Monthly Archives: June 2007

Library events, Picture book review, Summer reading

busy busy busy

It’s been a long week, though a fun week.  I really enjoyed visiting with all of the first through fifth grade classes this week, and especially enjoyed their reactions to the stories that I read them.  It’s not often that I get to read longer, more complex picture books out loud to kids, since my Thursday storytime at the library is primarily attended by 3 and 4 year-olds, so it was a true treat to dip into these more involved stories.  My personal favorite of the week is Mr. Maxwell’s Mouse, which I read to the fifth graders.  It was so fun to see these sophisticated fifth graders get totally wrapped up in the drama of the story, some girls covering their eyes and turning their heads in anticipation of the mouse’s death or the injury to the cat’s tail.  And then to experience the visible, audible relief in the room as the mouse escapes, and the cat clearly recovers from the cut to his tail.  (Thanks, Gayle, for reminding me about this book!!)

And I did a first this week:  I spoke to an assembly of 88 second graders, pretty successfully, too.  What nice kids, all of them!  I got such an incredibly warm reception from all of the classes I visited, and really enjoyed my week.

But, the work week is not over yet.  At 1 PM today, the H—- Puppet Players (a group of teenage volunteers “dedicated to the art of puppet performance”) will be performing “The Reluctant Dragon.”  These awesome creative volunteers have poured so much energy into the preparation for this performance, including creating a soundtrack and staying late at the high school’s art room yesterday to make scenery.  I can’t wait to see how the production goes today, and hope that they get a good-sized audience.

Before the show, though, all of the staff from the library will be attending the memorial service for Joanne’s late husband.  My thoughts are with Joanne and her family right now, as they prepare for the service. 

Charitable Summer Reading, Summer reading

Busy week

Only time for a brief entry this morning:  this is the week that I visit each class at the elementary school to promote the summer reading program, which means getting to work an hour earlier than usual…which is, of course, my daily blog time. 

It’s so much fun visiting the classes this year, since at least half of the kids in each class already know who I am (as opposed to last year, my first year, when very few kids knew me).  And this year I’m reading a variety of stories aloud, as the whim strikes.  Last year I only read one book to every single class, Beatrice’s Goat, as an introduction to Heifer International and the then-new charity component of summer reading.  Since most kids remember Beatrice’s Goat this year, all I have to do is hold it up, talk for a minute about this year’s Heifer donation, then slide on in to a great read-aloud story.  Aaaaah.

More updates on the school visits as time permits – for now, it’s time to head to school!

Spare time - Culture, Young adult literature

Nonfiction

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As far as home improvement projects go, this weekend has been a bust: it poured with rain on Saturday, and, more importantly, Jim has been knocked down by a really nasty sinus infection.  He’s hardly stirred from bed, hardly eaten anything besides jello and ginger ale; painting and residing the house were definitely NOT on the schedule this weekend.

Luckily, I had plenty to keep me busy in between mixing batches of jello.  I owed five reviews on eight books on the 8th, though I begged for, and received, an extension on the grounds of working overtime at my day (real?) job in preparation for summer reading.  So I settled down yesterday and today and polished off two of the three longest books, both young adult biographies of famous historical women.  All quality judgements on these books will be saved for the reviews I write, but I will say that I really enjoyed both of these books.  Not because of quality – but because they are both nonfiction books about periods in history, and two famous women, about which I knew relatively little.  I’ve come away from these books feeling better educated and better informed.

This is in sharp contrast to my feelings after reading several young adult fiction books for reviews over the last few months.  Bad fiction is bad fiction, but bad young adult fiction, with its tendency to didacticism, can be excruciating.  After finishing each of those inferior young adult novels, I felt more than a bit angry that I had wasted my limited and therefore precious reading time on books that stink.  Grrrrrr, I thought. 

But today I feel a bit smarter, after having read about and done supplementary research about C——–  and M————-.  Worthwhile time spent, and this might just keep me doing reviews in the future, if given the opportunity.

Children, Spare time - Culture, Teaching

Bittersweet

Last evening Gayle and I went to a fifth grade performance of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.”  Gayle and I both used to be (note the past tense) SPED tutors at this elementary school, and two of our favorite students were in this play, one of them as the lead, Charlie Brown. 

I left the school in November of 2005 to take my current job, feeling very very guilty about leaving in the middle of the school year; it took a lot of rational thinking to convince myself that, for once, I needed to put my own career and financial needs ahead of the needs of my students.  It was a tough leaving, and to this day I feel rather hollow about having abandoned “my kids.” 

