Underground Engineering Activity

During the summer we set up an activity table in the children's area.  We feature a different activity to try each week, and kids who complete the activity are rewarded with an extra raffle ticket for a chance at one of the big summer reading prizes.  This week our featured activity is a hands-on building project using PVC pipes.

We took PVC pipes, cut them into manageable pieces, and sanded the edges.  We put the pipes into a bin with some connector pieces and asked the kids to put the pipes together to design a plumbing system.  As a way of counting participation in this passive program, we also asked the kids to draw a picture showing us the system they designed, which they could turn in to us in exchange for a raffle ticket.  The kids have really enjoyed this engineering activity.  Some of them would truly spend hours building with the pipes if they could.

Paleontology and Archaeology Program

This year's Summer Library Program is in full swing, and today I kicked things off with my first school-age program of the summer.  This week's topic was paleontology and archaeology.  Just like last year I actually did this program twice, the first time with a group of 2nd and 3rd graders, and the second time with 4th-6th graders.  Each program lasted an hour and fifteen minutes.

First we took a couple of minutes to talk about paleontology and archeology and what these words mean.  We then segued into a discussion about how exactly fossils form.  We talked about different kinds of fossils:  Molds and casts, as well as petrified bones.  We then conducted our first activity:  Making our own fossils!

I don't know about you, but I recall doing this little project when I was in the first grade.  To make this cast-type fossil, all you need is a plastic cup, a small figure (we used plastic dinosaurs, but truthfully any shape will do), clay, and plaster or paris.  Simply press the clay into the bottom of the cup.  Then press your small figure into the clay, leaving behind an imprint.  It is important that you press very firmly on your figure so that you get a nice, deep imprint.  Then carefully pull the figure out, leaving behind the "mold" part of this fossil.  Mix a small amount of plaster of paris and pour the plaster into the cup.  The plaster will fill the mold and take on the shape left behind by the figure.  Then simply allow the plaster to firm up.  When it has hardened, cut open the cup and remove your fossil.  More detailed instructions for this project can be found here.

The plaster fossils were a great project.  The kids really needed lots of reminding that they needed good, deep imprints to get good fossils.  Making the imprints was really the kids' only job - my helpers and I mixed and distributed the plaster simply to make the process easier with 20 kids in the room.  Since the plaster took time to set, we had the kids write their names on their cups and take the fossils home still inside the cup.  This had the added benefit of preventing accidental breakage.  The plaster was dry by the time this program ended, so there was no risk of plaster spilling in transport.

While the younger group did not have the time needed for this next project, our older group was able to create dinosaur skeletons out of pasta: 

I found instructions for this project here.  However, I did not use the printout included here as I did not want to cut out and assemble the skeleton templates.  I found a different picture of a dinosaur skeleton online (sorry, I don't remember which image I used exactly, so I can't cite it) and it worked just as well.  I also decided in the name of ease to use pre-cut spaghetti instead of fettuccine for the ribs.  I was worried that this project would be a bit childish for the 4th-6th graders, but they were weirdly absorbed in completing this project.

The next activity  was actually a very simple project, but arguably one of the most fun activities of the day.  We did some cave painting! 

 We have big rolls of colored paper at the library, which generally get used to cover bulletin boards.  I took a long length of brown paper, crumpled it up to give it a little visual interest and dimension, and taped it to the wall.  The kids were each given a piece of chalk and they were allowed to make "cave paintings".  It turned out really cool!  I took the finished cave paintings and hung them in other areas of the library after the program ended.

The last activity of the day was definitely the most complicated and involved, but I think it was totally worth it.  I filled a kiddy swimming pool with sand and set up an archaeology dig. 

I was inspired by the project described here and basically ran with the idea.  Instead of using clay pots (which I was unable to locate at a cheap enough price), I purchased plastic vases at the dollar store.  These were painted and then broken into pieces using a vice and a sharp cutting tool.  I buried the pieces in the sand, and basically the kids got to dig them up and reassemble the vases.  I used this activity to also talk about what methods an archaeologist might use and how they might use the information gained from the objects they find to draw conclusions.



