Making the Impossible, Possible
Technology is driving me crazy. Sometimes I have to have a pep-talk with my librarian self and remind her that she became a librarian because of literature and as far as anyone can tell, literature is not going anywhere any time soon. However, sometimes I wish that broken SmartBoards and DVD players and VCRs (I know, VCRs!) and mixed cables and disconnected microphones and unreliable computers would fade away so that I could have some quality time to keep building in this school that which I believe fuels the imagination the most: my Library’s fiction collection.
This week, I’m determined to make it happen. I am constructing, in a middle school library, a section for 8th grade readers only. The wise and capable 7th and even 6th grade student will be allowed to read from the section, but I want 8th grade students to know that there are books here that speak specifically to their needs and wants as very-soon-to-be young adults.
Happily, Nancy Werlin’s Impossible will be one of the brand-new books to grace the shelves of this new section. Her book, which takes place in a contemporary setting, is alive with a fairy tale spin that makes it an amazing adventure full of riddles and complete with an evil elf. But with a rape scene, a teen pregnancy, and a teen marriage, I think it’s best featured in a section set aside for readers who are ready to read some of the themes within its pages.
I picked up Impossible on a whim, thinking that I would only be buying one of Werlin’s other titles, Rules of Survival,which is on our 8th grade summer reading list. Here is where I praise and extend my utmost thanks to independent book stores and their knowledgeable booksellers:
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
As I frantically ran through the aisles of BookEnds of Winchester, MA a few weeks ago, grabbing copies of Flanagan’s The Ranger’s Apprentice series, I asked the bookseller if she had Rules of Survival. She said: “I’m not positive, but I know I have her new book – Impossible.”
And off on another track was I.
She gave it an interesting and positive review and we discussed whether it would be a novel 8th grade students could read. She relayed the rape scene to me but said that it wasn’t graphic. She led me to believe that I should take a risk and see what I thought. Frankly, it just sounded like something that I would enjoy. Since I don’t care for fantasy much, I saw this as a sign that I should give it a try.
Happily, I did and spent last Saturday on the couch in a wonderful fantasy story I won’t easily forget.
Last week, every effort I made to sit and catalog books was thwarted by some outside force or another. This week, I’m making the impossible, possible. Come technology or high water.
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