Hope's BlogFriday, July 07, 2006Some YA librarians were talking recently about bibliotherapy. Here is my current take on it:I do believe in the healing power of stories, both told/heard and written/read. I also believe that not only can stories be healing in and of themselves, they can also jump-start healing that happens through reflection and/or discussion and/or other artistic expression. I also believe in the importance of readers' advisory training and experience. I also believe that as a librarian (and as a storyteller, for that matter) I have a responsibility to offer both "mirror" stories and "window" stories to my community. However, I do not think that anyone should be diagnosing other people's problems off the street and prescribing stories as if they were pills. Even self-medicating is tricky. My mother died on May 11. When I came home from her funeral in Florida, I looked at the stack of "get ready for trouble" YA novels that I had piled up at one end of the sofa before I left, and I felt like throwing up. On top of the pile was Jailbait, by Leslea Newman. I put a pillowcase over that stack of books and thought, "Wow. If there was ever a time in my life that I felt weak and vulnerable and in need of some bibliotherapy, it is now. C'mon, Hope. You're a librarian. What do you think? Will any random grief novel help me to cope, or should I be looking for a novel in which the main character is a single, white, middle-aged, female librarian whose mother died much earlier than expected? "Yes!" I thought. "That's what I want to read. Exactly that. Is there such a thing? I hope so. Because if I can find a story exactly like mine, I can read along with the main character to find out if she ever gets on with her life, and if so, how." But as soon as I finished that thought, I realized that I didn't really want to read any curative fiction at all. An exact match to my own story as I was living it would be impossible to find. Anything less would just be irritating right then. Nor was I ready to read any nonfiction about the meaning of death, or how to grieve, or any of that. I just wanted to read something nurturing. To my surprise, this turned out to be a book from my "just for fun" YA stack at the other end of the sofa, a book that someone had picked out during our last Teen Library Council book buying trip: Wrong About Japan: A Father's Journey with His Son, by Peter Carey. I had lived for five years in Japan, so reading Carey's account of his trip to Tokyo with his anime-fan son brought back positive memories for me. It also reminded me, gently, that it was my mother who had first piqued my interest in Japan. A few days later, still trying to get grounded, I went to Borders to browse the rubber stamping magazines. I thought it would be a good idea for me to stay out of the pyschology/self-help aisle, but a front-of-store display of a new adult graphic novel, Mom's Cancer, by Brian Fies, blindsided me. I picked it up even though I wasn't sure about reading it, but once I got into it, I read the whole thing, crying quietly in the bookstore coffee shop. It wasn't exactly my family's story, but it was very insightful, even funny in some parts, and therefore comforting. Now it is almost two months after my mother's death. Last weekend I finally got around to reading Jailbait. I still have a job to do, after all. Evaluating books is part of my job. My decision to put Jailbait in my library's YA collection will be controversial, yes, because the book is about a lonely 16-year-old girl from a "safe suburb" who gets involved with an abusive older man and calls it love, but I am now ready to defend the book, cover and all. Perhaps it will help some other girl hold out for the real thing. By the way, reading it was also very therapeutic. I cried and cried for the virtually motherless girl in that story. .: posted by Hope 6:42 PM
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