The kids seemed to have a really good time with the activities at this program.  In a perfect world I might have done two separate programs - one on archaeology and one on paleontology - but unfortunately circumstances forced me to merge the two topics.  Despite split focus, the kids still enjoyed the activities, and I think that most of them got a feel for what it means to "dig" into the past.

The Center of Everything

The small town of Bunning comes together every year for their annual festival celebrating the donut, which they claim was invented by the brave Captain Bunning who founded the town.  This year Ruby is honored by being the student chosen to read her winning essay at the festival's parade.  As Ruby waits for her turn to read her essay, she is also waiting for an opportunity to fix everything that has gone wrong in her world recently.  Ruby's best friend is mad at her, and things aren't looking so good with her new friend, Nero, either.  Most of all, Ruby greatly regrets not listening to her grandmother, Gigi, who recently passed away.  But Bunning Day is the perfect opportunity for Ruby to make things right.  It all depends on her essay, and also on the magic of her birthday wish...

Author Linda Urban has a history or writing thoughtful novels with introspective characters, such as A Crooked Kind of Perfect and Hound Dog True.  Her latest effort, The Center of Everything, is brilliantly written.  Ruby's character is well-crafted, and she somehow manages to be meek and powerful at the same time.  The pacing of this novel is interesting as most of the action takes place in only a two-hour period, but lots of flashbacks and introspection to flesh out the details and provide needed backstory.  The writing is certainly distinctive (it's already getting some early Newbery buzz) and I expect that this book will make my "Best of 2013" list.

This book will be appealing to fans of author Wendy Mass (11 Birthdays, etc.) and Rebecca Stead (When You Reach Me)

Overall Grade:  A

Grow Your Own Geodes

Last week I geared up for this year's Summer Library Program with a teen program.  We grew our own geodes!

I had found instructions on how to do this project months ago (thank you, Pinterest) as I was brainstorming summer program ideas.  Take a look at the instructions yourself on the Steve Spengler Science website.  This is a very easy science project to do at home since the tools needed are generally easy to acquire.  In fact, most of the supplies are probably already in your kitchen cabinets!  The trick with doing this experiment at the library is that it takes time for the crystals to grow, so we actually had to structure this project as a recurring program where the teens met briefly every day over the course of three days.  Because of this scheduling issue and because I needed to know exactly how much I needed to buy in terms of supplies, I was sure to require registration for this event.  In the end I had seven teens in attendance for this program.

It seems kind of silly to describe the step-by-step instructions when they have already been written out so well (see the link above), so I won't do that here.  But I will post the video - created by and included on the Steve Spengler website - which briefly outlines all of the steps.



Here are a few tips for doing this project with a group:

• The alum powder is the only ingredient that was challenging to find in the quantities that I needed for a group this size.  You should be able to find small amounts of alum at the grocery store in the spice section (alum is commonly used in pickling), which should be fine if you are doing this project at home with one or two children.  But if you are doing multiple geodes, it makes good sense to buy the alum in bulk.  I was unable to find alum in bulk at local stores, but you can buy it online through multiple sources, including Amazon.  We ended up making a trip to Nasco, an art, science, and education supply company which has an outlet store located in Fort Atkinson, WI (as well as an online catalog).  It is possible that alum may be easier to acquire in bulk locally during the late-summer canning/pickling season.
• Blowing out the egg, as described in Steps 1 and 2, was a little bit tricky, but it was definitely a lot of fun.  Just be sure to remind the kids/teens to only breathe OUT, not IN, while their mouth is on the egg!  I saved all of the egg innards (waste not, want not), took them home, and made two quiches.
• To get the water heated to the near-boiling point required in Step 9, we used a simple coffee pot without any coffee grounds.  We have a very large percolator here at the library that we use for meetings, and it was absolutely perfect for this job.
• We ended up using 24 oz. glass jars as the containers where we mixed the solution and, ultimately, grew our geodes.  These worked fine, but I kind of wish that we had been able to get containers with wider openings to make it easier to drop the eggshells in and, later, fish them out.  Glass measuring cups would have been perfect, but I was unable to borrow enough of these containers to go around.
• The programming room where we did this project has a sink in it.  While this isn't exactly a requirement for this project, there were a few moments when I was very glad to have the sink nearby.  The teens rinsed out their eggs to better clean them after cutting them open, and we dumped much of the liquid out of the jars before fishing out the geodes with a spoon since the openings were fairly narrow.  This also made doing the dishes very easy.

