The Boring Librarian.

So my cage was rattled recently. Long story short – when one student learnt that a work colleague and I were friends, the pupil apparently asked my friend:

“The librarians’ assistant…but isn’t she a bit boring?”

Okay bear with me. This is not going to be a blog post about how fascinating I am, because I am most definitely not the world’s most exciting person. My question is:

What makes a person boring? Because clearly working in a library does.

 

I’ve never met this pupil. Which leads me to the conclusion they’re basing their assumption on the only thing they know about me – that I work in a library.

Why is that? I thought to myself? I’ll tell you why:

Stereotypes

*vom*

I’m assuming when the term ‘Librarian’ is thrown around, they either picture this:

Photo credit:kdkbooklove

 

Or this:

 



Basically, I’ve got to be aged 60+, perpetually angry for unknown reasons and have a finger permanently stuck to my pursed, wrinkly, hairy lips to SHH you aggressively. OR I can be no older than 25, wear ‘geek’ glasses to make obvious the infinite extent of my knowledge and have a finger held daintily to my plumped, lipsticked mouth to SHH you and then probably giggle afterwards.

Oh and all I had to do for those images was search for ‘librarian’ in google images. Apparently librarians are all females too, because I swear I could probably count on one hand the amount of males that the search produced.

Anyway.

The annoying thing about a stereotype is that it does what it says on the tin. Everyone is lumped into one or two defining categories. It’s bad – but not so bad – if say your stereotype is an excellent one. Oh you’re a doctor?  How clever you must be! Oh you’re a fashion designer? How creative you must be!

Oh you’re a librarian?

How…um… erm…

Librarians just got lumbered with an unappealing stereotype. But does that make me as an individual 'The Boring Librarian'?

So, first things first: Do I conform to the stereotype? So here are some things that came up when I googled ‘Stereotypical Librarian’:

Wears hair in a bun.

I do not do this. And if I do it’s probably because I didn’t wash it that day and I’m trying to hide the unwashed-ness.

Wears glasses.

Only when I’m looking at a computer, because the shiny, magical light that they emit is just too much for my naked eyeballs apparently. ‘Spectacle shaped force-field’ makes it sound edgier. And just to note - my glasses neither make me look like an OAP, or super sexy.

Smells like coffee and cats.

I don’t like coffee, not even in chocolates. I probably smell like cats.

Wears cardigans.

Yup. Love me a knitted garment.

Reads all day.

Na, I have a job. And just because it’s one where I’m surrounded by books, doesn’t mean I can sit around reading them all day. As much as I’d like that, no-one would pay me. *sadface*

 

Anyway the one thing that struck me most about most of the stereotypes is that THEY ARE ALL VISUAL! Basically bun + glasses + coffee/cats + cardigans = Librarian. And not in a good way.

Why?? What is it about cardigans, and the odour of cats that makes one a boring Librarian.
Because this is the thing about boring: it is stereotyped itself.
Boring stereotypes include those of cardigans and glasses. And somehow they’ve wormed their way to nestle alongside Librarian to produce not a very exciting connotation.

So to some people I probably am boring. But to others I’m really fun. I like movies, yes – reading, getting tiddly and dancing tiddlier, Chinese food, laughing loudly (yes even in the library!), but most of all I like being with people who like me – in other words, socialising. That’s the one stereotype I’d like to break permanently. You can judge me for my cats and glasses if you like. But librarians are humans and if you come and talk to us we might be the most interesting people you’ve ever met, even only if to offer excellent advice on which colour cardigan would go nicely with your cat.

The main point of all this rambling is that no-one is truly boring because boring means different things to different people. To pre-judge a librarian as 'boring' before talking to them is almost as bad as assuming a blonde is, by definition, significantly lacking in intellect and will do sillier things than her brunette and red-haired counterparts in a bar environment. Or that teachers don't have lives beyond the classroom. Or that police-men are all terrifying and speaking to them will get you send straight to jail without passing go. Or collecting two hundred pounds.

Basically, don't judge a book by it's cover. Even if it does smell like coffee.

Over and out.

