What Wii Sports Taught Me

Some things I found out while doing our monthly gaming program:

• When you have fifteen kids at a program, having more than 1 Wii is a good idea.
• Motion Plus is required to play Wii Sports: Resort.
• My projector just doesn't work with video game consuls.

But, other than that, we had a really great time. Played some boxing, some baseball, and some bowling on Wii Sports. Meanwhile, there were random card games, Battleship, and chinese checkers going on.

Ultimately, I didn't think the program would get big enough to require two Wiis, so I only found one. But, I turned out to be wrong. This is a fantastic problem to have, too many kids, but it meant we didn't get as much time with the game as each participant would have liked.

Even though I'm definitely going to be getting more Wiis for next month's program, I was really impressed with the patience of the kids that came. Each of them had time for only one sport on the game, but they were generous by letting others go, and spending the waiting time playing other games with each other.

So, even though my lesson was learned, we still had a really great time at the program, and I still encourage folks to get a gaming program going; even if you only have one Wii to work with :)

Fahrenheit 451: Burn Their Ideas Away

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: The Authorized Adaptation by Tim Hamilton

Why did I read it?

North Idaho Reads is a series of events coming up this Fall. We'll be having a film festival, banned music, and a futurist all centering around one book: Fahrenheit 451. Originally written in 1953, Fahrenheit 451 was recently adapted into a graphic novel, and I thought I'd check out what this version had to offer.

What happened?

Guy Montag is a fireman, which means he starts fires for a living. Might seem a little bit backwards, but with perfectly fireproof houses, accidental fires don't happen; only intentional ones do. Why would they start fires? To eliminate books.

From our time, society continued to move faster and faster until reading a novel just wasn't desirable anymore. Watching a virtual world on your living room wall was much more interesting and made you much happier. Books became a burden. They confused people and made them sad. So, people decided by themselves that they didn't want books anymore, and firemen changed their jobs from stopping fires to starting them.

Starting fires is all Guy has ever known, but when a peculiar girl talks to him about taking life slow, and an old woman would rather burn than let go of her books, Guy starts to think that their might be something to those countless novels he put to the flame.

What did I like or not like?

Obviously, Dystopian novels are huge right now, and Fahrenheit 451 was one of the very first ones. It tells a thought-provoking tale of what might happen if we just lived for pleasure, and let go of reading and thinking for ourselves. The style of the graphic novel is rough, with a limited but vibrant color palette, and it was very interesting to read and take in.

Once again, I'm not sure if Dystopian novels are meant to be enjoyed per se, as they often portray dark and dangerous futures, but it was very interesting and worth reading.

Mixing in Math: Blog Post Hybrid!

Coming soon to a computer near you...Blog Post Hybrid! So this could fit into Monday Fun and Program Ideas because we did it for a Monday program, and it could be a program idea. But, it could also be a Techno Tuesday because I'm letting you know about a cool website. Ultimately though, I decided to post it in Techno Tuesday, because I wanted to write about our Hunger Games Party yesterday, and it gave me a post for today :)

So, the topic of our Blog Post Hybrid is Mixing in Math. Here is what they have to say about themselves:

"At Mixing in Math (MiM), we believe that daily life is full of opportunities to explore math. Math is in the things we do, the objects we use, the games we play, and the questions we ask. By building on the math around us, MiM helps children and caregivers become more confident, comfortable and competent in math."

Since our country's overall math and science scores aren't very fantastic, certain agencies, like the Idaho Commission for Libraries, ICFL, are encouraging libraries to mix some math into their programs. I took some of MiM's ideas and ran an hour program with them. But, they suggest just filling in an extra five minutes here and fifteen minutes there with a fun dose of math.

These are a few that I thought were cool, but you can view their whole list of suggested activities.

How Many in a Minute

Ten Pennies

Narrow it Down: Numbers

Our Hunger Games Party

So the weekend The Hunger Games movie opened, the Hayden Library held a Hunger Games party, and it was AWESOME! Turns out that I've had a lot to write about on my blog, so it took me this long to type up what we did.

