Judy Blume and Tatanka Means on the set of Tiger Eyes. Photos by Lorey Sebastian/Run Lizard.

When you take into account the vast influence author Judy Blume has had over multiple generations of readers, it might seem absurd that none of her books have ever made the leap from page to silver screen. You may recall that the author’s “Fudge” series (Penguin) was turned into a Saturday morning television show in 1995, and Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great (Dutton, 1972) was produced as a TV movie (directed by Judy’s son, Lawrence Blume) in 1991, but a major motion picture has, until now, been sorely lacking.

Lawrence Blume with actors Willa Holland and Tatanka Means.

That changes on June 7 when Tiger Eyes (PG-13) hits select theaters nationwide and will also be released simultaneously on Video On Demand and iTunes. The movie stars Willa Holland as Davey Wexler, a teenager who is still reeling after the sudden and violent death of her father. Forced by her distraught mother to move from Atlantic City, NJ, to the town of Los Alamos, NM, Davey finds herself on unfamiliar terrain, an outsider who reveals little about her emotional turmoil. However, while out exploring the nearby canyons, she meets Wolf (Tatanka Means), a local Native American who seems able to see beyond her facade, and they forge a connection that will change her life forever. Co-written by Judy and Lawrence, who also directed, this film marks the second collaboration between mother and son.

Both Blumes took time out of their busy schedules to talk about the book, the film, and the advantages and disadvantages of independent filmmaking in the 21st century.

So why Tiger Eyes? You know, of all the Judy Blume books in this great, big, wonderful world, how did this become “the one”? 

JB: [Larry and I had] talked about doing Tiger Eyes for years if only we could find funding to do it, because it’s the most cinematic of my books. I mean, maybe Summer Sisters (Delacorte, 1998). But Tiger Eyes has that sense of place that’s so important. When you see it, you will see that there’s Davey and there’s Wolf, and there’s the New Mexico landscape, and that’s as important a character as any of the others. Everything that happens to Davey that has meaning happens in that landscape, in those canyons, going into the caves. It’s a life-changing experience for her.

Lawrence Blume: It’s certainly something we always talked about doing. It didn’t just pop out of the blue. But at this time, it wasn’t something that was on our front burner. So it was really lucky [that the opportunity came up], and the fact that we got to do it our way, for better or worse within a very limited budget.  But along with that limited budget came creative freedom. So it’s very personal.

 Of course, this is not the first mother-son collaboration of this sort that we’ve heard of. Katherine Paterson’s son, David, wrote the screenplay for the 2007 film adaptation of his mother’s Bridge to Terabithia (Crowell, 1977), and that worked out beautifully. The difference is that in this case you two collaborated together on the movie script. Have you had much experience, Judy, co-writing with anyone before, or was this the first time?

JB: [Laughs] I can’t say that I’ve ever co-written anything. I did work closely with some writers over the years who were hired by companies to turn one or another of my books into screenplays. Never worked, never happened. This was completely different. This was exciting and creative and happy. It was emotional and it was good.

LB: I’d say [it was] a very positive experience. Making this movie was pretty joyful even though it’s a sad subject. But the process of making it and trying to put the puzzle together was really incredibly rewarding and engaging, and I hope it comes through on the screen.

Judy on the set in Puyee NM.

JB: You know, we did Sheila the Great when we were kids. We were both kids then. [Laughter] At that point, I had never even been on a movie set. I know more now, and I’m more mature. And I think when you decide that [something will] be a wonderful experience—that goes a long way in making it a wonderful experience. Larry and I knew that we wanted it to be that way. I think that’s what came across for everyone on the set, even the Teamsters. We had these big guys crying at certain scenes.

We were also so lucky with our cast. I don’t know really how much a director ever knows, but we had to cast very quickly. I loved that process. And we lucked out. I mean, we have a little boy [Lucien Dale, who plays Jason Wexler] who was in second grade in public school in Santa Fe, and he is a real kid,… not a cutesy movie kid. He and Willa [Holland], who plays Davey, just bonded. She’s playing his big sister in a very troubled family story. He just adored her, and I think there was no actor that Willa was closer to than Lucien. When you have something like that it really comes through on the screen.

