Week 2, Assignments 1 and 2: Appeal Factors

Assignment 1: Neal Wyatt's Appeal Factors

Excellent piece! I appreciated the level of detail that Wyatt goes into when describing the eight elements of appeal. He takes his time in constructing a comprehensive description of each appeal factors and provides concrete examples along the way. The titles he selects each serve to highlight a particular appeal element or one particular facet of an appeal element (as in his comparison and contrast of the characteristics of pace in his description of Downie's Medicus and Reilly's Ice Station). 

 

Assignment 2: Rely Mainly on Appeal Factors (Not Plot Summary) to Describe Two Books I've Enjoyed

For this assignment I selected Amelia Lost! by Candace Fleming and Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu. I read these for the 2012 Mock Newberys and had written up a little review of each. The challenge in this case was in imagining that I was recommending these books verbally, without the smoother, more detailed description a written review can provide. For this, I tried to recall how I'd historically described each to parents and children and attempted to blend this brevity with the lengthier written version from a year ago.

Amelia Lost!

Tension! Suspense! Mystery!

These are not elements typically associated with children’s biographies, but Amelia Lost! is anything but typical.  

Author Candace Fleming takes a unique approach to Earhart’s biography, interweaving both a fast-paced narrative (Amelia’s final flight) and a more leisurely-paced one (Amelia's life from childhood until through the final flight).  This presentation is skillfully rendered and offers alternating between blow-by-blow coverage of Amelia’s final hours and a comprehensive, yet wholly engaging biography of her life from birth to the last lark. 

Fleming’s organizational layout of the available information is distinctly reminiscent of the Dorling Kindersley's (DK Books) publications for children. Photographs, quotes, trivia and web links supplement an the otherwise suspenseful story. Comprehensive without being dense, Amelia Lost provides enough biographical information and dramatic action to shine as an example of both an enjoyable and informative read.

Recommended for children ages 9-14 and especially for fans of books in the DK series. It also serves as a great jumping off point for elementary and middle schoolers who are new to research and reports.

Breadcrumbs

In Anne Ursu's Breadcrumbs, folkloric symbolism and language are deliberately and expertly blended with a bittersweet story of growing up.

Ursu builds on a wide range of fairytale archetypes, both traditional and modern, to tell the tale of fifth-graders Hazel and Jack, best friends bonded by imagination and mutual understanding, whose friendship will be tested by a magic mirror, an opportunistic snow queen and the all-too-real influences of modern preadolescence.

It is a Highly Symbolic tale, brushing on such issues as personal and cultural identity, escapism and the grief of friendship’s change. Recommended for children ages 10 - 14 who enjoy new takes on iconic fantasy. 

Among Breadcrumbs’ merits is one feature every parent and caregiver will particularly love: vocabulary. Ursu does not compromise the scope of language used in Breadcrumbs by talking down to her readers. As a result, the text of Breadcrumbs is fairly saturated with new vocabulary which, because of its place in the unfolding narrative, remains accessible to young readers.

Week 3, Assignment 2 - Nancy Pearl Book Talk

In her book talk on NPR Nancy Pearl highlights a few select "under the radar" favorites from her Book Lust series.

Her book descriptions are all fairly concise and to the point. She uses the following tools to greatest effect: her tone of voice which she uses to personalize and ultimately sell both A Gay and Melancholy Sound and Treasure Island!!! as sincerely endorsed favorites; her relative brevity of description, which she uses to succinctly set the scene in her description of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk; and finally her use of strong adjectives to punctuate the appeal factors of individual titles, as she did to greatest effect in outlining her reasons for enjoying Lost (nice writing, flawed but appealing hero, complex plot, and historical setting).

In each of these she really only gives a couple of sentences to outline the plot, which I found to be sufficient in 3 out of 4 of the cases. I could not only grasp, but could also remember the basic plot for all of them, excepting the first, A Gay and Melancholy Sound, for which I really only remembered her enthusiasm and her citation of that work as the "purest autobiography" she's ever read.

It really depends on what will most appeal to a given customer during RA as to which of these elements is the strongest for selling a book or other material. Nancy's enthusiasm may well be enough to sell the first title to some customers, but I think it's her latter descriptions (involving succinct descriptions of plot and character, as well as powerful adjectives to define appeal factors) that will - as a general rule - result in more universally successful RA.

Week 3, Assignment 1: The RA Conversation

Not following a strictly chronological order in the posts here, but I'd rather record my impressions now when they're still fresh.

Reading through Wyatt's "The RA Conversation" really took me back to my Information Services class in grad school. There, like Wyatt suggests, we practiced reference interviews and readers' advisory with our classmates before trying out our fledgling RA skills with real patrons (well real virtual patrons, using the now defunct meebo messenger in that particular instance).

Of the two formats we tried, I have to say it was actually the in-person practice sessions that proved the more challenging of the two. Perhaps because the "real" patron RA requests were typed out, a little more care and thoughtfulness was necessary, which made for an easier interpretation of appeal factors on our part.

For me, this just serves to underline Wyatt's point about the importance of knowing how to listen as a tool key to any successful RA.

Overall I found the article to be a worthwhile read and I appreciated the suggested exercises, the varied icebreakers and the examples of book descriptions containing hidden appeal factors.