Congratulations Jacqueline Wilson!

Jacqueline Wilson has been announced as the new Children's Laureate!

I think this is excellent news. Jacqueline Wilson's phenomenal popularity amongst children will inevitably raise the profile of the post, and she has shown herself to be extremely engaged with children's reading.

Jacqueline has announced the intention of campaigning for a return to reading aloud in all schools.

What a brilliant choice!



Sorry that this blog hasn't been updated very frequently of late - computer issues have intervened. Remember, I welcome posts and comments from other community members.

Success stories

The last post may have seemed a little negative: if pay and respect in this profession are so poor, why do we do it? Of course, many people do enjoy good working conditions, but in the end it's not the pay or the status which draws people to this profession. All the best school librarians have a commitment to school libraries and to the children they work with which is its own reward. Personally, if I can give one child the gift which is confidence in and love of reading, my job will have been well worth the effort. With this in mind, I thought it would be nice to share some success stories.

Like many school librarians, we run a book club for the students. Before I entered the profession, I vaguely imagined that the kind of children who would attend a book club would be stereotypical 'bookish' types - shy, quiet, forever buried in a book. Perhaps in other schools this is the case - but it is certainly not true of our book club. The majority of them are more interested in loudly expressing their opinions than in tucking themselves away for a spot of private reading. In fact, although some are voracious readers, some read very little and one of our members is a profoundly dyslexic student who totally rejects reading in other contexts. I don't know if this is due to the type of students at our school, or if it's actually quite usual, but I like to think that the way we run the book club gives these less bookish students a lot of fun and confidence in reading.

Anyway... because our members are so chatty, we decided that we should have a session which took advantage of that fact. As our school was running lots of events for Make Poverty History week we decided to have a session which acknowledged the fact that many people around the world have no access to books and rely on oral storytelling. Everyone was told the week before that we would be telling stories and asked to prepare one to tell from memory. My colleague and I kept a few in mind so that we would have enough to fill the session if the kids bottled out. Well - no problem there! They absolutely loved the whole thing. One of the kids came to see us several times before the actual session with different ideas for stories. The story she told in the end was (I think) totally original, and didn't resemble the ones she' d spoken of earlier at all. Almost all the group had a story to tell, and once we got warmed up they thought of more stories they'd like to tell. Usually they are quite noisy and tend to interrupt whoever is reading, but this time they were completely respectful of the person who was talking. They stayed quiet and attentive while I told a 15 minute long story (my own take on the Loathly lady story) and gave their peers just as much respect. More importantly, they all seemed to love hearing and telling stories. All in all it was a hugely successful idea, and one we'll definitely be repeating.

Another recent success in our book club was a night themed around dystopias. I set up a new book display every week and had picked the theme of dystopia; my colleague suggested we use it for a book club. If I'm honest, the original display was inspired partly by despair, as so few kids seemed to look at it regardless of what was on it I was feeling a little self-indulgent (of which more later). We made a sheet of extracts from various dystopian novels for the kids to read from (they love reading out). We started the session by talking about utopias and asking them to describe what their utopia would be like (we made a big spider diagram on a flip chart). This really got them talking. We then introduced the concept of dystopia and read from the extracts explaining a bit about each book as we went along. We also touched on real life attempts at creating utopias and those which could be said to have resulted in dystopia (eg, Nazi Germany). The session provoked a huge amount of discussion and lots of books were borrowed at the end. I was amazed at how many and how complex their ideas were once we had started them off - it is so easy to underestimate children!

On the subject of my book display - that too has produced some positive results of late. The display is a set of books housed on a 'Frederick' wire rack which has a place at the top for signs. New books are put on one side of this rack, and the other side is devoted to a collection of books around a theme. I change the theme every week so that interest will remain high. For a while, though, it seemed that they just weren't interested. I racked my brains for exciting themes, made pretty signs, etc and still no books moved from the display. Eventually we decided to move the display to a different spot in the library in the hopes that this would stop it seeming 'just part of the furniture'. This helped a little... then two displays I've made recently really revived my hope that the display is actually worthwhile. One was of British Asian authors - no bells and whistles, just the title and the books. The Pakistani girls in the sixth-form were onto it immediately and borrowed every book for older readers there was. Then I made a 'Problem Page' themed display and stuck notes onto the front of each book to highlight the real life problem they dealt with. So many books have been borrowed from this one that I've had a job to keep filling the gaps. It just goes to show that displays do work - it's just a matter of hitting upon the themes and the presentation that interest your particular kids. Both these displays caught the interest of students who never normally borrow books... I hope that now they've had one or two they may start to wonder whether the library might have some things to interest them after all.

