My Smelly Precioussss...

So for the second year in a row, our children's librarian has ordered scratch and sniff bookmarks for summer reading.  But we all know that it is really for me since I talked her into ordering them last year.  I think it is another one of her attempts to get me to join youth services.  I decided last year to hand them out to the kids after they completed the summer reading program and they really seemed to enjoy them, I know I do.  Even the reluctant teens seem to dig them.  ("Dig" get it?? "Dig into summer reading".....)  What's really cool are the kids who tell me that they still have the ones from last year and that they're excited to add to their collection each summer.

Terra (Terrestrials #1) Book Report.

Oh no, not another dystopian young adult novel you say.  Well, I think it's better than those other dark YA novels.  You know the ones with the monochromatic covers, if there is any color involved, it usually involves a rose or flower of sorts.

Although I am not the best source for YA novels, I have read the The Hunger Games and Divergent series.  And they all seem to be built upon the same premise.

Here's the ingredient list for non-vampire related YA novels:
1 - a post-apocalyptic world
1 - structured caste system
1 - a "typical" teenage female who belongs in the lower rung of society
1 - male character who becomes the love interest
1 - strange set of circumstances which leads said female to become the heroine

There are a lot of structural similarities between these three novels, fortunately, Terra is able to distance itself well enough to keep my interest.  

I did have some questions after finishing the book.  These are not technically spoilers since the Amazon book description includes these details, but whatever, you've been warned.

My first question is, how high in the atmosphere are the skydwellers living?  This leads me to my second question, if they are as high as I assume they are from reading, wouldn't all the scraps the scavengers look for burn up in the atmosphere?

Overall, Terra is a quick and entertaining read.  If you are a fan of The Hunger Games or Divergent, you would definitely appreciate the Gretchen Powell's take on a dystopian world.  Now I am on to my next book: The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor.  

I Love Childrens Librarians...

Dunnnn Dun, Dunnn Dun...  More Books Need Augmentation Apps...

Yesterday, the quarterly, biannual, whenever they feel like it, Childrens Librarian Management meeting was held at my branch.  Needless to say, I was really looking forward to it.  One of my old branch coworkers emailed me a week before to say that she was coming in extra early to say hi and catch-up aka gossip.  She even brought me a little goody bag with a bacon flavored lollipop.

I ended up getting stuck on the desk for the whole duration, 3 straight hours because the assistant branch manager had to set up the web cam for their teleconference and had to be present during the whole thing.  The video came through just fine, but surprisingly a good majority of the librarians are near retirement age and they had a hard time hearing the presentation.  I could only imagine the whole room going, "We can't hear it," "What did she say?"  "Can't you turn the volume up?"  It stressed out my manager so much that he had to take a break outside.

When I came in to work today, my branch Children's librarian was so excited to show me one of the things she learned in the meeting: the 2013 Guinness World Records Book augmented reality app.  Granted it only works on a handful of pages and it is actually pretty wonky.  I tried it on the branch's iPad and then on my Android tablet and both had their own issues but overall it's pretty damn cool.  My favorite pages were the dunking parrot and of course the shark one --- "DEEP BLUE SEA... THEY ATE ME!  A EFFING SHARK ATE ME!!"

Me getting paid to play with stuff at the Info Desk.

I guess I'm the "Bookmark Guy"...

Like any work environment, people like to talk about other coworkers, myself included.  I can only assume it's much more pervasive in the library because we're dealing with people who work with "information."

Recently, my cool young female supervisor was replaced with an equally cool young male from another branch.  He already knew a lot about me before he started because I used to work with one of his coworkers.  She was one of the YS librarians at our old branch and I always called her "Friend."  She was one of the first Info people I befriended at that branch.  I also get along really well with my current branch's YS librarian and she's older than my parents and we really don't have much in common.  Now that I think about it, I really get along well with YS librarians in general, even the YS Librarian that doesn't play nicely with other librarians.  I think I have a thing for YS librarians, holy crap, this is some Freudian type ish right here...  Is this why I got my MLIS??

The People's Cubicle

Anyways, he mentioned one time, "So-so said you used to have a 'Bookmark Shrine' at your old branch."  Yeah, you could call it that.  I really don't know how it started, but working circ, you come across a lot of ... crap that patrons return in their books.  I guess one day I decided to hang a few on my drag cubicle walls.  My cubicle was off of Main Street so EVERYONE would see it and ask if I was collecting bookmarks, to which I just shrugged and said, "Sure."  Soon, every time I would come into work there would be a couple of bookmarks left by my coworkers.  It really did not take long to fill all of the walls but unfortunately I never took picture of it, this is all I have left, a crappy pic taken with my old Blackberry ::tear::

Okay, to be honest, I really kept it up because I knew it bugged the oppressive management there.  They love to micromanage every single aspect of the branch, even the way your cubicle is.  They hate when your desk has "clutter" aka anything that isn't: a keyboard, monitor, mouse, barcode scanner, stapler, tape, writing utensils, pad of paper, and Post-It notes.  I think all of my coworkers contributed to my bookmark collection as their way of "sticking it to the man."  A few have told me, "I can't believe they didn't tell you to take it down."  They couldn't because I had the people behind me and it would have just made everyone hate them just a little bit more.

My Short-Lived Teen Librarian Career...

So.Much.Pink.

With our youth services librarians busy with SRP and related book talking, they asked if I could help them go through donations to see if there is anything we could add to your YFIC collection.  I really feel bad for the YFIC demographic, I feel like our library system, as a whole, is neglecting them. 

This was only the first cart of many teen books to go through.  It was pretty ironic getting tasked to do this because I just read a Smithsonian article on how pink and blue came to define gender in society: 'When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?'.  Just after going through this one cart, my retinas were seared.  I liken it to being out in the snow on a sunny day for awhile and when you come back inside and everything white appears pink.