Born Librarian

Five Questions I asked at Midwinter

2012-01-27T20:34:00.000-08:00

For Five Things on a Friday, I was going to talk about five things I took away from the recent ALA Midwinter conference in Dallas. I'm still processing so that will have to wait. Instead I want to tell you about the five questions I took with me to the conference. These were questions I asked in discussion groups, at dinners, and hoped to find answers and inspiration from my colleagues.

I always go excited about certain sessions, or speakers, but knowing the real treasure of knowledge happens at dinner in a random restaurant or conversations between formal presentations. Here is what I asked and learned. All of these could be (and still might be) a post on their own, so I am trying to keep it brief.

What do you do when patrons have the latest gadget but no supportive equipment?
This has been bugging me for a few years now. Parents, especially in the lower socio-economic bracket, will buy a cool gadget for their children. But many of them don't work without a computer to synch them with, or an itunes account and credit card. And the library has computers locked down so tight that we can not download the needed software onto them. It's crushing to tell kids that I can't make their new present work. Brainstormed this with several people. More solutions later.
How does a library manage large numbers of teenagers?
I've talked about my afterschool hours before. I didn't get a ton of new solutions, but I did get reminded that all of our staff needs a break. I can feel in my soul and see in my staff's faces how very weary, jaded and burnt out we all are. Our busiest hours are 3pm to 5pm so I try to stack reference desk shifts for 2pm-4pm and 4pm-6pm so no one does the entirety of the worst time, and people get a break. Still pondering, especially how do I keep my staff from burning out?
What new book(s) are you excited about in 2012?
I primarily asked this of publishers as I visited their booth/dinner/breakfast. Partially spying for comittee work, partially to know what will excite my patrons in the next year. (Confession: I heard someone else ask this the first day and stole it.)
Would you still advise people to go to library school?
This is a question I ponder a lot. Short answer: I probably wouldn't. Long answer to come, at some point. More people said they would not recommed library school than those that would. Of course I didn't ask at any of the library school booths.
What is Newbery going to require of me?
I am scared and overwhelmed by the responsibility of being on the Newbery committee. That was my primary goal at conferene to understand better my responsibilities. And I do. I'm still overwhelmed but now I'm only quite nervous instead of extremely scared. There are a lot of books to read

Five Things on a Friday - Conference Survival Tips

2012-01-13T16:43:00.000-08:00

Are you getting excited about the ALA Midwinter Meeting? Packing? Perusing the vendor list? Playing with the conference scheduler? Constantly typing MidWinter and having to correct yourself to Midwinter? That last one might just be me.

I love conferences. I run myself from 6am (first breakfast meeting) to 1am (drinking with friends) and sleep as little as humanly possible. I catch up with old friends/colleagues and meet new ones. The energy, excitement, and knowledge are better than any form of caffeine. However just going into it can be really draining. There are loads of tips and techniques for making the most of a conference. Humbly I submit mine. I really thought I had written this post (or one like this) before, but I couldn't find it in my archives.

Before going: schedule multiple sessions for time slots
The conference scheduler provided by ALA has been better and worse over the years, but it works fairly well right now. I always browse and choose as many sessions as sound remotely interesting. I'll put highest priority on the one I think sounds the most interesting. However I often find that once I'm there another sessions sounds more interesting. This saves me from frantically flipping through a conference schedule or trying to pull up the (overloaded) website trying to remember what that other session was. Go ahead and print out your schedule. I export my schedule to my phone, but I'm always prepared for catastrophic technology failure.
Stay hydrated
Bring your own reusable water bottle. Fun travel tip: you can take an empty water bottle (even one of those metal ones) through airport security and fill it up with water once you're through. Carry that water bottle the entire time, including in the conference hall. Refill it often. Drink a ton of water. You need the fluids. The refillable water bottle is better on your budget and better for the earth then buying water.
Carry snacks
I have low sugar issues, so this is one of my life mantras. But even if you don't, it's easy to get caught up in the fun of conference and forget to eat (or run out of time). Stock up on some granola bars, dried fruit, nuts, etc., before you leave and you'll avoid getting lightheaded and thinking the $4 conference center muffin is a good idea. (Also true for airports). As a side note, get your coffee before you go to the conference center. Lines are too long. It's not worth it.
You need more business cards
I only took four once because I wasn't thinking. Don't forget them. Digital era and all, they're still going to be what everyone asks you for.
Be ready to organize paperwork
Speaking of business cards, you're going to get a lot of them. Turn the card over and scribble a note about why you talked to them. Put them in a dedicated place for just received business cards. Whatever you do don't put them with your business cards. (That way lies madness and embarrassment when you hand out the wrong card.) An envelope put in your purse/briefcase/messenger bag will do nicely, but you can go fancier. I always have receptacles organized for all my paperwork. A folder with the printouts I will need (the schedule, hotel and flight confirmation, registration info, etc.). Additionally I have a folder for handouts and an envelope for storing receipts. This makes my life post-conference about 100 times easier.

There you go. Those are my hopefully practical and helpful conference tips. See you there!

Management Lessons from History

2012-01-11T17:31:00.000-08:00

I love history, historical fiction, period dramas, and old movies. Recently I've been looking to them for management advice and techniques.

One of our biggest issues is (as mentioned in previous posts) the large numbers of teenagers. It's a good problem to have but 100+ teenagers in the library can be overwhelming to staff and other patrons. Normally (as I have to explain to some cranky old person* at least once a week) it isn't that any one person is too loud, it is only that there are a lot of people.

Sometimes it is that one person or one group of people are being too loud. If we can not easily identify which kid is the lynch pin and repeated general warnings do not work, we go to one of these techniques.

Decimate
In the original meaning of decimation, a group of Roman soldiers were punished by drawing lots. One out of every ten was thus randomly selected to be killed. Horrifyingly, he was executed by the nine not chosen.
My form of decimation is a little more humane. If a group is consistently loud and will not quiet/calm down despite repeated warnings, then they get one last warning that the next time some of them will be asked to leave. We then go down the line and count them off (usually by 3's) and kick out a random group (either the 1's, 2's, or 3's). It's surprisingly effective. We only have to do it once and kids then learn to be calmer when we ask them. (We don't ask for perfect silence just a degree of calm and no shouting.)
And as my sister pointed out when I told her this method (after she finished laughing) you can make sure that the number you choose "randomly" kicks out that lynch pin kid. She knows me really well.

I am Spartacus!
If decimation doesn't work, we try this. If they won't be calmer and can't stop hitting/screaming/throwing furniture, just kick out the entire group. Yes even the kid who hasn't been doing as much. It's the same as crucifying everyone if you don't know which is the real Spartacus. We know only one or two kids is tossing the volleyball over the shelves, but we're going to punish everyone. No, it isn't fair. But it does teach you to walk away when you see behavior like that. And in this city, the police can arrest you for hanging around known gang members. Sadly guilt by association is a real thing. We don't use this technique much, but it is very effective when we do.

Two quick techniques to deal with large numbers of teens in the library. We use them sparingly, but they work. In a future blog post, I'll write about my recent obsession with medieval history and the result (hint I'm getting very protective of my sovereignty over my domain).

Happy Reading!

*I wrote this in a cranky moment. A week later and the combined noise of all the teenagers got to me and I snapped. It can be overwhelming and I'm inured to it. It's not only cranky old people who complain, just mostly.

Five Things on a Friday - 2012 Goals

2012-01-06T16:39:00.000-08:00

As a general rule, I dislike resolutions on New Year's. I believe any day is a good day to start something better. Why wait until that one day? Make a decision and follow through. However there is a certain psychological thrill for big round numbers (hence why the 38th birthday isn't a big deal but the 40th is). And a new year appeals to that same sense that appeals to round numbers. It's a good benchmark and a pretty decent time to make goals. So here are my Friday Five professional goals. (For the record I was tempted to write in my official goals "continue to be awesome and don't burn the library down" but I resisted.)

Be on the Newbery Committee
Did I blog about this? I can't recall. I was elected to the 2013 Newbery committee. My term of service is now through next January. I'll read (almost) all the books eligible in 2012 and we will vote and announce the winner at Midwinter conference in January 2013. It's a huge time commitment (bye-bye knitting time) for this year in terms of reading and library conference trips (ALA Midwinter in January 2012 in Dallas, ALA Annual in June 2012 in Anaheim, ALA Midwinter in January 2013 in Seattle). It's not a goal so much as a plan, but it is my first time on an award committee and I'm really excited about it. I'll be blogging in moderation about it.
Teach a class on Craigslist
Last year's email class was fun and definitely served a great purpose. One of the things I do most is help people navigate Craigslist. I used it to sell my old phone this week and I got confused (and I'm good at this type of stuff). I think it would be a really great and helpful program for our patrons. When I do it, I will require that people have a valid email account BEFORE they come to learn about Craigslist. That always seems to surprise people.
Expand our library's community partnerships
Currently our two most valuable partnerships are with the Food Bank of Alaska and Let's Talk Anchorage. The Food Bank provides (as part of a federal program) full meals for some of our youth programming. We're hoping to present on it at the PNLA Conference in August. It's a great partnership but we can always flush it out more. I'd also like to see our library staff explore more partnerships as well.
More audiobooks!
I've been the graphic novel selector for our system for a couple of years now. (I do a bit of additional selecting, managing our leased book plan for best sellers, and spending grant money.) In 2011 I had the chance to place an audiobook order for the standalone audiobook players known as Playaways. This year I will be making all the playaway orders. As an audiobook addict, I'm quite excited!
Take advantage of opportunities. Try something new.
Too often we get comfortable in a routine and we stick to that. I love this library and the work we're doing. I want that to continue. But I also know that we have been open now for a year and a half, long enough to get routines established. When you first open, with a brand new staff, everything is a first, is new, is experimental. I want to keep that feeling as much as possible. We should keep the enthusiasm for the good things strong, toss the stuff that isn't working, always be willing to try something new. Everyday should have as much enthusiasm as that first week. And when an opportunity arrives, find more reasons to say yes than no.

Hat Knitting Frustration

2012-01-05T08:15:00.000-08:00

Warning this is one of the posts that has nothing to do with librarianship and a lot to do with knitting.

I've knit a lot of hats. I'm pretty good at it. Do you hear that? That's hubris. And pride as we know goes before a knitter falling on the floor, weeping and throwing pointed sticks around.

It all started simply. My dad's head is oversized and he has trouble buying a hat that fits him. I thought I would knit him a hat to wear in the winter when he walks the dog. He needs it to keep warm, especially as every year passes and he has less natural coverage up there. He seemed agreeable to this plan. Normally he likes ribbed stocking caps because they stretch to cover his head. I don't like knitting boring stocking ribbed caps because they're boring. Knitted hats should be special. It seemed a bit daring but I chose the Knotty But Nice hat from Knitty. I added a full extra repeat of the cables to make it big enough. It was fun to knit, fairly quick, and turned out lovely. It was mailed to him (mostly) in time for his September birthday.

See how pretty?
Note how the bottom part is wider than it should be? I should have read the comments on Ravelry and done the ribbing down a needle size, the cables up a needle size, and the crown down a needle size. The hat (despite my mods) was too small/too short for Dad's head. Grrr. But it's pretty! (That doesn't count for anything). Yarn is Cascade 220

So I tried again. This time with the Ryan hat in navy blue Ella Rae Classic Superwash (one of my new favorite workhorse yarns). Modified the pattern for worsted weight (basically added a lot of extra pattern repeats and winged the decreases). Made it nice and long so it could be rolled/folded up double over ears. This one was mailed off in the first week of November. It looks lovely, see:

This time Dad thinks it is too big (and too loosely knit).

Now by the rules of statistics and Goldilocks if the first one was too small and the second one was too big, then the third one should be just right. Maybe I'll try that next year. Maybe not.

I knit two other hats for Christmas for D's sisters.

Quest from Knitty in Ella Rae Classic Superwash.

Habitat by Brooklyn Tweed in Cascade 220 Heathers

Those two hats fit well and worked well for their recipients. (I really only bat about 50% success rate at knitting for people other than myself.) Now I'm working on two baby hats and a hat for my knitter group's January hat swap.

I apologize for the poor quality of all these photos, I'm never home during daylight hours this time of year.

Community Dialog on the Occupy Movement

2011-12-30T16:01:00.000-08:00

This fall the Anchorage Public Library was approached by a representative from Alaska Common Ground. Their organization had a grant to start a series of community dialogs and were hoping to partner with the library. And so with the added partner of the University of Alaska Cooperative Extension Service, Let's Talk Alaska was born.

Here I am going to quote our formal introduction:
Let's Talk Anchorage is a joint program of the Anchorage Public Libraries, Alaska Common Ground, and the UAF Cooperative Extension Service. Our vision is a community of citizens who gather easily and often for public dialogue or deliberation on timely topics. LTA can help plan, publicize, and facilitate public gatherings that are welcoming, stimulating, and satisfying.

Our first dialog posed a very simple question: What is the Occupy movement? Without the library or Let's Talk Anchorage taking a stand for or against it, we convened to discuss. The worldwide occupy movement is extremely timely, garners lots of media attention, and has brought their issues to the forefront of our national conversation. Despite all this, there are still many of us (myself included) without a very clear idea of what the Occupy movement is, who they are, what they want, etc. As this event was planned, promoted, and presented I heard over and over again that people wanted to know more. Hey! That's our business as a library! We can do that! And so we did, but we didn't do it alone. We did it with a committee of volunteers, the Let's Talk Anchorage group, facilitators, and others who all pitched in.

This is getting wordy. Let me get down to technical details.

Program Structure
Date: Saturday December 17th; Time: 1pm to 4pm

Set up: 12 tables scattered "randomly" around the room for a World Cafe set up (that is a specific type of facilitated dialog). It turns out I'm not good at setting up tables randomly, I like to line them up in neat rows. Drink table with water, lemonade, coffee, hot water and tea. (I could not keep up with the coffee demands with two 12 cup coffee pots.) Snack table with cookies, crackers, cheese, and mini-oranges. (Snacks and drinks provided by the aforementioned grant money.) The participant tables were covered in butcher paper and participants were provided with markers for writing. (We also had flowers at each table, a very nice touch.)

The idea of World Cafe is that there is no "front" of the room, but we did have a video screen down to show a short film. We begun with quick introductions. The first film was a collection of clips about the Occupy movement edited together as an introduction. Then various members of the Occupy Anchorage group stood up and talked about why they were involved in Occupy Anchorage.

Then a break, an introduction to the World Cafe format and we broke into small group discussions. Each table had a facilitator and ideally 4 to 5 participants. For each 20 minute discussion time period a different question was posed. The facilitator was not there for their own opinions but to keep things civil, flowing, and prevent filibusters.

We framed the discussion around three questions. At the end of each 20 minute period, all the participants got up and moved to a new table for the next question discussion. (Facilitators stayed put). The idea was to find an entirely new table of people to talk to, to mix and remix the participants.

Our three questions:
What about this movement resonates with me?
What about this movement confuses or concerns me?
What do I want to explore and/or discuss more?

Then there was another break and an opportunity for group reflections and a closing.

Outcomes
We had about a two week lead time (or slightly less) for advertising this. I didn't know what to expect. We put out tables for 50, crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. 48 people came! They were primarily Occupy movement supporters (even if not involved in the project) and self-proclaimed "liberals", but we had a legislator and a legislative candidate (Republican nonetheless) come as well.

The evaluation forms were overwhelmingly positive as were the comments I received directly from participants. People were very glad we had the program and excited about the possibility of more. From a library point of view, we were thrilled with the turn out and response of the participants. From the Let's Talk Anchorage point of view, we were thrilled as well.

Overall the entire project was a win. Where there things we learned? Yes. Will we do things differently? Yes. But that is true of every program. We proved civic dialogs will work in our community, there is a market for them. The library has a great reputation as a neutral space and is the perfect venue for this type of community conversation. And such a conversation perfectly aligns with the library's mission to facilitate information transfer. I look forward to working further with Let's Talk Anchorage and hosting more community conversations at our various locations.

Five Things on a Friday - Books As Gifts

2011-12-16T16:24:00.000-08:00

I love books, but I don't always love books as gifts. That's because I'm rather picky and if you give me a book then I feel obligated to read it. It bumps something else I'd rather read more off the queue and then there is the resentment and the awkwardness when you ask me about it. This doesn't always happen, sometimes I love the book and all is well. Sometimes not. So tread lightly. That caveat aside, books are fantastic gifts. Here are some of my favorites as today's Friday five.

FYI - I'm linking to Amazon but I'm not on the program where I get proceeds if you buy from that link; it's just the easiest option. Please consider supporting your local book store.

The Lego Ideas Book by Daniel Lipkowitz
200 pages of ideas (not instructions just inspiration) in beautiful large full color to inspire your favorite builder. While this seems an obvious for a child, I know several grown adults who have some fun diversions with legos.
Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois
The first of these cookbooks (Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day) changed my life. I love to bake bread but work full time. I really do make bread throughout the week now. (It's easy, you make the dough and refrigerate it between the first and second rise, pull it out, give it a second rise, and deliciousness follows.) I love that these books give you all sorts of geeky technical details (what type of flour with how much glutens/proteins requires more/less water) that let me learn why a recipe works or what went wrong. And it is amazingly versatile bread. The first book is my most used book in my kitchen. I pulled this third book from the library the day we received it and fell in love immediately. With flatbread you skip the second rise and get to yumminess faster. I made pizzas for two. We each got our own pizza (important since I'm allergic to tomatoes and rather a downer to eat pizza with) and I followed the simple directions to make marinara and pesto sauces. Incredible. In later days the dough became breadsticks to go with soup. If someone you know cooks or bakes, then you can't go wrong with this book. It's on my wish list and if I don't get it, I'll probably buy it.
Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living by Rachel Kaplan and K. Rudy Blume
DIY, homesteading, gardening, all of these things are becoming more popular as our economy continues to sink and more people are concerned about the environment, chemicals in their food, and a sustainable lifestyle. This book is a great overview of a range of skills. I already knit, crochet, bake, and garden (poorly). I'd love to have some chickens and figure out canning. Maybe in 2012.
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Fiction taste varies so much that I hesitate to suggest anything. However Zafon is the best author that I've discovered in the last five years. Spanish Magical Realism is my favorite genre. This, his first book translated into English, is an amazing story of literature, hauntings, mystery, and love. I can not recommend it enough.
A blank book
Know a kid who loves to draw? Get him a nice, artist quality sketch book. Someone like me who journals? A pretty journal. (But not me this year, I'm stocked up for several years.) A forgetful type? One of those little books that fits in a pocket and comes with a pen. (This is all presuming they don't have a smart phone.) Your religious aunt/friend/neighbor will appreciate a prayer journal. Even if they are swimming in tech, there is still a sense of magic about a really beautiful, well constructed blank book with quality paper. It just itches to be filled with poetry, sketches, collages, thoughts, ramblings, and all the other detritus we leave for those who follow us.

Five Things on a Friday - Holiday Displays

2011-12-09T14:02:00.000-08:00

I love book displays! I love making them, I love browsing them, love them in general. However this time of year, they can get fairly repetitive. There are a ton of books (for kids and adults) specifically geared to the holidays (yes I'm looking at our display) and those should be put on display. After all those mystery writers wrote a special holiday version of their normal cat/dog/antique store owner/antique store owner with a pet cat solves a mystery series and it deserves to be read* (because your library spent money on it and you would like return on investment). Beyond that obvious display, here are five other options. Some obvious, some less so.

FYI - I'm assuming you're already doing your best to put up world holiday traditions, especially those that are celebrated by different ethnic groups within your area of service. These are more Western/Judeo-Christian related ideas, but you should stick up all holidays as you can (we have like 3 books on Diwali but I'm working on it).

Entertaining
Here is where you put those cooking books (and yes this time of year a display on just cookbooks wouldn't be amiss, even a display on just cookie cookbooks), but you can also put all those decorate/make gifts/all sorts of stuff for the holiday books in the 745s. (Better Homes and Gardens puts one out almost every year as does Martha Stewart, Debbie Mumm, Mary Engelbreit and others of that ilk). But also put up books on general entertaining tips, cocktail recipes, even fashion so people can look fantastic at those holiday parties. Then checkout a cocktail recipe and cookie cookbook for yourself. You need it.
Classics
There is something about this time of year that puts people in the mood for a classic. Of course definitions of classic may vary. For many the holidays are about nostalgia and they can convince themselves that this is the year they will finally read a Charles Dickens novel. I'm not saying they're actually going to read Great Expectations, but they'll probably check it out, leave on the bedside table for 2.5 weeks, realize they're way too busy this time of year and just rewatch The Muppets' A Christmas Carol instead. Or you can save this for after the new year and try "Start the New Year with an Old Favorite" as a display.
Zombies and True-Crime
Even Carol Christmas gets a little overwhelmed with all the music, store displays, holiday specials, preparations, and sugar cookie highs until all she really wants is to murder that chick at Wal-Mart who stole the last 3-pack of double-sided tape. So this year, consider an anti-Christmas display. You'll appeal to both the Scrooges and the burntout Pollyannas.
Colors
Grab all the books you can with a red cover (or mostly red), or green, or blue. It's fun. Don't make a sign, just line them on the shelf and watch the people react. Pure magic. Super easy. And pretty!
"Cold" books
Here are cool books to read by a warm fire! Anything with the word "cold", "chilly", "winter", "snow", etc in the title, bonus points if it has snow on the cover. A few sample titles: Cold Mountain, Snow Falling on Cedars, The Snow Angel, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, Chill Factor, and so forth.

Any other slightly off the wall suggestions for December/Holiday book displays?

*but not read by me because I still don't like mysteries

Five Things on a Friday - Management Challenges

2011-11-04T16:41:00.000-07:00

I've been a manager of a library ~~branch~~, sorry, a neighborhood library for two months past one year. These have been the biggest challenges for me.

Managing a position I just vacated
My staff consists of three support personnel (two clerks and one associate librarian) and one youth services librarian. Immediately before this position, I was a youth services librarian. I didn't realize how difficult it would be to supervise that position. Every choice they made, I compared to what I would have done. I held them up to the standards I held myself which wasn't fair if they were a brand new professional. It was the position I am the most familiar with so it is the easiest for me to criticize. It means I could be uniquely poised to be a mentor. In the first few months especially I had to physically step away, recognize that this person was a different person and those different choices were not bad, just different.
Delegating
I'm a control freak and I'm used to not supervising people. So for me delegating has two hurdles: first remembering that I can delegate, that there are people I can ask to do these things. Second, I need to let go and trust those people to do it well. It's hard, but necessary as work piles up on my desk. I think I'm getting better. I just handed over the volunteer applications to someone else and told her she was now in charge of the volunteer program.
Solving every crisis
I like to problem solve. I like being asked questions. But there are days when I don't want to be where the buck stops. I rather suspect this is the same reason my mother used to occasionally lock herself in the bathroom when we were little. Fortunately as my competence grows, my feelings of being overwhelmed are getting farther and farther apart. I haven't wanted to lock my office and hide under my desk for at least a week now.
Keeping track of emails
I've always been a master of organization, but I was totally unprepared for the exponential way my email would increase with the jump to management. A few missives got lost in the inbox. I've gotten better about cross filing and creating reminders. I've also erased most traces of a line between my personal life and work life. My work email and calendar now alert on my (personal) iPhone. I can always turn it off if I go on vacation, but I'm a constantly connected personality type and it helps me to keep track and focused with what is happening.
Meetings
If I underestimated by half the numbers of emails, I underestimated the number of meetings by an order of degree normally only seen when talking about distances between stars. Supervisor meetings, library branch manager meetings, community meetings to represent the library, so on and so forth. There are days I'm out of the library more often than I am in. I never minded meetings when I attended two a month. I mind them more now.

Customer Service Lessons

2011-10-19T15:47:00.000-07:00

I'm not the first librarian to look for customer services lessons from the private sector. I doubt I'm even the 100th. And yet I care greatly about customer service so much so that when I'm out in the world being a customer, I try to pick up tips and tricks. Here are three that I have noticed recently.

Long Lines At The Bank
One of the more random facets of my job is to take the deposit to the bank a couple of times a week. Somedays bank lines are short, some days bank lines are long. I don't actually mind, it's time I use to catch up on my words with friends games. But for people less patient (or less iPhone addicted) than me lines are irritating. (Before you think I'm a model of patience, you should see me at the post office). Every single time a person walks into the bank, one of the tellers looks up, makes eye contact, greets them and lets them know that they will be with them soon. Even if that person knows they have to join the twelve person long line, they still feel better because someone acknowledged them. It's so simple, so easy, so FREE to implement.

Hand Offs at the Apple Store
This Monday I went to the Apple store to update my iPhone to the 4S. My cunning plan to wait three days so it would be less crowded did not take into account that this is Elders and Youth conference and downtown was crowded. Still I approached the first blue shirt (apple employee) I found free. He radio'd and found me a phone upgrade specialist. When the new blue shirt came up, the first one handed me off to him by name. He literally said "this is Eugene who will help you". Eugene introduced himself, shook my hand and then walked me through the process, helped me find a dock, and even choose a new case. When it came time to do the set up, he introduced me to a new blue shirt, "Elizabeth this Andrea who will help you with set up. Andrea, Elizabeth seems fairly familiar with the product and operating system" Andrea also introduced herself and off we went. (Set up I could have handled on my own and only took a few seconds which is I think the coded message Eugene was passing on to Andrea.)

At no point was I abandoned, no one pointed at someone else and said "go ask her", no one said "that isn't my job". It was always, "let me help you find the right person". Every hand off included an introduction of me, my needs, and the person I was being handed to. Once again this is simple, easy and FREE to introduce at the library. When a shelver is asked a question they can't answer, don't point vaguely in the direction of the reference desk, walk the patron over and say this woman is trying to find out what percentage of US households owned cats in 1989?*

Dad Gets Mad at AT&T
My dad hates his cell phone. He wants a phone that comes with an instrution book and he's still mad that his last phone (purchased three years ago) said it came with an instruction book, but really came with a pamphlet and a link to a website. That phone died and he went to AT&T because he's been paying $5 insurance/month on it for three years. To get it fixed was a $50/deductible. That pushed my poor father over the edge and he did not have a good reaction. He complained about everything, incluing the lack of an instruction book, and was prepared to storm out of the building. The customer service rep got a manager who found my father glaring at racks of new phones (Dad didn't admit he was glaring at them, but I know him really well). Together they worked out a compromise, got my father a temporary phone and promised to work with him after he returns from his vacation.

They also transferred his numbers and other data to his new phone. He then complained he couldn't get the photos off his phone. They offered to transfer them to his new phone, but it didn't solve the problem that he doesn't know how to get the pictures off the phone (a complaint he has had for the last several years). They were emailed to him. He left the store with an entirely reversed opinion of AT&T.

How does this apply to the library? Be gentle. Forgive first time offenses when you can. Work with people. We (like most libraries) don't let people save items to our computers. We do keep an extra thumb drive at the desk so people can save their items (usually resumes) temporarily to email them to themselves. I also spend a decent amount of time teaching to use Google Docs. It's amazing how easy this is and how grateful people become.

There are my musings lately on customer service.

*True story: in my reference class in library school we had to find answers to 50 "typical" reference questions and explain our sources/processes for getting them. This is the question that took me the longest to answer. No one in my actual reference career has yet asked me anything even remotely similar.

Five Things on a Friday - Making a Difference

2011-10-14T14:35:00.000-07:00

I'm a bleeding heart (not a bleeding heart liberal, just a bleeding heart). Of course I do what I do because I really want to help people. I care deeply about my community and its future. The library, particularly a library in the lower socio-economic neighborhood, is uniquely positioned to make a difference.

I consider myself to work in an education-adjacent field (not in a school, but next door both literally and spiritually) and fairly up to date. However I was shocked to learn that the Anchorage graduation rate is hovering around 70%. And even more appalled to hear Anchorage citizens saying they don't want to pay for schools because they don't have children. I don't have children (at this point in my life), but I'm happy to pay for schools. I'm invested in having well-educated doctors in the next 40 years and also in having a barista who can make proper change. I know that businesses and industries don't want to build in communities where they can not recruit qualified employees. Most importantly schools are cheaper than prisons. And more than 61% of the prison population does not have a high school diploma. Healthy schools=healthy community.

United Way of Anchorage has launched a fantastic new effort called 90 by 2020, to increase graduations rates to 90% by 2020. I've attended some of their community conversations. On their site there are 10 simple things (based on research, including interviews with teens) you can do to show kids you care. The entire community, even those of us without kids, can help. It's a bit easier for me since I work in a public library, but for my Friday Five, here are five of the ten simple things I am doing.

