LEGO Club

This past Saturday I had the privilege of holding my first LEGO Club meeting at the library!

The LEGO Club was actually started last spring by my predecessor. The club took a hiatus for the summer and met again for the first time a few days ago. The club is actually very informal. Basically I put out several buckets of LEGOs and let the kids go nuts. It's open to kids between the ages of 6-12, which is a pretty wide range but actually works pretty well for this event. We had several sibling pairs in attendance for our first meeting of the fall season. The kids started out working with their sibling(s), who they were the most comfortable with, and over the course of the hour slowly started intermingling and working with the other kids. That's one of the great things about this program: It really gives kids the chance to be creative and be social in a non-competitive environment. I didn't even really do anything to guide them - I just let the kids go to town and stood back to watch them have fun.

One thing I am going to change for next time is the length of the club's meeting. Past meetings were always an hour long, but I was met with loud groans when the hour was up. The kids were just getting into the swing of things! Next time we'll keep the doors open for a full hour and a half to give them some extra build time. I also need to see if I can buy a few extra pieces - big green boards are a must, as are more LEGO people.

This was such a great program and I'm excited to keep it going. I'm hoping that these kids will remain as enthusiastic about this even as I am!

Bink and Gollie

Bink and Gollie are great friends. The best of friends. Marvelous companions to the end, using their remarkable treehouse as a base for their adventures. But these two girls are vastly different too. Bink is short, impetuous and loves her brightly colored socks. Gollie is tall and a bit more serious but nonetheless has a flair for adventure. Though they do not always agree, the two girls share three delightful adventures - one involving Bink's socks, one with an adventure in the Andes, and another featuring a third marvelous companion - in this brilliant new book, Bink and Gollie, written by aclaimed authors Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee.

I have to say that this is one of the most brilliant books that I've seen this year. Not quite a picture book, not quite an easy reader, and not quite a chapter book, this is a piece of work that truly stands on its own and could appeal to a wide range of readers. The illustrations by Tony Fucile are vibrant and fun, with soft lines for the background and bright colors for the two girls. There are only a few sentences on each page, but the vocabulary features delightfully big words (including "spectacular" and "baffled") and a formalized tone that will make readers smile. This is a book that I truly envision being shared - parents reading with their children, and kids sharing with their friends. This deceptively and elegantly simple book begs to be read aloud and the characters beg to be loved - and with spunky and imaginative girls like Bink and Gollie readers will find both tasks easy.

Overall Grade: A+

Bulletin Boards

One of my responsibilities at my new job is to decorate the children's area. Spruce it up; make it special. One easy way to to that on on the two large bulletin boards in the hall that leads from the children's area to our meeting/programming room.

I have a few opinions about what makes a good bulletin board in the library. It should be fun. It should capture your attention. Color is a must. But I also really think that it should have something to do with the library itself. Somehow these spaces should promote what the library has to offer - a part of the collection, programs, or even reading/literacy as a whole. After all, I didn't get my MLS so that I could work as an interior decorator, so any decorating that I do is going to (generally) accomplish something.

Here's my first board, the larger of the two:


To help get geared up for fall I decided to do something seasonal. I immediately thought of trees and colorful leaves. The tree is pieced together from about 20 pieces of brown construction paper. I pinned the paper up to the board and then used a box cutter to trim the paper to the shape I wanted. Turned out pretty good if I do say so myself! The smaller leaves which fill in the space were left over from a past display and were done on a die-cut machine. For the larger leaves, the acorns, and the squirrels I actually found a box full of large outlined images (aprox. 9"x6") that seemed designed to be copied and used for classroom activities. I made photocopies of the shapes on colored paper, cut them out, and pinned them up.

This season also lends itself to a delightfully cheesy catch phrase: "Fall into a good book." I had hoped to actually print off cover art of several different books to put onto the falling leaves to go with this theme and promote these titles, but unfortunately the library does not have a color printer! Black and white images would not do. Perhaps in the coming days I'll make color copies of actual book jackets shrunk down to the appropriate size to suit this purpose.

Here is my second bulletin board:


This board is definitely more geared for parents, featuring descriptions of the six early literacy skills that experts believe that children need to master before they can become good readers (more on this later). Each sheet describes one skill and tells parents ways that they can help to encourage this skill at home. The building blocks along the bottom are there for visual interest and support the idea that these skills are, "the building blocks of reading." I like to talk about these skills during storytime whenever possible and having this information posted for parents to explore on their own - especially so near the room where storytime takes place - can only help to promote these ideas.

Another bonus - because this board isn't seasonal, I can leave it up as long as I need to!

Mockingjay

Good news: I'm safely moved and have survived the first two weeks at my new job! I'd say things are going well. My Internet access is still a tad shaky (trouble with wireless = not able to use laptop), but hopefully that'll be cleared up soon-ish so that I can get this blog rolling again.

Amidst all of this month's chaos, however, I did manage to read the book that I've been most looking forward to all year: Mockingjay!

As the final installment in the Hunger Games trilogy opens, Katniss finds herself in a difficult position. District 12 has been completely destroyed. Peeta is being held captive by the Capitol and is certain to face nothing but torture and death. And the rebels who lifted her from the arena desperately want Katniss to pose as a figurehead for the rebellion - their Mockingjay. Distraught by the violence around her but desperate for revenge, Katniss agrees. But will she simply become a pawn in another game - one perhaps even more dangerous than the Hunger Games?

Suzanne Collins has once again done what she is so great at: She has taken a piece of very challenging subject matter and tackled it from all sides. She has created dynamic and interesting characters who crawl under your skin and make you eager for more. The world building as readers explore the underground District 13 is superb. The writing continues to leave you breathless. In these respects, Collins is a crafter of stories like no other.

This book did not go the way I had expected. Mostly I actually think that this was a good thing as the surprises kept me on my toes. And just as in the final volumes of The Underland Chronicles, Mockingjay's exploration of war and violence leaves readers with much to think about as all sides of the argument are explored. Overall, this book is superb. But I can't help thinking of what I had hoped for that we didn't see. I had hoped for a tad more spark from Katniss. Not much, just a little. While Collins does not pull any punches in this action-packed volume, it seemed to me that the ending was a bit rushed. And I do kind of feel that Collins took the easy way out in regards to her expertly-created love triangle. Does it work? Absolutely. Is it great? Certainly. Was it perfect? Maybe, maybe not. Personally, this reader wants to tackle the book a second time to see how it resonates upon a slower, less ravenous reading.

Overall Grade: A-