LB: We cast very carefully, and we saw 100 girls. But I think in the end there’s a leap of faith with your cast.

JB: Yes, we didn’t know [Holland] at all, which was so good for us. She’s just so Davey. You know she’s protecting herself, but you can see it all there on her face.

I remember Larry saying that he wanted it to feel as intimate as a first-person novel. And Willa is in every scene. The whole movie is from her point of view. And it’s very intimate.

The movie is being released in theaters as well as through Video On Demand and iTunes. Brave new world. How do you feel about these alternate forms of media that are now an option for films that, in the past, were relegated solely to theatrical releases?

LB: Well, I have mixed feelings, but generally I’m excited about it because unless you’re a big studio movie that’s coming out on 3,000 screens at once, or you have a smaller company with very deep pockets, it’s always sad when you release an independent film because you’re going to have a very limited theatrical release. And now thefilm is available in every town in America on June 7th. Whether you’re going to the theater to see it, or sitting on your sofa and clicking and buying it, or watching it on iTunes, it’s really exciting to me because that means the film has every chance of reaching the widest possible audience.

You seem to have the best of both worlds here.

LB: I think so. I mean, I love the idea of it being in theaters because it’s so beautiful to look at but I also love the idea of women getting together and having Tiger Eyes parties at their houses. I think the nostalgia audience has really helped get the word out about this. They’ve been great in tweeting and blogging.

Judy, I have one final question for you. It’s very important. Is Larry actually the inspiration behind Farley Drexel Hatcher, better known to the world as Fudge? This is what inquiring minds want to know.

JB: [Laughs] Larry, answer that.

LB: No, you answer it. She asked you. I don’t know.

JB: He is—he was the inspiration, yes. He never swallowed a turtle, but that’s because we didn’t have one.

So, had a turtle been within his reach it would have been an option?

LB: Probably.

JB: He was a very interesting child, and look, he’s an interesting adult. So there you go.

Photograph by David Paul Morris
(Getty Images for SLJ)

In 1993 a certain New York Times article caught author Katherine Applegate’s eye. The piece, called “A Gorilla Sulks in Mall as His Future Is Debated,” focused on the B & I Shopping Mall in Tacoma, WA, where a 500-pound gorilla languished while the humans around him determined his fate. Something about this ape named Ivan lodged itself deep into the crevices of Ms. Applegate’s brain. It wasn’t until more than a decade had passed that she returned to it. During that time, she’d written a pair of Harlequin romance novels, the enormously popular “Animorphs” series (Scholastic), a multitude of books for children, and the verse novel Home of the Brave (Feiwel & Friends, 2007). After agreeing to write two novels for HarperCollins, she rediscovered Ivan’s tale. “I found it so tragic and so compelling, but honestly, I was not sure it would work as a book,” she says. “I really had my doubts.”

Now the newest winner of the Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children, Applegate’s The One and Only Ivan has brought new attention to an author who has worked tirelessly on books for children for decades. At 56, she and her husband, fellow novelist Michael Grant, live with their two children (Jake, age 15, and Julia, 13), a cat named Lightning McQueen, and a dog named Stan (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Bob, the dog in her Newbery winner) in Tiburon, CA. Says Applegate, we “can see San Francisco, Alcatraz, and Angel Island from our porch, unless it’s foggy.”

Funny and modest to a fault regarding her recent Newbery victory, Applegate spoke with me less than a week after her historic win.

What was the first thing you ever published?
I really made my way up through the trenches, and the first thing I published were psychology quizzes in YM magazine—I think it was called Young Miss. It was kind of like Seventeen magazine. So I did a lot of that, and the first book I published was a Harlequin romance. I’m almost certain that I will be the first Newbery winner to have published two Harlequin romances.

That’s a scoop!
You know, I’ll tell you something. They are very hard to write. You follow the formula. It was a really steep learning curve. And after that, I did a bunch of ghosting. So again, I was learning to write to a specific formula. I did, I think, around 17 “Sweet Valley Twins” [books].