If you read the comments to this experiment, you'll see that some users complained that their geodes did not grow at all.  Fortunately, we didn't have any problems at all with our geodes!  I truthfully don't know why these users had trouble with their experiments.  We followed the instructions to the letter and everything worked fine.  

And since you've all been waiting patiently, here are some pictures:

The teens had a lot of fun with this project.  I think they really enjoyed the hands-on aspect of this program. Several of the teens also came up with some creative ways to alter the experiment that might yield some interesting results.  It was really neat to watch the gears turn in their brains as they came up with these ideas! Ideas for variations included:

• Create new colors by mixing the food coloring.
• Don't add any food coloring at all.
• Add the food coloring later in the crystal-growing process.  Would the intensity of the color change?  Would the older, deeper crystals be clear, while newer crystals had color?  
• Crow crystals on surfaces other than eggshells.  What would happen if you were to treat an object with a different shape with the glue/alum as described in Steps 5 and 6?  What if you simply did this treatment to the inside of a bowl?

Most of the teens vocalized an interest in trying the experiment again, either as another library program or on their own at home.  Success!

Shifting

At my library, the graphic novel collection in the teen area was rather cramped.  The shelves were crowded, and some shelves didn't have any room to spare for new materials.  The whole space was uninviting and frankly, it looked sloppy.  Here are the pictures to prove it:

Clearly it was time to do something about this area.  Fortunately, I had some willing helpers from the circulation department who were interested in helping out with a project like this.

The good news was that it was actually possible to do a little bit of shifting to make some extra room.  I sadly don't have any "before" picture that show it, but once upon a time there was a stack of shelves immediately next to the graphic novels that held teen magazines.  These shelves were swapped with some regular shelves that had been used as a display space.  While I was initially a bit reluctant to sacrifice the display space, this exchange was well worth it.  This gave me the freedom to spread the graphic novels out into six brand new shelves!  Just look at the difference:

The top shelves admittedly look a tad barren at the moment, but there are several manga series that are shelved in this area that are quickly growing as new volumes are published (Bakuman, Black Butler, Blue Exorcist).  Another series featured in the top photo (Fairy Tail) was half checked out and room had to be left for the series' other volumes for when they returned.  Besides, I wanted to be sure to have plenty of room to add additional graphic novels to the collection in this crowded area.  Believe me, there is a reason for leaving all of this space!  

Having more room on the shelves makes a huge difference.  The whole collection is much easier to browse and it is much more inviting.  Patrons are less likely to be intimidated by crowded shelves, and the library pages no longer get frustrated when they are trying to reshelve books and find that there is no room.  It's a win for everyone!

Gendered Book Covers

Today I came across a story on The Huffington Post about a tweet that YA author Maureen Johnson made last Monday (5/6/13).  Her tweet reads as follows:

"I do wish I had a dime for every email I get that says, 'Please put a non-girly cover on your book so I can read it. - signed, A Guy'"

Johnson then went on to challenge her followers to redesign book covers as if the book had been written by an author of the opposite gender.  She's gotten TONS of great responses, and The Huffington Post included a slideshow of a few of their favorites with the article.  Take a look!

It really is incredible how gender-specific so many book covers are.  It's too bad, really, because even though a book might have excellent content that is attractive to both boys and girls, there are lots of readers out there who might get turned off of a book before they even open it because the cover does not appeal to their sensibilities.  

On a related note, this article (found on page 32 of the April 2013 issue of VOYA - link takes you to a digital copy of the April issue) also discusses the inherent gender biases that come with book.  The author of the article argues that librarians need to try not to categorize books as "boy books" and "girl books" because despite the gender of the author, the gender of the main characters, or the appearance of the cover, the content of most books will appeal equally to both boys and girls. 

