Hooray for letter S! It's Story time "Wednesday!"

Wow! Busy Busy Busy! So much to prepare for before Summer Reading takes off. I've been totally involved in giving presentations to students, ordering enough books, and organizing the final details for all of the library's outstanding programs and fun! We're also going to start filming short YouTube videos of fun science experiments that you can do at home! For now, let's look at the final story time of the spring and summer for me.

Letter S was almost too easy to find books for, so I chose to dig around a little bit and do something a little different. I chose Splash! which is a Houghton Mifflin reader that I still have from my teaching days. I also did Pete the Cat, Rockin in my School Shoes, by Eric Litwin and James Dean, (Yes, I know that's not a very different pick. It's just so much fun to get the guitar out to play and sing those.) and I'm a Shark! by Bob Shea. All three were really big hits. The thing I really like about the Houghton Mifflin reader was that the text was minimal, but since it was a big book, the pictures were huge and the absorbed the students interest like a sponge! It also has a small, non-fiction learning connection at the end about how baby animals play that the kids loved. Nobody captures a preschool aged child's mix of confidence and uncertainty quite like Bob Shea! I've become a bit of a fanboy of his recently since discovering that all of his picture books are incredible, not just the Dinosaur Vs. series. Also, nobody draws somebody yelling quite like he does:

See what I mean?






Anyway, this is my final blog for the summer, outside of updating event flyers. I will see you in September when Story times pick back up again, until then...here's what we did today!

ABC Action from heidisongs
Greeing Song We're all here! (Skip to my Lou)
Here, here, we're all here!
Here, here, we're all here!
Here, here, we're all here!
We're here at Story time!
Hello, ______. How are you?
Hello, ______. How are you?
Hello, ______. How are you?
I'm glad you're here today!

Letter S song and dance from heidisongs.

Letter S puzzle from Story Time Katie! (Awesome blog/website. Seriously brilliant.)

Letter S Snake

Cut the letter S out from an internet template
Stick two googly eyes on the head.
Glue a red tongue to the back of the head
Decorate with whatever you want to. We used dot stickers.

 The above photo doesn't show all of the little ones that have made an impact on me during my first year of story time. But some here have been coming nearly every week since last September. I couldn't be more grateful to see these wonderful little faces every Wednesday (and sometimes Monday too.)

Hooray for Letter R! Story time Wednesday!

Happy Wednesday! It's a beautiful morning for a story time. All the kiddos come in, dressed for outdoor play in shorts, sandals, T-shirts, cute dresses and hats. I took last Wednesday off for my birthday, and boy did I miss those kids! I could tell the missed me as well as they were laughing and more full of energy than I have seen them in awhile. Sometimes, you just need a little break to sit back and remember how much you love what you do.

For letter R, I found three fantastic books. Two that I was already sold on and one that took me by surprise. I read My Rhinoceros by John Agee, Little White Rabbit by Kevin Henkes, and Little Red Hot by Eric A. Kimmel. I was really happy with all three stories today. The kids responded well to all of them and there were many giggles. In Little White Rabbit, the rabbit imagines himself in all sorts of different ways, being green, very tall, unable to move, flying. I encouraged the kids to do the same thing. They were very eager to tell me about how tall they could be or what kind of green creature they would most like to be. My Rhinoceros is a very silly book. The kids really enjoyed the part when the main character thinks about the Rhino attacking the balloon vendor to pop his balloons and poking a hole in the little girls kite. I made sure to really act that part out and do silly voices. To my surprise, none of the little ones had heard of Little Red Riding Hood before. At least not that they said anyway. For Little Red Hot, a story about a little Texas gal who LOVES hot peppers! I put on my thickest Texas Drawl and dove into this re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood. I don't know how much the kids liked it, but they sat and listened very well.

So, what else did we do?

ABC Action from Heidisongs
Greeting song: We're all here! (Skip to my Lou)
Here, here, we're all here!
Here, here, we're all here!
Here, here, we're all here!
We're here at story time!

Hello, ______. How are you?
Hello, ______. How are you?
Hello, ______. How are you?
I'm glad you're here today!

