EAFOL Day Two & Three

Posted by Kanga.

Darren Shan read sections of both his older works and not yet published works. It’s interesting to watch a round faced, cherry cheeked man read about zombies eating brains.

Dubai area poets, The Poeticians, read their own works. Hisham Wyne’s experimental piece required audience assistance so that his hands would be free (for his harmonica).

The youngest Poetician, Farah Chamma,  wrote and read the most powerful pieces.

David Almond read from his new novel The True Tale of the Monster, Billy Dean. It is written phonetically, which I think I would find very frustrating to read. It was easy enough to listen to, though.

Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham are a husband and wife writing team. She does the research and comes up with story ideas. He is the wordsmith. Their recent book, The Cloud Tea Monkeys (which I mentioned in the previous post) was illustrated by Juan Wijngaard, a painter of Portugese/Dutch decent who lives in the US. They spoke about their writing process as well as the contribution of the illustrations. They also shared another book that will be published later this year.

Emirates Airline Festival of Literature

Posted by Kanga.

This weekend is the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai. We will be dropping in each day. Here is day one:

Qais Sedki, author of Gold Ring, was interviewed by Hisham Wyne. Qais took his love for reading, his love of manga, and his love of the Arabic language and put them all together in the first Arabic manga series. Two volumes are available in Arabic and volume one has just been released in English. Qais is also interested in animation of the story, but he doesn’t want an animated form to keep people from reading the story. This is also the reason for delaying the English version. He wants people to read in Arabic. It is great to see such a strong advocate for reading. We first met Qais at last year’s EAFOL and have enjoyed getting to know him. I hope to have him speak to my students soon and share his love of reading. I hope it is contagious.

Dubai Abdulla Abulhoul is the sixteen year old author of Galagolia. It is a fantasy novel that she has been working on for years. I’ve only read the first chapter, so can’t give an evaluation, yet. Dubai is a spunky girl.

Kinokuniya Book World is providing the book sales for the festival this year and the selection is great. We purchased several wonderful books (and one dud).

The Pearl Diver by Julia Johnson, illustrated by Patricia Al Fakhri – a picture book about traditional pearl diving. This is wonderful and I will be using it with my students soon. In fact, I plan to buy a class set. (ISBN 97819067688881)

My Own Special Way by Maitha Al Khayyat (spelled Mithaa Alkhayyat on the book) illustrated by Maya Fidawi, translated by Fatima Sharafeddini – a early reader chapter book about a young girl’s struggle to find her own style. Really sweet illustrations and story. Unfortunately, I don’t think my male students would find it of interest, but girls will eat this up. (ISBN 9781444003208)

The Arabian Nights by Wafa’ Tarnowska, illustrated by Carole Henaff – A retelling of the classic Arabian tales of Shahrazade. I’m looking forward to reading this one and hope that it will be one that I can share with students. It won the Smithsonian Notable Books for Children Award 2010.

Bride’s Story v.1 by Kaoru Mori – a graphic novel set in 19th century Mongolia. I have developed a fascination with Mongolia after reading Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford, so I couldn’t resist this one.

Cloud Tea Monkeys by Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham, illustrated by Juan Wijngaard – a picture book. I haven’t read it, yet, but the illustrations are amazing. (ISBN 9781406333862)

Saluki: Hound of the Bedouin by Julia Johnson, illustrated by Susan Keeble – a picture book about, you guessed it, saluki dogs. I haven’t read this, yet, but after reading The Pearl Diver I expect this one to be well researched and written, as well. (ISBN 9781906768904)

Now for the dud:
Here Comes the Poo Bus! by Andy Stanton, illustrations by Noelle Davies-Brock – a picture book about poo. Being a classy, sophisticated person, I can’t pass up a book about poo, but I should have stopped to read it before purchase. There is no real purpose to this book other than to say “poo bus” multiple times while reading aloud. The “poetry” is inconsistent, switching from ABCB to ABAB and back, with some missing syllables here and there making for a lack of rhythm. I used to have a collection of awful children’s books. I would have added this one.

Why librarians don’t sit around and read books

Posted by Kanga.

I had one of THOSE conversations with a good friend last weekend. “If you don’t read books all day, what does a librarian do?” Every librarian has had this conversation multiple times.

So, this has not been a typical week, but I am going to describe it for you so that you will know why librarians are not sitting around reading books all day.

