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Today I'm at the ALSC Blog talking about why Pokemon Go and libraries are a perfect partnership. Come check it out!

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My branch manager has challenged us over the next few months to get back to basics. Things like picking up messes, straightening books, push in  chairs, roving the department. So often when we get caught up in programs and other things, we forget these basic tasks.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how this can work in Youth Services as far as programming. I always struggle with providing programming for everyone and having options during the day as well as evening and weekends. Yet no matter what we try, we don’t get an audience for evening and weekend programs unless it’s something really big (Star Wars Reads Day, Meet Pete the Cat). I’ve tried Saturday morning storytimes out in the department for the past year and while it’s nice to offer, the crowds are small and the people that come aren’t at the Library for storytime,  but stop by because they are already here. After brainstorming some ideas with my staff, we’ve come up with a few ways we’re going to get back to basics in  our programming:

• More Impromptu Storytimes-We want to offer storytimes for as many people as we can and we want to reach those patrons who can’t attend our daytime stortyimes. So we’ve decided to host more impromptu storytimes. When the department is busy and we notice lots of families hanging out and we have a quick moment to step away from the desk, we’re going to try impromptu storytimes. These will be in the department, we’ll use our early literacy toys as activities, and whatever passive activity we have out as a craft if possible. We’ve done this a bit in the past and we think it will be a fun way to engage families and let them know about what we offer and tell them about other programs that are happening.
• Surprise Saturdays-This is another old program we’ve decided to bring back. It doesn’t seem to matter what we offer on weekends, we just don’t draw a large crowd. And the people that do come are mostly people who just happen to be in the department and are happy to have something to do. Surprise Saturday is a drop in program where we put out games,  puzzles, crafts, and activities-you never know what it will be! But if you stop by on a Surprise Saturday, you know there will be something happening at the library just for kids.
• More Passive Activities in Department-Our passive activities this year have gone over very well. So we’ve decided to keep these up and do more.  A lot of times we have kids coming in to study and do homework, so they don’t have time to attend a long program, but they have time to stop and take a quick break to make an origami dog, build Lego letters, write a letter for the mailbox, look in the magnifying glass at pictures, or play with Tangrams. We’re already planning on our passive activities for next year and planning things for our younger patrons as well as our tweens to engage them while they’re visiting the library. We’re also planning on hosting programs that are easy to run like Scavenger Hunt Day-we set up scavenger hunts all around the branch for the kids to complete. We’ve also brainstormed having more games out-simple games that we can teach if we need to in five minutes that the kids can then play on their own. Things like Checkers, Connect Four, Uno and Sushi Go are great for this.
• Work on Large Event Programming-Large events and programs are what are bringing our patrons in. They like brands, popular characters, and names. The most success we have with programs is when we tie it with something they recognize and have a large event. We’re hoping to host more costume characters, have giant sized storytimes (read big books, use the projector to show iPad stories on the big screen), “drive in” movies, family dance parties.

I’m hoping that by offering programs that are fun for patrons and easy for staff to implement will help us take a step back and look at what we really want to provide. I also think by spending a lot of our time and effort on large programs once a program period (every three months) we won’t be wearing ourselves thin with programming.

How do you program? Any ideas for getting back to basics?

The post Back to Basics appeared first on ALSC Blog.

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Fandom Starts Early Storytime Number 1
Fandom Starts Early Storytime Number 2

I've hosted two Fandom Starts Early Geeky Storytimes for kids and I knew it would be the perfect fit for LibraryCon. My previous Fandom storytimes have been OK, but I held them on Friday evenings, which are always a tough time to draw a crowd. Plus, I didn't get the true geeky families I was hoping for and I knew my audience at LibraryCon would appreciate and love a storytime based on fandoms.

I took some things that I've used before and added a few new things for the LibraryCon version. I actually had to adapt and change my plan at the last minute because my crowd ended up being much younger than I anticipated. So here's what we did for Fandom Starts Early LibraryCon!

Opening Song: Hedwig's Theme-I opened the doors had the kids walk in to Hedwig's Theme and welcomed everyone to Fandom Starts Early Storytime. I told the parents that it's fun to introduce their favorite fandoms to their kids and we have lots of great books to help do so. Plus, being a geek is awesome!

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So there were many, many things that went wonderfully at LibraryCon and we pulled off an amazingly fantastic event. I'm so proud of all the work that everyone did and what a fun program it turned out to be.

Here's what worked well:

-Involve the local geek community.  We reached out to so many organizations, cosplay groups, gaming groups, authors, illustrators, and other area cons to create our booths. In turn, those groups gave us names of others to include. This worked well because it helped us find people who really wanted to be part of this event.

-Provide water! And food if possible. We provided lots (over 100!) bottles of water for the people staffing tables and speaking on panels. They told us over and over again how thankful they were for this and it was such an easy thing to do! We also got a donation for lunch for our panelists and provided snacks for those staffing the booths, which was another nice treat. We also made sure we had staff available to sit at their booths while they took a break to eat.

-Have something for all ages. We had a huge mix of ages from kids to adults and lots of families attend LibraryCon because we really wanted it to be a family friendly event. Our booths all had something fun to offer for all ages and having various Cosplay groups was a huge treat for the kids. We also had a Geeky Storytime, which was a huge hit with kids and parents. We could have added even more kid events and plan to do so for next year.

-Have assigned tables clearly marked for vendors.  Also be sure to have lots of extension cords and power strips on hand. We had every table assigned and the list was left with the greeters at the front door. This made set up very easy and run smoothly.