Letter R/r song from Heidisongs

Which one doesn't belong game
I printed some captial R's and some lower case r's.
I printed some other letters and put them up on the magnet board with the letter R/r's.
The kids just had to pick which letter didn't belong.

Letter R Rainbow craft
You need:
Fruit loops
The letter R template
Cotton balls
Glue.

Print out the letter R template here. Glue fruit loops to the rainbow part of the R and then stretch and glue cotton balls to the part of the R that looks like a cloud. Easy!

Obligatory Display Blog

Well, I don't know how obligatory this really is, but my good friend Carrie from The Lion is a Book Worm has done a few in the past so I'm following suit and showing off a few of the simple displays the library currently features.

First I have the Read box that features all of my new fiction. I have very limited shelf space for displaying new books so many have to be spine out to fit them all on the shelf in an organized fashion. Since that doesn't bode well for circulation, I felt it needed a little something extra so...Read box.

 In the same room, I keep another bi-monthly display in the 2nd window bay. This April and May it's been all about fantasy. I just used Google image with the keywords "Dungeons and Dragons" and I got lots of cool pictures of fighters, rangers, clerics, wizards, dragons, and a few choice other images as well. I created the "Embark on an Epic Journey. Read Fantasy!" sign, using simple Microsoft Publisher, a downloaded Lord of the Rings Font and pasted it onto yellow construction paper. Simple and effective.




Finally, in the same room (Yes. The vast majority of my display space is in one room.) I have the kid art board. I cut the oval shaped sun out of construction paper while the rays are craft foam. It's all stapled to the board. Along the bottom, I made lots of cuts in green construction paper with the understanding that some of it would fall forward and give a more three dimensional look to the grass. I put some books up on the fireplace to make room on the Read Box Display. In the past this has been a Halloween display, and thanksgiving display, and a Christmas "Naughty or Nice" display. I was putting in a ton of effort into this board. In the winter and spring, I started running a story time every Wednesday, a Music and Movement program every Monday, a weekly book club for 4th/5th graders at a local school, a big family event every Thursday night and an outreach story time at at least 5 different preschools and country schools. Couple all of that with beginning the blog and the amount of weeding that I needed to do, the board kind of slipped under my radar for awhile. By springtime I was ready for this board to be dedicated to only kid work. All I did in this instance was provide a tub of crayons, scissors, glue sticks, and construction paper stems. The kids did the rest. I even had a group of middle school students coloring flowers for a few days. I love kid work. It's proof that they still do, in fact, love their library.

 This is my new non-fiction display. I have been trying hard to update our non-fiction collection. The only things that circulate in that room on some days are dust particles. I'm sure that many of you have noticed a decline in your non-fiction circulation. Kids today don't need to look in a book to find out. Google is like having all the books crammed into one, and it's easy to find. And it gives you your answer right away! And it's fast! It's also suspect in it's accuracy at times and can lead a child to some...unpleasantness...The point is, you can't beat a book, but information updates very regularly. New discoveries are made and what seemed like groundbreaking information 5 years ago, has now been rendered obsolete. It can be difficult to keep up with. Well, in an effort to move the books out of the library, we did a large shift and weed to clear the space necessary for a small display. It has helped, especially when we have schools visiting.

I'm ending the tour with the first display I ever did, way back in August of 2013. It still stands to this day as the new picture book display. When I arrived, all the biographies were on these shelves in the same room as easy readers and picture books. This obviously didn't help their circulation any, so one of my first big tasks  involved weeding them down,(there were a LOT of old, beat up books) weeding the non-fiction so there would be room for them, and placing them back on the shelf. Not all of my new picture books from the last six months fit on this shelf. We also display them on top of the kid-sized book shelves that fit in the middle of the room. As you can see, there are four shelves put together. Each one has it's own purpose. This one is where the new fiction goes.

I also try to feature an author each month, but so far, only Rosemary Wells has had enough books published to withstand a month of almost constant circulation. Seriously, if you want to expose your patrons to an author they may not be aware of, this is a great idea...just expect your shelf to look a little empty from time to time like this one does.






I also try to feature one or two concepts each month. These range from seasonal books, to holiday books, to ABC and 123 books, to...well...outer space books. I have also featured find-it and I spy on these shelves as well.





