Pound for Pound, Dime by Dime, Buying Low and Selling High

I first started collecting books when I was a kid with a paper route. Needless to say, my $10 weekly earnings didn't get me very far.

I continued collecting books when I was teenager frying burgers at McDonald's. $30 a week doesn't get you too far either.

Now I work full-time in a library, but often feel like an indentured servant. A 2% raise is quickly eaten up by a 3% increase in health insurance. A 1% bonus doesn't even cover the new daily parking fee. So this paycheck isn't getting me anywhere either...yet I still continue to collect books.

That's because, through all these years, I've always tried to find ways to earn a little extra money to afford my book-buying habit.

One of my first methods involved newspapers. Every day I would deliver papers to the customers on my route, then at the end of the week, I'd see those same newspapers sticking out of trashcans, waiting for garbage pick-up. Where do old newspapers go to die? I never really thought about it until the day I saw some Boy Scouts gathering old copies of the Detroit News and Free Press for a paper drive. I did a little investigating and discovered there were actually people who would pay you for old, used newspapers. Before long, I was pulling newspapers out of trashcans and selling them by the pound.

Here's how it worked: on the night before the trash was picked up in a neighborhood, I would enlist one of my parents to drive me down the designated streets. Every time we passed a house with garbage cans at the curb, I'd jump out of the car, grab the newspapers from the trash, and throw them in the trunk of our car. When the trunk was full, we'd go home and I'd stack the papers in the garage. It wasn't long till I'd created a map of the area, showing which neighborhoods had their trash picked up on Monday mornings, Tuesdays mornings, etc., so every night I was out gathering papers. Two or three times a week, we'd load the car up with papers -- in the trunk, in the backseat, on the floor -- and drive to Consolidated Fabrics, a little factory that recycled old papers into cloth and newsprint. We'd pull onto a giant scale and then wait while someone in an office up above weighed our vehicle, then waved us on. Then we'd drive to an outbuilding in back and throw all our old newspapers onto a conveyor belt that went up into another building. At the top of this conveyor, cigar-smoking men in thick gloves would sort through the papers. Inevitably, some other piece of garbage would turn up among the newspaper (we were getting them from trashcans, after all!) and one of the men would grab the apple core or crushed milk carton or empty tuna can and throw it at our heads, shouting, "We don't want your stinkin' garbage here!" After we'd gotten rid of all the papers, we'd drive our now-empty car back onto the scale to be weighed. The second weight was subtracted from the first weight to see how many pounds of newspaper we had delivered. The amount they paid differed by the day, but was usually in the area of $2.10/100 lbs. I'd run up a set of metal stairs and the man inside would hand me a receipt and ten or eleven or twelve dollars -- most of which went into my "Book Fund." ...That is, until the struts wore out on the car due to hauling several tons of newspapers around every week. Then I had to find a new way to earn money.

A few years passed. I still needed money for books. And I was still fascinated by the idea of getting paid for something you just picked up for free on the street, like old newspapers. Then Michigan passed a bottle refund law and I found a new way to pay for books. Everywhere you looked there were empty bottles and cans on the street -- just waiting to be picked up for ten cents a container. So every evening after dinner, I'd go to the local park with a Hefty bag and pick up all the bottles and cans I could find. If I was lucky there might be a Little League baseball game going on, with dozens of parents tossing back Cokes and beer. I'd crawl around under the bleachers and pick up their empties. Occasionally someone would call me over to give me their can, though I always felt like Oliver Twist standing in front of them holding open my sack while they tipped their head back for one last gulp, before dropping their can in. I will also never forget the woman who beckoned me over and, just before giving me her can, smirked and drop the end of her lit cigarette inside. I still took it. I was desperate. I was between jobs that summer. Shortly after, I received a letter from a book dealer selling first editions of I, JUAN DE PAREJA; ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY; MRS. FRISBY AND THE RATS OF NIMH, BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA, and THE SLAVE DANCER...all for $250. MRS. FRISBY alone was worth more than that, so I was determined to buy them. $250 dollars. 2500 cans. But can by can, dime by dime, I did it. And I especially treasure those books, still sitting on my shelf, because I know how hard it was to earn them.

