All posts by Abby

Children

A fan

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Yesterday:

I was sitting at my desk…one of my Mother Goose on the Loose storytime regulars came in with her mom and older brother…and I overheard her say:

“Abby’s home!  Abby’s here!  Abby’s home!!!”

I guess I do kinda live at the library.  And I guess Jim is right when he says I’m like a rock star to the little kids.  Because Janey kept up that refrain, “Abby’s home! Abby’s here!  Abby’s home!” for the whole half hour that her family was at the library.  Her mom and I thought it was pretty funny, and pretty cute.

Etc.

Happy Birthday to me!!!

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Yup, today is my birthday, and I had a great one!  A few highlights from today:

~ While I was getting ready for toddler storytime at the library, the phone rang – I answered – someone started singing “Happy Birthday” to me, a little offkey, but with great spirit.  At first, I couldn’t figure out who it was…then I realized it was my big sister!  Thanks, Jean!

~ One of my favorite patrons* came in with a homemade cupcake for me with pink frosted writing on it: “Abby – HBD!”  I share my birthday with this patron’s daughter, which definitely helped her to remember my birthday, but I was extremely touched by this cupcake.  It totally made my day special!  And even better was later in the afternoon when her daughter (the birthday girl) came in to the library, wishing me a happy birthday and jumping up and down with excitement because she turned seven today, and could get her library card today!!!

~ Just after the cupcake arrived, I was reminded that my coworker Barbara and I also share a birthday.  How spooky that I suddenly know all these other people with the same birthday!

~ And, the very best part of the day: I came home to an awesome dinner cooked by my totally fantastic husband.  And a great card.  And a gift certificate to the Concord Bookshop.  I’m going to have some kind of fun using that gift certificate on Friday!!  I definitely have the best husband ever.  Definitely.

So, happy birthday to me.  This one was very mellow and not nearly so traumatic as last year’s Decade Birthday.  Whew.

* it should be noted that all of the library patrons are my favorites.  🙂

Book groups

Book group lists updated

I just finished updating the lists of books that Jennifer and I have used for our book groups (grades 3 through 9).  The lists now only include books that we have actually used or will be using; I have removed all titles that were “in consideration.”

Children's book reviews

Little Sister Is Not My Name!

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No, this blog title has nothing to do with me and my relationship with my older siblings!  I just finished reading the first book in Sharon M. Draper’s new early chapter book series about a nine year old girl named Sassy.  And the title of the first book is:  Little Sister Is Not My Name! 

As I was putting NEW stickers on some freshly processed children’s books the other day, I was intrigued by this book’s cover.  I knew the book had gotten favorable reviews, but the cover just looks a wee bit commercial, so I decided that I’d best take it home and read it for myself.  And while I was at it, I chose a few other younger juvenile books to read, too, since it occurred to me that I’ve been reading mostly intermediate/middle school and young adult books, but not much fiction for younger kids.

Little Sister is a quick, fun read, and I’m actually very impressed.  The cover, cheesy though it is, will attract a lot of readers (primarily girls, which is too bad, because boys might enjoy the book too), and once the book is in their hands, I can practically guarantee that they’ll like it and be searching for the next book in the series.  Sassy is a completely genuine child character: with very few exceptions, her voice and actions ring true.  In my opinion, a well-portrayed child character is a rare beast, and it’s refreshing to meet Sassy and realize that if she weren’t fictional she could easily walk through the door of the library and start chatting with me about her Sassy Sack and boys and her friends and her Grammy.

Draper is an acclaimed teacher (see her official biography here – it’s impressive), and logic would say that her experience working with students helped her to create Sassy and her friends.  If you know kids and understand them, you’re more likely to be able to create a fictional kid who walks, talks, and acts like a real kid.

I highly recommend this first book in the Sassy series, and can’t wait to put it in the hands of a couple of my favorite young library patrons.

Book groups, Library events, Storytime

Busy busy busy

This was an unusually busy week – four storytimes, two book groups, Game Hour, and a special Halloween program with Greg McAdams.  Which is really only two more programs than a usual week, but it felt like a lot more than that!