So how do you like to display your books? If you are in a smaller library, how do you make use of your limited shelf space?

Suggestions and ideas are welcome. Be nice.

The 13 Story Treehouse: A book review by Pixelbeard the Librarian

Corporal, get me the cassette of Spaceballs the movie!


And so begins one of the funniest 4th wall breaks in cinematic history. Spaceballs is still one of my top Mel Brooks movies and one of my all time favorite comedies. As I have watched it nearly 40-50 times, I find myself only watching when the bad guys are on screen. Luckily, outside of the merchandising scene the Spaceballs provide the best bits of comedy where they actually admit that they are in the middle of making a movie. This little trick is called a 4th wall break. A 4th wall break is where the characters int he film break down the wall that separates them from the audience. This is accomplished in many ways. In High Anxiety, a camera zooms in a breaks a window. In Blazing Saddles, the climactic battle at the end of the movie spills over into another movie studio. In Spaceballs, they talk about making money from the movie, they talk about making the movie, they even slash a poor member of the film crew with the schwartz. It really adds to the absurdity of the film and for me, pushes it gleefully over the top. So what does this have to do with a kids book by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton?

Well, the 13-Story Treehouse is a book about an Andy and Terry who live and work in a 13-Story treehouse. The treehouse is every little boys dream come true with a giant swimming pool, a lemonade fountain, an automatic marshmallow shooting robot, a bowling alley, a giant catapult, a room full of pillows, and other fun, productivity destroying distractions. Just looking at the map of the treehouse itself would have kept my eyes busy for a long time and my brain fueled with imaginary adventures that I could have hanging out with Andy and Terry. The plot of the book involves the authors actually writing the book that you hold in your hands. Their publisher, Mr. Big Nose, demands that Andy and Terry come up with a new book within a week. Since they haven't started one yet, they have a lot of work to do. What follows are 13 (intentional) chapters of outright hilarity and delicious absurdity. There are a few Roald Dahl references peppered into the dialogue and it's easy to see that the authors were inspired by Dahl's sillier work like The Twits.

While the humor flies off the handle and goes beyond mere silliness, it never devolves into gross-out potty humor. I found this to be fantastic. I am a big fan of Captain Underpants and Super Diaper Baby. I am glad that someone is able to walk the tightrope of humor above the feces tank. (Oops! Even I fall victim from time to time!)

This book comes highly recommended for any reluctant reader, but lends itself especially to boys. I would have devoured this book as a child. I would have read it over and over again until the pages fell out. The text is a tad sparse, but the book is rich with fun illustrations and that's kind of the point, right? Many kids who can't focus or have attention span issues don't read much because they physically just can't sit for 300-400 pages of text. It's an impossible task. They get frustrated and give up. Get them this book. I believe that it can spark a love of humor and reading in any child and should have a spot on your child's bookshelf.

As I finish this review I will leave you with some immortal words from a great man who lost his wife to cancer, then quit Hollywood to raise his kids.

Odd, Weird, and Little: A book review by Pixelbeard the Librarian

Odd Weird and Little is the latest story from Guinea Dog author Patrick Jennings. I was previously unaware of his other work when I picked this one up as my latest back up book (My primary read right now is Battle for WondLa. You should understand why, right?) Patrick Jennings has garnered considerable acclaim for Guinea Dog including numerous state children's book awards.

What we have here is a warm tale about self-confidence, the importance of friendship, and the idea that being different and being yourself is far more interesting and cool than being like everyone else. That's a great message for kids in today's society. There have always been bullies. I was bullied. Some of my friends were bullied. I now know why my bullies were bullies. I understand the psychology behind a bully, but that didn't make it any easier growing up. Luckily for me, I grew up before the internet and before online gaming which meant that my bullying stopped when I got in my mom's car to go home after school. Today, kids can be reached by anyone at anytime. Bullying isn't just confined to school or perhaps in the neighborhood. I think kids have to fend off attacks on their self-esteem from an overwhelming number of places. It's scary for me to send my two boys out into this world when I know what a huge problem this is.

The message of the book is not anything new. Being confident in yourself is a theme that runs through many children's novels. Jennings takes this and brings something outrageous and new to it in the form of the character Toulouse Hulot.

