Though I have to tutor for two hours this evening, I have today off from working at the library.  I’ve settled down by the woodstove, freshly made banana bread by my side, my laptop in my lap, all ready for a no-pressure relaxing day of work on my blog.

Then:  CRASH!!!  BANG!!!!  CRASH!!!!  The guys working on the new construction next door have chosen today to work on digging the septic system.  Our windows are rattling.  The house is shaking from foundation to roof.  The dishes are chattering in the cabinets.  The cats are little furry balls of anxiety. 

What I want to know is this:  why choose today, cold with a forecast of staying cold, to try to dig a septic system?  Isn’t the ground frozen a bit solid at this point (hence the shuddering of my entire house)??

What I also want to know is how I’m going to be able to write anything coherent in the midst of this chaos.  Sigh.  All I wanted was a nice, happy day off. 

I’ve been thinking about blogging a lot lately, due in part to an email sent through the MASSYAC listserve and to the research that I do each week before my book group meeting, and also due in part to my brother’s recent entry on the third anniversary of his blog.  (Happy Anniversary, by the way, Dan!)  By my standards, Dan’s blog is incredibly successful: he is creative, profound, and prolific, and the comments left on his blog reflect his large readership.  But this entry isn’t really about Dan’s blog – it’s about the world of children’s literature blogs.

The email sent out to the MASSYAC listserve was from a children’s librarian announcing her new blog, and asking for those of us who already have blogs in place to send her the links to add to her blogroll.  Of course, I sent her my link, and added hers to my blogroll, and then I took a look at the collection of links that she had quickly amassed.  Lots and lots and lots of blogs on children’s literature, written by children’s librarians.  Lots of them.  And most of them much like the others, only differing really in the specificity of the opinions of the authors.  This is what I find each week when preparing for book group, too: for any given book that I’m looking into, there are several blog entries available to choose from, some giving suggested discussion questions, others raving about a book, some taking an academically critical approach to the book, some written by parents who have strong opinions about the book, and others a bit self-promoting (the “oh, look at me, I have an ARC of this book, because I’m special“).

The more children’s literature blogs that I read, the more I feel like I’m swimming in a vast, over-populated pool.  I know that I personally benefit from writing my blog, because in writing I am able to clarify my opinions and process my daily work events, and that alone makes this blog of value.  (Some could say here that I might as well just keep a daily work journal that’s not published on the web, but it’s the pressure of knowing that others are watching that keeps me writing on a regular basis.  If I didn’t have that pressure, I might not be as driven to keep this written record.)  But I do wonder whether my blog has value and relevance in the broader world.  I’m not Roger Sutton – I’m just a hardworking small town children’s librarian with a decent education, much like most children’s librarians in the country.

And then, by extension, I wonder about the value and relevance of all of those blogs similar to mine that are written by other children’s librarians.  Are we reading each other’s thoughts?  Are we communicating our ideas to one another?  Or are we each simply operating in our own little bubble, sending our words out to our imagined and hoped-for “audience” before moving on with the rest of our day?  I’d like to say that I’ll be better about reading the blogs written by my peers, but there are so many of them and there is so much work that I have to do each day – I doubt that I’ll get around to reading much other than “Read Roger” on a regular basis.  And that’s a shame, really.