Hoarding is not collection development
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Lisa’s Parents Fight
Lisa’s Parents Fight
Sanford
1989
Looking for a cute bedtime story for the kids? Here you go! You might recognize the author: one of our favorites and creator of this site’s best post to date: Satan for Kids (and the companion follow up post, Satan for Kids part 2). In this story, Lisa is in a real situation with her siblings. Lisa’s step dad (it is always a STEP!) seems to have a problem with his temper. He complains about the cost of kids (I confess I have complained A LOT about that too.) He watches TV (whoops, I do that too). By the end of the book, Step Dad decides he does have a problem (it is a miracle!) and the kids eat some McDonald’s carry out. This book is awful on so many levels, I don’t know where to begin.
Mary
Child Abuse Help
The Child Abuse Help Book
How to understand and cope with violence in the home
Haskins
1982
I plucked this from a teen nonfiction collection. Both the cover art and title are disturbing. For a brief moment, I thought this title was a “how-to” type book. I think this book is typical of those social topic oriented titles that are used for a school paper. Resources and advice are limited. For Michigan, there is a government address in Lansing you can write for “information” that I am quite certain is out of date. I have included some sample pages and I will let you draw your own conclusions on the value for student research.
The one positive this author did say is that the public library is a source of information on coping with child abuse situations. Too bad it is not this particular book. Let this be one of those posts that reminds you to go weed the 300s, especially in teens/youth.
Mary
Watch out for bad boyfriends
Date Abuse
Silverstein
1994
Again we have an important topic, totally appropriate for teen collection in a public library. However the cover art is just dated and more than a little odd. It looks like our abuser is trying to lift her up by the belt loops. I get the feeling they wanted a threatening cover, but not “too” threatening. I absolutely think this book is a weeder just on the cover alone. Regardless, I would also like to point out the “don’t blame the victim” speech followed by the comments about how dressing a certain way sends the wrong message. (Just to be fair…)
I know these materials have costs but old is not better than nothing. I also know that some of our local women’s shelters have pamphlets and other resources that should augment your collection as well. Teens deserve something more current than this.
Mary