Woody is the kid who gets picked on. The classroom bullies, Garrett and Hubcap torment him everyday. This changes when Mr. Logwood welcomes a new student to their class. Toulouse Hulot is a student who apparently hails from Quebec and who speaks only French. Woody is conflicted at first. Here is a new student who dresses up in fancy suits, hats, and glasses. A student who carries quill pens and inkwells in a briefcase. This student is also short, as Woody says "Like--Kindergarten short". Woody is sure that Toulouse will take some of the attention away from him and be the main target for Garrett and Hubcap. It would be so easy to join in on the bullying that Toulouse is sure to receive, but Woody takes a brave stance and befriends Toulouse. They find that they have many interests in common and even though it brings the bullying back on him, Woody befriends Toulouse. The remainder of the story shows Woody's development into a more confident young man because of his friendship with Toulouse.

Hanging over the entire story is the outrageous premise. If you consider the following a spoiler, I'm sorry, but it's so blatantly obvious, it's really funny. The nitpicker in me has to ask "HOW DOES NO ONE SEE THAT HE'S AN OWL!?" When Woody discovers this at the very end of the story, he gives an explanation about how if you accept something impossible to be true, it can alter your very perception of reality. If you accept that Toulouse, the owl, can paint, play volleyball, talk, write, read, and play accordion, you need to question other facts that you take for granted. To admit that Toulouse is an owl is to admit that the impossible is possible. Despite these questions and long reaching explanations, the book is written so well, you look past it.

This book is a very manageable 149 pages. It moves along quickly. The prose dances around as if set to music. The realistic setting is so expertly written, the students will feel right at home in the classroom with Toulouse and Woody. This comes highly recommended.

Hooray for letter Q! Story time Wednesday!

Happy Wednesday! It was a rainy morning at the library! A perfect storm of story time excitement! I was thrilled because a patron whose family are regular and avid readers, brought her little girl and their 3 week old baby boy for his very first visit to the library! I feel that this is quite an honor because they are such regular patrons with avid readers and I'll get to watch another little one grow up!

Anyway, letter Q isn't as tough to find topics for as you might think. I read Giggle, Giggle, Quack by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin, Quick As a Cricket by Don and Audrey Wood, and The very Quiet Cricket by Eric Carle. Giggle, Giggle, Quack was a very fun book and all the kids enjoyed the silliness. I used three puppets that I have that quack, moo, and oink when you squeeze them. So when the animals giggle in the story, I squeezed them along with my laughing for a great bunch of noise. Quick As a Cricket has fantastic paintings that the kids found fascinating. It was a fun read while I had their rapt attention. Finally, The Very Quiet Cricket went over o.k. I understand that children like repetitive text, but I feel this one over did it. It's pretty much the same 3 sentences on each page. I do know that at the quiet part at the end, all the kids were laser focused. It was a good way to end story time.


What did we do today?

ABC Action from Heidisongs.

Greeting Song- We're All here!
Here, here, we're all here!
Here, here, we're all here!
Here, here, we're all here!
We're here at story time!

Hello _____. How are you?
Hello _____. How are you?
Hello _____. How are you?
I'm glad you're here today!

Letter Q song/dance from Heidisongs.


Letter Q sort- This was inspired by the ABC games you can find a starfall.com, a WONDERFUL early literacy website. Some parts you have to pay for, but the ABC section is totally free. I have used it at home on our tablet with both boys and they have each known their alphabet and most sounds before they were two years old. I can't recommend this website enough. There is plenty to do for free and the yearly subscription is quite cost effective as well.
Anyway, using the flannel board, I cut two baskets out of brown felt. I wrote a capital Q on one, and a lowercase q on the other. I then used a bubble style font to print out six of each capital and lowercase Q/q.. I put velcro on the back and the kids helped me sort between capital/lowercase q's. They had to put the Q's in the correct basket. It was a lot of fun! I will do this again, for sure!

Craft: Letter Q queens!
1.) I cut out a letter Q template from an internet print out.
2.) I used yellow paper to cut out crowns from an internet printout
3.) We glued the crown to the top of the Q
4.) We glued jewel stickers to the crowns and Q's.
5.) I cut out strands of yarn for the kids to glue to the Q's as hair.