Most of the feedback we had was positive, and the comments about what to change were actually very minor. But no event is absolutely perfect, so here's what I'd change for next year:

-More Signage-We had a whiteboard outside the panel room and had a flier with a schedule of events and room locations. Everything was kept in our main concourse of the library and the rooms are all located right off the concourse, so it was pretty well contained to the front. But people still requested more signage about what was happening where and where rooms were located.

-Bring people into the library. Since most of the event happened in the main concourse, there was very little traffic into the library. This was good (it kept noisy things up front) and bad (people didn't explore the library as much as they could have). We had a scavenger hunt happening in the stacks and not many people knew about it because they didn't make it back to the Children's Department. We also had some kids crafts there as well that got ignored after storytime. I would like to find a way to bring people into the library more and show off lots of library resources and geeky book displays next year. Also, bring over a lot of your Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror/Graphic Novel collections to highlight at your event. We created a last minute geeky kids book display and the books flew off the display!

-Have a booth for the library. This might seem like a no brainer, but we didn't think about it. We thought oh, hey, people are coming to the library so they'll find out about what we offer. But that wasn't the case. Next year, I want to have a booth for library card sign ups and have information about upcoming programs.

-Create a hashtag. Neither Valerie or I are very active on Twitter, so it didn't occur to either of us to create a hashtag for the event until the day of! This is a great way to collect pictures and feedback from attendees on social media and spread the word about your event.

-Make sure you have enough trash cans. Another silly one, but we noticed that by the end of the evening, the trash cans located in the concourse were overflowing! Something else we really hadn't thought about! But for the most part, there wasn't much trash to pick up and the event itself was very clean.

-Offer even more things to do! We only hosted three panels because this was our first LibraryCon. We spread them out throughout the afternoon because we were trying to think of when people would arrive, want to take breaks, eat, etc. As my husband pointed out to me, "people will eat when they want to eat-you just have events and let them figure it out." Next year, I think we don't have to worry about spacing things out and having breaks, but instead offer more panels, fandom meetups, and gaming demos.

Overall we had a fantastic event it was lots of fun. You don't need to have a huge budget to put on an amazing event. Our entire LibraryCon was put together on about $80, and most of that could have even been taken out and not really needed. Include your community and you will get a great response. I can't wait to do it all again-bigger and better-next year!

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Since LibraryCon was such a huge event, I've split these posts up into three parts. Find Part One-Planning here and stay tuned for Part Three-What I'd Do Differently!

And check out Valerie's post about LibraryCon!

After lots of meetings, prep, and planning, LibraryCon was finally here!

On Friday, we set up the concourse and meeting rooms with our tables and labeled everything so everyone could find where they were assigned. I also set up for my Fandom Starts Early Geeky Storytime.


We had lots of water for all of our panelists and everyone staffing a table, which was greatly appreciated by all. We also had some food donated (thanks Chipotle!) for our special guests. We had staff scheduled as greeters, room attendants and floaters, so there was always library staff available to answer questions, welcome people to the event, and take care of room needs during the panels.


We had staff at the door throughout the event to pass out fliers which served as our schedule of events. It got pretty easy to spot who was coming for LibraryCon as the day went on-you could tell who was in costume and who wasn't. We did have several people who said they didn't know LibraryCon was happening that day but they were so excited they had come to the library and found out about all these great area organizations. There were still many confused faces from patrons as well who came into the library thinking it was a typical Saturday and discovered Storm Troopers, Deadpool, Ghostbusters, and Captain Jack Sparrow wandering around. Someone even came by and asked "what's the point of all this?" which gave us a wonderful opportunity to explain that the library is a community space and we had organized an event to promote and bring together the fan and pop culture communities in our area.

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So the Meet the Music Hero was pretty much born from this book and Angie's post about doing a program around this book. I had read it and loved it and knew I had to include in this series. Plus, Melba was born and lived in Kansas City as a child, so I loved that there was a local connection to our state!

We started this program with going over some background info, talking about jazz and how girls didn't often play jazz. I talked about how picture book biographies are amazing because you can learn about people you never knew about! I told the kids that I hadn't known about Melba until I read this book and I'm glad I learned about her because her story is wonderful. Then we read Little Melba and her Big Trombone by Kathryn Russel-Brown.

Also, extra points for this video because it features an all girl jazz band!

Then we played more of Melba's music and let the kids check out the fun fact wall Pamela made.

We had them make "trombones" out of strawbees. They were able to put the straws and connectors together to create whatever instrument they wanted to make, but they loved trying to make the slider on the trombone out of straws!

We also put out lots of books on display, especially titles about female musicians.

And this is what I get for not posting about this program until weeks later-I know we had another station, but I can't remember what it was!

We had a small but dedicated group this week and the parents were very engaged. I think they loved learning about someone they had never heard of as much as the kids did. As we read Melba's story, the parents said "wow!" almost as much as the kids which I thought was wonderful. I loved introducing them to a new musician and new book.

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For our third week of Meet the Music Hero, I wanted to introduce the kids to jazz. I first fell in love with jazz when I was around 8-years-old, so I thought this would be the perfect time to introduce this style of music to kids. Plus, Charlie Parker has some Missouri ties (he was born and lived in Kansas City) and there are many great picture books about these two, so Miss Pamela and I thought it would be a great storytime.

