Schools, dazed.

Lately I've been doing a lot of work with the public schools up here, and I've come to the conclusion that many of the teachers are out of touch with the real world as most of us encounter it. 

Back in August I set up a table outside the Duane Smith Auditorium so I could feature many of our cool books and other items that teachers can use in the classroom. I was handing out coupons when one of the teachers, as frightening a broad as ever stepped off a Gothic church, stomped up to me and said, "Every time I tell my students to get a book from you, you guys always tell them that you don't have it in stock and will have to order it! Why can't you have the books we need in stock?!" 

I said, "Every year we ask the teachers for their supplemental reading lists. We've tried and tried for years, but nobody has ever responded."

She huffed, "Well, maybe you should try harder!"

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This fall we had a signing with Ellen Klages, who wrote The Green Glass Sea (our number two best-seller at the store) and its sequel, White Sands, Red Menace. I sent a note to all the middle-grade teachers and the language arts team at the middle school to let them know that Ellen would be available for school visits. Two schools, an elementary school and the middle school, responded. 

Over the summer one of the middle school teachers had worked with the superintendent to make sure that she, and she alone, would be the only one allowed to teach The Green Glass Sea. (The upper-grade elementary teachers were understandably steamed, but, as far as I can tell, have ignored the edict.) At any rate, Ellen was going to speak to the creative writing class in the library, and as luck would have it, the classroom of the monopolizer of The Green Glass Sea was right next door. So Ellen and I went into the classroom, and I introduced Ellen to Ms. Monopoly and invited the teacher to come to the talk in the library. I figured that she'd leap upon the object of her monopoly with gladsome cries and boot-licking felicitations. "I'd love to come," Ms. Monopoly said, "but I have lunch this period."

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Now I'm working up estimates for one of the elementary school librarians. Her most recent list included about 20 titles that she wanted in both hardcover and softcover formats. I sent her the estimate, and she fired back a stern email saying that we needed to talk. Nothing cramps my bowels so quickly as hearing the sentence "We need to talk" from a customer. 

So I stopped by the school library on my way to the store, and the librarian told me that she wanted only the hardcover books and asked where in the world I came up with all those softcover editions. Then she asked me to make a copy of the estimate and walk it down to the principal's office. Fine. We're your full-service bookstore. And I was on my way out anyway. 

When I got back to the store, I had another request for an estimate from her. She wanted prices on books about latitude, famous Americans, geography, complex machines--no titles or grade levels included--and that book that has something in the title about "what every girl should know. You know the one I'm thinking of?" 

I wasn't feeling puckish enough to give her an estimate on Margaret Sanger's seminal (heh) work.