Not a Biography

A woman came in today and asked if we had any books about Justin Bieber for her daughter.  Apparently she needed such a thing for a book report.  Unfortunately for her, the few books we have about the pop singer were checked out.  I asked:

"Can I help you find something else?  Does your daughter need a biography for her report?"
"No, she doesn't need a biography.  She needs a book about a famous person."

...

Oh boy.

Guitar Notes

Lyla seems to be perfect.  She gets perfect grades, has perfect friends, and plays the cello perfectly.  But despite how wonderful things seem, Lyla isn't happy with her life.  Tripp, on the other hand, is more of a loner with his own issues whose only comfort - his guitar - has been taken away by his mother in the hopes that he'll make some friends without the guitar crutch.  The two find themselves sharing a practice room at school, with Tripp using the room on odd days and Lyla on even days.  What begins as a few notes about practice room etiquette (please throw away your trash) soon evolves into an unlikely friendship as they bond over Tripp's borrowed guitar.  Lyla and Tripp share secrets with each other and challenge each other to write songs and to look at their music in different ways.  But circumstances and well-meaning parents threaten to end Tripp and Lyla's friendship just as it is starting to flourish. 

In Guitar Notes, author Mary Amatto has created a wonderful story of friendship.  It was great to get at the emotional core of both of these characters and see how two people who seem so different really do have much in common.  And how many teen books can you think of where friendship is the central, driving theme of the story?  Not many.  I greatly appreciate that Tripp and Lyla's relationship never evolves into romance so that we can focus on the frienship that both characters so desperately need.  The story is told in alternating viewpoints and includes Tripp and Lyla's notes, text messages, e-mails, and song lyrics.

Overall Grade:  B+

So Many Books...

As the end of the year is approaching, I've been trying desperately to read as many good books as I can in the hopes that I will a) be able to start fresh with 2013 titles when it comes time to flip the calendar, and b) have read a few award winners and won't have to play catch-up when awards are announced in January.  It's a tough but enjoyable process.  There are so many great books out there, and so little time to sit down and read!  Here are a few young adult titles that I'm hoping to sneak in very soon:

Shadow and Bone by Leign Badugo
The bones of the plot sounds a little familiar:  Ordinary girl discovers that she has mysterious powers.  Girl tries to learn to use said powers.  The plot thickens with intrigue and romance.  But predictable plots rarely get glowing starred reviews, so I'm looking forward to this one.  The Russian influences on the setting seem especially intriguing.

The Diviners by Libba Bray
Set in the 1920s, Evie finds herself living in New York City with her uncle, who is the curator for the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. Evie is soon helping to investigate some occult-based murders. Add in a dose of "mysterious power" and we have ourselves the the recipe for an intriguing story.

Call the Shots by Don Calame
I love Don Calame's books. He's my go-to author for boys looking for something funny and I've been looking forward to this book ever since last year's Beat the Band. This time the gang has decided to make their own low-budget horror film. Antics and hilarity ensue.

My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick
Samantha's life seems very safe and calm, while Jase's family next door is loud and boisterous.  Of course, the two teens fall hard for each other.  Then tragedy strikes.  Elements of this book sound a bit like Jo Knowles' See You At Harry's, which I loved, and probably adds to my draw to this novel.

Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor
Last year's Daughter of Smoke and Bone blew my mind with a story that began with the words, "Once upon a time an angel and a devil fell in love.  It did not end well."  I've been on the edge of my seat waiting for the sequel ever since.  Karou is a highly likable heroine and I need to know what happens next in the angel/chimera war. 

Does anyone out there have any other must-read YA titles from 2012 to share?  I'm definitely interested in adding to this list...

See You At Harry's

Fern's family drives her crazy.  Her dad has a new plan to advertise his restaurant that involves using the whole family and he doesn't understand how this will ruin Fern's life. Her mother spends a lot of time meditating to find her inner peace.  Her sister is taking a year off between high school and college and is supposed to be helping at the restaurant, but is mostly looking to get out of doing any work.  Her older brother is in the closet and is having trouble both at home and at school as a result.  And Fern's younger brother Charlie is little and cute and seems to get away with everything, and no one else seems to see how annoying he is.  Fern loves her family, but with so much going on she often feels alone.  But when tragedy rocks the whole family's world, Fern feels more alone than ever as she wrestles with her grief and guilt. 

