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“We start every Ten Update Friday off with a LOLcat.”

more cat pictures

“I’m donating.”

“Me too after we beat this Super Mario Galaxy level!”

Amazon.com Widgets

“Report.”

“Satellite communications probe launched, Commander. Operation complete. Gamepowa Store Upgrade now broadcasting on all LadyStar pages.”

“Hi Acey-san! That’s a neat new banner we got! Do you really have all those games in your store?”

“Z-bot! What’s up? Let’s break it down for the people.”

“Standing by.”

“See, Z-bot and me got an understanding.”

*giggle*

When I was working toward my M.L.S. at Kent State University in Ohio, I imagined myself completing the degree and finding a job as the one librarian wearing the many hats of a librarian/library director in a small library probably in Ohio. That isn’t the course that my professional life actually has followed thus far, but if it had, Crash Course in Children’s Services by Penny Peck would be required reading for personnel working with me in that small library. Penny Peck offers an easy to read “how to” book full of helpful tips to library personnel who maybe are librarians but didn’t complete coursework in materials and services for children, or more likely, library staff who haven’t had the opportunity to take such courses. It is also a good refresher.

This title was mentioned by Tina, an ALSC Blog reader, back in October. Thanks, Tina! I hope you have had a chance to read the book and have some comments to share as well. There are two specific items in the book that I would like to share.

First is what Peck calls the Five-Finger Rule. I hate to admit it, but too often I find that I don’t have what seems to be common knowledge. I have had children read a sentence or two in a book as we try to find something they might like as an independent read, but I hadn’t heard of the Five-Finger Rule. After reading about the rule on page 24 of Peck’s book, I found many references to it online and was charmed by this description on Book Nuts Reading Club. Anyway, I wanted to share that Reader’s Advisory bit for your consideration and commentary.

The second portion is about Book Clubs. I adore the idea of Book Clubs but my one attempt with a parent/child book club didn’t work very well. Saturday afternoons had too many other commitments for my few participants, and, more than that, the majority were parents dragging in their reluctant readers. I wasn’t prepared for that and before I could regroup, they had already given up on the program. In retrospect, I can think of much better ways I could have handled it, but that’s neither here nor there. On page 79, Peck writes about her book club experience:

I have been very lucky with our Xtreme Reader group, which is the book discussion group for fourth and fifth graders. From the beginning, we had as many boys as girls. I think part of the reason is the name: Xtreme Readers, like Xtreme Sports, sounds really cool and does not make you think of tea parties. The name was thought up by a boy who was a fourth grader at the time. His mother works at the library, and he was in the initial group. We put the name prominently on all our flyers, in a cool font and with a dramatic graphic of a person reading while skateboarding.

To kick off the club, we sent flyers with a cover letter to all the GATE (gifted and talented) programs in the fourth and fifth grades (both public and private schools), because we felt our target audience would be children who already liked reading chapter books.

The local newspaper published an article about the club too. After a half-hour of discussion, she had hands-on activities to bring the books to life. She includes a few examples of books and activities. As for questions, she mentions several resources including Multnomah (OR) County Library’s Talk it Up!

As with last month’s book, I found much of interest. For March, I will post about two books that have been suggested: Early Literacy Storytimes @ Your Library: Partnering with Caregivers for Success by Saroj Ghoting and Pamela Martin-Diaz and Ready-To-Go Storytimes: Fingerplays, Scripts, Patterns, Music, and More by Gail Benton and Trisha Waichulaitis. Please join in the discussion. If you have books you would like to recommend, please comment here or send an email to [email protected].

Download the podcast.

Just One More Book!! is one of the ALSC Great Web Sites for Kids, filed under Literature & Languages’ Favorite Children’s Stories category. Advertising- and sponsorship-free, Just One More Book!! (JOMB) is a podcast powered by passion. Mark and Andrea, a husband and wife team, both work full-time jobs and squeeze in a recording session during their morning coffee ritual after dropping their eight-year-old and six-year-old daughters off at school and before heading to work themselves. They publish four shows a week: Mondays being interviews; Wednesdays and Fridays are book chats; Saturday’s content varies.