Experiences like the above are the best things about being a school librarian. If one kid grows up to love books because I attracted their interest, I will have succeeded. I'd love to hear other people's success stories - it's always nice to hear what works.

Training of school librarians

At a recent meeting of local librarians, I realised that not one of the five librarians present was actually a qualified librarian (although two - myself and another colleague - had plans to pursue MScs). This revelation set me wondering about the importance of professional qualifications, both in 'real' terms and in terms of the status of the profession. The situation in the UK is extremely mixed, with no legal requirement to employ a qualified librarian. By contrast, in Australia school librarians must complete a specialised Teacher/Librarian qualification. Does this disparity matter?

In my encounters with various school librarians, it has become obvious to me that the issue of qualifications is less relevant than the amount of relevant experience and the enthusiasm of the librarian. There are many excellent librarians who lack a qualification, and plenty of qualified librarians who are unsuited to working in school libraries at all. This is especially true given that the library and information courses on offer in the UK offer very little in the way of specialist training for school librarians - usually little more than one or two modules related to children's literature. Little attention is paid to issues of behaviour management or teaching and learning, despite the fact that these are two of the most important aspects of a school librarian's role. Knowing how to accurately catalogue your stock is of little use if it will be wrecked or stolen by students within days of it appearing on the shelf!

Despite the shortcomings of library qualifications, I do feel that it is important that school librarians should be qualified. There is a prevailing sense within the profession that librarians are undervalued within schools. Since joining the profession, I have heard many horror stories; librarians who are ignored or undermined by senior management, libraries expected to function on tiny budgets, and an almost universal sense of being underpaid. It is clear that a great deal of work is necessary in order to transform perceptions of libraries and librarians, and I believe that maintaining a high professional standard among librarians is key to this. If we are to demand the level of professional respect accorded to teachers we need to be able to claim equivalent professional qualifications. Furthermore, whatever the value of experience, there is much to be gained from pursuing a professional qualification. The rise of the internet means that information management is ever more important -and ever more complex - so that expertise is essential. Proper training provides us access to the expertise of others - why reinvent the wheel?

Speaking with other new librarians, it has become clear that behavioural, teaching and pastoral issues are those which cause the most anxiety. Most school librarians can expect to manage 30-50 students in the library during break and lunchtimes, often with no support. They will teach library skills and many provide unofficial pastoral support for some students. They are trained for none of these things. Given that traditional library and information courses provide little to no advice on these issues, I would argue that there ought to be a special qualification for school librarians. I am wary of the Australian model, because librarians are not teachers and I feel that the role of the information professional should remain distinct. However, I am sure that I am not alone in wishing that the kind of training currently offered by the SLA to in-post school librarians could be consolidated into one course, so that prospective school librarians could acquire a basic understanding of how to manage students, laws relating to student welfare, appropriate teaching methods, etc. We owe it to our students, and to ourselves.

Of course, any increase in the training requirements for school librarians would have to be accompanied by a corresponding rise in salary and status. CILIP's recent salary survey found that the average earnings of school librarians was £20,000, with 21% earning less than £15,000. Such low earnings provide little incentive to spend a great deal of time and money in acquiring professional qualifications. But we must try to ensure that as a profession we are well qualified, and use that as a basis for a campaign for better pay and conditions. It is to be hoped that the profession will not become trapped in a vicious circle in which poor salary and conditions lead to poorer quality staff who lower the status of the profession further. This has been prevented so far by the dedication of librarians who persist in often difficult conditions because of a commitment to high quality school libraries. Perhaps it's time for us to start fighting back?

On a positive note, it recently became easier for unqualified school librarians to gain qualifications. The AHRB recently changed its policy on the types of courses it will fund, and will now fund some part-time and distance learning courses. This is excellent news for librarians who would like to gain qualifications without leaving their posts, since courses such as Aberystwyth's MSc Information and Library studies by distance learning will be eligible.

Anybody else have any thoughts to share on the qualifications of school librarians? Is it important to be qualified? Is it feasible to study for the MSc when you are working full time?

Controversial literature and the Carnegie Medal

Thank you to all who have shown interest in contributing to this blog. You should receive further information on how to join by email - if you are missed out please email again to remind me to add you to the list.