 Even Paula had a great time!

See you next time for letter R!

Ava and Pip: A book review by Pixelbeard the Librarian

Full disclosure- I don't understand girls. I have wonderful relationships, professional and personal with many wonderful women. I have been married for nearly 10 years. I love my mommy and I have chosen to spend my professional life in industries that are predominately staffed by women (elementary education/librarian...duh). But I never had a close relationship with a girl growing up. I have one brother and I now have two sons. I have a nephew and a sister-in-law, but she doesn't count because, again, she's grown up. Because I've never had a little girl in my life, I find myself trying to understand them better by reading fictional stories about them. As strange as that may sound, I've found a gem by Carol Weston called Ava and Pip.
Carol Weston has been the author of 13 books for children and has been the columnist responsible for the "Dear Carol" advice column in Girls' Life magazine since the first issue in 1994. She also has a howdini site and YouTube channel called Girl Talk With Carol where she dispenses advice to children and adults alike. This expertise is obvious in the lessons, themes, and plot threads that weave throughout this book. Ava and Pip is more than just a story about two sisters. It is a story about thinking your actions through. It is a story about accepting help from others while also enabling yourself to be a better person. It is a story about learning from your mistakes and understanding that your words and actions have consequences that you must answer for. All of these devices are wrapped up together within a very believable setting populated by characters who, for some, may seem pretentious and overly-intellectual at first, become very likable throughout the course of the story.


One of the strengths of this novel is the Dear Diary device used by the first person narrator (Ava). Sure, nowadays in the Dear Dork Diary of a Wimpy Kid era this device has grown a tad overused and cliche. However, in reading those books, I think we can agree that the focus is not entirely on deep character development, but laughs. I think that Carol Weston has used the diary device to is maximum effectiveness. In this case, the Diary not only relays plot details and moves the story, it does what it is intended to do. Ava's diary gives an intimate portrait of her personality and how it changes daily. It also gives her the opportunity to play with language (She's an aspiring writer), and reveal to us the troubles of being an extrovert.

Speaking of extroverts, that is something that I think we all come to expect from the juvenile fiction novel, especially about two siblings. It's a format that is a classic as Ramona and Beezus. Fudge and Peter. The older sister, Pip is painfully shy. Shy to the point where her classmates believe her to be snobbish and rude. She doesn't speak to anyone outside of her family, and she rarely smiles. At home she is temperamental and acts childish at times. The book tells us that she's a preemie baby, and that because of that, she has had a delay in both physical growth and social skills. The opposite is true for Ava, the fearless extrovert. She is outgoing and creative. She has a way with words and experiments with palindromes and alliteration throughout the book. While the exterior shows that she is happy and all is well, the reader is invited to see that within, she struggles. She struggles with loving her sister and being frustrated by her all at the same time. Even though she is the extrovert, she struggles with all the attention her big sister gets. She says she feels invisible. She is wonderfully flawed. She is happy when Pip begins to improve herself, but jealous because Pip begins to get even more attention by the encouraging adults around her.

I finished this book in two days. It's a very manageable length for most middle grade readers at 206 pages. As I stated before, Ava and her family can come off a bit pretentious (her dad is a playwright and is REreading Ulysses by James Joyce. Yuck.) with all of their word games, palindromes, and classic literature, they remain just as odd as the rest of us. They may be intellectuals and they may be a tad pompous with their wordplay, but they're human.

Here's a bonus list of Palindromes (spelled the same forward and backward) from the book.
AVA
PIP
BOB
ELLE
HANNAH
WAS IT A CAT I SAW
NO MELON NO LEMON
EVIL OLIVE
REPAPER
DESSERTS I STRESSED
DOG DOO? GOOD GOD!
A NUT FOR A JAR OF TUNA
PARTY BOOBY TRAP
REWARD DRAWER
NOT A BANANA BATON
DO NINE MEN INTERPRET? NINE MEN I NOD!
MAY A MOODY BABY DOOM A YAM
LONELY TYLENOL
O GERONIMO NO MINOR EGO
SENILE FELINES
NOW I SEE BEES I WON

If you're REALLY into palindromes, check out the Weird Al Yankovic song "BOB"