Was following a formula valuable?
I think it’s a little like basic training. It taught me the discipline part of the writing. The stuff you want to get away with and you can’t, the continuity errors, and the inconsistencies in characterization. I think for me, it was a very helpful tool. The one thing I never really learned well was how to meet a deadline.

Did it feel natural to you to write for a gorilla?
Well, I have to say, I’m fascinated by animals, and I’ve always been fascinated by animal communication and experiments with primate communication, but I’m not a gorilla person. I’m much more comfortable with your basic Labradors. [Gorillas are] not cute and cuddly, and I think they’re profoundly intimidating because of their size and their strength. And that pensive sort of impenetrable gaze of theirs.

So I went into it not knowing. I didn’t know a thing about gorillas. I had had a gorilla in “Animorphs” that we’d use occasionally as one of the characters. That was back in the day before the Internet, and oh, man, it would have been so much easier to write with Google around. So, I’m sure it was rife with inaccuracies, but I had this nonfiction library that Michael and I used to try to keep track of data bits about animals. But we were writing a book a month, and the time frame for doing a lot of research about any given animal was pretty limited.

Did you consider writing Ivan as a nonfiction book?
Well, I tried—my attempts at nonfiction have not been entirely successful. Once I attempted a book about elephants on the savanna, and I got maybe two chapters into it, and I realized I was starting to make things up. [Laughter]

I was grossly unqualified to be writing nonfiction. So I pretty much knew going into Ivan that there was no way I should go near nonfiction per se. But I could follow pretty precisely what actually happened, and I did go to the Tacoma Public Library archives—they were so helpful—with my kids in tow, and dug through old clippings about Ivan. It was fascinating. I went back to the strip mall where he had lived, and they have this semi-shrine there. Once a year, they open up his cage, I think, on his birthday and let people walk through, and there were tons of clippings and tons of touching pictures from little kids and that sort of thing. So I got a pretty good picture of what his life was like.

Why did you decide to write the story in a sort of prose poetry form? Was it just to give Ivan a believable voice, or was there another reason?
I am not entirely sure. I tend to look at structure before I look even at plot, which is probably why plot is a struggle for me. I think about what the book looks like and how it feels. Maybe that discipline is helpful for me in terms of finding the right words.

But when I look at big sprawly novels, sometimes… my husband just finished [writing] 500 pages. I marvel at it, because it’s so symphony and I’m so chamber music. I just don’t think that way, and it seemed really appropriate that since I was working with an animal voice that it would be small and poetic.

But that’s kind of how I write anyway, left to my own devices. That’s why I love Twitter. That 140-character thing I can deal with, but Facebook to me is like, “Oh, my God, that’s so much more work, I can’t go there.”

Do you see yourself writing another novel in the same style?
You know, I think that there’s a danger in writing the same thing. Home of the Brave was definitely free verse, and I’ve done a couple of picture books where—well, you know yourself, picture books by definition are poetry.

They’re the haiku of children’s literature, yes?
I think I lean in that direction, but I don’t want to be redundant. I’ll have to see how it evolves. Right now, the book I’m working on is in sort of choppy blocks… bigger than Ivan, but smaller than a typical middle grade [novel].

You chose to put this story in the first person, which has made all the difference, I think, for your readers. Did you also consider other ways of telling the story?
Oh, yeah, I tried everything. I definitely wrote it in third. It seemed too distant. I wrote it in different kinds of first-person voices. I wrote it in big blocky narrative pieces. That seemed like too much. Name another way I could have written it, and I bet you I did it.

Was Anne Hoppe always your editor at HarperCollins?
Yeah, and you know Ivan would not be Ivan without Anne. Honestly, it was the most collaborative and fun adventure I’ve ever had with an editor. I was working on another animal fantasy, actually, and struggling with it. Anne finally looked at me, and she said, “You know, you really want to write that gorilla book, don’t you?” I said, “Yeah, I really do.”

I attempted to be very journalistic and follow the true story of the real Ivan, but it was a pretty passive story. There wasn’t a lot happening. When I had originally submitted the concept to her, I had envisioned a fictionalized element, and Anne said, “Look, why don’t you go back and try it, because right now it’s really short and I’m going to have a hard time selling a template.” So, I went back to my original idea, and it really fell into place. Anne loves words the same way I do, and so we could go back and forth for three days trying to get a sentence just right. I love that. She’d say, “No, that’s not quite right.” “OK, we’ll try again.” And when you have that experience with an editor, you just feel so lucky.

