July 11, 1990 - Comic Books

When I was in fifth grade my parents got me a pair of black, horn-rimmed spectacles.

Some kids fretted about the names other kids came up with -- "Four Eyes" being the kindest -- but that never bothered me. From the very beginning I truly liked having glasses. Partly, it was because I discovered that I'd been living in a sort of French impressionist world and hadn't even known it. I used to think trees were made up of intriguing swashes of color. Turned out they had sharply-etched leaves, definite branches and bark. The world was abruptly crisp and clean-edged. It was exciting.

But that's not the real reason. Even when I first learned that I MIGHT need corrective lenses, I was almost smug about it. Why? Because I have always identified with Clark Kent.

The first "real" book I read was #Danny and the Dinosaur#. And I can still rattle off the whole of Dr. Seuss's #Green Eggs and Ham# from childhood memory. But I LEARNED to read from comic books.

A lot of parents think comics books are intellectual fluff. But nothing could be further from the truth. Comics are wonderful bridges to literacy. A child can enjoy the pictures right from the beginning. But what really hooks the interest and imagination is the plot. To follow the plot a child needs to develop a vocabulary. At the age of 6 I could recognize and spell "invulnerable." Could you?

I cut my teeth on DC Comics, featuring Superman (50 years old last year), Batman, Green Lantern, the Flash, and many, many others. The stories often hinged on some "gimmick" -- a scientific fact or bit of logical deduction. I learned not only to imagine the improbable, but also to look beneath the surface of the story, to analyze and detect. Comic books taught me both to dream and to reason.

As I got a little older, I switched over to Marvel Comics. There I found Spiderman, the world's first neurotic superhero. I discovered Thor, the Thunder God, who sparked in me an abiding interest in Norse mythology and literature. The world of comic books gradually acquired all the rich complexity of the real world, a morass of plot and subplot, the likely and the legendary all intertwined.

In retrospect, I think superhero comic books were some of the best teachers I ever had. (Of course now that I'm an adult I read more sophisticated fare, like the comic book "Flaming Carrot.")

Parents, if your son or daughter is drawn to these universes of inspiration and heroism, please be kind. In fact, you should probably increase his or her allowance (and kids, you can tell your mom or dad that a college-educated person said so). Your child is not only learning to read, but learning to emulate greatness of power and spirit, tempered always with compassion and integrity.

To the world I may be a mild-mannered librarian, but in my imagination I have learned to leap tall buildings at a single bound. I thank comic books.

July 4, 1990 - Overdues

Many years ago, the public library in the small Illinois town of Towanda (motto: "I love to wanda on the plain") had a simple but effective way of getting its overdue books back.

Every Monday, it posted in its big storefront window the names of all the people who hadn't brought their books back on time. It also listed which books were late.

This Window of Shame sat right next to the only other business in Towanda, the Post Office. In small towns, people go to the Post Office pretty regularly. And generally speaking, they are more than happy to stop and look at a public list of their neighbors' sins.

Peer pressure can be a powerful thing in a small town. If Joey forgot to bring back a Tom Swift book, he'd hear about it not only from the librarian, but from at least twelve of his neighbors. Every day. And at least two of them would want to know why he was reading that trash anyway.

One thing about Towanda, though, anything even remotely like a "dirty book" always came back early. The local pastor used to stop by that window too. Nobody wanted to wind up the object lesson of a sermon.

The next step up from the Towanda approach is to telephone people when a book is late. It works fine so long as a library doesn't check out all that many books, or there aren't that many people.

For a long time now, the Douglas County Public Library System has used the phone method. But these days you might say we're overdue for a change.

Last year, our library checked out over 300,000 items -- closing in on a third of a million. We had almost 70,000 individual library visits.

The telephone call approach just doesn't cut it anymore.

Starting this week, we're going to let our computer do some of the dirty work for us. Every day, relentlessly, it will churn out reminders that some of our books didn't make it back when they were supposed to.
It will work like this. One week after the book was due, we'll crank out a gentle reminder. You'll get it in the mail a few days later. If you fail to respond by the next week, we'll generate another notice. Now the book is two weeks overdue, and you're looking at a little bit of a fine. If you still don't bring it back, when the book is three weeks overdue our computer will print a bill. Then you've got a choice: pay us the full value of the book, or shuffle in, red-faced, return the book, and pay the fine. Believe me, the fine is a fraction of the cost of most library materials.

