Learning from Mistakes

How are we doing today? As far as North Idaho goes, I think summer has finally arrived. It has actually been ninety degrees twice in the last week. Consequently, I’m going to the beach after work today.

Karen and I have been learning a whole lot about doing tween/teen programs over this first month and a half of programs. As we have never done programs for this age group before, we only have the things we’ve read and the assumptions that we have from younger programming. We are finding that serving this audience is entirely different, and we are trying to adapt our own ideas to meet your needs. New things are definitely a learning experience, and we have made some mistakes. But, we are learning from these mistakes, and are working for better library programs in the future.

This week has been filled with our usual band of suspects. Monday opened with three programs at the same time, which is what we have been doing all summer. Miss Cassie has an Every Child Ready to Read workshop, for the 3-5 age group. We also have an open craft set up where families can come anytime between 10 and 2 and make some crafts. The third program is mine, and is Ka-Boom Science Experiments. We had the chance to do a Mentos Diet Coke rocket, and we also got to make Gak. If you ever get a chance, I would highly advice doing both of those experiments. If you go to Steven Spangler’s website, he has all of the steps you will need.

Tuesday means Tween Summer Reading for me. This last week we made denim summer beach bags. We had sequence, petals, glitter glue, and buttons galore, and the bags turned out amazingly. We also had a really good turnout which is always cool.

Wednesday is our younger summer reading program, and this week we played READO, which is BINGO by any other name. Instead of numbers and letters, we did letters and different items such as bicycles, shoes, and dinosaurs. Then of course we gave away some of our summer reading prizes.

Thursday means that I get to go to Finucane Park. This was actually the first story time that I got involved in when I started working in the children’s area, and I’ve been doing it ever since. We read some frog stories and played with our parachute which is always fun.

Which brings us to today, and today we have our Open Game Friday and I’m working on getting our Ka-Boom program set up for Monday. Ka-Boom is going to be electricity experiments next week.

This past week I’ve also been busy doing some advertising. Karen made me up some new flyers, and I’ve been busy posting them at different businesses and stores (don’t worry, I asked before I put any up). I was really encouraged by how many places were willing to post information about library programs.

Well join us for Ka-Boom on Monday, Tween Summer Reading on Tuesday, which is going to be a battleship tournament, and you can also come on down for our Open Game Friday. Hope your week is filled with amazing times with friends, family, productivity, and plenty of sunshine.

Just Odd Enough to be Awesome

Happy sunny Wednesday! At least, it’s sunny here. Hope your Independence day was filled with friends, family, and appreciation for the freedom and principles that this nation is built on. Anyways, this week’s book blurt is about Criss Cross, a novel by Lynne Rae Perkins. Apart from reading several reviews on the book, and having it mentioned on several reading lists I look at, this was another one of those books that I glanced through when I was shelving books as a page. The book has also been awarded the John Newberry Medal, so I figured I would actually sit down and read it.
This book tells the stories of Debbie and Hector as they go about their lives in a very normal summer. Debbie and Hector have known each other for a long time as they have been going to the same schools as long as they can remember. The book goes back and forth from telling Debbie’s story, to telling Hector’s story, and then telling something that might happen to both of them. The book also concerns itself with Debbie and Hector’s families and friends. While reading through the book, there is no huge happening that jumps out at you. This book just looks at growing up from Debbie’s and Hector’s perspectives. It also deals with fate, destiny, chance, and moments and chooses that can change your life, or keep your life exactly the same.
This book is just odd enough to be awesome without being too odd that it is hard to read. The book doesn’t keep within the “normal” way of writing a novel. Instead of having longer chapters, this book has some long chapter, and some chapters that are only half a page. Instead of just having prose throughout, sometimes there is poetry, or a stanza of a song. In addition, there are small illustrations that start some of the chapters, or are mixed in with the words. The characters themselves are also a little off base. They don’t think normal thoughts. Instead, the characters think and feel very realistic, which means random. Instead of following one thought to its conclusion, sometimes the characters jump from topic to topic just like we do in our own minds. There are also some very odd thoughts that made me laugh out loud because I could totally see myself thinking or saying that same thing. The normal subject matter, coupled with the odd writing style makes for a very fun, interesting, and entertaining read.

Awesome Library Partners!

