vestibular migraine all week.) And I won’t explain how weeding old books from the collection helps people, but will stick with ways I helped members when working at the information desk. So here are some of the small ways I got to help people this week.

The biggest activity, naturally enough, is helping people find books. This week, I helped people find:
-a reference book on estimating costs
-books about the artist M. C. Escher
-a book to review for the AP History exam
-a movie to watch this weekend
-a book on aquariums
-some educational books for a woman’s grandkids
-books on fitness
-art books
-Amelia Bedelia books
-Yu-Gi-Oh! books
-Dora books
-Magic School Bus books
-Books on Helen Keller
-Books on Susan B. Anthony
-Short stories for members of an ESL class to read

And my favorite of that type:
-Books for a mother to read to her daughter’s second grade class

Some other interesting ways I helped:

When in the Virginia Room, I helped someone research a book on local history.

I figured out how to print three chapters from the Bible, triple-spaced, for a lady to mark up and bring to her Bible study group.

I helped someone figure out how to fill out an online application that was using Excel.

I watched the Virginia Room librarian give some extra donated maps to a map-obsessed ten-year-old boy. (That was very cool and was not me helping, but was another librarian helping. That boy may well be a cartographer some day.)

I helped someone view the 1940 census within Ancestry.

And my favorite of this type: When in the Virginia Room, I helped someone find out information about a distant relative he’d lost track of who recently died in this area. He had thought the relative lived overseas, and wanted to find out if this was really him and some more information. It was. I found some information and called back and left a message. He called the next day to thank me, saying the info was just what he wanted!

So, those are some small but satisfying ways I got to help people this week. How about you? Librarians, who did you help this week? Library members, how did librarians help you this week?

Spread the word: Librarians Help!

Edited to add: I thought I should mention which books the Mom picked to read to the 2nd grade class out of the pile I pulled out for her to consider:

Happy Birthday to You! by Dr. Seuss (it’s her daughter’s birthday this week)
The Pigeon Wants a Puppy, by Mo Willems
A Visitor for Bear, by Bonny Becker, illustrated by Kady Denton MacDonald
Millie Waits for the Mail, by Alexander Steffensmeier

Those second graders are in for a great time!

Review of Black Heart, by Holly Black

Alternate History, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Black Heart

The Curse Workers, Book Three

by Holly Black

Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2012. 296 pages.
Starred Review

Ah! Holly Black has done a magnificent job tying up her trilogy! I was reading this book while waiting for an appointment with a neurology specialist. I had quite a bit to go, but I read straight to the end. Then I looked up. Oh no! It was an hour after my appointment time! Had I been so absorbed in the book, I hadn’t heard them call my name? That definitely could have happened, because I certainly hadn’t noticed the time pass. No, it turned out that this particular doctor was known for spending all the time with patients that they needed (and he did this for me, too).

I don’t want to say much about the plot, because I might accidentally give away things that happened in the earlier books. And yes, this is definitely a trilogy you want to read in order. It’s an alternate world where people can curse you by touching you. Curse Workers come in many different kinds, like luck workers or memory workers. Even death workers and transformation workers. But there’s always some kind of blowback that affects the curseworker himself.

Cursing people is illegal — so families where many are born with the ability end up as crime families. The girl Barron loves is the presumptive heir to one of the biggest crime families. So it’s still an issue for Barron which side of the law he should be on. And meanwhile, a governor who was cursed by Barron’s mother is trying to institute mandatory testing and make it illegal even to be able to curse someone.

These books all have some kind of clever caper that culminates all the threads of the book. Must. Say. No. More. Since they are clever, and since Holly Black manages to surprise you each time, these books definitely make great rereading as well. One thing I particularly liked is that she made me like the second book better by the way she had things go in the third book.

This is a brilliant series. I will try to listen to books two and three in audio form to get to enjoy them again. (I’ve already both read and listened to the first book.)

So how’s that for a review that says almost nothing about the actual book? But I don’t want to give anything away from the first books! So I’ll leave you with a paragraph from Black Heart:

“Plenty of people get conned because they don’t know any better. They’re just gullible. But lots of people are suspicious at the start of a con. Maybe the initial investment is small enough that they can afford to lose it. Maybe they’re bored. Maybe they’re hopeful. But you’d be surprised how many people start a con knowing there’s a good chance they’re being conned. All the signals are there. They just keep ignoring them. Because they want to believe in the possibility of something. And so, even though they know better, they just let it happen.”

thecurseworkers.com
TEEN.SimonandSchuster.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/black_heart.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of To Timbuktu, by Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg

Graphic Memoir, Nonfiction Review, Travel, True Stories 0

To Timbuktu

Nine Countries
Two People
One True Story

by Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg

Roaring Brook Press, New York, 2011. 492 pages.

