At one of my first jobs, we had a "wall of shame," books we couldn't believe the library ever bought, ideas we couldn't believe were ever appropriate, with covers designed just to scare away potential borrowers; I believe one featured a hideously-drawn kid looking up to similarly-disfugured gramps asking the titular question: "What's it Like Being Old?"This absolutely hilarious site works as tribute to the fun(ny) side of weeding. Also, reveals the human side of our biz, as in "who would make such a terrible mistake and allow this book to be published," as in "who would select this for a library?" ("As in what journal would positively review this?") ......All adding up to the big as in "aw, they're only human."
Maybe those were different times? Mustn't be historically advantagist, I suppose.
1 comment:
I remember a sign-language book from the early '70s that had photos of clammy hands demonstrating the signs, augmented with and captioned in a rainbow of fingerpaints. It was the creepiest book I had ever seen, even more than those orange-spined Crestwood monster books that every kids library had back then. Some shades of red fingerpaint look just like blood, especially when it appears to be geysering out of a photo of a hand. A contorted, disembodied hand. That book couldn't have scarred my young psyche more if it had touched my butthole. Thanks for reminding me, Alan!
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