The real Ivan passed away on August 20, 2012. It must have been kind of bittersweet publishing Ivan the same year that he died. I know you didn’t get a chance to meet him, but you attended his memorial.
Oh, that was so touching! And I almost didn’t go because, you know, announcing to the family that I’m jumping on a plane to go to a gorilla funeral can be met with a certain amount of concern. But it was really amazing.

There were maybe 100 people. There were people from all over the country. His keeper was there and a primatologist who had been vital in getting him moved and people who just loved him. People came who had grown up seeing him in the malls when they were little kids going in every Sunday and seeing him, high-fiving the glass….

They had a big wall with letters of tribute, many from children. His photo was in the middle and people talked about their experiences with him. He was apparently quite a quirky guy. Ivan hated to get his feet wet. He did not like dampness, and when he went outside, one of his quirks was that he would take a burlap coffee bag, which were regularly supplied to the zoo by a local coffee supplier, and put it under his butt and under his hands. He would slide around on the ground and get around that way.

So hanging up was a burlap bag to signify his passing. It was lovely to see that a gorilla whose life had been so tragic in so many ways still had brought together all these humans.

I was looking at the villains in your novel and in this year’s Newbery Honor books, and I have to say, they’re usually very black-and-white. In Splendors and Glooms, the bad guy could not be more evil. In Three Times Lucky, the villain is pretty bad. And in Bomb, he’s Hitler. But Mack, who’s Ivan’s keeper, is the least black-and-white. He’s got the most gray. He’s the most human, I’d say, out of all the baddies. Where did he come from?
I really, really struggled with that, and thought about that a lot because I have not met the real live people who were involved with Ivan’s life. But I am convinced from what I’ve read that the feelings about him were very complex. It was a nuanced and complicated affair. I think they probably loved him very much in their own way.

I know that one of Ivan’s caretakers, who had worked there for quite a while, traveled to see Ivan when he was reacclimated at Zoo Atlanta because she was a figure that he knew. And, you know, I think kids are very capable of understanding nuance and of grasping that life is more gray than black-and-white. It was so important for me to get that across.

One of the things that I’ve heard about your book is that it’s an animal book for people who hate animal books. And Nina Lindsay, who blogs at SLJ ’s “Heavy Medal,” even went so far as to say of it, “the animal’s gestures feel true and vivid and consistent so that I believe in each character as the animal they are.” Did you turn to anything for animal inspiration? Did your pets sneak into the story in any way?
Well, Bob, a dog who is a small sarcastic sort of sidekick to Ivan, was inspired in part by my own little lap dog. I used to have big galumphy mutts around the house and this dog, who in my home is known as Stan, is a little Chihuahua mix with a deformed paw. And he’s kind of bratty and yappy—all the things you would expect from a little dog. He actually served as a wonderful inspiration for Bob.

Do the illustrations of Bob resemble Stan?
That was what was so remarkable, the sketches came back from Patricia Castelao, and I thought they were so wonderful! I loved the way she managed to make Ivan substantive and accessible and almost cute because, let’s face it, that was not an easy task. But when I saw the dog, I went, “Oh, my God, that is Stan!”

Had she seen pictures of him?
No, no. It was just a remarkable coincidence.

So, the story everyone wants to hear is the story of getting “the call” from the Newbery committee.
Well, I was in a Residence Inn in Richmond, Virginia. My sister had just turned 50, and we were celebrating. My daughter Julia was with me and she had a really lousy bug and a fever so I had decided to stay over another day. I was busy Googling Expedia, trying to figure out what I was going to do plane-wise, and I looked over and the phone rang. It was around 9:30. I saw Seattle, Washington, on my iPhone, and I thought, “Seattle?” And then it clicked and my heart sort of stopped, and I picked it up and when they said “Newbery Medal,” honestly I thought there must have been some clerical error. I think I said, “Are you sure?” I was just sort of stunned. I’m not sure how long I sat there silently just blinking in disbelief. But I finally said, “This is the coolest moment since I gave birth to my son and adopted my daughter,” and there was a long pause, and then I forgot that I hadn’t mentioned marrying my husband. I quickly added that. There was some laughter. Then they said, “Are you sure there aren’t any other life events you want to add?”

