Also on the docket:

Twelve is actually a sequel to the book Eleven (bien sur) which introduces us to Winifred “Winnie” Perry, your typical suburban American pre-teenager. Winnie is fairly average: she’s pretty, not wildly intelligent, but smart enough to do well in school (though the academic aspect of her life is barely mentioned). She is, however, incredibly insightful and self-aware for a 12 year old. She analyzes her relationships with her various friends, her family, and her body like a pro, although sometimes she is extremely embarrassed by all three. You can also tell that despite the embarrassment factor, Winnie truly loves and enjoys her family. Her parents are down-to-earth and supportive, and her equally self-aware older sister Sandra is a teen, yes, but a good role model for Winnie. Who, in turn, is a wonderful big sister to 6 year old Ty. She even lets him try on her bras!

From Winnie’s narration at the beginning of the book, if we haven’t read Eleven (and we didn’t), we can assume that during the past year, her best friend, Amanda, has jilted her for the more popular, fashion and girly Gail. Through this social turmoil Winnie struck up a friendship with Dinah, who seems less mature and more fragile than Amanda, but is kinder and a more devoted friend to Winnie. During the course of Twelve, Winnie develops breasts, graduates from sixth grade, gets her ears pierced, attends sleepover summer camp, goes skinny-dipping, starts her period, learns to use tampons, enters the world of junior high school and *gasp* meets a guy! Changing personalities, evolving friendships, developing bodies, and how to be a good person while worrying what the world thinks of you all figure prominently in this novel, as they do in most lives at that age. Sometimes I thought “This is Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret for the digital native age!” but it’s sweet and funny in its own right. Looking back at my own life at that age, (and the sometime trauma it caused me), I was at times very touched by Winnie’s successes, failures and commentary. For a reader who is the same age as Winnie, her experiences will also serve to normalize the sometimes difficult, humiliating, and joyous process of growing up for tweens.

The flow of the book takes the reader from Winnie’s twelfth to thirteenth birthdays. Since Winnie’s birthday is in March, the natural storyline of the book goes from the end of one year of school through the summer and up until the spring of the next year at school. The story itself is not quite a story, it’s more of an internal monologue that can jump hours or days at a time, analyzing all the new life experiences that Winnie’s 12th year has brought her. The novel seems like it’s more of a stream of consciousness or a bulleted list of events than an actual plot.

The setting also tends to change quite a bit and so do the people. There are a lot of characters in this novel, some of which are permanent, some fleeting, some are prevalent in some chapters  of her life (harhar) and completely absent in others. A few provide interesting information about Winnie as a character, but most just seem to be window dressing for the scene. For instance, Winnie meets a whole cabin of girls at Camp Winding Gap, but we as readers hardly ever get to know them and they disappear with in the span of a few pages.  While reading, I was put-off by this laundry list of places and people, each with their own little crisis or situation. When were any of these things going to become really consequential? Amanda, Winnie’s former best friend, returns for a summer of friendship at camp, then all but disappears when Winnie starts school in the fall, only to re-emerge as a goth in the sequel, Thirteen (shhhh!). Except for perfunctory comparisons to Dinah, Amanda is essentially dead to us as readers. Meanwhile, she’s seamlessly replaced by a girl named Cinnamon, who then becomes a friend-fixture in the rest of the novel and the sequel. Perhaps my initially adverse reaction was personal: I like follow-up. I like plot. But, looking back on my own years, I realized that perhaps this is how the book mimics life. The year that bridges elementary and middle or junior high school is one of changing peer groups, schools, and general upheaval. People come and go, we’re introduced to new characters every day, and while there might be story arcs like camp, finding partners, school… it’s just illustrative of a time of great change in our lives. A staggering work of literary genius, perhaps it’s not. But it is a lovely alternative recommendation for the pre-gossip girl in your life.

9:30 a.m.: Hunker down with the final throes of the FLD report – make it coherent, add some pictures and send. ZOOM…

10:03 a.m.: Month end-report and statistics. This requires looking at calendars and spreadsheets. I … do not like this. I manage to get all of the programs entered (20 or so to Teens 1 and Adults 3… jeesh) and start tabulating the stats. I also get the main points of my month end report bulleted. Sound-proofing, Cabinet Security and Winter 2010 registration and programs… it’s going to be a scorchin’ good read!

11:10 a.m.: All that staring at spreadsheets and now I have to get my storytime ready for Ontario Early Years in… 4 minutes!

My what? Oh right – break it down:

So we have a partnership w/ Ontario Early Years (OEY) so they offer a drop-in play based program for children 0-5 years and their caregivers. They provide a wealth of information about child care, health, development, literacy, etc. We provide the space and a liaison (yours truly) to lead circle time for 15 minutes every Wednesday. This is a pretty sweet deal as far as I’m concerned, but it’s incredibly difficult to entertain many children that literally range from lap babies to JK’ers looking for a fun day out of school. It’s also my number one source of baby hugs!

