All posts by Abby

Library events, Summer reading

Winding down

I just bought nine bags of popcorn, which should be enough to get us through the last two movie nights of the summer (Winnie the Pooh and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), and it really hit home as I bought that popcorn that summer is almost over.  Sure, it’s ninety degrees and wicked humid out, but the summer reading program only has eleven more days to go, and kids in the town where I work will be heading back to school soon after that.

It’s been an interesting summer at the library.  The first several weeks of the summer reading program were intensely, crazily, ridiculously busy, with tons of kids coming in for prizes each day and waitlists for programs.  In those several weeks, I wasn’t able to do anything that wasn’t summer reading related, and I went home absolutely pooped each evening.  But a week or so ago, things got somewhat calmer, and I suspect that a lot of people have now gone on vacation, and that the remaining kids have moved past the prize-receiving threshold and are now working on their bookplate numbers.  Which is not to say that it’s been quiet at the library, because it hasn’t been, but I have been able to accomplish some other “action items,” like getting that order of new books completely sorted and shuttled down to tech services for processing.  And, as I think about it, some of the relative calmness in the last week at the library can easily be attributed to the road construction on the state highway that runs in front of the library (the state closed the road and sent motorists on unmarked detours, which is a whole ‘nother story).

So, with eleven days to go, here is the current summer reading hours total for the kids participating in the summer reading program: 3,498 hours read.  That’s very impressive, especially since I know that not everyone has gotten their hours entered into the online reading program.  And I’m impressed with my own summer reading hours, which currently stands at 35 hours – a personal best.

As for programs, there are still some great programs coming up at the library.  Tomorrow afternoon is the last summer meeting of the Lego club; Wednesday is a program for ages 6 and up on Wetlands and Watersheds, presented by a teacher naturalist from Audubon Ark; Thursday night is the Winnie the Pooh movie night; Wednesday the 15th is the Finale Picnic; and the day after that is the final movie night for the summer, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  Not to mention the six remaining storytimes of the summer.  There’s still space left in all the programs (except for the Storytime for 2’s & 3’s), so call tomorrow if you’d like to sign up.

And now I’m going to do a little more work on my own summer reading hours, to finish up the excellent book Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan by Richard Bowers.

Cats Dogs Plants Animals, Jewelry Making, Spare time - Culture

Man in the Moon

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Last Sunday, to assuage my guilt at wasting time watching the Olympics, I decided to multitask and make a necklace while observing other people being active (which always makes me feel woefully chubby and out of shape).  The necklace is one I’ve been wanting to make for a long time – not a design of my own, but a combination of two projects (handmade chain and a single earring, used as a pendant) from Jodi Bombadier’s book Weave, Wrap, Coil.

I LOVE this necklace, and I’ve been wearing it all week.  It’s just so bright and shiny, and looks great with a scoop neck black shirt.  I had dinner with my dad last night, and showed it off to him.  As he examined it, he kindly remarked that it looked professionally done (aw, gee, shucks), and then asked me if it was the Man in the Moon.  What an absolutely perfect name.  I love it.

I’ve put a photo of my new favorite Man in the Moon necklace below, as well as some photos that transferred from my camera to my computer automatically when I retrieved the necklace photo.  Not being much of a photo bug, there are some old-new photos that I just rediscovered, and I included three of my favorites below: two of the Concord Independent Battery horses in the Patriots’ Day parade – look carefully at the brown horse; a photo of my sweet little Ophy cat, who currently isn’t feeling too great – hopefully she’ll get better soon; and a picture of the sun lighting up one of our glass doorknobs.

Summer reading

Raffle tidbit

A couple of days ago, I was calling this week’s winners of the raffle prizes.  Most of the calls ended up in voicemail, but some people were home…and one call was just so funny that I have to mention it here (and no, I don’t actually remember who this conversation was with!):

Phone rings.  The dad of the child raffle winner answers.

Me:  Hi, this is Abby calling from the library.

The dad:  Oh, no, we have an overdue book?!?!?!

Me:  No, no, no – much better than that!

The dad (excitedly):  Some books came in for us?!!!!!!

Me:  No, even better than that – your [son/daughter] won a gift certificate for a pizza!

The dad:  Awesome!!!!!!  We’ll be right down!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now that’s a library lover if I ever met one.  I hope the whole family enjoyed that pizza.  (And thanks to the pizza place that donated the certificate.)