We started by dancing to some jazzy music and moving around the room. Then Miss Pamela gave some background about Charlie and Dizzy, what instruments they played, and how Kansas City was a place for jazz. She showed pictures of each musician to the kids as well and had them try to puff out their cheeks like Dizzy.

Then it was storytime. We used the book Bird and Diz by Ed Young.

Then, a great clip of Dizzy Gillespie playing on The Muppet Show:



Then it was time for our activity! This week we really combined art and music, which Miss Pamela and I loved. We gave the kids chalk and black construction paper. I told them to listen to the music and think about what the music made them imagine. Then we turned on the song Salt Peanuts and had the kids create whatever kind of picture they wanted while they listened to the music. When the song was done, everyone held up their pictures and we talked about how we all thought of different things and drew different pictures but listened to the same song.

Then we played some more music and let the kids create and draw.

Miss Pamela made a "Did You Know" fact wall about our musicians and we put out additional biographies about various jazz musicians for the kids to read.

This was one of our biggest turn outs for our Meet the Music Hero program-we had 28 kids! I'm not sure if it was the theme or just good timing on our part (the department was very busy!) but about half the kids were repeat attendees from previous weeks which was nice to see. I loved being able to combine music and art for this week.

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So one Sunday afternoon I was working with Miss Pamela and I came across this fantastic blog post from Angie about her Meet the Music program. It got me thinking about programs and since were in the middle of planning for our Summer Reading Program, I immediately thought of a Meet the Music and Art Hero program. I asked Miss Pamela if she wanted to team up-she has more of an art background and I have a music background-and our program was born.

We decided to host a program on musicians once a week during the month of June (we dedicated July to artists). I went through picture book biographies and chose titles I thought would be good for storytime or to build a program around. This did limit us a bit, since I was looking for shorter books and I was working with ages 4-8 for the program. But you could adapt this program for any age and use longer books if you wanted.

The first week, we kicked things off with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

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Over Spring Break, we had a full week of programming ranging from storytime to a Lego-Build-Along. Since Ms. A was hosting a Cinderella programming for the tweens the week after Spring Break, I wanted to make sure I had something fairy tale themed for the younger kids who might have wanted to attend the tween program but couldn't because they were too young. I've also been wanting to do a big fairy tale party for a long time, so I thought this would be perfect timing.

I hosted the Fairy Tale Bash on Friday night at 7pm. It was a busy day and the weather was rainy and yucky, so combined with the theme, I thought I'd get a large turnout. Surprisingly, I only ended up with six kids, so I ended up not using the songs I had planned because they were content to read all the books-yay! But even with the low turnout, we still had a blast and I have plenty of stuff to recycle for next time!

I sadly didn't remember to take many pictures until the room was getting taken down. I only have a few to share-sorry!

Here's what I did:

For books, I pulled a variety and since I had a small group, I let the kids choose which books they wanted to read. I used fractured tales and retellings since I wanted something the kids most likely hadn't read before, they entertain the parents as well, and they're fun!

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Today I'm over at the ALSC Blog sharing about my library's Dinovember display. Here's a sneak peek:

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I love to sing and dance so it's no surprise that Bibliobop is one of my favorite library programs! Play music and sing and dance with kids for about 45 minutes? Sign me up!

Previously I've used a bunch of CDs and changed them out with each song but finally I have a speaker and an iPad to use for this program, so I felt pretty high tech with my most recent Bibliobop! (Ha! It doesn't take much!) Although I originally advertised Bibliobop for ages 2-6, it's really open  to all ages and in the Fall I'm changing the description to say infants-age 6. I usually end up with babies and toddler anyway and really, why not include them? They can dance too!

The set up for Bibliobop is pretty simple. I have a display of music themed books and I have all my items I need up front. I put out a few chairs for the adults in the back (but I encourage them to dance too!) and I clear the floor. I always read a book to start and take a book break in the middle of dancing (mostly because Miss Sarah likes having a break in the middle!) I plan out my music and this time around I added everything into a playlist on iTunes and let it play which was awesome. I plan out ahead of time which songs I want to use for scarves, instruments, parachute, or any other special items but other than that we just dance. Some songs are action songs with movements telling us what to do and others are free dance songs-we just dance along to the music. I've started adding in more new music which the kids love (I used Let It Go with the parachute once and they freaked out!)

Here's the most recent playlist/book list I used:

Opening Book: Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons by Eric Litwin-always a popular pick and I chose this one to start since our opening songs had a rap style and the song in this book is similar.

A Tooty Ta by Ray Remesch-I don't know where I've been, but I only recently learned about this song! It's hilarious to watch the kids and I think it's going to become a storytime regular!

Following Directions with Exercise by Mark D Pencil-A terrible name, but the kids love it. Our outreach department uses this with school age kids and they go crazy over it.

If You're Happy and You Know It-Carol Hammett-It's a classic! I use this version because it's slow enough for my little ones.

Happy by Pharrell-The kids get so excited when this comes on because they recognize it. But beware-it will be stuck in your head for days!

Bee by Bari Koral Family Rock Band-This was my scarf song. I had the kids pretend their scarves were bees. During the slow sections we laid down and rested and then we heard a buzzing. During the fast part we danced and waved our scarves. I had one little girl comment that this was her favorite song of the day.

Marching Medley by Ralph's World-A great movement song!

Little Blue Car by Jennifer Gasoi-I liked the rhythm of this one for instruments so this was our instrument song

Time for a book break!