Hot off the shelf: What I’m reading – ‘Studio Ghibli: The Films of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata’

This one is by Colin Odell and Michelle Le Blanc - the post title was long enough already!

It’s summer. Not officially – but it’s like a billion degrees out there and although the weather says rain is on the way (good old England), I have that summery feeling. So what do I do? Instead of reading inside, I take my books outside and expose my pale limbs to some vitamin D. I swear all you need when the sun is shining is some books, a blanket, some friends and snacks and it’s pretty much the best feeling ever. Oh and a day off – you need one of those too.

I had mine yesterday, my one full day off for the week. So what was I reading? Well, it was my birthday on Monday (I swear, after you turn 21, there aren’t any more exciting birthdays.  I am essentially just aging. Woo!), and thanks to various kind friends and JJ, I received some books, one such book being that mentioned in the title of this very blog post. It sports a friendly looking green cover with Totoro - arguably studio Ghibli’s most famous character, and their logo mascot - romping through grass with Mei and Satsuko.

For those of you unaware, Studio Ghibli (pronounced with a soft ‘g’, like ‘genie’) is a Japanese animation company pretty much created by the above names. This book was especially relevant, as Miyazaki has just announced his retirement after completing The Wind Rises, which is showing in cinemas as I write this (although he has done this before, only to return to work on Howls Moving Castle in 2004, so maybe he’ll do another film yet. We can only hope.) Various Ghibli films you might be aware of include My Neighbour Totoro, Ponyo, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s delivery service and the most recent DVD release From up on Poppy Hill. These films and all of the others are well worth watching – beautiful animation and simple, yet honest storylines bring a totally refreshing film experience. I am a big fan – so what did I think of this book?

Great! For die-hard fans, and Ghibli novices alike, this book holds the secrets of Ghibli, without being too ‘non-fiction’. It doesn’t feel like an information book. It’s easy to read and the way in which it is set up really lends itself well to those especially not well educated in Studio Ghibli’s films or history.

The first part of the book explores animation and what Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata were up to, pre-Ghibli. There’s some great examples of earlier work produced or directed by both before they formed Studio Ghibli, and especially about Nausicca – a film I believed to be created under Ghibli, but was actually pre-Ghibli. Nausicca was actually the success that led to the two being able to form Ghibli studios. The second section takes you through the films, in release order, made under the Ghibli name. It gives the director for each one and a small plot outline, peppered with other interesting tit-bits about its production or themes, for example. There are a couple of pages in the middle picturing some stills from various films. The third section is called 'other projects', detailing things like music videos, TV shorts etc that Ghibli have worked on, with a small section about the Ghibli museum in Tokyo and a section on collaborations with other Studios to finish.

Overall I’d rate this 9.5 out of 10. I’d loved to have seen some more pictures and obviously there hasn’t been an updated version to include Ghibli’s releases post Ponyo (in release order: Arriety, From up on Poppy Hill and The Wind Rises). However this makes an excellent companion text to all of the films and gives a great sense of background to Ghibli and its works. I definitely went straight to my DVD collection after finishing it and watched Kiki’s delivery service to round off the experience!

Over and out.

Book Club Activity: Quotes Quiz

Where was everyone? We only had about half of our usual number on Friday for our book club meeting I help run at the school. Due to language oral examinations at the school where I work, currently there are no bells going off signifying end of lessons, which meant a lot of them forgot. No worries! The smaller group enabled me to let each of the students talk for a lot longer about what they were reading and how it was going. It meant I could speak to them individually as well, whereas – due to the usual bigger group – I’m usually addressing them three at a time or so. So after a catch up and some well needed brownies, we had a little quiz.

Hopefully I’ll find a way to post the sheets and quiz online, so other people could use them if they wanted to. I know there’s somewhere to share resources on the shadowing site I’m just not sure how.

So with our small number there were two teams of four. I tried to make sure there was a few in each group who’d read a fair number of the books so they were equally matched. Basically I read out a quote, and they had to try and guess which book it came from. Both teams did well, however one just pipped the other to the post and guessed all eight correctly.