There isn't a way to talk about Jo Knowles' See You at Harry's without making it sound incredibly sad and tragic.  And I'll be honest - it's a heart-wrenching tear-jerker at times.  But what impresses me most about this novel are the more positive aspects.  Knowles does an amazing job of creating a realistic, nuanced portrait of a family.  The members of Fern's family all love each other, but they don't always get along perfectly.  The characters are what make this story powerful instead of saccharine, and it's great to see how the family comes together when they really need to.  This book is a bit of a page-turner and most readers will be able to get through it fairly quickly, but it is worth lingering a bit with these characters.

Overall Grade:  A-

Life As We Knew It

A major astronomical feat is about to take place:  A meteor will hit the moon.  At first, all 16-year-old Miranda thinks is that this event is giving her teachers an excuse to assign more homework.  But when it turns out that the asteroid is much denser than predicted, the impact actually knocks the moon out of its orbit and pushes it closer to the Earth.  As a result the Earth's climate changes drastically.  Tsunamis destroy coastlines around the world.  Volcanoes hidden beneath the Earth's surface erupt and ash clouds the sky.  Disease spreads quickly.  Crops are destroyed and food becomes scarce.  Electricity and heat become almost completely unavailable.  Suddenly homework is the last thing on Miranda's mind and she and her family struggle to survive in rural Pennsylvania. 

Told through Miranda's diary entries, Susan Pfeffer's Life As We Knew It is actually sometimes hard to read.  Not because the writing is poor - it's not - but because it becomes so easy to imagine that this disaster could really happen to us.  I personally found myself looking at the moon strangely and wondering if I had enough canned food in the house after I finished reading it.  The diary format works very well in this book because it allows readers to focus on Miranda's emotional response to the disaster rather than dwelling on the scientific whys.  Readers only know as much about what's happening in the rest of the world as Miranda does, and that honestly isn't much.  But this format makes it easy to get inside Miranda's head and connect with her situation on a personal level.

I read this book recently for a second time as it was this month's selection for my teen book club. It's just as powerful of a read the second time around!

Overall Grade:  A-

If you enjoyed Miranda's story there are two sequels to this book.  In The Dead and the Gone we learn about this same disaster from the perspective of a boy in New York City.  The conclusion to this trilogy, This World We Live In, brings Miranda's and Alex's stories together.

Pizza Storytime

This week's storytime was all about everyone's favorite food:  Pizza!  We started out by talking about what toppings we liked on our pizza.  I asked the kids to raise their hands if they liked a certain kind of topping to keep everyone from trying to talk at once, and this voting format worked really well.  Just about everyone agreed that cheese, pepperoni, and sausage were delicious, but we also talked about other toppings like olives and pineapple.  It was interesting to see what the kids thought of these toppings! 

As we read stories and did out other activities, I constantly was asking the kids about the steps that one has to go through to make a pizza.  One of the major goals of this storytime was to focus on this procedure.  What comes first when we make a pizza?  What goes on top of the sauce?  I mentioned to the parents that knowing the order of doing things, such as making a pizza, is very important not only for learning to follow directions, but also for building that important Narration pre-literacy skill.  After all, when we make a pizza we have to go through the steps in the right order or our pizza wouldn't make sense.  The same thing goes for telling a story:  If events aren't told in the right order, then the story won't make sense. 

Here are the books we read:

Pizza at Sally's by Monica Wellington
Sally owns a pizzeria.  Readers get to see how Sally makes the pizza that she serves to her customers.  I like to start with this story because it does a good job of showing the whole process of how a pizza is made in a fairly straightforward manner.  It's also a pretty good jumpstart for talking about how people eat pizza:  Have you ever been to a pizza restaurant?  Have you had a pizza delivered to your house?  At the end of the book there is a recipe that families can use to make a pizza of their own.

