Today I chose the books that we’ll be reading this summer in my book groups!
Teen Book Group ~ Grades 7 to 9: Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica Day George
6th Grade Book Group: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
5th Grade Book Group: The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester by Barbara O’Connor
Yay! I’m really excited about all of these titles, and I think each book really suits the personality of the book group that will be reading and discussing it.
Just after storytime finished this morning, while I was still surrounded by a crowd of happy and chatty two and three year olds, my coworker Jane brought a large cardboard box into the children’s room and put it behind my desk. Not too unusual, just another delivery of something, so I didn’t think much about it.
And then, after all the storytime families had left and the room was quiet, I noticed that the persistent (and recently rather loud) tinnitus in my ears had graduated to a new level of annoying: my ears were going beepbeepbeep beepbeepbeep beepbeepbeep. “Oh, dear,” I thought to myself, “I guess I really DO need to see a doctor about the tinnitus – this is awful!!!” And I started getting really worried.
And then I realized that the beepbeepbeep beepbeepbeep beepbeepbeep could be traced to the box that Jane had delivered. A-ha! The delivery of bookmark timers (which will be summer reading raffle prizes) had arrived!
But my joy at their arrival soon changed to absolute frustration bordering on beginning insanity. There are one hundred bookmark timers in that large cardboard box, and each bookmark is in its own little white box. AND I CAN’T FIGURE OUT WHICH ONE IS BEEPING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!
[It should be noted here, as I quietly go insane, that the tech services staff had lived with this box for two days before figuring out where the beeping was coming from…and that Jane brought the box down to me so that THEY wouldn’t go insane. :)]
The elementary school class visits begin next Monday – always an exciting time of year! I’m working on my final preparations for the visits, which include narrowing down the book choices for the books that I’ll read to the Kindergarteners and the first graders (I’ve pulled at least thirty of my favorites…so so hard to pick only a couple); streamlining my tour of the building to make it history-rich (the building is historic and very cool) but still engaging for a large group of kids; and creating a new feltboard story to use with the younger kids.
I’m really looking forward to next week’s class visits, since it’s such a great way to meet and make meaningful contact with every child in town who attends the public elementary school. And, of course, to promote the library’s ever-popular summer reading program.
And now it’s just up to the Bruins to establish whether I wear my Bruins shirts for the class visits…if they’re still winning, I’ll be wearing the shirts, since the Bruins are statewide co-sponsors of the summer reading program. If they’ve lost and are out of the running for the Stanley Cup, it may be a bit too fresh and painful for the kids. (But wearing a Bruins shirt does catch the attention of sports-minded kids, which is always great.) Stay tuned to find out what I’ll be wearing next week…
I’m trying something new in programming this month at the library: a paid performer on a weekday morning. This month is rare in the town in which I work – there is no early release day from the public schools in May. Normally, I schedule most of our paid performers to come on early release days, since after experimenting with Thursday evening shows and Saturday shows I have found that the best attendance for events is on early release day shows. (And, of course, magic shows always get the best attendance of all, much to my sadness, but that’s a post for another day.)
When the May early release day was cancelled back in December, I was first very glad that I had not yet scheduled a performer, and then I had to decide what to do for May programming. I toyed with the idea of having no performer at all, but that didn’t feel right to me. Then I thought about scheduling a Saturday show, but quickly decided against that given the weak attendance at the very cool Saturday program we hosted in January. January is an indoor month in town, where May is full of outdoor sports programs and the Apple Blossom Festival and the Garden Club Plant Sale and all kinds of other things. Not worth me bringing a performer to the library on a May Saturday.
Then I decided to try a weekday morning performer who specializes in working with preschoolers and infants. We do not have storytimes on Tuesday mornings, so that seemed the natural time to run a show. And, even better, the Memorial Day holiday means that my Monday morning storytime regulars would be happy to have a Tuesday morning program to make up for their missed regular storytime. And I’ve been wanting to bring Hugh Hanley back to the library, since I love the gentle way that he encourages parents and children to sing and do fingerplays. And I always learn from him: watching Hugh is like attending a master class in working with preschoolers.
Happily, we have a large group signed up to attend on Tuesday, and I suspect that even more attendees will drop in, which is just fine by me. The more the merrier! After all the mental machinations (and agony) that it took to get me to this decision of having a morning program, I’m thrilled that it turns out there is a demand. This may be the beginning of a new programming trend at the library, budget allowing, of course. How awesome would it be to have an early release day program each month for the older kids and a Tuesday morning program each month for the younger ones?
Last night we showed The Rise of the Guardians for the May family movie night, to a relatively small crowd. Usually I run the family movie nights on the first Friday of the month, but this year the Friends held their annual book sale at the library for the first time, which meant that we needed to make the large program room available to them for about a month for collecting, sorting, and then selling of the books. So movie night got bumped to later in the month…and prom was last Friday night, so movie night got bumped to yesterday, the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. Obviously, not as many people were in town for last night’s movie, so we had a smaller crowd.
I’ve been in my job for a while now, and sometimes I think that I’ve got things all figured out. But then there are nights like last night where I realize that I’ve learned another lesson. Last night’s lesson? Next year, I won’t bother to run a movie night in May. Not just because the crowd was smaller, but also because of all the things that I need to be accomplishing right before summer reading starts, and in times of stress like this, a movie night feels like time lost that could be spent stuffing summer reading bags or preparing for the elementary class visits.