Smile At Me
When I see a teen or young person, I smile, I make eye contact. That simple. At the library or at the grocery store. Too many teens receive hostile looks (clearly they're here to make trouble, steal, they're in a gang) or are ignored. Simply acknowledging their presence as you would any other human you share the planet with can be powerful.
Learn My Name
I know some of the teens at the library and greet them by name. And I'm trying to learn more. It's cool. The teens are asking my name and making an effort to say hello to me by name. They want to know you as much as you want to know them. (Well assuming you want to know them, and I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here.) I'm even trying to greet the neighbor's teens by names as I pass them.
Catch Me Doing Something Right
A lot of times we focus on the discipline issues, the 10% of the population that cause 90% of the problems. We don't pay any attention to the kids that are doing it right. In and around this library (and neighborhood) we have a HUGE litter problem. It's epidemic. We've bought trashcans and put them every 10 feet in the library and strategically located immediately outside the doors. Still I see kids toss a candy wrapper on the ground when they're within arms throw of the trash can. It's infuriating. So now when I see a kid throwing their trash into a garbage bin I very publicly thank them.
Answer My Questions
Duh. This is the entire point of the library reference desk. But we all need to remember that kids and teens as patrons are as important as adults. I've seen staff members skip over or short change teens while having long in-depth conversations with adults about the latest greatest mystery. Every patron in front of you is an individual deserving of respect and your full attention.
Be Available
After school my library is swarmed with kids from the nearby schools. It is not uncommon for the kids to number in the triple digits while I can count my staff on one hand. It's not easy to be available to them. Sometimes I'm running from question to question, discipline situation to drama/crisis and I don't look available. I look (and legitimately am) busy. And when it's over I'm sometimes burnt out. All I want to do is hide in my office and work quietly on a project on my computer. But I try my best. When I'm in my office, I leave my door open. My office is in the front of the library and I greet kids who come in with a smile. Occasionally they just want to chat a bit. That's okay too. (For a little while at least). And as I do my walk throughs of the library, I try not to just zoom past looking for discipline issues, but to slow down and engage with the teens.

So that's what I'm doing. I encourage you to look at the site and think about what you can do.

No you may not have a pony

2011-08-30T16:11:00.000-07:00

One of my jobs as library manager is to respond to patron comment cards. I email the patron a response directly (if they provided their email) and put the typed response up on the bulletin board. I have a love/hate relationship with patron comment cards.

I love that patrons have taken their time to share feedback with us.

I hate it when we have failed them.

I love it when they're praising us.

I hate it when I have to say no to a new service that they want. These are usually things that other libraries offer (ie fax service) that we don't or can't afford.

I love the ridiculousness of some of their requests. Some of the things they ask are completely out of the realm of possibility. They want me to do a major renovation to the building, stop the sidewalks from ever having snow (we're in Anchorage; we do get them shovelled, but some accumulation is inevitable), double my library staff, and so forth. I had one patron complaining because the library staff did not remember her personal email address password. Then there are the people who would prefer me to change basic human nature and stop the teenagers from congregating in groups. So far the requests have stopped just short of asking me to bend the laws of physics. But someday someone is going to ask that I make the sun shine for longer.

When I answer these comment cards I feel like the parent living in the middle of the city explaining to their urban child why they can not have a pony.

Keep It Positive

2011-07-28T14:17:00.000-07:00

It's easy to focus on the negative, not just for librarians but for society as a whole. However I don't write a society-as-a-whole blog, I write a librarian blog. Too many of our behavior guidelines for patrons focus on the negative. You can't do this, you can't do that. Of course it is (usually) quicker to list the prohibited behaviors rather than all of the allowed behaviors. And that might be acceptable in policies ~~but it isn't acceptable in daily staff behavior~~. (Oops, that's me focusing on a negative, let's try that again.) But there's a better way to deal with the public daily.

Focusing on the negative, the forbidden, the prohibited can lead to a combative atmosphere between librarians and patrons. They feel like we're always waiting to "catch" them doing something wrong and staff feels like patrons are pushing to see how much they can get away with. It's not fun, not fun for staff, not fun for patrons, not fun at all. This combative atmosphere can be true with any patron but seems to mostly manifest in our interactions with teenagers.

At my library, we're trying a different approach. Rather than focus on the negative behavior, we are encouraging a positive alternative. Here's a few examples:

Instead of don't run, we say walk please!
How many DVDs can I check out? Not only five but rather up to five!
The sign could say: No Food or Drink Allowed! but instead it says: Food and Drink Free Zone: bottled water welcome
Teens getting noisy and unruly? Don't tell them to quiet down, ask them to be a little calmer

Now clearly this won't work in every situation. Some behavior is egregious that it must be immediately corrected. (I have been known to order in no uncertain terms a kid to stop punching another kid.) However 90% of patron interactions can be handled with a positive twist. It's surprising how quickly this can change the tone of your library and improve the morale of everyone, patrons and staff.

Combining Passions

2011-06-30T15:32:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has been paying attention by now has realized two things. 1) I love being a librarian. 2) I love to knit and crochet. And now I shall combine those two.

Have you heard of Yarnbombing? (That blog isn't the only one. Go Google it. A Google images search is even more fun. It's a real thing, getting bigger all the time.

Look at these bike racks outside the Berkeley Public Library

It's not quite yarnbombing, but a library in the UK created a knitted garden that is an amazing and ongoing intergenerational community art project.

Somewhere in these stories a project for my library was born. This fall is the 25th anniversary of the Loussac Library. To celebrate that we are inviting the public to knit or crocheting hats to decorate the statues and busts of famous authors throughout the library.

We are calling this Hats Off To Loussac Library. Hats can be dropped off between August 1st and September 5th at any Anchorage Public Library location. They will be on display between August 15th and September 17th at Loussac Library. After the anniversary, all hats will be donated to charities.
Click for more information

Happy Knitting! Happy Crocheting! And as always, Happy Reading! (It might be fun to listen to an audio book while knitting and/or crocheting a hat. That's my plan.)

What if it's in my pants?

2011-06-15T14:19:00.000-07:00

Conversation I just had with a library patron, a regular. He's a 10 year-old boy who walks to the library everyday with his 12 year-old brother, uses the computer for as long as he can, hangs around other kids using the computers, and then goes home. They both have library cards, but they don't bring them. This means I log them onto the computers instead of them being able to do it themselves. It's not really a big deal except when they make me redo the reservation three times so they can sit at a specific computer. That led to this conversation.

Me: You know this would go a lot quicker if you brought your library card. You could log yourself into whatever computer you wanted.
Kid: What if it's in my pants?
Me: Your library card?
Kid: Yeah, what if it's in my pants?
Me: The pants you're wearing right now?
Kid: No, other pants.
Me: Like pants at home?
Kid: Yeah.
Me: Okay, tomorrow, before you come to the library, take your library card out of the other pants and put it in the pants you're wearing.
Kid: Okay, yeah.
Me: You're on computer #6.

I don't know if he was making a very lame 10 year-old boy attempt to embarrass me (it's in my pants!) or he was just confused. Either way, a slight failure to connect.

And then I taught a 40 year-old man how to double click. Yep. A day in my glamorous life as a neighborhood library manager.

Five Things on a Friday - Strong Women

2011-05-20T16:16:00.000-07:00

Occasionally strong women rather get the shaft from history. Their contemporaries may judge them and latter historians may assign the worst possible viewpoint to their motivations and actions. I'm not a radical feminist, but I do know that in a man's world, a woman is judged twice harshly. Never did I set out to do this, but lately I've read a lot of books written by female authors relooking at some of the famously strong women of history.

Notorious Victoria: the life of Victoria Woodhull, uncensored by Mary Gabriel
Before I picked up this book, I had never heard of Victoria Woodhull. She was one of the early suffragettes, was extremely successful with her sister on Wall Street as the first female brokers, edited a newspaper, and most impressively was the first woman to run for President of the United States. So why then do we remember her contemporaries Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and not her? Well those aforementioned ladies at first hailed her as one of the leading lights of the suffragette movement, and then dropped all support for her. While she was campaigning for women's right to vote, she also campaigned for some more out-there ideals such as free love, workers rights (in the Karl Marx sense), and spiritualism. Previously she had worked as a medium and spiritualist. Those views were a little too far afield for the suffragettes who tended to be fairly straitlaced Christians. And so Woodhull was dropped from the suffragette movement and from most history books as anything but a footnote.
Eleanor of Aquitaine: a life by Alison Weir
Eleanor of Aquitaine was the richest and most important heiress of her day. By birth she controlled large areas, then by marriage she would be Queen of France and later Queen of England. Throughout her life she was a patron for artists and writers of her day as well as an accomplished politician. Never was she content to sit quietly in a corner doing needlework, but rather she actively participated in a crusade. Eventually she was imprisoned for her meddlesome ways, by her husband for encouraging her son to rebel against him. After his death, she ruled as regent for her children and continued to plan marriages, alliances, and other matters of state up until her death in her 80s.
Lucrezia Borgia: life, love, and death in Renaissance Italy by Sarah Bradford
One of the most famous villains in history, or at least that's how we remember her. What's harder to see is the woman who was intelligent and capable, much at the mercy of her father's plays for power, and worked to turn situations she was thrust into to her advantage. However her name became forever linked with the worst abuses of power by her family, even those she was not involved with or had no control over. That is not to say that she wasn't ambitious for herself, only that she is not the pure evil her name has become a synonym for. Highly fascinating book, and subject. If you want to take the easy way out, Showtime has a new series following the Borgias, but I can't promise their portrayal will be balanced.
Cleopatra: a life by Stacy Schiff
Yes, I have mentioned this book before. I'm still reading it on my Nook, almost done, and still loving it. When you think about Cleopatra, words like temptress, seductress, beautiful come to mind. Perhaps what should spring to mind is politically astute, powerful, smart, ambitious, and doing her best in a desperate situation. Her history was written by those who defeated her in a culture that viewed women as political property to be traded in marriage not as able to rule. It is amazing to look at her story and think, she didn't seduce Caesar in a wanton play for power; she was trapped with him in a castle during a war, fighting for both their lives. They had a lot in common, it was inevitable. It's great to be able to toss out the Shakespeare, Elizabeth Taylor version of Cleopatra and see a real woman, not perfect, but doing her best and better than many of us would have done.
East to the Dawn: the life of Amelia Earhart by Susan Butler
Definitely not a vilified female, Amelia Earhart is the other extreme, she's been sainted in our cultural remembrance. However our common mythos about her is "daredevil pilot, flew a lot, broke some records, disappeared in the Pacific Ocean". That story, especially that ending, has overshadowed many other fantastic achievements in her lifetime. She was a dedicated social worker, spending much of her time with poor and immigrants. Earhart helped promote the idea of commercial aviation at a time when flying for travel was not considered feasible; without her we might not have the aviation travel industry as we know it. And of course who can forget her many feats in promoting the rights of women as pilots, including helping to found the 99s. I listened to this biography on audio and it completely changed my mind about Amelia Earhart. I would still put her on any hero/heroine list, but for completely different reasons.

Why I Don't Read Mysteries

2011-05-18T16:05:00.000-07:00

When people ask me what I read, I always say "anything but a mystery". And it's true. I don't read many thriller or horror books, but I'll read one rarely. I never read mysteries. I just can't get into them. After some mulling over, here are my reasons why.

Skipping Ahead
I'm one of those people who invariably skips around in books. Usually when I'm between 1/3rd and 1/2 way through, I skip and read the last 5-10 pages. If I'm in a particularly tense (or boring) moment, I'll pop ahead 20 pages or so to see if it resolves okay (or picks up). This is a bit harder to do on my ereader (a Nook) and on audiobooks. I might be able to handle a mystery in one of those formats, but maybe not. When I'm reading ahead on any type of book but a mystery, knowing the ending only makes it sweeter because I can't wait to see how they get there. With a mystery, it kills it for me.
The Helpful Civilian/Amateur Detective
There are many series mysteries that featuring detectives, forensic investigators, and the like. That I have no problem with. What irks me are the series that feature ordinary citizens who become amateur detectives. There is always someone, like an antiques dealer, who is continually running into murders, arson, and other assorted crimes as they go about their daily business. I've never been even tangentially close to a murder or arson case and if I did, I'd probably run the other way trusting that the boys in blue would take care of it, but not so our amateur sleuths. And the police never seem to mind their help, in fact they welcome it.

If there is anything I know about police work, it is that they welcome help from untrained community members. At no point would they stop to question why this particular antique dealer comes across a dead body with every estate sale find. They would instead rejoice that their burden is lightened by some random stranger. (This entire paragraph should be read in the sarcasm font.)

This leads me to my next point (which is really a side note/rant)...
A Side Rant on Angela Lansbury
I used to love watching Murder, She Wrote as a kid. A kindly, grandmotherly woman who solves mysteries? Perfect. As an adult though, I have some questions. If you were friends with Angela Lansbury, wouldn't you at some point say, "Dear Angela, you're very sweet, I treasure our friendship, but wherever you go dead bodies appear. I am uninviting you to the weekend getaway at our country house and am going to ask you to never contact me again." I've also developed two theories about her.
1. Angela Lansbury is being stalked by a serial killer. This killer passionately loves our heroine and kills for her. He then leaves enough evidence framing someone else that the object of his affection can (incorrectly) identify a culprit and be hailed a hero.
2. Angela Lansbury is a serial killer, but she's had a psychotic break and is entirely unaware of it (like Fight Club). She's been framing people for her murders for years, no wonder she can always catch the "killer" before the police - she's planting the evidence!
Handling Reader's Advisory
Now while I don't read mysteries, millions of patrons do. These patrons are deserving of my help when they come to the library desk seeking a recommendation for the next book to read. When I was a youth librarian, I tried reading a few mysteries. (Children's books are shorter). Though I imagine that if the police are thrilled about adult amateur sleuths, they must be over the moon to have the help of minors. However The Westing Game by Raskin is the only mystery book I've ever enjoyed. As an adult services librarian, I concentrate on reading reviews, blogs, articles and the like to keep me up to date on trends in mysteries. It works well enough. You can't be an expert in everything. Sometimes being a generalist means getting an overview instead of an in depth look.

Finding Your Tribe

2011-05-12T19:02:00.000-07:00

One of the most important parts of my adult social life has been the finding of my tribe(s). I'm very blessed to have been born into a lovely family full of people I genuinely enjoy spending time with. This entry is not about them nor in any way meant to disparage them, but merely about those other tribes we find in life.

In my life (outside of family) I have three tribes. Most people have trouble locating one, I'm so blessed to have three. (Yes I just used the word blessed twice in close succession. That's how I feel.) Finding your tribe is about finding people who care passionately about the same things you do. People you can have a 45 minute conversation with before you even exchange names. Those conversations that are almost incomprehensible to people outside your tribe. These are my three. I write about them in hopes you might be able to identify who your potential tribes are.

Librarians
Those 45 minute conversations before you bother to exchange names? They happen to me all the time at library conferences. I cheerfully wear myself out going from 6:30am (when I meet someone for breakfast) until late at night (meeting people for late night drinks, deserts, coffees, just chatting in hotel lobbies until all hours). In every session, in lines at restaurants, in the hallways, every person is a friend waiting to be met. We always seem to have something to talk about and some of the post-conference follow ups have lead to great things for me/my library/programming/etc. Library conferences always feel like "coming home" to me because of the people. That is a sure sign that you've found your tribe.

Crafty People
Mostly it is knitters and crocheters, but I have quite the kinship with all crafty people. Partially because I also sew, scrapbook, cardmake, cross-stitch, etc., but mostly because there is just some overarching motifs that all crafty people feel. Last week in the button/thread aisle of JoAnns I ended up in a 20 minute conversation with two other ladies as we gave each other advice matching notions to projects and compared using natural materials versus man made materials. I knit in public and often get other knitters who come up to "talk shop" with me. These are the conversations that are mostly incomprehensible to outsiders, full of jargon, in jokes, and references. My tribe speaks my language.

Church People
In church, I find people who share the same world view as me, the same mores and morals. When I don't understand where the rest of the world is coming from, I find like minded individuals there. When I'm tired and weary, exhausted and frustrated, ready to give up, these are the individuals who lift me up and give me strength. It's almost impossible to explain how important these people are in my life. My family is over 5,000 miles away and these are the people who I spend holidays with, who celebrate with me, cry with me, drive me to the hospital. They go beyond tribe and are my family in everything but DNA.

Some people cross lines. I have some Christian knitter friends or some crafter librarian types and those people are doubly close to me. Have you found your tribe yet? When you do, it can be the most rewarding part of your life.

Five Things on a Friday - Spring Fever Edition

2011-05-06T15:40:00.000-07:00

It's a beautiful sunny day and I'm having a bit of trouble focusing at work. Here's an extremely random spring fever edition of five things.

It turns out Greg Mortenson, author of the bestselling Three Cups of Tea might be a liar. Questions are arising about the authenticity of his story and how he is handling the money coming into his charity. A group of legislators are suing him and the very well respected Jon Krakauer (himself a best selling author and one of Mortenson's first backers) wrote an ebook called Three Cups of Deceit (scroll down) about the whole thing. Interesting story to watch develop.
School ends in two weeks on May 18th. It's hard to tell who is more ready, the staff at the school, our public library staff, or the kids.
The weather has gotten so very nice in the last couple of weeks in Anchorage that is hard not for me to stare longingly at the window. This does not apparently affect the teens. I kicked out a group of them yesterday for playing hackey sack in the library. I told them it was gorgeous outside and there was a very large lawn in front of the library open for play. They seemed resentful. I almost told them that I'd be happy to go play hackey sack outside if they wanted to play librarian for the day.
I'm really curious to see how summers will go at the library. We've not been open in the summer yet. Our Saturdays are typically a lot quieter because we don't have kids walk over from our next door middle school. However during the summer, the kids will be bored, need Internet access, and the weather will be nice (by Alaska standards) for walking. We could be dead or we could be slammed.
Last Friday I made a "Royal Fever" book display. It has a few of the books from my list as well as the book written by Charles, Prince of Wales, recently, a book on Diana, and various other royalty type things historical and contemporary. No one has checked out a single book from my display. It's in an awkward place, but still... A week and not one checkout? Display needs to come down.

Gotta have my tunes

2011-05-05T16:05:00.000-07:00

At some point in the last 30 years, we developped the concept of a personal soundtrack as your inaleianable right. I'm not pretending to be a social historian, but I suspect it began with the development of the portable transistor radio and then the walkman, the diskman, and finally the iPod (or generic MP3 player). The generation of teens today has never known a time when it wasn't possible to have whatever music you wanted whenever you wanted it. To be fair, I'm in my late 20s (part of the Millenial generation) and I can't really recall a time when I didn't have some sort of portable music player.

An example from a staff side. Years ago when I was active on livejournal, I belonged to a community based on sharing funny stories of frustrating library patrons and ranting about them in general. One library clerk posted a rant. Apparently a patron complained about the music she was playing. She had music streaming over the speakers on the circulation desk computer. Her rant was that they (presumably library management) wouldn't let her use her headphones (reasonable when she's working a public service desk) and she could not be expected to go 8 hours without her music. This woman literally believed it was her right to play music at all times. A scary number of comments agreed with her. Of course some agreed with me when I pointed out that it isn't too much to ask you to work without music when at a public desk at a library. But it was for me an interesting insight into a totally different mentality.

In a similar vein the question "Should shelvers be allowed to listen to music on ipods while shelving in the public stacks?" comes up regularly on library listservs.

It may be that I have developped some cranky old lady personality traits long before crows feet and gray hairs, but you do not have the right to have your music going at all times. (Also get off my lawn!) Shelvers shouldn't listen to music because it makes them unapproachable to members of the public. It is not unreasonable for you to be asked to work 8 hours without music. Yes many people work in jobs where they can listen to music; library work (except in back offices) is not one of those fields. Deal.

Let me spin you a very common story from the public side. This happens two or three times a day at my library. A patron will come in blaring music on their iPod. One earbud will be plugged into their ear, the other will be dangling loose. Everyone within 25 feet can clearly hear the music. They will not stop, pause, or turn down the music while talking to friends, browsing library materials, or interacting with staff members. I (or another staff member) will politely remind them that library policy requires that music only be listened to through headphones or earbuds. A small percentage of patrons will then make an appropriate adjustment, but the vast majority of them will look confused. We then further explain that they need to either stop the music or put both earbuds in their ears.

A secondary situation (as common as the first): the patron has correctly plugged both earbuds into their ears but the music is loud enough that everyone around them still hears every beat. Either their earbuds are cheap enough that they don't properly direct the music or their hearing is damaged from years of this abuse that they need it that loud or a combination of the two. Usually (even with the teenagers) it is a combination of cheap earbuds and damaged hearing.

Two less common scenarios (so I only see them once a week instead of twice a day) are patrons who are using oldstyle headphones (not earbuds) and wearing them around their neck to listen to music instead of over their ears. Or they are using their earbuds in the middle of the table as little bitty speakers for all their friends. The latter teen will typically argue with me that they are using headphones/earbuds.

And of course there are the people who simply use their device with external speakers in the library. I've overheard some private conversations as a person on speakerphone sat a library table consulting paperwork and yelling at their phone. Or people watching videos on phones/devices and showing them to friends. No headphones at all.

There are two simple rules. If we all agree to them, life will be easier. Or at least my life will be. And since this is my blog, that is what matters.

Rule Number One
Use headphones/earbuds in the library or hold your phone directly to your ear. Basically the sound needs pumped directly into your ear. This is a library specific rule (though it seems to be common sense to me) and I have no problem explaining it to you once. When we're having the same conversation about it every day, then I get irritated.

Rule Number Two
If you are using your headphones/earbuds properly, only you can hear the sound. That's the point of headphones. This is a general life rule and should be observed at all times by all people, especially on public transit.

Two rules. And then we can move on to not talking on your cell phone when trying to interact with a person behind a service desk (at the grocery store, at the library, wherever).

Sample Socks

2011-05-03T20:45:00.000-07:00

So I saw a tweet about a new indie dyer (Socks-to-be yarn) who was offering 50 gram yarn samples to people for review purposes to promote her new etsy store. Now I love sock yarn, hand dyed yarn, supporting small businesses and indie artists, and free stuff. Clearly I was all over this.

When offered my choice of colors, I asked for pink (it didn't really matter, but pink is almost always my preference). This loveliness arrived in my mailbox:
It's 80/20 Superwash wool/nylon.

I greatly debated what to make from this yarn. It came close to being baby booties. Or perhaps wrist warmers. Ultimately though it had to be socks. Normally you need a 100 gram/400 yard skein of sock yarn to make a pair of socks, but I made my Harry Potter socks from 50grams or so by making them with a large (for socks, a US 2) needle and short (just barely over ankle). The theory was that if I chose a lace pattern and made ankle socks it would work, even with my freakishly long narrow feet. I cast on in the highest of expectations.

The pattern I chose is Ribbed Ribbon Socks (Ravelry link) from Socks from the Toe-Up* by Wendy Johnson. I used US size 1 (2.25mm) DPNs because I knit too tightly to ever knit with the size 0's that are recommended.

This time I wasn't playing any games with the yarn. I weighed before I started, just about 51 or 52 grams. The first sock came in at about 26 or 27 grams. To avoid (unnecessarily) boring you with knittery details, I made a teensy mod to the second sock that makes it a tiny bit snugger but not unwearably so and ended up with two socks. I cut it so close, nearly ran out of yarn but I made it. Naturally I abhor anything resembling gambling adn this was way too risky for me.

All told I love how they turned out. The small amount of yarn forced me to do only five rows of ribbing after finishing the heel so they rest just under my ankle bone. They fit much like (but better than) my favorite commercially produced ankle socks.

Yarn review: Love it. The yarn was great to work with, not splitty or icky. There was one knot in the skein, not a big deal, but I mention it because some knitters view any knots as a cardinal sin. They're overreacting; one is fine, four are not. The color is perfect, a lovely slightly heathered pink. It's perfect for this lace pattern. It accentuates the lace without being overbearing. The second picture really shows how nicely tonal the yarn is in the sole of the foot.

Overall, I'm very pleased with this yarn. A nice yarn to work with and a beautiful color.

*I've never signed up for the thing where I get Amazon credits for linking to a book if you buy it, and I don't want to, so no more Amazon links. You can easily find the book on your own, on the author's webpage, or at your favorite local store. Also I think I've done enough hyperlinking in this post to last a good little while.

Five Things on a Friday - Royal Books Edition

2011-04-29T21:09:00.000-07:00

Somehow I managed to completely avoid Royal wedding fever. I certainly wasn't waking up at 3am Alaska Time to watch the wedding. I highly value my 8-9 hours of sleep; I'm not sure I'd wake up at that time for my own wedding. I checked the news long enough to see a gallery of photos and the dress. Then a second time I peeked in to see the hats. (It's all about the hats.)

However I love history books, particularly those with monarcy. So here are five books as my five things that royally rock. They're a mixture of fiction and non-fiction because that is how I roll.

Innocent Traitor: a novel of lady Jane Grey by Alison Weir
(Historical Fiction) I love Alison Weir's books. She's a very esteemed British historian and one of the most popularly known. Her non-fiction works are great; I particularly recommend her biography, Eleanor of Aquitaine: a life and her work The Princes in the Tower about the fate of the two lost (murdered?) princes during the time of Richard the IIIrd. In the last few years, she has also branched into writing historical fiction. The results can be a bit stilted at time, but are overall wonderful. This book, which follows the life of Lady Jane Grey who was queen for 9 days and then convicted of treason by her sister Queen Elizabeth I is marvelous. The story is marvelously told from the other side, not the one usually told (that of Queen Elizabeth). My favorite part of any historical fiction is the author's historical notes at the end and in this part Weir excells. Because of her background as a historian, she practically falls over herself to apologize for any liberties she took with the history. All told a great story about a reluctant and ultimately doomed queen.
Courtesans: Money, Sex, and Fame in the Nineteenth Century by Katie Hickman
(Non-fiction) This book isn't about royalty per se. However, many of these women slept with royalty (or were rumoured to have done so). They were never admitted to court, but instead lived in their own world: the demimonde. Besides their prowess in the bodouir, they were also charming, well-read, at the height of fashion, linguists, experts at banter, and a thousand other gifts. At their peak, they were expensive and men paid dearly to even be seen in public with them. Proper society women shunned them outwardly, but could not cease to gossip about them or copy their taste in clothing and fashion. This book follows the lives of five of the most famous and most influential courtesans of the 19th century, the heyday of the courtesan and balances that fine line between history and gossip that manages to be fun, fascinating, and educational.
We Two: Victoria and Albert Rulers, Partners, Rivals by Gillian Gill
(Non-fiction) It is impossible to measure the effect these two had in shaping history, morals, and society globally for years. They were of course shaped and lived their lives in reactions to the people who raised them. If they were known for their high moral standards, it is a reflection of the debauched rulers who preceded them and their own eccentric upbringing. This book focuses on them individually first, what shaped who they were when they got married, and then later them as a couple. Victoria was very much a traditionalist who would have been submissive to her husband, but British law would never allow him crowned as king or given actual political power, a fact that would frustrate them both. However Victoria did relish her role as Queen and even in that one place where she superseeded her husband. Their marriage (as told through diaries, letters, more) was a partnership and a continual rivalry. The author even delves into their bedroom (given Victoria's many pregnancies) and homelife with some fascinating insights. Before you go on a rant about "those uptight, stick in the mud Victorians" try this book on for size. You'll be surprised. I couldn't put it down.
The White Queen by Philippa Gregory
(Historical Fiction) Remember how much I like author's historical notes on fiction books? Gregory could do a better job of them. Other than that I love her books. She did a marvelous job with the Tudors and her Boleyn series. Now she backs up a few generations to the War of the Roses with this new series. (First The White Queen and then The Red Queen.) Here we have Elizabeth Woodville who marries in secret a Plantagenet King fighting for his throne. As their house rises to power, she fights for him at every turn. And eventually she would become the mother of the two famously doomed princes in the tower. I loved reading this one and have The Red Queen queued up on my Nook.
Princes of Ireland by Edward Rutherfurd
(Historical Fiction) I love large sweeping historical epics and Rutherfurd does it wonderfully. These two volumes (the sequel is Rebels of Ireland follows a handful of families through the major events of Irish history. The story starts with the last of the Celtic/Druidic prince-priests just as St. Patrick is Christianizing the island. It continues through rebellions, invasions, and more as those formally royal families make their way thorugh history. Obviously not every year and every generation is followed. Quite often there are several hundred year gaps as all the major parts of Irish history are covered. Wonderful stories and well worth the hundreds of pages.

Cleopatra: A life by Stacy Schiff
(Non-Fiction; Biography) I'm adding this one off the five thing list because it is my current friday reads. I've just started it, only 75 pages in, so I can't really judge it overall, but so far I'm really pleased. It's a more balanced look at the life of Cleopatra instead of just saying, "ooh seductress" or "powerful women misjudged by generations of male history". Somewhere between those two views lies the truth of this most powerful and famouns of royal women and I'm enjoying watching Pulitzer Prize winner Schiff sort it out.

Iknitarod

2011-04-20T16:23:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the wonder that is Ravelry I learned about the Iknitarod. The Iknitarod is similar in theory to other knitting challenge events (such as the Knitting Olympics or Ravelympics). During the time span of the Iditarod, you challenge yourself in your sport. The dogs/mushers are taking on a challenge and so can you, if your sport is knitting. Come on now, you've been training for years!

I joined the Ravelry Iknitarod Group and chose my challenge project. The challenge can be anything, a new technique, a bigger project, anything that is a bit of a stretch for you. For me just focusing on one project was going to be the largest portion of the challenge. I'm a non-monogamous knitter always switching back and forth between many different projects.

I fell in love with the beautiful Peaks Island Hood from Ysolda Teague's Whimsical Little Knits 2. It's the perfect thing for the Alaskan winters. The size of it would be enough of a challenge in the 11(ish) days the race ran (though I'd been knitting enough socks I forgot how fast working on size 10 needles would go). Plus it included buttonholes which I had never attempted before. So there was my challenge.