During their conversation for this approximately 15-minute podcast, Andrea and Mark answer my questions. Mentioned are:

1. Podcasters Across Borders
2. Kidlitosphere Conference
3. Dennis Lee, poet
4. JOMB’s interview with Henry Winkler
5. JOMB’s Interview with Simon James
6. Stuart McLean, storyteller

Episode 2

Just One More Book!!

The Fort Wayne Museum of Art in Fort Wayne, Indiana, is exhibiting works by Allen Say from now until April 20, 2008. The exhibit includes works from El Chino, Grandfather’s Journey, Home of the Brave, Kamishibai Man, Music for Alice, The Sign Painter, and Tree of Cranes. Allen Say will be at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art for a book signing from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m., Sunday, March 16, 2008.

Download the podcast.

There are four different sections in this roughly 10 minute audio file.

1. Sing At Your Library, a great part of the Kids! @ Your Library Campaign. At Your Library by Bill Harley © 2005 Round River Records, used with permission www.billharley.com
2. Listen to a brief intro to the rest of the podcast. Special thanks to ALSC member Elizabeth Bird. She is a children’s librarian at New York Public Library’s Donnell’s Central Children’s Room and in her spare time, she writes A Fuse #8 Production for School Library Journal and A Fuse #8 Production - Podcast Edition. She kindly shared her audio files from 2008 ALA Midwinter with us.
3. Aaah along with the people present at the Hyperion Book Preview Event.
4. Be prepared to adjust your sound for these snippets from the 2008 Media Awards Presentation.

Episode 1

Sing, Aaah, Jump, and Scream Along

My goal with this monthly series is to encourage discussion about topics from our professional literature. I don’t plan to review a title, but rather will respond to portions of the work that speak to me and encourage others to do the same.

The book that I selected for January is The Family-Centered Library Handbook, which was reviewed (scroll to the second review) recently in Library Journal. (Thanks to Kathleen Deerr of Middle Country Public Library and one of the book’s authors for the link!) You may have received a brochure this past November about the upcoming fourth Family Place Libraries™ Symposium, The Power of Play: Its Impact on Early Literacy and Learning. It is a free event (for public librarians and administrators) taking place on Wed., March 26, 2008 from 8:30 to 11:30 AM at the Minneapolis Public Library. For more information and to register, visit www.familyplacelibraries.org/symposium.html.

Why bring this up here? Well, Sandra Feinberg is the founder of the Family Place Libraries and director of the Middle Country (NY) Public Library. And one of the authors of The Family-Centered Library Handbook. I do enjoy these types of tie-ins.

The book’s contents are set up nicely, with an overview of child development theory, ways to evaluate basic competencies/willingness of staff, ways to collaborate with other agencies to pull together resources for parents and caregivers, ways to develop services for young children and special audiences (such as teen parent families). Let me say, it is a great deal of information. It helps that in the introduction the authors reassure the readers to take sections as fit their individual needs.

I completely agree with the authors’ point on page 104, that “Family Spaces are not just about the development of young children. Adults in children’s lives are also growing and developing in their roles as parents, grandparents, educators, childcare providers, and health and human service workers.” I was nodding my head while I continued reading on page 104:

Having a dedicated computer, collections, and displays for parents either in the children’s area or adjacent to it creates a sense of place for parents. […] An adult computer station featuring parenting, child development, and early literacy software and Web sites further expose adults to the wealth of resources available at the library.

The book’s authors stress the need for respect. I do worry that sometimes in our zeal to get children access to appropriate activities we alienate some parents, not respecting them as their child’s first teacher, but perceiving them as the child’s first stumbling block. That also leads me to the topic of intervention as encouraged in the book. When a librarian notices a problem, how to approach the child’s caregiver is discussed. My experience has been fairly limited in that I rarely had a consistent, long-term relationship with any family for me to think intervention. I believe that a relationship would need to be established first to truly understand if what you are seeing is a problem. Am I just rationalizing here? I am especially curious to hear other’s views and experiences with this.