You weren’t even aware it was that day?
I hadn’t really—I think it was probably a nice thing to have been traveling and doing other things because it had sort of left my radar, which made it even more of a shock. I don’t think I’ve quite absorbed it. That it’s for real.

Actually Michael, I believe, tweeted after the announcement: “I am married to the 2013 Newbery winner who will now make me do dishes for the rest of 2013.” True or false?
You know, it’s funny, someone read that to me in an interview I was doing. I hadn’t seen it, but I was thrilled and delighted. And I have to tell you, I came home last night and did the dishes. So there you go.

Elizabeth Bird (fusenumber8@gmail.com) is a children’s librarian at the New York Public Library and blogs at “A Fuse #8 Production” on SLJ’s website.

Illustration by Giselle Potter

It was 2001 and I was a year out of college, my dream of becoming a photographer neatly scrapped due to the slightly sobering fact that my photography skills, not to put too fine a point on it, stunk. Library school seemed a given at that point in my life, and I was determined to follow what I had always thought was my lifelong ambition: becoming an archivist. I wanted to conserve books. Never mind that I’m as gentle with rare materials as a cat with a dead mouse; I was determined to see it through.

That resolve lasted until I took LIS 721 Library Materials for Children on a lark. Despite the fact that I was pretty sure I didn’t like kids (a suspicion that proved to be poorly founded), just a couple of classes with Professor Heidi Hammond were enough to turn me off the wayward path of conservation and onto my true calling—children’s librarianship. After graduating in 2003, I left the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, MN, and soon discovered that New York City was the place to get hired.

At the time, landing a children’s librarian job was tricky but surmountable. These days, of course, it’s significantly more difficult. Between budget cuts and systems that reinvent the very definition of what it means to be a librarian, the word of the day for us must be “flexibility.” Still, in the end, it’s entirely worth it. Children’s librarians are the very backbone of the public library system, creating the readers who’ll grow up

to support the system with their tax dollars. As for school librarians, they’re often the first and sometimes the only librarians whom children will ever encounter, providing services for comers of every background.

I’m going to go out on a wild limb here and assume that many SLJ readers have a pretty little ALA-accredited library degree tucked safely away in their closet. But for those of you who don’t or hope to have one soon, let me guide you through the profession’s trips and traps. Let’s look at what you’ll need to know, where you’d like to go, what you can expect in terms of pocket change, and what the future holds. Everyone else, come along for the ride.

Where would you like to work?

As a children’s librarian, your choices basically boil down to four possibilities: working in a public library, a private library, a public school library, or a private school library. Librarians in each work with children but serve them differently. A school librarian’s days are chock-full of classes, leaving little time for her own work (and what little time remains is often booked by teachers who think the media specialist has nothing better to do than help them). A public librarian must balance storytimes and other programs with class visits and the after-school rush, as kids with working parents race through the door to claim computers and table space.

The public vs. private school question is an ethical and a financial challenge. Recent Pratt library school graduate Allison Bruce put it best when she explained that for her it comes down to working “for an impoverished population and risking failure and burnout, or continuing to serve a population that I don’t feel particularly needs my skills.” To some degree, children from families of every income level need a librarian, but those with fewer advantages particularly benefit from having one in their lives. Then there’s the question of hiring. While public school libraries often require additional education degrees, private schools don’t have such restrictions and can pay more. Hiring practices in public libraries vary according to location. While big cities like New York, Toronto, and Los Angeles have put the brakes on hiring, right now, suburban library systems seem to be advertising for new librarians. As for private children’s libraries, they’re rare but wonderful beasts. Imagine working for a children’s library housed in a museum or a private children’s literary collection that’s owned by a university. It can happen, but you have to be open to the possibility.

