{"id":1462,"date":"2013-02-10T11:31:43","date_gmt":"2013-02-10T15:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/?p=1462"},"modified":"2013-02-10T11:31:43","modified_gmt":"2013-02-10T15:31:43","slug":"still-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/still-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Still here&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, I&#8217;m still here &#8211; but I&#8217;m finding that my still-healing broken foot is limiting my evening creativity.\u00a0 While at work, I think of things that would be awesome blog post topics: a very young child who says or does something charming, a book group that takes the book discussion to a new level, an idea for a new program.\u00a0 But I can&#8217;t write blog posts at work, and by the time I get home I&#8217;m a bit cooked, mentally and physically, after stumping around at the library all day with the walking boot on my foot.<\/p>\n<p>So here&#8217;s a quick summary of what I&#8217;ve been up to for the last couple of weeks:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Lots of storytimes, which have been especially crowded now that the gloom of winter and cabin fever has set in for everyone.\u00a0 Last week there were\u00a0forty-one adults and kids at the Thursday storytime, which is\u00a0about the limit of what we can fit into the story room.\u00a0 But it&#8217;s such a nice group of attendees, all of whom participate enthusiastically.\u00a0 There was a wonderful moment at one recent storytime where every single adult in the room was belting out (in harmony, of course!) &#8220;Where is Thumbkin?&#8221;.\u00a0 Very very cool.<\/li>\n<li>Lots of great book groups.\u00a0 Of course I&#8217;ve waited too long to write up coherent\u00a0retellings of\u00a0each book group discussion, so I&#8217;ll just sum up each one quickly.\u00a0 The 5th grade group read <em>Chasing Vermeer <\/em>by Blue Balliett, and eleven out of twelve kids disliked the book because it was &#8220;too slow.&#8221;\u00a0 The teen book group read <em>The Ruins of Gorlan <\/em>by John Flanagan, and while talking about what kind of book it is I discovered that most of the group had never heard of caviar, creme brulee, or Agatha Christie.\u00a0 The 4th grade group discussed <em>Where the Mountain Meets the Moon <\/em>by Grace Lin, and they unanimously loved it.\u00a0 (They were also happy to hear that\u00a0a book they read earlier this year, <em>The One and Only Ivan <\/em>by Katherine Applegate, was the winner of this year&#8217;s Newbery award.)\u00a0 And the 6th grade group discussed <em>Wonderstruck <\/em>by Brian Selznick, which they mostly loved; it interested me that they were all surprised to find out that Brian Selznick both wrote and illustrated the book &#8211; the group members thought that he was only the author.<\/li>\n<li>And then there are the random things: sweet moments at the art portion of the storytime for 4&#8217;s &amp; 5&#8217;s (a five year old discovering that he can &#8220;erase&#8221; his painting and start fresh, thus prolonging the creative experience); an eighteen month old finding his dancing legs and grinning ecstatically while bobbing up and down to some Zydeco; two sweet girls at the Create a Valentine program surprising me with Valentine cards (one said &#8220;Feel Better!&#8221; and the other &#8211; launched at my back &#8211; was emblazoned with &#8220;Guess Who???&#8221;&#8230;the artist finally came over and told me she had made it, since I was clearly confused); and the daily niceties of working in a small town filled with caring people.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Hopefully my foot will be fully healed soon (eight weeks and counting right now, this is a loooooooong process), but until then please forgive me if I have lapses of blog entries.\u00a0 I&#8217;m still here!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, I&#8217;m still here &#8211; but I&#8217;m finding that my still-healing broken foot is limiting my evening creativity.\u00a0 While at work, I think of things that would be awesome blog post topics: a very young child who says or does something charming, a book group that takes the book discussion to a new level, an &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/still-here\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Still here&#8230;<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,11,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-groups","category-children","category-librarianship","category-storytime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1462"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1465,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions\/1465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}