Sunday (first day of the work week in the Muslim world):

• Late shift, came in at 10 am, worked until 8 pm
• One hour – new student orientation to the library
• One hour – collection analysis, comparing the titles in our collection to a recommended core collection (percentage is too low, need to order a lot of core titles)
• Meeting with other library staff to discuss how the first session of student orientations went
• Lunch – yes, for my health I insist on actually taking a break and eating something
• One hour – reference desk = being available to answer any questions people have and help them use library equipment (photocopier, scanner, computer)
• One & half hours – preparation for instruction sessions I will be doing Monday & Tuesday evenings
• Rest of the “day” until 8 pm – “manned” the circulation desk, sole library staff person on duty

Monday:

• In one hour late, because I am staying late to provide instruction to an evening class
• Four hours on the reference desk – photocopier help, etc.
• One hour – new student orientation
• Lunch
• Administrative tasks – trying to catch up on paperwork, follow up on tasks that have cropped up, responding to faculty requests, scheduling instruction sessions, etc.
• Instruction session for a class – teaching them information literacy in preparation for a major research paper they will be doing

Tuesday:

• Three & half hours – proctoring an English proficiency test
• Lunch – totally starving because I missed breakfast
• One hour – new student orientation
• Three hours – reference desk
• Instruction session, just like the one the night before

Wednesday

• Administrative tasks – trying to keep up with my email and paperwork
• Collecting together all our policy documents related to “collection development” = selecting, ordering, receiving, and withdrawing library materials (On another day, I will read all these, edit, and add to these documents.)
• One & half hour – attend a class to see students give their first presentations in front of the class and to talk about blogging.
• Lunch & run to the bank
• Responding to emails and following up on some requests, trying to keep my head above water
• Meeting with another staff member to revise some documentation on our process for ordering books from vendors like Amazon
• New student orientation
• “Manning” the circulation desk so that the assistants can be free to do other end of day tasks

Thursday: (tomorrow, so this is speculative)

• Library staff meeting – one hour
• New student orientation – one hour
• Reference desk – two hours
• Lunch
• Meeting about donating withdrawn books to another library
• Meeting with another librarian to draft proposals for a change in how we do some of our tasks in hope of freeing up some time

Now, I do have to admit that I did check out a book. It is a book on how to build a core library collection, so not an exciting read. I’ve managed to read about one page. I did pick up another book. This was during a orientation session time slot. I was waiting for students to arrive and wandered into the biography section, discovering that we have a biography of Yul Brynner written by his son. So, I looked at all the pictures, read the captions and read about one page of the first chapter while waiting. I also did some reading while proctoring the test, but it was mostly Twitter on my iPad.

So, there you have it. This is what those strange non-reading librarians are up to.

Summer

Posted by Kanga.

Well, my summer plans were looking something like this: read a lot, sew a lot, laugh at the cats antics a lot, watch a lot of Bollywood movies and go outside as little as possible. I was also going to do a lot of blogging – book reviews, movie reviews, cat antics and get caught up on the wacky toys videos. I was also going to get brave and explore some social issues that have been in the press lately.

However, on the 30th of June, I turn in my work laptop computer which is in great need of some maintenance work, and will not have it again until I return to work at the end of August. I expected to have a MacBook Pro before this, but that has not worked out. So, blogging is not to be. I will still be reading, sewing, laughing, etc., but any writing I do will be in a paper journal which only I will be likely to ever read. I will still be on Twitter, Facebook and email, because my iPod Touch is very useful for those things, but typing more than a few words is not practical, and loading pictures, forget about it.

We are not travelling anywhere exotic this summer, so maybe no blogging is not such a big deal. We are each travelling to the States at different times and to different destinations. This tag team travelling allows for the cats to be cared for without having to enlist a cat sitter and should be far less exhausting than last years 7 week odyssey.

I will endeavor to get caught up on some not yet posted pictures before June 30th. I’m sad that I won’t be able to take advantage of my time off to do more in depth writing.

EAFL

Posted by Kanga

Wednesday, I took the afternoon away from work to go to the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. We attended a panel discussion session on The Book Club Phenomenon. Authors present were (left to right) David J. Taylor, Chris Cleave, (moderator Rosie Goldsmith), Rachel Hore, and RJ Ellory. Admittedly, I had not heard of any of these authors prior to today. We enjoyed the session and it was interesting to hear the perspectives of the authors and to see the vast differences in their personalities.

