Picnic Family Fun Time, Saturday, August 29

I love my special one-off topic special storytimes. They sprout either one of two ways: either I’m perusing our collection, and I come upon a great book and think, “Hey, this would make a great storytime,” or I find a craft or activity I love, and think, “I’d love to do this with a bunch of “one-year-olds/toddlers/preschoolers/kindergarteners,” etc.

This past Saturday I had a picnic storytime. The problem was that the weather was great; so nice, in fact, that it would have been perfect for a real picnic. How was I going to get people into the library for a fake picnic?

Facebook! Hooray for social media!

Normally, I advertise my – and my coworkers’ – programs on some local listservs, and on Facebook, and given that I know some friends with little ones, I really guilt them into  encourage them to come to programs I think they might like. And the picnic one.. well, it had food. That’s a home run right there.

I had a bag full of goodies, plus my camping blankets, freshly washed.

Then, I sorted the goodies – popcorn, raisins, and candy corn – into Dixie cups (portion control is the name of the game), and kept them hidden throughout the storytime.

I’d really liked the books I’d chosen. They ended up working well, for all of the attendees, and turned out to be good participatory books as well.

What great fun! After stories were read and songs were sung, I pulled out the food, and everyone enjoyed having a (library-approved, no-mess) snack.

Shoeless and snacking? Heavenly.

In other news,

SUMMER READING IS OVER! 

I do love summer reading. It’s an amazing opportunity to get our kids to read, and our youngest ones (from birth up, even), to practice early literacy skills. But damn, it’s a lot of work. So for that reason alone, I’m glad it’s over.

On the “game boards” we used this year, kids have the opportunity to tell us why they love summer reading, and we’ll publish those answers on our website. This answer is far and away the best one I saw. I could have written it when I was a child (this is just as s/he wrote it):

  I love Summer Reading! It helps you calm yourself down when you are hyper 

and excited! The characters talk to you every time you read. They become 

friends with you and teach you a lesson. In non-fiction you get to know 

what’s happening in your world and around you! Then you will have fun by reading 

more and getting to know more. Also summer is the best time of the season to read but

I go with more winter by sitting by the fireplace getting warm.

That kid deserves a prize.

Two Sundays ago, Coworker J and I spent hours on the floor of the early literacy room, organizing the board books, weeding them (many of them had actual bite marks on them, which: yuck), and setting aside duplicates to redistribute to other branches, because we really only need three copies, not 10, of Growing Vegetable Soup.

After all that, here’s a picture of the beautiful shelves. Not that they stayed beautiful for long, but I felt the need to document our hard work:

Hey, I’m a librarian, not Ansel Adams. Give me a break.

Now, some links for you, my chickadees:

At the top: A fall preview. Get out your TBR list and a pen and get ready.

Didja see JKR’s Twitter on September 1, the day the Hogwarts Express leaves from Kings Cross. And guess who’s on it this year?? Then, of course, there’s the Sorting…

As Sister A said, “I’m just here for the Matthew Lewis.”

Mindy Kaling is deliciously overeducated. (See my note on Malory Towers below.)

A seriously useful guide.

Laugh all you want, but I would not be surprised if some of these came out someday. First-world, modern-age problems.

Combining two things I love: books and Doctor Who.

From Coworker J:

A little film about author and illustrator Oliver Jeffers, who, in addition to being rather talented, is also easy on the eyes. My goodness.

From Coworker T:

One of the requests I get all. the. time. is for princess books, so much so that I made up a list of princess books and authors to give to kids and their parents who request them. Luckily, most of these great choices are on it. (The Paper Bag Princess is a classic, and rightfully so.)

From Friend D:

Just the title of this is great. (And I’m Miss Havisham, obviously.)

How do they stay in business? I am fascinated.

ENOUGH ENOUGH ENOUGH!!!!

From Mama Bear:

Don’t expect the backstory of life on “Sesame Street” with this book. It’s a look at a side of Sonia Manzano – you know her better as Maria – you might not know.

Bill Bryson is one of the few authors I will read if you gave me a new book of his and I didn’t even know what it was about. I will buy his books the day they come out, topic unknown, etc. If he wrote on the history of mousepads, I would read it. I can’t wait to see A Walk in the Woods. Here he is in the New York Times.

From Sister A:

R. L. Stine! A nice guy who writes scary-ass books.

It is one of the rare books that Sister A, Mama Bear, and I all agree we want to read, stat.

It’s hard to believe that this modern classic of a graphic novel has been around almost five years!

