The bathroom in the children’s room is right next to my desk, and so I get to overhear a lot of amusing things. Most recently heard from my desk:
A pair of four year old twins were in the bathroom with their mother, when I quite clearly heard one of the boys say, “That’s ok – it matches the floor!”
The bathroom floor is yellow.
Say no more.
Years ago, when I was the manager of the Toy Shop, I had a vague dream of using puppets to work with groups of kids, and I used that excuse to purchase a vast supply of puppets for my personal collection. But I didn’t really think that the dream would materialize, and mostly just collected the puppets.
The puppets now live up in my attic, in plastic storage boxes, and are rarely used because they’re so hard to get at (oh, for a few more closets in our house – one large closet and one small closet doesn’t quite meet the demands). Even though the puppets aren’t being used, though, I am actually making that ancient dream of mine real, and loving it more and more each week.
I haven’t quite gotten to the point where I’ll have my puppets speak to the kids in the toddler storytime (I still have a sense that my family’s strength with puppet-usage is a bit odd and perhaps something to be ashamed of rather than flaunted), but I do use puppets on a regular basis. Yesterday I had Zebra, the official finger taster puppet, share with the kids some information about his home. Zebra whispers in my ear, then I speak his thoughts out loud. Working this way, Zebra told the kids about his school year home on the top of the bookcase in my office, where he can look out the office window into the children’s room. He also told the kids that he summers on Cape Cod (since Zebra will be put away for the summer, and it’s much more fun to say he’s on vacation than that he’s locked in the storage cabinet). The kids AND their parents loved that, and they all seemed to love the rest of my storytime, too.Â
The more storytimes I do, the more I’m able to incorporate some of the educational knowledge that I have and also let go of my inhibitions and ham things up.  Yesterday I used a so-so book, Robert Kalan’s Moving Day, and made it wicked awesome by turning it into a felt board story. I had worried that the story would be too boring, but by acting things out and adding some humor (when I picked up the “heavy” shell, I pretended to have a hard time lifting it – when picking up the “rough” shell, I said “Ouch!!”) it became something wonderful. I even got a round of applause in the second storytime of the day. Wow.
Clearly, the best route to success in these storytimes is to use multiple mediums (felt board stories, puppets, stuffed animals, fingerplays, songs) and to forget that you’re a grownup and supposed to be dignified. Once those inhibitions are gone, magical things happen.
The 5th grade book group has completed its evolution, and it’s fantastic. Yesterday we had eight kids (the ninth got the week wrong, and was sad to have missed the group), all of whom were bursting with enthusiasm and totally anxious to discuss The Fairy-Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley. I had come to the group armed with a variety of things to discuss about the book, but in the end my role was simply moderator. And that is how it should be, what I’ve been aiming for all along with these book groups. There was a moment half-way through the group yesterday, as I was looking at five kids with their hands eagerly raised, and I realized that this particular group of kids has become a true Book Group. They read the book, think about it, come to the group meeting with things they want to discuss about it, and even bring questions about the book to pose to the rest of the group members. They stay on topic for the whole meeting, are courteous listeners when someone else is speaking, and, most of all, they make really intelligent comments. Our only challenge yesterday was making sure that I did a good job calling on people – that everyone got equal opportunity to speak. Sometime, in the not so distant future, I’m expecting that the kids will be able to take control of the group moderation themselves, and that I’ll just get to sit back and appreciate the discussion.Â
And, for the record, they LOVED the book, boys and girls alike. Absolutely, unequivocably, totally LOVED it. Most of the kids in the group have moved on to read at least one of the sequels, and all were thrilled to learn that there are going to be eight books in the series.Â
Next month’s book is the classic Five Children and It by E. Nesbit. I can’t wait to hear their comments on it!
Elmo came to visit last Thursday – he made the trip all the way from Sesame Street to our library. Before Elmo came out to say hi to his fans, I read two short stories about him (not the best stories in the world, but you take what you can get), and then Elmo sauntered out and sat down in a big chair to greet everyone.Â
Some of the kids who attended were so in awe of Elmo that their parents had to gently nudge them towards him, but most kids were SOOOO excited that it was all I could do to organize them into a line. Once the line was established, everyone got a turn posing with Elmo and getting their picture taken with him. Many kids went back two or three times to visit with the big red monster.