This book reminds me of Mo Willems’ You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons. Both are about overseas adventures taken by people fresh out of college, complete with plenty of illustrations. To Timbuktu, however, has more text, since the cartoonist, Steven Weinberg, teamed up with a writer, Casey Scieszka. It’s less light-hearted because of having more text, but it also gives a lot more information about their cross-cultural experiences.

Casey and Steven met as students abroad in Morocco. They decided, after graduation, that they would go overseas together. This is the story of their adventures.

I think they had the most fun in China, where they spent the first six months and both taught English. That section is especially fun, with the descriptions of the kids and their antics trying to teach. After that, their time was a little less structured. Casey had a grant to study Islam in the schools in Mali, and Steven was working on his art.

The story is fascinating, and you’ll learn a lot about the countries they visited. Okay, I confess: I didn’t even know that Timbuktu was in Mali, let alone what living there is like. I didn’t know there’s a language spoken in Mali called Bamankan, or much about Mali at all.

I actually met Casey Scieszka at ALA Annual Conference a couple years ago when I was fangirl-ing her Dad, and I liked her very much. They said at the time that she was writing a graphic novel. This isn’t really a graphic novel; it’s an illustrated memoir. But it’s heavily illustrated, and that makes it all the more fun. After all, since they visited these cultures I know nothing about, it’s nice to have pictures to help understand.

This is an excellent book for anyone who’s ever dreamed of picking up and traveling around the world. You can enjoy their experiences without having to get hot and dirty.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/to_timbuktu.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Spread the Word: Librarians Help!

Uncategorized 0

When you think of the “helping professions,” do you think of librarians?

I’m not sure too many people other than librarians themselves do.

But I’ve been thinking about my calling as a librarian. As a Christian, being a librarian helps me fulfill my responsibility to help the poor. I see my job as a ministry. As a person with a social conscience, that’s also true. We help. It makes me happy when I know I’ve helped someone, and that happens every day.

I’ve been a teacher. I taught college math for ten years. And I feel much more helpful as a public librarian. I still teach people, but it’s people who want to learn. I don’t test them! I’m not their adversary! And mostly, I help them teach themselves, which is much more empowering.

Politically, I see libraries as the good things about the ideals behind socialism. The large group contributes very small amounts (less than a penny out of each tax dollar in this county), and this is invested into resources that all can use for free. And pooling the money gives a better return than any individual could get — lower prices on materials and even specialists (librarians) to help you in whatever information needs you have.

This contrasts with what I saw when I worked in the Office for Children, helping with the bureaucracy of running the USDA Food Program. Someone had once worked the system to get money — so now it’s overwhelmed with details and regulations. We had to make sure people filled out the paperwork exactly correctly and make surprise visits to make sure our centers were counting attendance correctly. All for pennies per child per day. And you know how they make sure no discrimination crops up? Every day care provider must post a certain poster, printed by the government that says there is no discrimination here. And every parent must get a flyer about it.

Or when my husband had just joined the Air Force and we got on the WIC program for a little while. The people who worked with us were incredibly condescending, and we had to attend a “nutrition class” to get the coupons. Because college educated people would never be poor enough to need this help? Yes, it hurt my pride.

Now, any time you have to apply for help, you’re going to have to deal with regulations to make sure the program is administered fairly. And there may be a stigma, since you have to be in a certain category to get this help.

Libraries aren’t like that. They help everyone. The rich can read books for free and get information help from librarians. And so can the poor. You do not have to apply to use the library. It is there for the entire community.

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. Last year, I went on a women’s retreat with my church. One of the speakers, who works for World Vision, was talking about our calling from God to help the poor. Later, in a small group, we were talking about what ways God is calling each of us to help. I mentioned my job at the library, which I had just gotten back to after working in the Office for Children for six months. She said, “I don’t think it can be a job.” (This from a person who works for World Vision? So that doesn’t count?)

But I do think you can help people in your job. And I don’t think that people, in general, realize how much librarians help people.

So — that’s the point of this post. I want to get the word out: Librarians Help! I’d love to start a trending tag on Twitter, so I may refer some people with lots more followers than me and ask if they’ll find reasons to use the tag #librarianshelp.

For me, I’m going to start a blog series. My plan is to post every week on my day off. That will be Friday this week and Saturday the following week, and so on. What I will do, is start writing down in a little notebook the ways I’ve helped people this week. I will keep it completely unidentifiable. For example, last week I helped a man apply for a job. He didn’t need a lot of help, but he was clearly worried about using the computer, and I got him on one of our computers and got him to the company’s website. He went from there, but I know I helped and reassured him that he could do it. (I hope he gets the job!) Of course, another favorite way I helped was helping a kid find the next book he wanted to read. So I’ll just mention a couple of episodes like that each week.

I’d love it if more people got involved. Each week, I’d love to see some comments with stories of ways you have helped someone or have seen a librarian help someone. Or a link to your own related blog post would be fantastic.

I’d like to spread the word: Librarians help!

Note: The opinions expressed here are entirely my own, and by no means should be construed to reflect the opinions of my employer.