Continuing with the theme of controversial literature, I received the following comment on my last post:

"The way in which we handle controversial literature in school libraries is an interesting topic worth discussing with other colleagues. It is often, though not always, the case that a title shortlisted for the Carnegie novel is perhaps not "suitable" for younger pupils who are often members of the reading groups joining the shadowing.

Our role must be to provide good, contemporary, children's' literature whilst being responsible about the readership for these. Who is to say a child of a certain age is not mature enough to read a particular book ? If such a concern exists, particularly in the case of a shortlisted book, I would insert a letter to parents in the book so that parents/guardians are aware of the content. I would always, in such cases, reassure that I was happy for the book to be in the school library. This means that there may be times when one would not stock a book, though very rarely. Interestingly, I have never stocked Melvyn Burgess' Doing It but I suspect this was rather to avoid the decision on my part! My fiction is split between Fiction (up to 14) and Older Fiction (over 14) so any such book would tend to be put in the older fiction section allowing Year 10 and up access (and Year 9 from the summer term usually).

I have twice in my career been challenged about a library book, though in both cases they were non-fiction. The first was a book on sex education by a well respected teenage author. A Year 7 borrowed it and after a few days his mother rang the head of year complaining it was disgusting. The head of year telephoned me, whereupon I said I would defend any of the books we had on sex education. Although I had not read this book from cover to cover it was aimed at lower school pupils, was light-hearted and, as I said, by an author I knew to be reliable. A week or so later the head of year phoned to say she had the mum in reception and was bringing her up. Imagine my embarrassment when she produced the book, pointing to a section headed "Sex with Animals", detailing the fact that it was not unknown for people to have sex with sheep in Wales! I apologised and agreed that perhaps the book should not have been lent to a Year 7 pupil. A similar incident happened when a parent complained about the graphic detail in some of the drawings in a book about Jack the Ripper. These incidents led me to introduce an "older non-fiction" category (for 14 up)."

Thanks Sue for your contribution. This reference to the mature content of some books shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal reminds me of a conversation I had recently with a local colleague. She commented on the fact that the Carnegie medal does not take into account the suitability of the books shortlisted for younger readers. Given that many schools use the shadowing process to encourage more children into reading and to extend the range of already keen readers, it is potentially problematic if the books selected are too mature for younger readers. My colleague mentioned the 2002 shortlist as one in which very adult books predominated. Although it is important not to underestimate the ability of younger students to cope with books intended for 'older readers', it is true that anyone shadowing the Carnegie may encounter some problems in this area. Sue's suggestion of involving parents in the decision by sending a letter home with the book is one means of avoiding complaints from parents - but where does this leave the child? Can the average keen 12 year old desperate to read every book on the shortlist really cope with the books intended for readers aged 14+? Even if their reading age is high enough for these books, there is no guarantee that their comprehension will match. Some of them may be left cold by descriptions of sex, pregnancy or feudal violence, to mention just a few of the issues covered in the 2002 shortlist. Similarly, some of this year's longlist would only appeal to mature readers; Anne Cassidy's brilliant Looking for JJ is a complex and sensitive exploration of child murder which demands intellectual and emotional sophistication. If some of our youngest keen readers try and fail to read the more mature books on the Carnegie shortlists, will they be discouraged from reading outside their comfort zones at all?

All this is not to suggest that the Carnegie Award is failing us. The quality of the books shortlisted is consistently high, and the volume of activity on the Shadowing Site testifies to the success of the scheme in encouraging students to read. In a sense, however, it may be a victim of its own success. With so many students of different ages involved, the problems inherent in including such a broad range of books are magnified. One possible way of resolving this problem would be to create two categories for the medal, one for books aimed at 10-14 year olds and the other for 14-18 year olds. This would enable schools to tailor their shadowing scheme more precisely to their readers, and might arguably make the prize easier to judge (on what grounds do we compare Philip Pullman's The Scarecrow and His Servant and Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now?) Keen younger readers would be able to read the entire shortlist, while older readers would continue to be catered for.

Introducing separate age categories for the Carnegie would solve some problems, but would it create others? Practically speaking, schools would have to buy two separate shortlists and run two shadowing schemes, or choose to sacrifice one age group due to time and cost constraints. Students on the cusp of moving from 'children's' to 'teenage' literature can be encouraged to move beyond familiar books and into more challenging realms by shadowing the Carnegie; would the introduction of age divisions destroy this bridge? I'd love to hear your thoughts, so please do comment.

