The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

Did everyone watch the Oscars last night? If you did, you may have seen an award presented for Best Animated Short Film. This year's winner was this delightful featurette:

It does my librarian heart proud. Enjoy!

Color Storytime

This week I was able to lead a storytime all about the colors of the rainbow. Here are the books that we read:

A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni
While elephants are gray and pigs are pink, the chameleon does not have a color of his own. Instead, chameleons change color to match whatever it is they are resting on. One little chameleon desperately tries to have a color of his own by standing on one leaf forever. This works for awhile, until autumn comes and the leaf changes color. Finally the chameleon meets another chameleon and realizes that it might be okay to change colors as long as he has a friend with him.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr., illustrated by Eric Carle
A group of children look at a series of different animals, all of which are different colors. This story - a real classic - is rhythmic and repetitive and great for storytime. I like to try to get the kids to make some of the animal noises as we read along.

Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh
Three white mice, hiding from the cat on some white paper, discover three jars of paint. The mice have some fun with the red, yellow, and blue paint and soon discover that they can make new colors by mixing two colors together.

During storytime we also played a game where the children looked at their clothes and picked out what colors they are wearing. The activity is based on a song ("If Your Clothes Have Any Red"), but I personally don't like to use the song. Instead we just look for colors in our clothing without the song's assistance. If the kids really need to get some wiggles out (likely), I'll add some actions for fun. For example, I might say, "If you are wearing blue, then jump up and down!" Using a more organic, free-form activity instead of the song means that we can have more of a conversation about colors. I'm also not restricted by the colors used in the song, giving me the freedom to point out colors like pink or orange.

Another song / flannelboard / prop story that we did was "Rainbow in a Pot". This is one of my favorite storytime activities!

Rainbow in a Pot

Take some cherries, put them in the pot
Stir it, stir it, stir it a lot.
Pour it out now what will it be?
The prettiest red you ever did see.

Take an orange...
Take a lemon…
Take a lime…
Take some berries…
Take some grapes…

Red and orange, yellow and green,
Blue and purple, colors are seen.
Put them together, what will they be?
The prettiest rainbow you ever did see!

I used a large pot (actually, a plastic cauldron from Halloween) as a prop in front of me, and asked the kids to imagine that they had their own magic pots as we sang the song. As we sang, I would hold up colorful pictures of the fruit in question, printed off of the Internet. I would put the picture in the pot and ask the kids to help me stir. I would then pull out a strip of paper with the appropriate color and stick it up on our board for everyone to see. By the end of the song, we have a beautiful rainbow!


For a craft project, we made colorful paper chains. Each child was given a series of 2x11 inch strips of paper in all of the colors of the rainbow. I put out glue sticks and had the kids and their parents construct their own chains. One could debate the merits of glue versus tape or a stapler for the purposes of this project, but in my opinion the glue sticks work just fine.

My Mom Is a Robot

This morning I overheard a little boy, about 3 1/2 years old, describe his mother to another child:

"My mom is no ordinary mom. She's actually a robot. I figured it out."

Sadly for me, the other child didn't seem terribly interested in the boy's mother's robotic tendencies and the conversation quickly shifted back to normal preschool concerns, like blocks and puzzles. But I have questions for this kid. How exactly did you discover hat your mom is a robot? Is she truly a robot, or is she actually some kind of cyborg? Are there other Mommy-Bots? What about Daddy-Bots and Baby-Bots? Has she been programmed to follow the Three Laws, or do we need to worry about an uprising?

Mystery ABC Book

Today I took an interesting question from a patron. A mother was in the library and noticed our display of alphabet books, which reminded her of a book she had read with her oldest daughter years ago. She said that the book was wonderful because it only had one letter on each page and the whole thing was done in bright primary colors. She also made a point of mentioning that the letters themselves were large but unembellished - no fancy fonts, no letters created by objects, etc. We quickly established that the book she was remembering was not currently on display.

