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description=A blog about books, movies, music, knitting, and photography. Sometimes cats and opinions get in the mix.;
description=A blog about books, movies, music, knitting, and photography. Sometimes cats and opinions get in the mix.;
description=A blog about books, movies, music, knitting, and photography. Sometimes cats and opinions get in the mix.;

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Text of the page (random words):
t so bad i lived and didn t even really have any nasty customers although i did kind of want to punch the ones who came up to the registers yawned then commented about how tired they were and how awful it was that i had to work so early in the morning and there was the dude who tried to convince me that the hardcover graphic novel he was holding was the same as a paperback box set advertised as 50 off because a graphic novel is called a trade in the business direct quote and therefore it should also be 50 off uh no it s 3 30 am and i m tired not brain dead and since i put up the signs on wednesday night i know exactly what they say a customer informed me that our bathroom wasn t pretty it s a bathroom not a lounge go down the hall for pretty bathrooms teenage girl squeals it s a table full of perfection it was a display of john green novels huzzah for enthusiasm on black friday exhausted looking mom i need the richard the iii book me ehrrrr are you looking for the play a historical novel or a biography exhausted looking mom you mean there s more than one yup definitely after some discussion she disclosed that it was for her son s high school english class process of elimination concluded that he was most likely in need of the shakespeare play grumpy mom at the register this book is 7 at target holds up new wimpy kid book me i m sorry we don t price match grumpy mom never me never she bought the book i wanted to high five her kid for whining about how he didn t want to walk alllllllllll the way back to target and he wanted his book noooooowwwwwww so many customers bought jj abrams s that i wanted to kiss them all and tell them how much of a sensory experience they were getting or giving yeah ok that s a little weird but you understand customer i need an inspirational book for my little niece she s 17 and she doesn t really know what she wants to do or if she wants to go to college she s pretty quiet me thinks that teenagers hate it when adults try and tell them how to plan their lives well we have a self improvement section after going through section we conclude that none would really work me has a brain wave this was going on like hour 10 of work would you like to look at a novel explains all about rainbow rowell s fangirl with much enthusiasm customer looks over the book and thinks this is a great idea score in my favorite encounter of probably the entire weekend i worked friday saturday and sunday i helped a mom and her eighth grade daughter for about thirty minutes they were looking for a book to buy that day car ride and ideas for later especially series we went through all the ya series nothing too violent not too much romance hmmmmm she thought hunger games was too scary and twilight was gross agreed honey and she hadn t read more than book 1 in each series mom thought divergent would be too scary also 1 to mom for reading a book ahead of her kid to make an informed decision she hadn t read harry potter or rick riordan interested but not really sold on either after talking so much with her it became apparent that she was a really young eighth grade and she was wearing a glee t shirt me do you watch glee kid yes i love glee me who s your favorite character because i had a feeling kid kurt no rachel ok i like kurt and rachel best me did you know that chris colfer has started writing a series called land of stories kid emits sound in the frequency range of a dog whistle noooo he did and just like that she had found her book for the day the wishing spell i don t think i could have pried it back out of her hands good thing our scanners at the register can stretch luckily for mom there s book 2 to purchase for christmas i also had them interested in marissa meyer s lunar chronicles cat valente s girl who series wonder and the one and only ivan posted by melissa ward at 3 11 pm 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels tis the season customers 04 october 2013 tis the season my child has a lexile score of october has arrived cool weather pretty fall color yummy drinks composed of apple cider or hot cocoa and i get to wear scarves i like scarves as an accessory and standardized testing if you are or have a school age child in my area of the country it seems school districts have chosen testing that calculates a lexile score for a child s reading level with an associated score range lexile is a company that uses a software program to analyze books for word usage sentence length etc and produce a lexile text measure for each book i copied the description from the lexile analyzer site the lexile measure of text is determined using the lexile analyzer a software program that evaluates the reading demand or readability of books articles and other materials the lexile analyzer measures the complexity of the text by breaking down the entire piece and studying its characteristics such as sentence length and word frequency which represent the syntactic and semantic challenges that the text presents to a reader the outcome is the text complexity expressed as a lexile measure along with information on the word count mean sentence length and mean log frequency generally longer sentences and words of lower frequency lead to higher lexile measures shorter sentences and words of higher frequency lead to lower lexile measures texts such as lists recipes poetry and song lyrics are not analyzed because they lack conventional punctuation i m not a huge fan of putting a score on a book based simply on a computer generated metric because the software doesn t take into account context or content of a book or form cf poetry but this seems to be accepted by the educational powers that be so it s here for the time being however i don t know how well or often the scores are explained to parents because i wind up in a lot of parent bookseller conversations like this parent my child has a lexile score of xxxx she has to read books in the range of xxxx xxxx will this work bookseller thinks fuuuuuuck bookseller says well lets pull up the lexile site to see what it suggests for that range and go from there the major problem here is that the parent hasn t the foggiest idea what books go with the child s lexile score or how score ranges line up with likely grade levels they don t have haven t been provided with a list of suggestions for the range they haven t looked up lexile on the internet to get a handle on what this thing is i mean hello the internet is the information superhighway google it and their poor child is off in the corner trying desperately to read another warriors book by erin hunter or wimpy kid or the new babymouse before the grown ups force her into reading stuff that she thinks she doesn t want to read as booksellers and by extension librarians a population i am not a member of but respect greatly we are the information gatekeepers the parents turn to in this situation we are the ones to take an abstract range of numbers and turn it into a physical pile of titles and authors we have to differentiate between editions because scores can fluctuate wildly and lexile isn t very informative type the sun also rises into lexile the old scribner edition has a score of 610l the isbn for