Mover Music Jump Up by Imagination Movers-another movement song that's great for an activity song

The Fox by Ylvis-My kids still love this one and it's fun to around to this crazy song-plus it just screams storytime, doesn't it?

Mockingbird by Zee Avi-A nice quiet and soft song perfect for the parachute.

Bop Til You Drop by Greg and Steve-Another fun take on the freeze dance this time including fall down.

Give A Hug by Bari Koral Family Rock Band-A nice ending song to give hugs and wave to friends.

Take A Little Nap by Ralph's World-I think this one is so funny I love ending with it!

Phew! By that time it's time to leave and I have successfully completed my cardio workout for the day!

Any song suggestions to use for future dance parties?

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So I may have been ALA Left Behind this past weekend, but at least I got to have fun at the library with our fifth annual library prom! The themes over the years have changed (Moonlight Masquerade, Geek Prom, Zombie Prom, Nerd Prom-which apparently I never posted about!) This year, my teen librarian J came up with the idea for Cosplay Prom. It was a huge hit and the most popular prom we've done so far!

Setting up the Event: 

J actually did the setting up and we brainstormed ideas of what to put out to keep the teens entertained in case they didn't want to dance (which is always a possibility). He bought food supplies to make candy sushi and we also had some animal crackers out for a snack. We didn't provide drinks because it's messy and we have a cafe in the library that many teens purchase drinks from anyway, so we decided food was enough.

For activities we had easy origami owls, paper bowtie making, pin the scar on Harry, bookmark making-(choose your fandom and design a bookmark) as well as some board games, Apples to Apples and Jenga. We also had a photo booth with props from the youth services costume stash for the teens to take photos. We didn't provide a camera since we felt the teens would have devices to take photos with.

We ran music through the speakers in the auditorium and used Pandora and Songza and YouTube to play popular songs and song requests.

How it Went: 

The teens went all out when it came to costumes! They had a blast and several commented how excited they were to have a chance to cosplay because they never had the chance to anywhere else. We had the teens sign in as they came in which helped us keep a good head count as to how many attend (around 75 teens!)

J and I made an announcement to start about what we had around the room and we kicked off the prom with some music. After a few minutes we put on The Cha-Cha Slide and that got the teens dancing-and they kept dancing all night!

About halfway through the event we held a costume contest with the help of our pages and circ staff as the judges. As the teens came in, I felt so out of touch with my teens and pop culture! I recognized some fandoms, but there were others (especially the anime) that the teens had to teach me about. The most popular fandoms were Doctor Who, Homestuck, Hetalia, and Sherlock.  Some of the teens even cosplayed as characters from books they were writing which was very cool. The costume contest winner was a Steampunk cosplayer who had created his costume the night before!

The most popular song was Let It Go, which the teens sang along to and was hilarious to watch. They also loved dancing and singing along to What Does the Fox Say, Gangam Style, Macarana, Cupid Shuffle-pretty much anything they could dance to. When we tried to play anything from a Top 40 playlist, they revolted and instead wanted theme songs and group dances. We also played themes for Sherlock, Doctor Who, Adventure Time, and a Doctor Who themed Time Warp Parody.

The rest of the night was spent dancing and singing along and playing games. The teens danced most of the night and were sad when we had to close up. They requested we repeat the cosplay theme next year as well as asked to have it more often and longer.

Things I Learned: 

Overall, the event went smoothly and was a lot of fun. The only downside was the playlist. We didn't have a set playlist and tried to take song suggestions, but J and I weren't familiar with which made it hard to choose songs from their suggestion list. When we asked the teens for feedback at the end of the event, this was a big comment-that we didn't play the songs suggested. Next time I think we'll try to pre-make a playlist. The other issue this time around was the screen had to be down and projected for the computer and sound to work, so any video we played on YouTube ended up being played on the big screen. This was good and bad-it was fun to watch the Doctor Who and Harry Potter videos, but hard to manage because they could see everything that was being typed in and searched for.

The teens enjoyed having additional activities out, which was great for those that didn't want to dance but I was surprised by how much of their time was spent just singing along to whatever songs came up on the playlist.

Our proms have become an annual tradition each summer and I can't wait until next year!

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Are you aware of the Hub Reading Challenge? Are you participating this year?
It’s quite the undertaking. Read as many of YALSA’s award-winning, honored, or selected titles from the past year as possible (or at least 25). You know, while reading everything else you want to read and doing your job and living your life outside of work. It’s both exciting and daunting. I signed up for it this year, though with other reading to do for booktalks, articles, and fun, I wasn’t sure if I could complete it (though I had already read many of the books on the list, you can only count the books if you read them during the challenge period). However, I was excited enough to think about inviting my library patrons to participate.

I’m lucky enough to work at a school where encouraging students to read for pleasure isn’t all that difficult. Castilleja is a school for girls in grades 6-12 in Palo Alto, California, and even with their incredibly demanding academic and extracurricular schedules, most of the girls find the time to read for fun, though this is more common with middle schoolers than upper schoolers. We also provide many of the adults on campus, both faculty and staff, with reading material for work and for fun. So when I set out to develop a reading challenge based on the Hub Reading Challenge, I wasn’t sure if it would be overkill or icing on the cake.

It turns out that people (especially middle schoolers and English teachers) will do just about anything if it means they can publicly declare how awesome they are in front of their peers.