How is this Independence Day Weekend finding you? For the library, it has been another busy week of great programs and fun.
Can you believe that it is one day away from the Fourth of July? I still can't believe how fast June has blown by. Before we know it, it'll be August, and we'll be prepping for our fall programs. Time flies when you are having fun, and when you are really, really busy.
This week at the library, we will be making Gak and a Diet Coke Mentos Geyser at our Monday Ka-Boom Science Experiments program. The program starts at 10:30am and goes to 11:30.
At our Tween Summer Reading program on Tuesday, we will be making Summer Beach Bags using sequence, glitter glue, petals, and all other kinds of awesomeness. This program starts at 11am and goes to noon.
Lastly, we will be having our Open Game Friday where the Wii will be set up, and I'm going to grab our board games and see if we want to play those this week.
I think I need to take this time to thank some of the people that have made some amazing programs happen for us. First of all, I want to thank Tim Boal down at Lightning Comics for partnering with the Hayden Library. He has helped us on three of our programs. The first was a Yu-Gi-Oh training, the next was letting us borrow some games for our Last Friday game night, and the third was for the younger kids and was a Readng with Superman.
The next person to mention is Mark Evans at the CDA School of Woodworking. He donated twenty five wooden boat bodies, and random boat pieces that made some amazing wooden boats. One of the ideas of the program was to see which boats floated and which didn't, and most of them did. The other part of the program was making some awesome boats, and that definitley happened as well.
Another partner is the North Idaho Fair & Rodeo. If anyone eighteen years or younger who is registered for summer reading reads fifteen hours, they will get a free pass to the fair on the opening day. Great stuff!
Lastly, the Texas Roadhouse is partnering with us as well. They are giving a free kids meal to anyone who reads ten hours and is under the age of twelve. Even though this doesn't apply to everyone in our Make Waves program, it is still really cool.
At our last Ka-Boom program, Mr. B (his last name is really hard to spell) programmed Lego NXT robots and brought them in for the tweens to play with. He put a lot of time programming the robots, and creating building instructions for the robots themselves. 
Although some of the programs didn't have a huge turnout, I'm hoping that these are the beginnings of some beautiful friendships. These are just a few of the people that are partnering with us, and I'll tell you about the others as they get closer.
See you on Wednesday for a Book Blurt on Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins, and have a great Independence Day!

Perception and Grief

I find that almost every one of my book blurt posts start with, “well here we are,” so I figured I would start with, “I find,” this week. Anyways, this post is about M.H. Herlong’s The Great Wide Sea. Our awesome youth services librarian, Karen Yother, reads a book a week, and she really enjoyed this book. Karen has handed me some great books before, so I sat down for a great read.

This book tells the tale of three brothers and their father, almost a year after their mother passed away. The entire family is obviously devastated by their lost, and they have had a hard time coping with it. Ben, the eldest son, copes with his lost by trying to be as normal as possible. He is turning sixteen soon, and he is looking forward to getting his first car. To Ben’s surprise, his father has been planning a year long trip around the Caribbean in a thirty foot sailboat. Having his normal summer dreams stripped away, Ben is thrown into tight quarters with his father and his two brothers. Ben has always had a good relationship with his two brothers, and he gets along with them pretty well. But, Ben still can’t forgive his father for planning a year long trip without talking to the family, and he also can’t believe that his father is so willing to throw away everything that was important to his mother. After almost a full year of sailing, their father disappears just as a huge storm looms on the horizon. Convinced that his father has committed suicide, Ben buckles down to protect his brothers from the storm, and whatever else may come his way.

Although this book deals with grief and family struggles, I really enjoyed it. Through the hard times, Ben learns to put his brother’s needs first. This part of the story really touched me, because I have four younger brothers. I also thought that the portrayal of grief was very realistic. Grief can drive people to crazy things, and this book shows that. It also shows how important perception is to a relationship. We can only see people’s actions, and then we have to assume what the intent was behind those actions. If we assume that someone did something to hurt us, even if that wasn’t their intent, we can wind up hating them. This is shown very vividly in the relationship between Ben and his father. Although it isn’t necessarily a joyful book, it is exciting, and brings the topics of grief and family very realistically to life.

Where have I been?

