In Honor of National Library Week

Checking out books at the Berkeley Public Library in California with my little sister, Meg. (Yes, that's me in the geeky-girl glasses. You can't tell in this black and white photo, but they are red.) And the librarian in the really cool glasses? Any Berkeley librarians know her name?

With thanks to librarians in cool glasses everywhere. Believe me, you've cheered me up, and given me info and made me laugh and brought whole new worlds to me, and you never even knew. So thank you, from me and millions of kids like me.

And the geeky glasses? They came in very handy. Still do.

New York Public Library, and Laure Halse Anderson lets it rip

I'm grinning. Marching made the New York Public Library's Children’s Books 2009 - 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing list.

How important are libraries and librarians? I climb on my soapbox as often as possible to rave about librarians, but never as eloquently as Laurie Halse Anderson (of Speak and Chains fame) just did at the American Association of School Librarians conference. She talked about recent censorship challenges her books have faced and then said this:

"I believe that every time a library budget is cut, every time a librarian’s hours are cut - or the position is eliminated completely - it is another form of censorship. It is stealing from children and interfering with their education.

Taking books out of libraries and taking librarians out of libraries are just like ripping the roof off of a school. And maybe that’s how we need to describe it, in the dire, stark terms of reality. You can't run a school that doesn't have a roof. You can't run a school without librarians and libraries.

Book people – like you and me – tend to be a little uncomfortable with conflict. We value discussion, we respect other opinions. We avoid fights.

When I was kid, I was not allowed to start fights. If I did, I knew that I’d be in a whole lot more trouble when I got home than I could ever be at school.But my mother – she of the hats and gloves and ugly purses - told me that if anybody ever hit me first, I was allowed to punch back as hard as I could.

“Don’t you ever start a fight,” Mother said. “But if somebody picks a fight with you, by God, you finish it.”

The people who do not value books or librarians have picked a fight with me. That was a mistake.

They are ripping the roof off our libraries, off our schools. They are exposing our children to ignorance and condemning them to poverty. When they rip the roof off of libraries, they weaken our country."

Awesome! To read a longer excerpt, check out her blog post.

New East Asian library open at UC Berkeley

The new and beautiful East Asian Library has opened on UC Berkeley's campus. I'm really looking forward to going to see it. They have a huge number of very, very, very old books, and now access to them will be easier. It's a great acknowledgment of our place here on the Pacific Rim.

For my book, John Lennon: All I Want is the Truth, I did research at this library a couple of years ago, when it was small and cramped and had a lovely smell of old books and dust. I couldn't find my way around the shelves at all -- nothing was in English -- but with help of the librarians I was able to request an old issue of Bungei Shunju magazine from the depths of storage. Yoko Ono had written a wonderful article in the magazine about herself and her art work. I had it translated by a Japanese woman, Kyoko K. Bischof, and found it a very revealing self-portrait of Yoko. Which was great, as so much about John Lennon and Yoko is half truths, or out and out untruths that have been repeated over and over again. Love those primary sources!

And much older than Yoko's article, here is a poem I have over my desk by Izumi Shikibu.

In this world
love has no color-
but how deeply
my body
is stained by yours.