Women in Translation Month

Did you know August is Women in Translation Month? Here are a few of my recently read translated favorites:

Picture Books

Animal City by Joan Negrescolor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I thought the colors in this picture book were fantastic!





How to Knit a Monster by Annemarie van Haeringen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A fun and cute tale of what happens when you're a prolific knitter, but you don't always pay attention to what's on your needles...



Graphics

Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World by Pénélope Bagieu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a quirky, detailed, fun collection of illustrated stories! This nonfiction graphic works well as a dip-in-and-out resource, and even though I read it cover to cover, it could easily be read by interest or as curiosity leads. The colors are sharp, and the book as a whole has a very eclectic feel. I love that it features women we don't often see depicted in media.

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This graphic memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution is at times funny, moving, sweet, heartbreaking, and enlightening. Satrapi's simple black and white illustrations tell her story without sensationalizing it, and both the words and images allow for the reader to connect with the content on an emotional and intellectual level. I'm excited to continue reading more of Satrapi!


YA Novels

The Forgotten Book by Mechthild Gläser
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reading The Forgotten Book is like reading Pride and Prejudice, but set at German Hogwarts. Largely a P & P retelling, though with more fantasy elements, The Forgotten Book swept me up in its romance and in the mystery of a book that makes the things written in it come true. An old boarding school with hidden secrets set in the countryside is a perfect setting for this story, and I loved exploring its passageways and imagining what it would be like to hang out it the library. Austen isn't always my cup of tea, but I like what Gläser did with this story. Despite mostly knowing what direction storylines were headed in, I still enjoyed the journey.


Erebos by Ursula Poznanski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For fans of Ready Player One and Warcross, Erebos shows readers a world where a computer game influences the real lives of teenagers in one city. This mystery-thriller was a slow burn with plenty of world-building (both on- and offline) and a few red herrings along the way. It was interesting to put myself in the places of the characters, and I also appreciated the thoughtfulness of the details of secondary characters and subplots.


Extras: view all my reviews.

Instructional Project Reflection

For our final project, my group decided to do a live database tutorial that would assist a fictional 8th grade class in their research for a fictional biographic research project. This activity would also assist the fictional teacher who assigned the project, as their students would be better prepared to complete the assignment. Choosing a topic for our lesson was fairly easy: we knew we wanted to teach middle school students and we also wanted to teach a database, so we browsed Dominican's offerings to see what would be age-appropriate and what could be linked with an actual classroom assignment (as opposed to doing a database walk-through just because). Britannica Online has a very user friendly interface that can be used by students young and old, and we liked the extensive biographies it has, so we went with that.

Creating the lesson once we had an end assignment and a few potential standards/outcomes took some trial and error, but on the whole was very productive. We tossed around ideas for database scavenger hunts, worksheets, and team competitions to find certain information. We all wanted to make the tutorial fun, interactive, and not too stressful - using the database isn't the assignment our fictional students are getting graded on, so our goal was more focused on getting them comfortable with the different features and with composing appropriate research questions than in quizzing them on the database itself.

The easiest way to engage learners is to get them doing something. Make it interactive, make the student the expert, and keep the stakes low. Our scavenger hunt starts with easier questions that get more challenging as the students explore, but there is no wrong way to find the answers. The important part is that the students try, and that they observe how their classmates found the information. If two students find the same information in two different ways, they are both right! I'm hoping the "challenge" factor engages our learners and increases their comfort with the database.

Pathfinder Reflection

After thoroughly enjoying the curation assignment, I was interested in preparing a more focused pathfinder. Honestly, curating themed resources is something I do fairly naturally, but intentionally sitting down to do it still had its challenges. First, I needed a topic. I love and crave limits and the creativity they foster, so on the one hand, I was excited to narrow down my resource gathering, but on the other hand I was overwhelmed by my options of topics! And of course, after all my practice in creating lesson plans and working with classroom teachers to create co-curricular assignments, I couldn't think of ANYTHING I wanted to do.

