Friday Spotlights presents… youth librarian Jennifer Hopwood!

First, be sure to check out Kim Pickett’s lie from yesterday’s Booklover of the Week feature. Did you guess it?

For today’s Friday Spotlight, I’m delighted to bring you another Librarian Spotlight! Please help me welcome head of the Youth Services Department…

Jennifer Hopwood
Franklin T. DeGroodt Memorial Library

As always, Friday guests will be sharing their You 2.0 stories about pursuing their dreams, changing their world, gratitude, and paying it forward. Then they’ll be talking about why they love the YA and middle grades genres and why they love being an author, librarian, or teacher. And good news… Three Truths and a Lie is alive and well on Fridays too!

SPECIAL GIVEAWAY TIME!!!

To celebrate another fabulous librarian guest, I’m giving away an ARC of Lauren Bjorkman’s upcoming debut, MY INVENTED LIFE (Henry Holt, September 29, 2009). MY INVENTED LIFE is a new participating title in The Great Scavenger Hunt Contest for libraries and their teen and young readers, so I thought that was a fitting prize. It’s going, going, gone to one lucky commenter on this post! You don’t even have to guess Jennifer’s lie correctly to be eligible. Winner will be announced on Monday.

So without further ado, please join me in welcoming the wonderful Jennifer!

The Basics

Name:  

Jennifer Hopwood

Library:  

Franklin T. DeGroodt Memorial Library

Location:

Palm Bay, Florida

Short Bio:

I am a Jersey Girl by birth. In high school, I started out as a library volunteer, but it turned into my first job. I mistakenly thought I wanted to be a High School English Teacher (I have a BA in English & Education). Big mistake! After 9/11, we moved to Florida. Unemployed, I finally got two part-time jobs, one as a tutor and the other as a Reference Librarian. The part-time Librarian job became full-time and then I switched from Reference to the Youth Services Department. I am currently the Head of my department and I am working on obtaining my MLIS from Florida State University.

A Bit About the Library:

The Franklin T. DeGroodt Memorial Library is one of two libraries in the city of Palm Bay. Palm Bay is one of the largest residential cities in Florida. We are known as the Space Coast because Brevard County is home to the Kennedy Space Center.


Questions About You 2.0

The You 2.0 blog is about becoming everything you’re meant to be. It’s about pursuing your dreams, changing your world, showing gratitude, and paying it forward. Here’s a chance for our Spotlight guests to share what You 2.0 means to them.

1.   PURSUING YOUR DREAMS: Everyone has the ability to be extraordinary, they just have to embrace what makes them unique and special and pursue their dreams with passion and confidence! Tell us a little about a dream you’ve achieved or are pursuing right now. If you’ve achieved it already, how does it feel to know you’ve made your dream a reality?

As a teenager I really loved books and writing. I knew I wanted to be a writer. However, I was realistic enough to know that I still needed to pay the bills and that the road to publication was very far off. My path led me to working in a public library and eventually to the Youth Services Department. I really enjoy working as a Youth Services Librarian. Every day is different and a way to show my creativity. Perhaps someday you will see my name listed on the Hunt, but in the meantime I am very happy where I am at.

2.   CHANGING YOUR WORLD: Changing the world doesn’t have to mean finding a cure for cancer or creating lasting world peace (though it definitely can!). It just means finding a way that you can make the world a little better off for having lived here, whether it’s making a difference to one person or a million, to the earth, to animals… whatever is important to you. What is one way you would personally like to make the world a better place?

As a result of the economy, many animals have found their way onto the streets. If I had the money, I would open up a ranch to rescue stray dogs. We have a 1 ½ year old Australian/German Shepherd mix who we rescued. She is the sweetest dog. It breaks our hearts to know she was on her last day at a kill shelter.

3.   GRATITUDE: Gratitude is a huge part of the You 2.0 life. Taking a moment to count our blessings is the best way to remember what’s truly important (especially when life is hectic and crazy!). What are you grateful for?

I am grateful that I have a wonderful son and a job that I love.

4.   PAYING IT FORWARD: If everyone took a moment to pay it forward, even just once, the world would be changed in ways we can’t even imagine. What is one thing you’ve done (or plan to do) to “pay it forward” in some way?

My husband and I are firm believers that if you do good things for others and try to keep positive about things, it will all come back to you in some way (kind of like karma). Sometimes it is done in small ways like paying for the car behind you at the toll booth or giving a random kid your prize tickets at the arcade. It is the little things that have the biggest impact.

At the library, we believe in giving people “the pickle”. It means giving people the little things (i.e. like an extra pickle) at no charge. In library terms that sometimes means letting them pay for copies next time they are in or calling another library to make sure a book is on the shelf before the patron drives all the way across town.