Library Shouts

Several weeks ago we ordered a book for the children's nonfiction collection called Sneaky Art: Crafty Surprises to Hide in Plain Sight.  Written by Marthe Jocelyn, this book has lots of cute, whimsical crafts that can be pieced together with everyday objects and left behind in certain locations as art. 

As we were paging though the book, one of the projects in particular caught our attention:  Library Shouts.  To do this project, you basically cut out some paper in the shape of a speech bubble and decorate it with words, shapes, stickers, stamps, cutouts...whatever you have on hand.  You then stick the bubble's tail in a book.  The idea is that the speech bubble will draw attention to the book and encourage people to pick it up.

I thought this was a perfect project for my Teen Advisory Group, and my teens agreed.  We changed the format slightly and made bookmarks with a large, oval-shaped bubble at the top.  This shape seemed to provide a bit more stability, plus it fit a bit better in the relatively narrow space between the top of the books and the next shelf.  During this week's TAG group the teens took the bookmarks and went to town decorating them.  We used magazine cutouts (mostly for the sake of mismatched letters), construction paper, markers, and sequins to make our Library Shouts look amazing.  When they were finished I laminated all of the Library Shouts so that they will - hopefully - last a little bit longer.  Then it was just a matter or sticking them inside books that we loved!

We placed all of our Library Shouts in books in the Young Adult area since this is the collection near and dear to the teens' hearts. But theoretically we could use these bookmarks anywhere in the library!

I also was sure to get my library's circulation department on board with this project. My hope is that the circ staff will be able to take the bookmarks when patrons go to check these books out and return them to me so that I can reuse them in other books. I don't expect that we'll be able to keep these Library Shouts forever - eventually they'll get lost or walk away - but we want to be able to use this promotion for as long as possible.

Live Clue

Life-sized board games are all the rage right now.  Not long ago I got to try my hand at it when we did a Live Clue program for teens.  Unfortunately, I can't take credit for developing this program.  That credit belongs to my predecessor, who is now working in another department at the library.  But she did such a good job with this program that we had lots of requests to do it again this year.  Fortunately, my predecessor was willing to help out with the program and show me how it's supposed to work.

At its most basic, the Live Clue event is a lot like playing the classic board game.  Players divided themselves into groups of no more than six.  Everyone in each group is dealt cards from the deck which represent the rooms, suspects, and weapons.  The players must make suggestions to uncover clues.  The idea is to use the process of elimination to figure out exactly who committed the murder, what weapon was used, and in what room the murder took place.  What makes this program special is that instead of moving small plastic pieces around the board, the players all take on the persona of one of the characters and physically move from room to room in the library to make their suggestions.

Since we were using different areas of the library as the "rooms" for this game, my co-worker also re-wrote the game's back story, which we read to the group before beginning play, to give it an appropriate library setting.  The story reads as follows:

Each of the Clue characters has a secret: They’re very bad at returning library books on time. The Library Director has invited these six people to the library to discuss their long overdue books. Unbeknownst to her, each person would rather commit murder than return their books and has snuck a weapon into the library. Although everyone had murder on the brain, only one of them actually succeeded in killing the Library Director. Tonight you will become one of the Library Delinquents and it’s your job to find out who committed the crime, what weapon they used, and in what part of the library the murder occurred. Everyone’s a suspect, even you…… 

To set the mood, teen volunteers used decorations like caution tape, masking tape body outlines, and plastic "weapons" all around the library.  A few participants also came in dressed as Clue characters, FBI agents, detectives, and the like.

Since we wanted to make use of the entire library for this program, it made sense to do Live Clue as an after-hours event so that we weren't disturbing other library patrons.  We held the program on a Friday because the library closes at 5:00 on that day.  This way "after-hours" did not equate to "really late at night."  The teens gathered at the library for pizza and to hear a brief explanation of the rules a half hour before the library closed.  Once the doors were locked the teens divided themselves into groups of six and headed into the library to start trying to solve the case.  We played for one hour with a hard cut-off time, and this amount of time was just about perfect for most groups to solve their case.  One group actually had time to start, but not finish, a second case.

