Storyhour mistakes

1:15 yesterday. I am just sitting down to eat my lunch after a busy morning helping the Director prepare for the evening Board of Trustees meeting. I have been working on the strategic plan, on compiling a spreadsheet and chasing down staff members for info, on writing a justification for a promotion. My mind is NOT on storytime….and at 1:15, up pops the reminder on my computer: Storytime for Big Kids starts in 15 minutes. Eek!!

Never before have I completely forgotten to get ready for storytime. Fortunately, doing storytimes for 30 years leaves me able to spring into action pretty quickly, so I pull together the books for today’s theme, dinosaurs. I grab some dinosaur cut-outs for tags. I grab my storytime pal Puddles, and I am ready to go.

Except I’m not. Because I ran into storytime at the last second and was all jangly and still startled, I set a tone of being frenetically cheery. Kids, of course, pick up on your mood quickly, so we were not off to a good start. And let me tell you, if you aren’t projecting calm and quiet, you are going to have a heck of a time getting the kids to sit quietly to listen.

And then there was that theme…dinosaurs. I have a lot of rambunctious little boys in this group, so I thought it would be a good match. I was wrong for a couple of reasons.

Dinosaurs are not calm, either. They are ferocious, and exciting, and a teensy bit scary, which I belatedly realized as I watched a little girl surreptitiously edge toward the door to try to see where her mother was.

And books about dinosaurs are short short short. You would think that with a short-attention span group, you would want to use short snappy stories, but in fact the opposite is true. It is only in a longer, engaging story that the most active kids have a chance to settle in and calm down and really begin to follow the story with interest. Quick stories mean a lot more transitioning between activities, and every time they have to settle themselves back down. It’s too hard!

Finally, the other big mistake with my theme is that they do LOVE dinosaurs! They want to come right up to Tyrannosaurus Was a Beast to point out different parts of the dinosaurs. Every page turn is another trip up to the front to check out Triceratops or Stegosaurus  with all of the accompanying cries of “I can’t see!” from the seated children. But although they love dinosaurs, they have no clue that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. It’s not especially funny to them to see dinosaurs wearing clothes, like in the cute and interactive Dini Dinosaur. As far as they know, the dinosaurs back then DID wear clothes and take baths in a bathtub. You can really spin your wheels trying to help them to understand that better.

So, all in all, not the most successful of storytimes. And yet, I still loved getting to leave the grown-up spreadsheets and strategic plans behind and go spend some time with the kids and the stories. It always keeps me in touch with why we bother with all of that work of running the library. The spreadsheets and strategic plans make the storytime possible, so I’ll try to keep that in mind as I work on them. And next week, I will try very hard to remember to get the stories AND myself prepared on time.

More creative bookmark slogans from the kids!

Every year, my library holds a bookmark contest where the winner from each grade gets their bookmark professionally printed and distributed during National Library Week. We always get several hundred entries, and it’s a challenge to judge them. This year, the bookmarks will feature the single most beautiful entry ever (we are ordering extras of that one!) and all of the winners will get to come to the library to meet picture book artist Terri Murphy, and to receive their ribbon.

So it is a big deal, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get a few laughs out of judging the many entries. The kids know the bookmarks must feature reading or libraries in some way, and here were some of their slogans:

For those of you who need encouragement, we have the bookmark that said, “Reading Is Not Hard!”

In the best back-handed compliment of the year category, we had “You could even have fun reading,” which showed children going down a water slide reading books.

We had one that showed a hand holding a Wii remote, but instead of buttons it had the word “READ” on it–very cool, and very well-executed. We also had something a little more assertive: “Drop the Gadgets and Read!”

For those of you who believe that a love of reading leads to great spelling we had, “I love reating books!”

Two bookmarks were almost identical. They each showed a goldfish in a bowl, with the words “Out of My Mind”. This would seem very enigmatic to most people, but children’s book people will recognize that each child read Sharon M. Draper’s book, Out of My Mind, about a girl with cerebral palsy. Kids LOVE that book! And I loved that they made their bookmarks about it.

A couple of slogans related reading to eating. We had “Reading is a piece of pie,” and of course we don’t know if they know that the expression is usually a “piece of cake” or not, but it’s cute anyway.  Another encourages us to “Eat the book with your eyes,” which is a different way of thinking about the process of reading.

I loved the wordplay of “Plop drip drop splashy reading day,” with raindrops running down the bookmark.