But then, if I had a better knowledge of other community agencies to which to refer people, perhaps the intervention idea would not seem so awkward. The importance of forming coalitions and collaborations is another area of the book that truly speaks to me and how I need to grow professionally. With an understanding of what resources are available, I would be in a better position to intervene, to offer suggestions of places to help the children and caregivers with the challenges they are facing. Kathleen de la Pena McCook is cited on page 59, from her book, A Place at the Table, regarding the need for activism and “to permit staff sufficient time to engage in the important work of building community relationships.”

Oh, those collaborations and coalitions are tough work, aren’t they? I have found that the two biggest obstacles are getting through each agency’s bureaucracy and timelines (even my own) AND the high rate of turn-over of staff in those agencies with which I have sought partnerships. I’m not saying that it isn’t worth it, but I am saying it is hard work and time intensive. At this point, I want to make a concentrated effort to just KNOW what other agencies are out in my community and what services they offer.

Again, I encourage you to share your thoughts. The book for February’s Professional Reading post will be Crash Course in Children’s Services by Penny Peck. The titles that have been/will be discussed in this monthly column are listed at the ALSC Blog’s LibraryThing account. If you have any titles to suggest, please post them in the comment section here or send an email to [email protected]. I know that I will be adding McCook’s A Place at the Table to the list.

Shortly after reading on our blog Bradley Debrick’s post about tagging, I read Matt Raymond’s post on the Library of Congress blog about the Library’s pilot project with Flickr, an online photosharing site. The Library of Congress is posting photographs which no copyright is known to exist and asking people to comment, make notes, and add tags. Matt Raymond shortly afterward shared how well-received that partnership has been thus far.

I am excited about the project and believe its potential for students of all ages is incredible. The Library of Congress’ Flickr profile page states:

We’ve been acquiring photos since the mid-1800s when photography was the hot new technology. Because images represent life and the world so vividly, people have long enjoyed exploring our visual collections. Looking at pictures opens new windows to understanding both the past and the present. Favorite photos are often incorporated in books, TV shows, homework assignments, scholarly articles, family histories, and much more.

The Prints & Photographs Division takes care of 14 million of the Library’s pictures and features more than 1 million through online catalogs. Offering historical photo collections through Flickr is a welcome opportunity to share some of our most popular images more widely.

Are there ways you envision using this project with young people?

Tasha Saecker of Menasha (WI) Library posted the 2008 American Indian Youth Literature Award, given by The American Indiana Library Associaiton (AILA), on her Kids Lit Blog.

For more information about the award criteria, please visit the AILA site, click on Activities and select AILA Native American Youth Services Literature Awards.

Please excuse the lack of formatting. I will correct the post; I just want to get the information on the blog right now. Thanks to my good friends, Mary and Becky for calling me. For Laura Schulte-Cooper for posting to ALSC-L and to Teri Lesesne of YALSA for posting to YALSA blog during the announcements. I hope that many of you were able to learn of the awards in real time via the webcast.

John Newbery Medal

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz (Candlewick)

Newbery Honor Books

Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis (Scholastic/Scholastic Press)
The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt (Clarion)
Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson (Putnam/GP Putnam’s Sons)

Randolph Caldecott Medal

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (Scholastic)

Caldecott Honor Books

Henry’s Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad, illustrated by Kadir Nelson, written by Ellen Levine (Scholastic/Scholastic Press)
First the Egg by Laura Vaccaro Seeger (Roaring Brook/Neal Porter)
The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtin by Peter Sís (Farrar/Frances Foster)
Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity by Mo Willems (Hyperion)

2009 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecturer

Walter Dean Myers

Mildred L. Batchelder Award

VIZ Media, publisher of Brave Story, by Miyuki Miyabe, translated from the Japanese by Alexander O. Smith

Batchelder Honor Books

Milkweed Editions, publisher of The Cat: Or, How I Lost Eternity, by Jutta Richter, illustrated by Rotraut Susanne Berner, and translated from the German by Anna Brailovsky
Phaidon Press, publisher of Nicholas and the Gang, written by René Goscinny, illustrated by Jacques Sempé, and translated from the French by Anthea Bell

Pura Belpré Author Award

The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano by Margarita Engle, illustrated by Sean Qualls (Holt)