I picked up some Cascade 220 from my local yarn store in a beautiful dark charcoal gray (used their ball winder for the first time - so much fun, I need one) and cast on that afternoon as I was headed to my friend's wedding. I very nicely refrained from knitting during the wedding or reception.

Here's how far I got on day one:

Here's day two:

And at that point I stopped taking pictures. I finished after the first place finisher but before the red lantern (trail sweeper) so that is good. I wore it about three times before our freakishly early spring stopped that. But I live in Anchorage and will never complain about a freakishly early spring.

Mods: The buttonholes as written were really confusing. After reading other people's notes on Ravelry I just fudged it. Bound off 3 stitches and cable cast them back on in the next row. While I had purchased 3 skeins of Cascade 220, it only 2 plus a teensy bit of the third. (I think I used the third skein for the last four rows.) Based off other people's notes I added five rows before starting the buttonholes and two rows between each of the buttonholes. Without the added rows I would not have needed the second skein.

And the final project. I love it!

Five Things on a Friday - Teen Programming Edition

2011-04-15T14:31:00.000-07:00

I'm updating again! This time is all about the ups and downs of teen programming at our library. As I've said before we share a parking lot with a middle school. We get tons of teens, pre-teens, tweens, and hangers-on. Here, very briefly, are five things that work for us. Or they're working for us as of right now. It's still very much a work in progress. I will eventually write an update with our entire trials and tribulations.

Food. Food brings them in. It doesn't seen to matter what, just food. We were wondering around Costco trying to find affordable relatively healthy edition. We ran into someone else buying for large quantities of teens too. Costco is the place to go. I don't know if it is our neighborhood (very low on the socio-economic scale) that heightens it, but every group of teens I've worked with can be bribed with food.
Popcorn. Popcorn is cheap. We got one of those very large popcorn machines (not the countertop one, the one in its own little cart) and a 50 pound bag of popcorn, 500 popcorn bags, and a ton of oil. We're set for a while. It's simple, but the kids love it. And the coolness factor is so much greater with the machine popcorn than the microwave stuff, plus it is easier to portion out.
Ukuleles. Ukuleles are cool. Teens and hipsters love them. A local store cut us a deal (ask for the educator discount) and we picked up half a dozen ukes. Our youth services librarian plays ukulele. The kids play their instruments, bring their own, borrow ours. I had them sitting out at the teen afterschool program and they were never idle. My favorite afternoons are the ones where we get impromptu concerts of kids singing and playing. One teen is even writing her own songs!
Playing cards. Cards are never out of style. We have a board game cabinet for the teens to use and however many decks of cards I put in there get checked out. I remember from my own teen years always keeping a deck of cards in my backpack. Their popularity does not seem to wane and of course the games that can be played are limitless.
The current iteration of our teen program is an "Open Zone" where they can come/go and hang out, play games, etc. We were struggling with how to keep track of how many teens were coming with all the in/out. So I counted how many cups I put out by the lemonade. A few kids took more than one cup (though they were encouraged to just refill) and a few kids took no drink. If we assume that those kids cancel each other out, and since it makes my life easier we will assume they do, we had 78 kids at our last teen zone event.

Get your vote on!

2011-04-06T15:40:00.000-07:00

I've blogged before about how important I feel voting is. Yesterday was a municipal election and as always I voted on my way into work. All day I proudly wore my "I voted" sticker. I work in a youth-centric library. One of our afterschool kids asked me who I voted for and I explained the concept of secret ballot. But they do notice and it is a chance to be a rolemodel without saying a word.

That being said if you're an ALA member, you have until April 22nd to vote. I have, but only about 10% of the membership has. Vote! It's your civic and professional duty. ALA makes it easy with candidate bios and statements of concerns right on the ballot. I wish the municipality did that. (Instead I looked it up and typed who I wanted to vote in a note on my iphone. I'm lousy at remembering names when it comes to the school board candidates.) If you're an ALSC member, you can vote for me (Elizabeth Moreau) for Newbery Award Committee.

So off you go! Go vote!

Knitting Socks!

2011-03-20T16:44:00.000-07:00

I've been bitten by the sock knitting bug. It all started innocently enough, I heard of the existence of the official Harry Potter Sock Yarn, drooled over it, and decided to buy some in late 2008/early 2009 (it was winter, but my memory is fuzzy after that). I made my first trip to a local yarn store to track it down. Though I'd been crocheting for years, I was just relearning knitting. I hadn't discovered Ravelry, knitting blogs, or anything much beyond what my mother taught me which tended toward the big box chain store yarns and Leisure Arts pamphlet patterns. (Note there is nothing wrong with either of those things, there is just a whole world of luxury yarns, natural fibers, and independant designers beyond them.)

Because I had to buy the Harry Potter yarn, I had to learn to knit socks. (At this point it didn't occur to me that I could use sock yarn for something else.) I remember standing in the local yarn store (a little shocked at how much it cost, but remember I'm used to big box store cheap prices for generic acryllic junk), and questioning carefully if one skein would be enough for a pair of socks. They reassured me it would. I took it home and immediately realized I would need to learn to knit in the round. So I made a hat. Other things in life happened. And a year later I was ready to start my socks.

Back I went to my big box store to look for a book or pamphlet for knitting socks. I found Toe-Up Techniques for Hand-Knit Socks by Janet Rehfeldt. Glancing through it, I realized toe up socks made an intrinsic sense to me, grabbed the right size needles and brought it home.

According to my Ravelry page, I started the socks on April 6, 2010. At first it was weird, but very quickly it was a lot of fun.

I finished the first sock in July 2010, but I bound off my regular way and managed to create an edge that would not stretch over my heel. So I put the socks in "time-out" for a while. In the meantime I had discovered a lot about knitting. In October I was travelling back down South for a friend's wedding and I took along the socks as a travelling project. I unpicked the knitting and redid the bind off until it was loose enough to work. I was so proud of myself I immediately took a photo in my friend's parents' kitchen and put it on twitter. A photo I can not find right now, but I know exists.

Started the second sock immediately but it languished as I completed other projects (mostly those baby blankets). But I'd been bitten by the sock knitting bug. I really wanted to join Rockin Sock Club so I made myself a deal. If I finished my socks by January 4th (when signups opened) then I got to join sock club. Then my superstitious/crazy/OCD side kicked in. Clearly if I had my socks done by the new year and were wearing them when I rang in the New Year I would have good knitting mojo all year long.

That would have been completely doable if I were capable of being a monogamous knitter and focusing on only one project. I'm not. Which is how I ended up knitting them on New Year's Eve at an Alaska Aces hockey game. (I have a photo of that somewhere). Then I tried a different type of bind off and it ended up (once again) still too tight (or my heel is too big). Quickly I unpicked the bind off and rebound off and I was wearing them by 11:35pm.

The astute of you will notice that I have ends not woven in. I didn't have my darning needle with me. The next day I wove in the ends, blocked them, and took a better photo.

I've learned a lot since those socks (including that using 5 instead of 4 DPNs will greatly reduce the ladders, that is to say 4 DPNs in the sock and one working needle). However I was really proud of how well I got the self striping yarn to match up even if I really hate how bad the ladders are. I used about half of the yarn on these socks (which are more like ankle socks). I didn't know how big to make them, how much yarn to use, so I stopped prematurely. (Now I know about weighing the yarn, as I have said I learned a lot.)

I've already started my next pair (which aren't the pair I got for my first Rockin Sock Club kit). And I've picked up a ton of other sock yarn (including some real splurges like malabrigo and some hand dyed yarn from some smaller dyers). I think I may have found my new love.

Five Things on a Friday

2011-03-11T19:10:00.000-08:00

I'm back... I went on vacation for 12 days and apparently blogging vacation for a month. I've half written a bunch of posts, but here are some of them condensed, five things style.

If you're a librarian or at all tuned into the library blogoverse, twitter feeds, or listservs at all in the last few weeks then you're aware of the controversy over Harper Collins ebooks. A short recap, Harper Collins (one of the biggest United States publishers) decided that all of the ebooks they sell to libraries through distributor Overdrive (the most popular service used by libraries to provide downloadable ebooks and audiobooks) will expire after 26 checkouts. Library Journal had a good article about it and then Overdrive weighed in with their response. Lots of librarians/bloggers/library systems also weighed in. Google it or search for the twitter tag #hcod and you'll get thousands of responses. I particularly like the response of Librarian in Black.
Our collection development librarian has decided that our system will not be buying Harper Collins ebooks whenever we can avoid it. Paperbacks have a limited number of checkouts before they're in such bad condition that they can't circulate anymore. We try to avoid buying those whenever possible unless the book is super popular and that's the only way to get it (such as graphic novels). Our budget is small and we make tough choices like that. We try to buy books that will last the longest and be enjoyed by the most patrons. 26 ebook circulations just won't do it.
Keeping with my ereader theme, there's another rumor circulating that Amazon will start giving away Kindles as soon as November. The gist of the rumor is that if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber (you pay $80/year for unlimited free 2-day shipping) then you get a free Kindle. Amazon Prime is a good deal for Amazon because even if they're consumers use it often enough to make their money back on shipping, Amazon still makes money because people aren't likely to stray from Amazon even if another seller has a lower price. Giving people a free Kindle just further locks them into the Amazon world and it's a very viable business model if they can get the Kindle hardware production costs down enough. Plus it would entice more people to join Amazon Prime. It will be interesting to see in the next few years how many more places follow this model.
The Iditarod is in full swing. I love the Iditarod. This year we have an Iditarod map up and little yellow pieces of paper with mushers names tacked on it. Once a day our Associate Librarian (who rocks so hard it's barely legal) moves all the little people to their new position. It's a lot of work (THANKS TERESA!) but it seems to be very popular up here. Mitch Seavey had to withdraw due to an injured hand which makes me sad. So now I'm rooting for his son - Go Dallas!
I fell into Graphic Novels rather backwards. First I started ordering them for the library, then I started reading them, then I fell in love with them. I've reached the next stage. I'm thinking about taking home an anime to watch this weekend. I'm already kinda crazy with the knitting things so hopefully someone will stop me before I'm going to conventions in costume. (There's nothing wrong with going to conventions in costume but I'd prefer to limit the number of consuming crazy-making passions I have and I want to go to knitting conventions.)

Five Things on a Friday

2011-02-04T16:24:00.000-08:00

Next Friday I will be boarding a cruise ship and the Friday after that I will be on a cruise ship somewhere in the great blue sea. I don't promise posts then though I suppose one before boarding is possible. Talk about a field test for my Nook! But as usual, here are my five things.

Yesterday, I gave a tour to a group of adult literacy learners. In addition to the challenge of learning to read, they were all also new immigrants and learning to speak English. They were not literate in their native language either. What an amazing challenge they (and their teachers) have chosen to undertake. They all got library cards and our children's librarian did a good job of demonstrating storytime (the students all had children). It was a warm, squishy, happy, this is why I became a librarian moment.
A year (or more) ago we renamed our Science Fiction and Fantasy section into Speculative Fiction or SpecFic for short. The abbreviations on the spine labels remain SF, but the signs on the end of the shelves changed. This has confused some (okay lots) of our patrons, but it does seem to make it easier to justify why Lord of the Rings and I, Robot on the same shelf. Speculative fiction is that which speculates and asks a great big "What if" question. What if wizards, elves, hobbits, and assorted other magical creatures lived together in another world? What if robots could think and act like humans? What if aliens on Mars attacked us? Of course I had a patron argue (erm discuss) with me that all fiction is by its very nature is speculative and every author begins their journey with a "what if" question. True that. But let's just go with this for now.
I've been really enjoying the 2011 Printz Award winner: Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. It's sci fi (or spec fic if you will) which doesn't usually win mainstream awards. Nailer is living in a dystopian future where he has to pull apart wrecks of old ships in order to find enough usable scrap to survive. Happy to recommend this as my Friday reads because it is a page turner so far.
Yesterday a kid was trying a dance move during break dance club and kicked a hole in the community room wall. He missed the mural by about 6 inches. The irony of him breaking the wall during break dance club (yes an official library sponsored event) is not lost on me. It's not amusing me, but I do see the irony.
We share a parking lot with a middle school. (Have I mentioned this before?) This causes lots of discipline challenges with kids and I've been thinking (and writing but it's not share-ready) about that a lot lately. However, it also causes parking issues. Though our area of the parking lot is clearly separate from the middle school parking, you drive through their parking lot to get to it. Parts of our lot are closer to the middle school than their own lot. Thus we also have issues with their staff filling up our parking lot. See? A problem that can't be blamed on "rowdy teenagers". It's nice to remind the rest of the world that the teenagers aren't the root of all evil.

A Librarian and Her Nook, pt. 1

2011-02-02T15:45:00.000-08:00

Three weeks ago, I cracked and bought a nook. I'd been reading ereader reviews for months, oohing over friends who had an ereader, and endlessly contemplating it. It takes me a little time to talk myself into something like that. (Wherein something like that is defined as something costing more than $50.) Of course once I made my decision, I drove as fast as I could as soon as I could to the nearest Barnes and Noble to pick mine up.

Why did I choose a Nook?
Lately my eyes are really bothering me from spending all day at a computer screen. I knew I couldn't read off a backlit style screen so that kicked out the iPad, the NookColor and anything that wasn't eink. After a lifetime of library work, it turns out I have a pathological aversion to purchasing books at full price. (Though I'm all about used book stores and friends of the library book sales). That meant I had to have a reader which could borrow the ebooks available from my library's website and knocked the Kindle out of competition. (Though my sister has a Kindle and loves it). One nice feature of the Nook is you can walk into the Barnes and Noble store and there is a help desk right up front (like the genius bar at the Apple store) to help you with your device. Local help and support is what won me over to the Nook over the Sony ereader or Kobo. And finally since I already have an iPhone, I didn't need the ability to do 100x extra things on my ereader so I didn't need one with 3G or one with color screen so I was able to buy the cheapest one (at $149).

Buying the Nook
I went to B&N and bought it in just a few minutes on my lunch break. (Love living in Alaska and not paying sales tax.) I also chose out a cover for the Nook and picked up a screen protector. I know myself, electronics need that extra little bit of padding since I'll be tossing it and our bags/purses. There were some really cute Kate Spade covers that cost almost as much as the Nook itself. ($85 for a cover for a $149 device? Nope!) So I went with a less expensive, but still good looking black and white Jonathan Adler cover (if you care about brands).

ebooks onto the Nook
The following came pre-loaded onto my Nook: a Nook user guide, a Nook tour, Pride and Prejudice, and Little Women. I was amazed; I thought that surely these Nook people know me, those are two of my all time favorite books. Then I noticed they also gave me for free Dracula (about which I'm apathetic), and samples of Three Seconds by Anders Roslund (don't care), and Awakened: House of Night Series #8 by P. C. Cast (hate this series). So maybe not.

There are a lot of free books available; they're classics that are out of copyright. Some can be downloaded directly from the nook website or through another website such as Project Gutenberg. And of course many ebooks are available as ebooks from our library's website.

Setting up the Nook
Set up was fairly easy on the Nook end, though using library ebooks was a teensy bit more of a challenge. (Hint download Adobe Digital Editions onto your computer, delete the version on your Nook and let the ADE on your computer recognize/authorize the Nook and reinstall ADE onto it. 5 minutes of googling turned up this solution and it worked.) Also when you sideways load content into your Nook (ebooks and pdfs), you have to turn it off and back on again to see them. When you get them through bn.com, you can just do a check for new content.

The first ebook I downloaded from the library was The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. The first out of copyright ebook I got for free (from the bn.com website) was Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. The first ebook I bought was The Autobiography of Mark Twain Volume 1 edited by Harriet Elinor Smith et al. (That book cost me less that $10 as an ebook but would have cost me between $22 and $35 as a hardcover and weighed my bag down with a hefty 743 pages. Much nicer to just load it onto the Nook.) I also immediately loaded it with some knitting patterns and personalize photos for screensaver and wall paper.

As I said, I've been living with it for three weeks now and I have more opinions. However this is a part one post and is long enough already. Happy Reading be it on paper or a screen!

Happy Kansas Day!

2011-01-29T08:49:00.000-08:00

Today is the 150th Birthday of Kansas. I've fully embraced being an Alaskan, but I'll always be a Kansas girl at heart. At school we always celebrated Kansas Day with an assembly and Kansas Cake (cake baked in the shape of Kansas, very easy - bake a rectangular cake and cut the upper right corner off). You know it is a real holiday because there's a dedicated dessert.

On January 29, 1861, Kansas joined the union after a long and bloody struggle that would eventually spill over into the rest of the country and the Civil War. 150 years later, it’s still an amazing place.

So here are a few fantastic Kansas facts for you:

State song: Home on the Range
State flower: Sunflower
State Motto: Ad Astra Per Aspra (to the stars through difficulties)
State animal: Great Plains Bison (buffalo)
Some Famous Kansans: Amelia Earhart, Dwight Eisenhower, Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, Buster Keaton and Charlie Parker
Kansas is home to the geographic center of the contiguous United States.
The very first female mayor in the United States was elected in 1887 in Argonia, Kansas.
Pizza Hut was founded in Wichita, Kansas in 1958.
And Kansas has the largest ball of twine in the world in Cawker City, Kansas with a circumference of over 40 feet and still growing!
Kansas has been scientifically proven to be flatter than a pancake.

To celebrate Kansas Day, I made (and am still making) Kansas dishcloths. These are going to lucky fellow Kansans as gifts (though some may not get them for a few weeks). I love knitting dishcloths and often in the lure of "sexier" knitting and crocheting projects, I forget about the simple joy that is creating a dishcloth.

Kansas Dishcloth:

Original pattern: Knitted Kansas Cloth; Yarn: Lily Sugar'n Cream in Yellow

I made a few modifications to make the picture look more like the map of Kansas (and I might do some more modifications to fix the "S", if I do, I'll post the changes). I don't think the original looked much like Kansas - just changed a few rows. Every other row I knit according to pattern instructions. Also I lightly steam blocked this (by hovering my iron and pushing the steam button but not actually putting the iron to the dishcloth) so it would look better for photography and gift giving.

Dishcloth modifications:
Row 29: k3, p3, k25, p3, k3 (basically just starting the repeat for the "body" of Kansas a row earlier)

Row 47: k3, p3, k24, p4, k3
Row 49: k3, p3, k23, p5, k3
Row 51: k3, p4, k24, p4, k3

Five Things on a Friday

2011-01-28T16:23:00.000-08:00

I really do write more than just five things entries. They're all half written draft posts. Coming soon I hope! In the meantime, here's five random things.

For my Friday Reads, I'm tweeting about You'll Never Know Book One: A Good and Decent Man by Carol Tyler. It's a fantastic graphic novel memoir done in scrapbook style. The author, Carol Tyler, explores her father's past in WWII and how that affected him which in turn affected her and her relationships with men, particularly as she goes through a separation from her husband. It goes back and forth from present day Tyler dealing with the separation to her WWII era parents and through the times in her family history that shapes them all. Great read and I have to put a hold on volume two, really enjoying it.
I haven't been able to stop reading the articles about Egypt and the riots/protests/revolution that is happening. I saw an initial (twitter) report that Egyptians linked arms to form a chain to protect the Egyptian museum against looting. I'm also seeing news reports that the museum was secured by the army. Either way, it's a good day to be a news junkie and I'm hoping it's one of those days that helps rebuild our world a little bit better.
We have a large lobby in the center of our building with one side off the lobby being the library and the other side off the lobby is the community room. The lobby has two doors, one on the parking lot side and one on the street side. A lot of kids after school cut through the lobby as they walk home. They don't walk by a sensor though (sensor is in the entrance off the lobby into the library side) and so they don't count in my statistics.
I was given a plant by a very well meaning person who does not know my history with house plants. I brought it into work because this library needs some plants (my director recently called it stark but we've only just begun) and the library gets much better sunlight than does my house. Unfortunately I brought the plant into the library on a -5 (Fahrenheit, -21 Celsius) day and that froze many of it's buds and leaves. It has some new growth but isn't looking good. Turns out I feel more guilty when a plant at the library starts dying than I do for one at home.
I promised myself for my New Year's resolution that I would stop reading the comments on the stories on the local newspaper's website. That didn't last. Reading an article about a development in our neighborhood and some of the comments were about this library. I found my blood pressure rising again. Must remember that four angry people with too much free time who seem to do nothing but comment incessantly on the newspaper's site should not affect me so much.

Have a good weekend people! And if you're like me and you work at your library on Saturdays, may all your patrons be smiling.

Five Things on a Friday

2011-01-21T14:50:00.000-08:00

As always, a random collection of my thoughts.

No food is allowed in the library, no drinks, bottled water is fine. I tell the same group of kids this every single day. I don't care that Ramen noodles barely qualify as food, you still can't eat it in my library with the brand new carpeting.
I'm torn on gum, hard candy, and vitamin water. Vitamin water is kinda like bottled water but it has added flavoring and color so it could stain the carpet. Even though it says "water" on the bottle, I usually ask them to take it out. It just seems petty to ban gum and hard candy, but I find those stupid little wrappers everywhere. If none of these people ever throw something in a trash can, what do their houses look like?
When the library was opened, they ordered one chair for each computer station. This is a lovely fallacy. People use computers in pairs and groups. Not just the teens (though that is one of their defining features) but also the adults. A ratio of 3 chairs for every 2 computers is more appropriate or at least more reflective of how the public actually uses the computers.
We've noticed an unusual phenomenon in this library. If we put up a display on an empty shelving unit with the books in the easels and no sign of explanation, the books will be checked out at a fairly good clip. If I put a sign up with the book display, then no one checks out the books. So what appeared to be a random collection of books, checked out. As soon as I added the "seen the movie? read the book!" sign, they stayed put. Only one person has taken a book in the last week and she timidly asked if it was okay. Don't know if it is the culture, the neighborhood, or what. Totally baffling.
I'm sharing my Friday reads with you. (It's a twitter phenomenon wherein everyone posts what they're reading on Friday.) I just (over my lunch break) finished up my first ebook on my Nook. (I'll post about the Nook experience as well.) It was a free ebook checked out from the library. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Excellent read. He's a bit too liberal for my taste, but he did a really good job of approaching the subject with an open mind. Coming from a family of hunters, I found the hunting section particularly humorous. It has definitely made me rethink what I eat and where it comes from. Unfortunately eating locally is not a valid option 10.5 months of the year in Alaska (except for seafood and I eat a lot of halibut and salmon caught by my friends). My parents are in a CSA in the lower 48 and I garden, but I do wish there was more I could do to eat off the industrial food chain. This is the best things in non-fiction, it makes you think, it provokes good conversations, and it was an engaging read. Totally recommended.

Five Things on a Friday

2011-01-14T16:31:00.000-08:00

Five signs that your work life is becoming all consuming, creeping into other aspects of your life, and generally making you one of those people who aren't invited anywhere because you can't talk about anything except libraries.

As you walk into the church building, you pull your work ID/lanyard over your head. You've begun to feel a bit naked without it.
You answer your personal phone with, "Hello blahblahblah library, this is blahblah."
You can't get into your house and it takes you far too long to realize that the library key won't open your front door. (We have about 4 keys for the library, I peered at the key to make sure it was the right one that opens my office door and tried about three more times to open my home door.)
You tell random children in Target to "walk please" and they listen to you.
You answer a reference question at a hockey game and find yourselves doing readers advisory in the stacks at Barnes and Noble.

Camping Out At The Library

2011-01-12T15:30:00.000-08:00

Opening a new library is crazy. Crazy fun, crazy busy, crazy weird, just crazy. And I crazy love it. Rather than tell you another woeful tale about current problems, I'm going to tell you fun stories about opening up the new library.

I was hired rather late into the project, actually just over a month before the library opened. Overseeing it before then were the library's development director, the associate librarian (para-professional) for this branch (and we'd had multiple staff members cycle through that position), the project manager for the city (for the facility stuff), branch manager of a neighboring branch, contractors and building types, and other assorted library personnel. It was explained to me that if anything seemed inconsistent or missing it probably was, this project had been in a lot of different people's hands. (Or as the development director said, we've lost a lot of soldiers in this fight.)

When I took over, the associate librarian had been bouncing around branches and only spending part of her time at Mountain View. She and I started working full time at the library (still closed) to get it ready. We were the first official occupants and the building wasn't quite ready for us. Have you ever spent time (serious 40+ hours a week time) in a not quite finished building? It can be fun if you approach it with the right attitude. Like camping there are some inconveniences (in camping lack of running water and a pillow top mattress top my lists) but some great benefits (unlimited time with those you love, great scenery, fresh clean air, s'mores) that make it worth it.

Some of my favorite little things that popped up and made me feel like we were camping out at the library.

Incomplete Furniture
The first few weeks we were here, we didn't have all of our furniture. In particular, we lacked office chairs. I was sitting at my desk in a very ergonomically unfriendly chair bought for the patron floor. Between that and hauling boxes, my back ached every night. It really made me appreciate my office chair when it finally came.

No Janitorial Service
Why pay for janitorial when you have only a few people in the building? We followed camp rules and "packed out what you pack in". That meant that every day I took my trash from lunch (or even any used kleenex) home with me and threw it away there. Considering my recent woes, I'm might be doing that again.

No Office Supplies
We didn't have any of the basics. Every trip to the main library, I'd pop my head into a different department's supply cabinet and "requisition" a few basics. And by a few basics, I mean I took literally 3 ink pens from one department, 2 pads of post-it notes from another. Let me tell you how fun that first trip to the office supply was store - a stapler of my very own! With plentiful staples! But no matter how good and thorough your list is, something will be missed or not bought in a plentiful enough of a quantity. Plan on a second trip about two weeks later.

No Bathroom Supplies
Our janitorial contractor provides the bathroom supplies so before they started, we were bringing in our own toilet paper and paper towels.

No One Knows Where You Are
We weren't a brand new library, just a library in a place that hadn't been a library in 20 years, so out of most people's working memory. And our building didn't have a library sign. (Still doesn't, that's a different story.) Every conversation or delivery required a detailed description of the building even though we're on a well known corner. I like to say that with no sign, I'm operating a stealth library, a ninja library if you will.

Wildlife sightings
Much like the woods really belong to the moose and bears and we're just visitors who must play by their rules, a new but not yet finished building really belongs to the contractors. The guys in hardhats need to cut power halfway through my epic masterpiece of an email? That's their prerogative. I'm sad whenever civilization runs off wildlife, but rather happy when completion runs off contractors. Of course my library has been open 5 months and they're still showing up trying to fix things and make them work right. (Today they came to play with the heat settings and repair a blown hydraulic door hinge.) Perhaps we're not totally out of the woods yet.

Christmas Knitting

2011-01-11T08:45:00.000-08:00

Time to brag about what I did for Christmas knitting this year. (And yes I know that this is supposed to be a librarian blog, but I've decided it shall be a librarian blog with occasional forays into craftiness.)

Baby Blankets!
I made these great star shaped baby blankets and matching elephant amigurumis for two babies that were born in December. I did two sets in different shades of blue. All were crocheted and a lot of fun, though by the end I was really really bored with endless rounds of double crochets on the stars. Technically these and the elephants were crocheted not knitted.

Little elephant:

Yarn: Lion Brand Baby Soft - trying to break the acrylic habit; Pattern: Lion Brand's Amigurumi Elephant; also used some small safety eyes

Star blanket:

Yarn, see above; Pattern: Baby Starghan

Wrapped up with some board books and ready to go to their new homes:

Patriotic Rag Rug
Using the same star blanket pattern with a few modifications, a p crochet hook and inch wide strips of flannel fabric, I made a rag rug for my military roommate who really liked it. Matches the red, white, and blue, stars and stripes decor really well.

(Yes, it isn't finished in that picture. I gave it to her unfinished because I wanted to know how much bigger she wanted it before I bought more red flannel. What you're looking at is the point at which I ran out of fabric.)

Flowered Headband for a Friend
I made this fun flowered headband for a friend who kindly welcomed us into her house and her family on Christmas Day. It's perfect for keeping your ears warm without smooshing your hair.

Yarn: Stitch Nation - Bamboo Ewe (found this at JoAnn's but it's a great yarn with natural fibers); Pattern: Flowered Ear Warmer

And then I made one for me:

Same Pattern, Yarn: Rowan Lima

Another Headband/Earwarmer
Continuing on the headband earwarmer trend (which makes sense when you live in Alaska), I made a ribbed one for another friend/former roommate.

Pattern: Calorimetry, Yarn: Rowan Felted Tweed Aran in this lovely blue/gray/tweed that I didn't photograph well

And that concludes what I knitted people for Christmas.

Five Things on a Friday

2011-01-07T15:14:00.000-08:00

I feel the need to be random today, or maybe today has forced randomness upon me. Plus I really like lists with five things on them.