Using photoshop and a large-scale color printer, I created a scoreboard with spaces for names and twenty smaller cels, encouraging people to read at least 20 books by the last day of school (June 6). Underneath the chart, I added images of each eligible book. Readers come to my desk any time they finish a book on the list and I give them a star sticker. It seems so simple and almost juvenile, and yet everyone likes looking at the chart and seeing if they’re beating their friend or their teacher (in addition to all three of us librarians signing up, two English teachers, a history teacher, and a math teacher have joined us). Though we officially kicked off on March 4, we’re allowing people to sign up at any time before the end of the school year.

I did make some major modifications from the original challenge to suit our school community’s needs (and my own taste). Since we started a month later than the Hub did, I made the requirement only 20 books, not 25. The Hub’s list of eligible titles is limited to YALSA awards and affiliates, whereas I went a bit more broad. I removed the audiobooks categories, because we don’t have any in our collection (though we don’t have every single print book eligible for the challenge, either), and I added in award winners and honors from each of the ALA’s ethnic caucuses or roundtables. I wanted to be sure there was as much diversity represented as possible, since this is a good way to promote literature that is often otherwise pigeonholed or labeled in such a way that it becomes undesirable. And, of course, I wanted to make sure all the members of the school community felt represented. That means that the books eligible for the reading challenge come from the Alex Awards, Printz Award, Nonfiction Award, Morris Award, Edwards Award, Schneider Family Award, Stonewall Award, Best Fiction for Young Adults, Great Graphic Novels, Popular Paperbacks, and Quick Picks, just like the Hub; plus the Coretta Scott King Awards, Pura Belpré Medal, American Indian Library Association Youth Literature Awards, and Asian Pacific American Librarians Association Book Awards. Titles were omitted if they were for very young readers. Finally – and this took a lot of considering – we decided that readers could count books that they read outside of the challenge period. This choice was made because we decided the point of having the reading challenge in our school community was to raise awareness of how great a world YA literature is, so people should be able to celebrate these books whether they read them now or last year. This, we hoped, would encourage people to join even if they felt 20 books in a less than a semester was too much.

To help participants find the books for the challenge, I created a spreadsheet with a list of all the available titles. They can download this list from our website. Whenever they were available, I added a note with the recommended grade level (from School Library Journal) and noted whether they were part of our collection or not. We also dedicated a display shelf in the library to holding all the eligible books. It’s usually close to empty, because books are always going out as soon as they are returned. On the internal side, I modified the books’ entries in our catalog so that whenever they are checked in, a notification pops up, reminding the person that it’s a reading challenge book so that it won’t be reshelved in the general collection.

A lot of good has come out of this experience, and it’s only just begun. For one, students get to see that their teachers like to read YA, and I hope that they are asking those teachers about their reading during lunch or after class. They also do a lot of advertising for the challenge themselves. If one student comes in and asks for a sticker, her friend might ask what it’s for, and by the end of the explanation, that student usually wants to sign up to play, too. One student asked if she could write a book review for the library website, and I hope more will follow suit. When we don’t have a book a student wants to read, we have a chance to tell them about how public library e-book lending works. Circulation is increasing, and students return books more quickly (partly because they know they are accountable to other students, and partly because they are reading so much and so quickly). We bought 15 new books we had not owned previously. In total, all of the eligible titles (we own 47 of them) had circulated 99 times as of March 26, only three weeks into the challenge.

I think we’re also helping students broaden their reading tastes without feeling like it’s medicine. Many students are reading March: Book 1 or Branded by the Pink Triangle, even those wouldn’t usually pick up nonfiction. Students who seem to be able to smell a grownup book from a mile away are reading novels originally published for adults and finding that they like them. Students I never could have gotten to read graphic novels are trying them out. And, of course, given that I added even more ethnic and gender diversity to the list, those books are flying off the shelves in a way they weren’t before the challenge, even when we put them on displays.

There are, of course, some hiccups and things I would change were I to do it again. I’m not a fan of my original title, the Read Like a Librarian Challenge, and haven’t used it in any context since printing it on the scoreboard poster. I also have not come up with a sustainable method for keeping track of which books people are reading. I wanted to find a sort of tag cloud that could be crowd updated, making titles larger as more and more people read them. When I couldn’t find one, I created a Google Form that people could constantly update, and then I thought I would manually compile the results weekly and put them on our website. But no one wants to fill it out, so that has fallen by the wayside. Word of mouth and individual chats about books are what people seem to want most. I wish, too, that I had sent a message to our parent association inviting them to participate, or at least letting them know about what their kids are doing. I may yet; we still have time before the end of the school year.

If you’re looking for a way to engage both young people and adults (though this is probably easier to manage in a school community than a public library) and for a way to keep yourself more accountable in the Hub Reading Challenge, I heartily encourage you to try hosting the same (or similar) challenge in your library. While the setup can take awhile, the managing of the challenge is easy, and it can open the eyes of readers and nonreaders alike.

Have you ever run a reading challenge (other than summer reading) in your library? How did it go?

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One of the things I love about the library world is that there is so much collaboration and sharing in the profession. I owe a HUGE thank you to two of my fellow librarians and bloggers: Amy at Show Me Librarian  and Marge at Tiny Tips of Library Fun. Because of these two lovely ladies, I got some great ideas for our storytime break.