What it all boils down to is the fact that you’ll have to look in a variety of places. New York Society Library children’s librarian Carrie Silberman found her position through the American Library Association’s (ALA) website. Though she’d studied to be a school librarian, her new job allows her to “create a modern children’s library within this historic institution.” The trick is staying flexible about where you end up. As another new graduate from Pratt, Danielle Kalan, says, “This job market requires it…. I’ve noticed a trend away from total specialization in library school, since students want to be more broadly employable.” So while you may prefer working with children, stay open to young adult librarianship, archival librarianship, or working with adults. The job you get today may just lead to the job you want tomorrow.

Mad skillz

Which is to say, there are classes that you’ll be glad you took. I’ll level with you. In grad school, I took a total of two classes directly related to children’s librarianship. These consisted of a class on literature (the one I credit with my vocation change) and another on programming. At the time, I had no idea that many of the other classes I happened to take would prove useful, including:

Reference and online services. Recent Pratt graduate Mahnaz Dar says, “The most important course I took was Information Services and Resources, which taught me how to reference sources and conduct reference interviews with patrons. It seems like the one skill that almost every librarian will use, and it was extremely valuable to me to really think about evaluating reference sources. Because I want to work as a school librarian, helping students conduct research is a big part of what I’ll be doing, and this course taught me to think critically about sources in a new way.” These classes sometimes offer help with managing a children’s reference desk, which may come in handy when you’re faced with a tow-headed five-year-old who wants to know where he can find “the orange book.” As Professor Hammond says of the skill that they don’t teach but that we all wish we had, “Mind reading would be helpful.” In lieu of that, try a reference course.

Management of libraries and information centers. Managing a library system may be the last thing on your mind when all you want is to just get hired. Yet you’d be amazed how easily a children’s librarian can slip into the role of manager. Why’s that? Jill Rothstein, manager of New York Public Library’s 67th Street Branch, says, “The same skills that make a good children’s librarian—dedication, energy, innovation—are important, along with understanding how to communicate with different personalities in staff and management, the ability to motivate others, and the ability to keep track of lots of balls in the air.” Remember, keep an eye on the future, even as you try to find a job in the present.

Cataloging. Don’t believe me? Then take it from newly minted school librarian Allison Bruce who says, “I wish I had taken a class devoted solely to cataloging…. I am finding that I’m teaching myself a lot of cataloging on the job and am sure that there are major elements I’m missing as I go.”

Serials management. Whether it’s dealing with the latest print issue of Ranger Rick or the digital edition of Kirkus, a course in serials will give you all the information you’ll need when deciding how to allocate your limited budget and what formats to consider.

Law. OK, I’m kidding here. I’ve found the law librarianship class completely useless. Sorry, law lovers.

While you’re considering potential courses, don’t shy away from those that test your prejudices. Whether it’s taking a class on young adult literature when you’re sure all teens are the devil’s spawn or a graphic-novel course when you couldn’t care two bits about the comic format, taking courses in areas you dislike or fear can only allay those worries and give you the preparation you’ll need. Consider, too, taking classes outside of your graduate program. As Steve Zampino, a teen librarian at Stamford, CT’s Ferguson Library, points out, “Being able to speak Spanish, or another foreign language used by a significant number of a library’s patrons, can be a big help on the job.” These days, multilingual librarians have a significant leg up on the competition.

Also pay attention to what’s new. Today’s innovation just might be tomorrow’s norm. Professor Hammond recommends keeping up with ebooks, ereaders, iPads, and apps, as well as social networking sites and cyber safety. New grad Danielle Kalan says the information technologies class, a core requirement when she attended Pratt, is extremely relevant to her work, especially the basic Web-design skills she learned. “These are the skills that are going to set recent graduates apart as desirable applicants, skills that those who were library students even 10 or 15 years ago won’t have,” she says. They’ll also give you the ammunition you need to justify your job. And when it comes to applying those skills later, find librarians in the field that you can look to for guidance. For example, if you want to be a public school librarian and you don’t currently worship at the altar of Buffy Hamilton, a. k. a. The Unquiet Librarian, now’s the time to start.

