Ic3 April 2013 Vol 3 No 1

Professional Journal of the WA School Library Association Vol. 3, No. 1 May 2013 In this Issue: Woman and children first! Why anyone who cares about gender and literature should pick up a children’s book. Now. Kekla Magoon Integrating the Year 6 History Curriculum and the Library Alison McKenzie WA Teacher Librarian and Library Officer of the Year + PTCWA Awards Interview with AJ Betts WASLA updates and much more! Contents Editorial Vol. 3, No. 1, 2013 2013 promises to be another year of marvellous opportunities and challenges for school library staff in 2. Women and Children First! Why anyone Australia. The ever-growing readership of ebooks (fiction, who cares about gender and literature should pick up a children’s book. Now. non-fiction and textbooks) promises to be the source of By Kekla Magoon great discussion among professionals. There will be more wonderful new books to read and share with our students. 6. PTCWA Outstanding Professional Service Award for 2011 and 2012 We will all work hard to support students and teachers in teaching and learning across the ever-changing 7. Integrating the Year 6 History Curriculum and the Library curriculum. We will do things in our libraries that excite By Alison Mackenzie and engage our kids, and things in our classrooms that reward and excite us as well! 9. Interview with Amanda (AJ) Betts 10. Using Book Covers Here at ic3 we look forward to seeing reports and By Barbara Braxton photographs of YOUR stories of engagement, excitement 11. From the President’s Desk and achievement — send them through to me at By Barbara Combes [email protected] — I look forward to hearing 12. The 13 Project from you. 13. The Australian Government’s Tehani Wessely, Editor CyberSafety Program Cover image: Steampunk author Richard Harland. Photo 15. Book reviews courtesy of Cat Sparks. 16. WASLA Recommends… 17. Response to the Federal Goverment’s Literacy Initiative By Barbara Combes 19. WA Teacher Librarian and Library Officer of the Year 21. Investigating Web 2.0 Tools By Bernadette Nye ic3 is a professional journal for school library staff that focuses on librarian- 23. 50 Quirky Display Ideas ship and information literacy in schools. ic3 is released three times per year By Barbara Braxton and supplied to all WASLA members as part of the membership package. It is available to others by subscription (details at wasla.asn.au). 24. School Library Dinner 2012 Publisher: 25. 100 Things Kids Will Miss if They Don’t Have a School Librarian in Their School Western Australian School Library Association. By Dr Nancy Everhart Editor: 27. Olivetti Typewriters, Funk Music and a Tehani Wessely Sexy Voice @ALIA Information Online [email protected] By Karina Tumon Ph: 0428 983 049 29. Gaslamp Fantasy vs Steampunk Submissions, advertising and subscription enquiries By Lia Keyes should be directed to the Editor. Panel of Referees: The following people have agreed to act as referees for ic3’s peer review process (see the WASLA website for more information): Major sponsors and • Val Baird regular advertisers relevant to • Barbara Combes school libraries are • Jo Critch • Mary Hookey welcome in ic3. • Tehani Wessely Please contact the Editor for • Gary Green sponsorship/advertising ISSN: 1838-9643 packages. 1 Women and Children First! Why anyone who cares about gender looked down on, and — worst of all — regarded as and literature should pick up a children’s something unworthy of being called work. book. Now. I couldn’t comprehend all this at age fifteen, yet Originally published at http://www.vidaweb. I’ve never forgotten the impact and the pain of that org/women-and-children-first-why-anyone- first tiny lesson. Nor have I forgotten the source who-cares-about-gender-and-literature- that opened my eyes to this uncomfortable truth: should-pick-up-a-childrens-book-now on 24 A challenged children’s book. Even as a teenager, February, 2012 in the throes of my inarticulate frustration, I Kekla Magoon felt profoundly attracted to Judy Blume and The first time I heard that Judy Blume is one of strangely proud of what she had done. Society the most censored/challenged American authors said she shouldn’t write it, but she did it anyway, of all time, I laughed. I was about fifteen. and when they got mad and tried to stop her, she kept on coming. I loved that. “Judy Blume? As in, the Judy Blume?” I didn’t believe it. You couldn’t walk through my middle The more powerful lesson I’ve learned since then school library without tripping over a copy of is that Judy Blume, in her defiance of the status Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. quo, by no