the reprint isn t found and the modern critical interpretations edition is listed with a score of 1420l confusing right and we are the ones who have to know what stories lay between the covers of those books so we can explain the contents to the parents in almost every customer interaction regarding lexile i have had to find books for a child who reads significantly above grade level at grade level is generally pretty easy and parents with children under grade level often have a list of recommended titles as a starting point for some reason those children who read above grade level don t have many recommendations for reference lexile gives a grade approximation for the score ranges even though the approximate ranges are pretty wide a book or series that is popular among peers isn t often in the right score range for an advanced reader some titles are marked nc meaning a non conforming score higher than intended audience but it s hard to tease those out of a range during a search i ve tried it can get pretty emotional when the child cannot find anything he or she wants to read or that parents will allow them to read that counts for their lexile score the biggest grade to score discrepancy i ve come across was a seventh grade boy and a bit young socially for his age who had a lexile score greater than 1100 his lexile range was approximately 1150 1210 the boy had to read at least five books that semester in his range to pass english and he was already behind his father had done some online research and was at a loss he was having trouble finding content appropriate books in that score range there was also a religious consideration so a lot of recommended fantasy titles were automatically out the boy was very open to reading stephen king who has a lot of high lexile score titles but the idea was vetoed by dad due to language and probably the religious consideration as well dostoevsky was perfectly acceptable to dad but the kiddo really couldn t get excited about it he was into gary paulsen s brian series but that wasn t even close some dumas was in the right range but not the more appealing titles the three musketeers and the man in the iron mask are both under 1000 gary paulsen s my life in dog years was just in range so i was able to interest both parent and child in that i sold them on the hound of the baskervilles and then hit paydirt with the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime the boy had a friend with an asperger like syndrome and they were friends in their advanced math classes whew finally three books and a reasonably happy father but i couldn t help but think what are they going to do as the child continues through the school system you re probably wondering where i m going with all this since this isn t quite the usual tone for a tis the season post well i really just wanted to put this out there to maybe help save parents children and teachers and possibly other booksellers and librarians some grief i would like to ask school administrators and teachers to work with children and parents to come up with lists of possible books appropriate to both grade level and lexile range and i understand if you do this and the parents forget are obstinate or leave the list at home when they head to the bookstore for parents lexile provides a map with lists of titles for score ranges it s a good place to start when trying to find books i would also like to ask teachers to be less rigid when assigning lexile related reading assignments because this seems to be where children have the most trouble i have so often helped kids who love love to read but have found that none of the books they find appealing count for a reading assignment because they aren t in the right lexile range or have no score because either the book is too new or has an un evaluable format these kids feel disheartened that they re failing that the things they love are unimportant and i hate seeing their disappointment when i ve gone through the entire stack of books they ve picked out and not a single one was in the right range i had a little girl just burst into tears once when i told her the last olympian the book she so desperately wanted to read had a score of 620l she had to have books greater than 700 or her teacher wouldn t count them at all please let children with high lexile ranges count some of those lower scoring books toward their reading assignment say an exchange of two non lexile books for one lexile book not to exceed half the assignment or perhaps give them extra credit for those books as long as they re keeping up with the lexile assignment if you re already doing that bravo these kids are reading because they love reading and they re already reading outside of school which is sort of the point of those types of assignments i rarely hear of a child being penalized for reading above his or her range so i think there s a compromise that can be reached for those kids who want to read but have trouble finding books due to age or content so bring your lexile ranges to me and i and my fellow booksellers and librarians will do our best to find what you like to read as well as what you need to read if we re very good that book will fill both requirements tis that sort of season posted by melissa ward at 2 35 pm 5 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels tis the season customers 31 october 2011 tis the season but it s only halloween yes two count em two customers asked where our christmas sales were at in the store for the love of all that is little baby jesus it s halloween gah also i have dealt with myriad but i need to have that book read by tomorrow for school why don t you have it whiners standard answer because your fellow classmates beat you here the university jcollege high school doesn t order your course books for this store and it is available as an ebook i need a button that says i am totally not responsible for your irresponsibility other random gems a dance with dragons is so not available in paperback yes i know it weighs a lot and isn t cheap i have no control over either if we are talking books made of paper ink and paste if we are talking ebooks it s maybe half the cost and the weight of only tens of thousands of bytes your choice i don t care about your political views i sell the books i am highly unlikely to read book there are so many other better things to read i mended all the plush in the store last week and sewed all the hermit crabs back into their shells totally worth it to watch customers warily approach the info desk when the bookseller standing there is armed with needles pins and oversize dressmakers shears i forgot the embroidery snips oops and barricaded by a pile of plush posted by melissa ward at 11 31 pm 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels tis the season customers 24 january 2011 when i have to huh as a bookseller there are days when the impulse to laugh has to be squelched mercilessly bad for business evidence the first a customer on the telephone wants a copy of the autobiography of mark twain which we as well as most of the bookstores online sources etc in this country are completely sold out of due to small print runs vs high demand you can get it electronically like i did if you want to read it and want to either a save money or b save time or both i explain this to the customer who needs this for a christmas present today it s january so someone s advance planning has failed i apologise offer to hold the audiobook we have on hand only to be ordered to call the other bookstores in the area so in the interests of good customer service i put the customer on hold checked the online inventory found that...