Jennifer is on vacation this week (I hope you’re having a great few days off, Jennifer!), so we decided that I would meet with her 4th grade book group so that they could have a meeting in October.  They are a terrific bunch of kids, and we had a very productive discussion about Patrick Carman’s The Dark Hills Divide.  The kids and I agreed that the first half of the book is a bit slow, a bit tedious, and a bit boring, but the second half of the book gets creative, fast-paced, and interesting.  Personally, I felt like the book was an awfully tough slog, but the kids seemed to mostly like it.

That was Monday’s book group – Tuesday’s book group was the 5th graders, and we discussed E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It.  I’ve used Five Children and It for book group discussions before, partly because I enjoy introducing kids to an author they most likely won’t discover on their own, and partly because the book generates great discussion.  For this meeting, I also played a portion of the movie of Five Children and It (starring Kenneth Branagh and Freddy Highmore), and we spent a fair amount of time talking about why the movie people changed the plot and setting of the story so much from the original.  This 5th grade group is another terrific bunch of kids, and I really enjoyed hearing their thoughts on this book and literature in general.

Then there were the storytimes…  I’ve been mixing in new Toddler Storytimes here and there with the ones I’ve already created (usually four weeks of established lesson plans, then one week of a new plan, then back to old plans), and somehow I managed to schedule a new Toddler Storytime for this week, when I already had two book groups to prepare for and only Sunday off.  Bad planning, which resulted in me working all day Sunday and then skipping my drawing class on Monday night.  But in the end, this Circus storytime worked out quite well, though there was an added element that day: an early intervention teacher came to storytime to observe one of her students.  I wasn’t bothered by her presence, but I found myself observing this teacher while she observed her student, which distracted me a wee bit. 

Tuesday’s Infant Storytime was full to bursting, and it was one of those storytimes where I finished really feeling like I was on my game, that I had turned out a pretty successful program.  There was a lot of positive energy in the room that day, and most of the kids were about the same age, which always makes the program run more smoothly.  Not to mention that there was a great bunch of grownups in the room who stayed on top of monitoring their small charges.  I really appreciate it when the other adults in the room keep the kids from crossing my “invisible line” that runs just in front of my feet, because it is SO hard to stay focused on my presentation when there is an adorable little person trying to dig one of my stuffed animals or musical instruments out of the bags by my chair.  Thank you, everyone!

Wednesday’s infant storytime wasn’t such a success, though.  I don’t know what it was, maybe it was leftover migraine ditziness from the afternoon before, but I was just not as good as I’d like.  Same exact lesson plan as Tuesday, but I didn’t do as well with the material as I did on Tuesday.  Go figure.

And then there was the Preschool Storytime on Thursday.  Usually I have a good sized crowd for this storytime, and since it was week three of my rotation – the most popular week, art week – I thought I’d have a full house.  But the weather was unseasonably lovely, and I think everyone decided to go to the playground.  In the end, only one family attended: two siblings of the right age for the storytime, a much younger sibling, and their nanny.  The nanny, who I’ve gotten to know in the past few weeks (she’s new to the family, but clearly not new to being a nanny), did a great job of sitting with the youngest sibling through the stories, then subtly removing him and herself from the room once it was time for art.  And the other two siblings and I had such a giggly good time creating “Pumpkin Mystery Faces” from MaryAnn Kohl’s book.  First I showed them how we could play around with the pumpkin’s features by using my felt board (I had figured this would be the best way to introduce the art project to the group without prejudicing their art, since felt is definitely different from paper), then we moved over to the tables and cut out black construction paper eyes, noses, and other shapes.  I had already primed our bucket full of paper shapes, so once the kids were ready to move on to the actual project, it was easy enough for them to root around in the bucket (no peeking!) and pull out shapes to plop down on their orange paper circles.  We laughed and laughed at the funny faces we made, and then eventually I brought out the glue so that each child could take a pumpkin face home.  The sister, who is five, made a very recognizable jack o’ lantern, but the boy, who is just four, had a massively good time layering on as much glue and black paper as he could, until the orange circle was heavy with both.