Belpré Author Honor Books

Frida: ¡Viva la vida! Long Live Life! by Carmen T. Bernier-Grand (Marshall Cavendish)
Martina the Beautiful Cockroach: A Cuban Folktale, retold by Carmen Agra Deedy, illustrated by Michael Austin (Peachtree)
Los Gatos Black on Halloween, written by Marisa Montes, illustrated by Yuyi Morales (Holt)

Pura Belpré Illustrator Award

Los Gatos Black on Halloween, illustrated by Yuyi Morales, written by Marisa Montes (Holt)

Belpré Illustrator Honor Books

My Name Is Gabito: The Life of Gabriel García Márquez/Me llamo Gabito: la vida de Gabriel García Márquez, illustrated by Raúl Colón, written by Monica Brown (Luna Rising)
My Colors, My World/Mis colores, mi mundo, written and illustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez (Children’s Book Press)

Andrew Carnegie Medal

Kevin Lafferty, producer, John Davis, executive producer, and Amy Palmer Robertson and Danielle Sterling, co-producers, of Jump In: Freestyle Edition

Theodor Seuss Geisel Award

There Is a Bird on Your Head! by Mo Willems (Hyperion)

Geisel Honor Books

First the Egg by Laura Vaccaro Seeger (Roaring Brook/Neal Porter)
Hello, Bumblebee Bat, written by Darrin Lunde, illustrated by Patricia J. Wynne (Charlesbridge)
Jazz Baby, written by Lisa Wheeler, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie (Harcourt)
Vulture View, written by April Pulley Sayre, illustrated by Steve Jenkins (Holt)

Odyssey Award

Jazz, Live Oak Media

Odyssey Honor Audiobooks

Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary “Jacky” Faber, Ship’s Boy, Listen & Live Audio
Dooby Dooby Moo, Weston Woods/Scholastic
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Listening Library
Skulduggery Pleasant, HarperCollins Audio
Treasure Island, Listening Library

Sibert Medal

The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtin by Peter Sís (Farrar/Frances Foster)

Sibert Honor Books

Lightship by Brian Floca (Simon & Schuster/Richard Jackson)
Nic Bishop Spiders by Nic Bishop (Scholastic/Scholastic Nonfiction)

YALSA ALEX Awards:

AMERICAN SHAOLIN
BAD MONKEYS
ESSEX COUNTY VOLUME 1
GENGHISTHE
GOD OF ANIMALS
A LONG WAY GONE
MISTER PIP
THE NAME OF THE WIND
THE NIGHT BIRDS
THE SPELLMAN FILES

SCHNEIDER FAMILY AWARD
KAMI AND THE YAKS (young children)
REACHING FOR SUN (middle grade book)
HURT GO HAPPY (teen book)

CORETTA SCOTT KING
CORETTA SCOTT KING STEPTOE: SUNDEE T FRAZIER for Brendan Buckey’s Universe and Everything in It

Two Coretta Scott King author honors:
NOVEMBER BLUES BY SHARON DRAPER
TWELVE ROUNDS TO GLORY BY CHARLES SMITH

Coretta Scott King AUTHOR WINNER: ELIJAH OF BUXTON BY CHRISTOPHER PAUL CURTIS

Coretta Scott King ILLUSTRATOR HONOR:
THE SECRET OLIVIA TOLD ME
JAZZ ON A SATURDAY NIGHT

Coretta Scott King ILLUSTRATOR: ASHLEY BRYAN FOR LET IT SHINE

YALSA EDWARDS: ORSON SCOTT CARD for Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow

YALSA PRINTZ HONOR:
DREAMQUAKE
ONE WHOLE AND PERFECT DAY
REPOSSESSED
YOUR OWN SYLVIA

YALSA PRINTZ WINNER: THE WHITE DARKNESS

I strongly encourage all ALSC members to become involved with the organization. I know there are many ALSC members who aren’t involved because they aren’t sure they are needed. You are!

Committee involvement requires time. When I served as the chair of the ALSC Children and Technology Committee, I felt very guilty when a few committee members resigned from the committee for various reasons, valid reasons that left them with too little time to do the committee work that I was asking them to do. At first, I wanted to encourage them to stay on the committee, to say that the rest of the committee members could pick up what they were unable to do, to suggest that I might be asking too much of everyone. But they knew and I soon realized that this attitude is not helpful to them, to the rest of the committee, or to our organization.

