Shelving is Therapy - and Why You Should Click to Give

I feel like a teen just sitting here at this little laptop in this little library. Sometimes I feel older than other kids I know, and right now it just feels good to be, like, your typical high-schooler pitter-pattering away on the laptop.

Although my mind is programmed as, "I should not be sitting here having fun on the computer. I need to work: shelve, check in, answer the phone." But Wednesday is not a storytime day - I am free to hang out. I'm so used to being here on Monday and Friday to help out.

Library work, I think, is therapeutic - checking books in has kind of a rhythm to it; and shelving, especially, requires a lot of concentration but very little brainpower. Perfectly soothing and steadying.

I think I'm starting miss it a bit. I definitely feel a prick of jealousy for the volunteer who is shelving now. I think she sort of has to do it, as, you know, a signed-up volunteer, rather than a walk-in one such as myself (Mondays and Fridays are not really walk-in days - I've been working at story hour for five years and am not about to stop this wonderful three hours a week!).

So anyway, Happy Earth Day. I'll repeat what I said on St. Patrick's Day - my blog is terribly green, is it not?

Please, please, please, please, in honor of Earth, will you Click to Give at The Rainforest Site? - http://therainforestsite.com. The more Clicks, the more money goes to conserving our pretty chattery creepy wet green forests. There are all sorts of organizations on the site - child health, literacy, animal rescue, breast cancer, and hunger - as well as the rainforest.

I make an effort to do it every day and woul be enormously grateful if you did, too. You can pick one, or do all of them. Or just a few. It's up to you.

~Emily

Parrotfish Vs. Luna

After I read "Parrotfish" by Ellen Wittlinger, I wondered why on earth people kept comparing it - often putting it down in the process - with another novel about transgendered teens, "Luna" by Julie Ann Peters. So I read "Luna" (though the first Julie Ann Peters book I read was "Between Mom and Jo" which pretty much rocked) and finished it yesterday.

And here are ...

Reasons to like "Parrotfish":

1. It's a riot.

2. It will stay with you because it's hilarious AND touching AND infuriating.

3. The main character's first-person narration is pretty much priceless. Grady. Rocks.

4. It gave Benjamin the idea to get me a bottle of organic peppermint shampoo for Christmas.

Reasons to like "Luna":

1. It's intense and fascinating.

2. It's really multifaceted.

3. It rips at your heart really hard. You know ... in a good way.

I can't help it. I think I like "Parrotfish" just a little bit more. But "Luna" will never leave my heart.

~Emily

P.S. I just started another Julie Ann Peters novel. It's called "Far From Xanadu." Methinks this Julie Ann Peters is a really marvelous writer.

Het Bibliotheek?!

Here is my Dutch Twitter page: http://twitter.com/eminnederlands.

My Dutch is in desperate, desperate need of improvement. In fact, it's down on all fours screaming and crying for improvement. We'll get there.

(Seriously, I said, "het bibliotheek." Who says, "het bibliotheek?")

~Emily

The New Kid

Last week brought a Variety Show held at my local high school. It was enormous fun; I had no idea some of these kids could do what they did.



I felt strange, though.



In the middle of the fourth grade, I started home-schooling; and so I haven't really been able to grow up with my elementary school classmates - not in the way they grew up with each other. So when I was there in the audience, watching and listening to everyone greeting each other with intense hugs and little shrieks and big smiles, I felt like The New Kid: only in this instance, I knew everyone but nobody knew me.

I got the chance to catch up with a few kids, though. I ended up have a wonderful time.

Sometimes I wish I were part of the high school.

~Emily

A Little Hole Opens Up In Me (And Other Things)

I have twenty Followers on Twitter. It's funny, I joined Twitter because Neil Gaiman talked (and talked) about Twitter and obviously really liked it; and so I figured, Okay. Something's got to be kind of cool about this Twitter thing. Whatever it is.

And I think it's just so much fun, and actually is very cool.

I am EmilyLady on the site, if thou art by some chance interested.

I picked up a copy of Laurie Halse Anderson's new book today - "Wintergirls"! I told myself I would wait until I found it at the library to read it, but I knew I would be upset and missing it if I didn't take it home with me from Barnes and Noble. And so I did. I had to.

Sometimes that just happens when I start a book - I put it back on the shelf and walk through the door, to the car waiting outside ... and a little hole opens up in me.

What else is there to say? ...

Well. Not much. I just felt a twinge of guilt for neglecting the blog for a few days; for some reason I feel lately that I have to update a lot more often than I once did.

Not that I don't enjoy it. And thanks so much to everyone (particularly the Fiends) for commenting. It's such a treat.

~Emily

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

"Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." My first play.

And it was PHENOMENAL, I tell you. It was truly, outrageously, tremendously, enormously phenomenal. Now, I know you must have been to a play before - and you know how the dancing can be hypnotic and fascinating and lovely? That was "Chitty Chitty." And you know how you want to laugh so hard even though nothing's really terribly funny, everything is just so wonderful and you're having one of the most marvelous nights of your life?

That was pretty much how it went down. And there's a lesson in this, too: if ever you are going to collect money for charity at a theatre, have the cast members stand around collecting it after the show. It works. People donate. I got to meet the child stars, Aly Brier and Jeremy Lipton.

I can't thank Miss Juliette and her parents enough. They let me have one of the most splendid evenings of my life.

~Emily

Off to Chitty Chitty

Tonight is a friend's birthday present. Ah, now THERE is a sentence that makes no sense: but it's a play. She was allowed to take one friend, and she chose me, and so we are going to see "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" together. Sounds like a lot of fun.

I love theatre with deeply, almost as much as I love books. I have performed in two plays - one a production of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", the other a bunch of Hans Christian Andersen tales - but never seen one. So this is my first, and I am so excited!

I must give an enormous thanks to Juliette and her mother for inviting me. And happy birthday, Juliette!

OH, I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M REALLY GOING TO SEE A PLAY!

~Emily