Well, how is this Friday evening finding you? As any of you who have looked at my blog before have realized, I haven't posted anything this past week. For that I apologize. Since my start of this job in February, I haven't had programs to speak of. I've assisted in children's programs, and I've been preparing for my tween/teen summer reading programs. But, I haven't had programs throughout the week. Now I do, and boy do I! I barely have enough time to get everything done. This makes it a little bit difficult to have time to do all of my social media stuff that I've been doing. But, enough of the excuses. I'm going to be more consistant with this blog and with my twitter and Facebook posts even though my schedule is busy.

I'm really liking having programs. Every day I go to work, and I get to work with the younger kids, or I get to work with the tween/teen audience. I'm having too much fun with it! I've already had several summer programs for the tweens, and I've had one of my teen programs.

For the tweens, I've done Ka-Boom science experiments for the past two Mondays. There are quite a few tweens coming to them, and we are having fun with things like cornstarch goo and water bottle lava lamps. This Monday, we are going to have a chance to play with the Lego NXT robot. My brothers were doing an NXT class through their homeschool co-op, and I asked their teacher where he got the robots. He is borrowing them from a company in Post Falls, and the company said we could use them at the library. Ka-Boom runs from 10:30 to 11:30 every Monday, and is for tweens ages 10-14. Every Tuesday we also have a tween summer reading program. Last week we had Boatmaking which was made possible through the donation of The Coeur d' Alene School of Woodworking. The week before that, we had some guys from Lighning Comics teaching Yu-Gi-Oh. This Tuesday, we are going to have our Animoto Day, so we will be making movies using Animoto and Flixtime. Tween summer reading is every Tuesday from 11 to noon and is also for ages 10-14. Our last tween program is Open Game Friday. I set up the library's Wii, and we have had fun playing Guitar Hero. If we ever get board playing the Wii, we can always grab our board and card games.

Our teen programs for ages 14-18 have also got going. We had our first Rock the Boat teen summer reading program last Monday. We did jewelry making. Our next Rock the Boat is going to be ReMix it Up where we will be making videos. This will be on the third Monday of July, the 19, from 6-7. We are also having a special event for teens at the end of every month. This month it is a game night where we will be playing video games, board games, and anything else we want to play. Our special events are going to be the last Friday of every month, which happens to be tonight. The event will be from 7 to 9.

That pretty much wraps up this week, and gives us some things to look forward to. I'll see you on Wednesday for a Book Blurt on "The Great Wide Sea" by H.M. Herlong. This time I promise I'll do it. :)

Evil Breeds or Bad Owners?

Well here we find ourselves on another Wednesday, which means another Book Blurt. This week I’m blurting about Ingrid Lee’s Dog Lost, which was written in 2008, and was also published by Scholastic. As it turns out, this book isn’t categorized in the YA area. It is actually in the juvenile area. You might be scratching your head wondering as to the reason that I’m reading it. Well, this book is a 2011 Young Reader’s Choice Award nominee, and I figured it would be good to at least read some of those. But more importantly, this book has some objectionable subject matters, and other librarians were wondering if it should be categorized in the YA section instead. Wanting to have something to say if this became an issue at the Hayden Library, I decided to read the book.

The book focuses on Cash, a pit bull, and a young boy named Mackenzie. Mackenzie’s mother died a few years ago, and his father isn’t handling the situation very well. He is often drunk, and isn’t very supportive of Mackenzie. Although this is the case, Mackenzie’s father does do something nice for him without even knowing how much of an affect it would have. Mackenzie’s father had gotten a dog while gambling, and he gave it to Mackenzie to take care of. Having something that he could love, and loved him in return, was something that Mackenzie hadn’t felt in a long time. The boy and the puppy spend all of their time together, until Mackenzie’s father gets angry with the dog, and abandons it in a field outside of town. The book then weaves the tale of how Cash survives without anyone looking after her.

Although this book was written for juvenile readers, I really enjoyed it. Although I didn’t mention it during the synopsis of the book, this book largely deals with a city-wide ban on pit bulls, which Cash obviously is. People in the town feel that pit bulls are a particularly dangerous breed of dogs, and therefore any pit bull that doesn’t have a home would be destroyed. Cash actually becomes something of a hero because of her great care for those around her, and the affect that this has on the town makes for a great ending. The book also weaves several stories together at the same time, and doesn’t tie them all together until the ending of the book. This keeps you wondering how the stories will relate to each other, and when they do intersect, it is done so in a realistic way.