You should know that Sister A and I have a weird obsession with, well, many things, but in this case with classic British boarding school books. Preferably Enid Blyton ones, like the St. Clare’s or Malory Towers books. We read those books over and over and over again when we were young, thanks to a cousin from Bermuda who introduced us to them. So when Sister A sent me this, we both got really excited. (Our whole family maintains that Enid Blyton is the reason that Sister A went to boarding school – she doesn’t disagree.)

In What’s Annabelle Reading, I’m so excited about the sequel to The Diviners coming out – we’re expecting it at our library any minute now, where is it?? – that I had to read it again to get ready. I’d forgotten how much fun it is, and how many little historical tidbits are in it. I love Libba Bray.

Next, I’ve finally gotten around to reading a children’s graphic novel that looked promising, a la Raina Telgemeier, and it didn’t disappoint. It’s Cece Bell’s memoir El Deafo, and it’s not only entertaining and informative on its own merits, but also meaningful for anyone, child or adult, who feels or is different and is yearning to fit in.

Finally, I re-read The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, which, you may remember, I really loved, to get ready to read the sequel (!!), The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate, which I didn’t like as much as the first one. Such is life.

Halloweenies 2014

It’s Halloween! Doctor Annabelle at your service.

(The lab coat is Daddio’s, from his first lab rotation, so that coat is older than I am. Add some scrubs, the pretend stethoscope from the early literacy room, and boom, a costume.)

Saturday, November 1 was our big Halloween party. Nothing like getting kids hopped up on sugar after they’ve finally come down from the night before

Last year we’d had about 125 attendees at the party, and prepared for about 150. But due to some weather concerns and another free event in my city, we had about 110. So we have a lot of candy left over. Oh dear! I mean, not that I’m complaining.

Our activities were: bingo, trivia, bag decorating, ghost decorating, and song and storytime. (I read Little Goblins Ten, which I had read the other day, and it worked even better, and did my Five Little Pumpkins rhyme that I’ve been doing since, literally, the first day of October.)  The party ran from 2 – 4, and at 3 we trick-or-treated around the second floor of the library, and the kids could pick up some candy but also some pencils, bookmarks, and tattoos. It was fun, messy, and tiring.

But then we have that nasty little drawback of post-Halloween: the let’s skip Thanksgiving and go straight to Christmas syndrome. It’s becoming more common in the past few years. Have you seen this meme below in your Facebook feed, my chickadees?

This morning, we swapped out all of the Halloween books for not only the Thanksgiving books – that I was prepared for; it made sense – but also the Hanukkah books AND the Christmas books. It’s November 2! It’s a little early for me.

Some Halloweeny links.

In the obvious first place spot, let’s learn a little bit more about the odious Dolores Umbridge.

Authors’ Halloween costumes.

Ranking the Goosebumps books.

From Friend D:

So many little facts we learn in the Harry Potter books.

From Mama Bear:

Now that it’s November, it’s NaNoWriMo. (I just made a new display in Teens on NaNoWriMo – I’ll have to take a picture of it.)

In What’s Annabelle Reading, I was between books, so I pulled out Sex With the Queen, because you know I love royal history, and it’s so much fun. Then, because I’m one of the world’s great introverts, I picked up The Introvert’s Way, which was super-interesting, not so much because it told me what it’s like being an introvert – this, I knew – but how to make the most of my introverted tendencies out in the world. In that respect, it was eye-opening, and fun to read. I’m in the middle of a fascinating work of fiction that I can’t wait to share with you all, so I’m turning off the Ravens/Steelers game (and not a moment too soon, at halftime), and heading off to read it some more. Good night!

STEAM Team, October 5

It frustrates the living crackers out of me when I prepare a program on a topic I think is pretty cool, with some neat visual aids – thanks, YouTube – and then people don’t come. I had, I think, 5 today? I would love to have so many people that the tables would overflow. That I wouldn’t have enough supplies. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful problem to have? Wouldn’t that just be great???

Anyway.

Today would have been Louis Lumiere’s 150th birthday, so me and my 5 talked about the early days of cinema, and I showed them the video of the train arriving at La Ciotat, and the baby being fed, and the men in the sea, and the kids particularly liked hearing (the probable legend of) how the audience thought the train might come out of the screen, or they might get splashed by the water on the screen. Then we made flip books! Mine came out terribly, but the kids seemed to have a good time.

I can promote all I like with flyers and on listservs and the web, but I wish I knew how to get attendance up higher.

Lotsa links.

In the top spot: Get ready to ovulate, ladies!

I’m not opposed to bribery…

Depends on who’s starring in it.

Well, duh.