Twelve teens were in attendance for this program, which actually was a very good number.  You can have as many as six people in each group (one for each of the six murder suspects) and it's more fun if the groups are larger, so it was wonderful that we could have two full groups.  I did require registration for this program so that I would know how much pizza to buy and how many volunteers I would need.

Three adult or older teen volunteers helped out with this program.  Each volunteer acted as a group leader and was in charge of coordinating a group of six teens, leading them around the library as they made their suggestions, and keeping everyone focused on the game.  With all of the walking around it could be a little bit tricky to keep player order straight, so it was the group leader's job to focus on turn order and further explain the rules if anyone had questions.  Since I had at least one volunteer with each group, this left me with the ability to float between the groups and help out as needed, plus it gave me the chance to interact with everyone instead of being tied to a small selection of the teens in attendance.

What kind of work went into creating this program?  It actually wasn't much work for me since this program had been done before and we already had most of the things we needed from past Live Clue events.  My predecessor, however, must have put in a bit of time to get things ready when she first began doing this program.  She had made all of the cards needed to represent the rooms, people, and weapons using Publisher, and then had then all printed and laminated.  She also created "case folders" for each player.  The case folders were color coded to correspond with the character that each player had chosen.  Inside the folder was a rules sheet that included the back story and a slip that players to use to mark the clues they had seen.  The good thing is that once these pieces were made, they were totally reusable.  All I had to do was print new clue sheets to restock the case folders, sort the clue cards and, of course, coordinate registration and the volunteers.  Expenses for this program were minimal, limited only to pizza and a few rolls of caution tape for decoration.

The hardest part of this program was getting everyone to understand the rules.  I highly suggest playing the board game yourself before doing the Live version so that you understand exactly how making a suggestion and uncovering clues works.  Honestly, this part of the game is something that's tricky to explain concisely and it makes the most sense after you just do it a few times.  Be sure that your volunteers are also very well-trained and are experts on making suggestions as well, since they're the ones who will have to do most of the explaining to the teens.  The single hardest part of this program was keeping some of the younger teens focused and following the rules correctly.  Not a problem for most of the participants, but a couple of them were easily distracted which lead to some overall confusion for the group.  Generally, though, everyone stayed on task with some firm guidance from the group leaders.

Green Dragon Book

Two boys, probably in the 5th or 6th grade, came up to me the other day. One of the boys was trying to tell his friend about a book he had read, but he couldn't remember the title or the author. All he could remember was that there was a dragon on the cover, and that it wasn't the Eragon series by Christopher Paolini.

 I asked the boy if he could tell me what the book was about. His response: "Well, the book was green..."

Hmm, not very helpful. But when he said there was a dragon on the cover my mind immediately went to another popular series of dragon books: The Last Dragon Chronicles, written by Chris D'Lacey. Each book in the series shows a close-up picture of a dragon's eye on the cover, and each book also features a different color. I was pretty sure that one of the books in that series was green. So I took a shot in the dark and walked the boys over to the shelf where this series is kept and, sure enough, the first book in the series (The Fire Within) was the book he had been thinking of.

Thank goodness.  If this hadn't been the right book, I might have had to resort to showing the boys every single book that we have that features dragons.  That's a lot of books!

Often it's really hard to figure out these mystery books when all we have to go on is the color of the book.  Clues like the plot of the book, the setting, or even the main character's name are usually much better clues because they better narrow down our options.  These clues are even searchable in reader's advisory databases like Novelist or even on Google, where book color really isn't.  Color also becomes tricky when a book has been reprinted with a different cover because the book on the library shelf might not match the image that the patron is familiar with.  Most book covers also feature multiple colors, and it's amazing how different colors in an image stand out to different people - a book cover that I might describe as yellow, for example, might appear blue to someone else.

Catching Fire Teaser Trailer

 

Last night at the MTV Movie Awards a teaser for the upcoming "Catching Fire" movie was finally unveiled.  Enjoy!