Children's literature, Librarianship

New Books

Since Jim works every Saturday, and since he had a gig last Saturday night, I spent this past Saturday doing a LOT of book ordering at home.  Hours and hours and hours of book ordering, interrupted only by moving the laundry along and occasional chocolate breaks.  (Nipping the perpetual question in the bud – this was on my own time, not on the clock…)

At this point in my career, I am looking at what I spend most of my working hours doing, and comparing it to the reasons for choosing this career.  I love the library’s patrons, young and old, I love running storytimes, and I love things like the summer reading program.  They’re all good things, and happy things.  But the reason that I took this job, the reason that this career makes me HAPPY, is what librarians call “collection development.”  Not being one for buzz words, I prefer to call this part of that process simply “ordering books” (and I do also love the other parts of the process, including weeding).

There’s a reason that I got my master’s degree in children’s literature, and that reason is that I am and always have been a passionate fan of children’s books.  And there is nothing more exciting than reading reviews of newly published children’s books (and, sometimes, republished older books), ordering the best of the best which fit into my budget, and then seeing those books come in on the UPS truck a day or two later.  This afternoon I went down to tech services and gathered up a very full book cart of gorgeous brand new books to bring back to my office for sorting tomorrow.  (Sorting, for those of you who are interested, involves labelling the fiction books as JJ, JE, J, AR, and YA – and putting genre stickers on the spine where appropriate, and also labelling the nonfiction books as J+correct call number or JJ+correct call number.)

Without a doubt, picking up that cartful of brand new books was the highlight of my week.  All that lovely new book smell, all those crisp pages, all those enticing covers.  One book in particular got my attention, probably because it looks like a great summer read, is Drink, Slay, Love by Sarah Beth Durst; definitely one I’ll be indulging in soon – a little guiltily, but that’s ok.  Also exciting for me to see is a book from one of my Simmons College gal pals, Wonder Show by Hannah Barnaby.  It’s been too many years since I’ve seen Hannah (twelve years since we all graduated from the children’s lit program!), and it will be so cool to read her book.  Maybe it will be even appropriate for one of my book groups to read…hmmmmmm…

So tomorrow at work will be heaven for me, handling all those lovely new books and getting them ready to go down to tech services for their final processing before they get into the hands of some eager young readers.  Books, really, are what it’s all about.

Library events, Summer reading

Summer summer summer

And yet another month has gone by since I last posted…which this time is a reflection of just how busy this summer’s reading program has been.  Without a doubt, this has been the busiest summer reading program ever at my library, with books circulating like crazy (often the circulation desk receives two full book carts of children’s returns each day), children reading more hours than ever before (and thus lines of children at the desk each day to collect their prizes), and fantastic attendance at the summer programs.

I’ve been so pleased with this summer’s programs, which so far have included:

  • Wolf Talk with Michael LeBlanc and his wolf Kocheech (I’m sure I’ve spelled that incorrectly, but I’ve never seen it written).  I can’t say enough great things about this program.  Hands down, my favorite library program ever.  Ever.
  • Jay Mankita in Concert.  Jay is a great musician, and we had an awesome concert with him playing outdoors on the library lawn on a gorgeous summer afternoon.  As an added bonus, his talented four year old son joined in and sang with Jay on a few numbers.
  • Bubbleology with Keith Michael Johnson.  What a great show!  Keith does more than just do cool things with bubbles – he teaches the kids a lot about science and experimentation and truly brings joy to that teaching process.
  • World Class Frisbee Show and Playshop with Todd Brodeur.  Todd did a program at the library two summers ago, and it was so good that I knew I had to have him back.  I love that he inspires kids to be active with just an inexpensive piece of equipment and no pressure to be an all star.  Not everyone is a future varsity athlete, but Todd inspired everyone at his show – adults and kids and teens alike – to have fun and be active with a Frisbee.  Awesome.
  • And, of course, there have been library programs, including the Ice Cream Social (biggest crowd ever), the Tie Dye program (once again, biggest crowd ever), book groups, storytimes, Book Gobblers for elementary age kids, and reading to Winston the therapy dog.

And we’re only about two thirds of the way through the summer!  Still some great things to come…stay tuned for reports on those programs…and still a lot of kids doing a lot of reading and working towards having a Big Number on their summer reading bookplate.  Awesome.

Summer reading

A month? Really?

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I can’t believe it’s been an entire month (actually, a little more than a month) since my last post.  It feels like it was just yesterday…but then, I’ve been busy.

