The Internet Is Alive--With The Sound Of Intelligent, Passionate Librarians Speaking!

Wow! It has been an amazing start to 2013 throughout library-land online!  Although I maintain this blog and a Twitter account, I've generally been much more of a consumer than a contributor to the wonderful world of librarian, educators, kid lit, and YA lit bloggers.  The simplest reason for this fact is the sad reality that I have yet to figure out how to balance a regular blogging schedule with both my job and my life beyond work. However, the more powerful (and less embarrassing) reason is that there is simply so many amazing librarians, educators, and authors sharing a plethora of outstanding material!  And as a young and still very inexperienced librarian, it's both intensely overwhelming and incredibly comforting.  I don't believe I could have survived either my adventures as a grad student intern in children's departments at public libraries or my first year and half as a middle and high school librarian without the wild and wonderful online community surrounding libraries.

So why am I writing this post now?  After all, I've been reading blogs and following Twitter feeds related to reading, education, kid/YA lit, and librarianship for about 3 years.  Well, it just happens that there has been a bumper crop of brilliant and incredibly relevant posts written about librarianship, youth services, kid/YA lit, and more over fews weeks.  And so I thought--why don't I pull together a bunch of these awesome links in one place?

As usual, taking time to check up on the latest from Liz Burns (@LizB) and Kelly Jensen (@catagator) on Twitter pays off big time.  Both pointed us toward a fabulous piece posted by Julie Jurgens (@himissjulie) about modern librarianship, the frequently skewed spotlight in the library world, and the under-appreciated daily realities of librarian life.  It's not only a very important piece of writing-- it's also a great conversation starter, provoking thought and discussion about very diverse and complicated world of modern librarianship.  As someone who got into libraries with the goal of working with children and teens and who did her first semi professional work in children's departments of public libraries, I have to say that the librarians working on the ground--especially those working with children and youth--do not always get the recognition they very much deserve.  Rehearsing puppet shows, leading toddlers through movements of a new storytime welcome song, helping a 10 year old decide on a new series to begin reading while he waits for the next Rick Riordan novel to be published, or showing a teen where the Sarah Dessen books are shelved--these do not sound like glamorous activities to many people.  But they are the backbone of libraries, of literacy, and of education in United States.  If we care about education, about children, and about our future, we absolutely must care about all libraries and librarians, especially those serving children and youth.  And we have to demonstrate that care though action and advocacy.  Because picture books and story times and puppets and children's series fiction MATTER-- even if they don't sound "cutting edge" or "sexy."

Whew! Anyway, that's my two cents on the subject.  There have been many more eloquent responses from librarians--check out Kelly Jensen's recent posts over at Stacked and Julie Jurgen's twitter feed (@himissjulie) to track some of them.

In other fun and fabulous librarian blog news, both Abby Johnson and Kelly Jensen recently wrote up some particularly wonderful posts as part of their regular features "Around the Interwebs" and "Links of Note."   Both collect a bunch of really great and diverse links that I will not try to recreate here--go check them out!  And then go follow the tags for those features and check out their past posts for even more online goodies.

Meanwhile the brilliant Jennifer LaGarde AKA LibraryGirl (@jenniferlagarde) posted a wonderful piece about neuroscience, affective learning, and libraries! Such a great example of taking recent research and tying it directly to real, everyday work in libraries!

Yesterday, awesome librarian Sarah Bean Thompson over at GreenBeanTeenQueen posted a really helpful piece about reading and writing critically about children's and young adult literature!  She not only gives some great advice (especially for newbies like me) but also references some specific professional books and links out Kelly Jensen's critical reviewing cheat sheet  as well as her posts on the value of critical reviews and on critical reviews & critical advocacy.

I also want to include a link to The Nerdy Book Club, an awesome collaborative blog that I have only recently started reading regularly--shame on me! The posts in the last 5 days alone are all amazing and if you aren't already checking the blog regularly, start today!

Finally I just want to express my general thanks to all the wonderful librarians, educators, and authors sharing their insights, ideas, and advice with such generosity! Take it from one newbie librarian--your contributions are insanely valuable and greatly admired;  you make me proud to be a librarian and your examples constantly challenge me to be a better librarian.  Thank you! 

Check out my ever growing Diigo list of Librarian/Educator Bloggers to see why I'm so thankful! 

Teen Read Week: A Rookie's Second Run.

Our "It Came From The Library" display of scary & spooky books.

