Best known for finding the wreck of the Titanic, celebrated adventurer Robert Ballard has a lifetime of stories about exploring the ocean depths. From discovering new extremophile life-forms thriving at 750°F hydrothermal vents in 1977 to finding famous shipwrecks including the Bismarck and PT 109, Ballard has made history. For the first time, Ballard gets personal, telling the inside stories of his adventures and challenges as a midwestern kid with dyslexia who became an internationally renowned ocean explorer. Here is the definitive story of the danger and discovery, conflict and triumph that make up his remarkable life. Part of the reason I go around calling myself a library unicorn is because as far as I’m concerned, kids and stories are magic. It’s magic when kids yell “WOW!” the first time they see the Children’s Room. It’s magic when they pick up the first book in a series and go breathless with love at first sight. It’s magic when they clamber into the storytime chair to read aloud to their caregivers. It wasn’t until I found myself telling my friend, enthusiastically and in detail, how I find the right books even for reluctant readers, that I started thinking of it this way: as a children’s librarian, I’m also doing magic. Way too often, even among colleagues in my field, I’ve heard youth services dismissed as “getting paid to play” or “reading books below kindergarten level”; and for way too long, I underestimated myself enough to buy into it. The thing is, though, that it takes work to guide kids and families to magical reading moments. Some of it is work we can learn how to do in classes or professional development sessions. But if a lot of it is also work many of us do intuitively, with whatever combinations of playfulness and people skills and passion come most naturally to us — and, well, that just makes it even more magical, doesn’t it? That means when we can find the words to share the actions behind great librarianship, we’re writing magic spells. Here’s the one I wrote up for my friend. I’d love to hear one of yours.
Spell Ingredients
One libraryOne or more childrenYou
Procedure
