As a parent who has read hundreds of books aloud over the past 10 years, I love finding any book with fun dialect which helps the read aloud experience. Junie B. is so much fun that way. My kids love the stories and the laughs. I'm just happy that they want to read or be read to. You have to be a pretty stuffy adult to not be charmed at all by Junie B. Or, an adult who hasn't been around "real" kids in a long time. My favorite Junie B. line--something to the effect of "Whatever is what adults say when they are thinking--'That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard!'" I think of it every time someone says "Whatever." It's perfect!

Hey, what does the NYPL mean by "transform" itself? How so? or is the ambiguity of this comment the point?

Re: Junie and Seuss-- One of my most vivid memories from Third Grade: We all had to take turns reading a poem of our choosing to the class at the start of each day. Well, I was in this nerdy Gifted program, and our teachers had assigned poems to us, as well--"Casey at the Bat," "Annabel Lee," etc. So I thought I'd wow my teacher and classmates with Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky." You can see where this is going. I think I got through "...and the mome raths outgrabe," but just barely, before my teacher began YELLING at me for reading nonsense, and that I needed to read a REAL poem. I was 8 or 9 years old, so I didn't quite have the wherewithal to explain to her that this was a poem written by the same man who gave us dear Alice and her crazy trip through the looking glass, so I grabbed one of the fat poetry books at the front of the room and hurriedly found some bland, crappy poem about autumn leaves.

... and Betsy, you modest molly, you never mentioned that you were a source in the NYT story: “Of our series books, it’s the most popular one we have that’s about a little girl,” said Elizabeth Bird, a librarian at the Donnell Library Center’s Central Children’s Room in Midtown Manhattan. “But it splits people down the middle. There are parents who will defend her till their death and those that call her loathsome. It’s unusual to find that sort of divide for early chapter books. They’re just not the sort of books that usually get much attention.”

Less modest molly and more uh-oh-did-I-clear-this-with-my-PR-office? I haven't gotten any angry phone calls, but at the same time I've not been discussing it much. I figure what I said was fairly innocuous, but you never know. I love me my NYPL PR people and the last thing I wanna do is piss 'em off. So I've been keeping it on the down low. It is nice to be quoted in the Times though, yes. Now to attempt to review for them... Love the story about The Jabberwocky, by the way. The sad sad story. Just goes to show that some people can go their whole lives without hearing a cultural touchstone here and there. Re: Sarabela - I'd love to know what "transform" means. Sounds like a buzzword, though. A scary umbrella buzzword that leads to library cuts and copious tears. Fingers crossed that this isn't the case, of course.

Sorry to interrupt an intelligent conversation, but how about THAT DUCKY? Totally awesome.

The saddest thing for me about Matt's story is that he was in a so-called "gifted" program. And this teacher of the gifted had never heard of "Jabberwocky"? Sigh.