Well, there are a lot of alphabet books in the library so I knew this would be a challenging search. Nothing immediately sprang to mind so I turned to my good friend Novelist for help. This database (available at many public libraries across the country and provided for all Wisconsin residents through BadgerLink) is a wonderful resource for questions like this where a patron remembers a few details from a book but not the title or author. I typed "alphabet, one letter per page" into the search bar and got a whole list of possible books.

Fortunately the book we were looking for was only the second book on the list of results. We were also lucky enough to find the book was on the shelf! The book we were searching for turned out to be Max's ABC by Rosemary Wells. In this story Max's ants escape from their ant farm. Chaos ensues until his sister Ruby comes to the rescue. Each page features a different letter of the alphabet drawn in large, bright, plain type in the illustration and includes a number of alliterative words that move the story along and reinforce the letter's sound. While perhaps not what I would describe as primary, the colors used to illustrate the letters and the backgrounds are definitely bright and bold.

Both Mom and her oldest daughter were able to confirm that this was the book they remembered after leafing through a few pages. They decided to take the story home with them to share with a younger sibling.

Looking for more great alphabet books? Here are a few others that were featured in our book display:

LMNO Peas by Keith Baker
Bad Kitty by Nick Bruel
Alphabet Under Construction by Denise Flemming
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr.
Superhero ABC by Bob McLeod
Apple Pie ABC by Alison Murray
A Isn't for Fox: An Isn't Alphabet by Wendy K. Ulmer

Unattended Children

Dear Parents of Young Children:

Thank you for bringing your children to the library. You are doing both your children and yourselves a great service by taking advantage of the books, movies, magazines, and computer access that the library has to offer. I am truly glad that you are here.

I understand that it can be difficult to pry your offspring away from the children's area. I can also empathize with your desire to simply spend 60 seconds alone in the adult section or at your car to quickly find what you need without youthful interruption. Unfortunately, neither of these circumstances qualifies as a good reason to leave your children alone in the library.

Let's get one thing clear: I am not a baby-sitter. I am paid to manage the library's children's collection, not to manage the children themselves. It's not that I don't love your kids - I'm sure they're great. But I have work to do that doesn't involve making sure that your children remain calm in your absence.

When you waltz past the children's desk and casually comment that you'll be back from the car / bathroom / circulation desk / adult area very soon, you probably don't think much of it. If you do stop to think, you probably imagine that you are doing your children a favor by making another responsible adult aware of your absence just in case. But if you know that your children might need a grown-up's attention while you are off doing who-knows-what (even if only for a moment or two!), then why are you leaving them with me, a virtual stranger who has other things to worry about?

Your 30-second detour has now turned into a 3-minute discussion of the library's unattended children policy. By the end of it, neither of us is happy. Please spare both of us this awkward conversation and remember that the library is a public place. Anything could happen to your children. If you are even remotely concerned that your children will need an adult to guard their happiness and/or safety please make sure that you are supervising them at all time. I'm sorry, but I cannot do it for you. I have programs to plan, books to order and catalog, publicity to create, and a half-dozen other patrons in the room who need my assistance.

If you really and truly do think that your children will be fine alone for a minute and you are willing to take the risk, then do us both a favor. Just don't tell me that you're leaving them alone.* Spare us the conversation about library policy. If your kids are well-behaved I probably won't notice that you're gone if you come back quickly (remember, I'm very busy). Just make sure that your children know exactly where you are going to be and how to find you if they need you. Empower your children to take care of themselves so that you will not feel compelled to ask me to take care of them for you. That's all I ask.

Sincerely,

Your Children's Librarian (NOT Your Baby-Sitter)



*Disclaimer: I do not officially condone this course of action due to the potential liability issues at stake here. I do admit however that it is - with the right family as determined on a strict case-by-case basis - not the end of the world if they children know what to expect and how to deal with it.

I've Got the Moves...

I started my new job last week! All is going well so far, and I have a Cute Kid story to share already!

As part of my orientation I went to shadow my new supervisor as she did an outreach storytime at a local school. While we waited for the kids to assemble, I observed a boy (about 4 years old) playing in the back of the room. He was singing to himself as he played:

"I've got the moves like Jagger. I've got the moves like Jagger. I've got the moves like Jagger..."

ROFL