librarianship

It's an exciting day at the library! Where to start?

1. Tonight is our literary magazine reception. The magazines turned out beautiful! If you're curious how they turned out, you can download my group's magazine as a PDF (2.7 MB), or visit my department's scrapbook page. (The image quality isn't fantastic because, uncompressed, the file clocked in at 10 megs. But it'll give you a good idea, anyway.) If you're going to read just one story, make it "Night of the Living Food," about the ingenious inventor Doctor Bob, his equally clever son Billy, and a town full of evil, mutant food. If this kid (who was incredibly prolific this summer) doesn't continue in the footsteps of Dav Pilkey, I will be very sad.
2. In November I get to work the day there's an OSTRICH at the library! A live ostrich! They're going to keep him in the storage closet beforehand so he doesn't get overstimulated! I can't wait!!!
3. We got our latest shipment from the ALA Store, including Babymouse and Wimpy Kid posters and bookmarks, a Danica Patrick poster (one of my coworkers loves race cars), and a Cesar Millan poster (which that same coworker sweetly ordered with me in mind)! So now I'll have the Dog Whisperer and Daddy (Millan's tried and true rock of a pit bull) staring out from my office window. Did you know there's a Twilight READ poster, too? There is, truly, no escape.

A few weeks ago, Abby the Librarian discussed some of her favorite storytime picture books and invited others to join in. I don’t do many storytimes during the summer, so at the time I drew a blank. Ditto for last week, when folks at my SCBWI network meeting were asking the same thing. Admittedly, it was eight o’clock, and my brain stops working at six.

Now that August is drawing to a close, it’s time I put the storytime hat back on and gave consideration to my fall curriculum. I do storytime three times a week, repeating the same program for 2 ½ to 3 ½ year olds the whole week. I always pick a theme, whether seasonal or simply fun. Storytime lasts half an hour, including a small craft (which I start five minutes from the end). We don’t require registration, but my groups average 15 to 25.

Because my audience is quite young and has the corresponding attention span, I pick books that are short: no more than two or three sentences per page. They should be concrete (think Piagetian stages of development). Concept books are good in moderation, but I also want books with plot. The pictures should be big and bright enough to see across the room. A great many books that work wonderfully for one-on-one sharing with a toddler don’t hold the attention of a group the same age.

I understand the love of Mo Willems’ Pigeon books and Zhaohua Ji’s No! That’s Wrong!, but experience has taught me to steer clear of them. Whether it’s my young, often not-very-verbal audience or my reserved personality (probably both), this particular style of interactive picture book usually falls flat for me.

Richard Egielski’s The Gingerbread Boy (Geringer, 1997) may top my list of favorite storytime books. It’s traditional. You can read it any time of year. It’s got great illustrations in a fun, New York setting. It’s the perfect length for three year olds but still works for older kids.

For concept books, some of my favorite authors are Monica Wellington (for careers) and Zoe Hall (for agriculture). Short, sweet, and appealing. Lois Ehlert and Anne Rockwell are up there, too, for various topics.

Some more of my favorite picture books, which are appropriate any time of year:

• The Best Pet of All, by LaRochelle and Wakiyama (Dutton, 2004)
• Big Smelly Bear, by Teckentrup (Boxer, 2007)
• The Bus for Us, by Bloom (Boyds Mills, 2001)
• Fluffy and Baron, by Rankin (Dial, 2006)
• I’m Not Cute, by Allen (Hyperion, 2006)
• Tiger Can’t Sleep, by Fore and Alley (Viking, 2006)
• Whistle for Willie, by Keats (Viking, 1964)

I like to sing, and I love singing picture books like these:

• If You’re Happy and You Know It (Jungle Edition), by Warhola (Orchard, 2007)
• Punk Farm, by Krosoczka (Knopf, 2005)
• The Seals on the Bus, by Hort and Karas (Holt, 2000)

Now that I’ve been doing storytime for almost three years, I’ve got a lot of programs together, many of which I’ve blogged about on Story Window, my library’s storytime blog. I make adjustments each time, working in new and new-to-me books, taking out books that fell flat. These are two of my best-received, most fun storytime programs:


• Great Garbage!
  Featuring Smash! Mash! Crash! There Goes the Trash (Odanaka/Hillenbrand), Trashy Town (Zimmerman/Clemesha), I Stink! (McMullan/McMullan), and some original action and counting rhymes.
• Pat-a-Cake, Pat-a-Cake, Pizza Man
  Featuring Pizza at Sally’s (Wellington), The Little Red Hen (Makes a Pizza) (Sturges), Hi, Pizza Man! (Walter/Goembel), and some fun songs and action rhymes.

If you do storytime for young children, please check out Story Window to get/share ideas! We’ll be posting more once our fall storytime season begins.

Carnegie Library, Braddock, Pennsylvania 1908
Originally uploaded by Orchard Lake

Lately, I’ve been taking advantage of the mild weather by riding my bike to work. It takes me about half an hour, and I work up a sweat. Fortunately, there’s a shower in the library boiler room—arguably the creepiest shower since Psycho. I mean, you’re in the basement, in the boiler room, and it’s kind of dark, and the boiler’s making weird noises, and there’s a freakin’ hole in the floor right next to the shower that probably reaches all the way down to an alligator-infested sewer… But the water’s hot, so it’s all good, right?

Anyway, besides scary Hitchcock movies, the shower always reminds me of the Carnegie library in Braddock, Pennsylvania. Built in 1889, the Braddock Library was the first Carnegie library in America. Andrew Carnegie had it built for his steel workers—many of whom might have appreciated better pay and working conditions, but hey, in the words of Carnegie, “It is the mind that makes the body rich.”