Gaskell was one of my special ladies – I focused on her during my time abroad and my graduate school writing.

From Friend C, a librarian in DC:

Her coworker wrote this interesting blog post on incorporating yoga (!) into library programs. A damn good idea, I think.

From Friend D:

You bet your bottom we won’t. For comparison, I tell parents all the time that I can neither confirm nor deny if their minor child has been in the library today. Personal information? Nope.

“I thought I’d killed enough teenagers. But then I thought it’d be fun to kill teenagers again.”

I’m just going to say it: I have always, always, always hated The Giving Tree. There. I said it. Go ahead and judge me.

A chat with Gillian Flynn.

Amazing letterhead! (Tone it down a bit, Harpo.)

Slang isn’t new, you know.

Easily.

From Library School Friend D:

How’s your vocabulary? I took it after having had a strong margarita, so I didn’t do as well as I’d like.

From Mama Bear:

Like I need another reason to love London.

From a small town near my parents’ house. I guess Sister A and I don’t need to head to Orlando now, huh?

From Friend T (see her excellent reading recommendation below):

The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge! I’ve read 131. I like the variety.

In What’s Annabelle Reading, I very much enjoyed a recommendation from Friend T, The Martian, which is very very science-y and math-y, but made me feel as if I were on Mars with our stranded hero, Mark Watney. I read it and felt quite happily geekbrainy. (Apparently a movie adaptation is in the works with Matt Damon.) In an abrupt about face, I went from that to new release The Good Girl, which has apparently been compared to Gone Girl, an accurate comparison I can see only in the fact that the two books share the word “girl” in the title. A shallow kidnapping caper with a twist a blind man could see coming. Meh.

Ones Storytime on Thursday, October 2

Oh, my adorable, fat-cheeked, round-bellied Wandering Ones. The storytime kids who have just found their legs and refuse to sit still. It’s sort of half-and-half among the adults: half of the parents apologize for their wandering little ones (I tell them they have nothing to apologize for, that this behavior is normal for their age, the kids are still absorbing something out of story time, and it’s a social activity for both the kids and adults), and the other half of the parents are clutching their kids tightly, unwilling to let them wander off, as if it’s bad manners to let their kids wander during story time and afraid they’ll crash into things.

I’ve actually come up with what’s turned into a great solution: during my “hello and welcome to storytime I’m Miss Annabelle please put your phones away and sing along with your kids they love it when you participate if your child is crying feel free to take him/her out and you can come back when s/he’s more in the mood or you don’t have to come back at all go as the spirit moves you I’m really happy to have you here thanks and let’s get started” talk, I’ve added another bit of spiel.

The part of the room where the kids sit, between me and the door, is all mats. But behind me is the easel with the flannel board on it – it’s tipsier than a freshman at a frat party – some stacked mats, and other supplies, toys, and musical instruments. In other words, things that are MUCH more interesting than I am. (We have to find a place to store all these things away from prying hands and eyes.) So my new bit of spiel is something along the lines of “I know that kids love to be on their feet during storytime, which is fine by me. But if you could help me by restricting their wanderings to just the mat area, please. There’s a lot of stuff behind me that we don’t want little hands to get into” – and I gesture with my hands here to demonstrate “behind me” and “in front of me” – “so if little ones could just stay in front of me, that would be best. Thanks so much.” The adults have been really responsive and helpful with that. This change has primarily stemmed from the flannel board once toppling over on my head (OUCH), plus I like to see who I’m talking to. This isn’t really a problem with the babies or preschoolers, but it’s been a useful reminder with the ones and the toddlers.

Any child of any age is welcome in a storytime at our branch – this isn’t the way at all of my city’s branches – but personally I think that since we’re really careful about planning our storytimes for each age group’s growth benchmarks with age-appropriate stories and songs, that’s the group that should attend. Of course, one step in either direction isn’t bad (a baby can attend ones or vice-versa), but a baby won’t be comfortable in preschool storytime, and the other way around.

ANYWAY.

Today was fun! We had a lot more dads than usual (we had four!) and I used some new books, too.

All new books, in fact. I use a lot of Jane Cabrera and Mem Fox, and both Mommy, Carry Me Please and Two Little Monkeys didn’t disappoint.  (With Mommy, Carry Me Please, I asked the adults to give a little tickle or touch with the body parts named where the animals carried their babies, and that was popular – the back, the belly, the feet, etc.)