Questions About You, The Librarian

5.   Why did you decide to participate in The Great Scavenger Hunt Contest?

It is a great way to get tweens and teens interested in reading. I love contests and this is an easy one to promote. Our department is short staffed, so it is hard to provide lots of programs. The Hunt is great because it is a program that doesn’t involve taking someone away from the desk to supervise an event.

I love the fact that there are such diverse titles available to choose from. Most of the titles are also Sunshine State Reader Award Winners which a lot of the kids have to read for school. The Hunt is a great incentive for them and makes that “required reading” a little bit more fun.

6.   Do you think you would’ve participated in the contest as a teen/tween?

I love doing contests. I know of some adult authors who have similar contests on their websites. I wish there was one site that grouped all of them. Though I have never won anything off these contests before.

I was a kid when the internet was still new. The first contest I ever participated in was one for Prodigy Online. It was a Scavenger Hunt to find the answers to different questions that could be answered using the World Wide Web. I won a little purple backpack that had the Prodigy logo painted on it. It would have been cooler if the contest had been about books. So, yes, I would definitely be a participant.

7.   Why did you choose a book-related career?

I love books. No matter what is going on in your life, a book can take you away from it or help you to understand it. I use to read a book a day when I was in high school. I love historicals and used to read ones that were the same time period as what we were covering in history class. Needless to say I passed all my essay tests and was in the top of my class. I don’t think my teacher ever caught on to what I was doing.

8.   What do you love most (and least) about being a librarian?

I love reading but I remember being the kid who wouldn’t pick up the book that was more than 60 pages. I still remember the first time I realized I could read and love it. It was a Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys Super Mystery that the librarian had given me by mistake. I was so bored that weekend that I read it anyway. I spent hours reading that book and never put it down until the very end.

This is why I dislike reading levels. I think they reinforce that reluctance in kids to read. I was that kid and I know if someone had told me back then that I could only read certain books I probably wouldn’t have picked up that Nancy Drew book.

So far this summer the best story I have heard is about a reluctant reader in 1st grade who read 25 books on her own as part of our Summer Reading Challenge. Her mom told us she has never willingly read a book on her own before. That is what makes me proud to be a librarian.

9.   What books inspired you as a teen/tween?

I love books that take you to other worlds. In middle school, I read all of the Star Wars books and this was before they introduced the Young Jedi Academy series. But it wasn’t the space travel that I enjoyed; it was the magic of the force and the almost aristocratic/noble nature of the characters. After that I discovered Tamora Pierce, Robert Asprin, and Mercedes Lackey. I love the worlds that they create and the magic of their stories. I also read Lurlene McDaniel, Ann Rinaldi, LJ Smith, and Christopher Pike. My reading tastes were pretty varied, but my perfect book would be one that takes place in the past with supernatural leanings and a hint of romance.

I also read a lot of comic books. My father insisted on buying me Betty & Veronica or Archie comics. It took me a long time to convince him I would rather have X-Men.

10.   What do you love most about the YA and middle grades genres?

When I was in school, it seemed like all the books written for teens were the ones with the oh-not-so-subtle messages in them. They were very clean cut and perfect world-ish, it didn’t seem to me then that their worlds were like mine. That’s probably why I tended to lean more towards supernatural/fantasy type stuff. I very much enjoy the books that are out now. They have real problems in them.

I love reading teen romances, especially when it is the geeky girl getting the hot guy (go figure that this geeky bookworm married a jock). I can do without the product placement that a lot of books seem to have. All I can say to the authors that try this is –weeding. Weeding is what we librarians do to those books that are so outdated that they don’t move off the shelf anymore. If it can’t stand the test of time, it is not going to last on the shelf and I probably won’t buy it for our collection.

11.   Are you also a writer yourself? If so, what do you like to write?

I have attempted to have some picture book manuscripts published with little success. I have finally moved on to continue working on my young adult novel that is- yes, you guessed it- a historical novel with supernatural leanings and a hint of romance.

12.   If you could go back in time and give your teen/tween self one piece of advice, what would it be?

Scholarships! No one ever told me about all the scholarships that were available for college. If I knew then half the stuff I know now, there is no way I would be so much in debt.


Will the Real You 2.0 Please Stand Up?

13.   I love the game Three Truths and a Lie because there are so many unexpected and interesting things about people that we never get a chance to learn about them. What are three truths and a lie that our blog readers can guess about you?

– At one time there were 9 dogs living in my house.
– I am allergic to cats.
– I can’t stand chocolate.  **UPDATE: Here’s the lie!**

– I started working in libraries when I was 15.

(Readers: As always, your guess also gets you an entry into the You 2.0 monthly contest for an ARC of The Cinderella Society or a prize dive in the awesome You 2.0 Prize Basket. Guess correctly and you get a bonus entry for the monthly contest AND today’s special giveaway! I’ll update the post on Monday to spill the big lie and announce the special giveaway winner, so get guessing and have fun!)

Thanks to Jennifer for a terrific interview!

Entry Filed under: Librarian Spotlight