In recent years, I've been replenishing my Book Fund by doing a little gambling. No, not at the casinos or lottery counter. But I read somewhere that the way to wealth was "buying low and selling high." I think they were talking about stocks, but I found a way of applying it to books. If I'm in a used bookstore or rummage sale and see a collectable children's book on sale for $5 or $10, I'll buy and then try to resell it (to a dealer, or maybe on eBay) at a higher price. I had great luck with this for many years, and often had a moderate amount of money in my Book Fund. However, over the last couple years I've found it harder and harder to find inexpensively-priced books...and books offered on eBay aren't selling for as much as they did in past.

So my Book Fun dwindles and I haven't come up with any new schemes for the future. Still, with spring on the horizon maybe the snow will melt to reveal a landscape of empty refundable bottles and cans.

One thousand bottles of beer in the snow,
One thousand bottles of beer
Pick each one up and my Book Fund will grow
One thousand bottles of beers in the snow.

Just My Speed

From where I sit right now, I can see fifteen books on my bedroom window sill.

Just below that are forty-three books (forty-three? Yes, I just counted 'em!) on my bed, extending from the pillow at the top to the folded afghan at the bottom.

I can't see the other side of the bed from here, but it's just as well. Several dozen books dwell over there. Plus there are a few full bags and boxes behind me.

What do all these books have in common?

I haven't read them yet!

One of my biggest regrets in life is that I'm just not a very fast reader. I don't think I'm a slow reader by any means. I don't follow the words on the page with my index finger and mouth them out one-by-one. In fact, when I attend a subtitled movie I often find myself laughing at the punchlines a few seconds before everyone else. So I'd say that I'm in about the sixtieth or seventieth percentile when it comes to reading quickly, but I'll never be one of those people who's "clocked at a thousand words a minute" or checks WAR AND PEACE out of the library on Monday and returns it Tuesday afternoon.

The summer after we got out of high school, a friend and I went to a free orientation session for an Evelyn Wood Speed Reading Class. I thought this was exactly the kind of training I'd need to start plowing through all the books I wanted to read in my lifetime. The training session was held in a conference room at a bustling suburban office building and I immediately felt like I didn't belong there (THE recurring theme of this blog, it seems.) The only people in attendance were the instructor, me, my friend...and Richard. My friend and I were wearing jeans and t-shirts, but Richard (as he introduced himself) came in wearing a tie and carrying a briefcase. He said he was a busy executive who didn't have time to do the all the reading his job required.

The instructor dimmed the lights and began a slide presentation. He showed a standard page of text and asked how we would read it.

Um...left to right?

Yes, but why was that inefficient?

Richard raised his hand: "Is it because our eyes have to cover so much of the page in order to read each sentence?"

"Yes!" said the instructor. He then asked if we could think of a better way to view the page.

In a (practiced) tentative voice, Richard ventured, "Would it...would it be easier if, instead of reading left to right, we let our eyes travel down the middle of the page...?"

"Yes, Richard! Very good!"

Richard added, "Maybe using a hand motion like this?" (He then demonstrated, running his index and middle fingers quickly down the page in a back-and-forth underlining motion.)

"Yes, Richard! You've got it already!" said the instructor.

I picked up my free Evelyn Wood pencil and leaned over to write "HE'S A PLANT!" on my friend's information packet.

She erased it.

For the next hour, the instructor and Richard dialogued about why the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading Class was so important for members of our busy society. Books could be read in an hour! Office training manuals could be knocked off during a coffee break! And with no loss of comprehension! In fact, graduates of the class actually reported that they had better reading comprehension than ever.