I also brought back my five little pumpkins velcro and poem from yesterday. My kids are now definitely my guinea pigs. Which sounds bad, but hear me out. I’m doing at least two storytimes a week throughout October, of all different age groups, and I’ll be using the five little pumpkins in each one, at least twice within each storytime. I’ll be interested to see how each age group picks it up, remembers it from storytime to storytime, whether the words or the hand motions. Even today, after the second time we did it, I saw a lot of the baby sign language motions for “more.” So they like it, as did my toddlers yesterday. A good sign!

Linkity-links:

Today’s top spot goes to Sister A with E.B. White. 

Samantha Parkington is BACK!!!

11 questions for R.L. Stine.

Some Game of Thrones casting news for Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. 

Some Game of Thrones casting news for The Scorch Trials (the sequel to The Maze Runner)

A particularly good better book title…

Dream adaptation casting (the Cormoran Strike one, I think, is spot on…)

From Friend D:

A quiz to figure out what you should read next. (I got the one book I refuse to read.)

There are Harry Potter fans (like me), and then there are people who are just one toe over the line (like this guy)

From Friend E:

If Mohammad won’t go to the mountain…

From Mama Bear:

I got 11/15 and am “a total book nerd.” 

How do favorite books and assigned reading intersect? Here’s a Venn diagram. (Science!)

Good news for Sherlock Holmes fans (not you, Cumberbabes)…

Baby Lapsit, Friday, September 26

Babytime babytime babytime yay!

We had lovely children today. Lots of babies. I had a few “volunteers” be my baby bouncers (not club/velvet rope/earpiece bouncers, I mean baby bounces) and my Pete’s a Pizza pizzas, which is so much better than using a doll, which I usually do.

Other recent highlights of work:

* Having a big brother latecomer to storytime today being disappointed that he missed the Hokey Pokey, so we did our own, just the two of us, after storytime was over, and he was so happy. His dad was really happy too. It was fun, and made me feel good.

* Discussing the differences between Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” and Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” with two teenage boys. Granted, I had never seen the “Anaconda” video – I have since, and that’s now something that I can’t unsee. Dear chickadees, please spare yourselves and don’t watch it! – but we discussed how big of a role sampling should play in a song and how much of it should be original. It was a productive and interesting discussion. I did not, however, reveal to the boys that I knew all the words, because a) that would have scared them, and b) it would not have been appropriate library language.

How ’bout some links?

The number one spot goes to: R.L. Stine. Because FEAR STREET is back!

Number two has to go to these clever folks who wrote Shakespearean versions of modern songs. Brills.

Secrets from Hogwarts!

Wise words.

Because there aren’t enough. (Great title, by the way.)

I originally posted this with a boatload of expletives on FB. But Friend R, writer that she is, managed to express her befuddlement more gracefully: “Did she manage to do something worse than actually banning the book? Not that I am condoning book banning…but why rip it to shreds and tear out its heart and soul?”

Quick, someone teach me how to sew.

Are you a fast reader? I am, and I’m not sure whether I’m proud of that or not. (Extra points if you guess the text from which the sample text is excerpted.)

It may look like a random bit of wire, but….

So reading Harry Potter reduces prejudice. I coulda been a scientist. (I coulda been a contenda! I coulda been somebody instead of a bum.)

From Friend D:

Banned on the page? Take it to the screen.

Don’t forget that Lois Lowry gave us more than The Giver. She gave us Anastasia.

Doesn’t it seem appropriate that Wonder Woman was influenced by Margaret Sanger? It does indeed.

From Friend L:

I scored somewhere in the 60s, I think. (In other words, not scandalous enough.)

SNAPECHAT (there’s almost nothing better than mashing up Mean Girls and Harry Potter.

From Mama Bear:

These are amazing, and this is a real book. (Coworker W makes a chocolate cake that is honestly the best I’ve ever had. It’s soft and delicious and moist and chocolatey, and we call it her Bruce Bogtrotter cake. #Matilda)

If Neil Gaiman describes you as angry, run with it.

NSFW, but You Have to Fucking Eat.

Not sure how long these will last, but today’s the last day of Banned Books Week.

Gosh, I love my hometown.

I may have posted about these before, but now they’re a book!

More banned books. (Great timing, guys.)

Wouldn’t this be great?

In What’s Annabelle Reading, I mentioned a few posts ago how much I enjoyed Grasshopper Jungle. I just read another of Andrew Smith’s books, Winger,  and boy, does Smith seem to get adolescents. I can’t speak about what’s in boys’ heads, but it rang true and honest to me. I really enjoyed it, and want to read more. I also read a children’s book (mostly on my commute to work today) called Prisoner 88, and liked it for a completely different reason.  Oddly sweet.