Game Hour was run by four fabulous teen volunteers, so that I only had to keep an ear and eye out for the group to make sure that everything was going well in there.  We’re getting quite a group of Game Hour regulars, and boy do they have a great time playing games together.

And last, but certainly not least, Greg McAdams came on Wednesday to present his Halloween Magic Safety Show.  Greg has come to the library two other times in my tenure, and each time I’ve been very impressed by his ability to establish good behavior ground rules in a way that is firm yet funny.  And I love that Greg mixes in a healthy dose of humor and talk about books and libraries with his magic.  I had wondered how Greg would mix Halloween safety messages into his show – would it be too didactic? – but his talk about safety was very subtle and spot-on.  I saw a lot of parents nodding happily when he talked about staying with your group when you’re trick-or-treating, letting your parents check your candy before you eat any of it, using a flashlight, and not talking to strangers.  Thanks Greg – you did an awesome job!

Of course there was a lot more to my week than these eight programs, but it’s almost eight and I haven’t had dinner, so you’ll just have to wait for the funny and cute stories from the rest of my week.

Young adult book review, Young adult literature

Mortal Instruments series

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Last night, way too late, I finished up the final book in the Mortal Instruments trilogy, City of Glass by Cassandra Clare.  And I went to bed feeling disappointed and a little grumpy that I’d stayed up late to finish a book that left me disappointed.

I loved the pace and feel of the first book, City of Bones.  In this first book, Clare does a great job establishing her characters and creating the urban fantasy world of Shadowhunters, demons, and Downworlders.  Reading the first book was like eating a perfectly sized slice of rich dark chocolate cake: not something I like to do every day, but a great treat.  But of course finishing the first book left me wanting to read the second, City of Ashes, which I promptly took out of the library and devoured in a couple of sittings.  And by the end of City of Ashes I felt like I’d had a piece of slightly stale supermarket birthday cake with super sweet frosting.  City of Ashes isn’t nearly as creative or engrossing as its predecessor, and (like my friend Lisa) I found the brother-sister plotline to be an annoying and gross plot manipulation.  But, of course, I still needed to know what happened next, so I requested City of Glass from the library network and eagerly sat down to read it through as soon as it arrived.  My bakery analogy for City of Glass?  A bit like an overcooked, lardy brownie that kind of cracks your teeth and sits like lead in your stomach.

Here’s why I think City of Glass doesn’t work:  the whole book takes place in the land of Idris, not New York City, removing the urban fantasy setting that made the first book so fresh and hip.  No more punk nightclubs for Clary; no more rundown urban hotels that are infested with vampires.  Just the boring bucolic Shadowhunter country setting.

But it’s more than the lack of urban grit.  Clare’s plot mapping feels too obvious in City of Glass.  While reading, I knew that she needed to take her characters from point A through point B in order for them to end up at point C, the end of the book.  And some things were too obvious to work [plot spoiler here, sorry]: I knew back at the end of the first book that Jace wasn’t Clary’s brother, and frankly it pissed me off that it took the author 1,470 pages to resolve the seemingly incestuous romantic conflict between them.  It would have been better if she had given her audience a little more credit for brains and fixed the brother-sister problem several hundred pages sooner. 

