Category Archives: Summer reading

Summer reading

Summer has begun…

Starting with movie night last Thursday, summer has officially begun at the library.  Our first movie was Bee Movie, which was a surprising hit (we reached capacity in the room, holy smokes!) and which both Jim and I enjoyed – once the problem with the sound was resolved.  (How frustrating to hit play on a movie for a huge crowd, only to find out that the sound wasn’t working!)

Next up:  the Ice Cream Social, which is scheduled for Tuesday.  Hopefully we won’t have to use a rain date this year.  And coming up on July 1, the first “real” program of the summer, a visit from Audubon Ark as they do a program on Habitats.  They’ll bring a skunk and painted turtle with them to show to the kids; it should be a fantastic program.

Other great programs coming up this summer include:  “Hurdy Gurdy, Monkey and Me,” a real organ grinder with his monkey Coco; another Audubon Ark program on Backyard Wildlife, with an opossum and a mallard duck; “Animal Antics,” a puppet show by Sparky Davis, who has a fantastic reputation; and a concert with Davis Bates and Roger Tincknell, perennial favorites at the library.  Not to forget the three other family movie nights – 101 Dalmatians, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and Nancy Drew.  Lisa will be running four movie nights for ages thirteen and up as well.   And, of course, there will be book group meetings, one meeting for each grade from three to six and the teen book group.  For the younger crowd, Jennifer will be running Mother Goose on the Loose storytimes every Wednesday, except for the two Wednesdays that Alex Andrews will be visiting with her Music Together program.

It’s a full summer, with lots and lots of fantastic events.  I’m psyched.

Children, Summer reading

A few more snippets

2 Comments

Yesterday’s class visits gave me these snippets to share:

I brought out the book A Visitor for Bear by Bonnie Becker to read to a second grade class, and a boy in the class called out, “I heard that book on NPR!!”  (A good indication of the type of town in which I work…)

When asked by Peggy (the school’s library media specialist) whether they knew who I was, several hands in that same second grade class shot up eagerly in the air.  One little girl, a favorite of mine, answered Peggy with the usual response to that question this week:  “She’s Abby.”  And a little boy, whom I also adore, said “I know her!!  I LOVE her books!!!!!!!!!”

Later on, as I was talking about the Ice Cream Social, that same little girl announced in her lovely British accent, “Last year you had the music of the Beatles!”  Which made Jim pretty happy when I told him later, since it was his band that played the Beatles music. 

Another comment that made Jim happy came from a fourth grader:  “Last year you had a BAND playing at the Ice Cream Social.  Are you going to have them again?!?!?!”

After I finished reading to the second graders, and they were busy doing some word searches, a member of the PTO came up to me and introduced herself.  Apparently she had been in the library shelving books as I was reading to the kids, and she commented to me, “Wow – they really like you.  And they really liked your stories.  You’re a celebrity!”

So, I may not have monetary fortune, but I do have a measure of fame.  And I love that I’m just “Abby” to the kids – not Mrs. Kingsbury, not Miss Abby (sorry, but I ABHORE being called “Miss Abby”), not the librarian.  Just Abby.  That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.

Children, Summer reading

Why kids are great

2 Comments

Some snippets from my week (a fun week, but a loooong week) visiting the classes at the elementary school, doing my regular job in the children’s room in the afternoon, and tutoring in the evening:

A third grader, standing in line to get his summer reading bag today, twinkled his eyes at me and said, “My sister knows you really well!”  “Ah,” I said, “Your sister is Rachael…and I know your sister pretty well, too!”   (His sister is a three year old toddler storytime regular.)  He grinned from ear to ear.

Tutoring yesterday, I had to dictate this sentence to A.:  “Gerry is a terrific person.”  I dictated the sentence, she repeated it back to me, and then she did what she often does – put her left arm kind of over her work so she could write without me seeing.  When she finished writing, we started the proofreading process, and she stifled a couple of nervous giggles before I figured out what was going on.  She had written the sentence twice, once just as dictated, and a second time this way: “Abby is a terrific person.”

Yesterday afternoon, after I had spent the day at the elementary school, two second grade girls came up to my desk hand-in-hand and said, “We just wanted to say ‘thank you’ for coming to our school and reading to us today!”  “Oh,” I said, “It was my pleasure!  Thank you for letting me come visit!”  The two girls giggled and blushed and dashed away as if they had just spoken to a celebrity.

Tonight my other student, M., told me the results of the fourth grade spelling bee that she participated in this week:  she made it to next week’s finals!  This is a student who struggles with encoding and decoding, and who has been working with me using the Wilson Reading System for the last year and a half or so, and she correctly spelled seven out of eight words given to her.  The only word she missed?  Average.  Not bad, considering it’s usually pronounced as a sight word (most people don’t pronounce the “er”).  Yay!  Way to go, M.!!