The two cutest stories of the day belong the just-over-one-year-old who couldn’t stay away from Elmo, and to an older boy. The littler boy ended up snuggling in Elmo’s lap, each hand grasping some fur on Elmo’s legs, and his head tucked down into Elmo’s, um, lap (the mom was quite grateful to find out from me that Elmo was inhabited by a woman, not a man, that day). And the bigger boy, who is about seven, carefully studied Elmo from every angle, pausing longest at Elmo’s back, where the zipper was just visible next to a tiny gap where the head fit on. This boy didn’t say anything about what he observed until Elmo had left for the day, and the young woman who had played Elmo came out to chat with the kids (she was great, saying “I missed Elmo! I can’t believe I didn’t get to see him!”). The boy got talking to the young woman, and whispered to her: “There was a HUMAN in there. I felt his hand, and there was a HUMAN hand inside!!!”
Thank you to the Start U Reading folks for bringing Elmo to the library! It was fun!
Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
I’ve been recommending Clementine by Sara Pennypacker (illustrations by Marla Frazee) to coworkers, patrons, and friends for quite a while now. Of course, I hadn’t actually read it, but I’d read all of the reviews, listened to a third grader who loved it, and been dazzled by the cute cover. So I chose it as the first book for my newly formed third grade book group, and sat down Friday night eager to finally read it.
But – you guessed it. Overly cynical, highly critical Abby didn’t like the book. Hated it, more like. How can that be?? Here’s how: I’ve known a LOT of third graders, kids I taught at the elementary school, kids that I tutor in my off-library hours, and kids who come in to the library. And not one of those third graders has ever been as cluelessly, annoyingly, cloyingly CUTE as Clementine. Blech. Ptooey. Ptooey. Blech blech blech. Take a little syrup, add some sugar, molasses, and saccharine, and you’ve got Clementine. She’s an adult’s idealistic vision of what a third grader should be, and about as far away from Sendak’s Max as possible. Like Sendak, I’d like the characters in children’s books to reflect real children, with their lumps and bumps and streaks of meanness and startling insights and un-cute moments.Â
I won’t be talking with the third grade book group about my feelings about Clementine, since it’s our first meeting and I haven’t even met some of the kids yet. I know that I tend to be a harsh, harsh critic, and I don’t want to burden our very first meeting with that baggage. Unless, of course, the kids bring up Clementine’s character, and they want to discuss her. It will be really interesting to see what they think of her.Â
In the supermarket last night, at the checkout register:
A little boy, about 4 years old, discovers a stack of Red Sox door mats, pats them fondly, and says, “Daddy? Can we get a Red Sox rug for our house?”
Daddy:Â “Well, I don’t think Mommy would like that much…”
Boy:Â “Why?”
Daddy:Â “Well, she’s, um, not much of a Red Sox fan.”
Boy, still patting the doormats:Â “Please, Daddy?”
Daddy:Â “You really like those, don’t you.”
Boy: “Uh-huh. Can we get one?”
Daddy:Â “Well, that’s more something you buy if you’re living in a house full of guys.”
Which left the little boy puzzled, but stopped the questions. Obviously, Mommy’s not a guy, so there ends that battle.
Yup, it was a train wreck. After taxing my poor aging brain to learn all the rhymes and songs (I even had to use my hands as a cheat sheet – there are still oodles of inky words all over my palms), and after purchasing all the required props, and after Jim crawled around in our attic to find my pig stuffed animal; after all that, my first Mother Goose on the Loose program was a total train wreck.