The garbage was not picked up today. The recycling was which proves that the carts were in the correct place and accessible. I almost cried when I saw the full bin. Fortunately a quick call to solid waste services (during which I was polite, professional and persistent) fixed the problem within minutes.
We've had a bicycle in our lost and found (well in the security guard's office which is really a converted storage room) since the first week of October. I wanted to walk it across the street to the salvation army thrift store, but the library has a policy about bicycles in lost and found. So we'll be contacting APD today.
When I called Solid Waste Services and introduced myself, "Hello this is Elizabeth manager of the Mountain View Branch Library," the very nice man on the phone said he'd seen me on TV talking about the library and I was doing a wonderful job. He also had a fantastic Irish accent. It completely made my day. (Well that and the tempura I had for lunch - broccoli is still healthy after it's been deep fried, right? All Japanese foods are automatically healthy, right?)
So many of the kids and teens come into my library wearing very weather inappropriate clothing. I'm bundled up like the little brother from A Christmas Story everytime I go outside; it's Alaska, it's cold. I don't know if these kids aren't wearing appropriate clothing because their parents can't afford it or because they're middle schoolers. Both are equally likely in this neighborhood. All I know is I keep getting sympathetically cold just looking at them.
A few days ago a very nice elderly lady asked if it was okay if she took some books from the "Men's" cart. I thought she meant one of the men who works here who was shelving so I nodded. Except that no one was actually shelving at the time. Then I noticed that this sign had flipped upside down. (Correct first, flipped second.)

So take heed. The brand new books that come in and get tossed on a cart for everyone to peruse - they're now gender specific.

Have a good weekend!

More Ranting on Garbage

2011-01-05T19:18:00.000-08:00

Another week, another 32 emails and phone messages about garbage. We've had our issues in the past with garbage not being taken out on holidays that fall on Thursday (for Friday pickup) such as Veteran's Day or Thanksgiving. We got that worked out, mostly. And this is important because we have those silly little rolly bins. If they're full, they're full. We can't throw away more than fits in those cans. So missing a week can be a problem.

Now I know this, and I'm just a librarian. One would think that if you owned a janitorial company and were successful enough to have received the city's contract, you would definitely realize the importance of timely garbage removal, doubly so if you were in the habit of leaving notes for me complaining about the building's rodent problem. (Working on it, almost solved, haven't seen any evidence of him in weeks but I don't want to get over confident.) And yet it is not a consistent process.

For the last two weeks our garbage has not been picked up. The solid waste department has these super fancy trucks that can grab the rolling bins and dump them making the whole process more efficient. It only works if the bin is on the curb with three feet of clearance on every side. If it isn't, they leave you a little green tag explaining the problem. (I think there was one week in my neighborhood when only one person's garbage got picked up, but we learned from our mistakes.)

The week before Christmas I woke up from a dead sleep at 2am worrying about who would bring the garbage in (this is when I realized how bad the crazy was). We're closed on the "Eves" (Christmas and New Years) which fell on Friday (bring in garbage day) this year. Fortunately we have staff in the building (since our holiday pay was only good for the actual holiday, you had to take leave to get the Eves off), and they brought in the trash. Unfortunately when I checked my email from home on Christmas the staff member sent me a message letting me know we had lots of garbage and a friendly (and holiday appropriate) green tag of warning. No three feet of clearance.

I left a note for janitorial reminding them about that issue (though they'd been in the same meeting I was where the rules were explained). On New Year's Eve when I brought in the garbage, it was still full. No tag this time though. A quick call to Solid Waste (to give you a clue, I have the number of our representative on a post-it note right beside my desk) revealed the problem. The janitors were pushing the garbage can all the way back into the dumpster enclosure* and the trucks couldn't get to it.

The head of janitorial (who works for the city and oversees the contractors) showed up all on his own today. We talked through it, he called the contractor and all should be well for this week's pick up. Because the only reason we're not drowning in garbage is we had two shorts weeks due to holidays. I'll let you know how it goes on Friday if anyone is reading still by then.

*One of the reasons we didn't initially order a dumpster is we were concerned about building an enclosure around it as required by city law. We do have a dumpster pad though. One fine day I heard hammering, but I'm opening a new library and used to that. I looked outside and saw men building me a dumpster enclosure around the dumpster pad. I called the project manager and head of facilities. They were both surprised, but I have a general rule against arguing with men with power tools and so let them build away. So our library has a dumpster pad, dumpster enclosure, and no dumpster. We do however have a great place to "hide" the rolling trash bins so they never get picked up.

How Garbage Has Come to Rule My Life

2010-12-18T15:31:00.000-08:00

Before I became a branch manager, I lived in a blissful world wherein I didn't think about garbage very much. I tried to remember when trash day was and take out the bins. Occasionally I would see a documentary or news special about filling up landfills and worry about our planet. For the most part though, trash was a very small part of my world.

Not now. Now, it is a huge part of my world. Hardly a day doesn't go by when I am not writing an email, having a phone conversation, or answering a patron complaint about garbage. And this is the story of how a nice librarian's life went to the dumps.

Before we opened the branch, there were about a thousand details to work out. Many of them I expected, the librarian type things (shelf end signs, ordering book ends and book carts) and those I dispatched with grace and professional surety. Some of the others took me by surprise. (Don't get me started on the weekly emails from the electricians with technical reports that appeared to have been written in Greek. I've saved them in case anyone ever asks me about the electrical system in this building). And that is how I found myself one day having a meeting about garbage pick up.

The meeting had all the usual suspects: the head of facilities for the library, the solid waste removal representative, the project manager for the building construction, and the head of janitorial services for the city. Oh yeah and me, the librarian. Binders were laid out and options were explained. I nodded like I understood. And then came the killer moment where everyone stared at me.

I stared back. "Great!" I said with cheerfulness, "So which one are we getting?"

"It's up to you," explained the head of facilities for the library.

And then we all stared at each other in complete confusion as it dawned on me that these four men, all specialists in buildings, maintenance, and garbage, expected me, a specialist in books, to make this decision. I had thought (well, really I had hoped) that this was merely an informational meeting, not an Elizabeth-make-12-rapid-fire-decisions meeting. (Opening a branch requires rather a lot of the second type of meetings.)

So there were choices. We could have a dumpster. We had a paved pad to put a dumpster on. But we would have to build an enclosure around it due to the new city ordinance and there was a lot of concern that people would come by and fill up our dumpster with their household trash. Or we could have those large rolling bins for trash and recycle and put them out on trash pick up day.

I carefully reviewed my choices. I reflected on that if you told me the square footage of the building and the demographic make up of the community (all information I had), I could tell you how many books you needed and what type of collection to build. Cheerfully I would rattle off number of children's books versus adult materials, media materials and computer needs, seating and furniture needs. How big should your meeting room be, your staff areas, etc. All of this would require some thought, but I knew how to work that out. I had a master's degree and everything to prove it. Garbage? I had no idea how much garbage this building I had just designed would be.

Desperately, I did what all good librarians do, I sought more information. By that, of course, I mean I tried to pressure one of the facility/janitorial/building type guys to make this decision for me. No go. They were wily and resisted all my efforts to get them to even commit to recommending one over the other. Eventually someone finally said that they thought rolling bins would be a better choice because of the aforementioned issue with dumpsters getting filled.

Aha! This is true. People do illegally fill up dumpsters not their own. Rolling bins! (At that point I was willing to act on even the smallest scrap of information.) After a bit more unsuccessful wheedling for advice on sizes and quantities, I chose two of the biggest sizes (which automatically came with a recycling bin) and we were off and running. Silly naive me even thought that would be the last I'd think about the trash. I was ready to leave the meeting.

But how would the trash cans get to the curb? This was the next big point of discussion. Couldn't janitorial just take them out? Janitorial only fully cleans our building three days a week, the other two days they just do the bathrooms. Garbage day was one such day. But if they were here to do the bathrooms, how much trouble would it be for them to wheel out the trash cans as they leave? (Janitorial comes in at night after library staff has left.) Then my staff would wheel them in first thing in the morning. Eventually all agreed this was the most logical course of action.

This post is currently ridiculously long, so I will tell you further tales of garbage later. I think I need a tag for this, perhaps facility maintenance woes?

In which I learn a painful lesson about donations

2010-11-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

Remember how I ranted about donations yesterday. Here's a great story to prove my point. Even better, I'm the rube in this story.

I was talking with one of my library staff and she mentioned that someone had wanted to donate some auto manuals to the library. The staff member (new) had checked with staff at another branch who thought it was a gold mine. That is true, to an extent. Our auto-repair reference databases get the most searches and this material is some of the most frequently requested. However, it makes the most sense to have this material on a database then occupying four rows of the library. The staff member mentioned the patron was bringing 10 or 15. Well, I can deal with 10 or 15 books even if we can't use them. This is the point at which alarm bells are ringing for wiser and more experienced librarians, but I continued blithely on my way.

One lovely Saturday morning in September just after we opened, we receive a call. The patron is on her way and wants to make sure we're ready to receive her donation and check if we have a flatbed and/or dolly. My heart starts to sink as I ask her how many books she is bringing. She has 15 boxes of books to bring us. My heart starts racing and I begin to feel a little faint. (I'm not mixing metaphors, my heart really was sinking and racing at the same time, hence the faintness I was feeling.) 15 boxes of auto manuals? No one has that many auto manuals. People usually have one or two auto manuals for the vehicles they own. People with 15 boxes of auto manuals have typically owned an auto repair shop. I don't know if you've ever been to an auto repair shop, but they're not the cleanest places in the world, and not to disparage mechanics (I've known several very nice mechanics, friends of mine), but they're not the best at keeping books in good condition. My sinking feeling was getting worse by the second.

When she arrived, the entire back of her pick up was full of boxes of auto repair manuals. And, naturally, she wanted us to unload the boxes so she could have them back. There were several moments here where I should have said, "I'm sorry that's not possible" or "I'm sorry we don't have the staff time available to deal with that donation". I didn't. I don't know why, but I didn't. Even as I accepted this pick up load of (and yes I counted) 17 boxes of auto repair manuals, I knew they would be worthless. This incident helped strengthen my backbone a lot.

As we were unloading the boxes, the woman said she had to "run and get something" but would be right back. Foolishly I assumed she was running to a store to pick something up. Nope. She went home and got another pickup load full of boxes of dirty, outdated, useless, heavy auto manuals. Another 9 boxes. That brings us up to 26 boxes of auto manuals. Our hands were turning black from unpacking them. The courier tubs we were putting them in were getting filthy. All in all it was a HUGE mess. But the patron thought she was doing us a service, helping out the new library in the poor neighborhood. I would never put these filthy books on my shelves. They were in disgusting condition and so old as to be useless to the vast majority of my patrons. Almost immediately they went into the dumpster and recycling bins. (Well I tried to send them to our main library but all that accomplished was another three staff members handling them, more courier bins getting dirty, and people getting angry at me.)

Lessons learned? When someone offers you a donation, clarify if they are counting in boxes or books. And make sure all of your staff understands what can be accepted as donations. (This assumes that you've already established a policy on what you're accepting as a donation.)

What we will (now) accept as donations:

hardcover books published within the last 5 years in good condition
hardovers of classic books
no encyclopedias
any hardcover or paperback graphic novel or manga
limit one box per patron per donation

Start Looking Gift Horses in the Mouth

2010-11-04T15:27:00.000-07:00

The public believes that all donations are good and that every library would happily welcome and rejoice at whatever pile of outdated, dusty, boring junk they found in their great-aunt's basement. As most librarians known, the public is wrong about this (and many other library-related things).

Let's start with the most common myth, donations aren't free. You (the great unwashed public) give them to me (the humble civil servant) thinking that out of your munificence you are enriching the library at no cost to us. However, we still have to take the book to technical services, add protectorants (the shiny stuff over the dust jacket, the stiff stuff on paperbacks that makes them feel hard), add labels, add security measures, add barcodes, and put them in our catalog. This can involve the labor of anyone from the technical services clerk to the head cataloger and it can involve materials costing anywhere from $1 to $10. All told your "free book" can cost the library somewhere in the range of $25 (or more) to add (labor+materials).

So when I get your donation, I start staring, inspecting, picking apart that gift horse. It's the same economic decision I make when I decide if I should purchase a book for the library. Will this book pay for itself in circulations? Do we have other copies of this book? Other things by this author? On this subject? How well have they circulated?

I guess what I'm really saying is that no, we don't want your 1999 edition of the Writer's Market, I have the 2010 edition on the shelf and only one person has even touched it in the last two months.

Feel Good Story of the Day

2010-11-03T15:50:00.000-07:00

Working in a library in an economically depressed area, particularly in a brand new library in an area that has not had a library in a very long time, can lead to some heart warming moments. Or as our development director says, tell one of those stories that makes everyone tear up.

So here is today's story. We share a parking lot with a middle school and are often overrun with kids. It can be overwhelming for our staff, our patrons, and pretty much everyone who isn't a middle schooler. Every now and then it can be nice to have that little boost that we're still managing to serve people amidst all the chaos.

A father came in about five minutes before the middle school got out and was chatting while waiting for his daughter. He told us that she had done five book reports since we opened, because we are here. Last week, they'd been here immediately before parent teacher conferences and quarter grades. Today he was happy to report that his daughter has an A in English. Because she's done five book reports. Because we're here. (Why yes, I am going to take all the credit for this.)

I needed that reassurance today.

On elections, voting, and libraries

2010-11-02T15:29:00.000-07:00

All across the United States, it's election day. In Alaska, it's a particularly heated one with Joe Miller and Scott McAdams on the Senate ballot while Lisa Murkowski desperately holds spelling lessons for the state. It's also the first day with any real/noticeable amount of snow though mostly it's a couple of inches of slush on the roads and in the parking lots.

Despite snow and slush and crazy campaigning (I won't even get started on the people in costumes I saw), I pulled myself up early and stopped to vote today. With elections, I like to either vote on my way into work, or if voting early get a sticker and save it. This allows me to wear my "I voted" sticker all day at the library. As a public servant, someone who works with a lot of youth, it is a chance to very quietly set an example. Voting is very important to me and I haven't missed a single election, no matter how minor, since I turned 18. It might be slightly sanctimonious, but I like to think of myself as a role model for my community. Today I do my best to live up to that by voting and displaying the evidence.

Of course, as a public servant, I am extremely limited in what I can say to the public. Municipality ethic rules specifically forbid me from any sort of campaigning as part of my duties. That means (naturally) that I can't wear a "Vote For X" button while I'm at the library, working the desk, etc. Perfectly logical. However, we're in a very bad budget cycle (when are we not?) and I also can't campaign for the library. The current budget plan is to close one of our branches (not mine) and when patrons come in to ask about it, we're very limited in what we can say. Two years ago when we had a bond issue on the ballot, I could remind people that there was a library issue on the ballot, but I could not ~~tell~~ ask them to vote for it. I can't write a letter to the editor and sign it with my name and position. We can't display any information about the library budget that asks a voter to take action (such as voting one way or contacting a legislator). And on and on and on the rules go. It can be maddeningly frustrating when an issue affects your very job and you can't ask the person on the other side of the desk to please email their assembly representative.

No solutions, no real complaints, only musings on a snowy election day.

A Promotion

2010-11-01T23:19:00.000-07:00

Live exploded about three months ago (shortly after the last time I managed to update this blog). Many things (some fun, some less fun) happened in my personal life. Professionally, I received a huge promotion. I became the branch manager of the Mountain View branch of the Anchorage Public Library. (Before I had been a youth services librarian at the main location.) This is a great library. It's in an urban area, or as we've been saying the most "economically challenged" part of Anchorage. There hasn't been a public library in this neighborhood for eight years, a standalone library for nearly 20 years. I hired and chose the vast majority of my staff and oversaw the final parts of the construction. Many people go their entire career without an opportunity like this so I am trying to make the most of it. Someone suggested I tell the story of the library and it isn't a bad idea. Brand new library, brand new community, brand new staff, brand new manager. We're learning a LOT as we go along. People keep reminding me that making mistakes is a part of the process. I hope so because I feel like I'm making a thousand mistakes a day.

I've accepted that I will probably never do Nanowrimo so this month I will do Nabopomo. Instead of writing a novel in November, I will do my best to write a blog post either here or at my other blog. Hopefully the story of my library will get told and all the funny crazy things that have happened and continued to happen every day.

Book Club - Jake Drake

2010-07-24T15:28:00.000-07:00

I'm a few months behind on posting book club news - summer and the lead up to summer is so crazy. For the July book club (which was today), the Little Dippers read a perfect back to school book in which a young boy learns a little about teachers and a little about being funny. School starts in about three weeks here so that was a lot of the focus of our discussions. Please note some of the teacher discussions don't work as well with homeschool students.

Book: Jake Drake, Class Clown by Andrew Clements

Introduce Yourself: Tell us your name, age, and what school you'll be in this fall.

Discussion Questions

Are you ready to go back to school? Ready for a new teacher?
What do you hope your new teacher will be like?
What was Miss Bruce not supposed to do before Christmas? [smile] Why do you think Miss Bruce was told not to smile at the class?
Do you think that a teacher should smile at a class?
Is it better for a teacher to be friends with her class or to be in charge? Can they do both? What happens if they do too much of one?
Who was the best teacher you've ever had? Why? What made them a good teacher?
Who was the worst teacher you've ever had? Why? What made them a bad teacher?
Is it good to be the class clown? Why or why not?
Is it easy to be funny? Hard?
Why does Jake stop being funny all the time?

Activities
Tell Me A Joke
Everyone tell me your favorite joke! (Note 1st graders tend to lack comic timing.)

Make the teacher laugh
I sat in a chair and the children took turns trying to make me laugh. I had a kitchen timer set to 15 seconds (started with 10 seconds, but it wasn't long enough). They got a prize out of the treasure chest (filled with trinkets) if they made me smile or laugh. They didn't succeed until the end when I let them all try at the same time.

Joke Tellers
I pulled a ton of joke books from the library and we looked through them and had a ton of fun picking out our favorites. We then made together step-by-step some origami fortune tellers which I renamed into joke tellers. (Thank heavens I mastered these in elementary school.)
Here are simple instructions
We put the joke question on the part with the numbers (inside the "face" of the teller) and the answers under the flap you lift up (where the fortune usually goes). We moved our fingers back and forth showing the different choices until the other person said stop. It was a lot of fun. And of course the joke books were available for check out.

All in all fun was had.

Book Club: Catwings

2010-04-03T13:03:00.000-07:00

For March our book club read Catwings the first volume in one of my favorite series of all time. It was well-received though it's reading level falls into the easier end of our 1st to 3rd grade age range and it is also definitely ne of the shortest books we choose. This works well to use this short of a book when you are trying to meeting more often than once a month.

Book: Catwings by Ursula K. LeGuin

Introduce Yourself
Tell us your name, age, and

Discussion Questions

What would be an advantage to having wings?
What would be a disadvantage to having wings
Why is flying harder for cats than birds?
What do we know about birds that help them to fly? (half of my kids knew about hollow bones)
What is a nocturnal animal? Can you name other nocturnal animals?
Why is it easier to be a stray cat in the city? In the country? (comparison list time!)
Why were the birds scared of the cats?
Do you agree that it's "fair" as the other animals think that someone other than the birds can fly?
What types of hands and shoes were there?
What human behavior would you classify as "good hands"? "bad hands"?
What are ways we can show kindness to animals? Is it always kindness to feed a stray cat?
Do animals love us? How do they show it?
If you could give wings to any other animal, which one would you choose? How do you think the animal would react? (Personally I think my dog, who is quite stupid, would be so surprised, he'd start flying, forget to pump his wings, and fall.)
What does it mean when it says that Owl was not a quick thinker, but he was a long thinker?
Why did Owl atttack James and the other cats?
Why did the cats decide to trust Susan and Hank? How did Susan and Hank show they were trustworthy?
Do you think it was the right decision for Susan and Hank to not tell anyone about the catwings? Why or why not?

Activities
We made paper airplanes. I'd pulled several books on how to make paper airplanes (enough books in fact for every child to be looking at a separate book). When I had done this three weeks before with a slightly older group (fourth grade boys), it had worked wonderfully and been incredibly sucessful. The first to third grade group had trouble following the directions in the books independently though most knew how to make some form of a paper airplane. They did not find this as engaging of an activity as the older boys. It was only mildly sucessful.

Snacks
Tuna Salad on crackers, of course
Goldfish crackers

Book Club - Horrible Harry

2010-03-05T11:04:00.000-08:00

For our November Book Club we read from that classic beginning chapter book series, Horrible Harry by Suzy Kline. I chose thus particular volume of the series because I had a lot of copies of it. This is not a series that needs to be read in order.

Book Horrible Harry's Secret by Suzy Kline

Introduce Yourself
What is your name, age, and who is your best friend?

Discussion Questions

Who is the narrator of this story? (Hint: It's not Harry; it's Doug, Harry's best friend.)
Why do you think the author calls this book (and all the series) Horrible Harry, but Doug actually narrates them all? (For us this lead into a whole discussion on types of narrators such as first person, third person limited, third person omniscent, and why an author would choose one over the other. Not bad for first and second graders!)
Is Harry really horrible? Why or why not?
Why were Doug and Harry fighting in the book?
Have you ever gotten in a fight with a friend? Why? What were you fighting about?
How can you resolve fights the best?
What are your favorite snow activities?
Why won't Horrible Harry smile at the end? (lost his teeth)
Have you lost any teeth?
What does Doug call it when Horrible Harry smiles? (Showing his pearly whites)
That is almost an idiom, what other funny expressions and/or idioms do we use? (hungry as a horse)

Craft Activities
Painting
Make a winter mural as they do in the book with large pieces of white paper and blue paint. Alternative to paint: blue chalk, white chalk on dark paper, blue markers, blue crayons, all blue things. We used white butcher paper and mixed medium blues (chalk, markers, colored pencils, and crayons). Hung it up in the library and it looked great.

Drawing
Pair the kids up and have them draw pictures of other children. (Again as it is done in the book.) Alternative: have them draw a picture of a family member or friend rather than a fellow book club-ite.

Illustrating Idioms
Harry and Sidney "bury the hatchet" by drawing a graveyard with an axe buried in it. What other idioms can you illustrate? I had some pre-printed on half sheets of paper ready to be illustrated. There are several books that are great examples of this such as Raining Cats and Dogs by Will Moses (which I showed to all the kids) and Punching the Clock by Marvin Terban.

Other Activities
Snow Ball Fight!
By far the most popular thing we did. Crumple up paper from the recycle bin to be snowballs in a pretend fight. (Yes we did this in November in Alaska when we had plenty of real snow on the ground outside, but no one had wet socks at the end of the time.

Feed the liver to the frog
Tape a piece of paper that is an "aquarium" with a frog drawn in the middle. (I can't draw and taped a die-cut of a frog up there.) Blindfold the kids with small pieces of "liver" (scrap construction paper with tape on one side) and let them feed the frog. Whoever gets the closest wins. (Basically this is glorified pin the tail on the donkey, but it's always fun.)

Readalikes
If they like Horrible Harry's Secret by Suzy Kline, they should also read:

The rest of the Horrible Harry series by Suzy Kline
Marvin Redpost (series) by Louis Sachar
Frindle by Andrew Clements (or any of his school stories)
The Boys Start the War by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (first in a series for slightly older readers)

Book Club - Franny K Stein

2010-02-24T16:02:00.000-08:00

In my spate of catch-up posts about book club, I hop in my wayback machine to February of 2009. During that Valentine happy month, we read Attack of the Fifty Foot Cupid by Jim Benton, the second in the Franny K Stein series. Normally I try to feature the first book in a series in book club. However I had received a large number of free paperback copies of the second title in this series, so we went with the giant cupid. If you're not familiar with Franny K. Stein, she's a lot of fun as a beginning chapter book for guys or girls. She's a mad scientist (though not evil) kid who does wacky science things worthy of any film noir villain, but does so with humor and surprising humanity.

Book: Attack of the 50-ft Cupid by Jim Benton, part of the Franny K. Stein series.

Introduce Yourself
What is your name, age, and favorite subject in school?

Discussion Questions

Is Franny a likeable character? Why or why not? (Make a pro/con list! I love lists!)
Why do you think Igor the dog likes her?
Does Franny get more or less likeable during the story?
What do you think of Franny's valentine's generator?
Did you make/give valentines this year?
Is it better to valentines once a year or to show love all year long? (these last two questions break my own no yes/no question rules but they lead into the next few questions)
How can you show love all year long? Does Fanny understand this? How so?
Which is your favorite of Fanny's inventions?
What would you invent if you could invent anything?
What would you "biggerize"?
What would you make manifest?
Do you like science?
Have you ever done a science experiment before? What was it like?

Acitvities
I've previously posted a Gross Science Program and any of those ideas would work. We made silly putty (erm I mean the non-trademarked pushy putty). Each kid got their own ziplock baggie full of fun. Pro tip: have hand wipes and clean ziplock bags available for transport home. Here's the recipe I used:

Pushy Putty/Flubber
Add 1/4 cup water to 1/4 cup Elmer's Glue
Squish together in ziplock bag with a few drops of food coloring (optional)

Make Borax Solution:
Take 2 tablespoons borax (found in the laundry aisle), add 1 cup water and stir

Add 1/4 cup of Borax solution to water and glue mixture.

Knead together. Let dry for a few minutes then store in an airtight container. It will be smooth and rubber like; it can bounce, pick up pictures from paper and more!

Science Experiment Take Two:
A great, fun, amazing, and simple science experiment demonstrates the law of gravity (that it works equally on all objects regardless of weight). Drop a ping pong ball and a golf ball from the same height at the same time. Guess which one will hit the ground first. (Hint, they'll hit at the same time.)

Snacks!
Obviously you'll be serving valentine candy you quite wisely bought on the 15th for a deep discount.

Readalikes
You can read the rest of the Franny K. Stein series by Jim Benton for a good start. Also fun is: Andrew Lost (series) by J. C. Greenburg, The Adventures of Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey, and The Zack Files (series) by Dan Greenburg.

Book Club - Legend of Spud Murphy

2010-02-23T17:29:00.000-08:00

Our first book club of the new year, at the end of January, was The Legend of Spud Murphy by Eoin Colfer. This book got rave reviews from our kids (remember our audience is first through third grade). I admit I'm not good at posting book club activities, but I save all my notes and I mean to! Since I'm doing a presentation at the Alaska Library Conference next week on book clubs, hopefully I'll get a bunch of these back notes put up. Helpful hint, while I always want to pronounce Eoin like Ian, I listened to an audio book of one of the Artemis Fowl series and they pronounced it more like Owen. I'm assuming the audio people would have pronounced the author's name correctly.

Book: The Legend of Spud Murphy by Eoin Colfer

Introduce Yourself
Name, age, and your best adventure story (one you read or one you lived)

Discussion Questions

What are the boys' favorite types of books to read? (Action/Adventure)
What are your favorite types of books to read?
How do the boys know which area of the library to stay in?
What areas of the Loussac Library are you allowed to be in? (all of them) Where are you not allowed to be? (you can go anywhere, but you do need to respect quiet zones)
Why do you think kids weren't allowed in other sections of the library?
Why were the kids so scared of Ms. Murphy? Was she really scary? Why or why not?
Do you think librarians are scary? Why or why not?
What do you think Ms. Murphy meant when she said she sometimes forgot the library was about books?
What else is the library about besides just books? (hint programs, information, helping people)

Activities:
Library Tour!
We spent about half our time on a tour of the library. Even though these kids are regular library users, they all said they learned stuff, and they all enjoyed it. Of course at the end, they got a READ temporary tattoo.

Survival Games
Using various survival guides such as The Boys Book of Survival or The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook and we played a quiz game with situations such as what would you do in a bear attack? (This is Alaska - they might need that! Of course they're less likely to be stuck in a hurricaine.)

Exploding Popsicle Stick Frisbees
Because my library is WAY more fun than Ms. Murphy's library, we made the exploding popsicle stick frisbees featured in The Outdoor Book for Adventurous Boys.

Potato Gun
I wish. We didn't do this, but how cool would that have been?

Snacks
We don't do snacks any more, but it would have to be something spud based. Tater tots if you have a way to heat them, or potato chips. (The healthy kind of potato chips, er the healthy-ish kind.)

Readalikes
There are two veins to go when kids like Legend of Spud Murphy. The easiest is to go with similar humor books. I'd recommend Frindle by Andrew Clements (or pretty much anything by Andrew Clements) or any of the Joey Pigza books by Jack Gantos (first title is Joey Pigza Swallowed The Key).

You can also go with survival stories, anything by Will Hobbs or Gary Paulsen (though those tend to go to a higher reading level). Gordon Korman is also a really good choice. And I tend to really like non-fiction books as well. Thus I recommend The Outdoor Book For Adventurous Boys by Adrian Besley and The Boys' Book of Survival: How To Survive Anything, Anywhere by Guy Campbell and not to leave the girls out we have The Daring Book For Girls by Andrea J. Buchanan.

Book Club - Bunnicula

2009-11-03T18:31:00.000-08:00

Just in time for Halloween, on October 23rd, my 1st through 3rd grade book club read and discussed Bunnicula by Deborah and James Howe. This was a quite popular book and many children took home the next few in the series. This was also our first book club since the furlough closed the library on three months of Saturdays so I was thrilled to see that we hadn't lost any people numberwise. (We had some new kids, some kids didn't returned, but by the numbers it all evened out.) I've done this book club two years ago, in Kansas City. Here is a conglomeration of everything we did both years. Once again the questions are a mixture of things you would know if you read the book, and things anyone could answer.

Book: Bunnicula by Deborah and James Howe

Introduce Yourself
Name, age, and do you have any pets?