Since my last post, I visited with every Kindergarten through fourth grade class at the town’s elementary school (unfortunately, the fifth graders were too busy this year to see me).  In a happy new twist, the school’s Library Media Specialist arranged to have the classes walk over to see me at the public library instead of the usual arrangement of me walking over to the school.  We’re very fortunate to be located on the school’s campus, just across the street from the elementary school and right next to the middle school/high school.  While the transit time to and from “my” library meant that I had half the usual time to talk to each class, I was very pleased that some kids who had never before been in the public library got a chance to see what we’re all about.  I have a feeling that some of those newbies might participate in the summer reading program now that they have visited the library.

And then I’ve been busy with all of the preparation for the summer reading program.  This is my seventh summer reading program, and I’m happy to report that all my years of obsessively fine-tuning my preparation systems are really paying off.  I’ve learned to type up notes to myself each summer, so that the next summer goes more smoothly; there are always glitches and things that could have gone better, and it’s really helpful to type up those things so that I don’t have to try to rely on my memory each year.  It’s so nice to be really hitting my stride in my job, and to reap the benefits of my hard work and record-keeping.  The beauty of reaching this point in my career is that I can spend less time building programs and systems, and more time fine-tuning and perfecting.  The groundwork has been laid, I’ve paid my dues, and now I get to really dig my heels in and truly enjoy my job and take my role to the next level of excellence.  I hope that my town and coworkers like me as much as I like them, ’cause I’m hoping to spend many, many more years there!

Back to what I’ve been doing this last month:  how could I forget to mention the Ice Cream Social?  Always the year’s biggest program (even bigger than the Lego Expo), this year’s Ice Cream Social was the biggest ever.  The weather was perfect – dry, slightly overcast, and not too hot – and hundreds of people showed up.  At one moment of panic I actually thought that we would run out of ice cream, which is remarkable since we had seventeen and a half gallons of the stuff!  Luckily, though, we had just enough ice cream for everyone, and it was the best ice cream ever, thanks to my favorite ice cream stand, Erikson’s Dairy of Maynard.  A million thanks to Erikson’s for making it possible for us to purchase their ice cream to keep the masses happily well-fed!  And a million more thanks to the fabulous group of volunteers who helped with set-up, clean-up, ice cream scooping, face painting, and management of the toppings table, bubble station, and sidewalk chalk station.  Without those fantastic volunteers, the Ice Cream Social wouldn’t be possible – THANK YOU all!

The summer prizes went out on Wednesday, and I’ve seen the hours read by the town’s kids going steadily up on the online reading site.  Current number of hours read by the kids: 314.76.  Wow.  And I love that the kids are more focused on reading, and less focused on prizes; only a couple of dozen kids have come in to get prizes so far, but I know that there are at least a hundred kids actively tracking their reading at this point (and that’s just the kids who are using the online program – there are countless others who are tracking their reading on the paper clock sheets).  Wow again.

And that reminds me that I’d better hunker down and get some reading time in myself, so that I have something impressive to post on my reading log sign in the children’s room come Monday.  Next up for me: a re-reading of The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall.  Happy summer!

Spare time - Culture, Storytime

Storytime progress

It’s been slow – rather tedious – and at times torturous – but I’ve made significant progress on my goal to add new storytime lesson plans to my repertoire.  I realized recently that my goal for this fiscal year stated that I would add sixteen lesson plans to reach a total of sixty-seven in my storytime bank…but that actually I would be adding twenty-three new lesson plans, not sixteen, to reach that total of sixty-seven.  Silly me, I forgot that I had made files for some lesson plans that I had not yet created; so I thought that I had fifty plans already on file, but really some of those plans did not yet exist.  But I’m committed to reaching sixty-seven total, and I’m ALMOST THERE!  Only five left!!

Tomorrow’s storytime is on Sickness and Health, with two fun featured stories:  Llama, Llama, Home with Mama by Anna Dewdney and Guess Who, Baby Duck! by Amy Hest.  None of the books I pulled for this week would work in a feltboard format (feltboard stories can’t be forced, I’ve learned), so I’ve decided instead to have a bear puppet come visit storytime.  The poor little bear isn’t feeling well – he has the sniffles and the sneezes and his throat is sore – so we’ll tuck him up in bed (an Ikea plastic bin with a pillowcase folded to be a pillow and another pillowcase as a blanket), feel his forehead to see if he has a fever, and put a box of tissues by his side.  Then we’ll distract the sick bear puppet with some fingerplays and stories and see if he feels better by the end of storytime.