Yesterday morning, as I was making my way through the school’s lobby to the school’s library, I passed by and greeted another one of my toddler storytime regulars, who was with his mom dropping off his sister for kindergarten.  Liam’s jaw dropped when he saw me, and he stood there frozen in place, watching me go into the school library.  Shortly thereafter, he and his mom followed me in, and she (a wonderful, wonderful mother, by the way) smiled at me and said that she was just going to give Liam a little orientation and explain about the school library and why he was seeing me there and not in my usual spot.  Liam still looked a bit shell-shocked by the whole experience.

Today a young man, an afternoon regular at the library, came into the room and said hi to me, and I responded by wishing him a happy birthday.  “Wait a sec…” he said, “How did you know it was my birthday????”  “Well, I saw your name at the top of the list on a white board…”  “YOU were at MY SCHOOL???  Wow.  Wait, why were you at my school?”  (He’s a fifth grader, and a smart one.)

And my favorite moment, the one that pumped up my flagging ego:  in the fifth grade class that I visited on Tuesday, there were two of my book group girls.  One of them, Sophia, raised her hand and asked me, “Did you get a haircut?”  When I said yes, the other, Madeline, told me, “It looks really pretty!!!”  That’s just the kind of moment every girl (ok, almost forty-year-old girl) needs now and then. 

It’s been a really great week visiting the school.  Lots and lots of great kids, and more stories than I have room for here.  Though I’ll be totally and completely and thoroughly worn out by the time I’m done tutoring tomorrow night, I’ll also have enjoyed one of my favorite parts of the year.  A favorite part that’s been even better this year, since more kids know me now and thus have been attentive and terrific audiences for the stories I’ve read to them in their classes.

And not to forget my two tutoring students, who have very few lessons left (two for M., one for A.), and whom I’ll really miss this summer.  We’ve developed a special bond, and become great learning teams.  Though the tutoring exhausts me beyond measure (just that much extra time and energy spent on the top of an already very busy day), I also find it deeply rewarding.  Great kids with great attitudes and personalities who have made great progress in our time working together.

Etc., Summer reading

Sign of the times

Yesterday I went from store to store, asking very nicely for donations for our summer reading raffles.  I know times are tough, and so all I did at each store was present a donation request letter on the library letterhead; if there was any hesitation on the part of the store manager, I said, “I can just leave the letter, and if you decide you’d like to contact me, my phone number is at the bottom.”  Basically, I go into this project not really expecting anything, and am very happy if a store donates an item or gift certificate to the library.

Why do I ask for donations from local businesses?  Two reasons:  library budgets are small, and donations are one way to provide prizes for summer readers; and as a former small business manager, I am a firm supporter of local small businesses, and view this as a good way for local stores to promote themselves and expand their customer base.  If a store donates a $5.00 gift certificate, and the winner of that certificate comes to the store for the first time, that person just might decide that this is a store they want to visit again, and a new recurring customer is born.

In my travels yesterday, I did notice that there was a lot of fear and pain in the eyes of the store managers and owners.  Clearly, business is not good.  Clearly, the economy is taking its toll on small businesses.  By the end of the day, I was feeling rather crummy about having asked for donations, and very depressed about the state of our economy.  Things do not look good.

And then this morning I came into work to find a voicemail from a business owner who had donated last year.  It was a pretty angry, borderline combative message, saying something along the lines of, “Mailing a letter to my business isn’t enough.  You need to prove to me that you shop here.”  Ironically, I didn’t mail the letter, I came by in person.  And I do shop at the store.  I’m not on their mailing list, but I have shopped there.

In short, asking for summer reading donations was a pretty negative and depressing experience this year.  A true sign of the times; I’m frightened for what the future will be bringing to our country.

Summer reading

Summer reading…

It always amazes me how summer reading consumes my every waking (and sometimes sleeping) moment starting at the end of May.  The events have been planned and scheduled since December, but the nitty-gritty back-breaking preparatory work happens now.  And it never seems as though there’s enough time to accomplish all that needs to be done.

On the docket for today:

  • making the final 300 copies of the summer calendar (bringing the total copies made to 1000) and 200 more copies of the summer letter to parents (for a total of 800 of those)
  • folding the calendars
  • desperately trying to drum up more volunteers to help at the Ice Cream Social – seven wonderful volunteers is great, but no where near enough
  • typing up all of my “begging letters” to take around to local businesses on Thursday…to get items and gift certificates to use for summer raffles
  • following up on the food donation requests that I sent out two weeks ago
  • a million other little things that I can’t think of at this moment
  • and, of course, putting through this month’s book orders

Yikes.  I just might be freaking out right now….