Due to financial and family reasons, last year I declined an opportunity to seek involvement in ALSC leadership. Instead, I asked and was accepted to serve as a virtual member of the Children and Technology committee. I meet with the rest of our committee through online chat meetings. We use Google documents. We send emails. I am still an active member of ALSC.

We are over 4000 strong in membership. We need active members to ensure that our important work — improving and ensuring the future of the nation through exemplary library service to children, their families, and others who work with children — is accomplished. Each of us must be realistic about what we have room for on our own plate. Those of you who have been considering an active role, please do so by completing a committee volunteer form. (You can download one from the ALSC home page.) Those of you who have had to limit your involvement, thanks for all your work. We look forward to your return when you have the time.

Please excuse my very short post. I am in the midst of a reading frenzy to prepare for the 2008 Mock Sibert, Mock Newbery, Mock Caldecott and Mock Geisel programs presented and hosted by the children’s librarians of the Allen County (IN) Public Library.

The mere thought of being on an actual award committee intimidates me, but the mock elections are, for me, great professional development tools. If you are involved with a mock election program, I would love to hear about it.

So, happy new year! Now I have to get back to my stack of books.

Have you ever compiled a list of recommended materials for children? That's basically the job of Priority Group II committees. Kathy Krasniewicz, Chairman of the ALSC Notable Children’s Video Committee, shares: The charge of our committee is to select, annotate, and present for publication annually a list of notable videotapes and ... Read the rest of this post

The American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting will be held January 11 through 16, 2008, in Philadelphia, PA. Here are a few online places you may use to help you plan your meeting schedule.

• For fully registered attendees, the ALA Midwinter Event planner is available.
• A list of ALSC meeting locations is available on the ALSC web site.
• The ALA 2008 Midwinter Meeting Home Page offers the Meetings and Sessions web page which includes a spreadsheet (that you have to download) of the full Daily Schedule.
• There is also an Official Wiki of the 2008 ALA Midwinter Meeting.

If you are attending, please consider reporting about the events, programs, and meetings for those who cannot be there in person. No previous blogging experience is necessary — just ALSC membership and the willingness to post reports within one week after Midwinter. If you are interested, please contact Teresa Walls at [email protected].

Linda Braun, YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) blog manager, shares with ALSC Blog her recent podcast (YALSA Podcast #30) in which she speaks to Teen Librarian Sarah Couri and Children’s Librarian Rebecca Schosha, both with the Donnell Library Center of the New York Public Library, about their new monthly program that gives adults the opportunity to discuss books for youth.

Download the podcast.

Many thanks to Linda, Sarah and Rebecca!

Note: The ALSC Blog will begin a series of monthly podcasts in 2008. Please email your topic suggestions to [email protected]

The American Library Association issued a press release stating a live webcast will be available of the “national announcement of top books, video and audiobooks for children and young adults” beginning at 7:45 a.m., EST, on Monday, January 14.

For you lucky ducks who will be at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in person, the doors of the Pennsylvania Convention Center Ballroom B open at 7:30 a.m. The rest of us are encouraged to bookmark this not-yet-live page at Unikron, a streaming content provider. There are a limited number of connections to the webcast, so I’ll be checking with some friends who will be there (lucky ducks) to see if they will call me long-distance to share the titles added to the ranks of Newbery, Caldecott, Coretta Scott King, Odyssey, Carnegie, Pura Belpré, Sibert, Schneider, and Geisel, so I may be sure to post them here in a timely manner.

If you are attending in person and would like to share your experience with the readers of the ALSC Blog, please contact Teresa Walls, blog manager, at [email protected]. Thanks!

In one of my first posts to the ALSC Blog, I mentioned sharing professional reading. Since then, I have toyed with ways to do this. While I am uncertain LibraryThing is our best option, I thought we could give it a go, at least for the first 200 books, the limit to maintain a free membership.

