Sneezenesia by Deb Lucke - review

 

I once yelled at one of my kids so hard I gave myself a cold. No lie. What had he done? Um. He forgot a thing. He forgot a thing something like 65 days in a row, and I admit I kind of lost it. I lectured, I harangued: I got so upset I picked up a kitchen chair and banged it on the floor a few times like Krushchev or Baltimore's former mayor with a shoe. And when I stopped for breath, I sneezed four times and then had to go lie on the couch for three days.

The kid in Sneezenesia has the opposite problem. Poor kid has sneezed so hard he's forgotten his own name! Shopping at the supermarket, he's forgotten what his mom looks like! And then he keeps sneezing and keeps sneezing until all the facts he's ever known - dinosaurs, presidents (none the worse for wear, but Richard Nixon is covered in snot) - pop out of his nose and lie scattered on the floor in the canned foods section.

 

This book came out last year but somehow I missed it. I'm glad I caught it now. I'd put it together with A Sick Day for Amos McGee and do an unexpectedly fun cold-and-flu-themed storytime. Anybody know a good song about sneezing?

 

Comments

[Ray]

Hi Paula,
I live in Nova Scotia, Canada. I was surfing the web and just listened to your recorded interview on the Morning show. I really enjoyed it. I have a question about the future of libraries! Since your also a librarian.... I’m wondering with technology like e-books, iphone, Ipad, Kindle, sonny e-reader and with the recent closing of Borders Book stores where do you see actual physical Library buildings say in 5, 10 20 years from now...will they still exist? Just a thought!!
Thanks and warm regards
Ray

[:paula]

Hi Ray! So cool that Maryland Morning reaches all the way to Canada via the web!

I don't know about the future of libraries. I'd like to think that we'll always have them, but then I think about what I think libraries are FOR, and I do wonder if we'll need bricks and mortar buildings in 20 years.

In other words, I wonder if librarians will provide reference service solely via chat or text, and library patrons will receive the materials they're looking for via instantaneous download.

I think university libraries will still exist, although I think they will exist more and more as study centers - and maybe that's a model for the public library, that maybe public libraries will be for meeting and studying and working together, with easy free access to information sources in the building.

It's a good question. I bet I will still be a librarian in 20 years, and I wonder what I'll be seeing then!

:paula