But, more importantly, I realized last night that we’d wasted a great movie that could have been our opening movie for the summer reading program. We hold two movie performance licenses at the library, but there are still a limited number of new release children’s movies that are covered by our licenses. I really struggled to come up with five movies to show this summer, and I know full well that the two older movies that I chose to show in August will not draw as large a crowd as a newer movie would.
So last night was an if-only night: if only I hadn’t insisted on showing a movie in May; if only I hadn’t chosen a hot new release to show at that May movie night; if only I had saved Rise of the Guardians for the June 21 movie night. If only. Lesson learned. I’ll remember next year…
Ok, it’s that time of year. I woke up at 4:30 this morning, and started to panic about all that I have to get done. The elementary school visits begin on June 3, which is the unofficial start to summer reading (even though the “real” summer reading doesn’t start until June 25, the day of the Ice Cream Social).
It’s lovely that there is a movie night tonight, and equally lovely that this is a three-day holiday weekend, but in reality all that means is that I lose four hours today and eight hours on Monday when I could be getting a lot of work done. So I gave up on sleep at 5:15, and hauled myself into work very very early. Hopefully I’ll be able to get enough done this morning before we open so that I can enjoy my holiday weekend.
And this is one of those days when I want to point out to anyone who thinks my job is “cute” and easy – it ain’t. It’s a lot of never-ending, hard hard work. Rewarding work, but hard hard work. And did I mention never-ending? 🙂
I was so thrilled to see the news report that the Moonbird, B95, was recently spotted. See my review and discussion of the book by Phillip Hoose here to understand why I’m excited about this news.
Yes, I know, I have been terribly remiss about posting on my blog lately. It’s all about screen time: I spend about nine hours a day at work staring at a computer screen, and when I get home, I hate to spend too much more time in front of a computer screen.
Ok, so it’s about screen time AND self-control: I should be able to just turn on my laptop for fifteen minutes to write a blog post, but it’s so tempting to just check Facebook (which I actually hate) and then just check my email (far too much work to actually answer any emails, though) and then just check my work email (as if I hadn’t just left work) and then just check the Garnet Hill sale of the day…and then the entire evening is gone and I feel like I’ve wasted my life. And, more often than not, I never got around to writing that blog post after all.
I see this pattern with the kids who come to the library after school. They all race here to be the first on the computer (each user gets a half hour on the computer before being bumped for people on the waitlist) and then they slump down in front of the computer and mindlessly play computer games. Yes, I slump too. Yes, my web surfing is just as mindless as the computer game playing. The difference is that I’m a bit older and I grew up without computers – and I am beginning to feel more than a bit mortal and don’t want to waste what’s left of my outside-of-work life in front of the computer.
So I made a goal for myself around the time I broke my foot, mostly because it’s hard to balance a laptop on your lap when you have to keep your foot elevated (which I had to do for eight weeks). The goal, which I have achieved, was to spend more time reading in the evenings. It’s been absolutely wonderful – I’ve had time to read books other than the books I need to read for book groups. I’ve rediscovered Agatha Christie, and now I’m ready to rediscover some of my favorite authors: Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
But it’s time for me to add a new goal to this goal of reading; it’s time for me to spend fifteen minutes a night writing on my blog…and then to exercise that thing called self-restraint and Turn Off The Bloody Computer so that I can read.
What do you think? Can I do it?
Very few words this morning.
Lego Expo.
Fifth Annual.
This Saturday.
Lots and lots and lots of prep to be done still.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
Jim and I have decided we need to explore our local world more, so today’s field trip was to the Fitchburg Art Museum. We’d been there once (or maybe twice?) before, but it’s been several years since we last visited, and we were very pleasantly surprised by the changes. We were obviously the only visitors in the museum when we first arrived, and we were greeted enthusiastically by an older woman at the desk who informed us that the museum has a new director who has made significant – and good – changes to the museum. And it’s clear that the director is on to something, because every security guard in the museum was happy and friendly and helpful and welcoming. I’ve never seen such a great bunch of security guards; usually they seem to be wishing they were someplace else more exciting, but not this crew.
It’s a small museum, but they have two awesome special exhibits at the moment, one of paintings from the Hudson River School, and the other (my favorite) of photographs from the museum’s “world-class collection.” (See the museum’s website for more information on each of these exhibits – scroll down a bit on the home page and view the six page cycling banner.) I’m not a photography expert, but I think they had some pretty awesome photographs in that exhibit…photos by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Berenice Abbott, and many many more.
We also enjoyed the other exhibits we visited: the Egyptian gallery, the gallery of Eastern art, and the African masks. The enthusiasm of the guard in the Egyptian gallery knew no bounds, and his enthusiasm encouraged us to explore that gallery in far more depth than we otherwise would have. I even took the time to look at the mummy of the cat, and moved from being grossed out by it to intrigued by it. And the mummy of the tiny crocodile was fascinating.
We were happy to see other museum visitors arriving as we concluded our visit, and hopefully the energy of the museum’s new director will bring many more people to this small but vibrant cultural gem. As for us, we will definitely be back, sooner rather than later (upcoming field trip with Dad to see the photography exhibit).
And next week’s Sunday field trip is to meet our new nephew!!