When I visited the Braddock Library for one of my college classes, the most memorable sight was the shower stalls in the library basement. The library was designed so that workers from the steel mills could come to the library, grimy from a day’s hard work, and wash up before going upstairs to use the books. A hot shower was a luxury most workers’ own homes did not include. Nor was the library just a building full of books. It included a gymnasium, a bowling alley, a swimming pool, and a music hall.

Music hall, you think, okay, that’s cultural. But can you imagine a library today having a gymnasium or a bowling alley or a swimming pool, much less all three?

More than a hundred years later, public libraries are still defining themselves. Are libraries more about the collection or about community? Can they be both without cheating one or the other? We see this in every argument over whether video games are an appropriate activity to offer our patrons. Likewise, knitting circles, movies, Pokémon tournaments, rock concerts…

Andrew Carnegie was one of the first to treat libraries as true community centers. If he thought duckpin bowling belonged in the library, I’m sure he wouldn’t have said no to MarioKart. (In fact, here’s an interesting article about how the Homestead Library, another Pittsburgh-area Carnegie library, is adapting its century-old, community-minded mission and facilities to fit today’s needs. Not as much has changed as you might think.)

Say what you will about Carnegie as a steel boss, he was truly the “Patron Saint of Libraries,” having funded over 2,509 of them between 1883 and 1929. He also founded the university I’m proud to call my alma mater. Let’s carry on his legacy by making our libraries more than simply giant, brick boxes for books.

This summer, our library gave away paperback books as summer reading club prizes, rather than the usual cheap, lead-containing and/or choking hazardous toys. Over all, the response has been very positive, and it’s been interesting to see which books of those we selected have disappeared fastest.

For our independent readers club for up through fourth grade, we offered the following choices (plus a few extra titles we had hanging around due to Baker & Taylor errors—forty copies of The Secrets of Droon #32 was a tad excessive). Bold indicates that we’ve run out since the prize-giving began last night.

• Camp Babymouse (Holm & Holm)
• Case of the Missing Monkey (Rylant)
• Diary of a Fairy Godmother (Codell)
• The Dog That Pitched a No-Hitter (Christopher)
• It’s Disgusting and We Ate It! (Solheim)
• Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher (Coville)
• Laugh-eteria (Florian)
• Marley: A Dog Like No Other (Grogan)
• Millicent Min, Girl Genius (Yee)
• Minnie and Moo Save the Earth (Cazet)
• Mr. Chickee’s Funny Money (Curtis)
• Rotten Ralph Helps Out (Gantos)
• The Secret of Platform 13 (Ibbotson)
• Stink: The Incredible Shrinking Kid (McDonald)
• The Water Horse (King-Smith)

For our read-to-me club, we offered the following choices until our selection got so limited we had to run to the bookstore for more! (We issue these prizes all summer. Instant gratification for the preschoolers, baby!) The most popular choices are bolded.

• Best Friends for Frances (Hoban)
• Biggest, Strongest, Fastest (Jenkins)
• Buzz (Wong)
• Dinosaur’s Day (Thompson)
• The Gingerbread Boy (Egielski)
• Hi, Fly Guy! (Arnold)
• Little Red Riding Hood (Marshall)
• Make Way for Ducklings (McCloskey)
• Mama Cat Has Three Kittens (Fleming)
• Margaret and Margarita (Reiser)
• The Mightiest (Kasza)
• Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (Steig)
• The Three Billy Goats Gruff (Galdone)
• Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears (Aardema)

Okay, so nearly all of them were very popular. Gingerbread Boy was the runaway winner (ha ha), but the rest were all depleted at a pretty even rate.

The middle school/junior high club, which is funded by our Friends of the Library, had $8 Borders gift cards as the prizes—about the list price of a paperback book. A pretty sweet deal, I dare say.

I don’t expect every library to have prizes these nice. It isn’t cheap, even taking wholesale prices into consideration. But since we do have the money in our budget, I think it’s a nice route to take.

No cohesion to this entry, just pure, unadulterated brain-dump in list format.

1. In spite of my worries, the aftermath of Summer Reading Club has not been bad at all so far. One of my coworkers made some great signs warning people of the club's approaching deadline, not to mention a banner that hung all summer with the beginning and end dates. They seem to have helped. We've had relatively few stragglers, and no problems that I've heard about. Both our membership and completion rates were up from last year, which is cool.

2. Publishers Weekly Children's Bookshelf has a new op-ed feature. This week's entry: When YA Might Not Be OK. Librarian Shannon Stevenson tackles the question of how to respond when middle grade children ask for books with mature themes. My personal approach is more hands-off but similar in spirit. If a parent's doing the asking on behalf of a child, I'll be very forthright about mature content, in a "Just so you're aware..." context. If it's a kid, I'll say with a certain amount of significance, "That'll be in the high school section..." But I leave it there, figuring that the book will go over their heads and/or that parents will do their job.

ETA, 8/8/08: More reactions to the article at...

• A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy
• Read Roger

3. I've obtained a rental copy of Breaking Dawn so that I can see for myself what all the fans are complaining about. So far I've kept myself spoiler-free. I hope this doesn't devour my entire weekend.

4. I'm registering for SCBWI Wisconsin's Fall Retreat. I'm both excited and nervous about the prospect. I've never been to a big (um, or even small—so this feels big to me) writing event like this before. I'm excited because I'll get to meet other writers, including Julie Bowe, who's been nothing but sweet to me in answering lots of my questions the past few months. I'll also get to meet my agent in person. I'm nervous because I have to get a 10-page manuscript sample together for critique, and I have to figure out how to get to Racine, preferably without driving.