I created an account for ALSC Blog and have added a link to that account on the bottom of the sidebar on the ALSC Blog’s home page. The January book to be discussed/shared is The Family-Centered Library Handbook by Sandra Feinberg et al. The book for February will be A Crash Course in Children’s Services by Penny Peck as suggested by ALSC Blog reader, Tina. I will add that title to the ALSC Blog’s Library Thing account after I post about The Family-Centered Library Handbook.

I invite you to recommend titles to this professional reading list by either commenting here or emailing [email protected]. If you have other ideas of ways to do this, please share those as well. Thanks!

A few days ago, Library Link of the Day sent a link for “Children’s book outrages parents,” a November 30, 2007, article, from The Morning Call, a Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, newspaper. The book to cause the outrage: King & King (2002, Tricycle Press) by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland.

If you aren’t already familiar with your library’s material selection process and its materials complaint process, that should be high on your to-do list. The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom offers Dealing with Challenges to Books and Other Library Materials, a very helpful resource whether you are dealing with a complaint or do not want to be overly surprised when/if a complaint arrives at your library.

My initial reaction to the article was, well, a little, shall we say, holier-than-thou. Good grief, I thought, it’s a library, it’s supposed to have materials for everyone. How hard is that to realize? Read the books yourself before you present them to your children. And then, I was reminded about one of my first jobs. The summer after I graduated from high school, I worked as a ride attendant at Cedar Point, an amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio. You probably have been to an amusement park. Remember the yellow lines? The areas where you aren’t supposed to stand while a roller coaster train or ride car is in motion or out of the station? Many people forget. Many times a day, ride attendants have to remind people about the yellow line. In fact, sometimes it is easy, as a ride attendant, to forget that the person in front of you hasn’t heard about the yellow line or is so caught up in their own world that they have forgotten about where they are standing and the others around them.

I moved past my initial reaction to the article and a question came to mind. One that I want to share with you. When someone signs up for a library card, or even whenever they check out any children’s materials, should the library personnel and policy make more of an effort to offer a recommendation that a caregiver first review the material before sharing it with a child? Not to say that there is anything wrong with certain materials, but as a reminder that our libraries offer books that share many ideas, that represent all types of families. To help those people who forget where they are and that there others around them. Please share your thoughts.

Monday is December 3, the application deadline for most of the Professional Awards for ALSC Members. You still have the weekend to put together your application if you haven’t yet. Don’t miss out.

If you are an ALSC member who would love to host a children’s author or illustrator to speak with a group of children who have not had the opportunity to hear a nationally known author/illustrator, you are encouraged to apply for the ALSC Maureen Hayes Author/Illustrator Visit Award. This award pays up to $4,000 of the honorarium and travel expenses for a visiting author/illustrator.

The application is available to be downloaded from the ALSC Maureen Hayes Award Page. The page also links to the very helpful Tips for Planning an Author/Illustrator Visit

One of the award’s requirements is to cooperate with other types of libraries and local or area groups. I know how much work it is to develop partnerships with other agencies. However, a combined effort to invite an author/illustrator is an exciting way to build those partnerships, opening more doors to offer resources to children and their caregivers. There’s still time to apply for the 2008 Maureen Hayes Author/Illustrator Visit Award. The deadline for applications has been extended to January 1, 2008.

Those words came out of my mouth to a branch library manager. Earlier this month, right before I was to fill in for the full-time librarian who was on vacation. The manager looked a bit stunned. I had noticed two tables covered with large sheets of white paper in the meeting room where I was to share stories and songs with a group of preschoolers. I didn’t want to assume the paper was for the children who would be with me, but I thought we could have fun drawing pictures of things that begin with the letter F and writing the letter F all over it. I had selected several stories about friends, and I think F makes one of the funniest sounds.

When she said, “It’s for the craft. To protect the tables from the mess,” I just blurted out, “Oh, I don’t do crafts.” I quickly added, “I would love to have the kids write and draw on it though.” She found the markers for me.

That incident happened well over a week ago, but I have been haunted by my pointed statement of the not-doing of crafts. I have done crafts with children while employed as a full-time librarian but I rarely do them in a 1/2 hour storytime geared for preschoolers. Why is that?