As the teens arrived I had each one of them look up their Hunger Name. Basically the website randomly gives you a crazy name, what district you were from, when you participated in the Hunger Games, and how you died. It was a fun way to break the ice.

We then entered our training portion of the evening, which consisted of three stations. The points you received from these stations were added to the points your team got from the Cornucopia Challenge (chatting about that in a minute), and that determined how many times your name went into the drawing for the two movie tickets at the end of the night.

One station was archery (a plastic bow I bought from Fred Meyer), another station was javelin throwing (a pool noodle works really well), and our last station was getting across a pit of boiling goo (doesn't necessarily happen in the Hunger Games but I thought the game makers might have come up with something similar. Basically, you had to get from point A to point B without a part of you touching the floor. All that could touch the floor were two cardboard boxes. Some teens used them as stepping stones, while others shimmied their way across the floor).

In addition to the training portion, we also had provisions and creativity exercises. Our provisions consisted of frosted doughnut holes, which reminded us of the Capitol, and beef jerky, water, and trail mix which reminded us of the arena.

We had two creativity exercises. Katniss's mockingjay pin becomes a symbol of the rebellion, so we figured we would make some. We used Shrinky Dinks paper to trace a picture of the mockingjay, threw them in the oven, and they shrunk to hard medallions that were pretty cool. I purchased the Shrinky Dinks paper at my local Michaels.

Our other creativity exercise was making a Paracord Survial Bracelet. Now I couldn't find slide release buckles, so I made a couple knots instead of the male end of the clasp, and made a simple loop where the female end of the clasp was. I bought the paracord at Black Sheep Sporting Goods, and brought a small lighter from my house to burn the ends of the rope so it wouldn't unravel.

Once we had tested our creativity, battle readiness, and had some provisions, we were ready for our Cornucopia Challenge. Our participants were divided into teams with a huge pile of supplies in the center of a room. At the buzzer, one team member grabbed one item, brought it back to their team, then the next player took off to grab something else. Once the Cornucopia was pillaged, a script was read. If you had the right stuff for the script, you got points, and if you didn't, well, you didn't.

After the Cornucopia, the only thing left to do was tally the points, figure out how many names each participant got to put into our drawing (we did 1 name for each 100 points), and then we drew to see who got the movie tickets.

Our teens left with a medallion, the start of a survival bracelet (turns out they take some time to make), and memories of a great evening. If you haven't done one yet, I would highly suggest it for this movie, or when Catching Fire comes out :)

Three Little Words: Nine Long Years

Three Little Words: A Memoir by Ashley Rhodes-Courter

Why did I read it?

I don't normally read memoirs. But I thought it was cool that they were included on my required reading list for school, because I probably wouldn't have read this book otherwise.

What happened?

Ashley, and her younger bother Luke, were born to a young mother who struggled with drugs, alcohol, violence, and responsibility. Taken from her mother at 3 years old, Ashley spent the next 9 years of her life in a legal and emotional limbo, until she was finally adopted by another family.

Throughout this time Ashley bounced between relatives, foster families, and shelters. When someone actually seemed to care, a circumstance would mess things up, and the rest couldn't handle Ashley's rough points for very long. After being abandoned by her mother, and shipped off whenever things got tough, Ashley was relatively sure she never wanted to love anyone again, and relatively sure she would never be adopted.

What did I like or not like?

Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to get through the entire memoir this week. But, up to this point, it has been a really eye-opening experience.

Ashley's memoir paints a very clear picture about most of the foster families she lived with, and some of them aren't pretty. Her memoir also gives us a very clear look at what is going on inside her head, which helps us feel the desperation and anger she feels, and the love she longs for.

If anyone wants an honest look at the foster care system, and a girl who succeeded after going through it, this memoir is a very interesting and heat-felt read.