Discussion Questions

How did they choose names for Chester? (Chesterton the author) Bunnicula (Like Dracula, the movie at which he was found)
Do you know how your parents chose your name? (If not, and most of my kids did know, then this is a good question to ask your parents.)
Have you ever read to your pet like Toby reads to Harold?
Did you think this book was scary? Why or why not?
What is the scariest book you've read? Movie you've seen?
What is Harold's favorite people food? (Cupcakes, chocolate cake)
Does your pet have a favorite people food?
Are all people foods safe for pets? Is chocolate safe for dogs? How can you know what is safe?
What is Harold's bad behavior? (chewing shoes)
Do your pets have any bad behavior?
Garlic scares away vampires. What is your least favorite smell?
List some weird things about Bunnicula and Chester in the book. We used a big sheet of paper to do this together.
What is the weirdest thing your pet has ever done? Also on a big sheet of paper.
Who in your life is most likely a vampire secretly?
What about some other secret creature/mythical creature? (ie fairy, bigfoot...)
If you were secretly a monster or mythical creature, what would you be?
What would you do if you thought one of your pets was a vampire?

Activities
Fact or Fiction Game - Vote with your feet
We're in a room with large stairs (it's a theater, they're for sitting upon) and so we stand on the middle step and jump forward to the lower step for "real" and backward to the higher step for "not real". You can also do this by having kids start in the middle and run to one wall or the other. They love this game, and emphasize that this is just what you THINK not a right or wrong choice. So vote with your feet if you think these are real/not real:

UFOs
Aliens
Loch Ness Monster
Yeti - the abominable snowman
Mermaids
Vampires
Fairies
Unicorns
Phoenix

The Nose Knows
Harold is quite proud of his nose. I put a number of strong scented things in brown paper bags and then we guessed which was which. You could have students write them down, but for simplicity sake we all took a turn smelling and then guessed all together verbally. The objects I used included: coffee, orange, lemon, oregano, chili powder, cinnamon sticks, chocolate chip cookies, a wet wipe (for that nice disinfectant smell), and garlic.

Crafts
Pet Picture Frames
We used blank mats and ribbons, markers, and stamps to make frames for our pet photos.

Nightime scenes
Use black paper and light colored paints to make a nighttime scene from Bunnicula

Snacks
Obviously veggies. Just carrot sticks, cherry tomatoes, and ranch dressing work great. Or you could give everyone a glass of veggie juice. (One child had hoped they would get chocolate cupcakes with creme in the middle like Harold likes, but no going.)

Readalikes
And book club is most a success if they leave inspired to read more books. I recommend:
Bailey School Kids series by Debbie Dadey (mythical creatures abound!)
Hank the Cowdog series by John Erickson (a dog solves mysteries)
and of course the many other books featuring Bunnicula and his friends by Deborah and James Howe.

Pre-Marketing is Confusing

2009-10-08T13:37:00.000-07:00

There is a certain segment of the population that finds pre-marketing confusing, and this segment is larger than you would expect. Thus when they see an advertisment for a book, they immediately come to the library and ask for a copy. Now as soon as a book is put on order by the library, we can place a request or "hold" for you on that book. So that when we get the book, you'll already be on the list. This doesn't mean we have the book yet. And thus the confusion begins.

Of course you heard that Sarah Palin's book is coming out. Naturally we're already getting requests; they started the day after the announcement. So the conversation goes something like this:

Confused Patron: I'd like Sarah Palin's book please.
Patient Librarian: That won't be out for six weeks, can I place a request for you?
CP: But they were talking about it on the news.
PL: That is because it was just announced, but it won't be available for another six weeks.
CP: But they were showing it on the news.
PL: The cover art has been released so they can show the cover, but it is not available yet. Can I place a hold for you?
CP: But I saw it in Barnes and Noble!
PL: I believe you saw a poster advertising pre-ordering the book as it won't be available until Nov X. (at this point I'm usually pointing to the bolded release date on the amazon.com screen) Can I place a hold for you on the book for when it does come out?
CP: And how long will that take before I get the book?

And on we go. I have this conversation dozens of time whenever a new hot book is released, or getting ready to be released for either kids or adults. Recently (and by recently I mean for the last four months), I've been having this conversation with children about Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days by Jeff Kinney, the fourth book in a very popular series which I promise is not going to be released until October 12th. No your friend didn't have it, they had an ad for it in the back of the last book, no you didn't see it in Barnes and Noble, you saw a poster, yes I'm sure, no I'm not trying to keep you from getting the book.

I feel sorry for these people. Do they go to the movie theater and demand to see a movie right now that won't be released for weeks? (But I saw it on TV! But they showed it on Letterman!) It seems like a tough way to go through life if you don't understand pre-marketing.

Extremely Exciting News!

2009-10-06T16:54:00.000-07:00

I have been selected as a participant in the American Library Association Class Emerging Leaders Class of 2010. This is a great honor and a fantastic opportunity to learn about my profession, and meet some of the best young librarians out there. I'm literally walking on water. It all kicks off in January at the ALA Midwinter Conference in Boston. No complaints about Boston in January. I'm an Alaskan girl now, I'll be brining the bikini.

Picture Book Picks for October

2009-09-29T13:38:00.000-07:00

Every month, I've been recommending new and fantastic picture books for our bookletters service. We're looking at migrating over that service to a blog format and this is a trial run. So here are some fantastic picture books for October. Some are pure Halloween fun, but others feature ghouls, ghosts, monsters, and witches dealing with life on every other day of the year. But all of them are new, shiny, and fantastic. Enjoy!

How to Potty Train Your Monster by Kelly DiPucchio; illustrated by Mike Moon
Congratulations! Your monster is growing up, and up, and UP!
Now it's time to potty train him!
Potty training is not always the easiest task to navigate-especially for growing monsters. Thankfully, with the help of this easy-to-use guide, young ones can be sure not to forget any steps in the process. With hilarious text and playful, energetic illustrations this potty training guide is a must-have for little kids and little monsters everywhere.
Check the Library Catalog for this item!

Boo to You! by Lois Ehlert
The harvest garden is bursting with delicious vegetables, the pumpkins are decorated and lit, and the mice have their costumes ready. Everyone is looking forward to the annual Halloween-night feast. Scary Cat wasn't invited to the party, but he seems to think he's coming anyway. Hmmm, time to come up with a clever mouse-style trick to outsmart him! Done in Ehlert's beautiful and signature collage style, these mice might inspire your own little artists.
Check the Library Catalog for this item!

There Was An Old Monster! by Rebecca, Adrian, and Ed Emberley
In this variation on the traditional cumulative rhyme, a monster swallows ants, a lizard, a bat, and other creatures to try to cure a stomach ache than began when he swallowed a tick. He swallows progressively bigger animals until he tries to swallow a lion... Children will laugh, dance, and sing along with this delightful book.
Check the Library Catalog for this item!

Bone Soup by Cabria Evans
Retells the classic tale about a traveller, a ghost, who tricks a town's witches, ghouls, and zombies into helping him make soup, fulfilling his voracious appetite, and beginning a Halloween festival.
Check the Library Catalog for this item!

Boo, Bunny! by Kathryn O. Galbraith
Halloween can be especially spooky for a shy bunny. But when that shy bunny bumps into another shy bunny, friendship scares away fear. Once they join forces, not even the darkest night can stop them two brave bunnies from having the best Halloween ever. Full of sounds, spookiness, and sweetness, this dynamic picture book celebrates the best part of Halloween: friends!
Check the Library Catalog for this item!

Monsters Don't Eat Broccli by Barbara Jean Hicks
What do monsters eat? In this rollicking picture book written by Barbara Jean Hicks and illustrated by Sue Hendra, monsters insist they don’t like broccoli. They’d rather snack on tractors or a rocket ship or two, or tender trailer tidbits, or a wheely, steely stew. But boy do those trees they’re munching on look an awful lot like broccoli. Maybe vegetables aren’t so bad after all! This hilarious book will have youngsters laughing out loud and craving healthy monster snacks of their own.
Check the Library Catalog for this item!

Ghosts in the House! by Kazuno Kohara
Just the right mix of sweet and scary for the youngest trick-or treaters. At the edge of town lives a clever girl with a spooky problem: Her house is haunted! Luckily, she happens to be a witch and knows a little something about taking care of ghosts. She catches them, puts them in the washing machine, airs them out to dry, and gives them new lives as sofa covers, table cloths, and, of course, bed sheets to cozy up under. Fresh and charming illustrations in dynamic orange, black and white bring this resourceful heroine and these spooky ghosts to life.
Check the Library Catalog for this item!

I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll
A unique monster-under-the-bed story with the perfect balance of giggles and shivers, this picture book relies on the power of humor over fear, appeals to a child’s love for creatures both alarming and absurd, and glorifies the scope of a child’s imagination. One night, when Ethan checks under his bed for his monster, Gabe, he finds a note from him instead: "Gone fishing. Back in a week." Ethan knows that without Gabe’s familiar nightly scares he doesn't stand a chance of getting to sleep, so Ethan interviews potential substitutes to see if they've got the right equipment for the job—pointy teeth, sharp claws, and a long tail—but none of them proves scary enough for Ethan. When Gabe returns sooner than expected from his fishing trip, Ethan is thrilled. It turns out that Gabe didn't enjoy fishing because the fish scared too easily.
Check the Library Catalog for this item!

Do Not Build a Frankenstein! by Neil Numberman
A Frankenstein is big.
He could push you really high on the swing. He'd never get tired of giving you rides on his shoulder.
A Frankenstein would be the perfect new best friend.
Maybe you could build one. . . .
No!
Wait!
Whatever you do, Do Not Build a Frankenstein!
Check the Library Catalog for this item!

Monster Baby by Dian Regan
Mrs. Oliver's dreams have come true when her husband finds a tiny baby on the doorstep of their farmhouse. He looks like any other newborn—well, except for the fur, the tail, the pointy teeth, and the horns. But to Mrs. Oliver, he is beautiful. Olly begins to grow at an alarming rate, and in just three days he's big enough for kindergarten. He makes friends with the children at school, but his size keeps getting him in trouble . . . until he realizes all the things it allows him to do. After graduating from college two weeks after coming to live with the Olivers, Olly is adopted by his new parents. Even better, someone new—and equally unusual—moves into the farm down the road.
Check the Library Catalog for this item!

BONUS PICK: Graphic Novel
Magic Trixie by Jill Thompson
For slightly more mature and adventuresome readers, try this new graphic novel series. Magic Trixie is an adorable witch who attends a magic school with her best friends (werewolves, vampires, mummies and more) all the while dealing with not-so-magical problems, such as a baby sister who seems to get far more attention than she does and finding the perfect trick for show or tell. Kids will laugh and relate to Trixie in all three volumes of this fantasitc new series.
Check the Library Catalog for this item!

Book Club - The Littles

2009-09-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

The next installment on my series of book clubs for first through third graders features the classic book, The Littles by John Peterson. Because of book availability we read either The Littles or The Littles to the Rescue. This was the best attended book club we have had, and the most popular book. I remember loving these books as a kid, and they're still popular. After book club, every copy we had of any Littles book was checked out and I could have checked out three times as many. I actually did this back in November of last year, so that is how far behind I am on this blog. Here's what we did for our book club.

Book: The Littles; The Littles to the Rescue by John Peterson

Introduce Yourself
What is your name, age, and which Littles book did you read? (I was surprised by how many children read multiple of the books.)

Discussion Questions

What was your favorite part of the book? Why?
Which is your favorite character? Why?
What Little family member are you the most like? How?
Do you think there are tiny people living in your house? Why or why not? (at this point we stacked up the evidences on pro/con lists as part of our critical thinking skills)
Why do you think the Littles only take what the Biggs are done with? Is this like recycling? Bonus How can we recycle and reuse things at home?
Why do you think the Biggs have never noticed the Littles?
If you were a teeny little person, what would you "borrow" from your big house?
What would you use for a bed? Blankets? Dishes? Tables?
Can you imagine how the Littles would use other things beside the telephone to communicate? (example a computer)
Lucy and Tom Little don't go to school. How do you think they learn?
Are the Littles brave? When were they brave?
What would be harder if you were noly five inches tall? What would be easier?

Activities
Postage Stamp Art
The Littles use postage stamps as art. I went to the post office to buy post stamps that looked cool and didn't have a lot of choices. I remember there being tons of choices as a kid. Fortunately I had an envelope at home of "pretty" stamps that are all the wrong denomination. I recommend asking your staff/family/friends for donations of "old" stamps (not valuable obviously) for this. We "mounted" the stamps on colored cardstock and made "frames" by gluing on colored toothpicks. I, naturally, had cut the colored toothpicks in half the day before. I also had blank spine labels and allowed them to draw their own miniature paintings.

Little Books
We used small strips of paper folded accordian styles and stapled between cardstock to create books. I had printed book covers in teeny miniature versions. Or they could draw their own cover on blank cardstock. Very fun and popular.

Food or Snack
I used the recipes on the fantastic Hamster Tracker in their Cooking for Lucy section. I made and brought in a few examples (the little burgers and little pizza) and sent home instructions on the "take home fun and activities" sheet. I used a picture from the site, and received permission from the site's author who was quite kind about it. I encouraged the kids to make their own at home since we don't do food here at the library. But it would be a fun group activity if the cutting was done ahead of time by an adult (naturally).

Take Home
I sent home a "Take Home Fun and Activities" sheet. It included the "micro-burgers" recipe and picture, a list of The Littles books, and instructions to decorate a "Little" house.

To Decorate a "Tinies" House
Start with a shoe box and set it up as an extra room for any visiting Tinies. An old sock (especially a child's sock) can be a sleeping bag. What other furniture can you find? Old water bottle caps make wonderful bowls. Hang up the art you made in book club. Make a tinfoil mirror. Use your imagination and have fun! (Remember to ask an adult before you "borrow" anything.)

Other Books
And of course I would be no kind of librarian if I didn't do a "if you liked The Littles, you should try..." segment. Here's my recommendations:
The Littles (series) by John Peterson (there are seven or so in the series)
Andrew Lost (series) by J. C. Greenburg
The Borrowers (series) by Mary Norton (for slightly more advanced readers)

Review of Lunch Lady

2009-08-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

I update so rarely, that I pretty much only assume people are reading this blog if they stumbled upon it on a google search. Since I often do searches on "activity/activities" and the book title before book club, someone else must be doing them too. I have a goal of updating at least once a week until I have the chance to get through my backlog of notes on book clubs. Today I will not be talking about kids' book club though.

Recently (at the beginning of this year, so 10 months ago) I became the buyer for our library for children's graphic novels (well all of 700s but mainly graphic novels). I've always enjoyed them, but now I'm trying to be educated about it. Our collection of graphic novels was almost non-existent beyond Tin-Tin and Garfield, so I've been building up from scratch. I've been buying at a large pace for 10 months and the shelves are still bare. I take that as a success. If all my graphic novels were in, they wouldn't fit on the shelves currently allotted to them. They're always all checked out. It's also usually one of the messier (more heavily browsed) sections and they end up on the reshelve cart with great frequency. So as much as I buy and add, I haven't yet hit saturation, heavens I'm not keeping up with demand. But it's a fun challenge. And so today I review one of our newest acquisitions.

Lunch Lady and the League of Librarians by Jarrett J. Krosoczka
Knopf, 2009, available in a library binding
Lunch Lady Website

I of course must begin this review by saying that I am morally obligated to despise anything that portrays librarians as less than the beacons of hope and pillars of society that we are. Got that? Great, moving on.

I was thrilled to get this book because I love Jarrett Krosoczka, especially Punk Farm. Many is the time I've lost my voice after a particularly energetic storytime performance with those guys.

Starting with the cover, and to be honest that is where my library kids start, and all is good. I hate comparisons, but they're useful, so here goes. Lunch Lady is similar in size and look to Babymouse. Except where Babymouse only uses (shades of) three colors (black, white and pink), Lunch Lady only uses (shades of) three colors (black, white, and yellow).

Inside artwork: it is still only those three colors, but you won't miss the rest of the palette. The resulting artwork is deceptively simple and striking. This book has a lot of shelf appeal, especially to both genders. (I have yet to convince a single boy to check out Babymouse.) There are a mix of sizes and styles of panels, from traditional (aka newspaper style) small square panels to double page spreads. The variety keeps it entertaining and allow for more flexibility in the storytelling which Krosoczka uses admirably.

Plot and writing: I started with the second one since for reasons known only to our distributor it arrived before the first volume despite being ordered at the same time. It worked just fine to read out of order which is always a huge plus in the library world, where we often hope to convince kids to take what is available no matter which volume it is. For the plot, once again we have evil librarians. They've taken all their fundraising money, stolen fundraising money from the cheerleaders (this librarian thinks our severely underfunded, having to take mandatory furlough, closed three days a week libraries could use the extra cash and doesn't see what is so evil about that) and are plotting world domination (a world run by librarians might work better, perhaps we should give it a try, still not evil). They've used the purloined fundraising money to buy deadly weapons (okay probably evil) and are setting out to sabotage the latest video game system so kids will read. And what is super cool (and not at all evil) is that their weapons are books that release "Book Beasts" such as the lion from the Chronicles of Narnia.

I'll end the plot description at the risk of being too spoilery. Let's just say I have ambiguous feelings about the end, but I know the kids will love it. The writing doesn't feel that he stretched for too epic, or kept it too simple, but just right. There is a lot of action, massive fight scenes, and plenty of humor. While most kids will like the action, I appreciated (and I know many kids who will as well) the small, almost throwaway, bits of referential humor.

Cross Appeal/ Age Appeal: This will appeal to readers of Babymouse, Sardine in Outer Space, etc. Primarily ages 5 to 10 depending on reading level. I think it will appeal to a wide range as it is neither too hard for the younger guys nor too babyish for the older ones. I can tell you that all of the library's copies were checked out within hours of hitting the shelves.

Overall Conclusion: This book gets an A. (It only didn't get an A+ because librarians aren't really evil.) If you're a librarian with a graphic novel collection, buy the two that are already out. Go ahead and order the next two he's announced. (I have.) If you're looking for a gift for a reluctant reader, try this.

Book Club - Chalk Box Kid

2009-07-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately due to budget cuts, the most recent Little Dippers Book Club is the last one until October. Learn more here I think many of my regulars were out of town and/or thought we were already on break because I had a much smaller group, and no repeats, only new kids. Here's the outline.

Book: The Chalk Box Kid by Clyde Robert Bulla

Introduce Yourself
Tell us your name, age, and favorite way to make art.
At this age everyone still likes art, and no one has yet been convinced that since they're not "good" at art they don't like it. Only as we get older are we convinced that if we have no talent at something we must not enjoy it. I'm not that talented, but I love to create, craft, etc. I should also point out that I always give my name and age.

Discussion Questions:
A note on using the questions. I start broad and give them hints and ask more leading questions if I'm getting blank stares. I also tend to break up the discussion time. A few minutes of discussion and then an activity and then more discussion or discussion during activities. Kids do well with discussion while their hands are occupied.

Why do you think Uncle Max covered up Gregory's pictures? Was he trying to hurt his feelings or just didn't think about it?
What did Gregory mean when he said it wasn't his room anymore, it was Max's?
Why do you think Vance didn't like Gregory?
Was Gregory bragging when he said his old school was bigger?
Gregory erased his little pictures of things like alligators to make one big (cohesive) picture of a garden. If you had a whole building to draw on would you make many small pictures or one big picture? Why?
Do you think Greogry thought his pictures were better than Ivy's? Why or why not?
Why did Ivy want to give Gregory her prize?
Why did Ivy bring her brother to see Gregory's garden?
Why did Greogry's mom and dad wait to see what he was doing in the old building until after his teachers came?
Should you play in an abandoned building by yourself? Use a ladder without asking an adult? (I'm a librarian and always have to add in the little safety message.)

I know there are more questions that we talked about, I just can't recall them. I will add if they come to me, a lot of extra questions flow naturally out of the discussion and don't get recorded in my notes.

General Discussion Subject
We talked about bullying (because of Vance) and general ways to recognize bullies, how to deal with bullying. How to stop bullying, if bullying is happening to you, if it is happening to another kid, etc. And how bullies can still be nice if they are made to understand that their behavior is unacceptable by both their peers and authority figures (and I do believe this is true in the first through third grade level).

Activities:
Chalk Drawings - Individual
Of course you have to draw with chalk. I pulled tons of gardening books, the children leafed through them for inspiration and then created take home drawings on the larger size of black construction paper.

Communal Chalk Garden
We pulled a big piece of dark colored butcher paper and created a chalk garden as a group. It had the lettuce from the book and other fantastic ideas from the gardening books. I hung it up on our bulletin board along with a sign explaining about book club. Easy advertising and an easy bulletin board. Win/Win! I'll show pictures if I ever get another camera.

Raddish Seeds
We ran out of time and didn't do this, but it is so easy it hardly needs mentioning. Plant raddish seeds (hard to kill, quick growing) in a cup with some potting soil. Send home. Bonus fun: decorate the paper cup first.

Grass Head
Just like the raddish seeds, but a slight variation. Draw on a paper cup (or on a label that you stick on a plastic cup, slightly easier for younger hands) a face. Fill cup with dirt and grass seeds. The grass grows as "hair" for the face you drew.

And that was our book club for first through third graders on The Chalk Box Kid. We again played the "vote with your feet" game mentioned previously and there were more discussion questions than listed here. Overall very successful and I will miss book club for the next few months.

Book Club - Geronimo Stilton

2009-06-16T18:21:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted since I took my new job up in Alaska. Being a librarian in Anchorage, Alaska is not too fundamentally different than being a librarian in Kansas City, Missouri. I get asked about Battle of the Book books instead of Mark Twain books, and I am learning about Alaska history instead of famous Missourians, but a lot of the same issues. I began the job in Feburary of 2008 and in September began a book club for first through third graders which was one of my favorite aspects of my job in Kansas City. Because the big dipper sign + northern star is so prominent in Alaska (appearing all over the place, most notably ont eh Alaskan state flag), I decided to name our book club Little Dippers Book Club. Hopefully in a couple of years we can grow the group to include third through fifth/sixth grade readers in a Big Dippers Book Club and perhaps even a sixth through eighth grade book club called Northern Lights Book Club. I get requests for the next age up all the time. But for now Little Dippers is a success. Our first meeting had only 4 participants and our last meeting had 17 participants (which is awfully close to my panic/full number of 20). I've made a few changes to the program. Instead of meeting twice a month on Tuesday afternoons, we meet once a month on Saturday mornings. It is 45 minutes instead of an hour (a much better and more managable amount of time). And no snack (though that more has to do with our food policy, and helps account for the change in time as well since when there was a snack it always took the last 45 minutes). I'm going to try to work backwards and talk about the various books we've used as well as other great programs held here at the Anchorage Public Library.

Book: The Lost Treasure of the Emerald Eye by Geronimo Stilton

Introduce Yourself: As always we start with introductions, including me. I also use nametags. Tell me your name, age, and what do you plan to do this summer.

Discussion Questions:

Who is more adventorous: Geronimo or Thea?
How are they alike? How are they different?*
Why do you think they are so different even if they are siblings?
How are you different from your siblings?
Geronimo, Benjamin, Thea, and Trap are all different? Is it better to have people who are different or people who are similar on a team? Why?
Do you think those four make a good team? Why or why not?
What qualities do they each bring to the team?
Why do you think they elected Thea leader?
Why do you think Thea didn't vote for herself for leader?
Was she a good leader? Why or why not?**
What was the emerald eye treasure?
Is that a good treasure? Or would you rather have treasure you could spend (like Trap)?
How do we protect such treasures (nature)?

Discussion Extention Activities:
*From the list of alike and different characteristics, have the children name them while you make a Venn diagram.
**Make a list of what makes Thea a good leader, characteristics of a good leader in general, characteristics of world leaders, etc.

Craft:
I made homemade playdough in yellow for cheese sculptures. I still need to post my playdough recipe, but any salt dough recipe will work.

Other Activities:
For a variety of reasons including space and time, I did not try these activities, but thought they were worth sharing.

Cheese Tasting: It is not possible to have food in this library setting, but in Kansas City this would have been a go. Have a variety of cheeses, everything from cheese in a can to gourmet "stinky" cheeses and let the kids try them all.
Newspaper Scavenger Hunt: I got this from another librarian's blog (the marvelous Children's Programming) and sadly didn't have time to do it. But a Newspaper Scavenger Hunt would have been fantastic. Read that entire entry for many other fantastic ideas.
Treasure Map Search: Of course you can always hide "treasure" in the children's area, provide a map, and let them go for it. However I prefer to keep my group smaller and contained and didn't want them loose. You lose the "book club" feel, but it would be perfect for a Stilton party.
Origami Boats: I really wanted to make origami (or newspaper) boats, but we just didn't have time.
Mouse Trap: I have a copy of the old classic board game of Mouse Trap (still readily availalbe), but didn't know how to let 17 children have fun with it at once. I still think it could have been cool, I am just not sure how I could have worked it in.

Vote With Your Feet:
At APL, we're in a theater with the superwide stairs for seating. For this "game" everyone stands on the middle stair and I read a statement. If that statement is true (or you agree or the answer is the first choice) you step down one step (forwards, if it is false (or you disagree or choose the second choice in the multiple choice arena), you step backwards (up) one step. I announce the correct answer, and we all compare what we think. Especially on a "what do you think" type of question, this is a good way to get the discussion ball rolling.

Sturcture / Timeline:
Here's how we're organized. As kids come in, we sit in a circle and do introductions. Then we discuss maybe one or two discussion questions. Then there is a "vote with your feet" game and that allows us to have a few more discussions (and keeps us from getting too fidgety from sitting too long). Then we start the craft. While making the craft (once we're all started), we do more discussion. As the craft wraps up, there is more discussion. Then a discussion extention (such as the Venn Diagram), and we wrap it up by passing out the take home and reading a little bit of the first part of the next book if we have time. Basically at no point do we just sit still and talk for more than 10 minutes; I try to keep discussion blocks at 5 to 7 minutes if I can.

Take Home Activities:
There are a ton of great printables on Scholastic's Stilton website and they got a word search and maze.

It's cold up here...

2008-02-15T12:04:00.000-08:00

I took a new job in a new library. Though I loved working at the Kansas City Public Library and would recommend it to anyone who is job hunting as a librarian, my dream opportunity came up. For years I have dreamed of living in Alaska. I have particular idea where this desire came from, but it's been there. (Also I'm ending a lot of phrases with prepositions, forgive me.) I've always watched the job postings on the Alaska state library jobline to see what was available. While Alaska appealed to me, I never really considered any city other than Anchorage. So when a job came open in Anchorage I applied, never thinking they would even call me for an interview. It was more of a "why not apply" type of situation. I got called for an interview and thought "sure!" and did a phone interview. Because why not? This is my dream. (As my best friend pointed out, at some point I'll have to stop with the "why not? might as well..." attitude and make the actual decision to uproot my life and move 3500 miles away.) I was shocked when they offered me the job, took a few hours to seriously consider it (something I'd been doing since the interview), and then accepted. Six short weeks later, and one harrowing drive up the Alaska Highway in January (a feat apparently even "real" Alaskans won't attempt), I arrived in Anchorage, found a place to live, and started at my new job.

So future posts should have an Alaskan slant to them. Though I've discovered that kids are kids and storytime in Alaska goes much like storytime in Kansas or Missouri. There are a few differences which I will post about later.

Book Club - Emperor's Silent Army

2007-12-11T12:19:00.000-08:00

Here is another entry in my series of book clubs for 1st through 3rd graders. Some of my kids are homeschoolers and tend younger, so my activities tend to gear that way.

Book: The Emperor's Silent Army by Jane O'Connor

Introduce Yourself
Tell us your name, your age, and what you would put in a tomb like the Emperor made?
We start every book club with name, age, and some semi-related book question.

Discussion Questions

Why did the Emperor have the clay soldiers made?
What would you take with you to the afterlife if you could?
What type of soldier would you like to be in the Ancient Chinese Army?
What surprised you most about the terracotta army?
What would it be like to spend a very long time making something like a soldier and then have it buried?
Why did the emperor have the books (except medicine and farming) burned? (he thought ignorant people were easier to control)
What do you think of this? Are ignorant people easier to control? Why or why not?
What were some of the interesting things about the emperor’s life? (the 270 palaces, assassination attempts, etc)
Would you like to have been a first century emperor like that? Why or why not?
Can you think of other cultures that built elaborate tombs? (the Egyptians, the Mayans)
How do we honor the dead now?

Extention
There are all sorts of fascinating pieces of information about the teracotta soldiers on the web, including about the excavation of the Emperoror's tomb (and what is holding it up). We talked about that side of the story and looked at pictures and such.

Craft
Not a surprise, we went with making our own teracotta soldiers. I used self-hardening clay so the kids could take it home immediately and not have to worry about a kiln or the like. It was fun, but some kids were resistant and wanted to make their own images. After they made one little soldier, they were allowed to make other creatures, dogs and cats were especially popular. We used simple tooth picks to do our molding.

Snack
In keeping with our semi-Chinese theme, we had a semi-Chinese snack. We drank Green Tea a la Crystal Light. (In a powder, mixed up a pitcher, served chilled, it is rasberry enthused, etc.) All of the kids at least tried the Green Tea and only one didn't end up liking it. We ate snow peas (available in bags in the bagged salad aisle of my supermarket) dipped in ranch dressing (not at all Chinese, but very kid friendly). All the kids liked the snow peas, except for one (surprisingly not the same child who objected to the Green Tea).

