Mizzelle's Menagerie

Guest post: Superheroes at your library

dcwomenkickingass:

There is a lot of focus on the LCS when there is a discussion about new comic readers and getting more women reading comics. But the LCS is only part of it — there is another influence that doesn’t get as much attention. Today I have a guest post from someone who in her role as a librarian has been introducing young adults, both boys and girls, to the joy of comics. Pamela Bodziok is a Teen Services Librarian from Western Pennsylvania. In this post she discusses how she selects graphic novels. She also writes about how she brought the new 52 from DC Comics into her library and got her young female patrons reading the titles. Her thoughts follow:

So, true story: my inspiration for becoming a librarian came from Evelyn Carnahan, the plucky adventurer/librarian from Stephen Sommers’s Mummy movies. I was a lifelong lover of books to begin with, and watching Evy made a job at the library look like so much fun. Granted, I expected that I’d encounter far fewer mummies and undead skeletons on the job than she did, but I figured my time as a librarian would give me plenty of pluck-requiring challenges of my own.

Imagine my delight when, shortly after starting my new job as a Teen Services librarian, I discovered another, awesomely inspiring librarian character: Batgirl herself, Barbara Gordon. The role models don’t get much better than that.

I’ve been a comic book fan my whole life — going through a few dry spells, but always coming back to the medium. I love comics. And in my time at my library, I’ve more or less become the de facto Graphic Novel Expert — less, I expect, because of my position as teen librarian, and more simply because I am the biggest comic book fan in the place.

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