When I started at my current job last fall, Teen Read Week had not previously been part of the programming schedule in our school library.  Considering I had about a month to pull together a range of activities that work with our very crowded school schedule, I felt that our first ever TRW celebration went really well.  I hit on a few easy but fun programs that work well with our population and started giving the library an even more prominent and (I hope!) positive presence on campus.

This year I knew that the planning and implementation process would be a little different, especially because we now have a Student Library Advisory Board.  Our SLAB (as they've taken to calling themselves) was formed at the very end of the school year in May; I put out an application and was thrilled to get great responses from some fabulous kids.  However, since the group is newly formed and they are all busy kids with a somewhat jammed school schedule, our meeting times have been somewhat rushed and infrequent.  So I knew that Teen Read Week would be a bit of gamble in terms of their levels of involvement, especially in the implementation.  However, despite time crunches, bad weather, and crazy schedules, TRW2012 went really well if I may say so myself.  To perhaps inspire your future TRW programming, here's a little breakdown of what was happening at our humble library during TRW this year!

What makes a good Teen Read Week at our library?

• LOTS OF SUGAR!  If there's one thing that nearly all the students and faculty now know about me, it's that I love to bake--and I am unafraid to utilize my skills in the kitchen to "encourage" involvement and participation in library-related activities!  One sugar-related activity we held during the week came directly from one of my very enthusiastic SLAB members: Book Checkout Trick or Treating.  We filled a plastic cauldron bucket with candy and kept it at the central desk all week; every time anyone checked out a book (or DVD, etc), she could grab a piece of candy.  Note that using a cauldron bucket instead of a plastic jack o'lantern allowed me to label it the Checkout Cauldron, which satisfied my deep enjoyment of cheesy, alliterative titles.    
• STUDENT CREATIONS! One of the simplest but most enjoyable activities we've done during Teen Read Week for the last two years combines a couple of our students' favorite things: cookies AND creativity.  I created templates of mini-posters with the following questions on them:
• What do you read for fun?
• When do you read for fun?
• Where do you read for fun?
• Why do you read for fun?  

 I copied these templates on colored paper and then I proceeded to go home and bake my little heart out!  Several of my students baked cookies as well.  On the appointed day, we ran our Reading Is Sweet campaign from the beginning of classes through the library closing at 5pm.  Throughout the day, students (and faculty!) decorated posters with words and/or drawings in response to one of the questions--in exchange for a delicious homemade cookie.  I've now hung all the posters up as a garland through the library and I see students and teachers suddenly pausing to look up at them all the time--our student tour guides point them out while showing potential students around the school!

Get a taste of the awesome responses we got from this activity! 

• CONTESTS AND LOTS OF FREE STUFF!  We continued to provide opportunities for students to tap into their creative instincts by running a scary story writing contest, open to both middle and upper school students.   Additionally, I held raffles for copies of several recently released books--a consistently popular and easy to run activity.  
• MOVIE NIGHT--AND MORE FOOD! As requested by my advisory board, we concluded our TRW celebration with a scary movie night in the library.  One of my board members suggested that we let the upper school student vote on the movies and so we created two short lists--one of traditional horror/scary movie and one of nostalgic, Halloween classics.  Then I sent out a Survey Monkey with both lists about two weeks in advance.  As the same student suggested, we added a bonus question to the survey: students could choose to type in their name and be entered a raffle for a half dozen homemade Halloween cupcakes.  Using our library and a nearby lounge space, we were able to show the winning movies from both categories simultaneously, allowing attendee a choice.  I purchased drinks and snacks--and baked more goodies, of course.  And despite a sudden rainstorm and cancellations of earlier evening sports games, we had around a dozen kids come out to this first ever evening movie night.  Most importantly, all who attended had a wonderful time and the buzz--even from a smaller group of attendees--was highly positive! 

But how do we really measure the success of our Teen Read Week celebration?

The plethora of positive responses from our teens! 

We had lots and lots of excited teens passing through the library all that week.  Students continue to look up at the little posters waving above their heads in the library, pointing their own out to friends or giggling at particularly funny creations.  Best of all--the positive student responses have continued.  The recent issue of the school newspaper included TWO articles about the library: a piece about Teen Read Week that included interviews from me and from a couple students and a piece about our Student Library Advisory Board that contained quotes from me and from one of our Board members.  

How did all of you celebrate Teen Read Week?  