I could go on with small gripes about plotting and lack of character development in City of Glass, but it’s not necessary.  These books are decent young adult fantasy, definitely higher quality than Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, and I did enjoy reading them.  I just wish that the last two books of the trilogy didn’t feel as if they were written in a rush, but I suppose that’s more a product of the publishing industry today (churn out the sequels quick while the first one’s hot) than of the author’s inability to complete the series in a way that respects what she accomplished in the first book.  It makes me feel for authors who are put under that kind of pressure and who must surely sacrifice some of their artistic vision while bowing to that pressure.  Ah, if only we could move away from the desperate need for lengthy trilogies, and back to the good ol’ days of stand-alone works of fiction…

Book groups

October book groups

Here are the book choices for October:

3rd grade:  Soupy Saturdays with the Pain and the Great One by Judy Blume

4th grade:  The Dark Hills Divide by Patrick Carman

5th grade:  Five Children and It by E. Nesbit

6th grade:  The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma by Trenton Lee Stewart

Teen (7th – 9th grade):  Flora Segunda by Ysabeau S. Wilce

The 3rd grade and teen groups will be meeting this week.  I’m enjoying reading Flora Segunda, and I’m looking forward to hearing what Jennifer thinks of Soupy Saturdays.  I’ll post entries on each book group meeting as soon as I’m able.

Librarianship

Nightmare

The other morning I woke up from a nightmare with my heart pounding, feeling as though I were screaming.  Here’s the dream:

I was at the library, and my coworkers and some library patrons were throwing a small party for me, to wish me well in my new job.  My new job was to be the receptionist at a wildlife sanctuary, the same wildlife sanctuary where I worked as a receptionist when I was twenty or so; my going-away gifts included a gift certificate to the gift shop at the wildlife sanctuary.  One of my favorite library patrons had made me a scrapbook with pictures and memories from my time at the library (it was quite lovely), and as I was looking at it, I thought:  “But I don’t WANT to leave!  I LOVE my job!!  Why do I have to go to this other job???  I want to stay HERE!!!!  NOOOOOOOO!!!!  I want to stay here!!!!  I WANT TO STAY HERE!!!  I LOVE MY JOB!!!!!!!”

And then I woke up.

I’m guessing that this dream stems from the state budget uncertainty these days.  I’ve finally found my niche, the job that makes me happy AND I’m pretty good at, and when I allow myself (which I try not to), I worry that in a year or two I won’t be able to continue in this career anymore.  Hence the nightmare.

In my conscious hours, though, I’m trying to just enjoy my working life as it is now.  And do the best job that I can do.  These days, no one has any guarantees in their job: somehow, we’ve all got to find a way to survive the next few years with our sanity.  And let’s hope that it’s just the next few years, or less…

Librarianship, Storytime

surreal

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Tuesday morning I had a moment in the midst of storytime.  We were doing a lap bounce (“The Grand Old Duke of York”) and somehow I went on autopilot while leading the group and took in the scene as if I were an outsider.  A semicircle of adults around the room, singing while bouncing and lifting their children in unison, following my lead and my rhythm as I demonstrated the lap bounce with Pepper the border collie puppet in my own lap.  How frickin’ surreal.  I mean, seriously.  Five years ago I would have laughed if you had told me I’d be leading a large group in song while bouncing a dog puppet in my lap.  And here were all these sincere faces following along with me.  Not a single person on the verge of laughing.  Seriously.  Part of me wants to videotape myself leading one of these storytimes, just to see what it’s all about, really; but I know that any confidence I currently have would be totally shattered by watching a video of myself.  So I’ll leave my observations of myself to the odd surreal out-of-body moments like yesterday’s.

And then, fast forward to this evening, at my first meditation class: we had just finished a walking meditation around the room, and had eased back to our chairs.  “Stand in front of your chair,” said our instructor, “but don’t sit down yet.”  Which is what I say as a lead-in to “Handy Spandy” in the infant storytime.  It was all I could do to hold back from launching into the rhyme: “Handy Spandy, sugary candy, we all jump IN.  Handy Spandy, sugary candy, we all jump OUT.  Handy Spandy sugary candy, we all jump UP.  Handy Spandy, sugary candy, we all sit down.”  Thankfully, I was able to restrain myself, but how odd that my first reaction in that situation was to want to take charge and lead a sit-down action rhyme.

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[For those of you who might be wondering, I LOVE my meditation class.  LOVE IT.  A great bunch of people (we shared a huge laugh together, which is the best kind of bonding experience), and, most importantly, meditation actually seems to work for me.  Yay.]