Objections
One parent objected to the book and would not let his daughter read it because it "wasn't a story book" and was perhaps a bit too scary. Another parent thought it was rather "intense". They are primarily referring to the parts where the workers are shut in (to die) in the Emperor's Tomb. However, I strongly believe in tossing in the occasional non-fiction into our book club. A lot of kids respond very well to non-fiction, it stretches them, introduces them to types of literature, etc. The vast majority of the kids and parents had fun with this book.

Harry Potter News

2007-11-01T13:34:00.000-07:00

J. K. Rowling just completed a new book, a book of fairy tales called “The Tales of Beedle the Bard” which is of course the volume that (WARNING SPOILER!) Dumbledore leaves Hermione in his will. (OKAY SPOILER OVER). Only seven copies have been made, one of which will be on sale in an auction house for charity.

Read the story
Sadly our entire book budget for the year probably wouldn't buy it. We could pay the starting price, but it is going to rise so fast...

Also, Ms. Rowling is suing to block a publication from a “lexicon website” because she plans to publish her own HP Encyclopedia. So that is good news for all the die-hards out there.
Read that story

I see another party in our future… Or at least a massive trivia night.

State Award Nominees

2007-11-01T07:26:00.000-07:00

The 2008-2009 nominee list for the William Allen White Award is now available. Right now it is primarily for ordering purposes for teachers and librarians. Remember this is the award voted on by students in Kansas. I see some of my favorites on it:
2008-2009 William Allen White Award Nominees

Of course, I'm not a Kansas librarian anymore. I'm in Missouri now. That means I wait upon the Truman and Mark Twain Awards. The Mark Twain award which for years covered grades 4-8 is being split with slightly older than the Mark Twain Award and younger than the Gateway (high school award). Books can appear on multiple lists though. So it should be interesting.
There is a preliminary reading list available and I see many favorites on there as well.

Words to remember

2007-10-31T11:31:00.001-07:00

Too late for Banned Books Week, but always good to quote again...

"All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf - that work I abhor - then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us."
-- Katherine Paterson, American author of childrens books (1932-)

Book Club - Bailey School Kids

2007-10-30T17:21:00.000-07:00

Remember that I do book club for 1st through 3rd graders. So we stick to simpler books. This time, for our pre-halloween meeting, they got to read any book in the Bailey School Kids series by Debbie Dadey. This was a bit harder because everyone read different books (well some books were read by multiple children, but not many). So the discussion questions were vague and the activities less tied-in. This is the most purely "let's just have fun" book club that I have ever run. Here basically is what we did. (Personally I read Ghosts Don't Eat Potato Chips and Mummies Don't Coach Softball).

Discussion Questions

Tell me in three sentences or less about the book you read.
What sort of "unreal" creature were they investigating?
Did the children decide that the adult was that creature?
Do you think that adult was that creature?
Are the Bailey School Kids brave? How were they brave (or not brave) in the book you read?
When was a time you were brave?
In Ghosts Don't Eat Potato Chips, they learn to play poker, what is your favorite card game?

Activity: Compare and Contrast with Venn Diagrams
In each of the books, the Bailey School Kids have to decide if an adult is or is not some sort of unreal creature. What type of mythical creature does the librarian most seem like? (With no prompting whatsoever from me the children chose angel). I had a big sheet of paper on the wall and we talked about Venn diagrams (the two circles that overlap) and how they could be used to compare and contrast. So we wrote down the things that were true only of librarians, only of angels, and true of both (we're both smart, and we both like to read). At the end, most things were not in the overlap of the circles, so it was decided I was probably not an angel. In a really intense book club, you could do this with the characters in the book.

Activity: Games
I read Ghosts Don't Eat Potato Chips in which they play poker. I didn't think I had enough time to teach poker, plus I wasn't sure about parent reactions. So I just pulled out board games for some fun.

Craft: Monster Masks
We designed our own monster masks (or cat or dog or angel or whatever). Cardstock or paper plates, markers, feathers, pompom balls, scissors (though I ended up cutting out most of the eye balls) and a jumbo craft stick to glue to the mask to use to hold it up. And we were good.

Snack: Potato Chips

Off to MLA

2007-10-02T18:28:00.001-07:00

MLA (an oft used acronym, in this case the Missouri Library Association) Conference is this week. Tomorrow morning early (very early considerintg I work until 9pm tonight and haven't packed) I leave for Springfield Missouri for this year's conference. You can catch me as part of the blogging team over at the official blog. I may try to double post/cross-post back here, but you never know. This is my first conference (PLA was a symposium) and I've heard they can get pretty crazy...

Happy Reading!

Banned Books Week

2007-10-01T09:05:00.000-07:00

Banned Books Week is upon us. Go here to get your web badges. (I've got mine.)

Secrets of Droon - book club

2007-09-30T19:35:00.000-07:00

Last week my first through third grade book club read The Hidden Stairs and Magic Carpet by Tony Abbott which is the first in The Secrets of Droon series. My kids are fairly active so here is some of what we did...

Nametags:
As they came in everyone got a nametag with their name written backwards (like the code Princess Keeah uses). After two kids ruined nametags, it was easier for me to write the nametags out.

Quick vote:
Who would go down the stairs? All of my kids decided that they would go down the stairs...

Introduce yourself
We said our names, our ages, and if we had the head of a person and the body of something else (like Max the spider-troll), what would your body be?

Discussion Questions:

Would you have gone down the magic stairs?
What sport do Eric, Julie and Neal play? What sports do you play?
Eric, Julie and Neal work together as a team? How?
When do you work with other people as a team?
Max is a person’s head and the body of what? (Spider). If you could have a person’s head and an animal’s body, what animal would you choose?
Where would you go and what would you do if you had a magic carpet?
There was a bird following Keeah, do you think it was a good bird or bad one? Why?
What did the Red Eye of Dawn disguise as? (A jewel) How would you disguise a magical object?
How do you think that Eric, Julie and Neal could tell that Keeah was the good guy and the guys on the lizards were the bad ones?
In this book, they fly on giant flying lizards, what sort of animal would you fly on if you could?
Why do you think they can’t leave anything behind in Droon? (If they do something from Droon will appear in our world…) How could that be good? How could it be bad?
How do you think Lord Sparr learned about our world from the soccer ball? What do you think he learned?

Activity: Droon Bingo
I used words from Droon (such as groggle, keeah, etc) and made bingo cards. Then we just played regular bingo. Bingo Card Maker

Activity: Droon match/memory
I made two sets of cards up with words from Droon (though not necessarily magic words) such as soccer, stairs, carpet, etc. On one set the word was written forwards, and on the other set they were written backwarsd (like Keeah's code). Both cards had the same clip art on them to be identifiable. The kids played Go Fish with them and also the memory game. (The one where you lay the cards out in a grid and turn over two at a time until you find matches).

Magic Candy Dust
We had some leftover Sandy Candy supplies (test tubes and the candy) from the Harry Potter party so we used that to make our own tubes of "magic dust" (just like Keeah used to heal Eric's ankle).

I didn't do anything specially book related for the snack. Nor did we do a craft since we made the candy tubes.

9/11, books, and children

2007-09-12T13:18:00.000-07:00

September 11th is never going to be an easy day. On our calendar it is printed as Patriots Day. I like that title well enough. On the second and fourth Tuesday of every month I do a bookclub for 1st to 3rd graders (theoretically, we've got homeschoolers so some 5 year-olds sneak in there, if they read the book and participate, they're fine). This September 11th was a second Tuesday. Normally I choose a simple chapter book, occasionally a non-fiction book. They read it before book club, we do some discussion, a game/activity, and often a craft. Then over a snack, I read the first few pages of the next book and they take it home with them. When I realized my book club would fall on September 11th, I had two choices, ignore it or do something about it. I am me, so I chose do something about it.

I chose three books that dealt around the topics raised by 9/11, the children were encouraged to read any two of the three. The books I chose were September Roses by Jeanette Winter, The Man Who Walked Between the Towers by Mordicai Gerstein, and The Librarian of Basra by Jeanette Winter. The first book most completely talks about the 9/11 tragedy, but in a way a child can understand. The second book tells the story of how in the 1970s a tightrope walker walked and danced between the towers with a rememberance to the fallen towers at the end. And the final book tells the story of an Iraqi librarian who helped to save books from her library (which eventually burnt) during the war.

Some of the parents were nervous, one mother wanted her son to start book club, but decided to wait until after this session. I understand. I was nervous about it too. During the summer my numbers had dwindled to about 11 or 12 kids per session. This session I had 17! A lot of them were new, or this was only their second time. So it was really chaotic. We talked (very briefly) about 9/11. I let them volunteer what their parents/teachers/etc had told them, and summed it up as a "very sad day". (They said the towers fell down, it was a cop out, but it was fine.) Our introduction is always "your name, your age, some random fact". This week's random fact was when was the last time you did something nice for someone without being asked. Then I talked about how the events of that day six years ago made a lot of people think about how we could change our world for the better. And we talked a little bit of that. They all shared ideas about how doing little things in their area (pick up litter, etc) can help make the whole world more peaceful. Around the Gerstein book we talked about civil disobedience (it's a stretch, it's against the rules for the tightrope walker to go between the towers), and when it is okay to not follow the rules (Gandhi, Martin Luther King, jr., stressing that most of the time you should follow the rules). We were going to talk about remembering things and memorials, but we never got to it because we spent so much time on how we can be peace people and change our world.

Then we played a game around The Librarian of Basra. I held up a variety of books two at a time. In each hand there was a different book, and the children had a split second to decide if they could only save one, which one would they save. They ran to the side of the room to indicate their choice. It's fun, very visual to see how the group splits, and they loved it. The hardest choice for most of the kids was Harry Potter versus Magic Tree House. Next we made peace people out of pipe cleaners, ate snack (which sometimes relates to the book and this time was just yogurt in those little tubes kids like), and read from the next book (The Hidden Stairs and the Magic Carpet by Tony Abbott). It was a crazy thing, but it went well. I don't think anyone would have minded had I ignored the holiday, but I think the parents felt that this handled the situation properly for a group of children who were toddlers when the towers fell.

It's funny because even with this plan, I let myself forget a little that it was 9/11. When I was in the car, with the radio on, and they were replaying some coverage of that day set to music, than I remembered. And I allowed myself to mourn again a bit for all those lost.

I wrote up in our library's email newsletter a little thing for parents about using books to help your children deal with tough events. I worked hard on the wording because I didn't want to be condescending (you MUST talk to your child about 9/11 and this is the ONLY way to do it). Read below if you would like...

Many of the children we see at the xyz library were too young to understand what was happening on September 11, 2001, or they were not even born. However that day started a series of events that forever will shape their lives, even as it continues to shape the world climate. As another anniversary draws near, we recognize that talking to children about this and other disastrous events such as the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean or the continuing conflict in Iraq can be difficult It is our hope that some of these books might be helpful in your conversations with your children.

For the youngest preschoolers:
Mama: a true story in which a baby hippo loses his mama during the tsunami, but finds a new home and a new mama by Jeanette Winter
In this d eceptively simple book that only contains one word of text (“mama”), a small hippo is separated from his mother during the 2004 tsunami and eventually adopts a giant tortoise as his mother. Based on the true story of Owen and Mzee. Even young children can undertand the anxiety of being separated from your mother and the joy of finding a home again – and this book uses that to show the struggle faced by so many after losing their homes to natural disaster.

September Roses by Jeanette Winter
In the simplest of text with basic but beautiful illustrations, this little book tells a big story. Two sisters journeyed from South Africa to New York for a flower show. After the attacks of 9/11, they found a new use for their roses and a beautiful tribute is made both by their flowers and this lovely book.

For older preschoolers and early elementary students:
A Mama for Owen by Marion Dane Bauer
Here the story of Owen and Mzee is more fleshed out with beautiful watercolor illustrations that illustrate a young hippo who loves to play hide and seek until the day he can not find his mama at all. Eventually he finds a new person to cuddle with and a new hide and seek companion. While parts of the story are sad, the warm tones of the illustrations and hopeful note of the text present a comforting image.

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers by Mordicai Gerstein
One sunny morning in 1974, a young street performer took to the skies in a daring act as he walked a rope stretched in between the two towers of the World Trade Center. This Caldecott Medal winning book tells his story in breathtakingly beautiful illustrations and fold out pages, as he dances and plays suspended in the sky between two of the highest towers ever built. And at the end, we are all reminded that though the towers are gone, their memory is still with us as is the memory of a young man dancing up in the sky.

For more advanced children:
Owen and Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship by Isabella Hatkoff
Here is a non-fiction book that tells in wonderful details and incredible full page photos the story of Owen and Mzee. Readers can follow the trek of young Owen as he is painstakingly rescued and relocated to a refuge where he meets Mzee. This is perfect for older children who always want to know “what really happened”. For those who want to know what happened next, they can also read Owen and Mzee: The Language of Friendship by Isabella Hatkoff

The Librarian of Basra by Jeanette Witner
As war threatened Iraq, one librarian worried about the library in her charge. Slowly she moved the books to her house, and then, with the help of her friends, to safety. Based on a true story from Iraq, here is one librarian who understood her duty to protect the books and valuable cultural treasures. As war rages, and danger, fire, and bombs come closer, still she protects the library’s collections. The book ends on the hopeful note of telling us that the librarian will continue to protect the books as she dreams for a peaceful day and a rebuilt library.

Gross Science Program

2007-09-12T12:45:00.000-07:00

Now that summer is over, vacation is over, and I can finally recover, I would like to start posting some of my favorite and most sucessful programs from the summer. Having already discussed the Harry Potter event in great detail, I will move to my second favorite event of the summer - our Gross Science program.

Logistics:
Gross Science was held on an afternoon (2pm) for one hour. It was registration only, 30ish spots, filled up, and we did not take a waiting list. (Though anyone who showed up hoping to snag a no-show's spot was allowed in.) The program was aimed at boys ages 7-10, but anyone was allowed in. It was almost perfectly half/half gender divide, ages 6 to 11 attended (with the greatest cluster around 7 to 9), and about 35 kids came. Total supply cost is around $30.

Set up:
I had a large meeting room at my disposal. I put tables against all the walls and left the middle area empty. Each table (actually a wall with two or three tables pushed together) had a different station. No one was allowed in early (of course I was still setting up until the last second). When everyone came in, they all sat in the middle.

Getting the gross fun started:
All the kids are sitting in the middle, facing me and the "front" (In a room with stations on all sides, front is a relative concept, but they were facing the projection screen.) What could be grosser than poop? So that is how we started things. We did some fun facts about poop. How much do you poop a day? (There's a fun math formula to help you figure it out.) How does poop help us? How can we use it? Poop helped us fight WWII. (German soldiers fighting in North Africa believed it was good luck to roll their tanks through camel dung, so Allied soliders began hiding bombs under the dung.) Kids had fun with the facts and guessing which animal pooped the most, etc. However this was mostly short. I then held up a copy of The Truth About Poop and explained that this was the source of all of my facts. (See resource list below). At this point the parents who hadn't left (just unobtrusively hanging out in the back) were looking rather queasy.

Then we went into a powerpoint that was projecting on the wall of a "match the poop" game. Each slide had two pictures of poop and two animal pictures. First the poop would appear and the kids would shout out guesses. Then (when I raised my hand they went silent, mostly) the two choices would appear. We would vote on which ones we thought matched. With a click of my magic mouse, lines would be drawn connecting the animal and their droppings. Super fun.

Next we read a book about mealworms (A Mealworm's Life by John Himmelman).

Starting the stations:
At this point we were ready to start the kids on the stations where they would spend the bulk of the program. I walked from station to station explaining what they were and what they would do. (In an ideal world we would have one staff member or volunteer for each station, in my world we just had me.) All the kids were given a handout that explained some basic fun facts, stuff about each station, reading list, website list, etc. And they got a bag to carry things around in. Then I turned the kids loose. They could go to any station, in any order, and stay as long as they liked. I encouraged them that if one station was full they could go somewhere else and come back when it was less busy.

Station one: Owl Pellets
On the right side table I had some owl pellets set up for the kids to disect. I had information about what you could expect to see in the owl pellets (bones, hair, fur, etc). Owl pellets are paper plates with disection tools (plastic pointy things). I got the pellets from Operation Wildlife for a $1.50 sterilization fee each. Great deal! They are a local group here, check for a local group or find someone to ship to you. This was not as popular as I expected, but many of the kids had done it recently in school.

Station two: Fake Poop
On the table to the right, clockwise, of the front, this one I really spread out over three tables together so many kids could work at once. At this point, I had put up on the projector pictures of the different poop types. A few pictures on the tables would have been nice too. I made my own play dough and colored it brown. (I have a great recipe I will post later.) To color it brown I put in black food coloring (available separately from the rest of the pack) and added in some of the yellow and red for warmer tones. It was a rather grayish brown, but it was real looking enough to be gross. I also purchased a large bag of hamster food that had lots of seeds etc. Kids rolled these seeds, nuts, shells, etc into their poop pellets. Corn is a good filler (and often isn't digested and shows in feces). These fake poop pieces were then placed in ziplock baggies and into their carrying bags. Actually I already had the playdough divided into chunks in baggies to keep one child from taking it all, so they put it back in their baggie. It was a good system. Some children really got into making their poop look like a specific animal's poop. Lots of fun, especially after the owl pellets.

Station three: Mealworms
Continuing clockwise around the room, this was on the "back" wall, opposite the front, projector, and station one. This was also two tables or more. When explaining the stations, this one took the most time. Kids spent the most time here, enjoyed it the most, and in the past few months it is the one they mention to me the most when they come in. I bought mealworms (a hundred of them cost $5.99) at a pet store (when I was buying the hamster food for fake poop). They're in the refrigerator section (to be fed to lizards and what not). If you try to keep them in your fridge be careful, they can't get too cold without dying. I bought them the day before and just let them thaw overnight. I recommend this to get them more active. I learned just as much about mealworms from talking to the pet shop guy who raises them for his lizards as I did from books and websites. I bought them and then dropped some potato bits (for moisture) into the grain stuff they were in. They liked the dark and calm of my cabinet (which also kept my cat from trying to eat them). They were most active immediately after being removed from a darkened cabinet so I tried to keep them in something resembling that right up until I showed them to the kids.

We had "experiments" the kids could do with the mealworms. There were mealworms still in their tupperware (butter tub style) container from the pet store and some on paper plates. As well there were magnifying glasses and paper towels. They wrote the answers/observations with golf pencils onto their handout.
Questions to explore:

Do you see any exoskeletons shed by the larva? Look at them under the microscope. What do you notice?
Pick up a larva mealworm. Does it wiggle? Does it wiggle more when you hold an end instead of the middle?
If you put your mealworm on a plate, does it move toward the damp side (wet paper towel) or dry?
On the dark and light plate*, does your meal worm move to the dark or to the light?

*The dark and light paperplate had half of it covered up with paper taped down like a little "roof" for the mealworms to crawl under.

Next the kids got to make a "mealworm habitat" to take home. We had babyfood jars (with holes punched in the lids). They put some oats (regular oatmeal) in the bottom and a piece of potato. Their handout included some mealworm care instructions. They never need water, they'll get the moisture from the potato. Kids then placed a few mealworms in the jar to take home (but only if their parents approved). Even as the beetles they'll eventually turn into, they really can't escape. Kids were also encouraged to move their mealworms to a bigger container eventually (any sort of small butter tub or other washed former plastic food container such as a cottage cheese tub will work). I think every single kid took home some meal worms. The rest of them were set free in a compost pile and a garden. These mealworms were destined to be food so I felt not bat at all about giving them to children. One child has sucessfully bred a new generation of mealworms.

Station four: Fake Snot
This is on the next wall in our clockwise circle. Following the instructions here we made fake snot. I had big bowls of water and borax solution, gallon jugs of glue, spoons for measuring, and small cups for mixing (as well as craft sticks to mix with). It all goes into a ziplock baggie at the end. The neon food coloring is particularly fun for this. We went through two and a half vials of green food coloring.

Station five: Books and resources
Back on the "front" wall, on the left of the projection I had a table full of books for kids to check out. I requested every copy of these titles in my system and almost all of them were checked out. Usually at a program, one or two people take a book, here everyone left with at least one book, many left with multiple books. Especially popular were mealworm books (to care for their new pets).

Booklist
A Mealworm’s Life by John Himmelman
Mealworms by Donna Schaffer
Mealworms: Raise them, watch them, see them, change by Adrienne Mason
Grossology by Sylvia Branzei
Grossology and You by Sylvia Branzei
Hands-on Grossology by Slvia Branzei
Gross Universe by Jeff Szpirglas
Gross Science Experiments by Q. L. Pearce
Truth About Poop by Susan Goodman
What Stinks by Marilyn Singer
Jurassic Poop by Jacob Berkowitz
Gee Whiz! It’s All About Pee by Susan Goodman

Web Resources
Learn about mealworms, interesting activity ideas
Grossology

There is more out there, but I'll let you enjoy finding it. This was one of my favorite programs ever. I'll try to figure out how to get the handouts online or email me if you would like them.

Harry and the Potters

2007-08-20T09:32:00.000-07:00

Our Harry Potter release party drew 625 people. Pictures abound, and I'm not feeling up to posting them right now.

Harry and the Potters performed last week at our main branch library with Draco and the Malfoys oepning. Pictures are on our website. I went (on my own time) in my Hermione costume (already owned it) with a friend just for fun. Since I was there (in costume) and I'm (arguably) one of the biggest fans of Harry Potter stuff on staff I got to introduce the band. I kept up my Hermione guise and told the assembled crowd (primarily teens) that as schools both Muggle and magical were about to start they should be at home studying. It was fun. Great concert. See if you see me in the pictures!

How Harry Potter has taken over my life...

2007-07-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

Long time, no post, but we've been unbelievably busy here with school visits and summer reading at the Plaza Library. And now our world is all about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We're planning a massive event. Currently I'm re-reading/listening to the books so I'll be all prepped for the new book.

Our Event site All this happens from 10pm until 1am on Friday July 20th, until Saturday July 21st. (D-Day basically).

We closed off reservation with hundreds and hundreds of people last week. In case anyone needs any last minute ideas, here is what we're doing. Basically we're transforming the entire library into Hogwarts Academy. Children (arriving at 10pm) will check in. As they go in to the event, they'll receive a bag with a copy of the "Daily Prophet" outlining the different activities and a parent evaluation. 20 bags will contain a "golden ticket" (we're mixing our books yes I know) good for one free copy of the new book. They will also draw out a nametag from the sorting hat. The nametag will have one of four crests on it, effectively sorting them into the appropriate house. The students may then attend the following classes at their own pace (Note I say children, but I mean kids ages 6 through 17 with their adults):

Divination: there will be a fortune teller or two, as well as instructions for palm reading and those little fish things that curl up in your palm to tell you a fortune.
Snacks: Lots of very cool snacks to choose from, including pretzel wands.
History of Magic: Giant trivia contest as teams, prizes available
Care of Magical Creatures:Real Live Owls! WOOOOOO! And an owl craft.
Common Room: If you can find a staff member to tell you the password, you can grab a cushion and relax while watching the third movie.
OWL and NEWT testing: Professor McGonagall will be on hand to test students (word searches and the like) who will recieve a reward (small prize)
Wizard's Chess: Chess boards set up for fun
Herbology: Plant something! (Probably basil in a small pot that children will take home)
Potions: This is the class I'm teaching. We'll be making our own bouncing balls out of normal type stuff (elmers glue, borax, etc) that I will relabel as potions ingredients. We will also have sandy candy (edible sand art) for the kids to assemble in test tubes to take home their own "magical ingredients".

I feel like I'm missing something, but probably not. At about 11:30 or so, we'll gather everyone into one massive area. At every class (even the common room), they had a chance to enter a drawing just for participating. We'll pull those winners. (For my potions class, the prize is a crystal growing kit, each prize relates to the class.) We'll do some other fun stuff and then at midnight, Brian Busby will read the first 20 minutes of the new book. The books will be on sale curtesy of Reading Reptile with proceeds going to the Library's Children's Book Fund. No one is obligated to buy the book to come to the party.

The magic is in the details and we're making as many details as we can magical. When you get checked in, it is by a person in costume (all staff is in constume) with a quill checking names on parchment. When you take your OWL test, we have quills to use (beautiful ones too). The decorations are incredible. We want this to be as over the top and incredible as possible, something people will remember and talk about for years.

My costume is pretty cool. I'm Hermione (kinda grownup). I've already got the hair afterall. Knee length gray skirt (had trouble ordering a school girl skirt), gray sweater vest, short sleeved white shirt, Gryffindor tie, black graduation robe. I'll try to post pictures.

It's going to be an amazing, incredible party. But it is also totally consuming my life and that of many of my coworkers. We've been planning for months. Our entire workroom is overflowing with party supplies as is my entryway to my house. It feels like every other word out of my mouth is HP related. There are huge standups counting down the days til the book all over our department. And of course it is all over the news. I'm going to see the movie on Thursday, all I'm reading are the books. It's like a new lifestyle, one that is all Harry Potter all the time. It's insane, but it is also a ton of fun. This is truly a once in a life time event and we want to make it that special, wonderful, magical thing.

It's a testament to how much I love my job and this event that I'm not even a little burnt out yet. 10 days! (well to the book, 9 days to the event)

Dial-a-Story

2007-05-09T13:53:00.000-07:00

At the Kansas City Public Library, we offer the ever popular Dial-a-Story service. Call the phone number and listen to a story. Updates once a week. Always fun.

Found this article on a library in Austria raising money through an unusual variation of the same theme. Dial-a-Story for grownups perhaps?

Libraries as Homeless Shelter

2007-04-02T14:53:00.000-07:00

Everyone else is posting this article I guess I should as well.

Former Salt Lake City Assistant Director writes about the problems of the homeless at the library. Keep in mind when reading this article that it is not journalism and objective, but more of an opinion piece from a (former/retired) librarian. And the comments can be rather volatile.

America Gone Wrong:A Slashed Safety Net Turns Libraries Into Homeless Shelters

I'd always heard vaguely about libraries having a problem with the homeless. But I heard that fom the comfort of my nice suburban library where we very very very rarely encountered it. And I knew it academically from listserv discussions, articles, etc. And then I moved to an urban library. And I saw it everyday. And hearing about it and living it is different. These poor people tug at your heartstrings. And yet they can be disruptive. But they have no where else to go. And we're open to all. It's an impossible conundrum. Or at least it feels that way.

Space Storytime

2007-04-02T09:22:00.000-07:00

I originally called this storytime "stars and moon storytime" but space works just as well. I used this storytime with preschoolers, and toddlers and both seemed to enjoy it. The books are all fairly short so I just read more of them to the older preschoolers. I used my standard format:

opening song/introduction to topic
longest book
fingerplay
book
song/action rhyme
book or flannel board
fingerplay or song
closing song

Of course all of that is open to interpretation, and I usually also sing the ABCs, count up and down to 10, etc.

Books I used:

I Took the Moon for a Walk by Carolyn Curtis and Alison Jay - a nice story about a boy who goes for a nighttime walk. There is one to two sentences on each page, with some (not too terribly corny) internal rhymes. It's a good size for storytime. Practice because some of the text wraps around pictures and you don't want to have to tilt your head in the middle of reading it.
Moon Plane by Peter McCarthy - A boy in his yard looks up to see a plane flying overhead. He imagines being on the plane and flying in it up to the moon. The pictures are pretty and have that washed out grey tone of dream world. It's a little abstract and I like the next one better.
Zoom! Zoom! I'm Off to the Moon! by Dan Yaccarino - A bright and colorful book where a boy goes off to the moon. It's fun. The kids liked it. With this one or the previous one, I always stop and ask the children if they think they'll go to the moon (hey commercial space travel is a reality, it's a big future, and who knows which of your children will grow up to be astronauts, plus I'm a scifi fan). Always encourage children to dream.
I'll Catch the Moon by Nina Crews - This is standard Crews, collages of real pictures show a girl who climbs up a ladder to catch the moon. There are cute moments and some fun word play. The pictures are great and the girl is non-caucasion showing some much needed diversity. The writing is somewhere between lyrical prose and just plain stilted, but I still like it for storytime.
The Sun is My Favorite Star by Frank Asch - I like to talk about some real astronomy facts, such as the sun is a star (this is amazing to four year-olds), and this book is a colorful reminder. It is a little more about the sun than the rest of space, and only has one night picture, but it is a cheerful friendly book.
Stars! Stars! Stars! by Bob Barner - My absolute favorite book for this storytime. My only complaint is that it is rather little. I wish it were bigger physically. I love to tell the kids that some of the stars we see are actually planets and if we were on another planet, Earth might look like a star. This book traces outward through the galaxy in bright simple pictures and easy rhymes. At the end is one page with all the planets on it. We do a review on this page. Of course Pluto (poor Pluto!) is listed as a planet. I just say Pluto and friends are the dwarf planets out there. It works okay. It is always good to sneak in some colorful true books (this one we have in Juvenile Easy with picture books, but other systems may have it in non-fiction).
See You Soon Moon by Donna Conrad - A boy going on a long car trip to his grandmother's bids farewell to the moon only to discover the moon comes along. Decent book, not overwhelmingly wonderful.
Papa Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle - I would be rather remiss if I left Eric Carle off this list. But I didn't actually use this book in storytime. It's a nice story of a child whose father tries to fetch her the moon and a nice way to talk about the phases of a moon. But the other books are more fun with the toddlers (in my opinion).