The point, if it isn't obvious by now, is to recover the materials -- not to humiliate anybody. You see, the books that don't come back are usually the ones most in demand. It's cheaper and usually faster for us to mail a couple of notices than to replace the item.

So if you should happen to get one of our new overdue notices, remember -- it could be worse.

You could live in Towanda.

June 30, 1990 - Library advertising

Last night I had the strangest dreams.

First, I was in a dusty Western bar, watching a poker game. One big, grizzled cowpoke laid a spread of cards on the table before him and grinned. "Three queens," he said.

Then the man to his left, a skinny dude with no chin and an enormous Adam's apple, set his cards face down. "Fold," he said, then spit.

The next man, dressed all in black, peered up from beneath the worn leather brim of his hat. His eyes were ice-gray - cold and dangerous. His gaze swept around the table. In a gravely voice, he sneered, "Full house." After tossing his upturned cards to the table, his calloused hand reached out toward the mound of coins.

Just then a high, thin voice rang out. "Not so fast, mister." A small hand dropped over the scarred paw of the man in black, freezing it.

Then, just like in one of those spaghetti westerns, the camera of my dream turned slowly, to a rising tide of hoofclops and guitar music. And there, splashed in a dazzle of spotlight and white-fringed cloth, sat a 6 year old in a 10 gallon hat and full good guy cowboy regalia.

With infinite, almost impertinent confidence, the boy lifted his wrist and snapped down ... a Douglas County Public Library System card.

Everyone around the table moaned.

"With a Douglas County Public Library card," piped the boy, "you've always got an ace in the hole." Then, as the others lowered their eyes and backed away, the lad lassoed the money.

Then I had another dream.

The scene was -- the Philip S. Miller Branch library. But mingled with stately rows of angled bookstacks, there were benches and mirrors, and hundreds of people milling around in leotards and sweatpants.

My dream did a close-up on a beefy young man panting on the edge of a library table.

"I started out lifting some of the lighter books - V. C. Andrews, Stephen King, and like that. But now ..." I noticed that in each hand he held several volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. "Now," he said proudly, "I can bench press half the essential knowledge of mankind."

I saw an energetic young mother, aerobicizing in the aisles. "Mentally as well as physically," she huffed, "today's women go for the burn."

And suddenly, in my dream, the library had a drivethrough lane. "Your order?" a voice asked brightly. "Two bestsellers, a Newsweek magazine, and a book about current car prices." "Please pull forward to window 2," said the bright voice. "And have your library card ready. Have a nice day!"

Abruptly, I woke up, sat up, and shook my head. What was my unconscious trying to tell me?

At first, all I could think was that whenever you dream about your job, you should get to put it on your timecard.

But then it came to me. What's the real reason that more people talk about movies, health clubs, and fast food restaurants, than talk about public libraries?

Simple. Advertising.

Here we are, with a veritable cornucopia of culture, with more to offer (in my unbiased opinion) than any other institution in our society. But people persist in thinking of libraries as nice quiet places where people doze whilst reading Chaucer.

It's time for a change. Libraries need a brand new image.

Or am I dreaming?

June 23, 1990 - Weeding revisited

Before my wife and I moved to Colorado I used to say we had a ton of "stuff" - our belongings. I was wrong. When the movers weighed everything, I discovered we had three tons of stuff. One ton - 2,000 pounds - was just books.

These days I try not to buy so many. If I want to read something, I get it from the library. Otherwise, I know that sooner or later I will once again have to whittle down my possessions to fit the available space. I hate that. I get enough of it at work.

Deciding which books not to keep is the most painful task a librarian faces. You don't get into this business unless you love books. And like everyone else, we have the unconscious presumption that a once a book makes it to library shelves, it will be there forever. The Happy Hunting Ground of the Printed Word.

But libraries not only collect books. They have to get rid of them too.

We call this process "weeding," and we do it for the same reason a gardener weeds. We need to make room for fresh, healthy growth. Just because a book makes it to the library shelves, doesn't mean it stops getting old. Over time, and despite our best efforts, the paper yellows and turns brittle. The binding begins to deteriorate. Dust collects. The lettering on the spine starts to fade. Old books eat up shelf space. After a while, they actually scare people away from the new books.

Particularly in the non-fiction areas, we can't afford to keep books more than ten years. Even five years is pushing it. Old books, particularly technical books, have bad information in them.