11:15 a.m.: Go into OEY and rock their little socks off! A good time was had by all.
We read:
On the First Day of Winter by Denise Fleming
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
10 Rubber Ducks
(oh yes, they’re learning about numbers).

11:30 a.m.: Baby-hugged and back at statistics and emails. Which are far less interesting.

12:00 p.m. Lunchtime!

1:00 p.m.: Information Desk time! I spent a good 10-15 minutes on the phone trying to direct a customer how to access a downloadable audiobook on our website – really difficult to coordinate over the phone! She finally gets to where she needs to be – literally clicking “Click here to Download”, but then her computer has some kind of connectivity error?! Yeargh.

3:05 p.m.: Back to the safety of my office where I have the BEST intentions of hunkering down and finishing my month-end report but then, but then BUT THEN I see that the Summer 2010 (yes we program this early) draft has come out. And proofreading is due soon! This means looking at more and further spreadsheets. Both computer generated, and human-inputted (word? ohwell) So in order to proofread I have to look at the information generated by our online-registeration system, a spreadsheet that the librarians all over the system use to schedule programs, and the Outlook Room Booking calendar for our branch.

3:58 p.m.: It appears as though someone has changed the curriculum-based (ohgod I will explain that later) programs around for our branch and the person all happens to be “not me.” This being the case, I’m not quite sure how I’m expected to proof-read, since I don’t know which way is up or down or where my butt is. Will have to figure this out. But the good news is – the programs I’ve contracted are looking good. FTW.

4:02 p.m.: SPREADSHEETS. SO MANY SPREADSHEETS. I’m trying to make all of them match what we have on the online-registration document. This is “tedious” to say the least.

4:48 p.m.: Finally have located and identified my programming ass from my programming elbows. It’s all looking good up in my various spreadsheets. I turn back to Month End Report and other spreadsheets… but … nope. It’s too late. I’m out!

Well that was my fairly boring, administratively laden and tedious day. Now I have to go back and blog about yesterday!

Girl (one Bella Swan) moves away from her emotionally needy, child-like, yet perceptive mother in sunny Arizona to live with her quiet, introverted father, Charlie, who lives in the Pacific Northwest. The weather is terrible, she hates it. Blah, blah, blah. I felt as though Meyer goes through a lot of trouble to really drive home how “normal” Bella is. “Hey, look, kids! She’s a REAL LIVE TEENAGER TYPE PERSON!” The beginning of the novel is made up of many excruciating pages of text in which Meyer painstakingly enumerates the minutiae of Bella’s everyday existence. Her sweatpants. Her intellect. Her insecurities. Her food preferences. Her quiet, awkward -yet-loving relationship with Charlie. Her inability to accept presents (???). Her clumsiness. We get it, Steph, “Bella” is spelled B-O-R-I-N-G. Or it was, until …

She begins school and notices a group of beautiful teenagers, the Cullens, who don’t eat and keep to themselves. One of them, Edward, appears not to be able to stand her. This DEVASTATES her. Why? The reader isn’t sure. She’s used to being a relative outcast, but she seems generally well-accepted in this new school. She’s smart, she’s capable (physical prowess notwithstanding), she’s pretty. But we get it, rejection from hot guys is hard. Fact of teen life, right?

Edward disappears for quite awhile from school and when he comes back he suddenly takes a special interest in Bella – giving her rides to school, questioning her incessantly, etc. He even saves her miraculously from potential physical harm during an out-of-town shopping trip (rape is generally implied, later confirmed) after which he takes the stunned Bella to a very expensive Italian restaurant. It’s all very mysterious and romantic. Then, during a weekend trip to the local Native American reservation, her old friend Jacob Black (remember that name, ladies and gentlemen) tells her about the Quileute (Jacob’s tribe) legends regarding “the cold ones,” and their antagonistic relationship with the Quileutes’ wolf-spirit forefathers. She puts two and two together and then: OMG, you guys, Edward Cullen is totes a vampire, amirite?!?

It turns out there isn’t just ONE vampire there’s seven. The Cullen family consists of Carlisle, Esmé, Rosalie, Edward, Emmett, Jasper, and Alice. The Cullens have a unique world view from most vampires – they’re “vegetarians,” meaning they only feed on animal blood, even though it’s generally a poor substitute for human blood. Subsequently, Meyer goes about deconstructing all of the old vampire legends: destroyed by sunlight, silver bullets, and stakes through the heart. Basically anything that makes it more difficult for this romance to be a reality. In fact, she incorporates attributes to her breed of vamp that makes them even more sexy! Their beauty, for one thing: they’re just so brilliantly beautiful that they can’t go out during the day because then everyone would KNOW something was wrong. But that’s not all, folks! Some vampires have special “talents,” and it just so happens that the Cullen family has three such vampires: Edward can read minds (except Bella’s), Jasper can influence moods, and Alice can read futures based on decisions as they are made. So they are breathtakingly beautiful, harmless vampires that have a stable home life, supportive vampire role-models, not to mention extraordinary talents, (even for a vampire). Oh, and did I mention they’re pretty? Because they are.