I started a few different pathfinders to see which topic's potential resources felt best, and to see which curation tool I wanted to use. I looked at the LIS 724 website, saw a few tools that I hadn't used before, tried Scoop.It, hated it, and went back to Wakelet. It's just so streamlined. Pearltrees would have also worked, but I liked being able to add more text to explain my resources. I started gathering mermaid resources, fairytale retelling resources, and Chicago resources, and found that I was most interested in collecting a more specific set of Chicago history resources - primary sources and artifacts. That led me to gathering websites, books, encyclopedias, and archives related to Chicago's history in general and four events in particular: Fort Dearborn, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, and the Century of Progress Exposition of 1933-34. Chicagoans and other discerning historians will recognize these events as the ones represented by the four stars on Chicago's flag, which for me was the easiest way to narrow down the expanse of Chicago history.

I know I'll be using pathfinders throughout my career and in my personal life (my booklists here are a sort of pathfinder) for years to come, so it's helpful to try out new platforms and topics that students or curious Chicagoans may actually find useful! 

Rani Patel in Full Effect

Rani Patel in Full Effect by Sonia Patel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Rani Patel is a teenage MC living in Hawaii in the early 90s. She struggles to reconcile her Indian heritage with the hip hop culture she's adopted as her own. She also struggles in her relationships with both her mother and father, and begins to confide in and form an uneven friendship with an older MC, Mark. Using her own words and rhymes as a personal reflection, Rani discovers her strengths and gains the courage to be fully herself.

Simply put, this book is unapologetically itself. Nothing is watered down, and though there is a glossary in the back (appreciated and helpful for cultural outsiders like me, though definitely an "extra"), Rani never stops to explain her vocabulary or her family's meals or her clothing style - which is as it should be! Defining asides and other explanatory comments tend to take the reader out of the flow of the story, and they center a certain type of reader - aka, a reader not like Rani. I loved that this book forced me to read more about hip hop culture and MCs of the 80s and 90s, and I love that a reader who already knows these things can enjoy the book as it is, no extra explanations needed.


View all my reviews

Database Tutorial Reflection

Before starting this assignment, I was not looking forward to screencasting and recording because, like most human people, I do not like hearing my own voice played back at me. Having to use voice overs in our Digital Storytelling assignment helped get me more comfortable with it, and once I had a basic script and went through my database routine a few times, I was ready to try it out.

I used Screencastify because it has such an easy interface for my Chromebook, and videos are saved automatically to my Google Drive. I found the process super quick and easy, and did a practice run of my tutorial. Take 1 helped me decide what was useful and better ways to click through the pages and options of my chosen database (JSTOR), and with a few notes to myself about enunciation, I was ready for Take 2. An almost immediate word flub sent me to Take 3, which gave me a pretty solid final product.

So solid, in fact, that I thought to myself, "I bet I could improve a few more things and streamline the process." BIG MISTAKE. The number one thing I have (re)learned with this assignment: a good and done job is better than great or perfect and not done. I should have been happy with Take 3 and its minor word stumble because Takes 4-7 all had technical difficulties (my laptop took extra time loading pages, the sound cut out at one point, and I could not get the Screencastify extension to stop recording, leading to 30 extra seconds of silence at the end of one video).

After a short break and a few deep breaths, I was ready to try again and take whatever okay product I could get. Luckily, Take 8 was the charm and here I have a Final Product.



From now on, I'll be extra forgiving of online tutorials with minor mistakes or flubs (including my own) - probably the creator of those just wants the product done and out there to help others, and has gone through multiple takes of even worse videos or just okay videos that they wanted to improve. As a lapsed perfectionist, I understand that done is better than perfect, but it's always a good to be reminded of that in practice!

The Lunar Chronicles

Today I want to talk about book series. I used to be a HUGE series reader - from The Boxcar Children and The Babysitter's Club to Nancy Drew and Sammy Keyes, I loved finding a world of characters and sticking with them for 10 to 20 to 50 books (plus companion readers!). As an adult, I'm still always on the hunt for a world to get lost in, and recently I've found a few that I can't wait to visit again. One series I finally finished this past year is The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer - futuristic retellings of popular fairy tales that all connect to each other. Let me break it down for you.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first book in this epic series is a Cinderella retelling. As an introduction to the world, Cinder did a great job of being just familiar enough while also throwing in new technology, a fractured society with various classes of citizens (Earthen, Lunar, cyborg, android) and tense political loyalties. There is a larger story at play here, as a deadly plague threatens Earthen citizens and ties to Luna and her citizens are fraught. Cinder herself was a joy to get to know, along with her android partner and friend, Iko. Prince Kaito had far more personality than Prince Charming, and I actually rooted for their love story. Important Cinderella artifacts and events like the glass slipper, the "pumpkin" chariot, and the transformation from disheveled worker to glamorous ball-attendee are all present, though in slightly adjusted forms.

