Do you have wrestling books?

Ah, the struggle between being a hip librarian and one who wishes to impart positive values upon one's students...

Last year I got rid of the dozen or so Captain Underpants books, not because I disapprove of them, but because I was sick of every kid obsessing over whether we had them or not. With 1000 kids and 12 copies, they were usually out...and then the kids get disappointed and don't wan to to look for alternative reading. It was just easier to say, No we don't have them.

The other issue was with "wrestling books." Basically, we had about half a dozen biographies of WWF champions, you know, what they call "high interest" books. Which I'm all for. Except, that say, one fifth grader would borrow a book on "The Rock" or "Stone Cold Steve Austin" and next thing you know every boy, from first grade on, wants to borrow "wrestling books," being that their parents plunk them down in front of the TV and its zillion channels (these families get free lunch because they are poor yet every single house has a satellite attached to it).

Well, my first thought was, get rid of the wrestling books too so they stop harping on them. But then I thought, hey, what if I can turn this to the library's advantage...

So, this is the experiment...as part of my newly acquired classroom management skills, I developed an incentive program. Making fake "library dollars" each kid earns them for completing tasks, following directions, good behavior, etc. For every five library dollars earned, the student can choose either to spend it on borrowing a book from the "special shelf" or continue saving it (25 dollars gets a nice prize). Anyway, among the books on the "special shelf" are about 20 "wrestling" books. I use the W word loosely because I also ordered martial arts books for kids (eg. tai chi, aikido or tae kwon do for kids) hoping they might serve as a healthy counterbalance to WWF shenanigans. (Forgive me Theo for lumping aikido in with "wrestling"--it is all for the sake of getting my kids to read! and maybe not worship violence). Anyway, to borrow these books, they have to at the very least not model themselves on "The Exterminator" while they are in the library! Let's see if it works....