Finally the instructor mentioned how much the class would cost. I believe it was $360, which was about $350 more than I had to spend. But Richard was already pulling out his checkbook saying, "Sign me up! And if you kids were smart, you'd sign up too!" My friend -- far wealthier than I -- actually did sign up for the class; I left the conference room in humiliation, doomed to a life out-of-step with the demands of modern technology and a future comprised of dead-end jobs and minimal social contacts. (I hate to admit it, but they were right on all counts.) As we pulled out of the parking lot, I saw the instructor and Richard outside by the dumpster sharing a cigarette. I couldn't read their lips, but I suspect Richard was saying, "Next time I'll be the instructor and you be the busy executive."

For the next few weeks, my friend attended the Evelyn Wood class and reported back to me that her reading had improved significantly. She showed me two John Steinbeck books she'd brought to class and boasted that she had read each one in under two hours. Now if these books had been THE GRAPES OF WRATH and EAST OF EDEN, I might have been impressed. But they were THE PEARL and THE RED PONY...each one about a hundred pages. Even a slow reader like me could have read each of those in less than two hours!

It's been about thirty years since then. I'll have to ask my friend if she still practices the techniques she learned in those classes. I am still plugging along, reading books at exactly the same speed I did in high school. I just can't go any faster. When I do, I begin to lose comprehension. Even when I deliberately try to scan (or "flash read," as someone at work calls it) I find that I'm only picking up about fifty per cent of what I'm reading and soon slow down so I can understand it all better. I wish I read faster; I'm jealous of those who do...but at this point I'm pretty much resigned to my own slow-but-steady speed -- even as the books pile up around me. On the windowsill, on the bed, on the floor, everywhere, as I slowly turn another page and mutter every reader's eternal cry:

"So many books, so little time."

Daylight Saving Time Sunday Brunch

Let’s see, the clock beside my bed is now an hour behind. The clocks on my computer and VCR, which used to automatically spring ahead when Daylight Saving Time began, didn’t do it this year because DST now has a new schedule. (This also means that sometime in early April, when DST traditionally began, those clocks are going to jump ahead an hour and confuse the “daylights” out of me.) The good news is that my car clock now tells the correct time -- but only because it’s been hour ahead all winter (I never bothered to change it when we “fell back” last fall.) And I’m taking tomorrow off work because I can’t bear getting up at 5:30 AM and knowing it’s “really” 4:30 AM.

Here's a sleep-deprived (and thus probably full of typos) Sunday brunch of eclectic items (random thoughts, facts, and opinions about children’s books.) Hope there is something of interest below.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

A librarian recently told me that her library doesn’t provide much moral or financial support for their children’s department -- a common complaint these days. However, I noted that during our conversation, this librarian continually referred to the children’s department as the “juvie section.” Maybe it was a term of endearment for her, but it sounded disparaging to me. Not as bad as the term “kiddy lit” -- that oft-used phrase only a glottal-stop and syllable away from being “kitty litter” -- but it’s still condescending. I think it’s important for those of us who work with children’s books to treat them with respect. If we don’t, no one else will.

EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT HITTY

Fans of Rachel’s Field Newbery-winning novel HITTY : HER FIRST HUNDRED YEARS might enjoy visiting

http://www.hitty.org

which contains photos of the doll that inspired the book and dozens of other links of interest.

I also stumbled across a kit that includes a Hitty doll, as well as fabric and instructions for making her dress. I know nothing about this company, but am just passing along the info in case any future Project Runway aspirants are interested in making doll clothes:

http://www.americankit.com/dolls/kits/hitty.htm

NEWBERY SHOULD-A-BEENS

We all have different opinions about the Newbery choice each year. Sometimes we love it, sometimes we hate it, and sometimes we hate it so much that one of our friends ends up screaming, “We know! We know you hate that book! You haven’t stopped talking about it for months! The award’s been given, it’s over and done with and there’s nothing you can do about it, so please SHUT UP!” (My grown-up response? “MAKE ME!”) It’s now been nearly two months since this year’s awards were announced and I still really regret that Ruth White’s WAY DOWN DEEP, that beguiling story (with a touch of magical realism) about the denizens of a 1950s West Virginia boardhouse and Lauren Tarshis’ wonderful character study, EMMA-JEAN LAZARUS FELL OUT OF A TREE, didn’t at least make the Honor list. Both books are unforgettable and I hope they find an audience -- silver award sticker or not.