I work at the main branch of a large library district and my branch is very much a destination branch. Even though other branches have opened since my branch opened, it's the main branch, the largest, and it's a big draw for our community. Add in the fact that the business area around my library has really built up and we have a lot of traffic. A lot of our traffic is toddler and preschool and we get large crowds for our storytimes, especially in the summer. We do six storytimes a week and average around 12-25 kids per storytime. Sometimes it's a lot more, sometimes it's a lot less. So storytime breaks are something we value very much at  my branch. We take off the entire month of May (to prep for summer reading and make school visits to talk about summer reading), entire month of December (due to low attendance numbers in this month), and a few weeks in August after summer reading (mostly to give us some catch up time after summer reading to prep for the Fall session of storytime).

I love having planning breaks. They are wonderful refreshers, I have a chance to prep my upcoming programs and storytimes, and I have a chance to evaluate the last session of storytimes and see what I want to continue or change. But no matter how long we've done storytime breaks (for years!) and no matter how much we advertise, there's always someone who comes in for storytime. This happens even when we do have storytime and someone comes in on a non-storytime day or time. Somedays I think I could have a non-stop loop of storytime happening and that would be OK. I might go a bit crazy though! :)

So this December, I was inspired by these two lovely bloggers to try something new. Amy gave me the idea of take home storytime kits.  Mine were a bit different, as I didn't advertise the theme on the kit as Amy did, but the idea was the same. My staff and I collected two-three books per bundle (we tried to stick to a theme like jungle, farm, but that wasn't required). We also tried to make sure we had a toddler book, preschool book, and if we could find a good one a non-fiction book to highlight all of our resources. We added one CD per bundle and tied it up in a nice bow. I had cards that said "Take Home Storytime Kit" printed off in nice bright colors that we tied to each bundle. On the front of the cards I included a rhyme or fingerplay and the Racing to Read Skill (our early literacy program at the library) each bundle was focused on. On the back, I wrote down the title and the barcode of each item, so they could take the entire bundle up front to check out without having to untie it.

We had so many compliments and patrons who loved the storytime kits. They really loved the themes and asked if we could keep doing theme bundles (so far I haven't kept it up-I think it will be a special display for off months due to the amount of work it takes to create each bundle and keep up the display). Thanks Amy for the great idea!!

From Marge, I borrowed the idea of the Cookie Club. My cookie club has been running since December 1st and will run until the end of February, so I went a bit longer than Marge's club. Kids come to the desk and join the Cookie Club, which is basically receiving a small business card with the information on the front and blank on the back for stamps. Each time a child comes into the library, they get a stamp on their card and can decorate a "cookie" (a brown construction paper circle) and hang it in our window. We have to large windows that look into our workroom and I'm always trying to think of creative ways to decorate them-they look so great with lots of cookies filling the window!

When they get six stamps of their card, they get invited to our super special secret invite only Cookie Club party that is only for members where will we read books, sing songs, and eat cookies! The party will be in March and the goal is to get people into the library as much as possible during the slow months of winter.

So far, the kids have been loving it. They love getting stamps on their cards and they love decorating cookies. And if you tell someone it's a super special secret invite only party-of course they want to be there! It's been a great success and was nice to give the kids something to do (decorate cookies) when we had our storytime break. Thanks Marge for the great idea!!

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On Saturday my library hosted our very first Mock Award Event. I decided to do a Mock Caldecott because I wanted to start everyone out with some lighter reading and picture books are always fun to talk about with all ages! I had flyers made up with our shortlist, spread the word to librarians and teachers, and told patrons as they came into the library about the event. I was also very lucky that a friend of mine who had served on the Caldecott Committee was able to come down and facilitate our discussion. I really was expecting a small crowd-I thought I'd be lucky with a turn out of five people. We'd never down a Mock Awards program and I wasn't sure if it would go over well.

So imagine my surprise when we packed out the room with 41 people!!! We had all ages-kids, parents, college students, teachers, librarians-it was great. Hearing the feedback from everyone was awesome and the kids had such great things to say about each book!

I gave the group a shortlist of 14 titles to read and discuss and at the beginning we voted to eliminate half the titles to make our discussion a bit smoother. From there we talked about the books we had left-we got our list down to 9 books to talk about. Then after all the books had been talked about, we voted and came up with one winner and three honor books. Our Mock Caldecott picks were:

Winner:

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Each year the Missouri Library Association chooses a list of picture books to be the shortlist for the Building Block Picture Book Award. The books are chosen by librarians and are for ages birth-five. The purpose of the award is to encourage reading aloud, help develop pre-reading skills and introduce children, parents and caregivers to a variety of authors and titles. The books are voted on by kids.

This year we had a large poster of all the nominees displayed in the department along with ballots for the kids to vote for their favorite. I also decided to host a voting party in December, the month all the votes are due. I set up our storyhour room with activities and stations as well as displayed all the nominated titles and encouraged patrons to come and go throughout the day, read the books, do some crafts, and vote on the book they liked most. It was lots of fun and I hope to repeat the program with next years list. Here's what I did for the 2012 list:


Station 6: If You're Hoppy and You Know It by April Pulley Sayre, illustrated by Jackie Urbanovic

-Act like animals. I found this rhyme (and I'm a terrible librarian and did not site my source on my notes!) and had the kids say the rhyme and act it out:

”Hop Like a Bunny Rhyme”
Hop like a bunny (hop)
Run like a dog (run in place)
Walk like an elephant (hold one arm in front like a trunk and sway back and forth)
Jump like a frog (squat down with hands on floor and hop)
Swim like a goldfish (hold palms together and move hands in swimming motion)
Fly like a bird (flap arms up and down at your side)
Then sit right down and don’t say a word (sit down)

-What other animals can you pretend to be?