And, meanwhile, just to add verisimilitude, I’m fighting a cold of my own.  Bah humbug.  Lots of echinacea today!  And hopefully a very fun storytime tomorrow…

Book groups, Children's book reviews

When a book isn’t what you expect it to be

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This evening I finally had a chance to start reading Mr. and Mrs. Bunny – Detectives Extraordinaire! by Mrs. Bunny and translated from the Rabbit by Polly Horvath.  My first plan was to read The Georges and the Jewels by Jane Smiley, which I’ve been itching to read for a long time, but when I opened my library copy it looked as if someone had peed on the lower right corner of the pages.  Ick.  Guess I’ll be ordering a new copy for the library tomorrow…

At any rate, I was equally excited to read Mr. and Mrs. Bunny, and my plan was to preview it to see if it would be appropriate for the third grade book group.  Not that I personally believe that children’s literature has to be all cute and fluffy, but I have found that for the books I choose to read with my younger book groups, cute and fluffy is a good path to take, considering the variety of readers in any book group.  Mr. and Mrs. Bunny seemed like it would fit the bill.

But I was pleasantly surprised to find that Mrs. Bunny has written a book with some bite to it – humor that appeals to me, and surely will appeal to a lot of kids who are older than third grade.  Mr. and Mrs. Bunny engage in some wonderful spousal repartee, such as their animated conversation after Mr. Bunny comes home with the news that he has bought a new hutch for them without Mrs. Bunny’s input.  Mrs. Bunny ends up with her head down on the table, then comes this lovely exchange:

“Mrs. Bunny, I am sure you are only hungry.  Once you have a little carrot stew in you, this mood of yours will pass in a trice.”

“DON’T TELL ME ABOUT MY MOODS!” began Mrs. Bunny, and that is when Mr. Bunny, in one of his few smart moves that day, pulled out the picture of the hutch and shoved it in her face.

“SEE?” said Mr. Bunny, a trifle hysterically.  “SEE?”    (pages 18 – 19)

And, of course, the hutch is beautiful and perfect and just what Mrs. Bunny would have picked herself.  And I realized that I was holding a book that is far, far better than I had expected – and I’m hooked.  It’s not for my third grade book group, but that’s ok.  I’ll use it with one of my older book groups, kids who have enough life experience to “get” the wry humor, and I’ll be sure to put it into the hands of those library kids who like the quirky and fun and unusual, with a little dash of gory (did I mention that there are foxes who kidnap and are looking to open a canned rabbit products plant?  and that the foxes like to say and write “Mwa-haha”?).  Ah, how I do love a book that’s unexpectedly much better than I thought it would be – especially when I thought it would be pretty good.

Etc., Librarianship, Teaching

A road not taken

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All of us have things that we could have pursued in life, but haven’t – those roads not taken.  Yesterday I was reminded of one of mine…

Quite unexpectedly, I ran into the mother of one of my former students yesterday, and our conversation made my week (perhaps even month).  I recognized her immediately – especially since I had the advantage of context, as she was working the job where I met her – but it took her a few seconds to realize who I was.  Her face literally lit up as she figured out that it was me, and she said, “Abby!!!!!!” with a huge smile.  And then she started talking about how key I was to her son’s success in life, and that they frequently think of me and are thankful for what I did for him, for, as she put it, I started the ball rolling for her son’s education.

I tutored her son when he was in kindergarten and first grade, and he was the most dyslexic student I ever worked with.  Very sweet, and very, very smart, but very dyslexic, and his school system was not providing anything close to what he needed.  I suspect that that school system had never had a child quite like him, and simply didn’t know how to help him.  My role in working with this student was primarily to get his confidence back, help him with sound recognition, and, when his mother asked me in desperation if her son should attend a school that specializes in dyslexia, to give his parents the name and number of an advocate.  That advocate managed to get this boy into the Landmark School, with the town paying the bill, and the difference in the boy was almost immediate.  He had reached the point where school was unbearable for him, but after he started at Landmark I remember his mother telling me that suddenly he was the first one in the family to wake up in the morning, and that he would get dressed and ready for school and wait impatiently for his family to drive him there.

And I found out yesterday that now he is finishing his junior year in highschool; he owns and operates his own landscaping business; he can read fluently; he plans on attending a two year college; and that he wants to have a career as a tugboat captain.  He is thriving, and his mother very kindly gave me a lot of credit for his success, since I was the first one to recognize the extent of his needs and I helped her find the experts to get him where he needed to be.

