(This is the slightly edited text of a speech I gave October 24, 2017 to children's library staff for the Toronto Public Library.)
I’ve been asked to talk about what libraries
have meant to me – especially when I saw the world at kid level.
And there are a number of directions where
I could take this little talk.
I could talk (ad nauseum) about how important libraries have been in my
life (and, in recent years, my career).
I could blow smoke about how awesome you
librarians are... I obviously believe this is true. I did dedicate my novel MINRS2
to librarians, and I meant it. You get books into the hands, and minds, of kids in
ways no one else can… and certainly in ways no algorithm will ever do.
But it's the end of your meeting and you
probably all want to grab a cold drink and some nachos somewhere - so let me be
blunt and get to my main point right now.
Fight.
You are the keepers of the very last refuge
for kids in this increasingly structured world. A world that is structured according to
adult wants and needs. The refuge where kids can access their own empowerment
on their own terms.
You are the only people left who are there
for them and with them.
And I know teachers care about kids. Parents,
are supposed to…. etc. But what I'm saying is that teachers care for kids
(increasingly) within the constraints of curriculum, and under the strictures
of cost-cutting school administrations – and more and more without access to libraries.
School, in our public discourse, is more and more about
training the employees of the future and less and less about creating
fully-formed human beings. This seems to be happening at every level (including University).
I love teachers (MINRS2 is also dedicated to them). They are as creative and giving as they
can be in their classrooms. But outside forces have skewed things so that as the school year turns from fall to
winter – it’s time to get the kids prepped for standardized testing and the adult-expectation based results.
(Don’t get me started on standardized
testing. It’s based on the idea of kids as little machines that
respond to inputs and then make outputs that can be measured and tweaked.)
This creeps into our own lives as well.
I’m not a giant fan of reports that talk about children as “clients” – or, in
my other life at the CBC, listeners as “consumers of media”. These abstractions
allow us to treat “people” like abstract principles with up or down measurable
results – like Gradgrind does in Dickens’ HardTimes.
But YOU
have the power to give them the
power. The kids.
I’m
focusing on schools right now because it’s where kids HAVE to be much of their
lives. And we are failing them.
I do about a hundred school visits a year. And what I'm seeing more and more in our public schools is school after school with a one-day-a-week
librarian IF THEY ARE LUCKY.
The Forest of Reading, the amazing OLA reading
program for kids – is sometimes getting whacked as an unnecessary perk. (Hint about why – it’s also largely run by kids who get
to decide which books and how many they can read. Adults don't like kids having much power methinks.)
It's very disheartening.
You see, the library is the only, and I
stress this, the ONLY place where kids have the power to help decide what, and
how, they will learn. It is the only place that lets them self-direct their own
learning. They search the stacks. They decide what to read, and they gain the sense
of confidence in making their own choices.
I know this first hand.
The library is the place where I learned to
be a reader, a student and a writer.
I was not a very good reader. I was given
books all the time by teachers, my parents, even friends... and there was a
library in my elementary school.
But that library was a static, boring
place. Musty. Row upon row (in my mind’s eye) of grey dusty books lined up in
uniform rows on metal racks. Like the books were in prison.
Going there to find a book to help with a
school assignment was like visiting a dentist’s office. Important? Necessary?
Yes.
Enjoyable? No.
And it was not a place or space that
promoted lingering. As a result, it contained the wisdom of ages - but it was all trapped
like a genie in a bottle.
Then a miracle happened - at least for me.
The public library in my town (the Youngstown Free Library)
underwent a renovation. I was 10 years old.
What they did first was take all the stacks
(lovely oak, some metal) and pushed them to the side walls in the children’s
section. The result was two-fold. The huge windows flooded the room with
light.
And there was now a huge empty space in the
middle of the room.
They filled the
space with giant pillows. Bright colours. You could sink into them like you
were being hugged. There were even a couple of bean bag chairs (which
the younger kids would sometimes throw around).
Wow.
It was (and still remains in my memory) the most comfortable, wonderful spot I've ever had
to read a book.
As I sat on the luxurious pillows, I
finally noticed the actual books around me.
Beatrix Potter at first. Sports books. Then the Hardy Boys. Then the Hobbit. (There was a
progression here from books with lots of pictures to books with fewer and
fewer).
 |
| This is from Neil Flambé 6 - but is clearly inspired by the artwork in the Hardy Boys. |
I went there after school, on weekends, and
for evening book clubs. This was to a place I never would have visited
willingly until the renovation. Drawn by the comfort, I finally gravitated
to the actual books.
It was no coincidence that the Beatrix
Potter books were stacked at the eye level of the kids sitting on the floor.
The books became more complex the more you stood up - not according to alphabet
or Dewey decimal system but according to the height of a kid looking for those
books.