Finally for this post, congratulations to all those on the Honour List for the School Librarian of the Year Award. It's great to see people get the recognition they deserve; it is to be hoped that the award (currently in its first year) will flourish and succeed in its aim of raising the profile of school librarianship.

Controversial literature

In the process of acquiring and cataloguing several Melvin Burgess novels, I’ve recently had cause to think about controversial literature and the ways in which we as school librarians should handle it. Happily, we in the UK are not faced with the censorious culture present in the US, where I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the Harry Potter series are among the top ten most frequently challenged books (see the ALA website for more information). Nevertheless, certain books and authors have received censure in the British press; Melvin Burgess’ books ‘Junk’ and ‘Doing It’ were both heavily criticised upon publication (Anne Fine went so far as to argue that ‘Doing It’ should be pulped because of its pornographic content and negative attitudes towards women). Although I don’t think that ‘Doing It’ deserves the extreme negative criticism which Anne Fine directs at it, it is undoubtedly a controversial book which deals with matters of an adult nature. In the context of a school library, such material is difficult to classify. Given that the school librarian is educator and role model, do we have a responsibility to protect young readers from such material, or to facilitate their access to it? After all, although I have described ‘Doing It’ as dealing with adult material, Melvin Burgess argues that it presents a realistic picture of adolescent boys, explaining ‘I wrote Doing It because I do believe that we have let young men down very badly in terms of the kinds of books written for them’. Stephen Chbosky, whose book ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ has attracted a good deal of negative publicity in the USA, makes a similar case for the scenes of date rape and drug use in his books, arguing ‘If we didn’t talk about sex and we didn’t talk about drugs, and all these other things that impact teenagers’ lives, literature would still reach teenagers. But the ones having problems in these areas would be totally left in the dark, and would unfortunately be more ignorant’ (see interview at Word Riot). In choosing and classifying controversial literature, then, is the real issue that our concern to shield younger readers may also limit the access of those ready to tackle such material? In my own school library, for example, we ultimately chose to place ‘Doing It’ in the sixth form collection, since we felt that we wouldn’t be comfortable with a year 7 student picking up this particular book. Inevitably, though, this limits the access of students aged 15-16 – precisely the age of the book’s protagonists. In exercising this limited censorship, are we failing some of our readers?

I’d be interested to learn how other librarians have dealt with controversial material – and especially interested to hear if anyone has ever been challenged by a parent over the suitability of library books. Please leave your comments here letting me know what you think about this issue. I will post a review of ‘Doing It’ and a fuller discussion of how our cataloguing decision was made on this book at a later date.

Introductions

Welcome to UK School Librarians Unite! I'm an assistant librarian at a secondary school in Bristol, and I thought it would be nice to have a place where school librarians can compare notes, comment about the job and share ideas and support. This is a place for extended essays or musings on aspects of the job, pleas for help or general chats about the experience of being a school librarian. I hope that it will ultimately prove a valuable resource for linking up people in what is sometimes an isolated role.

You don't have to be a librarian to join this community - anyone with an interest in children's literature is more than welcome to comment. If you know someone who might be interested, please let them know the address of this site.

This blog is intended to be a community - I want lots of people to post, not just me. You can do this in three ways:

1. Respond to posts by clicking on the COMMENTS link below the post. Anyone can do this - you don't need to have a blog of your own.

2. Join the community by emailing me and asking to be added as a team member. Once invited, you will need to create a blog of your own (it's free and very easy to do). This will allow you to create new posts.

3. If you have a long essay you'd like to post, but you don't want to become a member, email me the essay and I will post it. Keep shorter comments or queries in the COMMENTS section, though, or my workload will become too high.


Ideally, most people will choose to become team members. I hope to be an administrator, not sole poster. Remember that this is an open community and you should not post anything which shouldn't be in the public domain. In order to prevent abuse, I do reserve the right to edit or delete posts or bar members if necessary - I hope I will never need to. If such a situation does occur, I will endeavour to contact the person involved before taking action. Please don't be put off by the need to create your own blog - it's really very simple and you don't have to use it beyond the demands of this community.

Madame Pince (group administrator) Email: irma dot pince at gmail dot com (Delete spaces and replace dot with . and at with @. It's written this way to avoid the attention of 'bots' which trawl the web for email addresses.)