And a Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Booktalk Breakdown: Secrets, Lies, and Spies

So when I'm not wandering around the internet, reading young adult books, or indulging in my many random t.v. obsessions, I'm a librarian working with 7-12 grade students at an independent all girls school.  As part of my job, I visit both the 7th and 8th grade classes during their weekly grade-level meetings approximately once every three or four weeks with a booktalk.  As I say in my little bio in the sidebar here, I am a rookie librarian; I finished my graduate program in August and started my job a few weeks later.  Booktalking, when librarians or teachers use their creativity and wits to tease and sell books to students, is a standard tool in the youth services librarian's tool belt.  So I was fairly nervous for my first booktalks this fall.  However, I've been pleasantly surprised at how well most of my booktalks have gone so far this year.  Now that I've settled in a little bit, I wanted to try and change up my pretty basic booktalking methods.  Ally Carter's fabulous and fun novels are incredibly popular with our 7th and 8th graders; her newest Gallagher Girls novel comes out in March so it seemed like perfect opportunity to try out a more ambitious booktalk.  Since I'd like to include more library programming posts here, it also seemed like a great opportunity to try out a new occasional blog feature, breaking down my process of developing, creating, and implementing a booktalk.

The Gallagher Girls series, for those who might not spend lots of time with 12 and 13 year old girls, is about an elite school for young women with unique gifts--specifically, gifts for international intrigue. Cammie "The Chameleon" Morgan, our protagonist and narrator, is the headmistress' daughter, a CIA legacy, and a specialist in disappearing into the crowd--hence, her nickname.  So, first I gathered together other fun novels with spies, mystery, and intrigue.

I settled on three novels, all of which are the first in series.

The Liar Society by Lisa and Laura Roecker


As I noted in my review a few months ago, this debut is a fun if imperfect mystery that combines elements from E. Lockhart's The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (elite private school with secret societies) and Veronica Mars (angry outcast teen sleuth searching for the truth about her dead best friend).  It opens with a great hook--a cryptic email from the protagonist's dead best friend.  I typed up the email on my own account and took a screenshot, which I placed into the Power Point slideshow that I used with the booktalk.  A little set up, flash the email up on the screen, and then a final hook sentence and this book was sold!

Inside The Shadow City (Kiki Strike #1) by Kristen Miller

Ananka Fishbein lives a very ordinary life--until one day she sees someone or something creeping out of a sinkhole across the street from her family's New York City apartment.  Ananka decides to investigate and discovers a hidden city underneath Manhattan's streets, an awful lot of rats, a group of renegade girl scouts, and the mysterious Kiki Strike.  Suddenly Ananka's life has been transformed from ordinary to extraordinary.  I did a second person sell with this novel, starting: "You have lived an very un-extraordinary life..."  It certainly helped that as soon as I held the novel up and clicked my slideshow to the cover image, a student yelled out: " Oh my God, I read that--it's soo good!"   

A Spy in the House (The Agency #1) by Y.S. Lee

After a sudden rescue from the gallows, young orphan Mary Quinn is surprised when she's offered an unusual opportunity: an education at Miss. Scrimshaw's Academy for Girls.  Now seventeen years old, Mary learns that her education has prepared for more than a career as a mere governess.  The Academy is actually a cover for The Agency, an independent group of female investigators who take advantage of the Victorian assumptions about women to solve cases when the police can't.  For Mary's first case, she must infiltrate the household of a wealthy merchant suspected of international smuggling and dig through his family's many dangerous--and deadly--secrets.  I was a little unsure about the reception I would get for this novel; historical fiction is frequently a bit of a gamble with a mixed group of middle schoolers.  But I was happily proved wrong and this one sold quite well!


Once I had selected these readalikes, I began working on the other portion of my booktalk.  Recently, I've been working on creating my own book trailers using iMovie.  This booktalk proved the ideal opportunity to try and work in one of my experiments.  I didn't want to do a traditional booktalk for the Gallagher Girls books because so many of the students have already read at least the first novel in the series.  So instead I made this little trailer that acts as a introduction to the premise of the whole series, with a hook at the end for the new title coming out in March.

I then embedded the Youtube version of this trailer into a Power Point presentation.  I decided to add slides with the cover images of each book as well, a practice that I might try to use in many of my future booktalks since it allows more students to see the cover and cover images are key selling point with my students.  The room used for the seventh grade class meetings has a Smart Board and I just hooked my laptop up, tested everything out beforehand, and got the presentation cued up for the start of the meeting.  Considering this booktalk was my first with any kind of media other than my own voice, I was more nervous than usual.  However, it went incredibly well and I had even more trouble than usual deciding how to distribute the one or two copies of each book among the ten to twenty kids who wanted it.

So there's my first Booktalk Breakdown!  I'm beginning to work on another slightly more adventurous booktalk on dystopian fiction for my Hunger Games-obsessed eighth graders and if it comes together, then I'll post another breakdown!