Chaos!
Later, the experience was mirrored (and
built on) by my high school library Lewiston Porter in Western New York. It was a newer building with a librarian who cared about the space. It was hung with artwork. It felt like a weird witch's
cave - macrame plant holders, tapestries and paintings (I later
learned most had been made by students – when I got involved in the art clubs,
probably thanks to being exposed to the art in the library).
And it had reading spaces too - cleverly
tucked in all over the place, in odd angles against the concrete walls – or in odd
configurations of the stacks.
These felt enclosed and hidden (which
appealed to the teenager’s cat-like desire for a "private cubby") but
were still visible from the librarians desk.
AND - she introduced a MUSIC ROOM. A room
where students could go and sample music - with headphones and listening
cubbies with individual turntables.
There was this one tough kid – who
was like a dude from The Outsiders - and one day I saw him coming out of the music room and he’d left
behind the record he’d been listening to.
Which happened to be the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky. Pretty sure that wasn’t a musical selection he would have avowed
in front of his friends, so the music room allowed that kind of eclectic
investigation and experimentation.
It also tweaked a life-long interest of my
own in unexpected things – because it was the first time I listened to that
Overture. Canons!
It's where I fell in love Tchaikovsky – and
then Beethoven and Gershwin. That room gave me the ability to listen without the pressure of
outside scrutiny.
Now, I'm old - and so a
music room and comfy pillows might seem quaint against the bells and whistles
available today.
But my point is the same no matter what era.
These were librarians who viewed these spaces through MY eyes. Through the eyes
of kids.
Librarians structured the spaces according
to what would make me more comfortable. Not what makes the books more
comfortable.
Chaos!
But what amazing chaos. You’d take books
out and just not restack them. They would sit on the tops of stools, tucked
into the curved impression of a kid left behind on a pillow.
And that was cool too, because often you’d
walk in and see a book cover with a ghost or pirate on it – and you’d just
start reading that book. Of course the librarians could have restacked them… or
ordered us to restack them – I’ve certainly been in libraries where you could
get kicked out if you didn’t put your book on those wheely metal pushcarts.
But why? Kids don’t necessarily access the
library that way. I think (in fact am pretty sure) the librarians would choose
some of their favourite titles and purposefully leave them out in the open so
that we would discover them.
Think about what the kids want. They might
wreck books. They might mess with the systems. They might do a lot of stuff.
Good. That will make them readers...
passionate lovers of books and the knowledge and wonders they contain. Because
they aren’t left with the feeling that the object is more precious than what’s
inside.
This is a hard thing for an adult to say.
Sometimes we have to fight our own adult wants
and needs. I'll use the library in Harry Potter as an example. Readers love the idea of the old libraries with cobwebs and chained
books. I’ve been to those places – The Bodleian at Oxford. The Long Room at Trinity College in Dublin.
Amazing places… FOR ADULTS. Yes, kids sometimes romanticize those places, but
do kids really like them?
You know the only kid who ACTUALLY likes
the library? Hermione. Sure. She’s great. But she’ll read books in a library
filled with Boggarts – so why didn’t Hogwarts and librarian Irma Pince do a
better job of making a space for the non-inspired students? Maybe throw some
books in the air and have kids catch them on brooms? Or maybe allow certain
spells in the library that make the books read themselves... you know, for
dyslexic wizards or reluctant readers?
Draco Malfoy might have turned out better.
And this is all circling around the central
idea of SPACE.
What kind of space should a CHILDREN’S
Library be?
Well… for one thing, make it fun.
And it doesn’t really matter how large the
available space is – maybe you have a tiny library.
Size doesn’t even matter.
Kids will fill a space with their own
psychic energy.
One of the reasons the idea of a “land
inside a wardrobe” works in the Narnia Chronicles isn’t because kids can
imagine what that’s like. But because they have experienced it. Kids fill up
spaces with their imaginations, and even a tiny space can hold a multi-verse.
So just don’t make it uniform and boring.
Make it a place where there are things to discover.
Another personal anecdote. In my house
there was a cubby on the landing between the first and second floor – a crawl
space. There was a wooden door with a latch, and we’d open that then pull
ourselves inside. (We being me, my brothers and various friends from the
neighbourhood). And what a cave of wonders. Boxes of old newspapers.
Knickknacks like old china plates and crystal cups. It was like we’d landed in
Smaug’s lair, and we pretended to be hobbits, or sometimes pirates, discovering
and plundering a lost treasure trove.
Going back as an adult – it’s just a tiny
closet, really. But as a kid it felt enormous. Yes, children are smaller and
experience the world from a different point of view (it’s one the reasons kids
love stories of giants so much). But it was also because – if kids are given
prompts for our imaginations – open and varied spaces filled with odd things
(or odd books) we will invest that space with our own expectations and meaning.