This isn’t the first time a parent (or child) has credited me with such grand things, and yesterday I once again worried whether I made the right decision seven or so years ago when I decided to lose my $100 deposit at Simmons and not enroll as a student in the two degree programs in which I had been accepted:  to get my master’s in special education and my education specialist degree in language and literacy.  Everything had been signed and sealed for me to get those degrees and then pursue a career as a reading specialist, but each morning as I got ready for work I’d cry my eyes out and say to myself, “But I want to be a children’s librarian!!!”  And so that’s what I did – I went with the career path that felt right to me.

But was it the right path?  Do I as a children’s librarian have as much potential to positively and profoundly affect kids’ lives as I would as a reading specialist?  I’m not sure.  In going down the path that I knew would make me happy, did I lessen the positive impact that I could make on the world?  Or, as I’ve often told myself, would the fact that being a reading specialist wouldn’t make me happy mean that I ultimately wouldn’t be as good at that job and thus not as effective?  I’ll never definitively know the answers to those questions.  But I do know that it was lovely to see that mother yesterday and to hear how well her almost-grown son is doing, all these years after I knew him.

Spare time - Culture, Storytime

New lesson plans update

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I’ve been completely and totally neglecting my blog lately, but for good reason:  one of my four work goals for this fiscal year was to create new lesson plans for the Storytime for 2’s & 3’s.  Here is my official goal, as submitted at the beginning of the fiscal year:

Create 16 more lesson plans to add to the curriculum for Storytime for 2’s and 3’s.  Lesson plan creation includes selecting 20 to 30 book titles for each theme, creating weekly handouts, choosing fingerplays, rhymes, and songs, and creating feltboard materials (which is done at home on my own time).  This will bring the total number of lesson plans up to 67, which is enough to get through two full years (including summers) with repetition only occurring a few times in those two years (Halloween/Fall, Winter, Spring, Valentine’s Day, Summer, etc.).  Though two and three year olds actually love repetition, parents are never as keen on it, so it is important to  have enough lesson plans to cover the entire period that a child is registered for this storytime.

I knew that this goal, along with my usual reading-done-at-home for the five book groups that meet each month, would seriously impact my ability to write blog posts.  But I didn’t anticipate that it would mean no blog posts for a huge span of time!  But, I am very pleased with how these new storytime lesson plans are turning out, and very happy that I will have enough plans to cover two full years; good for me as the presenter, good for the folks who attend.

One reason these plans have been taking longer than expected is that I have moved beyond my original source for plans, Storytimes for Two Year Olds by Judy Nichols, and am creating everything from scratch.  In her book Nichols provides fifty themes, with suggested book titles for each theme, as well as suggested fingerplays and songs, follow-up activities, craft activities, suggestions on which books to turn into feltboard stories, and so on.  While I’ve always viewed Nichols’ book as a starting point for me, since I am my own person and like to put my creative stamp on my storytimes, having that starting point was absolutely invaluable.  I’ve been totally on my own for these new lesson plans, and thus bring much of the planning work home (in addition to the feltboard work), since creating from scratch takes soooooooo much longer than using someone else’s template.  And my theme ideas haven’t always worked out, meaning that I’ve had to regroup many times…

I’ve had to trash several ideas for themes that seemed good when I chose them, but turned out to have insufficient books available for this age group.  I gave up on “Dragons and Unicorns” after spending a great deal of time searching for and reading picturebooks on these two mythical creatures; fewer picturebooks exist on them than I thought, and those that I found were far too complex and long for my target age group.

Another theme that I thought would be terrific, but didn’t work out at all, was “Royalty.”  Queens, kings, princesses, princes, knights – surely that would be a great topic, right?  Not so much.  I found a few books, but ultimately gave up and completely nixed the theme after deciding that the books I had found (both in my library and other libraries) were either too long or too dull or both.

And “Snakes.”  Great idea, especially since we have a couple of terrific snake puppets that I’ve been dying to use.  But a total washout in terms of books that are available.  I finally had the great idea to take the snake idea and broaden it out to “Pets.”  The snake puppets still got used, and I found a tremendous number of great books.

Why so many books, you ask?  Partly to include in the weekly handout, which I know many parents use as a source for age-appropriate books for their children.  Partly so that there is a stack of books available for checkout by the kids and their parents on the day of the storytime (which many families love).  And partly so that there are thirty or so books on display in a ring around the carpet squares in the room; these books are there for the Quiet Time section of the storytime, as recommended by Nichols.  I’ve grown quite fond of the Quiet Time section, and love seeing the caregivers each reading to their children – it’s a terrific way to take the reading skills learned during the storytime and bring them back to their everyday one-on-one at home usage.

And on that note, I think that I had better get to work on the handout and lesson plan for Monday’s storytime, theme of Spring…wish me luck!