Another thing I have to mention is the objectionable content in the book. As I mentioned earlier, the reason I read it is because other librarians had some objections to it. The book was objected to because of references to dog fighting, and other examples of cruelty to animals. After reading the book, I can see where these librarians are coming from. Dog fighting, and the subsequent cruelty to animals, is referenced in passing in the book. After Cash is abandoned in the field, she is captured by a shady character and put in the ring with another dog. Although Cash escapes, the other dogs that have been fighting for a while are talked about, and it isn’t a pretty scene. In addition to the dog fighting references, there is some profanity throughout the book.

The cruelty to animals and the profanity definitely raise some red flags for me. But in regards to moving the book to the YA section, I don’t think that I would do that. The book itself is definitely written for a younger reader. The sentence structure is simple, and the lead character is a young boy. Moving this book to the YA section would be taking it out of its intended audience. Having said that, I don’t know if I would want my younger siblings reading this book, so I can see it from both sides. Personally, I would leave the book in the juvenile section, but if anyone came to me with objections to the book, I could totally understand their objections. Although the book has some objectionable content, it is well written, and sheds some light on the debate between evil breeds or bad owners.

Sponge or a duck?

Well, how did this week find you? Busy, excited, a little under the weather, upset, annoyed? A few months back, the Hayden Library had a customer service workshop taught by Kate Laughlin, who also taught the Intellectual Freedom workshop that I told you about. She talked about how we had a choice to be a sponge, or a duck. We could either let all of the problems and complications really get to us, or we could let them roll off of our back. I like this reminder to have a positive attitude even when things don’t go the way you want them to, or when it isn’t the best week.

Speaking of having a positive attitude, something that could either be annoying or hilarious happened yesterday. Karen Yother and I took the library van to get some stuff from storage. The Hayden Library has two vans that it owns, and our director, John Hartung, had the newer one. Not a huge problem; the old one still runs. The problem was that the old van is used for recycling, and the entire storage space was filled to the top with cardboard boxes. Needless to say, we needed to take a trip to the dump to free up some van space. Once we headed through the dump, we drove over to our storage unit. Like most storage places, you need a code to get in, and it turns out that our code didn’t work. You could normally go up to the office and they could get you in, but the storage people were out for lunch. Turns out that the bill hadn’t gone through yet, and the system automatically starts locking people out of their accounts if the bill doesn’t go through. Obviously, it could be a very sponge or duck kind of choice. This situation could either be seen as a huge waste of time, or we could look at the bright side and think how this could very easily be used in a slapstick skit.

Yesterday also included driving to Hayden Meadows and Dalton Elementary, so I got to spend a lot of quality time with our Library Van. At the beginning of every summer, we always have some free giveaway stuff that we get from the Collaborative Summer Library Program. Although we didn’t do summer reading promotion at these schools like we did with Fernan or Bryan, we got them the free stuff and some information on when programs were going to be held.

Going back to the beginning of the week, I heard about a resource that I haven’t been utilizing. It’s called Bookletters. Bookletters is an online service with thousands of pages of information on books, films, and authors. You can also set up a customized subscription email, or choose from the long list of subscriptions that come out through Bookletters. You can also set up an event calendar. Basically it’s a database on new and old books, which include synopsizes, author and book information and a lot more. Bookletters can be accessed from our ksalibraries website. Although I don’t have a YA specific newsletter and event calendar set up, I’ll be working on it, and getting back to you in a few weeks.

A few more things to mention. I have my first Book Blurt book review, which I posted on Wednesday. This week’s was about Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl, and next week’s is going to be on Ingrid Lee’s Dog Lost.

In other news, this week is going to be the start of our summer programs. Our older teen programs aren’t until the third week of the month, but we have plenty going on for tweens (basically our middle schoolers, so around grades 6-8 even though we won’t be too precise) this week. On Monday, we have Ka-Boom science experiments. On Tuesday, we have Lightning Comics teaching us how to play Yu-Gi-Oh, and on Friday, we have our Open Game Friday where we’ll set up our Wii and have some fun.

Well that about wraps up this week, so I’ll see you on Wednesday, and always remember to be a duck.