So every so often, librarians have to (gulp) throw books away.

How do we decide what goes? Since this is an election year, let's say the people decide. Every time someone checks out a book, it counts as one vote. Popular books are like popular candidates. They get a lot of votes. So whenever we weed, we re-elect them to our shelves.

But sometimes we find that a book hasn't been checked out in a long time. And in the public library, a book that hasn't gotten a single vote in ten years gets kicked out of office. It's democracy in action.

Even when the People Have Spoken, that doesn't make it any easier on librarians. Some books - classics, for instance - we may choose to replace with newer copies. In our innermost hearts, we still believe that every book has its reader, and every reader his or her book. It's sad when one of our books goes unloved.

So where do new books go when they've been weeded? That's the good news. Usually they wind up in library book sales. From there they pass to precisely the places that please us most. They find good homes, with people who will love them.

Until, that is, it's time to move.

June 13, 1990 - Summer Reading Program

I've been a father now for almost three years. In that time, I've learned a lot about the single most powerful influence on the parental mind: guilt.

On every side, the new parent is met with questions that seem simple enough at first, then get staggeringly complex. Should you use cloth diapers or disposables? Is it better to breastfeed or use bottles? Are playpens a simple lifestyle convenience -- or a sort of kiddie Auschwitz?

In some places I've lived, you almost had to get your children's names on the "right" preschool's waiting list before you got them home from the hospital. Is this academic one-upmanship, or sound educational planning? Then there's the BIG question: if both parents work, is the child going to grow up to be a serial killer?

On either side of these issues, there are hosts of persuasive experts, all citing alarming research. And as a librarian, I have to say that it makes sense to do a little reading before you make up your mind.

But guilt can go too far. A woman told me a story once that sticks with me. She and her mother were chatting when the woman's newborn child woke up and started crying. The new mom, desperate to do the right thing, started rapidly thumbing through one of the new baby Bibles to figure out what to do. The woman's mother, who'd raised six children, said carefully, "Put down the book. Pick up the baby."

I've met parents who march their children into the library the day after school lets out and announce, grimly, "Studies have shown that during the summer, children forget up to 80 percent of what they've learned in the previous year. And their reading skills can deteriorate by as much as a grade level." Then they sign up little Joan or Johnny in the Summer Reading Program in the name, I guess, of a higher grade point average.

What can I say? It's true. Children do forget a lot in the summer. BUT THAT'S THE POINT. THAT'S WHAT SUMMERS ARE FOR. Force a 6 year old to read so as not to lose an academic edge in the first few months of the next grade, and you will get a child who does not like the library.

But now that I've probably awakened all your guilt, let's put it back to sleep. Yes, I, a library expert, strongly recommend that you get your kids signed up for this year's summer reading program. Why?

Because they'll have fun! If kids read for just 12 hours over the summer -- and they can read anything they want, we'll give them fancy certificates, and PRIZES. And if you have children that are too young to read, then you can read to them for just six hours over the summer. They still get prizes.

We'll also have some other fun stuff. We'll have storytellers and skateboarding demonstrations. We'll have photography contests. We'll have air-conditioning.

So what are you waiting for? Take your kids out for an ice cream cone. Then, with great enthusiasm, say, "Hey, I just got a great idea! Let's go to the LIBRARY. I hear they've got some cool things happening this summer."

Sure it's good for them. But they don't have to know.

May 30, 1990 - Home schooling

What do the following people have in common: William Penn, Abraham Lincoln, Douglas MacArthur, Agatha Christie, Pearl Buck, astronaut Sally Ride, and Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor?

None of them went to school. Or to put it more correctly, they were schooled at home.

Based on the people my staff and I see using the library, there are more and more families practicing home schooling. Others have questions.

First of all, is home schooling legal? Yes. According to Colorado Senate Bill Number 56, which was effective as of July 1, 1988, "The general assembly hereby declares that it is the primary right and obligation of the parent to choose the proper education and training for children under his care and supervision. It is recognized that home-based education is a legitimate alternative to classroom attendance..."

Do parents have to be certified teachers? No. Then how do we know if the child is learning anything? Home school students have to take nationally standardized achievement tests in grades 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 - just like the kids in regular schools.

How well do home school students do? Based on numerous studies, they do at least as well as public school students, and tend to average better.

Why do parents decide to teach their children at home?