means stands alone. Children’s writers of all stripes stand with her, as do the many “Yes,” my mother said. “She’s controversial teachers and librarians who steadfastly insist because, among other things, she wrote about a on placing such important books in the hands of girl getting her period.” children; we are collectively and constantly at the I knew this. I had read Are You There God? It’s vanguard, shaping a new generation of readers. Me, Margaret a couple of years before. “So what? Much like writing from a female perspective, They banned her book?” writing for children represents another way I was incensed. I didn’t have the words to speak of diverging from the privileged, straight, of it then, but I remember how viscerally rageful white, adult male point of view that apparently it made me. What was the big deal? What could dominates mainstream literature. Even though be more natural, more essential, more inevitable, I am indeed female, I’d be remiss if I didn’t more female, than a girl getting her period? But emphasise up front that the primary identity I like I said, I didn’t have those words. claim in the literary world is not “woman writer” but “children’s writer.” Until very recently, it “That’s stupid,” I told my mother (not an never even occurred to me to identify myself uncommon exchange, back then). professionally based on my gender because, If I’d had the right words … well, they would have even though being female directly affects many been censored. But if I’d had the words, I might aspects of my life, I’ve never experienced it as a have said something about what was taken from barrier to advancement in my writing career. me in that moment of realisation. It was my first Perhaps you’re about to dismiss me as naïve. harsh lesson about what it really means to grow up Clueless. Oblivious to the obvious forces of male female, the first time I gained an inkling of the fact domination that wreak daily havoc on the literary that I was a soon-to-be woman living in a society in world. The thing is I don’t live in that particular which womanly things must be talked about behind literary world. I live in the Kidlit world, an closed doors and certainly never written down. alternate reality where the only limitations for A society in which women’s bodies are treated a female author are her own imagination and as objects, available for your viewing pleasure her willingness to speak the truth in its simplest but unworthy of inner exploration. A society in fashion. (I kid you not.) which the roles that women traditionally hold — essential roles, like making homes and giving When women writers rail against gender birth and raising children — are taken for granted, discrimination, I feel quite distanced from their 2 specific struggles, yet I do feel a kinship with about kids at all renders our contribution less them in the desire to be fully recognised and valuable in the eyes of the literary mainstream. respected in the context of literature. I’ve grown Kidlit authors are mostly women, taking care of increasingly aware of distinct parallels between women’s concerns, so therefore we deserve less how women writers talk about their relationship prestige. We belong in a box, apart. to the literary establishment and how children’s writers talk about our relationship to that same Plenty of adult writers look down their nose at establishment. That feeling of having to claw your children’s books. Time and again I’m asked if I way into a firmament that doesn’t have much think I’ll ever try adult writing, as if my efforts respect for your ideas or your work, despite its won’t be meaningful until I’ve done so. After beauty and its power — that feeling is something looking at my (award-winning) teen novel dealing that children’s writers can’t ever overlook or with the Black Panthers, an editor from a major forget, either. publishing house once handed me her card and said, “I would love to see a real novel about this Upon further reflection, I’ve come to understand topic. Let me know when you feel ready to write that our gender plays a direct role in why children’s for adults.” She said this with a straight face, in writers feel so marginalised. But it’s easy to fool the careful tone of voice you might use to explain myself, because in the Kidlit world, quite frankly, something to a toddler. women rule. An overwhelming majority of my writer colleagues are women, as are the authors I’ve grown used to this sort of dismissal. It didn’t whose careers I look up to most. My editors are occur to me at the time to be separately angry that women.

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