I did this storytime the day after the full moon and we talked about looking at space and stars. I like to think that I'm encouraging more than just reading, a love of learning through reading. It was a really fun storytime.

Fingerplays
I used a lot from this website, especially the "we're flying to the moon" one. It was fun to add in our own verses and act them out about going to the moon. Don't forget Twinkle Twinkle Little Star though that is so slow, it always makes me sleepy.

Craft
We made our own galaxies. We had fun foam shapes (a big bag full of circles, ovals, squares, etc. in great colors) and some die-cutes of stars and a crescent moon. The children glued them on and colored in details. Perfect craft for the 2 year-olds. The foam shapes could be planets or asteroids or space ships, or whatever they wanted. It's about the process after all not the result.

I think I like this storytime because it is a little more factual than the usual storytime topic such as "frogs" (though I love those as well). I feel like I'm encouraging the natural curiousity of a child towards the world around them. Plus I get to share fun astronomical facts in my happy storytime voice. I'd love to hear if anyone else is doing anything similar.

Building Block Nominees 2007

2007-03-28T12:50:00.000-07:00

It was my pleasure this year to serve on the committee for the 2007 Building Block award. For those of you who are not familiar with the award, it is for the picture book for preschoolers voted most popular by preschoolers. Librarians (and others) nominate books all year long, this year the books had to have a 2005 or 2006 publication year to be eligible. In addition either the author OR illustrator must be a resident of the United States. The committee reads the nominees (usually around 90-110) and votes. The top 30 make it to the next round. Those 30 are read to an audience of selectors (other children's librarians, MLS students, paraprofessionals, etc.) who vote for the top 10. Those top 10 are the nominees. Librarians all across Missouri work hard to get as many preschoolers to read or listen to these books as possible. We go to schools (headstarts and kindergartens are eligible), day cares, etc for votes as well as having ballots in the library. Since I only became a Missouri Librarian in August of 2006, I have been through one season of voting (voting runs September 1st through December 31st) and thoroughly enjoyed the process. The 2006 nominees were great and I had a lot of fun with them. Not all of our books are as strong this year, but more about it later. I will also talk a little in a future entry about which books didn't make it to my disappointment.

2007 Missouri Building Block Nominees

Move Over, Rover! by Karen Beaumont; Illustrated by Jane Dyer
Dooby Dooby Moo by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin
Wiggle by Doreen Cronin; Illustrated by Scott Menchin
Looking for a Moose by Phyllis Root; Illustrated by Randy Cecil
A Splendid Friend Indeed by Suzanne Bloom
Snowball Fight! by Jimmy Fallon; Illustrated by Adam Stower
Starry Safari by Linda Ashman; Illustrated by Jeff Mack
Edwina, the Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct by Mo Willems
Cha-Cha Chimps by Julia Durango; Illustrated by Eleanor Taylor
Sakes Alive! A Cattle Drive by Karma Wilson; Illustrated by Karla Firehammer

Official Missouri Building Block Website - Check out the previous years' lists! There are some great books on there for storytime and you might find a new favorite; I know I did.

Is Book-It bad for children?

2007-03-05T11:24:00.000-08:00

How many of you did Book-It as a child? I did, and I'm sure many of you did too. Simple concept, read some books, collect little stickers for your button and then eventually get a coupon for a free personal pan pizza. Marvelous. Or not?

Critics Denounce Pizza Hut Reading Program

The criticims make sense at first, but let's break it down.

It is a corporate program and should schools be supporting a corporation? Well... In an ideal world, no, but that isn't the world we live in. Almost every school I know hosts a scholastic book fair and/or passes out those brochures for book orders. It happened when I was a kid, and it still happens. (Often parents bring those in and try to get the books through us and we don't have them for a variety of reasons). It makes money for the school and gets kids a chance to order books, but it also supports one specific corporation and publisher. Schools have partnered with corporations and accepted private support in a variety of ways throughout the year. This is not signifigantly different.

It encourages childhood obesity. Yes childhood obesity is a national epidemic. I'm not arguing that, no one is. The article specifically mentions schools getting rid of soda machines. Soda machines provide daily access to sugary pop. As I recall, you can get two pizzas at most per year. Two little pizzas a year do not make you obese. Nor are parents forced into going to pizza hut. One time, we traded in our coupons to make pizzas with dad. (Dad makes the most marvelous pizzas, he worked as a pizza chef in college). That was a ton of fun. Parents can offer there children an alternative award if they don't want to go to pizza hut.

When children read for a prize, it doesn't make them readers. Basically this is the idea that kids are going to choose the quickest book and just do the minimum they need to get through the program. Perhaps. Some kids will. And the ones who are already good readers don't need this program. But then there are the other kids, the in between ones. Those kids will do it because they want the pizza, and in the process might find that one book, the first book they ever liked to read, the first book they ever read cover to cover. Granted they might find it in a school based awards program, but you never know. Rewards motivate kids, and some kids need that motivation to discover that they might actually like reading. It certainly is better than AR type programs. I would rather reward the children for doing any reading at all than force them into one level. (But you really don't want me to get started on AR. If you don't know about it, thank your lucky stars and move on.)

And I work in a library where we solicit coupons for freebies from businesses to give away as prizes. Schools and libraries don't have enough money for incentives and I'm all about accepting the partnership and rewards from corporations. At the PLA Spring Symposium I was just at, a librarian (perhaps one of the California State Librarians? I'm not sure) was talking about the presence of Coors as a sponser for an adult literacy program. They had to eventually reject them because too many adult learners have struggled with substance abuse in the past and it sent mixed messages. I understand nixing Coors, nor would I be in favor of letting a cigarette company sponser summer reading. But Pizza Hut? I have no problem with.

I personally would be disappointed and saddened to see this program ended. There are some ALA members (though I do not believe the two are officially affiliated) on the board of this program and I would also be saddened to see the ALA make a rash decision to pull out and condemn this program.

Total side note: the photo on this article must be a stock photo. It shows a marine reading to a bunch of kids and has nothing to do with the specific Book-it program.

PLA Spring Symposium - informal

2007-03-02T22:32:00.000-08:00

I'm far too tired to keep writing up some highlights of my notes. I'll try to get to those in the morning. This is my first professional event and I am loving it. I keep refering to myself as a 'baby librarian' because I am younger and a new professional. Everyone is wonderfully friendly and open. I'm learning as much from sitting and talking to people as I am from my track on literacy (which is wonderful). People will mention things and I keep stopping to write down recommendations for books, articles, web resources, and programs to look into. I can also tell that one of my main mistakes was not picking up enough business cards. I actually walked out of the library with only three, and walked back in and grabbed some more. But I probably should have gotten more than I did for safety. This is such an amazing time to meet with people and hear what people are doing all over the country (and Canada). There is also a very rejuvenating quality to the chance to meet and laugh with my coworkers. By the end of work today, we were making Dewey Decimal jokes. These people are goofy in the same way I am goofy and I love it.

And from a librarian from Canada, I learned a wonderful new red light game, look at the license plate number (#s part only) of the car in front of you. What dewey subject does that coordinate to? For example, 743 - drawing. Marvelous fun, such a great thing!

PLA Spring Symposium 2007 Day 2 Morning

2007-03-02T13:34:00.000-08:00

The workshop on Literacy initiatives has thus far been focused on sucessful programs and the history of how they got there. It is very interesting (and inspiring and frankly a little intimidating). A lot of the presenters are state librarians or work on that level and are discussing state wide programs. I keep reminding myself that it is okay to start small. I've taken pages and pages of notes and my hand is starting to cramp up. I would think about taking my laptop, but it can also be a bit of a distraction. Here are some of the highlights and I believe I have them all associated with the right people.

Susan Hildreth (PLA president and state librarian of California) talked about the new PLA service response that emphasizes literacy for teens and adults and family programs. It is separated out from early childhood literacy. Quite often it is easy to focus on early childhood literacy (as in the absolutely wonderful program Every Child Ready to Read) that these other components get missed. The way that PLA reshaped this service response seems a very good solution to this problem.

According to the National Association of Adult Literacy, 90 million adults (out of 221 million) are at basic or below basic literacy skills. 30 million of those are below basic level. At the basic level you can do some simple tasks like filling out a bank deposit slip, but not much more. Service is needed for adults whose reading level is below that required for entrance in adult educational activities.

Here's a controversial question posed by Gary Strong (UCLA librarian and former state librarian of California): Are libraries educational institutions? For many libraries this seems to be a tricky point. Are we here to provide books and access to information or are we also going to help people read those books and access that information in a more effective and more literate way? My personal opinion: While we can not and should not ever attempt to be schools, there is a place for some educational services such as literacy services in our libraries. This should be in supplement and partnership to those services provided by other agencies. However this is a tricky slippery slope. How much is too much? Is it really ever too much?

While so many people are interested in childhood literacy and early childhood literacy, Robert Wedgeworth (of ProLiteracy Worldwide) repeatedly pointed out that it is the educational level of the parent that most influences the child's literacy abilities. By offering literacy services to adults, we are increasing childhood literacy. This brings us to the idea of family literacy services and that we must (as several of the panel speakers pointed out) provide literacy programs for all ages and that these programs should work together. To paraphrase him (since I'm sure I didn't get an exact quote): No children's literacy program can be completely sucessful without a companion adult program.

I also really liked this: literacy is not just about knowledge, but it enables a better quality of life for your entire family. For example you can monitor your family's health and medications more effectively with a higher level of literacy.

Gary Strong also made an interesting point. Again to paraphrase: Libraries are not an island unto themselves - they can not solve every community problem by themselves. But they can be an amazing force to identify and help solve problems in partnerships. Which leads us to the next question: How do you place the library as a key player in the community?

There was a lot more, that was only the first panel. I only got through about half of my morning notes. I'll try to bring lots more later, but now it is time to head back to my afternoon session.

PLA Spring Symposium 2007 Day 1

2007-03-01T22:25:00.000-08:00

I'm in San Jose, CA for the 2007 PLA Spring Symposium. I got up early today to fly here from Kansas City and arrived mid-day. From there I found the Fairmont hotel (so far no complaints - it is beautiful and well situated downtime), and checked in. A quick check of the schedule told me I had just enough time to make a tour (followed by a lunch) of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library (which is the main branch of the San Jose Public Library). However I hadn't registered. I took a chance and headed over (the four blocks). Luckily they had plenty of room (there were only a few of us and they had planned on many more).

We got a great tour of the library. They have lots of art incorporated throughout the building, but it is concept art and not labelled so you have to look for it. I especially like the shelf unit of books that rotate to reveal a back of trick books. Very cool, especially since it is in the mystery section. The library is a joint effort between the city and San Jose State University. Half the floors are dewey, half are loc. One entrance is a public entrance on the street, the other (directly through the main hall) is an entrance onto the campus. It is a really great partnership. Beautiful library, amazing use of space and also great merchandising of the collection. We then had lunch with staff from the library school and the public library. I had great conversations with my other attendees and their staff. Then there was an open house for the King Library's Adult Literacy center. I'm here for the workshop on literacy initiatives. It was great to see what they're doing and how much they're helping people.

The opening session featured the LJ Librarian of the year who talked about her work in Maryland libraries advocacy and lobbying. It was good and inspiring. I got to talk to some neat people during the desert reception.

Photos of the Symposium - mainly King Library so far.
I tried to get a picture of the very cool counter they have by their circulation desk. It is a large LED screen that continually counts their circulation stats ever since they opened. You can watch it go up as people check stuff out. Fabulous! (The picture isn't that great though).

I could go into more of all that, but I'm tired. It's late by any clock and I've had a long day. I'll try to blog more complete thoughts about the experience later. There is also the official PLA blog to read.

There was an earthquake about 50 miles away, it was a 4.2. I didn't feel anything. I'm almost a little disappointed.

Potty Mouth! For Shame! - Reflections on the Newbery Medal

2007-02-24T10:11:00.000-08:00

Heavens to Betsy such a commotion has rippled through the world of children's librarianship that one would think Dr. Seuss had been found alive and well in the woods of Montanna with a case amnesia and a fear of rhyming words. I am of course referring to the use of the word (hold your breath and cover your eyes, this is scary) scrotum in the Newbery Medal book Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron. Granted the word shows up on the first page, and may not be the most familiar word to kids. It may not also be a word that parents or educators really want to pop up every day in their children's conversations, but it is by no means a word that children should be unfamiliar with. (with which they should be unfamiliar? I hate that ending in a preposition thing.) Off the top of my head, I can think of dozens of words that would be much worse to have on the first page of a book, and I bet you can too. Personally I'm in favor of children and adults using correct medical terminology.

I have not had the fortune to read Higher Power of Lucky yet, but my boss has an advanced reader copy I hope to get my hands on soon. I can not imagine not stocking this book because of one simple word. The librarians who are doing so should have their librarian stripes stripped. Granted, it is easy for me to talk from my large well-funded and well-supported urban library. I'm not dealing with a small town or hugely conservative community. But in all the cases of the book being pulled (and the tons of discussion on PUBYAC), I've not heard of a parent complaint. It seems to primarily be librarians pulling this book pre-emptively to avoid a complaint. Censorship battles can be hard, exhausting, and detrimental to our public image and librarians exist only upon the sufferance of the public good will. Picking your battles is all well and good, but don't retreat before the bugle call has sounded. Stock the book and wait. Most likely I imagine there won't be a huge battle and we'll all move on to more pressing issues. But let us not become our own enemies by censoring our libraries before any one else has the chance. We owe more to our public, we owe them a chance to see all the material and make up their mind about it. Just as we believe that no one group has the right to dictate what stays on the library shelves for the general public and we fight for books such as And Tango Makes Three, we have to remember that librarians don't have the right to censor either.

Ms. Patron - this librarian is with you! (Okay, she may never see this, but I get swept away in my own dramatic speech, in my mind remember I'm issuing a rallying cry, holding books up and fighting the book burners - an active imagination is what makes me a good children's librarian.)

Of course other people have said this much better than I:
Cynthia Lord and the other Newbery Honor Book authors support Susan Patron

Author Neil Gaiman Chimes In

There are many more popping up, but I'll leave you with those two.

Photosharing

2007-02-12T10:26:00.000-08:00

I've photo shared before but I was asked to do it again for the sake of library 2.0. I was also asked to take pictures of my favorite place in Kansas City and share them. However this assignment was given in January and February when we've been unusually cold and frigid and covered in ice and snow. So I didn't get to the park like I meant to. Instead you get pictures of the library (see previous post). And I have an online photoalbum.

Check it out! BornLibrarian's Photos!

I created a second professional photo album for similar reasons to why I created a professional blog months ago. This photo album will be a permanent link on the side bar.

Christopher Paul Curtis at Plaza Library

2007-02-11T19:51:00.000-08:00

On Friday, February 2nd, 2007, Newbery winning author Christopher Paul Curtis came to the Plaza Library. He gave a great speech which really drew out the teens and kids in the audience. And the audience was packed! He signed books and posed for photos. Such a very nice man.

Here he is signing my book:

Here is very nicely posing with me:

Bigger and more pictures at BornLibrarian's Photobucket/Christopher Paul Curtis

Pandemic Flu and Libraries

2007-02-08T16:20:00.000-08:00

Only a few days behind breaking news, but on February 1st, 2007, the CDC, Center for Disease Control released their new recommendations for dealing with a pandemic flu virus. Scariest thing I've read in a long time. Warning, thinking about this too hard will give you nightmares. Failure to think about it may be fatal. Read on or not at your own risk.

New York Times article on the release of the Pandemic Flu Vaccine Guidelines
PandemicFlu.gov - your official source on all things flu related
The recommendation guidelines and pre-planning measures - warning this is long, full of beaucratic lingo, and hard to comprehend, once you do comprehend it, it is horrifying

I've heard, read, and studied about the 1918 Spanish Influenza Epidemic where huge numbers of Americans died. There is nothing to stop that from happening again. The new recommendations are based in part on studies of that epidemic and how the cities with the lowest mortality rates managed it. Of course some small towns cut off all communication with the outside world entirely.

The new guidelines include a category system to rank the severity of the pandemic. This is similair to the system that exists for hurricaines. Here is a pretty chart with scary black at the top to indicate the most severe and deadly forms.

See that is much scarier than those Homeland Security Levels were when they first came out in 2001. Because those numbers are already assuming that almost 1 in 3 people are sick. Also keep in mind that level one is really just a really bad year of the average flu virus. In an average year 36,000 people die of the flu in the United States.

Quickly some highlights of the new guidelines:

Close all the schools for up to three months
Encourage "social distancing" which as near as I can tell means that you scare people from having contact with their fellow human beings
Stagger work shifts to keep reduce the number of people on public transportation at one time down
Close public meeting and gathering places
Quarantine an entire household (including healthy people) for up to 10 days if one person becomes ill

One thing to remember is that many of these decisions will be made at a local level because power to do things like close schools remains in the hands of city and county officials. Unless of course things start getting nationalized. And in a national emergency and panic that could happen. That's just as scary to the part of me that fears big government, big brother, federal government, and centralized power.

This sort of thing would be devastating to our country economically, emotionally, and socially. The report specifically mentions encouraging "social distancing" for students (and adults but especially kids) out of school. That means no trips to the mall with your friends. Closing public gathering places means no movie theatres. However the report also mentions closing things such as churches. It means intentionally isolating yourself. Let's not forget the widespread panic that would incur among the general populace. Don't kid yourself, we're a nation of hypochondriacs who are easily driven to fear and irrational behaviors.

This could ruin our economy. Businesses would suffer. No one would go to restaurants, stores, etc., if they could help it. People such as teachers and support staff in schools don't really want to take three months with no pay and taxpayers can't really afford to keep paying them. (Teachers with contracts and unions might be okay, but support staff such as cafeteria workers would not be.) What about students who rely on free lunches (as much as 60% in some urban areas) and breakfasts for their nutrition? Lowered nutrition will result in a weakened immune system and more suseptibility to disease. Plus we do not have enough medical professionals, pharmacies, hospitals, or health facilities and practitioners in general to deal with this. No one in the world has the resources to deal with (almost) 1 in 3 people being sick.

In 1918, the flu spread in from the East Coast. That won't happen this time. It will be everywhere at once thanks to our highly mobile airplane society. It will be an international problem very quickly.

And where does this leave libraries?
Obviously we as libraries are public meeting and gathering places. If we do our job right, we're vibrant communtiy centers, the heart of much of what happens in our world. (Ah, but I wax idyllic.) So do we close? Everyone knows how much of a petrie dish is your average public library. Speaking as a children's librarian, I'm exposed to so many germs every day I'm considering buying stock in sudafed. And if the schools do close (worst case scenario) than we all know that desperate parents may turn to us as drop off points for their children to spend all day (heaven knows it happens in the summer and afterschool). Instead of being at the heart of the information spreading network for the community, we risk being at the heart of the disease spreading network. But we do close? I tend to think of us as being an essential service. For many on the wrong side of the digital divide, we are the only way they have to access the internet, and basic computing programs and word processing. But do I want to (literally) risk my life so someone can type up a resume and online job hunt? Let's not forget I'm the sole breadwinner for my household (which includes me and one cat). I can't afford to be out of work the time of a pandemic, especially if said time is unpaid.

It's not an easy decision. And it isn't pleasant to think about at all.

After the epidemic than what? We have a society in ruins, it's crumpling before our eyes. People have intentionally "socially distanced" themselves, creating isolationism. Our economy would have crumpled. It would be as changing for our society as 9/11. How do we recover? How do we rebuild when we've all been sick and so many of us have died? I know it can be done, I believe in the human spirit and the American spirit, but there is no way we come out unscathed or unchanged. Yes some positive things came out of 9/11, stories of heroism to inspire, a renewed sense of national identity and patriotism. But many negative things came too. The world changes, but it also keeps on turning. Though these reports have an apocalyptic feel to them, we must remember that it might hurt us, but I don't think in the end it could bring us down. In times of great challenges, we've often been surprised at how far we can rise. Even wars can bring about great technilogical and medical innovation. A phoenix can rise from the ash. I need to end positively with the hope that our country could come through this not only alive, but stronger and more unified, because I'm depressing myself thinking about the alternative. As we say in my home state of Kansas (our state motto), Ad Astra Per Aspra, to the stars through difficulties.

Runescape

2007-02-03T16:45:00.000-08:00

As a continued part of Library 2.0, we were asked to play Runescape which is a massive multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). This is hugely popular with our library kids. After school and on the weekends about half of our comptuers are given over to this game. The kids exchange tips, play together, play against each other, etc. For a computer game, it is a remarkable social event, encouraging real life discussions in addition to the online cooperation. Of course it also starts arguements as kids steal each other's passwords, hack their accounts, etc. I know many librarians hate it and hate the computer time it "wastes". I've never done an RPG or a large computer one like this. I have some friends that do World of Warcraft (which requires the purchase of software and is a subscription based service). Unless we are to block it (which I understand some librarians are doing or are on the verge of doing), it is here to stay. I think it is important that before we block the site or run around prognosticating on the evils of runescape, we should at least try to understand it.

A great deal of reading was recommended to me and I found more on my own.
This article on Runescape from wikipedia is helpful as is the information in the "knowledge base" portion of the runescape website. It is interesting that part of the sucess of this game is that it has a free component and it requires no additional software or downloads but can be played from any web browser. The program is written in java which results in some limits in graphics, but it is fairly good for all that. These are all important elements as to why we see it so much in libraries. My library, like many libraries, blocks all attempts by users to download and save things to computers (an annoying but necessary precaution). Many of our patrons (urban library) do not have computers and/or (high-speed) internet access at home. They would only be able to play a game like this with the conditions (free, works from web browsers) that Runescape provides. Options such as World of Warcraft and Second Life are not a possibility for these kids.

So, my Runescape story...
To begin with I created my character a cute woman/girl with pigtails and a fun blue dress. I named her laughingliz if any of you want to find me online and be my "friend". All that we were required to do for staff day was to make it through tutorial island and add a specific librarian's character as a friend so she would know we really played. All new players are first put in tutorial island which teaches you how to operate controls and perform some simple tasks. They aslo give you various things you will need in the runescape realm. While there are other beginners (or noobs in internet speak) in tutorial island, you do not interact directly with them. I had only a few problems with tutorial island, it didn't seem that much more complicated than Sims which I've played before. There were more controllers and options, all of which are thrown at you at alarming speeds, but other than that it was okay. I was feeling fairly confident because I was having so much less trouble with this than some of my coworkers. And confidence, much like pride, goes before a fall.

With my tutorial island "success", I decided I wanted to understand this whole thing better and I headed off to the real world of runescape to try my hand. I found it very overwhelming at first. I started off as suggested and talked to the various NPCs (non-player characters, basically computer generated characters) to ask for help and advice. There are these tutors and guides. They recommend catching fish or mining to make money. So I caught fish and I mined and I had no idea how that was supposed to become money. In the meantime I was observing the social interactions of my various players (who I guessed were greatly in that teen and tween demographic). I found "listening" to their conversations (which are displayed in text for all to see) one of the most fascinating things. They were recognizing friends, forming groups, social bonds, exchaning myspace pages, etc. Very cool. And since there are no profiles, they accepted me as one of their own and didn't know that I was in fact a 24 year-old librarian spying on them. Marvelous! No clamming up like they normally do when I walk round the bend. In fact I've even had a couple of people offer to be my boyfriend (or bf in internet jargon).

The game is much more chaotic and confusing outside the safety of tutorial island. I had trouble translating skills into money or undertsanding all the steps that go into producing anything, going up levels in various skills, etc. And people kept attacking me! I killed one person and felt just awful about it (I didn't know about running away and he started it) until I realized it was just an NPC. I was rather frustrated about what I should do next as I was having trouble making some of the leaps you need to. I don't like not understanding something or failing at it. My stubborn streak kicked in with a need to "master" or at least get the basics of this game. Fortunately one of my fellow staff members is quite a runescape aficionado and has become my guru. What started out as a simple quest to understand it has turned into a genuine liking for the game. I'm stubborn and wasn't going to give up until I understood the entire thing better and to my surprise it ended up being fun. I don't like fighting other characters or NPCs too well (I've now learned about running away and have been saved a couple of times by other players though I did die once), but I like some of the skills of it and it is just the right balance of mindless/challenging to keep my brain-dead self after work. Unlike many people, I seem to have about a 30 or 45 minute limit for how long I can stand to play. I've played a few times over the last week and a half and managed to raise my skill level in various categories such as cooking, crafting, mining, and smelting. (Numerous attacks finally forced me to spend a little time fighting to raise my levels there, but I didn't like it). I'm not sure how much longer I'll keep playing, but it is sort of fun.

Runescape in Libraries...
Playing runescape has given me a way to talk to kids who've previously been rather wary of librarians as authority figures. In fact one of them is now my runescape friend! I've gone to them for advice and with questions and they like to be able to help the librarian out. Plus it helps me a lot to understand what they're fighting about (in the maybe two incidents we've had over runescape) and what they're doing. I have a lot more respect for the game. Players have to use logic to solve certain puzzles. As you're learning a skill, you will fail a certain number of tries much like in real life. (I've burnt a good deal of bread for example.) That teaches patience and persistence. It takes many steps and some planning to produce some items. Not to mention kids learn computer skills. All of these are good things. Yes, runescape does occupy our computers and our bandwidth, but is it any less valid of a use than some adult who is surfing match.com or playing online chess? (And to be fair I've seen adult patrons who were runescape addicts too). Nope. Plus we're building up kids to like the library as that nice place you can go to play runescape (and maybe since they're already here we can engage them in other activities).

One concern, that fellow Kansas City Public Librarian Clare pointed out in her blog is that according to Runescape rules you have to be 13 to play on the game. (This is because kids uner 13 don't understand the danger of giving personal information online.) To use computers in our kid section you have to be under 13. And yet they're all playing runescape. I was working with a boy today who couldn't have been more than 8 or 9 and yet he's a whiz at Runescape. Here's my thought, it isn't my job to police and enforce the rules that runescape has established. Nor do I want at all to be the evil librarian who prevented the kids from playing a game they love. They'll leave and they won't come back period. I'm not turning them against the library like that. I refuse to be a totalitarian librarian or a parent figure. I'd rather be their friend, help them with the game, with the library, and maybe sneak in a little bit of talk about online security (in brief 45 second bursts). It is something to help our kids be vigilent about, but it isn't ours to enforce. For the most part this game is overly beneficial to our kids, it gets them in the libraries. If librarians give this game a decent chance (I recommend an hour or so, it took me two sessions, maybe 60-75 minutes to get through tutorial island and a little time in the real version of the game) maybe 20 or 3 hours total and it doesn't have to be at once. Even if you don't like it, or don't become a regular player, it will open your eyes to what your kids are doing. You can start conversations with thsoe kids who come in, go straight to the computers, and never talk to you. Ask for help, they'll love it. And I bet they start talking to you more, asking for help with other things, and your relationship with them will expand outside of runescape. This could be a great way to connect to those kids.

New Harry Potter Date announced

2007-02-01T10:55:00.000-08:00

News of this sort spreads wide and quick, but here you go. The seventh (and final) Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be released on July 21st. The price is $34.99 (ouch), though amazon.com is already pre-order selling it for $18.95.

I'm betting Harry dies. It seems as though that would be the only way to properly vanquish Voldemort.

Before placing my amazon.com pre-order, I'll wait to see what Borders does for the pre-order. With the previous two books, I've just pre-ordered through them and picked up day of.

PLA Spring Symposium

2007-01-26T12:53:00.000-08:00

I just got approved by my library (which means they pay) to go to the PLA Spring Symposium. Of course I got approved today and today ended the registration, so I had to scramble, but now I have a hotel reservation, conference registration, flight, and I'm so excited.

I'm taking a workshop about literacy and not just early childhood stuff, but lifelong, broad spectrum stuff. It should be really cool.

Very very excited!

Historical Fiction, Mill Workers

2007-01-24T10:34:00.000-08:00

I love history and historical fiction. This all started with my father. When we were kids, we would beg our father to tell us a story. Occasionally they were his own far fetched tales that he made up on the spot, but usually they were some historical event. Instead of starting a story with Once upon a time, in a land far, far away..., he would start with, "About a hundred and fifty years ago, Texas was part of Mexico..." and then would come the story of the Alamo, or Valley Forge, or the Rolling Stones at Altamont, you never knew. This gave me my great love for history because I never saw it as dates and names, I saw it as stories. Historical fiction is just telling those stories.

There are tons of options for historical fiction in the third to sixth grade range. Even through high school, there are lots of options. Here is what I've been reading lately and comparing it to some classics in various time periods. I'll probably stretch this out over several posts.