It’s all about personality, baby

My mother always said that they should give out degrees in social work alongside degrees in library science to folks going into public library work. Basically, if you’re going to deal with the public, you need to consider how your personality gels with the profession. Work in a public library and you’ll find out some valuable things about yourself. When asked what makes a good children’s librarian, Steve Zampino suggested that “diplomacy and empathy…can be very helpful when dealing with kids, teens, parents, and teachers in a variety of situations.” Don’t feel particularly diplomatic or empathetic? Have a short fuse? Figure out now what might cause you trouble later.

Surprisingly, the rewards outweigh any unpleasantness. Helping a tiny tot find a copy of Strega Nona will get you through an irate mom who demands that you burn your copy of In the Night Kitchen any day of the week. Above all, know thyself. If merely answering the phone gives you stage fright or you don’t much like people, any people, then perhaps front-desk work isn’t for you.

What’s the going rate these days?

Naturally, you’re going to want to know how much your average children’s librarian makes. I don’t think I’ll shock anyone by noting that few folks retire in their 40s, thanks to a lucrative life behind a reference desk. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2010 the median salary for any librarian was $54,500 per year or $26.20 per hour. (For more information, see SLJ’s first public library spending survey and Library Journal’s 2011 “Placements & Salary” survey.) Here’s the good news and bad news about job prospects. The bad news is that while the “employment of librarians is expected to grow by 7 percent from 2010 to 2020,” that’s slower than the average for all occupations. The good news is that while there are limited positions available in the early part of the decade, the prospects will sharply improve as older librarians retire. That’s all well and good, but how does it look for children’s librarians? Well, according to SLJ’s 2010–2011 school library spending survey, librarians who work in the educational field also have a good and bad scenario. Tiny budgets, additional duties, and limited hours are some of the problems you might encounter. On the plus side, the survey showed that media specialists’ salaries went up by 10 percent, book collections have grown, and it appears that painful budget cuts are at last ebbing.

Finding a job

Happily, in spite of every economic downturn, library jobs still exist. Unfortunately, the number of applicants per position is sky high. That means you’ll need to explore unconventional places for employment. “I try to keep up with various listservs,” says Mahnaz Dar. “For example, there’s Pratt’s listserv, and I’m also on the Hudson Valley Library Association’s [an organization for librarians working in independent schools] listserv. However, most of the actual jobs I hear about are from people I know who have told me about opportunities at their libraries.” Joining a library as an intern, a page, a clerk, or a volunteer can give you first dibs when a job opens up. Plus, librarians will sometimes bend over backward for an employee they know over an unknown applicant.

Connect!

The children’s librarian who works in a bubble is just asking for trouble. If you think you can ignore networking just because you work with preschoolers, think again. With public library cuts looming and school boards axing media specialists, the time to meet, collaborate, and learn is now. Public librarians need to reach out and meet up with local school librarians, public and private. Build relationships with these people, and you’ll get your hooks into students who might otherwise never have stepped foot in a public library without a gentle little push. Likewise, a school librarian who connects with a public library can discover that the relationship yields all kinds of unexpected rewards. For example, one Manhattan public school of my acquaintance cultivated a partnership with its local public library. When the school librarian fell ill and was out on leave for several months, the public library sent multiple children’s librarians to the school to read to the kids on a regular basis. Build a bridge, and you’ll have many reasons to cross it.

Another way to connect is by joining a professional organization consisting of like-minded folks. There are the usual suspects like ALA, the Public Library Association, and the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), which all help you find your tribe. Consider thinking outside the box—join organizations that connect to your world but in ways you’d never imagine. For example, I’m a member of the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators as well as the United States Board on Books for Young People, both of which give me insights into the crop of new books for children in the States, as well as children’s books found worldwide.

It can be done!

No matter how daunting the outlook seems, there’s hope. Maybe it’s ridiculous, but I believe that even if all other forms of librarianship were to crumble to the ground and wash away with the tides, children’s librarians would remain standing. New parents and children appear every day. They need your opinions, your thoughts, your recommendations, and your help in finding the best books, websites, apps, and materials out there. Some people say that where there’s a will there’s a way. I say that where there are children there will be librarians, by hook or by crook. Now go out there and help those kids, tiger!