Library events, Summer reading

Almost done – a bit of a wrap up

2 Comments

Only two days of summer reading remain – yay!  I don’t think I’ve ever been so ready for a vacation as I am right now.  Last night Jim pointed out that I haven’t had any “down time” at work since I started this job, between learning the job, my first summer last year, then preparation for the library move in what would have been down time, then the move, then this summer.  With any luck, this fall will be that quieter time that we all need at work.  (When I ran the toy shop, one of my coworkers used to remind me that while December was outrageously busy, we’d “all be eating bon-bons in January.”)

At any rate, there are two days left, and two events left.  At noon today we have our summer reading Finale Picnic on the library lawn, for which I have to buy goodies at Donelan’s today, and then this evening we’ll be showing the new film version of Charlotte’s Web.  As a special treat, the town fire truck will be making a special appearance at the picnic, courtesy of the chief and firefighter Oona, who is much beloved by the kids in town. 

Tomorrow is the last day for the kids who have been tracking their reading to “cash in” their hours for prizes.  The supply of prizes is getting a bit dismal, due to unprecedented participation, but hopefully those kids who still need to get prizes will find something that they like.  And speaking of unprecedented, Renee started counting up the Heifer votes that have been placed, and the votes are in the THOUSANDS, with no clear leader.  Tomorrow after we close I’ll do the final count, and post a sign telling whether we’ll be donating a sheep, a llama, a goat, or a pig to Heifer International.  A second animal will also be donated, thanks to the generous friends and family who have sponsored me in my summer reading, since I reached my goal of thirty hours (I’ll be sending a donation reminder email to everyone who pledged).

Two other events occured this week:  the teen book group meeting, in which we discussed Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin, and yesterday’s Origami Fun workshop.  I’ll write about each of these in their own posts, hopefully this afternoon when I’m home on my split shift.

But for now, it’s time to go food shopping.  Thanks to Donelan’s of Littleton for their generous donation of a $100 gift card to pay for the picnic’s food!

Library events, Summer reading

Poetry in Motion

3 Comments

David Zucker came to the library yesterday with his performance of “Poetry in Motion.”  David describes his program as “an exhilarating tour-de-force,” and that’s actually a bit of an understatement.  The kids who attended, some of whom were quite young, were an absolutely rapt audience as David did mime, acted out poems, incited participation from the kids and adults, and changed characters.

Since it’s August, attendance for library events is at low ebb, which is a shame, because only  forty adults and kids attended yesterday - but this was also a boon for me.  I was able to sit down in the audience and enjoy the show, rather than stand by at the door.  Sitting in the back row, I was sucked into the show along with the rest of the crowd; I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in a long time.

David possesses the rare ability to be intelligent AND accessible while engaging kids.  Poetry probably seemed like a dry topic to many of the kids in the audience before yesterday, but after hearing David’s rendition of “Casey at the Bat,” complete with our help with sound effects, the entire room erupted in a loud round of applause.  In fact, there were many rounds of spontaneous, heartfelt applause: after David recited and acted out “Jabberwocky,” after he recited and mimed two of A.A. Milne’s poems, after he took on the character of an alley cat and recited an alley cat poem.

I love that David stopped several times after speaking a difficult word (“mackerel” and “zwieback” among them), said “Hold on!  I can’t read a poem when there’s a word I don’t understand,” and solicited audience input for word meanings before re-winding and starting the verse in question again, word meaning in mind.  What a fabulous way to demonstrate reading strategies without hitting the kids over the head with them.

I also love that the discriminating woman who sat in front of me, who I have known in a casual way for years (she was one of my more particular customers at the Toy Shop), turned around mid-performance and whispered to me, eyes wide,  “This is wonderful!”  I love that one of our former teen volunteers, who has just finished her freshman year at Smith (a smart girl, needless to say), came up to me at the end of the show and raved about how amazing the show was.  I love that the audience was reluctant to leave at the conclusion of the performance.

Definitely a great performance to end the summer.

**  (ok, there’s still a week of summer reading to go, and a few activities left, but in my mind this was the functional end of the summer shows)

Library events, Summer reading

Best program of the summer?

Though comparing this summer’s programs is a bit like comparing apples and oranges – a magician versus an indoor planetarium? a natural sciences program versus movie nights? – my vote for this summer’s best program goes to the Massachusetts Audubon Society Audubon Ark presentation on Birds of Prey yesterday.

