Retrieving and Processing

    This past week was a productive one for my inquiry project. I now have what I feel are enough sources to move forward, and I have begun digging through them and exploring my topic more deeply. Me Read? was not only a helpful overview, but also led me to two very helpful books that happened to be available at the library where I work and were easy to grab. I will be focusing on those books, Me Read? , and a few of the other online sources I've already discovered. I also intend to follow the book authors' citations if they mention any previous research that I find especially relevant.

    Currently, I'm about halfway through Me Read? and about a chapter in to one of the books. Reading progress has been slow, as I normally try to get reading done at work when things are slow, and things have been very much the opposite of slow at work this past month. I'm hoping I'll have more time to focus on this project now that the main season at my museum is over. 

    I have been doing a lot of thinking and making connections about my topic in my everyday life and conversations, however. For example, I work part-time at a living history museum and spend most of my time in their Civil War area. During the fall, we have lots of school field trips come through - usually 500-1500 kids a day ranging in age from K-12. My coworker was a bit disturbed at how often the kids treated the violence of the war as a game; at our site they get to train for the Union army and run mock drills with sticks of wood shaped like muskets, and they often play with the fake guns, pretend to shoot their friends with them, etc. I find it disturbing also, but explained to my colleague that children under a certain age probably can't understand what violence means on a cognitive level. I've tried to explain to some of the children, in character, what joining an army and killing another human being actually means, and it usually just confuses them unless they're closer to middle-school age. The day after that conversation, I read Newkirk's first chapter, in which he discusses the culture surrounding boys and violence post-Columbine and argues that enjoying stores about violence doesn't necessarily translate to boys committing violence in the real world. Combining the perspectives of Newkirk, myself, and my coworker (who, I should add, is an adult male gun enthusiast) has given me quite a bit to puzzle over for the past few days. Newkirk examines these violent impulses from the perspective of school teachers, and I'm trying to decide on the ideal way to approach it as a librarian. Should I encourage boys to read violent books if that's what interests them? Of course, the question may really be how I, their parents, and most importantly the book's author treat and discuss the violence in the book. If it's trivialized in the narrative, that would probably not be a book I would recommend. On the other hand, a book that I felt dealt realistically with the consequences of violence in an age-appropriate manner would be a good resource to recommend to young patrons. Perhaps further reading on this subject will help me decide what exactly my approach to discussing violence with boys (at both my jobs) should be...