But for most unexpected and entertaining, I have to go with this one: “After a long day of conquering the world for the Roman Empire, I just want to sit and read.” That is my kind of soldier.

New Kinds of Learning at the Library

Lately, like many people working in public libraries, I’ve been thinking about makerspaces–creating room in your library where people can make things, build things, DO things. I went to a great program on the topic that talked about using 3-D printers with middle schoolers, offering hands-on workshops on bike repair, sewing, electronics, silk-screening, wood-block printing–you name it. I love to go to meetings like that where I can hear what other libraries are doing and get excited about it, too, so that when a staff member at my own library wants to do something original, I don’t just stare at them and start giving them all of the reasons it won’t work. “Wood-block printing, are you crazy? They’ll hurt themselves! We’ll get sued!” etc. Once you see what other libraries are doing and how they’re making it work (and you hear what they learned along the way) it makes you realize that the possibilities are almost unlimited as long as you have a good match of topic and audience.

Some people will still think this is outside the scope of the public library. But as big a fan as I am of books–and if you could see my house you would know that I am a BIG fan of books–I think the mission of the public library is broader than that. I also would guess that a lot of people who define the mission narrowly are doing so deliberately, because they want to see the public library line on their tax bills go away. Programs and activities get in the way of that, but to me, they are all part of learning.

The great thing about makerspaces is that a lot of people don’t have the room, equipment, or expertise at home for learning a lot of new things. The public library has always been the place for information and learning and pleasure, and this is a new way to offer that. Bring in the 3-D printer where a potential inventor in your area can create a prototype of their great idea and to be able to improve their design. Bring in cloth and mannequins and scissors and a sewing machine and let teens learn how to construct clothing. Make your library a space where people who can’t afford fees for programs (let alone the $2,000+ for a 3-D printer) can come and make their lives better by learning new skills. It’s another way of serving the patrons, and if you haven’t noticed,  it’s an exciting time to be working in the public library.

So Quiet You Don’t Know They’re There

Chances are, there’s a group in your library that keeps such a low profile, you hardly even notice them. When their work is executed perfectly, they become invisible. And that means they don’t get nearly enough love from their colleagues!

I’m talking about your library’s Technical Services Department. You use them to order your books, keep track of the money you’ve spent, process your materials and get them out to your patrons as quickly as possible. Most of all, you rely on them to come up with records that you use constantly, and if they have done what they try to do, you don’t ever think about them at all. We take an excellent catalog record completely for granted, and we only think about it if we can’t find something we’re looking for.

Think about it: How many times do you send emails saying that a record needs to be fixed compared with how many times you send emails saying, “Awesome record!” “I sure could find what I was looking for because you took the time to enter the names of all of the short stories/songs/episodes!” “Thanks for adding those notes–I never would have found what I was looking for otherwise!”

If you’re like me, the answer is a ratio of something like 15:1. But now that I oversee Technical Services as part of my job, I get a lot more of a look at this self-effacing, highly dedicated, very thoughtful group, and I just want you to know that they deserve some love too, even though they would probably tell you that they prefer to go quietly about their business in the back of your library. Valentine’s Day is coming up–now’s your chance!

The Day Between Big Days

Yesterday was a big day.  The Saturday of  ALA Midwinter  is when the youth award groups make their decisions. After a year of reading/viewing/listening to submissions, it is time to make a final choice. Some committees (the ones with fewer to submissions to judge) finish early–mine was done by 4:00. Some may have continued discussing and voting until midnight. But today, the decisions have been made.

Tomorrow will be a big day. The Monday of  ALA Midwinter  is when the youth awards are announced. Right before the awards begin, authors and publishers of the Newbery, Caldecott, and other big awards get the big phone call, and then the prizes are announced at the convention, usually with a huge, vocal audience. You’ll be able to watch it here, if you log in a little earlier than the start time of 8am Pacific Time.

Today is the day between big days, when everyone on the committees knows their winner but are sworn to secrecy. If you meet up with someone on a popular award like the Newbery, they will probably announce immediately, “Don’t even ask!” I can’t say that I get a lot of people trying to pry information out of me about the Carnegie Medal for Best Children’s DVD, but I couldn’t tell them if they tried. It’s an odd sort of twilight time, where the work has finished but the celebration can’t yet begin. And yet it’s a sweet feeling, too, especially when you are on a committee that does a great deal of work to prepare.