Hi, Pizza Man! by Virginia Walter, illustrated by Ponder Goembel
A little girl eagerly awaits for the arrival of the pizza delivery man.  As she waits her mother asks her how she will great him when he arrives.  Of course, the girl will say, "Hi, pizza man!"  But what if it's not a pizza man?  What if it's a pizza woman?  Or a pizza kitty?  Or a pizza dinosaur?  I love that the pictures in this book show all of the animals decked out in their best finery, adding an extra level of silliness to this already silly story.

The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza by Philemon Sturges, illustrated by Amy Walrod
In the traditional story of The Little Red Hen, an industrious hen bakes a loaf of bread all by herself after her barnyard friends refuse to help.  This version follows the same format, but with pizza instead of bread.  There's also a cute twist at the end where the hen's friends agree to help with the dishes after sharing the pizza that they didn't help to make.  This is a longer story and can be a tough one to end on depending on the crowd's mood so I always have a back-up just in case...

Curious George and the Pizza by H. A. Rey
Curious George and The Man in the Yellow Hat visit a pizza parlor.  George gets into trouble when he tries to help make the pizza, but ends up saving the day in the end. 

We made our own pizza using flannelboard pieces (I made it myself!) and a rhyme that I adapted from a similar rhyme that I discovered on SurLaLune.  With my smaller afternoon storytime group I let each kid come up and place the next part of the pizza on the board so that everyone was involved.  I love having the kids help me with this step when it's possible since it gets them involved and keeps them a little more focused on what we're doing.

  Here is the rhyme that I used for this flannelboard story:

The Pizza That Sally Made

This is the crust that Sally made.

This is the sauce, so spicy and sweet,

That went on the crust that Sally made.

This is the cheese, so gooey and chewy,

That went on the sauce, so spicy and sweet,

That went on the crust that Sally made.

This is the pepperoni, that makes it Italian,

That went with the cheese, so gooey and chewy,

That went on the sauce, so spicy and sweet,

That went on the crust that Sally made.

These are the olives, so black and so salty,

That went with the pepperoni, that makes it Italian,

That went with the cheese, so gooey and chewy,

That went on the sauce, so spicy and sweet,

That went on the crust that Sally made.

These are the peppers, so green and so crunchy,

That went with the olives, so black and so salty,

That went with the pepperoni, that makes it Italian,

That went with the cheese, so gooey and chewy,

That went on the sauce, so spicy and sweet,

That went on the crust that Sally made.

These are the kids, so hungry and lively,

That devoured the pizza,

Made with the peppers, so green and so crunchy,

That went with the olives, so black and so salty,

That went with the pepperoni, that makes it Italian,

That went with the cheese, so gooey and chewy,

That went on the sauce, so spicy and sweet,

That went on the crust that Sally made.

And that was the pizza that Sally made.

We also did an adapted version of the classic rhyme "Pat-A-Cake" that involved making a pizza, which I also found on SurLaLune's Storytime page.

To finish off our storytime we did a craft:  Paper Plate Pizzas!  This craft would allow the kids to make their own paper pizzas to take home and would reinforce the importance of doing all of the pizza-making steps in the right order.

The kids were each given a paper plate that would serve as the pizza crust.  They could use a red marker to draw sauce on top of their crust.  They were each also given  a baggie with the other pizza toppings:  Strips of yellow crepe paper for the cheese, and simple colored circles and rectangles to represent pepperoni, olives, ham, and green peppers.  All of these toppings just needed to be glued on top with a glue stick - cheese first, of course!

Yes, I could have made this craft a little easier by using fewer toppings.  But even though many kids stick to simple pepperoni or plain cheese when they eat pizza, I think it's good just to remind kids that there are lots of other good topping choices out there.  Besides, the pizza is a lot more colorful with more different kinds of toppings!

Giraffe Sounds

There is a small stuffed giraffe who lives on the Children's Reference Desk. His name is Butterscotch.

 

Today a boy, about 15 months old, came up to the desk, pointed at the giraffe and said, "mooo." Mom told me that according to her son every animal says moo. Super cute.