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While Cinder tries to save Earth from the plague in New Beijing, another young woman in France just wants to find her grandmother and carry on with their country life on the farm. A roving street fighter named Wolf seems to hold all the answers to her grandmother's whereabouts, and Scarlet has no choice but to follow him to Paris, despite not trusting him. It's there that Scarlet realizes her grandmother was involved in something connected to the current political tension between Prince Kaito of Earth and Queen Levana of Luna. While departures are made to update the reader on Cinder and the larger story, most of the focus in this tale is the journey of Scarlet (who, yes, wears a red cape) to see her grandmother with Wolf attempting to earn her trust.

Cress by Marissa Meyer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Cress's story (which includes glimpses into Cinder and Scarlet's continued adventures that I won't detail here) begins in a satellite orbiting Luna. Cress herself is a computer hacker for Queen Levana, and has been tasked with tracking down the Earthen fugitive Cinder. All alone in her satellite (besides brief visits from "Mother"), Cress has had plenty of time to hone her craft and grow her hair. When the dashing Captain Thorne arrives to rescue Cress, they crash land on Earth and must work together to survive. I found Cress herself to be super lovable as a character, and I loved the way Rapunzel's story was reflected in various details - her name, the satellite "tower," her hair, even the fate of Captain Thorne.

Winter by Marissa Meyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As the official finale of the Lunar Chronicles, Winter does an amazing job of tying up loose ends while also essentially introducing us to a brand new character. Readers of Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress will have heard of Winter, the young Lunar Princess, and stepdaughter of Queen Levana, but it's not until this book that we hear about her sheltered upbringing, fragile constitution, and the way that the Lunar people are devoted to her, maybe even more so than they are to their own Queen - a possibility that the Queen just can't allow. While all of our characters finally meet and their stories combine, Winter still manages to stay faithful its own story (a retelling of Snow White). I found this book to be a bittersweet ending to a series that I'm glad I invested my time in, which means I was relieved to learn about both the related short story collection, Stars Above, and Fairest, an origin story for Queen Levana to bring me back to the Lunar world.

Extras: view all my reviews, Little Mermaid retellings, or reviews of short story collections (including Stars Above).

Digital Storytelling Reflection

Similarly to creating book trailers, the process of digital storytelling can be both fun and overwhelming. There are so many options and ways to tell your library's story! A person has to know their own style, or their library's style, to help narrow down editorial choices and make sure that the video is reaching the right audiences.

Speaking of audiences, something to think about when creating digital media like library tours, interactive reading lists, or other video-based content is who the content is for. What age? Parents or the students/youth themselves? And beyond that, what level of familiarity or comfort does this audience have with media - that is, what is their media literacy? Will the audience be able to access your video and understand it? Does the video have both visuals and audio? Not all tools will be useful to all library patrons, so it's helpful to use a variety of them to reach the largest audience.

Overall, using digital storytelling to create short videos was a simple process that has many uses within the library and on a library's website. I'll definitely be thinking of ways to use digital storytelling in my own librarianship!

 

Prezi Reflection

While I've seen Prezi presentations and heard various views on its usability and merit, this was my first time creating a Prezi. I found it fairly intuitive and easy to get started with, but the more I explored, the more there was to do and work with. Overall, Prezi seems like the type of tool that is easy to learn, but difficult to master.

The collaborative element of Prezi was very handy, as I could see live updates as my group mates worked on their sections. One of us could upload an image or type out a section of text and have the rest of us okay it or proof it for them on the spot. There weren't any issues of saving progress and sending updated files, or worrying about others' contributions.

As an option for presenting alongside Google Slides, Prezi does offer some cool elements - the movement of "slide" to "slide" being its most distinctive. I like that with Prezi, a presenter can jump around from topic to topic depending on where their presentation is going (hopping back a topic to answer a question, or skipping a topic that may not need to be covered, for example) without skipping through each individual slide. That same feature is one of Prezi's downfalls as well, as all the jumping and hopping may leave audience members a bit woozy. I think that Google Slides will always be my go-to out of comfort and ease of use, but I'll definitely keep Prezi as a backup for times I want to present things in a more holistic versus narrative way.