So often, in my experience, a craft project is a detailed instruction about how to make an end product. Many skills are required and practiced in making a craft. Important skills. However, as a child, I never found I had enough time to do the craft the way I wanted to do it, the way the sample looked. As a mother, I have found that my young son spends less than two minutes of the time on the craft, preferring to make the craft materials talk to each other.

Maybe I should offer more opportunities for craft-making so young children can experiment and create with different materials, to allow variations on a theme, to start with an idea and let the children interpret that idea. Maybe it would encourage those children, the ones who, like me, might get stuck on what the end product is supposed to look like, that it’s o.k. to let go a bit. Maybe it’s a reminder that a conversation between cotton balls and glue can be about friends and fun.

For the past few days I have been attending Winter Wheat, a writer’s workshop at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio. One of the sessions today had an activity that I thought could translate well to programming for school-age children.

Ed Buchanan, a graduate student with the University of Akron, shared a writing exercise in which we were to take the first line “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water” and in seven minutes or less, write, what he called, “the missing middle” that leads to “Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.”

Here is what I wrote in the allotted time:

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. But there was no pail.
“I thought you brought a pail,” said Jill.
“No. I handed it to you.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure or I would be carrying it, wouldn’t I?”
“O.K. Now what? Mom’s going to be mad if we don’t have the water.”
“If we walk back down it will take forever.”
“Yes, but we need to get it. I’ll race you. Go!”
Jack ran as fast as he could.
“Wait for me!” yelled Jill, but Jack had a head start. She was gaining on him when Jack fell down and broke his crown. And, Jill came tumbling after.

Following the exercise, I immediately thought of you, dear readers. Would this type of exercise, creating “missing middles” of nursery rhymes, work in your programming plans? Please share your thoughts and ideas about writing with children in the library.

Children’s book author and illustrator Grace Lin and her husband Robert Mercer founded Robert’s Snow: for Cancer’s Cure as he fought sarcoma, a disease which took his life on August 27, 2007. In celebration of his life, many children’s book illustrators have created special snowflakes to be auctioned to benefit sarcoma research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brookline, Massachusetts.

Here are the 2007 snowflakes. There will be three separate online auctions, each with different snowflakes. The first auction begins November 19. The third auction ends December 7.

The ALSC Louise Seaman Bechtel Fellowship is designed to allow you to spend a month or more, (yes, you read that correctly), a month or more, reading and studying at the Baldwin Library of the George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainsville.

O.K., you do need to meet a few qualifications before the ALSC Bechtel Fellowship Committee can truly consider your application:

• Personal membership in the Association for Library Service to Children.
• Currently working in direct service to children, or retired members who completed their careers in direct service to children.
• At least 8 years professional experience in direct service to children.
• A graduate degree from an ALA-accredited program.
• Willingness to write a report about his/her study.

Once you meet the criteria, your application must include a description of the topic of study for the fellowship period and a demonstration of ongoing commitment to motivating children to read. Read what topics previous Bechtel fellows have studied.

The application deadline for the 2008 award is December 3, 2007. For more information and to download the application, please visit the Louise Seaman Bechtel Fellowship page of the ALSC Web Site.

If you, like me, don’t meet the criteria yet, keep the Bechtel Fellowship in mind as you advance through your professional life. Jot down topics of interest, because one day, you may be heading to Florida for a month of study. I already have my notebook ready.

With a sad heart, I share that Elizabeth Watson, President of ALSC from 1997-1998, died recently. You may read her obituary in the Worcester (MA) Telegram & Gazette.

She completed her Master in Library Science from the University of Michigan in 1968. From 1969 to 1970, she was the children’s librarian at the Bacon Memorial Library in Wyandotte, Michigan. Beginning in 1971, she was the children’s librarian and then the chief librarian at the Fitchburg (MA) Public Library. She retired in 2004. As an ALSC member, Elizabeth also served on the Caldecott, Budget & Finance (as Chair), Arbuthnot (as Chair), and ALA-CBC Joint committees.

Here is a photograph of Elizabeth introducing Lecturer John Bierhorst for the 1988 Arbuthnot Lecture at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma.

I did not have the honor of knowing Elizabeth; I encourage those of you who did to share your thoughts in celebration of her life and work.