by Steven Engelfried
I spent quite a bit of time during a children’s desk shift last Saturday helping just one patron. She was an eleven year old who would think up something that interested her (Bratz dolls….Disney World…guinea pigs), then ask me to show her books on the topics, which she would look at briefly, put down, then ask for something else. She seemed sharp enough to learn how to do this herself, but was not at all interested when I offered to show her how. She wanted me to do it all. And even after a half dozen or so trips to the shelves, I was fine with that. As reference librarians, I suppose this might be seen as a missed opportunity to empower a young patron with independent skills…to teach her to fish instead of catching the fish for her, as they say. But when kids get us working for them like this, I think there’s more going on.
Part of it is just the comfort of having a patient, non-judgmental adult who will listen to you, show some interest, and help. Lots of kids don’t get much of that. It’s hard to measure or prove, but I think we children’s librarians have a significant impact on some kids’ lives when we take that role. At the same time, I think that these kids actually are learning to do research; they’re just doing it cautiously. They’re fascinated with the idea that there is all this great stuff in the library, but also have some hesitation, and maybe lack of confidence, about their ability to take control of it on their own yet. Those interactions they have with us, even when we’re doing the work that they might be doing, can be like trial runs. After enough of these, they gradually feel confident that there’s someone who will help them find stuff and also treat them with respect and patience. When they’re ready to ask for more complex guidance as they experiment with their own research, they will.
My favorite example of this is Julian, one of my favorite long-time patrons a few years ago. He would drop by every afternoon to have us look up and place holds on videos (Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger) and/or hip hop cd’s (Ludacris and Nelly). He would look at the screen while I did my searching, watching every minute, but never once trying on his own. After a while he would tell me exactly what to type and offer alternate search strategies when he felt I wasn’t zeroing in quickly enough. But still he always wanted me to do it. Then at some point he stopped dropping by the desk every day. I’d see him in the library still, though; I think he had simply decided he was ready to go it alone. A while later I had to smile when I watched him in action at the catalog, enthusiastically explaining to a classmate the difference between keyword and browse searching. Julian never let me teach him a thing directly, but he learned all he needed to in his own way…and then he showed someone else.
KT Horning
Steven, you make such interesting observations about reference service to children. I always enjoy reading your posts.
I see the two children you describe as representing two completely different types of transactions. Julian sounds like a smart kid who has a specific type of learning style that you perfectly accommodated by being flexible and responsive.
The 11-year-old described in your first paragraph sounds like the kind of kid who asks questions as a way of getting attention. This behavior is not exclusive to children. I’ve seen plenty of adults do this as well. One of my favorite regular patrons was a girl named Dameeka who used this same strategy to get the sort of positive attention she craved. Her technique was to think of a movie she had seen and ask for a book based on it. She would usually ask for 5-6 movies/books at a time.
She really wasn’t interested in the books at all. At age eight, she had not yet learned to read. Once I realized this, I started turning the questions back on her. I learned that she had a very wild imagination and she told me great stories about trips she had taken to Paris and famous people she had met. I found her very entertaining, and always looked forward to her visits. But I didn’t always have the time to give her my undivided attention, so I had to think of something else to keep her busy.
One day when she visited, I handed her the book “Baby Says” by John Steptoe and taught her to read it. Actually, she just memorized the text, but she felt like she was reading it. After she could get through it all smoothly, I asked her to find a preschooler in the children’s room that she could read the book to. (Luckily, we had a lot of them handy.) She did. In fact, she read it to several young children, multiple times, and it became the thing that kept her occupied when she was at the library. She loved the adoring attention she got from the preschoolers, they loved the attention they got from a big kid, and their parents loved having a few moments to themselves to select books for their children. And best of all, she got very positive attention from the parents of the preschoolers, who frequently praised her reading ability and told her how good she was with young children.
I bought her her own personal copy of “Baby Says” and she brought it with her every time she came to the library. It became almost like a job for her, to read it to any willing preschooler she’d find in the library. I’d like to say she went on to learn to read and to become a librarian, but one day she simply stopped coming to the library, and I never saw her again. I do still think of her, though, whenever I see the book “Baby Says,” remembering her passion for reading it aloud, even the one wordless spread which she always acted out.
–KT Horning
Steven Engelfried Post author
What a great “Baby Says” story, KT! It’s too bad we rarely get to learn the end of the book-child connections we start in the public library, but it’s hard to imagine this girl not being a life-long reader….
– Steven E