There are probably as many reasons as there are parents. But generally, the concerns seem to fall into one of several camps: religious, academic, medical, and philosophic.

Religion is a chief concern of about 40% of the people doing home schooling. These parents feel that their values, typically Christian values, are not emphasized sufficiently in public schools. In fact, some believe that American textbooks are specifically DESIGNED to "undermine religion and traditional values."

Other parents get into home schooling because their children just aren't doing well in their studies. According to one woman I spoke with, her child kept falling behind in school and couldn't seem to get the help she needed to catch up. But when she was taught at home, she caught up, stayed caught up, and started to pull ahead.

The medical theory, put simply, is that children just aren't ready for school at the age today's society dictates. Citing research on brain and body development, they argue that real physiological damage can occur by shoving small children into school too soon. To quote educator Raymond Moore, "the eyes of most children are permanently damaged before age 12." Moore and his associates at Hewitt Research Foundation also concluded that "thoughtful learning" was not possible - due to the rate of brain development in most children - until the age of 8 or 9.

Some parents become home teachers simply because they are opposed to what they see as the incarceration of their children in a totalitarian environment. Let children be children! they argue, instead of trying to forge them into super-geniuses. While "thoughtful learning" in the sense of classroom reasoning may not be productive at early ages, children naturally soak up a great deal of information about the world just by playing in it. To quote Moore again, "...to attempt to institutionalize all young children because a few are disadvantaged...is like trying to hospitalize all because a few are sick."

What kind of guidelines exist for home teachers? I recommend Mary Pride's books on home schooling (available through the Douglas County Public Library System). Her books, such as "The New Big Book of Home Learning," are arranged in a catalog format, and provide near-encyclopedic surveys of what's out there.

What other kinds of support are available? Well, there's a Colorado Home Educator's Association and a Home School Legal Defense Association, to name just two.

Is home schooling a significant educational trend? Could be. I know one thing: home schoolers really use the library. For that alone, I give them an "A."

May 23, 1990 - Libraries, public schools, and Mad Magazine

When I was in college, I had to work five part-time jobs in order to eat, buy books, and pay tuition and rent. Two of those jobs were teaching assistantships.

I have the deepest respect for teachers. To get ready for just 50 minutes of class time sometimes took me up to 6 hours. Teaching is hard work.

Of course, teaching has its rewards too, even if I can't think of any right now.

I prefer the rewards of librarianship. For instance? I like talking with a two-year-old one minute and an octogenarian the next. It tickles and sometimes enlightens me.

Another reason I'd rather work in a library is that I don't think most kids really want to go to school. They're forced to. Coerced.

When children go to a library, it's more likely to be by choice. And we're a lot more relaxed about what they can do when they get here. I remember Mrs. Short, my fourth grade teacher. Once she caught me reading a Mad Magazine in class. She yelled at me, then took it away. I never saw it again.

At a library, kids can read Mad Magazine and we not only don't mind, we're thankful that they're reading. (Hmm. Do our branches subscribe to Mad Magazine? No? Then by Alfred E. Neumann, they will! You know, sometimes it's great to be the boss.)

(And by-the-bye, Mrs. Short, if you happen to be reading this, I'd just like to say that I learned more from Mad Magazine than I did from all my sappy fourth grade reading primers, and now I'm buying it for THOUSANDS OF OTHER KIDS.)

But old injuries aside, schools and libraries can and ought to be good partners.

If libraries are doing their job, they hand over kids prepared - even eager - to learn, especially to learn how to read.

Then, during the school year, public libraries provide backup for the school libraries. We not only stock our shelves with plenty of reference and non-fiction materials, we also buy lots of books - and magazines - that help children remember that reading is more than a classroom skill, it's fun!

And when school days at last are done, we provide materials to help people write resumes, find colleges (and scholarships), repair cars, cook meals, buy a house, and much, much more.

Together, schools and libraries form a sort of life-long intellectual insurance policy. The public school system is there to provide the core knowledge and basic learning skills. Libraries exist to stimulate the interest for reading in the first place, and help people track down the information they need later on.

So what do you get when you combine formal instruction on the one hand, and supplementary reference materials plus recreational reading on the other?

You get smarter kids. And eventually, smarter adults.

Before long, libraries may assume an even more direct role in public education. But I'll have more to say about that next week, when I examine what seems to me to be a distinct Colorado trend: home schooling.