The local paper ran a feature on the teen dystopia series to coincide with the release of the first movie. The front page photo was of a twelve-year-old of indeterminate gender: messy, medium-length hair and no makeup, but its name is Jade so we'll hope it's a girl. Jade is part of a local middle school's "Book Bites" club. Hey, kids reading, that's good, right? Until you get toward the end of the article and realize that all these kids with their paperbacks open in front of them aren't actually reading; they are, in fact, listening to a librarian read aloud to them. That's right. Twelve-year-olds with a book which is, I presume, of an age-appropriate reading level have joined a book club to have a librarian read aloud to them like they're preschoolers.
Runner-up for most depressing part of the article: A direct quote from a junior high librarian:
"When I first started teaching, we didn't have hardly any zombie books...."
Parse that, grammarians: "We didn't have hardly any." From a librarian knowing she was being quoted in the newspaper. I would hope that back in the day the editors would have cleaned that up for her or paraphrased the information to avoid embarrassing her, but I'm guessing they didn't have a problem with the grammar themselves. There's no [sic].