So, as this applies to libraries, imagine
the joy of getting lost in the uneven stacks I experienced as a child.
Especially in my school library which had different configurations and spaces.
You turned a corner and it wasn’t another rack of books – but a chair. Or you
walked up a set of stairs and there was a table with books on it.
And this brings me to a last big element
of making a space for kids work.
Surprise:
They expect books. Give them more. Like
pillows (I don’t know why adults sections don’t have these!)
Invite an author to come and talk about books (my LINK here) – or tell funny stories.
Demystify the book.
Another personal library experience, and
this has to do with surprise.
But one day I walked in and my school librarian
set up a movie projector.
This is a while back, so the important
thing here is that this was NOT normal. Libraries were for books. Not for
movies. But she explained that this was a movie about writing.
And the movie was this. A girl is running
through the woods. Scared of something that’s chasing her, but that we never see.
She stumbles and falls into a puddle. Then gets up and screams again. She
begins running, then stops, Now, in front of her there is a door. It
opens a cracks and a light shines through. She opens it, runs inside, and slams
the door. And that’s the end of the movie.
My librarian spoke these magic words “ what
happens next?” And that was the day I became a writer.
Now, had this been a story she’d told or a
books she’d suggested I’d read it’s POSSIBLE that I might have been inspired
the same way. (Think of Chris Van Allsburg’s The Mysteries of Harris Burdick).
But the weirdness of seeing it happen on a
movie screen, in my boring musty library, caught my attention right away.
And that led to a conversation of the type
of ending I thought might work for that movie.
And that led to my discovery of the idea of
genre. So I became a better student
and then a better, or at least more informed, writer.
You think she goes through the door and it
opens to another dimension? You might like fantasy – such as Tolkein, L’Engle,
Frank Herbert. Oh, and that section is over there.
You think there are more monsters waiting
for her on the other side? Here’s the horror section with some books by a dude
named Stephen King.
You think it’s all in her head or ghosts?
Here are some psychological and gothic thrillers by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Or Shelly
or even some Dickens.
See how you can trick those pliable young
minds into learning stuff? Knock them out of their comfort zone.
(This is a lesson I have internalized as an
author, by the way. Trick kids into learning. My Neil Flambé series, for
example, includes history – such as Marco Polo (whom I like) and the Spanish
Conquistadors (who I don’t).
MINRs is an adventure series, but gets kids
thinking about child labour and the sort of stigmatization and scape-goating
that they can see in front of them with Trump.
So be weird. Unexpected
Today, that might be thanks to the “weirdness”
of a 3D printer or a green room (like the one in the Innisfil ideaLAB) that
kids can use to make their own music videos, for example.
If the library is made for kids, they will
make it their own.
So... going back to my original thought.
Fight.
Last year at the Forest of Reading celebrations - I made
a plea to the kids (and through them their parents and teachers) to FIGHT for
libraries. In schools. In communities. To hold politicians' feet to the fire and
demand better kid-centred spaces.
But these days, I don't think cut-crazy politicians really give a damn. Some school
administrators don't give a damn. I'm not sure a lot of parents give a damn. They will
cut everything down to the bone, and leave kids in an environment that is
focused on adult expectations.
Libraries seem like luxuries to these
knuckle-heads.
A funny thing that happens when I go to
private schools is that they have, often, multiple libraries and librarians –
with computers, tactile learning stuff (from legos to 3-D printers). So people with money KNOW the importance of these places.
So if the rich will pay to have them, why
don’t our politicians and school boards see how central they are to levelling
the playing field?
Or maybe they do, but they don’t care, or
don’t want that playing field levelled.
In fact – while re-editing my speech this
morning, and getting distracted by social media – I noticed my twitter feed
blowing up thanks to a back and forth between Andre Walker (a columnist for the New York Observer.
The awesome Cressida Cowell tweeted her worry that
school libraries are dying – and this will impact kids. Walker then suggested closing Public Libraries and putting the books in
schools. Problem solved!
So many stupid parts to this argument, but
he backed it up by saying “Nobody goes to libraries anymore”. This is a lie the
politicians want to spread – because the people who actually DON’T go to
libraries will believe it, and then won’t cry when they get cut.
(NOTE: Walker has since posted an "I Surrender" tweet after more than 100,000 people responded to his original tweet. See, protest CAN work!)
But kids do go. They want to go if the
library is a place for them. They will respond. They will thrive. They will
become better readers. Better citizens. Better people.
You are charged with making sure that
happens. Even when you have to fight to do it.
Then those kids, like me, will fight for
those spaces. Because they will be the MAIN PLACE where they become who they
want to be.
Thank you.