Makerspace Inventory Reflection

The kind of makerspace that comes from the combined imaginations of a school, academic, and public librarian is both fun and flexible. While my groupmates and I all agreed that new technology is super cool and useful, we wanted our space to reflect more hands-on making with technology as a bonus. We also felt that our space would be most used and useful if it was mobile and able to support various library programs. Many libraries have a community room or all-purpose room that could be temporarily set up as a makerspace, then put back to common use when no program is in session.

Once we had our basic parameters set, it was off to shop for our various programs. I had the idea of incorporating a community garden, so I searched for ways that could work and looked at other libraries' garden spaces to see what I liked and didn't like. This garden tower on wheels seemed simple and fun, and I liked that I could get a starter kit with seeds and potting mix. A system like this one could be used indoors and out, and year-round to grow different plants, specifically fruits and vegetables. While we paired it up with a Jack and the Beanstalk program for our mythical Summer Reading Program, it could also be used for programs with food, cooking, plant biology, composting, erosion, community development, or geology themes.

After finding my big ticket item, I also shopped around for other gardening and garden craft supplies. Some things I knew would last more than one summer/programming year, while other items I found were consumables, which would need to be noted in the budget so they could be replaced. That was a learning curve for me during this project: how much of our $3,000 would we spend on investment items versus things that would be used up? Art supplies will always get used, but then money has to be spent to replace them. Cameras and iPads last longer, but they cost more and what if they don't get as much use as you'd like? This is clearly an issue of both balance and knowing your own library/library patrons. It's also a good argument for renting equipment or sharing with other nearby libraries, at least until you know how much your patrons will use something.

All-in-all, I enjoyed creating a pretend program and shopping for it, and my groupmates both agreed that we wish we could have our makerspace and made up summer reading programs for real. It also got me looking around to see what local makerspaces are doing, and if I can learn anything from their experiences.

Friday Night Links 41

Okay, it's been a long minute since I've shared a list of links here (like, a year)...but I've been saving these up for this exact Friday. My very last Friday as a 20-something. !

As if my to-read list wasn't long enough...48 books to read in my 30s. (I've already read #s 19, 20, 43, & 46...so make that 44 (more) books to read in my 30s.)

How 30 YO feels around the world.

Thirty from another blogger's perspective: "I want my thirties to be about having less, in the best possible way."

What's a birthday without a few charts? 30 in charts and graphs.

Book Trailer Reflection

While I think the final products are pretty neat, creating book trailers can easily turn into a rabbit hole of finding music, images, and video. I think that if I'm going to continue with them, I'd need a way to streamline the process - namely, a way to not get distracted by all the flashy options and the overwhelming directions one could go with 30 seconds to a minute of time.

Choosing the book to trailer was easy - The Forgotten Book is a new YA title that I recently finished, and it's an easy sell to the right reader. Anyone looking for a contemporary Pride & Prejudice retelling set in a boarding school in the German countryside will want to check it out. Also, there's a book that makes the things you write in it come true, a missing schoolgirl, and other fairytale-esque details.

Then came choosing the video platform. Animoto was simple, though even with its pre-made storyboards and limited design control, I still found myself spending ample time sorting through songs, trying out different images, and reworking my final product. I could see myself using this platform again, and I think that once I've made a few different videos, knowing which storyboard/song/etc I want will come easier.



For my second trailer, I choose to use WeVideo since it had the easiest sign up/was the most clear about having a free plan. At first glance, WeVideo seems to give the user more freedom. The video editing and effects tools were easy to play around with, and I had more control over the music as well. Once I realized I was "trying out" a few premium features, I had to dial back a few of the edits I had made, but there were still enough tools for me to create. I modeled my WeVideo video after my Animoto one to keep things simpler, but was still able to personalize more aspect (the option for multiple songs, fading in and out of each screen).



I've usually seen book trailers done by students or teens for either an assignment or because they love a book that much, and I can definitely see how this platform could be useful for a teacher or librarian to engage kids with different technology in relation to something they are reading. In a public library setting, it would be cool to use one of these platforms in library programming - technology or makerspace-wise, then let kids play around with it and create their own book/movie/etc trailers that the library could then share via social media or embed to a website, similar to what the Chicago Public Library has done using its YOUmedia space.