It’s not that I did such a bad job, really, it’s more that my infant storytime is a victim of the success of my Toddler Storytime. 45 moms and kids are signed up for the Toddler Storytime, which doesn’t leave too many people to attend the Mother Goose on the Loose storytime. So there were only 4 adults and 5 kids in the room at the start of the storytime, and the number quickly dropped as one child decided to leave the room (mom had to follow), then another child fell on the floor and cut his lip open (grandma and big sister had to leave the room with him, mopping up the blood as they went), leaving just 2 adults and 2 kids and me. And one of those kids, a sweet little girl, REALLY wanted to leave, since her best friend was the little boy who left the room at the start.  Which would have left only 1 adult and 1 child in the room - thank goodness the little girl’s mom was able to stick out the whole storytime.Â
When you have that small a group, it’s substantially harder to have much fun. The adults get very self-conscious about their singing voices, leaving me alone to carry the tunes (never an ideal situation), and if the kids are at all reluctant to do something like beat their names on the drum, the reluctant kids don’t get to see eager kids model the behavior first so that they can follow suit.Â
But I will say that Mother Goose on the Loose is fun. With a bigger crowd, it would have been a blast. So I’ve got two big challenges now: get more people to attend, and figure out how to keep the program to 30 minutes (I ran overtime, and didn’t even finish the program…obviously need to work on my timing a bit…). Aside from that, I’m enjoying beating my drum and jingling the bells and waving the scarves. I’d just like a few more people to join in with me!
Last week was school vacation week in the town in which I work. It was heaven. I got more work done in those four days than I have in any four day period since we opened in the new building. And we were still busy; plenty of patrons in the building. But no after school crowd, which meant that all children, tweens, and teens were attended by an adult, and that adult wasn’t me or any other staff member. Heaven.
So today we’re back to reality. Which isn’t so bad, really, especially when I have the satisfaction of knowing how much I accomplished last week.
I’ve been taken down. Again.
Friday night was movie night – we showed Ratatouille – and I spent the whole movie alternating between riding the volume on the remote control and ducking out of the main hall to indulge my coughing fits. My dinner that night? Cough drops and water (and a late bowl of soup upon arriving home). I’m not going to even discuss Ratatouille, because I hated it, but I think I mostly hated it because I felt like crap and just wanted to be home in front of the wood stove with a cup of tea and a cat in my lap.
Lisa told me that I “have a weak constitution.” Harumph!* Seems to me I was barely sick at all last winter. The real problem is that I work with kids – lots and lots of kids, of all ages – all day, every day, and my poor beleaguered system can’t get a chance to recover and become healthy. Fifteen toddlers and their moms in a small story room on Mondays: that’s a lot of germs. A similar number of infants and their moms on Tuesdays. Six or so preschoolers and their parents listening to my stories on Thursdays: even more germs. All the elementary school and middle school kids who sneak usage of my phone while I’m away from my desk: I don’t even want to think about those germs and their direct access to my immune system (and so much for training the kids to only use the phone in my office – the minute I’m away from my desk, they use my primary phone. grrrrrrr).Â
And then there are the books. I had to go buy a new paperback copy of Magyk by Angie Sage to read for the upcoming book group meeting; the library copy that I brought home is BEYOND disgusting. A hardcover petri dish. Blech.
Thank goodness for this three-day weekend. Lots of OJ and rest are on my schedule for the weekend, and nothing else.
* and Lisa, if this doesn’t prompt you to leave a comment, I don’t know what will! 🙂
In my tenure at the library, I’ve facilitated quite a few book discussions for children and teens, and there has been one universal ingredient in all of those discussions. It doesn’t matter the age of the book group members, or the book that is on tap for that meeting: each time in the last two years that I have sat down with a book group, the conversation has turned at some point to Harry Potter.
The Harry Potter books have irrevocably, and I would argue harmfully, shaped the way that children and teens today read. I should make it clear that I am not a snobbish hater of Rowling and her work, but my personal opinion is that Rowling’s strength lies in her plotting and overall vision for the Potter series, not in her writing style. When library patrons, adults and kids alike, rave to me about what a fabulous writer Rowling is, I cringe inwardly. How can an author who regularly produces wordy, under-edited 800 page tomes be considered a fabulous author? Her plots are terrific, her fantasy world engaging, but her writing, in my opinion, borders on miserable dullness. Continue reading The State of Reading Today