Everyone seemed in good spirits anyway. This activity took us about 15 minutes – both the quiz and the marking afterwards. But perhaps it would have taken longer if the full group had come. Not sure what I’ll try next week, but I’ll let you know how it goes!

Over and out.

Book Club Activities: Tension Graphs and other ideas

So as mentioned before, every Friday I’m helping to run a book club with our year sevens (age 11/12). They’re taking part in the Carnegie shadowing scheme and so far it’s been successful, with three curious new faces last week at our third meeting. I wanted to do some posts about activities we’ve done and activities I hope to do. ‘Share your ideas and resources’ was something that came up a lot at library camp so here I go. I’ll probably edit this post a lot as I think up more activities and I’ll link up other posts I do on how they went too.

Tension graphs: This was something we tried last week, at the suggestion of my colleague. Her idea was to get them to plot the ‘action level’ of each chapter of their books onto a graph. I took that idea and simplified it. We only have half an hour for our meetings so this needed to be snappy, and I wanted to do something that involved them working as a team.

We divided them up into ‘book groups’, so some who had read ‘Ghost hawk’ in one group, other’s who’d read ‘The Child’s Elephant’ in another, and so on until we had a few of the books represented. I then had one group at a time up at the front where I’d stood a giant flip-chart, and they plotted the tension levels of their book on a graph, 10 being very tense and 0 not very tense at all. Sort of like this:

This is in no way an accurate representation of their feelings on the books – there was a lot more fluctuations and scribbles as they argued back and forth about which bits were more tense!

This went down really well. We had a few new members, so it was good to let them see the other member’s thoughts on a few of the books to help them choose what they wanted to read first. Our one rule at book club is NO SPOILERS. So it was interesting to let them explain why they were rating the middle a 10, for example, without giving anything away. Lots of giggling ensued when they made their lines really erratic for uber-emotional parts. It was nice to let them have the floor for a change as well, giving them confidence (not that most of them need any confidence boosting!) and hopefully getting across their enthusiasm to each other.

So that was last week. Add that activity to the way we always start, which is swapping all the books around for those who’ve finished, and we finished right on target time-wise. So this activity lasted us about 20 mins: Dividing them into groups, letting them discuss between themselves for a bit and finally allowing each group to come and draw on the graph and allowing for discussion at the end. Oh, and cake eating, there was lots of that too.

Other activities I hope to do in the future include:

Quotes Quiz. This is already prepared for Friday, so I’ll let you all know how that goes. Basically I’ll be reading out eight quotes and they have to match it up with the eight books in the shortlist that we’re shadowing. They’ll be in teams and to save on time I’m made some answer sheets so they can just write “Quote 1” next to the picture of the book they think it matches to. [Edit: See here for how it went]

3 word/One sentence reviews. I was hoping to get a video of each of the pupils holding up one of the books they’ve read so far and describing it in three words. For the shyer members, we could maybe have words written on whiteboards and held up. I could then go away and edit the video, putting funky music in etc to show at the next meeting. I think a lot of them might like the chance to be in the limelight. I’ll suggest it on Friday and see what they think.

A characters meeting. What it says on the tin. Questions about the characters that have most affected/annoyed our readers. Prompt questions like “If you were stuck on a desert island with one character, which one would it be and why?” “Which character would you most like to date?”  “One character has to keep you alive in a video game, who would it be and why?” etc.

Crafts! I have no idea what, but I love crafts so I’ll have to think of something! Bookmarks maybe. Book themed bracelets even. Who knows.

Two truths and a lie: A general icebreaker. Perhaps for a meeting when not many of them have finished their books. Everyone goes around and says three facts about themselves, two are truth one is a lie. The others have to figure out which is the lie. Good team building I suppose, but perhaps a bit null, as they already live at school together. I just added this as I did it at uni and really enjoyed myself.

Movies: Discussing which of the books would make good movies. General discussion about which other books they’ve been reading have made good movies and seeing which actors/actresses they would like to star in a movie adaptation.

And that’s all I’ve got for now. If I end up doing any of these and writing a blog post on them I’ll link them up back to here. SO MUCH LINKAGE. Any other suggestions would be fabulous if anyone out there is reading this. Lemme know.

Over and out.