Mill Workers/Turn of the Century

Counting on Grace by Elizabeth Winthrop. Wendy Lamb Books, 2006.
I already talked about this a little in my entry on the Mock Newbery candidates. Here is the story of Grace who must leave school to work in the mill to help her family. She wants to be someone her mother can count on, but she also isn't sure about what she is giving up by leaving school. It is illegal for her and the other children to be in the mill so young, but no one enforces that. When people try to change it, Grace finds herself torn. Inspired by a picture of a girl working in the mill, this book does an amazing job of capturing life in a cotton mill in 1910. The author's note is amazing and gives historical details on both the mills and the photographer who captured images of the children working. Grace doesn't always know what she wants and the reader can easily see what a confusing time it would have been.

Bread and Roses, Too by Katherine Paterson. Clarion Books, 2006.
It goes against the grain to say anything against the amazing Katherine Paterson. She has given us so many fabulous books over the years. From any other writer, this book would be good. From Ms. Paterson, it is merely okay. I'd never heard of the Bread and Roses strike in the Lawrence mills of 1912, but I found it a fascinating subject. Before reading the book, I read up on the strike in various sources (okay mainly wikipedia). It was revolutionary not just because it was led by women, but because it united so many different immigrant groups. Speeches were translated into more than forty languages, people worked together, stood together, took care of each other, and won. All of that would have been nice to see in the book. The story follows Jake and Rosa who are sent away from Lawrence to stay with other families for the duration of the strike. It is told in alternating viewpoints of the two children. It's good, Rosa and Jake both show plausible character development. But if you want to read about mill workers and you want to read Paterson, read the true classic.

Lyddie by Katherine Paterson. Dutton, 1991
There are multiple covers of this book, so no picture of the cover. I read this as a child, and re-read it as an adult. It is set in an earlier time (1840s) than the other two and is less about workers' rights and more just about mill life. Lyddie is an impoverished, uneducated girl who leaves the farm to work in the mill. She betters herself through hardwork, determination, and education. The main character is also older than the other two books. Here Lyddie is self-sufficient and in some ways caring mostly for her family (before they are disbanded). She is functioning as an adult. It is still a very accurate picture of mill life and better written than the other two.

For kids I would recommend the books in this order, but that is just my personal preference. I might just recommend the one that comes to hand first.

Counting on Grace
Lyddie
Bread and Roses, Too

That isn't to say any of these books were bad. Even if my criticisms seemed negative, I enjoyed all of these books and would recommend any of them. These are all appropriate historical fiction choices for upper elementary students, but would probably primarily appeal to girls.

Cynthia Lord of Rules

2007-01-23T12:37:00.000-08:00

I've already mentioned how much I love Cynthia Lord's book Rules. It won a Newbery honor and a Schneider Family Book Award (for raising awareness of a disability). The book is very powerful.

Over at her journal/blog, Ms. Lord writes about winning the Newbery and what it means to her. This is an especially important book since she has a son with autism and a daughter who inspired the main character.

Reviews of Mock Newbery candidates

2007-01-22T12:30:00.000-08:00

This is a bit anti-climatic in the event of the announcement of the actual awards, but I typed up most of this before the awards were announced, just hadn't posted it yet.

In a previous post, I posted results for the various mock awards. In the spirit of continuing to earn library 2.0 prizes and sharing, I am going to explain in greater detail what happened at our Mock Newbery and give (brief) reviews and thoughts on the books.

Unlike the real committee, we couldn't all read all of the books out in the year. Instead we focused on a short list chosen because of good reviews and availability. It is a sad truth that libraries don't always receive books in a timely fashion. In theory everyone there, and we had about 14 people, had read all of the books. In reality everyone read as many of them as they could. We then went around and discussed each book in turn. We then did a round of voting for which ones would stay on the table to be still considered. I have bolded and starred* those below which made it past our first cut. Here are my thoughts on them and some of our discussions. Very brief reviews because there are so many of them.

Mock Newbery Nominees:

The Wright 3 by Blue Balliet
Summary in brief: Three kids solve a mystery to save a Frank Lloyd Wright house. It's a sequel to Chasing Vermeer which I haven't read.
Review: I didn't like this book. To be fair, I don't like mysteries. However I thought this book just dragged on and on. I was listening to it on CD and it was like pulling teeth to get through it. The author could not decide if she was writing a mystery or a supernatural mystery and it was confusing as it veered between the two. The only good part about the book was the developing relationship between the three kids. At the end, all of the resolution came very quickly without warning. It was far too abrupt and jarred the reader. Of course then the book continued on for chapters with little points. Other people liked the book (a little) better than me, but not much.
Ask Me No Questions by Marina Budhos*
Summary in brief: After 9/11 a Muslim family living illegally in the United States tries to go to Canada only to have the father arrested and tried.
Review: People thought this book was fabulous. I thought it was okay. It was timely and it is nice to seek a book from the Muslim point of view. The author did a good job of showing the grey areas of the law, that the family understood that they had been breaking the law for years by staying on an expired visa. I'm not sure how readable this book will be in fifty years. While it made it past our first round, it didn't get many votes.
Victory by Susan Cooper*
Summary in brief: Two stories told side by side in differing views, one of a modern girl who has moved from England to America and is having trouble adjusting and one of a boy pressed into the English Royal Navy in 1803 aboard the ship Victory.
Review: I had not read this at the time of the discussion, but I have since finished it. I liked it very much. The naval history was amazing. I believe the book would appeal to both girls and boys. Our only male at our discussion pushed hard for this book. Flaws: the girl's story is not as fleshed out, and the supernatural vision that brings them together at the end is a little unrealistic.
Loud Silence of Francine Green by Karen Cushman
Summary in brief: A girl growing up in California in the middle of the Red Scare meets a new friend, learns about thinking for yourself, standing up for what is right, and the Hollywood blacklist.
Reviews: I thought this was a very good book. The character was an 8th grader which is exactly when children really start to question that which their parents are teaching them. The questioning of the daughter and increasing fear and confusion of everyone in her life is shown in exactly the right amount of downward sliding slope and scale. Some of the people felt that the Catholic school nuns were depicted too harshly from their experiences, however others felt it was pretty accurate from their experiences. I liked this book a great deal and felt it would appeal to girls in about the fifth or sixth grade. It bored one of my coworkers. However, it wasn't spectacular and nothing that deserved the Newbery Medal.
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo*
Summary in brief: A chnia rabbit is greatly loved by his owner and he only cares for himself. Eventually he is separated from her, goes through a great journey, and learns to love.
Reviews: No question about it, Ms. DiCamillo can write. This book is fabulous, beautiful. It has the feel of a classic, very much as The Velveteen Rabbit is. Our male member thought that this book was too "precious" a book that appeals to middle aged women (who lets face it are the ones giving the awards for the most part) and they hope it appeals to kids. The school librarians said the kids are split on love/hate it. So are many of the adults. I loved the illustrations, except for the one illustration that looks like a crucification. While the ending seemed predictable (and trite) to me (though I loved it and cried, but I'm a sucker who cries at Hallmark commercials), others were surprised by it. I feel like this book should get some sort of award or we're ignoring something really obvious.
Weedflower by Cynthia Kadhata
Summary: A Japanese girl in an internment camp during WWII.
Review: I haven't read this one. No one liked it well enough to keep it on the table.
Monkey Town by Ronald Kidd
Summary in brief: A girl comes of age while her town is in the middle of the Scopes Monkey Trial and she begins to doubt her father who organized it and everything she has been taught.
Review: It was well written and very largely based on historical fact. The largest change was that the main character was quite younger in real life than in the book. The author's note is fantastic, possibly the best part of the book. I can't remember reading a lot of historical fiction books about this particular subject which makes it unique and valuable. However I felt that some of the author's slams against Christianity were unnecessarily harsh and unwarranted to make his point.
Year of the Dog by Grace Lin
Summary in brief: A year in the life of a Taiwanese-American girl adjusting to the United States and American lifestyle.
Review: The Newbery medal is awarded for the most distinguished piece of children's literature. Many of the books on this list are distinguished. This one is a nice book, a sweet book, and completely not distinguished. No one at our session had much of anything to say about it past that. I am not sure why it was on our list. Good points: based on the author's own experiences and the picture book the character writes in the story is an actual picture book the author has written. That's a fun tie in.
Rules by Cynthia Lord*
Summary in brief: A girl tries to help her autistic brother learn to deal with the world by writing rules for him. She also tries to make a new friend, lead a normal life, and reconcile her feelings for a handicapped boy she has recently met.
Review: I loved this book. It was my favorite on the list (before I read Victory and it is still my favorite, but it a close thing) and I fought hard for it. The rates of autistic children (or at least the rates of diagnosis) are increasing in our society. More and more of these children are being mainstreamed into classrooms. It is very possible that students will know or know of an autistic child. The book was at times funny and heartbreakingly poignant. (Now did that sound like a cliched movie review or what?) It is amazing to watch the main character deal with her feelings for brother and her attempts to be normal and have normal friends. These things aren't easy to reconcile and Catherine doesn't always do it perfectly. The ending isn't perfect, but she does grow, and it is real. I think everyone should read this book.
Gossamer by Lois Lowry*
Summary in brief: Two magical creatures give dreams to an old woman and an abused boy.
Review: Well, when I summarize it like that, it doesn't sound like much. But it is. Ms. Lowry has once again taken a slim volume and created a masterful work. As the creatures discover their existence and point of view they struggle to create nice dreams for their charges. They also go up against the creatures that give nightmares. It is a well-fleshed out book for being so short a tome and well written and distinguishe. Our only male representitive thought it was again too precious.
Out of Patience by Brian Meehl*
Summary in brief: Jake lives in a dying town in Western Kansas. There is a propehcy that the town will be destroyed when the plunger of destiny returns.
Review: I loved this book. It's fun and funny. I fought for this one too, but not as hard as for Rules.
Jazz by Walter Dean Myers
Summary in brief: A collection of poems about Jazz music.
Review: It's pretty and the poems are nice, but this book didn't quite jive for me. I'm not sure why, but it seemed like something I've before time and again.
Dear Miss Breed by Joanne Oppenheim
Summary in brief: The true story of a librarian who kept in touch with many of her former students after they had been taken to internment camps for being Japanese during WWII.
Review: I skimmed this book to be honest. It seemed pretty good.
Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich by Adam Rex
Summary in brief: A series of poems about various monsters.
Review: Cute, I especially liked the ones where the Phantom of Menace can't get various silly tunes out of his head. It's a picture book basically, and not particularly noteworthy.
Bella At Midnight by Diane Stanley*
Summary in brief: A girl grows up in a kingdom during a time of war as a best friend of a prince. She discovers she is actually not a commoner and helps to overcome the war and help her friend the prince.
Review: Loved this book. I kept trying to make it a traditional fairy tale, and that never quite worked. There were definitely elements of one fairy tale or the other, but it isn't a specific fairy tale. The magic elements worked as did the human elements. I book talked this book sucessfully to fifth and sixth grade kids.
Counting on Grace by Elizabeth Winthrop*
Summary in brief: Grace is a mill worker in a cotton mill. She struggles to balance her desire to help support her family with her desire to better herself.
Review: I love historical fiction so I am pre-disposed to like it. I loved this book, thought it was wonderful. And the author's note is amazing. The author's note is the best part of the book.
Optional:
Toys Go Out by Emily Jenkins
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M. T. Anderson

Library 2.0

2007-01-16T11:33:00.000-08:00

My library, the amazing and wonderful Kansas City Public Library, is entering the world of Library 2.0. Step one in our version of Library 2.0 is to create a blog. I've been blogging for years over at another site as a personal blog. (Though some library stuff ends up there). I created this last September to be a more professional blog. Fortunately I am able to use it for Library 2.0. It by the way looks really odd to put a period at the end of 2.0 to finish a sentence. From now on I think I will try to avoid using 2.0 at the end of a sentence. I am also one of the people at my branch who is the answer-technical-questions contact for all these fun and exciting things. The only thing on the list I've never done is create a runescape character. I've never done that or any sort of RPG or MMRPG (I am pretty sure I just messed up that acronym), but it should be fun and I'm looking forward to it. It will help me relate to the kids in my library, understand what they're doing, and solidify my geek status.

Now why am I doing Library 2.0?

It is a fun excuse to play with this stuff at work.
I get free stuff for doing so
I'm betting there is more stuff I can learn. I love technology and geeky stuff like this and want to learn more.

Mock Awards: Caldecott, Newbery, Coretta Scott King

2007-01-09T17:59:00.000-08:00

Tis the season...
The holidays are over and children's book award season is upon us! In the last week, I've been to three different mock sessions. These were metro-wide events but attracted people from outside the Kansas City area too. They're great because I get to see so many of my fellow children's librarians (who I won't see again for months and months). It's always fun to spend an afternoon with people who like me are willing to debate endlessly the finer details of children's lit and illustrations. I'll try to blog later and in more detail about them, but here, in brief, are our winners.

Mock Caldecott (held at Antioch branch of Johnson County Library)

Winner:
Good Boy, Fergus! by David Shannon

Honor Books:
I Saw an Ant on the Railroad Track by Joshua Prince
Mama: A True Story by Jeanette Winter
Winter is teh Warmest Season by Lauren Stringer

Mock Newbery (held at Oak Park branch of Johnson County Library)

Winner:
Gossamer by Lois Lowry

Honor Books:
Rules by Cynthia Lord

Mock Coretta Scott King (held at Plaza branch of Kansas City Public Library)

Winner (Illustrator award):
Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom illustrated by Kadir Nelson; written by Carole Boston Weatherford

Honor Books:
My Feet Are Laughing illustrated by Frank Morrison; written by Lissette Norman
My Pop Pop and Me illustrated by Cathy Ann Johnson; written by Irene Smalls
Welcome, Precious illustrated by Bryan Collier; written by Nikki Grimes
Bessie Smith and the Night Riders illustrated by John Holyfield; written by Sue Stauffacher

That's our choices! Stay tuned for more details and my thoughts on some of the books.

When political correctness meets a child

2006-12-19T12:42:00.000-08:00

In my library we (by which I mean I) do a book club for lower elementary school students. The kids are ages 5-8 and we read a simple chapter book. The youngest ones, well I suspect their parents read it to them, but that is just fabulous. We meet twice a month. There is some book discussion, a game, an activity or craft, snack, etc. It's a ton of fun and I love it. For the last discussion we were talking about holiday traditions, and I was being my typical librarian politically correct self and saying "Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa". One little girl (interuptted) asked, "What is Kwanzaa?" I was focused on the child whose turn it was and so didn't answer in time. Another child answered explaining Kwanzaa thusly, "I think it is something vegetarians don't do." I was laughing too hard at first to correct her. One of the kids present does celebrate Kwanzaa so I asked him to explain it. His explanation: "we go to this place and they talk for a long time and then they light a candle; I don't like it, it's boring." I added some explanation about the candles and the symbolism of African-American heritage and then wisely steered the conversation away. Fortunately my Jewish attendee had more fond memories of Hanukkah to share, and my Muslim boy talked cheerfully about Ramadan (yes it is not in December this year, but equal time), and then we had some happy Christmas stories. It's a great group, fairly diverse, and fun. And now you know that Kwanzaa is for vegetarians, carnivores, and omnivores alike!

Cross posted various places in other blogs.

Animal Movement Storytime

2006-12-07T09:27:00.000-08:00

I really do intend to do update this more than once a month, at least eventually. Today's storytime was a great deal of fun. I did this storytime with my Tiny Tykes/Toddlers which in my library we define as 18-36 months though we allow a lot of leeway. I had some older kids (3 year-olds) and some younger ones (15 months) and they all seemed to enjoy it. I'm not sure how it would work with five year-olds, but it was a big hit with my crowd. Part of why it works is how interactive it is. This storytime, these books, these songs flow well and beg for children to interact with them. Here's a storytime plan:

Theme: Move Like the Animals

Opening: Open like you normally do. You hopefully have a routine established with a song, a rhyme etc. In my library we sing two songs and I introduce myself (not a week goes by without new people) and the theme of the storytime. We usually also do a sign that goes with the theme. This week I used the sign for animals.

First Book: From Head to Toe by Eric Carle
This is a classic book and perfect in this setting. The words are repetitive and invite the children to try out the motions which get progressively more elaborate. MOst of the children stayed sitting during this, though there were some who stood for more expansive movement.

Song: Hokey Pokey!
Okay, I admit, there is no animal movement in this song. But it is fun. It is a whole lot of fun. I used a version from a collection of 100 Favorite Kids Songs. Use whichever version you can. Do listen to it first to make sure you have an idea of what order the parts come in. I recommend you stay away from Little Richard's version. It's a bit too crazy, too much his style, and too fast. It is actually kind of scary. Now the kids (and parents probably) are up and moving. Tell them to stay standing for the next book.

Book: Animal Fun by Zita Newcome (from the Toddlerobics series)
This book follows a toddler aerobics class as they do various movements. It directs your toddlers to do the movements too. I did them (for the most part) with the book balanced in one hand. At the end of the book, the kids are directed to lie down on the ground, wiggle like a worm, and take deep breaths. It is a great way to ground them for the next activity.

Song: Old MacDonald
I sang this to go with the animal theme. There are a lot of great animal action fingerplays and motion rhymes or other songs. But a few verses of Old MacDonald never went wrong.

Book: We've All Got Bellybuttons!
We love this book at my library! Big colorful pictures, and great inclusionary dialogue. And of course at the end, the parents tickle the children and all is well.

Song: Shake Your Sillies Out by Raffi
Okay, once again, not to do with animals. But it is fun and kids can dance and move. You can skip this song and go straight to your closing routine if you wish or substitute for another motion rhyme.

Closing: Close as you normally would. We use If you're happy and you know it.

We had so much fun with this with the dancing and moving and jumping. I was winded by the end and the kids were beaming. Even the littlest guy was bopping along.

Other books:
I found these titles better as display. I try to leave some books out on the same theme to encourage parents to go home with a book. And of course I try to have extra copies of the storytime titles so we can take those home too.
Monkey See, Monkey Do: An Animal Exercise Book for You! by Anita Holsonback and Deb Adamson
Babar's Yoga for Elephants by Laurent De Brunhoff
Wiggle Waggle by Jonathan London - this is a good one to substitute in storytime too

Craft: Not everyone does a craft, but we do. We made a simple elephant but his legs attached by brads (all cutting and brad attaching was done in advance by volunteers) so the elephant could "dance". The kids colored him and glued his head to his body. Perfect.

Eoin Colfer

2006-11-08T12:30:00.000-08:00

I am a huge fan of Eoin Colfer, especially his Artemis Fowl series. A few years ago I played Holly Short in a brief "teaser" style adaptation of his second book in that series at the Arizona Festival of the Book. Recently I listened to Artemis Fowl: Opal Deception on CD. For years I've been pronouncing his first name (yes he's Irish) as Americans are wont to pronounce Ian, but on the CD it sounds more like Americans pronounce the name Owen. Oops. I'm trying to change it in my head. There is a fifth book in the series now (not including the companion book, The Fowl Files) entitled Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony.

Review of Opal Deception
I believed that at the end of the previous book, Colfer had written himself into a hole, but a very interesting hole. Artemis Fowl had had his memory entirely wiped of the Faerie people. Or has he? There are the mirrored contacts. At the beginning of this book, Artemis Fowl does not remember his friendships and has reverted to his previous self. Colfer does manage to bring the Fowl that he had become back, but it is an interesting journey. And it is a dangerous thing for a writer to do, to wipe away all character growth that he spent three years building. Fans will love Opal Deception. I listened to the CD and it was captivating. However I'm not feeling the urge to rush out and get the next book. With previous books I had that urge so much I preordered books in the series. Perhaps it is that the Fowl mystique is cooling for me. However I will still read the next book, and I will keep recommending the books.

I've also booktalked Artemis Fowl with great sucess with fifth through eighth graders. I tend to recommend these books to kids who like Harry Potter. If you like Artemis Fowl and/or Harry Potter, here are some other recommendations.

Gregor the Overlander (actually the series is called the Underland Chronicles) series by Suzanne Collins... It all starts innocently enough. Gregor's father has been missing for two years. He is babysitting his baby sister and she falls into a grate in their laundry room in their apartment building in New York. Gregor follows her and they float down on mists to land in an underland world. There a race of humans fly on giant bats and fight six foot rats. The four foot cockroaches have decided his sister is a princess. And the humans are pretty sure that Gregor is the warrior prophesied to save them. This book series is also very good for Narnia fans as it is light on the magic but packed with action (thus more palatable for conservative Christian families). Oh, and just for fun, did I mention that Gregor is African American, but that it isn't the point of the story and it isn't a big deal. Readers may not even realize immediately. We need characters like that. Reading level starts around 4th grade.

Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud... Welcome to an alternative London where instead of Lords and Ladies as nobility and everyone else as commoners there are wizards as nobility. Nate is a young apprentice wizard. The secret to the power of wizards lies in their ability to summon and control powerful demons. However when Nate summons a demon named Bartimaeus everyone gets more than they bargain for. These are great books, lots of action, magic, fun. They're much smarter and well written than Harry Potter in my opinion. Reading level starts around upper 5th or 6th grade.

Charlie Bone series by Jenny Nimmo... This one is very much like Harry Potter. Charlie Bone is a half-orphan (dad disappeared, but mom's still there) with crazy black hair (no scar though). He lives with his nice (maternal) grandmother and mean (paternal) grandmother and mother and uncle. Then one day he discovers that when he looks at pictures he can hear what was being said when the photo was taken. He is a "gifted" descendant of the Red King. The Red King had a lot of children, all gifted or as they usually say endowed, and half of them tried to kill the other half. He's packed off to a boarding school for the gifted and endowed children. And the war started with the Red King rages on among his desendants. Occasionally into an evil family (like Charlie's) a good one will be born and vice versa. All of Charlie Bone's friends have different powers. And there are some magic cats and other adults who aid them along the way. Five books and the series feels complete. I can't imagine there being more, but I suppose it is possible. I didn't like this as well as Harry Potter, but it has its merits and it is a good filler. It is also an easier reading level. Starts at about 4th or maybe very high 3rd grade level.

Happy Reading!

Spiderleg and Cobweb pizza

2006-10-30T12:21:00.000-08:00

Recently we had a children's musician, Dino O'Dell come in to the library for a Halloween program. He preforms a piece about pizza and had mentioned something about it in the program description. I didn't realize it was referring to a song and not to actual pizza. Neither did our patrons. People kept saying how excited they were to try his spiderleg and cobweb pizza. We were in a little bit of a pickle when we realized that there was no pizza. I had primarily been the one telling people who asked that yes there was pizza. The other librarians had heard the song before. (That's me, the librarian who spreads disinformation). So we got pizza. And then I had my flash of genius. I drew on cobwebs with that string/spray cheese that comes out of a can (called Easy Cheese, not cheez whiz, cheez whiz comes in a jar, this was a matter of great debate among the chidlren's staff and we did eventually have to look it up). I also put on little plastic spiders. The results looked fabulous. (That canned spray cheese is disgusting so we had some pizzas without "cobwebs" also because I only bought one can).

I took some pictures, but with my cell phone so they're not the greatest quality.

See how cool they look? (This is just the last one eaten and the only one remaining when it occurred to me to take photos.) I'm ridiculously proud of this. One patron told me she was stealing the idea for her halloween pizza party. Edible string would work too, but edible string is harder to find and harder to convince children that it is edible. I saw one little girl lean over and "whisper" conspiratorily to her brother, "the cobwebs are just cheese". If you wish to attempt this yourself, easy cheese comes in multiple flavors. I used American, and it still didn't taste good (in my opinion). Also one can of easy cheese (sold in the cracker aisle) will draw cobwebs on about four large pizzas.

Pirate Storytime: Songs and Fingerplays

2006-10-04T09:14:00.000-07:00

I believe that I promised a piratatical themed storytime and comments on the same. No one is reading this yet, but I hope that someday when it is read, it will be useful to go through the archives. There is a ton of stuff out there on pirates including a very recent PubYac compilation. Here are some of my favorites.

Songs and Fingerplays

If you're a pirate and you know it
If you're a pirate and you know it, swab the deck (swish, swish)
If you're a pirate and you know it, swab the deck (swish, swish)
If you're a pirate and you know it, then you'll hear the sea winds blowin.
If you're a pirate and you know it, swab the deck (swish, swish)

verses two and three
If you're a pirate and you know it, walk the plank (stomp, stomp)...
If you're a pirate and you know it, say ahoyAhoy! (with arm movement)...

I wrote this one, so please use it but give credit! I'm proud of my "piggyback" song creation. Someday I'm going to publish all of them. The rest of these I did not write.

One-Eyed Jake
I’m One-Eyed Jake, the pirate chief
(cover one eye with hand as if covering eye with a patch)
A terrible, fearsome ocean thief
I have a peg upon my leg
(Stand on one leg)
I have a hook and a dirty look
(One arm in the air, curving hand into a hook shape—make exaggerated mean face)
I’m One-Eyed Jake, the pirate chief
A terrible, fearsome ocean thief.

This is a fun one to use cumilitively. Add action after action, until the child is standing balanced on one leg, an eye covered, arm in a hook. They'll giggle as they try to stay upright. It isn't easy for me to do (especially in heels).

The Day I went to Sea
When I was one (hold up one finger)
I sucked my thumb (mock sucking thumb)
The day I went to sea.
I jumped aboard a pirate ship (jump)
And the captain said to me. (point to self)
We're going this way (lean and sway while pointing right)
And that way (lean and sway while pointing left)
And forward (rock/walk forward)
And backward (rock/walk backward)
Across the deep blue sea. (spin in circle)

other verses
When I was two, I tied my shoe...
When I was three, I scraped my knee...
When I was four, I shut the door...
When I was five, I danced a jive... (or learned to dive)...

This one is easy to sing, simple tune. If you start singing, I bet you'll fall into the "right" tune. And the kids seemed to love it. I did it at storytime, big hit. I did it with 2nd and 3rd graders at a school visit and they were really getting into the rocking forward and back and to each side.

Ten Little Pirates
Ten little pirates stood in a row hold up all ten fingers
They bowed to their captain so lower and raise fingers
They marched to the left march hands to left (or opposite since kids will mirror you)
They marched to the right see above
They shouted yoo hoo! cup hands over mouth
And gave their captain a fright act scared, cover mouth with hands

Simple, but great with younger kids.

Coming up: Reviews of Pirate picture books for storytime usage!

Talk Like a Pirate Day

2006-09-19T11:08:00.000-07:00

Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I also have my newly formed Family Storytime. Librarians love this type of coincidence. So I chose a pirate theme, I already had the storytime prepped. It's one of my favorite storytimes. I also emailed the official web site and had my event added to their list.

A few days later I get a call from a reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal about my event and pirates. It was an article for their teen section and appeared today. She used my quote, even if she did promote me from a humble children's librarian to youth director. Oh well. Link below.

No Ocean? No problem on Talk Like a Pirate Day

You have to register to read the article, so here is the full text. Now who actually gets this paper in print and can get me a paper copy? I'll try to post my secrets to a pirate storytime later.

No Ocean? No problem on Talk Like A Pirate Day

by Talory Atkins
The Capital Journal, September 19, 2006

Ahoy, Mateys! Today be International Talk Like A Pirate Day. It's a day to start an adventure, take to the sea and fill up on hardtack and salty cod.

Unfortunately, for Kansas pirates, Lake Shawnee isn't exactly the Pacific Ocean, and hardtack? Enough said.

But don't walk the plank just yet. Elizabeth Moreau, youth director at the Plaza Branch of the Kansas City Public Library, said Pirate Day is more than just big boats and bad food.

"I think it's the pirate spirit of always being free or going wherever the wind blows you that's appealing," Moreau said. "There is a lot we can do to be like a pirate."

Moreau will be holding a Talk Like A Pirate Day event at 7 tonight at her library, 4801 Main St., Kansas City, Mo. For buccaneers who can't make the voyage to Kansas City, you can find ye' inner pirate close to home.

If hardtack doesn't sound appealing tonight, Red Lobster, 2011 S.W. Wanamaker, has a Shrimp Lovers Tuesday, that lets you choose from three kinds of shrimp for $11.99.
And if you are short on gold, make pirate grub in your own galley. Pirate recipes, such as Pirate Pie, Pirate Sticks and Key West Pirate's Cake, can be found at www.cooks.com.

For pirate fun, look no further than http://www.talklikeapirate.com/. The Web site is the official International Talk Like A Pirate Day port, maintained by the day's creators. The site has pirate shanties, both to sing or download, a pirate advice column by Capn' Slappy and every lonely scallywags' favorite -- pirate pick-up lines.

If you still haven't gotten your sea legs, you can sit back, relax and watch other pirates wo set sail on the silver screen far before Johnny Depp. Check out "The Princess Bride," starring Cary Elwes and Robyn Wright Penn; "Hook," starring Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman; and "Treasure Island," starring Charlton Heston and Christian Bale.

somewhere I can say what I want to say

2006-09-15T20:25:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about librarian issues more lately. They creep up more often in my personal blog. A place was needed where I could express all those things. Here it is. More will come later to this space. I worked for nearly 12 hours today (and I thought a librarian would get to keep normal hours, silly me).

First there was a KCMLIN Children's Koffee (it is their decision to misspell coffee not mine). That was an amazing experience, a great time to talk about how we are working with the schools. We had people from St. Louis, MO to Louisburg, KS and everywhere in between. It was at my home library, but I got to see quite a few of my former coworkers. Then of course I spent (over) a full day at work. This leaves me tired and ready for bed. So naturally I started a new project. It gives me something to tinker with instead of sleeping.