Station 7: Do You Know Which Ones Will Grow by Susan A. Shea, illustrated by Tom Slaughter

-Grow or not grow? I printed out pictures from clipart half of things that grow (children, flowers, animals, etc) and half of things that don't (telephone, couch, bed, chair, etc) The kids got to guess which ones would grow and which ones wouldn't just like the book. If I had had more time, I might have written our rhymes to along with each picture.

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Each year the Missouri Library Association chooses a list of picture books to be the shortlist for the Building Block Picture Book Award. The books are chosen by librarians and are for ages birth-five. The purpose of the award is to encourage reading aloud, help develop pre-reading skills and introduce children, parents and caregivers to a variety of authors and titles. The books are voted on by kids.

This year we had a large poster of all the nominees displayed in the department along with ballots for the kids to vote for their favorite. I also decided to host a voting party in December, the month all the votes are due. I set up our storyhour room with activities and stations as well as displayed all the nominated titles and encouraged patrons to come and go throughout the day, read the books, do some crafts, and vote on the book they liked most. It was lots of fun and I hope to repeat the program with next years list. Here's what I did for the 2012 list:

Station 1: Mitchell's License by Hallie Durand, illustrated by Tony Fucile

-Car racetrack. We have large rolls of butcher paper, so I taped a long sheet of paper across the floor. I put crayons out for kids to draw their own roads and paths along with some plush cars to race down the tracks.


Station 2: The Wonderful Book by Leonid Gore and Dog in Boots by Greg Gormley, illustrated by Roberta Angaramo

-Read to stuffed animals. Both of these books feature animals and a love of stories, so I set up some stuffed animals around the books for a reading station.



Station 3: I Spy with My Little Eye by Edward Gibbs

-I Spy Game. My wonderful volunteer made me a giant I Spy collage using animal pictures from magazines.

Station 4: Rrralph by Lois Ehlert

-Make your own Rrralph collage. This was a great way to use up scraps of fabric and paper. I provided large sheets of paper, crayons, glues and random scraps of paper, fabric, and anything else I could find to make a collage.

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I thought this program at the Bridgeport Public Library program was too cool: zombie apocalypse survival training for teens. It's intended to get kids into the library by teaching survival skills, like how to make yourself look like a zombie to avoid an attack by the zombies (The Walking Dead, anyone?).

But this one's for teens only. "It's rewarding that adults have voiced they're interested in attending," says teen librarian Michael Bielawa. "But we have had to explain, this is just for the teens."

Bummer... I guess when the zombie apocalypse is here, we'll want to hang with the teens from Bridgeport.

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There’s a new meme in town. STEM Friday focuses on books that promote Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. The round-up this week is hosted at, well, STEM Friday.

Over the year I’ll be sharing the preschool program I created for the library and that I’m presenting once a month. The concept behind the program is to introduce science topics by combining fiction and nonfiction, songs and mini-experiments, action rhymes and hands-on times. As a preschool program the information conveyed is basic, and intended to encourage a questioning, observational approach to scientific topics.

Rocks
Book: Rocks in His Head, by Carol Hurst

Hands-on "Rock Show"
Examine different kinds of rocks: from the garden, the ocean, caves, polished, carved, etc. Maybe kids can bring their own rocks.

Book: Rocks, Rocks Big and Small, by Joanne Barkan

Experiment: "Rock Layers"
Layer modeling clay lightly in sheets and press together to show how rocks can press made in the compression of layers.

Book: Let's Go Rock Collecting, by Roma Gans

Experiment: "How Does Solid Rock Melt?"
Fill a cup with warm tap water. Put a spoon in the cup of water. After 30 seconds remove the spoon, and put a chocolate chip in the spoon and see it melt. Though rocks are also solid, when they reach they’re melting point they become magma.

Book: If You Find a Rock, by Peggy Christian

Hands-on: "Rock Collector"
Look at different kinds of rocks. How would you put them in categores? By color? By size?
By name? Test rocks for hardness by scraping with a penny and piece of quartz. Scrape the rock across a surface to see if it makes a mark.

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There's a new meme in town. STEM Friday focuses on books that promote Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. The round-up this week is hosted at Simply Science.

Over the year I'll be sharing the preschool program I created for the library and that I'm presenting once a month. The concept behind the program is to introduce science topics by combining fiction and nonfiction, songs and mini-experiments, action rhymes and hands-on times. The target age for the program is three to six years old, so the information conveyed is basic, and intended to encourage a questioning, observational approach to scientific topics.

Measuring

Book: Kidogo by Anik McGrory

Experiment: "Big or Little"
Hold up various objects – pencils, stuffed animals, etc - and decide as a group if they are big or little. What do we have to consider? Comparison? Use of the object? Standard sizes of the object? What makes something big or little? Shows that description is subjective and we need more standard ways of measuring.

Book: How Long Is It? By Donna Loughran

Experiment: "I Need an Envelope"
Each child has a card and needs to order an envelope of the right size. The child measures the envelope with any of the following: fingers, paper clips, or pencils. The instructor fills the order, but the envelope doesn’t fit. Why not? Because the adult filling the order has a bigger finger, smaller paper clip, and smaller pencil. This exercise demonstrates why standard measuring systems are needed.