SOMEDAY THE PRINTZ WOULD HAVE BEEN USEFUL TO THIS ONE TOO

My big Printz regret is that Peter Cameron’s SOMEDAY THIS PAIN WILL BE USEFUL TO YOUwasn’t recognized. This young adult novel features a disaffected New York City teenager whose pitch-perfect (though unreliable) voice drives a quietly powerful narrative.

DOWN GILEAD LANE

Three or four years ago, I tossed and turned all night and uncharacteristically woke up right at dawn on a summer Sunday morning. My clock-radio was on and I heard the sound of kids arguing about going to a party. I turned the radio up and was soon drawn into a radio drama. A radio drama in the twenty-first century? It was called DOWN GILEAD LANE, a continuing story about the Morrison family who live in the midwestern town of Coleraine. Produced by CBH Ministries, every episode contained an overt religious message (I guess that's why they run it Sunday mornings), but what impressed me the most about these shows was how contemporary and non-stodgy the series actually was (with episode titles like “Bo-Ring!” and “Snot Fair.”) The plots were tightly written, the huge cast of characters was well-developed, and the dialogue was just right. The creator of this series was named Beth Klima (later Culp) and I read on the show’s website that her goal was to write children’s books. I could definitely see that, because each episode of the show seemed like a chapter from a wonderful children’s book. Beth Culp (who was very young when she created and began writing this series) left the show a couple years ago, but I hope she’s out there trying to write a children’s book. I’d definitely be anxious to read it!

UP THE DOWN READALIKES

Earlier this week I blogged about one of my favorite adult novels, UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE, which utilizes a series of notes, class assigment, letters and memos to relate the narrative.Any young person interested in reading a similar type of book might like Jennifer L. Holm’s MIDDLE SCHOOL IS WORSE THAN MEATLOAF, a fun story told mostly in graphics, which was published in 2007.
And 2008 brings Steve Kluger’s MY MOST EXCELLENT YEAR, a young adult novel which also uses a non-traditional narrative style.

JENNIFER L. HOLM, MEET MADELEINE L’ENGLE

Overheard in a bookstore: A nine or ten year-old boy pulled a book off the shelf and showed it to his sister, “Hey, another book by Madeleine L. Engle.”

(Why not? I could never pronounce her name either.)

ANOTHER BOOKSTORE, ANOTHER DAY

I walked into another bookstore on Friday and saw a display of a new board book edition of HORTON HEARS A WHO; this one has a plush elephant head poking right through the front of the cover. It was a slow evening at the store, and I was only there for twenty minutes, so imagine my surprise when I was leaving and noticed the display was empty. The owner of the store said they’d sold two copies in the past five minutes. Sounds like this book is going to be a huge hit.

WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR?

All my life I’ve heard a story -- possibly apocryphal -- that Michigan State University owns a cow with a glass stomach. Students study him (I know, I know...if it’s a cow, it’s a her) to see how food is digested, etc. I was reminded of that cow when I saw an ad for this book:

I think this picture would have confused me as a child. But the title makes me think this is another of those children’s-books-that-are-not-for-kids. “Your baby” seems to address the mother. Plus the baby is calling out for “Ma,” not “Big Bro” or “Big Sis.” This book may sell well for baby showers and such, but I have an inkling it’s not really for child-readers.

BRUISED FOREHEADS

I was just talking to a couple people about the perils of doing crosswords and sudokus at bedtime -- pencil marks sliding across the page as you start to doze off, getting stabbed by a pencil in your sleep. But that’s nothing compared to what I go through every night when I read before bed. Holding the book in front of my face, I’ll start to fall asleep ten...fifteen...maybe twenty or thirty or even fifty times...with the book slamming into my face over and over as I struggle to stay awake. If you ever hear me say “This book knocked me out!” I might not be effusively praising its qualties -- I may simply be stating facts.