kebojo: March 2008 Archives

Today I am inventorying, weeding, and re-purchasing books in our juvenile series collection. Some observations:

The Kitten Friends series kind of makes me want to puke rainbows anyway, but I can't get over the cover tagline on Felix the Fluffy Kitten: "Is Felix just too fluffy?" Seriously? This is a question? I am compelled to read the back of the book to determine why, exactly, the cat is "too fluffy." Turns out Jodie's mom is pissed about the fur matting her furniture and clogging the drains. Sixty pages of this, folks.

My husband totally has the exact same white-collared red and blue striped polo shirt Encyclopedia is wearing on the cover of Encyclopedia Brown Gets His Man. Also, on the new covers issued circa 2002, Bugs Meany isn't wearing his Jughead hat. A tragic loss to children's literature.

It really annoys me when kid whodunits have titles like The Case of the Mummy Mystery or The Case of the Cheerleading Camp Mystery. It's redundant. Either you have The Case of the Something Something, or you have The Something Mystery. Maybe The Mystery of the Something Something. But not all of the above in one statement. Mary-Kate and Ashley are repeat offenders in this department.

If I were nine years old again, I'd definitely read a book called Tell a Lie and Your Butt Will Grow. Wouldn't you? No wonder the binding is falling apart. Great-Grandpa's in the Litter Box is also popular.

In libraries, adult reference work is very different from services to children. I generally prefer the latter, because the clientele is cuter and more huggable. But I've discovered that grown-ups are just as likely as kids to provide me with some memorable, entertaining dialogue.

Here are a few of my favorites since I've begun working at my current library (very different from the one I chronicled in Day in the Life):

> From my gaggle of harmless but nevertheless creepy stalkers, mostly white, male senior citizens who wander over from the McDonalds next door after breakfast: "Where do you go to school? ... Oh, that's the bad girls school." Also, "What do you think of Britney Spears? You're about her age, right?"

> On an author whom the patron had seen interviewed on television: "I can't remember his name. He's from San Francisco and he's gay. He didn't look gay, though. He just looked like a regular person."

> When I presented a very proper woman in her 80s with yesterday's newspaper, which we didn't have and which I'd run down the street to purchase: "Oh my! Such service! I feel like Mrs. Clinton!"