books teachers books

I'm doing a booktalk in January. For those of you who aren't familiar with the librarian-jargon, a "booktalk" is where you hype up good books really quickly for an audience. Most of the time, in my albeit limited experience, this is done either one-on-one with a patron, or for a group of young adults or children. The upcoming january booktalk's audience is: teachers.

Teachers have always amazed me. From the ones I had as a child- Miss. Horvath & Mrs. Paxson, Mrs. O'Brian and others- their dedication and ways of thoughtfully uplifting a child while concurrently teaching them academically is astounding. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has a teacher that made a profound effect on them in one way or another- and I've been blessed enough to have several of these teachers. Now I'm a grown up, and I deal with teachers again- not as often as I'd like. I wish teachers wanted to partner-up more with public libraries and librarians. I wish they'd remember us as a resource as often as they should. Sadly, many do not- but some do.

I also have the pleasure of working with a former teacher (former as in a 3 years ago or so) who handles our Homework Help Center. Younger than me, she's single-handedly supplied the HHC with the textbooks, rulers, protractors, T82 calculators, building blocks and colorful posters. She helps students ranging in age from 4 years old to high schoolers, on things like Algebra and basic introduction to reading. It is amazing to watch her remember such things, and witness how quickly she can recall algebraic equations and scientific terms. I'm in awe of her dedication. Like me, she's got a Masters degree and she (like any teacher) is not paid nearly what she is worth to these kids, their parents, their teachers at school, or to the library. But she loves her job. And it's really cool to watch her in action.

All of that being said, working so closely with a teacher has made me terrified of this booktalk. I would much prefer to be hyping up books to 13 year olds than to adults who work as hard as teachers do. My main concerns are that the books I will pick will be obvious ones, and the teachers will take nothing away from the conversation. I do not want to waste their time. My other (and probably more rational) fear is that I will freeze up, forget the book entirely, and just stare.

So in the process of readying myself for this talk, I've started frantically reserving a TON of middle-school age books. I brought home seven of them last night. I also brought home an adult nonfiction book and a Teen book that is NOT appropriate for middle grades- but both of these items are much more intriguing to me right now. So what am I doing? Of course: reading them instead.

HEre's to speed-reading over the next month or so, and let's hope that I can find some stuff that is age-appropriate. My own taste apparently doesn't linger around the middle grades much. Le sigh.

I will try to remember to post the books on here, so the two dots from my previous posting's map will have these books as resources. haha!