The Sassy Bibliophile

I"m going into my 29th year as an educator this year---9 in the classroom, and headed into my 20th year as a school librarian. I've worked in elementary, middle, and now high school as a librarian. You might say I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly throughout the years. Through it all--the good times and the bad--I've always firmly believed I have the best gig in the universe.  I love what I do, and I have a true passion for it. I had a brilliant professor in library school named Betty Carter.  She used to talk about how meeting difficult characters or situations in a book before you met them in real life was so helpful to young people because it gave them the chance to think through it and figure out best ways to handle it ahead of time.  I hope that you will read this list in much the same vein.  Especially for all my new-to-the-library friends, this is not a list of mere complaints, but a list of possible scenarios for you to brainstorm about so that ...

We lost one of our new graduates this summer. It was an awful, tragic loss. She was a beautiful soul.  She was one of my library kids. As we gathered together to say our goodbyes, I noticed something important. So important that it has rendered me quiet for a bit with the sheer magnitude of it all. I had to take a bit to take it all in and really, truly grab hold to it before I was ready to talk about it here. But you need to know it....and I need to share it with you. Our work is important. Vital. Books are great, research is awesome, technology is cool---yes. But our greatest job is that of a haven; a place of safe community. Those teens at the funeral that day---well over 50 of them---those were my kids. Before it began they were hugging one another and me.  They were comforting one another and me. They circled up to pray together---united in love for one of their own regardless of any of the ways you could have chosen to separate and organize them by thei...