Librarian Confession

I have been a children's/school librarian for over 40 years and have never read a Raold Dahl book.

Anyone else have a confession to make?

Great topic!

I've been a school librarian for 33 years (all grades at various times) and have never Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, nor have I read anything by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Not a librarian but enjoying this & hoping for more to come--no Dahl? no Wilder? what next--no Heidi? no Anne of Green Gables?

Do ye know that you're playing a variation of Humiliation here? (https://postgradpanopticon.wordpress.com/2011/11/25/playing-humiliation-or-books-ive-never-read/)

>3 bluepiano: No to Anne of Green Gables, as well! I have seen some of the PBS episodes, though!

>3 bluepiano: I can put you out of your misery on that...I haven't read Heidi or any of the Anne books. Also hated To Kill a Mockingbird. And I didn't become a librarian b/c I love to read (or b/c I love books). Shocking. I know.

I have read To Kill a Mockingbird numerous times (also seen the movie 5+ times), but haven't yet picked up Set a Watchman. I read something that it puts Atticus in a semi-bad light, and I don't want my personal image tarnished.

I have also not read Hatchet but recommend it to my students a lot, especially boys. And a few years ago, I discovered that of all the Newbery and Honor books, I've only read about 60 of them. However, some of them are such favorites that I have re-read them many times.

Not having read Arthur Ransome is my guilty secret.

Haven't read Hatchet? Don't worry, you're not missing much. It was only ok.

Haven't read any of the Harry Potter books, never plan to.

I've never read Peter Pan or Wind in the Willows and I'm pretty sure I never got around to Judy Blume either.

Having been a high school English teacher before becoming a school librarian, I've read To Kill a Mockingbird more times than I wish to know.

In retirement, I can also confess that I once taught Blustering Frights to a senior English class without having had the stomach to actually read more than half of it.

I've never read Harry Potter or Game of Thrones. I don't feel bad about that. What I feel bad about, is that for as big of Tolkien and fantasy fiction buff, is that I haven't read Simarallion or any of his Post-humis works.

Also, I haven't finished a book in 9 months, because I get bored.

I haven't read any Raold Dahl books and don't really plan to unless I have children who want to read them. I also haven't read Anne of Green Gables. My last confession is that I'm so tired from pursuing my bachelors in ILS and work that I've lost my desire to read books. I feel horrible about that.

I have a monumental sized list of books to read that many people have read, like Moby Dick or Dan Brown books...

To danahaskell: Maybe one day when you retire from ILS work you will recover your desire to read for pleasure. It has happened for me.

I am a Childrens Librarian and I do not like Eric Carle's titles!

Here's another confession: although I give a lecture to my students about always using our data bases for accurate information, I often use Wikipedia.

>16 theretiredlibrarian: I do that, too! LOL!

>16 theretiredlibrarian: I'm a curator at a small museum (a librarian of artifacts, art, ephemera, etc if you stretch a point) and I have been known to start looking there and hoping they have some good footnotes or bibliography and every so often I find an answer.

Case in point, the mother of our name sake (Christian Sanderson) liked to make "Betsy Ross" flags. Someone asked me were there other types of flags during the Revolutionary war? Suffice it to say there were a lot!! Wikipedia saved a lot of Goggle work as the name of the web site with flags wasn't even close to what one would think.

Not a librarian yet so there's probably time for redemption but I haven't read anything mentioned here except for Harry Potter, and only one Roald Dahl. I'm reading one more right now, and can't help but think some of the stuff in here would not be okay if it were published now.

I'm not sure I even know who Wilder is.

On Wikipedia though, no shame! It's a great launch point for research, just not the best end point.

I can't stand Shel Silverstein.

@19--You have never heard of Little House on the Prairie? Amazing.

>21 MsMixte: Ah. Yes, that I know, but I could not have told you who wrote it until just now. ;)

>20 RowanTribe: *gasp, puts hand to heart* (I don't know if the guy was a good guy or not, but I love his poetry, and honestly I hate most poetry)

>19 WeeTurtle: Laura Ingalls Wilder (weirdly enough just about an hour ago I got a patron asking for biographies about her and by her). She wrote Little House on the Prairie books I do believe.

>23 DanieXJ: I know, right? That's my darkest librarian secret.

Well, maybe that and the fact that I really LOVE de-accessioning (weeding) outdated nonfiction books. It just makes my heart happy to know the outdated info isn't going to screw anyone over any more, and that they're being recycled into new shiny things.

>24 RowanTribe: I just found a poem that I really love "The Chaos" by Gerard Nolst Trenité. It's crazy crazy good, and quite mind blowing :)) (Still not better than a good Shel, although I will say that when I was a child the picture that was on the back of most of his books literally terrified me).

I've never really done weeding, but, I work with two women who do. One loves weeding, practically cackles with glee at getting the bad out so there's room for the good, the other, well... not as much, and she nearly never gets rid of things because of it.

>24 RowanTribe: I love weeding! It frees up room for the gems that are left!

Not a librarian but an intern in a library. Had to move the Manga around. Is it me or is some Manga a little racy to be in the children's section? I confess I want to move all of the Manga and the Graphic novels deep in the upstairs Adult fiction.

Manga is Japanese created comics and it is not limited to children so yeah, it's not something I would put in a kids section unless it was manga specifically for kids. Most places I know either have it on it's own rack, or in and around the teen/YA areas.

It's the same for anime. Consider it a medium or genre, but not an audience specific one.

This is a source of massive frustration and anger for me. When it was first being published in the west I guess I can understand why it was all assumed to be kid stuff (although, it still annoys me that it was), but at some point librarians should have educated themselves on the entire medium of graphic novels (regardless of country of origin or style). You don't have to like a medium, but you should have a basic understanding of what it even is.

Yeah, culture clash in this case. It's the same in a way with video games. People have the idea that video games are for kids and don't realize just what kind of content is there. It's good they have the rating system now, like movies.

We have separate adult and children's "graphic novel" collections, and manga gets split into grade levels and appropriateness just like the western stuff does - I don't understand why it seems to be so difficult for people.

>32 Verkruissen: Wow, it was that good a confession. Yikes.... ;) (I'm just joshin' with ya).

I'm no librarian either, but I love book talk of any kind. All this talk reminded me of one of my favorite books Persepolis. I even watched the movie, but that was like watching the book, if you know what I mean. Right now my life revolves around deciding if I want to study management with all it's expensive textbooks(https://www.bartleby.com/subject/business/management) or economics which I'm afraid I might find very dry. Sometimes I re-read Persepolis just to get a grip on how inane my problems are in comparison to other people's problems. Sigh, this is a confession of a different sort, I guess.