Puppet Tales: Local Puppet Awesomeness

Youth services staff have way too much fun with puppets! There is a husband/wife team in Sandpoint who have been doing puppet shows and trainings for a couple years now, and they just officially named their business Puppet Tales. Dave Nickodemus is the fella, and Beth is his beautiful wife.

Dave came in yesterday (kind of the reason you got some Monday Fun today), and did a Puppetry 101 training for staff from Community Library Network (the network I work for), Coeur d' Alene Public Library, and the Sandpoint Library.

Dave chatted about why, where, and how to use puppets, basic puppet positions and movement, developing voices, and how to utilize puppets in introducing stories and topics. Finally, he mentioned a lot of websites where he got his puppets, and let us play with his puppets.

Why do I mention puppets on Techno Tuesdays? Well I'm going to give you the websites that Dave mentioned, which is kind of techno-y, but ultimately Dave is a local resource for ideas, information on puppets, and actual puppet presentation, and I couldn't resist giving him some props. All twenty-five staff or so were really impressed with his skill, knowledge, enthusiasm, and general awesomeness. If you ever need a puppet guy, I would highly suggest him :)

This post is already getting a little bit long, so I'm going to give you the low-down on the websites next week, but in the meantime, check out Puppet Tales' Facebook page :)

Passion for Italian

So apparently I've been busy the last two weeks. Missed on Tuesday and missed again yesterday. But, so you don't miss out on some fun ideas, here is your Monday Fun on Tuesday :)

As I contemplated a food program to do, I kept coming back to Italian food. But, I was told by several interested parties that spaghetti is just over done, so I thought of something else to do. Judging by the comments of the folks that tried our little cuisine, I think we did pretty goood.

During our cooking program I try to do three recipes. I split the kids into two groups, with a recipe each, and then as those cook, we put together the third recipe all together. Works out pretty good.

Quick Marinara Sauce

As many of us know, you can't do Italian food without some marinara sauce, so here is the quick recipe that I used. We poured it onto our Italian Wontons.

Italian Wontons

Even though I had never done them before, they were so awesome! Three words of the wise; wonton wraps are normally found in the produce section, wear an apron while frying the awesomeness, and almost remember to bring a pair of tongs!

Italian Cheese Bread

Oh my goodness and golly day, this bread is awesome! While we fried the wontons and stirred the marinara sauce, this was slowly baking to perfection in the oven, and no one who tried it was dissapointed. Another word of the wise; bring a nice knife and a cutting board to your library :) Makes things a whole lot easier lol.

Not your typical Italian food, but it was all definitely worth it.

Blekko: Slash the Web!

This isn't technically Techno Tuesdays anymore because this is Wednesday. But, because I couldn't post yesterday, I figured I'd still give you some awesome website action!

So once a quarter myself and other members of SPLAT (Special Project Library Action Team) get together and talk about cool websites, trends, and the future of libraries in Idaho and beyond. Blekko is something that has come up at a couple of meetings, so I wanted to share it with you :)

Blekko's primary elevator speech is that it is the spam free search engine. They use human editors to help eleminate low quality websites that fill other search engines. Who doesn't want a bunch of ads and lame sites when they are searching (insert hand raise here)?

Another big part of what Blekko does is slashtag searching. What is that? "It is a tool used to filter search results and helps you to search only high quality sites, without spam or content farms." A couple examples are /date /like /news and /gossip. Each one of these slashtags will limit your search term to that particular subject area. Pretty cool, no?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a big part of many company's search to be the top results on a search engine. The thinking behind SEO, is that search engines are based on computer programs, so if you know what they are looking for, your website could be higher on the list of results.

Blekko makes this easy by having information on inbound links to a website, when Blekko last crawled (a program that checks out new information on websites that are then used on the search engine results) the site, and how many pages are on that particular site. Just use the /seo slashtag, and you're on your way. You have to have a Blekko account to use this feature, but it is once again pretty cool.

Blekko also does a Grep once a day. What is that you may ask? They ask their users to submit things they want compared, and then Blekko does a report on it. One example was +1 button vs. FB like button vs. FB share button.

