Recently there was a conversation on MASSYAC (the list serve for children’s librarians in Massachusetts) about movie nights and why it’s hard to attract patrons to movies at the library.  The whole conversation totally puzzled me, since it was the exact opposite of what I experience at the library I work for.  Other librarians complained that they would hold a movie night and no one would come, or only a few people would come, or that attendance would be spotty and irregular from one movie to another.

Perhaps it’s simply the geographic makeup of the town in which I work, but movie nights are a consistent hit for us.  This town has no movie theater, and is quite a drive from movie theaters in other towns.  So the weekly, sometimes bi-weekly, movie nights that we have planned for this summer are a terrific way for families in town to socialize with each other, and now that we have reliable air conditioning, it will also be a great way to beat the heat in the midst of summer.

And the fact that Mary, Lisa, Roy, and I are willing to work an evening shift in order to run movie nights, even Friday evenings in the school year, must count for something too.  Though I do want to instigate gentle afternoon movie showings in the children’s room for the coming school year, I also feel quite strongly that it’s necessary to hold movie nights, events that working parents can happily and easily attend with their children. 

All these reasons aside, our first movie night in the new building was an unqualified success, with an almost full house of attendees (a full house is 89, we had 74).  The movie was Flushed Away, a movie that Jim and I had rented a few months ago to watch at home.  Truthfully, I didn’t enjoy it much when Jim and I watched it, but I still put it on the summer schedule because the demand for our circulating DVD has been high at the library.  And I was pleasantly surprised by Flushed Away when I saw it on the library’s big screen, with a crowd of happy, rowdy (in a good way) children in attendance.  It was a LOT of fun, and the crowd gave a heartfelt round of applause at the conclusion.

Next week’s movie is Shrek (might as well show the first of the trilogy, the one that started it all!), and I’ll be going out today to buy some more of the incredibly popular popcorn that we served at this week’s movie.  Which might be another key to our success:  good popcorn.