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Monday, July 24, 2023

The Importance of Unimportant Books via Teen Librarian Toolbox

Today I am sending you to Teen Librarian Toolbox, a site I have referred you to before, for an important opinion guest post by author Darcy Marks entitled, "The Importance of Unimportant Books."

This title is the entire definition of RA Service. This is why we do what we do and why it is so important. This is why I spend my time traveling around teaching people how to match books with readers.  This is why money is spent to bring me in to lead those training sessions.

We are here to match people with the books that they will most enjoy based on what they have enjoyed before. Sometimes, a book that means the most to someone, that keeps them reading, is NOT the most award winning book, it may not even been a book that is that popular with others. But to that reader, it is THE book in their life. This essay explains that.

This is why when I do my RA Basics program, I ask people to think of a book they love. I don't ask for their favorite. I make that clear. "Favorite" often leads people to the more "important" titles. We have been conditioned by society to think that a book cannot be a favorite unless it has been deemed "important"by some measurable metric. But "love," love leads people to follow their heart. I can teach people how to match books with readers based on what they are actually going to enjoy much better when they are focused on what they love, not what others will think of them based on what they term their "favorite."

This essay gets to the heart of what RA Service is all about. It also serves as a great reminder that why we do what we do is so important. Often leisure reading, especially reading just for fun, is disparaged by others in the literary and library community. 

I help out at the elementary school library and one of the best changes that has happened there is a shift in checkout policy for the kids. It is a change that signals to them that their "want to" reads are more important than their "have to" reads. That change? They used to be able to check out 2 books. 1 "just right" book and 1 "for fun" book. And now? 2 for fun books and 1 just right book. Grades K-6. [And yes, both "for fun" books can be graphic novels because they count as reading. Stop being dumb by limiting those titles as inferior.]

But this change of showing the kids that the school wants them to read for fun, to choose their own titles, and to explore the collection as they want not as they have to, all of this is important because that book that we might think is unimportant, could become a book that they love, hold on to, and help them grow as both a human and a reader.

This essay is also a great reminder of why we fight for the Freedom to Read as others fight with more money to squash it. Any book has the potential to become important to a reader. We have no idea what that book will be. But if we don' have it on the shelf for them to find it, and if we don't have staff that prioritize matching books with readers based ONLY on if it will appeal to the reader (and not what is "worthy" of their time), we will be a society without readers. 

One of the best thing that came out of the pandemic closures is that people rediscovered leisure reading. We see that joy in #BookTok and in library stats. My library's total checkouts are, driven by the increase in e-matieral checkouts from the spring of 2020, an increase that settled down a bit lower than peak but WAY above where is was at the end of 2019.

Think about what I have written, read this TLT post, and think about your own "unimportant books."

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