Monthly Archives: June 2011

Pop culture, Spare time - Culture, Summer reading

Summer’s here…

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The class visits at the school are done, fairly successfully, I think; the school year ended on Friday; we had the first movie night of the summer Friday night – Gnomeo and Juliet; and the Ice Cream Social is on Tuesday.  Yup, summer has begun.

I really enjoyed my visits to the school this year.  The kids’ enthusiasm about the participation of the Boston Bruins in the summer reading program was fantastic, and amped up the excitement of my visits significantly (and this was before the Bruins won the Stanley Cup, too).  And the kids also seemed pretty psyched for a lot of the programs coming to the library this summer, which is always gratifying for the person who hired the performers…which would be me, of course.

Movie night, though – I’ll be blunt here:  what an AWFUL movie!  I absolutely HATED it!!  Too much Elton John music, bad animation (or should I just say “uninspired” animation?), and a schmaltzy plot.  Blech.  And the aggressively happy ending, in which Gnomeo and Juliet live happily ever after, unlike Shakespeare’s characters of similar names, simply nauseated me.  And made me think about Lori Gottlieb’s article in the current issue of The Atlantic, “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy“: let’s substitute a happy ending for this classic story and animate it with garden gnomes to spare our children the tragedy of the original play.  Blech.   I couldn’t wait for the movie to end, and I was really surprised when there was a lot of applause from the audience at its conclusion.  Talking with the four teen volunteers afterwards during cleanup, though, was encouraging, since all four of them seemed to dislike the movie as much as I did.

And then there’s the Ice Cream Social, coming soon to a library near you.  Jim hauled our chest freezer over to the library this morning so that we’ll have a way to store the eighteen gallons of ice cream that I’ll be picking up from Baskin Robbins on Tuesday morning, and I finished the Topping Shopping trip on Thursday; all that is left now is for the weather to be fabulous on Tuesday, and for the event to be over.  I have a love-hate relationship with the ICS; I love that the families that come to it have such fun, but I hate all the hyper-organized preparation, not to mention sheer physical effort, that goes into the event.  In my view, the best day of the year is the day after the ICS, when I have 364 days to go until the next one.  How grumpy that makes me sound!  Which I’m really not, I just dread the pre-event planning and post-event exhaustion.

So summer has begun, and I should get back to my summer reading.  One child in one of the classes I visited at the elementary school issued a challenge to me that I should try to read more than thirty hours this summer.  Yikes.  And this summer reading program is one week shorter than last year’s, and it was all I could do to get to thirty hours last year.  Time to get back to Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian.  Happy summer, everyone!

Summer reading

Summer Reading School Visits!

Bright and early tomorrow morning I’ll be heading over to the elementary school to begin my class visits to promote summer reading!  I’m really looking forward to these visits, as always, because I love seeing all of the kids at the elementary school, not just the library users, and it is so much fun to read to them and talk to them about the summer.  And, it’s always nice to have a change from my usual daily routine.

I’ve picked out a bunch of great picture books to read to the classes – three or four for each grade level – and Audrey and Jennifer and I have stuffed 625 summer reading bags with the summer calendar, the summer informational letter, clock time sheets, and bookmarks.  Each child will get a bag to take home, and then  >poof<  the signups for the summer programs will begin!  Yay!!   We have SO many great programs coming up this summer, and it will be fun to observe the kids’ reactions to the program descriptions as I talk about them.  My guess is that Mike the Bubble Man’s show will get the most oooohs and aaaahs, but I’m not putting money on that guess…

And this year, like last year, I’ll be wearing special t-shirts for my school visits to help get everyone enthused about this year’s theme.  Last year I wore black and green t-shirts with recycling logos on them, which was way cool, for the summer theme of “Go Green at your Library”; this year I get to wear bright pink and bright yellow t-shirts with “One World, Many Stories” emblazoned on the front.  Not quite as hip, in my personal opinion, but I’m guessing the kids will still appreciate that I’m making the effort.

My biggest worry for this coming week is my ability to read aloud clearly, since I’m still experiencing numbness on my left lower lip and chin, due to the nerve damage from my third surgery six weeks ago.  It will take extra focus and effort to force myself to speak a little more slowly and enunciate well, which hopefully won’t distract me from reading with expression and drama.  We’ll see!!  [And I’m not commenting here on “how I’m feeling” after this last surgery, since I really, really, really don’t want to jinx myself.  ‘Nuff said.]

Here’s to summer coming!  Let’s hope that it’s the best one ever!!