Gayle worked through the school year of ’05-’06, then left to take her own fourth grade classroom in another town.  In the remainder of that school year, Gayle spent a lot of time with the kids who were in last night’s play, and when she was invited to the performance there was no doubt that she wanted to attend.  She also convinced me to come, and we worked it with the SPED teacher, Rachel, that we would be a “special surprise” for the kids at the end of the show.  (Rachel talked up the “special surprise” for a couple of weeks, but the kids never guessed that it would be us.)

Sitting through the performance last night, I realized a couple of things.  First of all, though I had close bonds with the kids who played Charlie Brown and another lead role (we’ll call her “Janet”), I really didn’t know much about the other kids in the play.  Had this been the class of kids who are now 6th graders, or the kids who are now 7th graders, I probably would have been a weepy mess as I reunited with old friends and favorite students.   But the era of Abby at that school is pretty much past; the kids I spent so much time with have moved on, grown up.

I also realized that my self-esteem plummeted the moment that I walked into that school.  Though I was pretty great at my job there, it made me miserable to be the second-class citizen that is known as a “tutor.”  In my current job, I feel valued, respected, incredibly happy, and challenged.  I never dread going to the library the way I did school – I look forward to each day of work with enthusiasm.  Guess I’ve finally found my calling.

And then, after the show, Gayle and I chatted with the kids (hugs all around) and their parents, most especially Janet’s mom.  Janet’s mom is wonderful – sweet and kind and smart – and it felt like a knife through my heart when she told me that things were never as good for Janet at that school as they were when I was working with her.  She told me that Janet made so much progress in the year and a half she was with me, but after I left there just wasn’t anyone to fill the role that I had played in her life, and things were never the same.  I got a bit weepy, and told her how guilty I felt about leaving, and this gracious mom put a hand on my arm, looked me in the eye, and said, “Don’t feel guilty, please – I am SO happy for you, SO happy that you found a job that you love.”

It was a tough night: remembering where I’d been, feeling terrible about having abandoned kids who needed me, and also feeling so very thankful that I have moved on to a job and a role that makes ME happy and fulfilled.  Isn’t that always the challenge in life?  Keeping yourself happy while doing right by others?

Children, Teaching

Winding down

The school year is almost done, and I only have four more lessons with one of my students (her family goes away for the summer), and one more lesson with my other student (she’ll be attending summer school).  Both girls have made great progress this year, and I’m very pleased with how much they each have learned.  In an ideal world, I’d love to continue tutoring the first girl over the summer, to get her in the best possible position for fourth grade next fall, but it’s not an option since her family won’t be in town.

And then there’s the idea of having my evenings to myself again.  I’ve gotten accustomed to getting home late each evening, devouring a late dinner cooked by Jim, and having only an hour or so before bedtime.  It’s going to be truly lovely to get home at dinner time, relax out on the deck, read a book, enjoy Jim’s guitar playing…as much as I’ve enjoyed tutoring both of these students, it will be a real treat to have some free time this summer.  It will feel like a vacation, though I’ll still be working full-time at my day job.  Pretty good trick.

Summer reading

Ready to go live…I think…

After a long day yesterday setting up our preferences on the summer reading software, I think – hope – that we’re ready to go live with it.  This software should be a good addition to our summer program, since it allows kids to log their reading time (the number of hours they’ve spent reading) from a computer at home or from their vacation destination.  Then when the kids come to the library, the library staff can easily look up how many hours each child has spent reading.  No more shuffling through pages of colored clocks, no more worries about lost clock pages (though, of course, we still have hundreds of the clock pages available for those kids who would rather keep track that way).  It’s pretty cool, and will be linked from the library’s home page for ease of use.  I can even update the messages on the front page of this summer reading site to reflect upcoming events and other pertinent summer reading information.  And best of all, I’ll have some really great statistics at the end of the summer, easily transfered to Excel format (now that I’m an Excel devotee, this totally excites me; the Abby of ten years ago is rolling her eyes at the me of today).

So today I’ll write up the parent information letter for the school packets, to be delivered starting on Monday, and will include all the news and necessary links for this new program.  Hopefully the kids who participate this summer will be as excited about this as I am!

Librarianship, Summer reading

Summer

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Last year was my first summer reading program, and I was very, very stressed out in the weeks leading up to the start of summer reading.  I had thought that this year would be completely easy, since my worries of changing the prize structure and adding a charitable donation would be gone (everyone loved those two elements last summer), and the scheduling of events would be much smoother.

In truth, though, I’m still quite stressed out this year.  All of the performers were booked in January, all of the prizes were ordered & delivered & are sitting in boxes in my office, the calendar is complete and in the process of being printed (only 100 copies at a time so the copier doesn’t overheat); but I’m still stressed.  Moving into the new building threw me off schedule in some ways, and I haven’t been able to jump back on that schedule track yet because of the increased business at the new library.  A happy problem, to be sure, but for an organized person like me it’s a bit torturous to know that I’m not completely up to date with my work tasks.  And then we throw summer reading into the mix: the flurry of activity necessary before the summer starts would have thrown me off schedule for other things anyway, and in this case it’s just throwing me further off schedule.

Ack, I’m getting stressed out just writing about it.  Hopefully it will be quiet at work today so that I can check many, many things off of my “ongoing list extraordinaire.”  Or else there won’t be much sleeping tonight for me…

Library events, Picture book review

Coming in the fall…

I just received a confirmation email from Random House that Tad Hills will definitely be coming to visit the library in the fall (exact date yet to be decided).

For those of you who don’t know, Tad Hills has written and illustrated two great picture books, Duck and Goose and Duck, Duck Goose.  I absolutely LOVE these books, and have used Duck and Goose more times than I can count for storytime.  Duck and Goose, the two main characters, have so much personality, and the pictures are funny and the colors are fantastic.  The storyline alternates masterfully from pages with a lot of text to pages with very little text, making it a long story that is easy to read aloud, even to a young group. 

And I love hearing the kids tell Duck and Goose, with amused exasperation, “That’s not an egg!!  It’s a BALL!!!!!”

Blog administration

The nightmare that is my blog: a cautionary tale

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As some of you may have noticed, there have been some funky things going on with my blog of late.  It all began when I decided to sit outside on the deck one afternoon with my laptop to write a blog entry.  Since we have dial-up service at our house (dark ages, I know), I wrote the entry in Word, then later went into the house and cut-and-pasted the entry into my blog software. 

Now, it should be noted, I had done this before – several times before, though not recently.  Mostly I write my blog entries directly into the WordPress software, but I had successfully used the Word technique in January and February of this year.

But the most recent time I used it, for an ill-fated entry titled “Yellow Star,” I managed to cause the death of my blog.  Apparently there are some hidden Word commands that WordPress can’t understand, and the end result of these communication issues for me was that I could no longer log on to my blog.

Dennis of Deerfield Hosting did all that he could to help me, and went way above and beyond the call of duty to help.  When Dennis figured out what had happened to my blog, and told me that it couldn’t easily be fixed, I dialed 1-800-call-Dan and begged my ever-patient, ever-wise big brother for help.

Dan set me up with a new blog (you’ll notice that the address is now abbykingsbury.org/books, not /blog), and gave me specific instructions on how to transfer over entries from my old blog to my new one.  But I’m the youngest in the family, and a bit stubborn and impetuous at times, and I didn’t fully obey Dan’s wise instructions.

Once I saw that it was going to take weeks, if not many months, to transfer my old entries over, and once I figured out that my own family members (husband, father, and sister included) had not yet found the blog’s new location, I sent an email to Dennis to see if he could put a note on my old blog to send readers to my new blog.

Bad Abby.  Bad, bad Abby.  Dan told you to wait to do this until AFTER moving all the entries over!!

Dennis very kindly responded to my request by redirecting all traffic from my old blog over to my new blog address.  Wonderful!  Now people can find me!  But wait – oh, no!  Now I can’t access my old entries!!!  All is lost, lost I tell you, a year’s worth of writing gone – fffttt – into cyber-oblivion!  Oh, woe is me, why didn’t I listen to my brother???

You guessed it: I called Dan again.  Dan is amazing, and I owe him BIG TIME.  He suggested that I google my blog and search for cached entries.  And that I do this fast, since those cached entries won’t last forever.

At first Dan’s advice didn’t seem to work.  My jaw clenched, some bad words came spitting out of the corners of my mouth, and my husband beat a hasty and well-timed retreat to an early bedtime.  Smart man. 

But after 3 hours of fusting around, doing some creative google searches for my blog, I’ve finally been able to copy all of my archived entries (I think) into several Word documents that I’ve titled “desperate,” “desperate 2,” “desperate 3,” and so on.  There’s no rhyme or reason to the order of the entries I’ve copied, since I searched by categories, months, and finally exact dates, and there are many duplications along the way.  Sorting this mess out will be much like untangling a large skein of kite string after the kite has gone crashing down into the ocean and dragged and sputtered across the beach. 

And, of course, I’d be a fool to use those Word files to reinstate my blog entries into WordPress.  My plan is to retype everything directly into the blog software (luckily I’m a fast typist) over the next few months.  Tedious, to be sure.  And, sorry to say, I’ve lost many of your comments along the way, since the links from each entry to the comments no longer function.  My apologies, and my regret: the reader comments are usually the best part of this blog.

At any rate, let my experience be a lesson to you.  Never let Word and WordPress communicate with each other, and always listen to your big brother. 

Man, am I going to be tired tomorrow.