Andrea, the teacher-naturalist, was fun, knowledgeable, and knew how to engage the kids’ attention and answer their questions.  And the stars of the show, a Broad-Winged Hawk and a Great Horned Owl, provided mesmerizing drama as they flapped their wings, chirruped gently, and nibbled on Andrea’s arm.  Once the birds had been put back into their carriers, Andrea brought out various bird eggs, talons, wings, tails, and even a Great Horned Owl head.  Though some kids were faintly disgusted at first by the owl’s body parts, Andrea very matter-of-factly explained to them that this particular owl had been hit and killed by a car.  When one young attendee pointed out that the right side of the owl’s skull was smashed, Andrea simply said, “That was probably where the owl hit the car,” and the child who had asked the question wasn’t grossed out or horrified, but realized this was a simple consequence of a bad meeting between a car and a wild animal.

Having worked for Mass Audubon for a year in my late teens, I know and respect their work and their employees, most especially Drumlin Farm’s emphasis on the cycle of life.  Drumlin is a working farm, and they are upfront about this with kids; in yesterday’s program, Andrea was equally upfront about interactions between wild animals and humans, including an explanation about why certain wild animals become part of the Audubon Ark travelling programs (these animals have been injured in some way and cannot survive in the wild).

All in all, a very impressive program, and I will be organizing more visits from them (with a variety of different programs – Andrea told me I HAVE to get the program that brings an opossum) for the coming school year.

Children, Children's literature, Summer reading

“Happy Harry Potter Day!”

That was at the head of a note that Nanette, our cataloger, left me on the CD-book version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  Nanette had come in early Saturday morning, even though she wasn’t working that day, in order to finish processing the CD-book (there hadn’t been a record in the system for her to attach to when she worked on Thursday).  Nanette was also the chosen person who handled and processed all of our Harry Potter copies.  As I might have mentioned before, and as any children’s librarian knows, I had to practically sign away my first-born child in order to receive the books before the release date.  And as any librarian knows, if you don’t receive the books before the release date, there’s no earthly way the books will be ready to be checked out on the release date, since they need to be covered, stamped, book pocketed, and entered into the catalog. 

Nanette was the perfect person to cover these books, though, since she confessed to having absolutely zero interest in the books.  No temptation to peek, since she really doesn’t care.  And thus, my totally subliminal fears that came out in my nightmares of Wednesday night were totally put to rest.  Thank you, Nanette.  🙂

But what of Harry Potter Day itself?  I knew I couldn’t compete with any of the big stores that were throwing huge bashes and selling books at 12:01 on Saturday, so I chose to run a very low-key event.  I found gobs and gobs of trivia quizzes, which I copied and stapled and arranged around the story room tables.  I sharpened dozens of pencils (to use on the quizzes), and I set up the special Harry Potter bookmarks that I “won” through a regional lottery.  And I set up raffle tickets and a raffle box for a copy of the new book.  No food, no decorations (not on our brand-new walls), no music, no goody bags.  The minimalist Harry Potter day.

A couple of dozen kids and their parents trickled in and out of the room from 11 AM to noon.  Some of the kids had dressed in costume as their favorite characters.  Some of the kids had a great time doing the trivia.  And some of the kids were clearly disappointed in my low-key party.  Oh well.  But when it came time to raffle off the copy of the book at noon, there was a rapt audience.  I shook that box up, down, and sideways, until the raffle tickets were well-mixed, then I announced to the gathered crowd that I sure hoped the winner was in the room, since it’s always a disappointment when I draw a winning ticket and the person isn’t in the room.

And then…drumroll…I drew the ticket.  “H— R— B—,” I announced, as I looked right at HRB’s older sister.  It took a couple of seconds for M—, the older sister, to process the news, then she started jumping up and down and screaming for her sister — and then she went running out into the children’s room, looping around the room looking for her sister, crying “Rosie! Rosie! Rosie! You won! You won! Rosie! Rosie! Rosie!  You WON!!!!”

It was the most joyful reaction I’ve seen in a long, long time, and it TOTALLY made my day.  Happy Harry Potter Day!!!!!

Library events, Summer reading

Thursday, continued…

So Thursday was a bit of a long day. 

Our movie that night was Toy Story, by special patron request.  Being an older movie, it drew a smaller crowd than Happy Feet, which is a good thing when you have to set up the room from scratch – fewer chairs to line up, fewer bags of popcorn to fill. 

The patron who had requested Toy Story showed up in full Buzz Lightyear splendor:  Buzz pajamas and the coolest Buzz Lightyear furry, fluffy, light-up slippers.  Awesome.

It was a mellow crowd that night, and we had a great time.  T— the popcorn fiend ate popcorn to his heart’s content (I counted six bags that he ate, then gave up counting), and his sister A—- once again very cordially and quietly collected everyone’s trash a few minutes before the end of the movie, so there was no trash to be seen when the lights went up.  M—, the cute little curly-haired British girl who has become my buddy, came and visited me part-way through the movie, and waved to me from the other side of the room for the rest of the movie.  And the tow headed toddler sitting right in front of me had a great time playing wave-and-smile with me for most of the movie. 

I had a great time.