Kimberly Hirsh

🔖🍿 Read Why Minecraft Movie Fans Are Getting Rowdy and Going Viral by Lynn Zubernis Ph.D. (Psychology Today)

Found this via Austin Kleon’s newsletter. I love this explanation of how rowdy theater behavior is developmentally appropriate.

And there’s a whole Science of Fandom Column? I am excite.

Finished reading: The Secret Garden by Mariah Marsden and Hanna Luechtefeld 📚

The Secret Garden is one of my favorite books from childhood and this is an excellent graphic novel adaptation that captures its magic beautifully.

💬📺 “The thing, Hastings? Do you think Poirot concerns himself with mere thingness?” Season 1, Episode 2, “Murder in the Mews,” Agatha Christie’s Poirot

💬📚 “Rather than seeing ChatGPT as a threat that will destroy things of value, we should be viewing it as an opportunity to reconsider exactly what we value and why we value those things.” John Warner, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI

Finished reading: I Kissed an Earl by Julie Anne Long 📚

A headstrong lady! Shipboard romance! As always, Julie Anne Long does the job.

💬📚 “Do you want to look back on a life of items crossed off lists drawn up in response to the demands of others? Or do you want to hang on to, and repeat, and remember, the thrill of discovering things on your own?” Rob Walker, The Art of Noticing

This week is National Library Week in the US and today is Right to Read Day. @cygnoir@social.lol wrote a great post about how you can show up for libraries. United Against Book Bans has a page on actions to take for Right to Read Day.

Here in North Carolina, I’m tracking House Bill 595, the latest parental rights bill filed. As soon as it’s moved far enough to go to a vote, I’ll be contacting my state legislators and urging then to vote NO on it.

Here are some of its chilling library-related provisions:

• placing responsibility for the selection of materials in the hands of superintendents and boards, instead of in the hands of library professionals with training and professional expertise in selecting materials
• requiring that all library books selected are “integral to the instructional program,” which will likely limit the purchasing of materials for students’ free choice of reading
• the creation of a “content access designation” (read: rating) system, flattening complex evaluation of books for a given community’s needs
• requiring that all materials selected be available for a 30 day review period by parents, which will place an immense administrative burden on library staff (I have a relatively small library budget and I order about 100 books at a time)
• the use of a broadly defined designation of “harmful to minors” as a test of whether materials should be included in a collection, which is likely to target books about growth, development, and anatomy as well as disproportionately target books with LGBTQ+ topics
• the establishment of standing “community library advisory committees” with as-yet-undefined requirements for membership, as opposed to ad hoc committees carefully curated to evaluate each materials challenge
• the requirement that every book made available in a book fair be reviewed by “appropriate school personnel,” which will generate a large administrative burden for library staff and, I anticipate, result in the reduction of book fairs and the resulting budget they provide for libraries without any alternate method of funding provided
• the criminalization of library staff who provide items deemed harmful to minors
• the ability for parents to demand access to a record of their child’s library borrowing
• the creation of restricted sections in public libraries, effectively requiring library staff to spend time reclassifying every work in a collection
• the creation of a special category of library cards for minors (another immense administrative burden)
• the revocation of library cards obtained by minors without their parents’ permission

Taken together, these provisions are likely to lead to librarian’s self-censorship in purchasing, administrative burdens grinding library services to a halt, library staff leaving the profession, school libraries losing funds, and most importantly, kids not having the materials they need to learn and grow as readers and people.

If you live in NC, please keep an eye on this bill and get ready to contact your state legislators about it. If you live elsewhere in the US, check EveryLibrary’s Legislation of Concern tracker to see what’s going on in your area.

Please join me in fighting for libraries. These are existential threats for libraries and library staff.

📚💬 “…kindness is a form of magic we can choose to know how to do. What matters is attending to suffering, no matter why it’s there.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

📚💬 “I want a life capacious enough to contain what I choose to be true about myself and that which I did not but have nevertheless learned to work with, to use, to wield.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

Finished reading: How to Tell When We Will Die by Johanna Hedva 📚

This book challenged me. I don’t know the last time I had to look up several new-to-me words in a book, but we’re talking decades. This book was full of essays that resonated deeply with my own experiences and others that were like a window into a completely different world. I’m so glad I read it.

🍿Watched A Minecraft Movie.

Super fun if you’re familiar with Minecraft. I loved seeing it in the theater with a bunch of folks who clearly love Minecraft and applauded as each key bit of Minecraft lore was revealed.

📺 Watched The Residence.

So great! A country house mystery where the country house is the White House. Uzo Aduba is wonderful, as always. Full of fun actors in smaller roles.

Oh no I’m attending a LEGO Education Info Session and it’s in Teams. I don’t care for Teams.

Finished reading: Let the Children March by Monica Clark-Robinson 📚

A great picture book about the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham in 1963, perfect model of how kids can make a difference.

Finished reading: The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander 📚

A gorgeous picture book poem.

Looking at my online presence you might believe all I do is read books, but I also play Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters.

Thank you @cygnoir@social.lol for sharing this link of how you can be an ally on Transgender Day of Visibility and every day! 🏳️‍⚧️

Finished reading: Since the Surrender by Julie Anne Long 📚

Julie Anne Long is really good at the job. Lots of yearning in this one, in the best way.

Bio update! My bio everywhere now reads:

Three books in a trench coat. Escribitionist. Mom. School librarian. Citizen of Romancelandia. I manage multiple chronic illnesses. I love books and games. 🌈♿

📚💬 “The most anti-capitalist protest is to care for another and to care for yourself. To take on the historically feminized and therefore invisible practice of nursing, nurturing, caring. To take seriously each other’s vulnerability and fragility and precarity, and to support it, honor it, empower it. To protect each other, to enact and practice a community of support. A radical kinship, an interdependent sociality, a politics of care.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

📚💬 “Maybe the blast radius of disability destroys everything and also makes new worlds. Maybe these are worlds of paradox: both the radical limitation of what you used to be able to do and an explosion of the horizon around what you thought would ever be possible.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

📚💬 “In illness, the now feels like punishment.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

📚💬 “…this is the conundrum all sick and disabled people live with. To be pathologized is to be allowed to survive.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

Finished reading: How to Steal a Galaxy by Beth Revis 📚

Super fun but also upsetting because of the social commentary middle book in a space heist romance trilogy.

📚💬 “When you have chronic illness, life is reduced to a relentless rationing of energy.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom