Maze

We've started doing passive programming in the children's area of my library quite recently, and the month of March was my turn to create one of these programs.  Here's what I came up with:

I found this maze* online just by Googling "mazes" and looking at the image results.  I tried to pick a maze that had bold lines.  It couldn't be too hard (I didn't want younger kids to be discouraged), but I didn't want it to be too hard but not too easy either (didn't want it too boring for older kids).  The image size also had to be fairly large so that it would print crisply after enlarging it.

I used Microsoft Publisher to blow the image up to poster size and added the start and finish words/arrows.  When it was ready, the maze was printed on nine sheets of tabloid-size paper.  I assembled the maze, trimmed the margins as needed, and mounted it on several more sheets of red construction paper.

Once the maze was created and assembled I just hung it up on the wall.  Kids who came by could just use their eyes or a finger to find their way through the maze.  Easy!

To track participation, I also posted a sign asking them to come to us at the Children's Desk when they finished so that they could get a marble to add to the jar on the shelf nearby (not pictured).  It's amazing how well this actually worked.  Only a handful of known participants failed to come up for their marble (we'd add a marble ourselves if we noticed), and some of the younger kids were surprisingly excited about adding a marble to the jar.  At the end of the month I just counted the number of marbles in the jar to get a number to include with our program statistics.

I would absolutely call this program a success.  We had 92 marbles in the jar at the end of the month, which is a fantastic number.   What I especially liked was that this maze was a quick thing to do - most kids only needed a minute or two to find their way to the end - but it was still lots of fun.  To me, that's the perfect recipe for successful passive programming.



*I may or may not have violated some sort of copyright law by using the image of the maze in this way.  Honestly, I am never quite sure what qualifies as "fair use" and what qualifies as infringement, so I decided to just go with the best image I could find.  Judge all you like.  And if you're the creator if this maze and you're mad that I used it, please know that I'm very sorry and intended no harm.  And if anyone wants to better explain how "fair use" does/does not work, I'm all ears.

Maker Mondays - Lava Lamps & Pet Jellyfish

This month's Maker Monday program was a combination of crafts and science as we did two hands-on projects, both involving plastic bottles and colored water.

The first project, and probably the easiest of the two, was the lava lamps.  I got the basic idea for this idea from a project I saw on Pinterest (check it out!) and many similar projects with tutorials can also be found online.  The basic idea is to fill a bottle half with water (colored with a few drops of food coloring) and half with vegetable oil (baby oil also works and is clear in color, but is more expensive).  The oil and the water will not mix no matter how much you try to stir/shake the two together because of their differing densities.  To make the lava lamps work best, I recommend filling your bottles with water first and then topping them off with oil.  If you do it the other way around, you'll need to give the bottles more time for the liquids to sort themselves out before moving on to the next step or the effect will not be very exciting.

Extra bling like glitter and sequins could be added at this point to give the lamps a bit of pizazz.  Once the bottles are prepped, the real magic begins.  Simply break an alka-seltzer tablet into pieces.  Drop a piece of the tablet into the bottle and watch the colored water bubble up through the oil.  Neat!  Our testing showed that with a one-liter bottle you could put up to half of a tablet into the bottle at once, though any more than that was overkill.

The second project was a little more involved, but the finished product was totally worth the effort.  We made jellyfish in a bottle!  Instructions for this project can be found here, but I do have a few tips for anyone who might want to give this project a try. 

• When you're cutting the plastic bag to give your jellyfish legs/tentacles, remember that you're cutting off and throwing away A LOT more plastic than you're keeping.  You really only need 15-20 super-skinny tentacles.
• Related to that:  Be sure that your tentacles are skinny, skinny, skinny!  If you're looking at your tentacles and think that you could cut them in half pretty easily, then you probably should.
• Instead of using a string to tied your jellyfish's head, we used tiny rubber bands used for hair braiding.  Seemed much easier to use and provided the needed stretch.

The finished product was super cool.  I put one of these jellyfish out as a sample, and tons of people stopped to play with it.  It helped to drum up lots of interest in the program!  I tried for ages to get a good picture, but my timing wasn't very good.  Enjoy this video instead.

I had eight participants in this program, four teens and four tweens, and they all seemed to enjoy themselves.  Part of me wishes that I would have had an assistant to help them with their projects since everyone, especially the tweens, needed a little guidance and/or reassurance that they were doing everything correctly.  But we made do, and everyone's projects turned out really well. 

The cost of this program was pretty minimal since most of the materials were easily upcycled.  Both projects required empty plastic bottles.  Fortunately, I have a friend with a crazy soda addiction who buys his soda in one-liter bottles.  He saved tons and tons of bottles for me to use for this program.  We had food coloring left over from another project, and plastic shopping bags were easy to come by.  A staff member with daughters who were totally over the hair braiding phase donated tiny rubber bands to use for the jellyfish.  The only supplies that I had to purchase was the vegetable oil and alka-seltzer for the lava lamps.

Pi Day Display

Pi is a pretty magical number.  For those of you who haven't taken a math class recently and/or do not use pi on a regular basis, pi is a number that is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.  Pi is always the same number no matter the size of the circle.  It is a never-ending, non-repeating, very very very long number, usually truncated down to two decimal places:  3.14.

Math geeks in recent years have taken to celebrating Pi Day on March 14 since the date, when written out with numbers, uses the first three numbers found in Pi.  This year's Pi Day was extra special because when we included the year along with the month and date, we could expand Pi by two additional decimal places (3.1415).  Neat!

To celebrate, I did a little display all about Pi in the teen area of the library.  I found lovely printables online and mounted them on construction paper, pinning them to the bulletin boards on our shelves' endcaps. One of these was a super cool infographic with some neat facts about pi.  The other was a printout of pi's digits in much of its glory.

I also wanted to add an interactive element to this display, but didn't want to put out math worksheets because a) we're not a school, and I'm not a math teacher, and b) that's not exactly super exciting or attention-grabbing.  Instead I found a Pi-themed crossword puzzle and put them in a folder for teens to take.  Since voting has been a popular passive program for us, and since eating pie is one of the more popular methods of celebration on Pi Day, I also asked the teens to vote for their favorite kind of pie.  (For the curious, apple pie was the clear winner with 20 votes.)

Truffulla Trees

Credit for this beautiful Dr. Seuss display goes to one of my lovely co-workers.  Isn't it lovely?

The display is certainly dramatic, but my co-worker tells me that it was surprisingly easy to make.  The truffulla trees were made with large tissue paper flowers (there's lots of tutorials out there - here's one).  They were affixed to white cardboard poster tubes wrapped with black construction paper to give them their stripes.  The trees are propped up in a planter pulled from storage and surrounded by more tissue paper for the grass.  Writing with a Sharpie on a smooth stone made the "unless" stone - the perfect finishing touch.

Dr. Seuss' birthday, as well as the Read Across America initiative that celebrates this renowned author, falls on March 2.  How will you celebrate?

Books for Boys

I discovered the below blog post hidden as a draft in my archives.  I have no idea what happened there.  This is still an important topic that I feel pretty strongly about, so I'm going to share this now, backdated to the day I first wrote about this.

Yesterday I came across this blog post, written by author Shannon Hale.  Please take a moment to go and read this post.  I'll wait.

Hale is the author of a number of highly-acclaimed books for children, including The Goose Girl, The Princess Academy, Rapunzel's Revenge, and The Princess in Black.  She's a great writer.  Many of Hale's books do feature girls as the central characters and they do often feature fairy tail-esque characters and settings.  But her characters also have a lot of spunk and many of her books feature adventurous plots.  In my opinion, there is nothing to be found in these books that cannot be appreciated by boys and girls alike.

Yet when I look at all of the reader's advisory that I have done over the past several years, how often have I given one of Shannon Hale's books to a boy?  I'm not sure that I ever have.  I do, however, regularly give her books to girls.

I truly don't think that this is a choice that I have consciously made.  I think that it's just the sort of response that comes from years and years of social conditioning regarding what boys want versus what girls want.

This phenomenon is not something exclusive to libraries.  We see situations like this at toy stores all the time.  Think about LEGOs, for example.  There are "girl" LEGO Friends sets, hued with pink bricks and featuring larger character figures great for storytelling.  The good news is that we live in a refined enough society that we know that it's also okay for girls to pick up a Star Wars LEGO set, or the Pirates set.  But is it socially acceptable for a boy to play with the pink LEGO Friends set?  Not so much.

I'm glad that we've become the sort of society where girls have, for the most part, been told that they can do whatever they want.  They can read "girl" books, or they can read "boy" books.  But we still have a ways to go when it comes to gender equality.  We now need to also lift our boys up and tell them that they can play with the girls and read "girl" books and play with the "girl" toys.  Let's dare to take this even a step further.  We need to stop categorizing books and toys in this way at all.  Let's just call them "books" and "toys" and be done with it.

It's one thing to have these noble ambitions in one's head.  It's one thing to understand them logically.  It's another thing entirely to actually put these gender-equalizing views into practice.  After all, we're looking to undo more than a 200,000 years of gender bias. 

So my challenge to myself is this:  When a child comes to the library asking for a book suggestion, if it seems appropriate to the child's interests I will attempt to give a boy a book with a female protagonist.  I will not apologize for it.

Maker Mondays - Cupcake Wars

This year I have started a series of programs for teens and tweens (grades 5+) affectionately dubbed, "Maker Mondays."  Once each month (yes, on a Monday) participants gather to do some sort of hands-on project.   Sometimes we might do craft projects, sometimes we might do something more science based.  No matter what the project may be, each month's activity is very hands-on and often requires some creativity.  I'm also trying hard to make sure that there's a component where the participants are working together and collaborating/sharing as they work.

Our first Maker Mondays program was Cupcake Wars.  This is a program that I've had on my radar for some time, and it seemed to fit in nicely with the theme.  I set out a ton of frostings and toppings, and gave each participant three cupcakes.  The teens were given three challenges for decorating their cupcakes:

1)  One cupcake could be decorated any way desired.  Anything goes!
2)  One cupcake had to be decorated to represent a book.  Any book was fine!  A book display was on hand to provide inspiration.
3)  One cupcake had to use at least one of the ingredients from the "unusual toppings" table.

I decided not to do any actual voting or judging to declare a winner, though I did ask all participants to take turns showing their cupcakes to the group and talking about their inspirations and what ingredients they chose to use.  At the end the kids were allowed to eat their cupcakes and/or take them home.
 

Food-based programs are always hugely popular, and this one was no exception with 16 total participants.  Everyone seemed to have a great time, and it didn't even take too much cajoling to get the teens to share their creations. 

It's a good thing that food-based programs are so popular, because they unfortunately are always a tad expensive.  Let's face it, junk food and candy aren't cheap! 

To save a bit on money, I bought boxed cake mix and made my own cupcakes to use in this program.  This saved us a ton of money compared to the cost of purchasing cupcakes from a bakery, but required a bit more time and effort on my end.  I also suggest that other librarians looking to do this program double check their library's rules regarding serving food before making their own cupcakes to be sure that your policies allow for this.

I purchased several different types of canned frosting for the teens/tweens to use.  I also provided a few containers of easy-squeeze decorating icing.

Toppings for the cupcakes were easily the largest expense.  To put this program together, I suggest first raiding your own cupboards at home to see if there is anything that you can spare a small amount of.  There were tons of leftovers since we really only needed a very small amount of each topping, but we did want to have a wide variety of toppings to choose from.  Many of the leftovers were saved to be used as snacks for upcoming programs.

Some of the toppings that I made available included:

• Oreo Cookies
• Chocolate Chips
• Butterscotch Chips
• Raspberries
• Blueberries
• Sweedish Fish
• M&Ms
• Pixie Stix
• Snickers Bars
• Reece's Peanut Butter Cups
• Pretzels
• Graham Crackers
• Marshmallows
• Peanuts
• Trail Mix

I also had a table full of "unusual toppings" that you might not normally think to include on a cupcake.  The teens were allowed to use toppings from this table at any time, but were required to use at least one of these for one of their cupcakes:

• Flavor-Blasted Goldfish
• Chex Mix
• Corn Chips
• Sun-Dried Tomatoes
• Crispy Pepper Chips
• Beef Jerkey
• Olives
• Jalapenos
• Shredded Cheddar Cheese

Cover Art - Coincidence?

While perusing my Goodreads account, I went to visit my "medical issues" bookshelf.  (I have various shelves that describe themes/topics addressed in the book.)  I couldn't help but notice something:

All of these books - the most recent 20 books that I put on this shelf all have covers that contain lots of blue and/or green.  I wonder if there's something about this color that publishers associate with this theme, or if this is all just a striking coincidence.

Thoughts?

Today at Work...

Sometimes I find myself doing some pretty interesting things at the library.  Today, I spent a little time playing with magnetic poetry.

I promise, this was a completely legitimate use of my time!  The poetry and easel arrived in today's delivery, and I just had to open it up and play try it out as a way of getting ready for an upcoming passive program in honor of National Poetry Month in April.   Stay tuned for the full story!

2015 ALA Youth Media Awards

On February 2, the American Library Association announced the winners of their Youth Media Awards.  The oldest, most prestigious, and most well-known of these awards are the Caldecott Medal (given to, "the most distinguished American picture book for children") and the Newbery Medal (given to, "the most outstanding contribution to children's literature").  For a complete list of the medal and honor books for all 22 awards, please visit this website.

This year was a fairly landmark year when it comes to these awards.  Here are this year's winners:

Caldecott Medal

The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat
Beekle is an imaginary friend.  All imaginary friends live together in a magical land until they are imagined by a child and join this child in the real world.  Unfortunately, Beekle's turn never seems to come.  So he takes mattes into his own hands and journeys all alone to the real world to look for a friend.  Eventually he finds a child, Alice, who is the perfect companion.  Dan Santat's signature style really shines in this story.

Honor Books:
Nana in the City by Lauren Castillo
The Noisy Paint Box:  The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky's Abstract Art by Barb Rosenstock, illisturated by Mary GrandPré
Sam & Dave Dig a Hole by Mark Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen
Viva Frida by Yuyi Morales
The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus by Jen Bryant, Illustrated by Melissa Sweet
This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki, illustrated by Jillian Tamaki

Newbery Medal

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander
Josh and his twin brother Jordan are the best there is on their middle-school basketball court.  After all, they learned the game from their father, who once won a European championship and would have played pro for the Lakers had an injury not ended his playing career.  Josh narrates this story of his own potential championship season with fantastic poetry that really captures the movement and intensity both on and off the court.

Honor Books:
El Deafo by Cece Bell
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Wilson

Thoughts
What a year!  There's so much to say that I don't even think that I can do it properly with prose.  Bullet points it is.

• NONE of the Newbery award winners are written in traditional prose.  Two are written in verse and one is a graphic novel.  Wow.  Speaking of:
• A graphic novel (El Deafo) winning a Newbery Honor!  That's a big deal.  It's never happened before.  This is history in the making, folks.  I'd seen this book in the talks but wasn't sure if or how the committee could consider it because graphic novels rely so heavily on illustration (a factor that I think that the committee is not supposed to consider when awarding this honor).  But now we have our answer, and I think it's fantastic.  Nice to see graphic novels get a little credence.  Speaking of:
• Another graphic novel (This One Summer) winning a Caldecott Honor!  This is somehow less shocking since graphic novels rely on illustration and this award is given specifically for illustration.  But somehow it's never happened before until this year.  In retrospect, this is shocking.  More literary history!  What surprises me a bit more about this particular honor is that the Caldecott is specifically for books for children up to age 14, and I really think that this particular book really pushes that limit.  Fourteen is about the youngest I'd give this graphic novel too, and I kind of feel like that's pushing it a bit.  It's worth noting that this book also was graced with another silver medal, a Printz Honor, given to outstanding books for young adults.  Still, there's no denying that these illustrations are gorgeous.
• So many Caldecotts!  Six honor books, plus the medal.  And I did not see most of these books coming - only Sam & Dave Dig a Hole and Viva Frida were really on my radar.  Not sure if that speaks to my lack of reading this year, or to this year's field of published material.  

A Big Number

This month in the children's department we are doing a Valentine's Day passive program.  We have a big jar of conversation hears on display, and we've challenged everyone to guess how many are in the jar.  It's all quite charming, and that big jar of candy has been a real attention-grabber.

Today a group of our regulars (two kids, age 5, and their nanny) came in and noticed the jar.  The nanny tried to get her kids to take a guess.  This activity is naturally a bit of a challenging for younger kids who do not yet possess refined estimation skills.  The nanny knew this, and really just tried to get the kids to guess a really big number.  The first child's guess?  One million.

The conversation with the second child is what really cracked me up:

"How many hearts do you think are in the jar?  Think of a really big number."

"Infinity!"

This lead to a brief, but very nice conversation about how infinity is never ending and there was definitely not a never-ending number of conversation hearts in the jar.  The kids seemed to accept this restriction on their guesses and the conversation continued.

"So let's guess again.  Think of a really big number that isn't infinity."

"Ten!"

From one extreme to the other.  Well done, kid.