This brought to mind another incident that happened a few days ago with the giraffe. As they walked past the desk a mom asked her daughter, about 4 or 5 years old, what sound a giraffe makes as kind of a joke. The girl responded by sticking out her tongue. Apparently that's what giraffes do!

Summer of the Gypsy Moths

Nothing is going the way that Stella planned, and for a girl obsessed with keeping things in order this is a very bad thing. Stella's mother has gone off to "find herself" (again), and so she has been sent to live with her great-aunt Louise at the small Cape Cod resort that Louise runs. To complicate matters Louise has also taken in a foster child Stella's age, and unfortunately Stella and Angel do not get along very well. Things get even more troublesome when, just as school is ready to end for the summer, Louise suddenly dies. What are Stella and Angel to do? Neither of them has family that can take them in or anywhere else to go. The only option the two girls see is to bury Louise in the garden and hope that nobody notices...

Author Sara Pennypacker has made a name for herself with her early chapter books, especially the lovable "Clementine" series. Summer of the Gypsy Moths is her first foray into writing for somewhat older readers and it's a real gem. It's easy to see why this book has been generating a bit of buzz this year as the writing expertly blends humor and heart. It's just a delight watching Stella and Angel's relationship develop as their unusual circumstances throw them together. And who can resist a story where two girls hide a dead body? Pick this book up today. You'll be glad you did.

This book should appeal easily to fans of Suzanne LaFleur's Love, Aubrey and/or Jennifer Holm's Turtle in Paradise.

Overall Grade: A

Librarian's Purpose

The Children's Reference Desk sits in the children's area of the library, and there is always a staff person there ready to help patrons with whatever they need. Tonight I found myself at the desk as a young boy, about 5 years old, brought over a few books that we wanted to check out. I told him that I couldn't check out his books, but he could take them to the "Big Desk" (the Circulation Desk) just outside of the children's area. The boy looked at me, squinted in confusion, and asked:

"Then what are you there for?"

Fair question, my friend. I explained to the boy that I was there to answer any questions that someone might have and that I could help people find the books they were looking for. Since neither of these situations seemed to apply to him, this kid was severely unimpressed.

I can't decide if this whole exchange was hilarious or vaguely insulting to my career.

New Book Bribery

Right now there are too many New Young Adult books at the library. Actually, there are always too many books in this area - I really need additional shelf space so that I can keep books on the New shelf for more than 2.5 months. Unfortunately though, the New shelf is full to the point of overflowing right now. This is a slow time of year in terms of circulation as everyone is done with the Summer Reading Program but most have not yet fallen into their school-year routines, so the large number of books on the shelf isn't entirely surprising.

Of all the terrible problems to have, right?

The circulation department was getting a bit anxious about the lack of space on this shelf and asked me to do something about it. Since I can't magically make the New Books area larger it soon became clear that books needed to be taken off the shelf. I'd much prefer that this be done via checkouts rather than de-newing, so my supervisor and I have instituted a program encourage *coughbribecough* patrons to check out books from this part of the collection.

The program is simple: If someone checks out a book from the New Young Adult area and shows one of children's librarians which book(s) they will be taking home, then we will give them a "prize pack" as a reward. Easy!

These prize packs are made up of coupons that we had left over from our Summer Library Program anyway, so we did not have to spend any money at all on this program. I made up a few fliers to post in the library, bookmarks to stick inside each of the books in the New YA area, and posted a blurb about this promotion on our Facebook page. This promotion is available "for a limited time only" - basically until we either run out of prizes or the New YA Books situation is under control.


This picture was taken about four hours after we first advertised the program. Already there is more shelf space than there was before...but it's still not much. In a normal scenario the top shelf would be empty/mostly empty so that you can see the sign that labels this area as "New YA Fiction". In an ideal scenario, none of these shelves would be even close to filled and I'd be able to turn a couple of books face-out.


There is another benefit to this promotion: Teens have to come and talk to us to pick up their prize packs. We can use this opportunity to talk of upcoming Teen programs! I'm really hoping to recruit a few more people for my Teen Book Club though this effort.

And who knows, maybe a few teens will discover a new area of the library or a new favorite book through this promotion too!