TCCL News & Events

When Kelly Jennings began her library career in the early ‘70s in Kansas City, Mo., many public libraries still were located within the public schools, there was no such thing as e-mail, if you wanted to reach the American Library Association you had to write a letter, and children’s literature didn’t deal with terroristic attacks, divorce, homosexuality and other sensitive topics that you weren’t supposed to talk about.

“Public libraries and children’s literature have changed considerably in the last 40 years,” said the quintessential children’s librarian who retired from Tulsa City-County Library in January after devoting 30 years of sharing her expertise and love of children’s literature and helping to establish the outstanding children’s and parenting collections that fill our libraries’ shelves.

For the past two decades, Jennings has written the TulsaKids Books column, enlightening countless parents with her vast knowledge of children’s literature and child rearing resources. In fact, Parenting Publications of America awarded her an Excellence Award in 1996 for the Books column, noting that it helped readers sort out the “genre of helpful books that has proliferated to the point that parents can be bewildered by the variety.”

What seems bewildering now was relatively unvaried prior to the ‘70s, as children’s books were more sugar and spice, and the primary parenting books were by Dr. Benjamin Spock, said Jennings.

It was in the ‘70s when children’s literature really started to change when authors like Judy Bloom shook things up with her novels for elementary schoolers. Blume was among the first to tackle such controversial matters as racism (Iggie’s House), puberty and religion (Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret), divorce (It’s Not the End of the World), bullying (Blubber) and teenage sexuality (Forever).

Around the same timeframe, local author S.E. Hinton helped set off the young adult genre with her realistic novels The Outsiders; That Was Then, This Is Now; Rumble Fish; and Tex, which explored teenage sexuality, gangs, drugs and other social problems.

“Today we have all kinds of books that deal with social aspects,” said Jennings. “As our society has grown more open so has children’s literature. People look toward books and libraries to help them answer the questions in their daily lives. Sometimes librarians even go to the publishers and say ‘we get a lot of questions on this’ and then the publisher has a book written on the subject.”

Not only has the content evolved, so has the appearance of children’s literature.

“If you compare a book from the 1980s to one published now, the visual presentation is so dramatic – the colors, the paper, the whole look is so different because of all the wonderful technology we have. For example, take Mark Reibstein’s Wabi Sabi, it looks like you can almost feel the texture in the illustrations,” said Jennings, who formerly served with an elite group of children’s librarians on the American Library Association’s prestigious Caldecott Award Committee in 2001 to select the winner for this internationally recognized award for illustration.

Another significant change is that children’s literature now includes a bounty of books for babies. Prior to the 1980s you really didn’t see many board books, and at that time board books were considered as toddler toys instead of as real books. Now board books is a genre of its own, said Jennings.

Particularly since the beginning of the new millennium, more and more books have been published for babies, especially since current scientific research has shown that about one half of a person’s ultimate intelligence is developed by the age of 4. This research also has sparked a demand from parents wanting information on how to use books with babies.

“It’s not just books for babies either; the materials for children all across the spectrum have changed considerably,” said Jennings, who selected children’s materials for Tulsa City-County Library’s collections since 1994. “When I started in children’s services, we selected materials designed for children in kindergarten through eighth grade; now we go from babies to fifth grade. Young adult is considered a separate area and that area has really boomed with its own set of authors. Plus, books are now written for specific ages. For any given topic, the same book may be fine-tuned for a target age group, such as children ages 8-10.”

Though children’s literature has changed significantly over the years and technology has exploded with all kinds of new distractions, the key to motivating kids to learn to read has not changed.

“It still takes an adult to show a child that reading is fun; that reading can be about something they are interested in,” said Jennings. “The child who is read to from the very beginning is most likely to become a reader and library user. Yes, it is a little more difficult motivating kids to read as you have to compete with computers, iPods and other technical devices, but I’m not sure if it’s any worse than in the ‘70s. It still comes back to what the parents put as a priority. If the parent devotes a little bit of time each day to read to a child, that kid is going to learn how to read.”

It also helps when teachers read to kids in the classroom, said Jennings. She personally hopes that the No Child Left Behind Act is changed and that the school testing is lessened because she says it dampens the desire for learning to read.

“The excessive testing consumes time when children could be reading or teachers could be reading to them,” said Jennings. “We can tell when a teacher has been reading to kids because they will come into the library and say ‘I want that book my teacher’s been reading.’ They don’t want to wait for the teacher to finish it in class.”

Jennings said Tulsa County is so fortunate to have a library system that has a wealth of resources to promote reading – from storytimes for babies, toddlers and preschoolers, to the annual summer reading program, to an extensive, top-of-the-line collection of parenting books and the best in children’s literature – not to mention the topnotch children’s librarians across the system.

Many Tulsa City-County Library staff celebrated Jennings’ outstanding career as they expressed their heartfelt “thank yous” and said their teary goodbyes at her retirement party on Jan. 29. The theme was Ian Falconer’s beloved “Olivia” – one of Jennings’ favorite characters. Anyone who knows Kelly can attest that Kelly is very much like Olivia – perky, passionate and precocious!