So yesterday was the big day, and tomorrow is the big day, and today is…the day between big days…for everyone except the Notable Book committees, who soldier on while everyone else gets to play.

The Garden of Your Mind: My Hero, Mister Rogers

Probably lots of you have already seen this video, a auto-tune remix of quotes from Mister Rogers turned into a really lovely piece. If you haven’t seen it already, go ahead and watch now–if you aren’t a confirmed Mister Rogers hater (I know they exist) then you will enjoy it.

After a week in which two separate wild boys in groups I was supervising burst into a certain song with a certain incredibly stupid dance with the initials GS, I especially love listening to Mister Rogers. And I wish there was a  modern-day Mister Rogers out there talking to preschoolers, but I don’t think there is. All of the television shows for kids that I see are:

A) Violent cartoons

B) Vulgar cartoons

C) Curriculum-based cartoons

D) More curriculum-based cartoons

Where is the live human being? Where is the adult person who speaks slowly enough that toddlers can follow (really slowly) and who takes the time to explain things? Where is the person who stops and tries to figure out if kids know what the heck they’re talking about? Where is the person who tries to explain the really hard stuff in life to kids?

Fred Rogers will forever be one of my heroes, because he spent his life trying to help kids understand the world, and understand themselves. If he were alive today, he would go talk to a musician about how auto-tune works, and he would experiment with it himself. He would encourage kids to experiment for themselves, too. And then he’d tell them to go dig in the dirt or something that wasn’t staring at a screen.

Sure, it’s partly nostalgia for a less frenetic existence. Sure, the sets were tacky, and the puppets old and beat up…which I think was part of the point. Sure, there were moments that made all adults cringe (though nothing like on a scale compared to Barney). But Fred Rogers was an amazing blend of heart and intelligence. He is speaking to the two and three-year-olds out there, but I feel inspired to pay attention to the garden of my mind, too.

The Giant Gingerbread House

I am not a very creative person. Brainstorming terrifies me, and I find people who can sit and think of ideas to be quite amazing. Most of my ideas come under pressure or on the fly, which is why I will never write a book if I don’t start writing a book and keep working at it long enough to get the ideas going. I have finally come to realize that if I wait for the perfect inspiration, it will never get written.

In my library career, I have had exactly two really great ideas. I’ve already written about one of them, the Poetry Scavenger Hunt, which I know other libraries have since picked up and started doing too. Yay, poetry!

Here is the second one: The Giant Gingerbread House. I can’t even tell you for sure when it started–2004, I think. I had seen how popular adult programs were for decorating gingerbread houses, but I am not a fan of small, expensive programs generally speaking. I wanted to do something where every child who wanted to participate could. Frankly, the thought of frosting and kids is another thing that terrifies me, too. Ick.

So I asked the library’s graphic artist at the time, Mike, to build me a gigantic gingerbread house out of foamboard. And he did! And he wasn’t especially happy about it, either, because wrestling enormous sheets of foamboard into brown paper and then finding a way to make them stand took a ton of effort and probably some swearing. On the Youth Services end, we spent some time photocopying two basic designs of a circle with a swirl that would look like pieces of candy, and cutting out the circles. Then throughout the month of December, kids who visited the library could pick up a piece or two, decorate it, and see their work displayed on the gingerbread house. We also let them glue cotton balls to the edges of the roof to look like snow, but quickly discovered that even adults found it tempting to pull at the cotton balls, so that went away after the second year.

In later years, we got some of the prep work handed off to volunteers, and a couple of different staff members took over the planning. For the past few years, Ms. Debbie has been the gingerbread queen, and she even got the building manager to construct a wooden frame that the sheets of foamboard could be velcro’d to. She’s come up with lots of new ideas for decorating, and as with a Christmas tree, every year it is prettier. But one of the things we like about the gingerbread house is that although it is festive, it is NOT a holiday decoration, and we find families of all kinds participate in making it. To the kids, it truly is a giant house, too.

It usually takes them the whole month to finish filling it up, and when the house gets full, we hang up the last pieces around the department. You do need to be a little bit of a fascist about hanging the pieces yourself, to make it look nice, and by the way, your building staff will not love you if you use glitter. But I highly recommend making a giant gingerbread house of your own. It is fun, it is cheap, and it allows the kids to contribute to something beautiful, at their library.

2012 Niles Public Library Giant Gingerbread House

Closeup of Gingerbread House