Afterward, we bought a few of books and got them autographed. A Quiet Belief in Angels by R.J. Ellory, which he himself says is a dreadful book. We had a lovely, short chat with him about Dubai and what brought us here. (Our favorite topic, but he initiated it.) Unfortunately, it did not occur to me to take pictures until later. Next was The Other Hand by Chris Cleave. We had a nice chat with him, too. He’s on Twitter, so he took down DaddyBird’s “handle” and had already “tweeted” to him before we got home.

Next was Qais Sedki, author of the first Arabic Manga series, Gold Ring. It isn’t available in English, yet, but we bought the Arabic first issue anyway. We chatted with him also. He is very interested in promoting both reading and Emirati culture. I look forward to the English version.

The following day the authors participating in the festival went out to schools, so I got to hear Imran Ahmad speak and got a signed copy of Unimagined: a Muslim boy meets the West. I haven’t read it, yet, but I suspect that I may be seeing to it that friends and family get a copy of this one.

Bookstore

One thing that has been rare, until recently, in Dubai is good book stores. There are a few used bookstores, small Arabic book stores here and there, and one chain of stores that have new English books as well as some Arabic. But, when Dubai Mall opened so did Book World by Kinokuniya. It is HUGE. They have books on everything. I was able to get a couple of books on embroidery and beading. They have loads of English books, but also French, German, Japanese, etc. They have a large section of comic books & manga. I ventured into the language section and found a book on beginning Cherokee. How thorough is that?

Beginning Cherokee

Hay-on-Wye

I should probably start with a brief explanation of why we are in Hay-on-Wye. The shortest explanation is that there are 30 bookstores in this small town. The longer story is that I heard about it about 20 years ago and have dreamed of coming here ever since.

Hay-on-Wye is very photogenic and I have lots of pictures. I’ll give them to you a few at a time, so as not to overwhelm.
Castle Street is one of the main streets.
This structure used to be the butter market. There is a weekly street market held each Thursday and this and other areas of the town are used. We bought some lovely green olives stuffed with garlic cloves which is a combination we haven’t found in Dubai, yet.
Here is the Castle. Of course, there is a bookstore in it.

The Catholic Church.

We are enjoying our stay here. It is very peaceful and lovely. My only complaint is that the entire town is on a slope, so it is hard on my ankles to be walking on uneven ground. Daddybird says we can retire here, but I would need one of those motorized chairs that old people use to get around. Works for me!

Summer reading list

I just selected my summer reading list items from the library collection. Here they are:

Teach Yourself: Teaching English as a Foreign Language by David Riddell

Oranges in the Sun: Short Stories from the Arabian Gulf edited by Akers & Bagader

The Power of the Gaze: an Introduction to Visual Literacy by Janne Seppanen

Practical Pedagogy for Library Instructors: 17 Innovative Strategies to Improve Student Learning edited by Cook & Sittler

Web Literacy for Educators by Alan November

Plus numerous articles from academic journals about teaching information literacy.

Don’t worry. I plan to add some for fun titles (by Sonia Singh, hopefully) when I hit Powell’s Bookstore in Portland.

Spinoff

I started a new blog at http://missineedabook.wordpress.com to test out WordPress as a possible new home for this one.

Take a look, comment, hopefully laugh a little.

Book sale

Here we are at the Magrudy’s Bookstore warehouse sale. “Everything must go!” This is the line of people waiting. Yes, that is a man holding a Siamese cat (on a halter and lease, no less). He put it down later and took it for a drag.
Below, we have a Christmas tree. Yes, the Christmas shopping season has begun in Dubai.
A display of Christmas books.
The line continues…
And continues… Mostly expats, so they knew how to line up, at least.
Finally, the golden gates, the emerald city, the holy grail, the river Jordan, the end of the rainbow…
The madhouse — where butts collide. Just rows of boxes full of books of various kinds.
They had a very efficient system and once we got into the checkout line (which I thought would be long and slow) it moved too quickly. I wanted to checkout the books as I stood in line, but it moved fast. They counted them up, you paid your money and you got out. Simple as that. Dhs 5 for paperbacks ($1.37) and Dhs 10 for hardbacks ($2.74).
Above is the cafe where we sat afterward and watched the line which was still strong when we left an hour or so later. (Really bad service at this cafe. Felt bad about leaving a Dhs 7 tip, but had already waited a ridiculously long time for our food and didn’t want to wait for the change.)
Below are our treasures. Mostly travel and language books. 41 books for $60.00. Now we need a book case!