chapter 3

There is something familiar here.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan

“I kind of absolutely love the Maybe Dead Cats.,” I say.

“They’re not bad, yeah. A bit pseudointellectual but, hey, aren’t we all?”

“I think their band name is a reference to, like, this physicist guy,” I say. In fact I know it. I’ve just looked the band up on Wikipedia.

“Yeah,” she says. “Schrodinger. Except the band name is a total fail, because Schrodinger is famous for pointing out this paradox in quantum physics where, like, under certain circumstances, an unseen cat can be both alive and dead. Not maybe dead.”

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Rachel passes me the joint, looks at me. “You know about Schrodinger’s cat, right?”

I shrug.

“Awww, dude!” the three of them say in unison.

Kyle’s eyes are bloodshot slits in his grinning face. “This will blow your mind! Okay, so this scientist guy, Schrodinger, did this trippy thought experiment in quantum mechanics where he was all, ‘Hey, what if you’ve got a cat in a sealed box along with, like, a radioactive substance…’”

“Not that you should put your cat in a box with poison; that’s why it’s a thought experiment…,” Rachel points out.

“…and the atom either decays and kills the cat - or it doesn’t. Until you open up that box and observe, everything’s a probability.”

I read these books one after the other and was completely distracted by this damn Schrodinger’s cat. I’m sure it is just a coincidence. Do you think I should be concerned about my cat? Are young adult authors trying to tell me something about possibility and outcome? Am I going to contract mad cow disease or perform in a musical autobiography of a giant gay teen? I’m not sure. I hope the next book I read has nothing to do with quantum physics and cats trapped and poisoned in a box.

Green, John & Levithan, David. (2010). Will Grayson, Will Grayson. New York: Dutton.

Bray, Libba. (2009). Going bovine. New York: Delacorte Press.

chapter 2

So apparently there are vigilantes out defacing my library books. I was told by a teacher that Pecos Bill’s butt had been covered by a parent sometime before I started working at my school. Today while I was doing inventory I came upon the book, Pecos Bill adapted by Brian Gleeson and illustrated by Tim Raglin. Not only was his butt covered but it was covered in marker pants. The cowboy that finds Pecos Bill, to this point having been raised by wolves and crawling around the plains, says

“You’re naked as a jay-bird, partner! Why in tarnation are you running around without your clothes? Did you lose them in a poker game or something?”

“What do you mean naked?” Bill howled. “I’m a coyote, and coyotes don’t wear no clothes.”

Exactly Bill. Exactly.

Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen is often banned because of this little guy’s butt and genitals. Poor thing. If I was falling into a bowl full of batter I certainly don’t want to be wearing my clothes. They would just get really messy and I’d have to wash them.

The main issue here is censorship. No one has the right to tell anyone what is appropriate for others and they definitely don’t have the right to cross things out in books. If you don’t want to look at Peco’s butt, then don’t. Don’t tell me I can’t. Butts are funny. And if there were more butts in books kids would probably read them even more.

Gleeson, Brian. (1988). Pecos Bill. Rabbit Ears Books.

Sendak, Maurice. (1970). In the night kitchen. Harper & Row, Publishers.

chapter 1

Today I read an entire book. The book I read is called This World We Live In by Sarah Beth Pfeffer. This is the third in a series about a global catastrophe. An asteroid hits the moon and knocks it off course. This causes natural disasters and world-wide chaos. Book one, Life as We Knew It, focuses on a female character, Miranda, living in upstate New York when things go down. Book two, The Dead and the Gone, follows Alex and his family in New York City during the disaster. In book three Alex and Miranda meet, I’m not sure they should have. This series is like an addiction that you know is wrong but want so much that you just can’t help yourself. I listened to the first two books on audiobook and the characters are speaking to you, telling you their tragedy. It’s like hearing good gossip. I read the last book and didn’t feel the connection. Maybe the book just wasn’t as good (yes, I think so) or maybe I missed the narrator speaking to me. Book one was a gentle introduction to this tale compared to book two that made me cringe and cry and care. Book three was a poor attempt at closure, closure that I thought I needed but really didn’t. Oh well, it mentioned librarians!

“I tried to remember how people found things out before the Internet existed. They had to have questions, after all, and they couldn’t always ask their parents. Or teachers. Or librarians.

Librarians! Librarians always know how to find out things. That was their job even before the Internet”

Pfeffer, Susan Beth. (2010). This world we live in. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.