Newberry!

I love Newberry medal books like only (future) librarians and teachers can. The books are for kids, supposedly, at least the authors wrote them for kids, and usually, kids do love them. And the kids love them for all the right reasons, because they're good and engaging and usually have wonderful lessons about life that come across by just being very real (and I am sure the kids who read them usually just enjoy them and learn without going "oh hey, that's an important life lesson!") Librarians and teachers tend to be the ones who love them because of the life lessons. Anyway, I'm writing because Neil Gaiman's book The Graveyard Book just won this year's Newberry, and I'm thrilled.

Problem is, I have not yet read this book, because I didn't realize it exists, and now I need to. So, I skipped the library option (sorry libraries) and went straight to Amazon. Once I was there, I had almost decided NOT to buy the book, when I found another book, Everything You Know About God is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Religion, and it looked so fascinating and so potentially challenging (I tend to read pro-religion books, and this, while not anti-religion, looks slightly...subversive) that I needed it. When I looked at the price, I realized that if I bought that book AND the other, I would get free shipping. So I did it. Now that it's done I regret the money spending, but really hope it's worth it. These books are both books I want to read and "library building books" - books that have merit by making my library more interesting and well-rounded and up to date. My gosh, I'm doing collection development for myself!

Also, I just bought a new bookshelf to accommodate my book problem. My boyfriend's response to all this: "Keep it up and I'm going to confiscate your credit card." I would so deserve it.