So girl meets vampire. Vampire meets girl. They are in so. Much. Love. They kiss, he spends the night in her bed watching her sleep, he straps her on his back and takes her on runs through the countryside. It’s awesome. She’s generally accepted as part of the family and everything is great UNTIL:

They’re playing baseball (the great American pass-time, why not?) and suddenly Alice sees another coven of vampires coming towards them. They see Bella, normal human teenager girl hanging out with a bunch of vampires, and all hell breaks loose. One of them, James, tracks Bella, despite her best efforts, to her childhood home in Arizona. For a minute it looks like Bella’s going to bite it (oh, pun intended) but of course Edward saves the day just in time. Hooray! So Bella’s got a broken leg but also a boyyyyfriend. The End. Of Book 1.

“Appropriate.” Such a dangerous word when it comes to children and literature. Is it too violent? Too sexual? Too profane? All of these are parental concerns, naturally, but taken too far can be … limiting to a child. Exposure to different viewpoints via literature is a powerful experience, and something I personally wouldn’t deny a child without good reason. On the other hand, reading material meant for more mature audiences (even the difference between children and teenagers) is a delicate balance when you’re young, but ultimately, I find it hard to prescribe censorship of any literature. A book might be perfectly acceptable in my opinion, but I’m a 20-something, idealistic, extremely liberal woman with no religious affiliation or children of my own. So, what’s acceptable for me, might not be so for the parent at the other end of the sociopolitical spectrum. Overall, it’s my opinion that parents need to read what their children read – especially in the case of these so-called “controversial” texts – so they can be aware of issues that may come up and address them if necessary.

So is Twilight “appropriate?” Having previously vowed a life of Twilight-celibacy, I wasn’t in a good position to answer such a question. Well, abstinence-only sex-ed doesn’t work, and neither does a life un-touched by Twilight, especially when you work with kids in a library. So, I read it. I read the whole thing. Why? So I could write a BOOK REPORT on it. It’s forthcoming, probably in several instalments… What I plan to do is give summaries of each book (with as much brevity as can be expected) and then let the criticizing (for better or worse) begin. Stay tuned!

The program itself was bit harder because I was exhausted and I got really hot jumping around with the kids. Usually their enthusiasm has proven to give little attention seeking me the fuel to finish the 20 minutes or so of story times. But I think the kids were as restless as I was tired so it was a struggle. Not to say they didn’t have fun… they shook their sillies out, but they spent more time kicking each other than actually listening, haha.

Here’s the outline of the program:

Song: Shake My Sillies Out

Book: What Did You Put in Your Pocket?

Song/fingerplay: Five Green and Speckled Frogs

Five green and speckled frogs,
Sat upon a speckled log,
Eating the most delicious bugs!
Yum! Yum!
One jumped into the pool,
Where it was nice and cool.
Then there were four green and speckled frogs!

Glub! Glub!
Repeat for 4,3,2,1

Action rhyme: Bouncing Ball

Book: The Mud Puddle

Song: Mr. Sun

Oh Mr Sun, Sun Mr. golden Sun
Please shine down on me.
Oh Mr. Sun, Sun Mr. golden Sun
Hiding behind those trees.
These little children are asking you
To please come out so we can play with you.
Oh Mr. Sun, Sun Mr. Golden Sun
Please shine down on me.

Song: The More We Get Together

Book: Jamberry

Song: Head Shoulders Knees and Toes

Book: Peanut Butter and Jelly

Song: Do Your Ears Hang Low?

Book: Slop Goes the Soup

Song: If You’re Happy and You Know It

Actually, I didn’t get to Slop Goes the Soup, cuz the kids pretty much were just bugging each other by the time I got around to “Mr. Sun” but… I had planned it. Overall, I think The Mud Puddle (by the wonderful Robert Munsch) was a bit too old for the majority of the kids, although it’s a great book for story telling and they listened politely. What Did You Put in Your Pocket (Beatrice De Regniers) was possibly a bit too trippy for the kids. It’s a strange book – great visuals , putting pudding in your pocket, but it doesn’t really flow as well as I’d like. I feel like there should be a rhythm (“What did you put in your pocket? What did you put in your pocket? In your pockety-pockety pocket? Early Monday morning…) but somehow I’m not getting it very well. It lent itself well to a great tie-in craft, though: I had the kids make their own “pockets” by cutting out a pocket shape in construction paper, and then stapling a plastic baggie to card stock under the pocket shape. It made a transparent pocket which they could decorate then stuff it full of strange things, just like the book. I gave them glitter, feathers, foam shapes, crepe paper and cotton balls. Hm. Might have to post a picture of that one, haha. So, I think they had fun… Wellll, that’s my report for this “Family Fun Day Monday”… tune in next time for “Hilarious Hats and Headwear” (ohhhhh I am such a children’s programming cheeseball).