Sound interesting? Well you can easily compare Blekko with Bing and Google to see what you like the most. Just type in a search term and the slashtag /monte, and it will show you results from all three. May the search be with you!

Mockingjay: When An Author Stays True to Her World...

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Why did I read it?

Because I literally had to start the third book once Catching Fire ended lol

What happened?

SPOILER ALERTS

Unbelievably, much to the chagrin of the capitol, both Katniss and Peeta once again survived their time in the Hunger Games. But, this time Katniss didn't escape by threatening to eat some poisoned berries. She escaped by destroying the force field encasing the arena, and was rescued by District 13 hovercrafts!

Unbeknownst to Katniss, and the rest of Panem, District 13 was not destroyed at the conclusion of the rebellion seventy-five years ealier. Instead, they moved completely underground, and have been waiting for their opportunity to once again challenge the Capitol. Katniss was just the figurehead they needed for all-out war on their persecuters.

There are only a couple of problems. Katniss isn't sure she wants to be a pawn in District 13 hands,  Peeta was captured by the Capitol, and with each step she takes, she is more unsure who she can really trust, and whether or not she, or anyone she cares about, will get out of this alive.

What did I like or not like?

Let me say here that this is NOT a happy trilogy. There is a semi-happy ending, but there is a lot of death, dying, suffering, questions, betrayals, and sacrifice that lead up to it.

But let me also say here that this trilogy blew me away with how awesome it was! I got done reading and all I could think was how amazing the storyline ultimately was. Each choice, each small circumstance affected everything else, and the characters were absolutely realistic and true to the last page.

Many people I have talked to about the trilogy say the third book was violent just for the sake of being violent, and that Suzanne Collins didn't have to make many of the choices that she did. More people could have survived!

But, this is my take on it: Suzanne was just being true to the world that she created. From the very first chapter of The Hunger Games, Suzanne created a dangerous, violent, unfair and chaotic world, and when the stakes went up, these things took their affect as well; with disatrous consequences.

I've also had friends who disagree with the books themselves. They don't agree with the thought of young adults killing each other being seen as entertainment.

Here is my take on that: While The Hunger Games are entertainment, and are hugely popular, they don't view death and killing as entertainment, and they also don't condone it. The characters in Suzanne's world have to deal with these realities, but with every chance they get, they strive to remove these atrocities from their world.

So, those are my quick thoughts on an awesome trilogy. If you have other ideas, hit me up on Facebook, Twitter, or leave a comment below. Or, you could track me down at the Hayden Library, and I'll be more than willing to spend a very long time chatting about this series with you :)

Altered Book Collages: Imagine, Resue, Repurpose

Has anyone heard of altered books? Basically, you take a book that isn't going to be read anymore, and you repurpose it into a craft project.

Some people make purses; some people make wreaths; some people make poems. But no matter what is made, I thought the idea was super cool!

First of all, it's cool because it is something totally out of the box.

Secondly, it's cool because it breaks all the rules. You aren't supposed to cut, paste, or damage a book. But, if the book is destined for a landfill, why shouldn't we use it as a craft project? If a book has been well-loved, why not love it one more time?

Lastly, it's cool because, well, its just cool!

For our first foray into altered books, we just did collages. Working at a library, there were plenty of discarded books to choose from. Then it was simply a matter of grabbing stencils, yarn, stickers, markers, fancy scissors, and buttons, and letting the kids imagine what their books could look like. Some of the kiddos decorated the covers, other kids picked a pair of pages inside, while other kids posted a single element onto each page inside.

The kids had a really good time, and I'll definitley do altered books again. Might be a different project next time, though, because there are so many ideas out there!

Catching Fire: Need I Say More?

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Why did I read it?

With the huge success of The Hunger Games movie that just hit theatres ($253,006,396 in 11 days according to Box Office Mojo) everyone is talking about The Hunger Games right now. I originally read The Hunger Games in 2010, but because of a crazy schedule and other books, I wasn't able to finish the series. So, when I heard the movie was coming out, I reread the book, and this time, I couldn't stop until I had finished Mockingjay.

