Too uninspired to come up with a title, please come up with something amazing and pretend it is here

Bother, sat down to contemplate the day (from a bloggy perspective) and somehow managed to lodge two Saturday based songs into my head and they are now intermingling in a weird and confusing way.

“It’s another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody” is now muddled up with “It’s a drive- in Saturday”. Which is a messy internal monologue. A David Bowie and Cat Stevens mash up is not something I anticipated when I sat down at my computer.

Still there it is. I am thinking if I go off and try and sing them out I might rescue my day from this. Please pause a moment while I do a quick Google for the song (I really only have “She’s uncertain if she likes him, but she knows she really loves him” for one and “I’ve got some money cos I just got paid” for the other. Talk amongst yourselves while I am gone.

 

 

Right, back on track…well as on track as I ever on. It is Saturday and the library resumed its normal levels of busy (as opposed to last week).

In the scheme of Notable events today, I have nothing. It was been a day filled with the usual: people looking for unfindable books (anyone know of a Helen of Troy picture book last read from our library about four months ago?), apologising for errors that the library has made (one patron’s books are frequently incorrectly returned, another seems to always get given the wrong reserves), conquering technology (I successfully managed to fax something for a stressed patron), soothing an irate patron (noise of children), contemplating why any one person would be brave enough to have out 53 adult fiction books from various branches (the $1 per item return fee thing could get seriously out of control for this patron) and helping a young patron with a school project.

And it was another day that I was grateful that the team here supports us doing our best to help even when maybe you do something that is probably not on the training schedule (off the top of my head I suspect that the time I spent providing a bit of guidance on grammar, proof reading and the value of your passion project being “helping people” is probably not on the top of the library assistant role).

And before you know it the day is over and all the tasks I thought I’d get done I simply managed to start. My weeding list is half done. My picture books for next week’s kindy visit remain unselected (yes they are desperate enough to send me off to another one).

My overwhelming desire is to head to bed and enjoy a good book (after all I have spent a chunk of my day surrounded by them and recommending various ones here, there and everywhere) but instead I am faced with a looming assignment deadline. And I am a little flummoxed by a significant portion of it.

Somehow in 400 words I need to discuss five criteria that denote a great book, discuss particular examples within a specified book and have supporting authoritative research backing it all up. The word count is doing a mind fuck on me and then research supporting the importance of characterisation and have a good plot line is sadly lacking in the academic world. Plenty of run of the mill websites proclaim reading is great, that having believable characters is a good idea but no one seems to want to throw any actual science or research behind that statement. Maybe they do but I am buggered if I can find it.

So the evening is looking loooooong and uninteresting.

Today I am going to recommend an unexpected children’s book. Thunderbolt Pony by Stacy Gregg. I will be honest and confess that when I saw this book on last years Storylines book awards nominees I figured that they must have been just choosing it based on its popularity with the young girly horsey crowd (I should make a quick note that there is no shame in being a young girly horsey type- I have friends who are proud owners of such children but I figure books targeted at this group would be akin to the dreaded Daisy Meadows fairy books). And so I was pleasantly surprised that this book was not just “yay, ponies are pretty” but in fact was a great little story.

We follow 12-year-old Evie, and her animal companions, on a dangerous journey (think the incredible journey but with a horse, dog and a tween with OCD). This book is told from Evie’s perspective, providing the reader with all her thoughts and feelings. The plot is engaging and moves forward at a gallop (if you’ll pardon the pun). The description of the earthquake’s aftermath, both physically on the landscape but also emotionally, will speak to everyone who has lived through them. Gregg’s gentle handling of the protagonist’s OCD was delicately done.

It wasn’t a perfect book. You needed to suspend your disbelief filter a bit to work round the perfectly timed meeting of an adult with OCD that showed Evie her potential future. I would have preferred it if the publisher hadn’t dumped a bloody flowery pony picture on the front cover because that puts off a bunch of children. And I wish that there had been a little bit of a greater sense of New Zealand spread throughout it.

Here’s to success for everyone’s weekends.