Personal: Reading Goals and Book Awards

As a Youth Services librarian that works with children and teenagers I feel a need to keep up with new work that is coming out for that age group in addition to reading the award winners each year.  For me that includes the Printz Award and Honor Books, Newbery Award and Honor Books, Caldecott Award and Honor Books, and the Pura Belpre Award and Honor Books.  I also always try to read a couple of winners from the time period before I was a librarian (or before I decided to add the particular award to my reading goals) in an effort to play catch up.  I also tend to look through the Great Graphic Novels for Teens list and read a mountain of those (although I don't keep track) and take a glance at the Orbis Pictus each year and read the winner if sounds interesting.

All of these awards are given by various branches of the American Library Association except for the Orbis Pictus which is given by the National Council of Teachers of English.  The Caldecott, Newbery and Printz are all awards for books that were considered the best in their field.  These are not necesarily the books kids will find most interesting but they will end up becoming school assignment books and every library will try to have a copy of them on shelf. I feel like it's important to read these books because they are supposed to be the best of the best, it's good for professional development and more often then not I do find that a number of the books were on my to be read list anyway because they sounded interesting.  The Pura Belpre award is given to authors and illustrators that do an excellent job of illustrating or writing about hispanic life and culture through their work.  Since my family is all from Spain I always felt like this level was important on a personal level.

However I am beginning to feel torn about this decision.  It's beginning to get a little overwhelming having 16 books added to my to be read list each year, not including the ones I am trying to read from years past.  I don't always enjoy the books.  Sometimes I am not enjoying the particular award winner and it becomes a struggle to finish the work.  I also already have other books that I HAVE to read for library programs that are not necessarily my cup of tea.  I feel like I haven't read anything I've wanted to read in a while now.

What award winners do you try and read every year?  Do you struggle through the books you don't like or let yourself skip that particular one this year?

Professional Program: Mock Printz

About midway through January the Suffolk and Nassau Library Systems got together and held a Mock Printz discussion.  A Mock Printz is like a mini version of what the ALA Printz Committee goes through every year when selecting Printz Award and Honor books.  Unlike the ALA Committee we only had to read and vote on 6 titles.  The ALA Committee most likely reads an astounding number of books over the course of the year.  I had already read one of the books to be discussed and four of the remaining five were on my to be read list.  I went back and forth about whether or not I should attend mainly because I wasn't sure I would have enough time to read all six books before the discussion and it would suck up my only day off that week.

Then one of my coworkers was asked to lead a discussion on 3 of the 6 books selected.  Of course she ended up despising the book I had already read which I had actually really enjoyed, so she asked me if I would lead the discussion with her; reminding me that it would look fabulous on my resume.  Naturally this was the final push that teetered me into deciding to attend the workshop and help her lead the discussion group.

For Long Island's Mock Printz discussion we had to read:

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan

Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Seraphina by Rachel Hartmen

Bomb:  the Race to Build--and Steal--the World's Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin

My coworker and I lead the group discussion on The Raven Boys, The Brides of Rollrock Island and Chopsticks.  We prepared five questions on each book ahead of time.  Due to all kinds of scheduling mishaps and a heavy programming schedule we were unable to meet in person so we used Google Docs to formulate out questions.  I highly recommend this when preparing for a presentation with multiple people and you are unable to meet in person.  It's so much easier then emailing a document back and forth and allows both users to be online editing at the same time and allows for a chat function so that you can discuss changes that you're making in real time in the same browser window which I find extremely convenient.  

I fully admit that I was very nervous going into this.  I don't really do any adult programming and I am generally not used to talking to large groups of adults at the same time unless they are a large group of people that I already know.  I had also never run a book discussion group before.  Fortunately things went smoothly and I actually had a lot of fun.  

First 6 people got up individually and each read a defense of one of the books.  They talked about why they enjoyed the book and what features made it Printz-worthy.  The group was then divided in half with the two of us leading a discussion on our three books and with two school librarians leading a discussion on the other three books  

We did decide to change the order of the books last minute and shift the discussion of Chopsticks to the end.  For those of you that haven't read it Chopsticks is a very different book.  The story is told through visuals mostly and has links to online media.  It can also be downloaded and read entirely as an app.  I think the whole concept is really interesting although not necessarily Printz worthy.  Most people either love or hate the book and we probably could have spent the entire time just discussing the one book.  We then swapped and met with the second group.  Then everyone met together and we voted.   

Our Mock Printz award winner ended up being Code Name Verity, which we now know ended up being one of the Printz Honor Books for 2012.  We also had one Mock Printz honor book Bomb which ended up winning the YALSA Nonfiction Award.  

As I said before I actually had a lot of fun.  It was also a great opportunity.  I read a lot of books that would probably have taken me at least a year to get to otherwise.  I also ran into some folks I hadn't seen since library school, networked with some new librarians and stepped out of my comfort zone a little and succeeded beautifully.  I'm already hoping I get to do it all again next year.  

New Years Resolutions

Normally I never do New Years Resolutions, partially cause in the past few years I have been working and going to school and my goal was to survive that without going completely insane. I did set one goal for myself and that was to keep track of how much I read, which I did using GoodReads. I found out that I read over 500 books this year and that more then half of that was graphic novels/manga and that I read barely any nonfiction. I also finally convinced myself that it is okay to stop reading a book if I wasn't enjoying it.

This year I have my degree and I saw that Bookworming in the 21st Century and GreenBeanTeenQueen posted her resolutions and I thought that might be an interesting way to keep track of my resolutions.

1. Blog Goals
a. I want to get more involved in the blogging community.
b. Decide whether to add book reviews or not.
c. Post once a week.
d. Improve my blogging skills so that my blog feels more personalized, no offense intended to blogger I just want to improve.

2. Reading goals
a. Read more nonfiction.
b. Read the stuff I own and try not to have more library books out then I can handle.

3. Life stuff
a. Keep improving my skating (and maybe lose a little weight in the process).
b. Be more assertive.
c. Move into my own place. (I hope, I hope, I hope.)

Well those are my goals for the year, I will keep my fingers crossed. Feel free to post your own in the comments and have a Happy New Year.