What happened?


SPOILER ALERTS
(Not a ton, but its hard to do a synopsis of a second book without giving some stuff away)

Both Katniss and Peeta survived the 74th Hunger Games! This is a situation unheard of in Panem history and there will be consequences. The Hunger Games were designed to give the illusion of hope while demanding respect and fear and exacting control. With the stunt that Katniss pulled, this control has been called into question and the scent of rebellion is in the air.
Preparing for the Victory Tour, a quick trip around the districts designed by the Capitol, Katniss is approached by President Snow himself. Snow makes it clear that he isn't forgetting her defiance, and that he isn't afraid to destroy everything she holds dear if she steps out of line. Okay, don't mess things up on the tour, got it!

But, the choices that Katniss made have taken on a life of their own, and she soon realizes that nothing she did or didn't do on the tour could change where Panem is heading. In an effort to stamp out this fire that is quickly catching across Panem, President Snow issues a special edict for the 75th Hunger Games, and no one could have seen it coming.

What did I like or not like?


Holy moly and pandemonium, I love these books! The Hunger Games was amazing, but the way Suzanne was able to build the scope of the story while remaining so true to the original world is spectacular.

So many trilogies suffer in their second book because the author doesn't want to give away too much of the story. They almost drag along until the third book. But, this is something that Suzanne doesn't have a problem with. There is so much story to tell that this story will glue you to your seat and not let you up.

Suzanne also does a great job giving us new revelations in each character, but never changing who the characters are. It is no wonder why these books are so popular, and if you haven't read them, I would highly suggest them.

Next Book Blurt I'm going to be chatting about Mockingjay, and a little bit more about the ideas behind the trilogy. Stay tuned!

Teen Librarian's Toolbox: If You've Got the Passion...

So originally, I was going to do a post on The 2012 Project but then I figured that I should probably tell you a little bit about the site that this brilliant idea comes from. So, this week we will be talking about Teen Librarian's Toolbox :)

"Ths mission of TLT is to provide fast, easy to use resources for teen librarians who are short on time, staff, and money . . . but not on passion." I don't know many teen librarians who don't fit into that category, and I think TLT does a good job fulfilling this mission.

TLT is made up of three people, Karen Jensen, Cutler Creech, and Tim Jensen. Karen has been a Young Adult/Teen librarian for the past 19 years and a reviewer for VOYA magazine for the past 10. Cutler is an eighteen year old author who loves dystopian novels. Tim, Karen's Mr., loves Monty Python and might sometimes steal books that Karen is reading.

In addition to The 2012 Project, which is super cool, she writes book reviews, Reader's Advisory Posters,  Teen Programs in a Box (who doesn't need a ready made program sometimes), and stuff about YA advocacy.

I've connected with TLT on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, and if what she does sounds interesting to you, I'd highly advice her resources.

Guitar Hero at My Library

As I mentioned in my last post about video games, 5 Websites for Gaming at Your Library, March was the first month we could actually do a video games program because of holidays. But, we were finally able to do it, and we had a great time.

A couple years ago, we were able to purchase a Wii, the Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock game, and 2 Wii guitars. I've used these off and on for programs in the past, so I thought it would be appropriate for Guitar Hero to be the first game we played.

While doing the program there was a couple of things that I noticed. First of all, my younger patrons had a great time helping me set up. I had a meeting right before the program, so I just a little bit behind. But, the majority of the kids didn't seem to mind as they pulled out Wii cords, synced controllers and assembled guitars :)

Another thing I noticed was that my projector didn't want to find my Wii. I just looked it up on Google, and there are plenty of other people using Wiis with a projector. But for some reason, mine wouldn't. I think I'm going to keep trying though, because video games on a bigger screen is always better.

Finally, having board and card games out while playing the video games worked really well. If it wasn't your turn to play and you didn't feel like watching, it gave you something to do. I also think its a fun way to let kids know that board and card games can be a lot of fun as well.