Book: Measuring Penny by Loreen Leedy

Experiment: "Types of Measuring"
Show different items and ask the group what they measure. Things like measuring cup & spoons, scale, thermometer, ruler, measuring tape, scale, etc. What else measures?

Book: Magnus Maximus: a Marvelous Measurer by Kathleen Pelley

Experiment: "How Big Is It?"
Hands-time to measure different items. Each child has a paper ruler (look online for templates) and a pencil. Six items to measure are pencil, envelope, card, post-it notes, book, and paper clips. Also time to explore the other measuring items from "Types of Measuring." Have beads and pom-poms for the measuring spoons and cups, let them measure each other with the tape, weight themselves on the scale. (Put away the thermometer before somebody sticks it in his mouth. Lesson learned.)

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I love trivia! Any chance I get to use trivia in a program, I add it because I'm such a trivia nerd. Add in my love for Harry Potter and a Harry Potter trivia contest sounded like the perfect library program!

The idea for a Harry Potter trivia contest came from my cousin-in-law, who is one of the most Harry Potter obsessed teens that I know. She spent a year working on trivia just for the fun of it. Kaylee went through each book and came up with easy, medium, hard, and ridiculously hard questions for each chapter. (Told you she was obssessed!) With the trivia question work already done for me, I transformed it into a program.

I browsed through Kaylee's questions and pulled out ten for each book with a variety of easy to ridiculously hard since we had all ages. I tried to pick the most ridiculously hard questions because I knew we would have some hardcore fans who would know everything! I took the questions and added them to a powerpoint. I required registration for the event and said teams had to be made up of two-four people, any ages. I opened registration up for all ages and we ended up with a wide age range of contestants which made it a great multi-age program.

I've done the Harry Potter Trivia program twice-once in November when Part One of the movie was coming out and again in June before Part Two. We packed out both events with huge crowds! There were several attendees that were family members of participants or people who just wanted to watch and not play, so I had seats in the back and around the side open for non-players. For the teams, I set up tables all throughout the room. For the November event, I had movie posters of various characters, so I assigned team characters to each table. For the June event, because our numbers were so much higher, we had teams create their own names. I also had more judges the second time around (seven compared to three!) and assigned judges to each table so the judging was more spread out. Add a large whiteboard for scoring and team names and you're set!

In addition to the tables, I tried to decorate the room as much as possible. Harry Potter posters hung all around, the library's statue of Dobby stood at a place of honor, cauldrons and wands decorated the tables. I used any and all Harry Potter decor the library had collected over the years.

I made sure no one entered until it was time to start. With Hedwig's Theme playing in the background as everyone entered, the judges welcomed the teams (aka-O.W.L. exams takers!) into Hogwarts. Judges included Aberforth Dumbledore, Hermione, Ginny, Rita Skeeter, Professor Trelawney, and a few muggles. Having a big entrace adds to the fun and everyone got a kick of coming into a big announcement of "Welcome, welcome, one and all to the O.W.L. exams at Hogwarts!"

Now to start the trivia game! To make it easiest on everyone, each team had a chance to answer any and all questions. I provided each team with paper and pencils and had them number 1-10. As the questions were asked, they could talk to teammates and write down the answers. Questions could be repeated if needed throughout the round and once everyone was satisfied wi th the all the repeats, answer sheets were turned in to the assigned judge. As each round was being asked, the judges were busy grading the answers. After each round, one appointed judge would tally all the team totals on the whiteboard. We announced the team totals after the third and sixth rounds.

Of course we were prep

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This summer my library is pumping out programs like no one’s business. Every week we offer four storytimes, a family movie time, two elementary programs, two tween programs, one teen program and at least one adult program. That’s a whole lot of programming! This is in addition to the Summer Reading Program, which is a beast all its own. Oh, and then there’s that pesky business of having a library to run. Phew –  no wonder I feel so tired!

I am sure most of you are in similar positions. Libraries have this way of morphing to meet the needs of their communities. As people google for more and more information, we find ourselves transforming once again so libraries will remain a staple in the community. What better way than free programming? Times are tough and no one has money to spare. You can bring your family to the library for programs that offer exciting activities plus promote reading and learning.  Oh AND give mom a little break.  Count me in!

So in the midst of all the summer mayhem, I just want to take a minute to reflect on how great all this programming is.  If you feel exhausted from the kids who are packing out your programs, remember that this means you are excelling at your job.  Programs offer a great chance to get to connect to teens.  Teens love having an adult that will listen to them while they are making worry dolls from Guatemala or sushi from Japan.  By taking the time to connect to those teens and listen to their drama of the week, you are fostering a love of libraries.  Go head with your bad self!

All that said, it can be hard to come up with ideas for all these programs.  Maybe we can all share our favorite program from the summer and our favorite website/search engine.  As my high school year book teacher once said, “Plagiarism is wrong. Stealing is great.”

My favorite program so far has been Middle School Mayhem.  This program is for 10-14 year olds, is bi-weekly and lasts for one hour.  We have set time travel as our theme and have gone to the Wild West, where we made gun holsters from duct tape, created wanted posters and had a shoot out (with water guns of course), we Escaped from Pompeii, making baking soda and vinegar volcanoes and edible volcanos and created Medieval Mayhem by  making shields with family crests, dragon drool (slime) and dragon cupcakes.  I have relied heavily on google images this summer.  Finding ideas is not usually too big a problem but figuring out how to adapt them to different age groups and a specific time frame can be hard.  Google images has been great at helping with this issue.  So, that’s mine- please share yours in the comments section.