There is such a thing as a free lunch

My poetry books talks for the fifth graders went well today. The best part wasn’t the book talks themselves, though, (which you can see here), but the part where they followed me to the library and tore up the poetry section (don’t worry, I’m using “tore up” figuratively). Some readers’ advisory highlights:

• Poetry about horses
• Shakespeare’s sonnets
• More poems for two voices
• An “easy short” poem
• Robert Frost

Most of the books I talked got check out, too. Here’s a pic of my display:

After the fifth graders were taken care of, I went to work on getting the third grade readers’ theatre onto my blog. It’s a long story because I had to keep changing file types in order to edit the audio with Audacity (which is, incidentally, surprisingly easy to use), and then I realized I couldn’t upload audio onto a WordPress blog and that I’d have to host it on my UW space, but I didn’t want to download SFTP onto the Bush School computers, so I just emailed myself the files and I’ll have to put the plays up when I’m on campus next. Whew.

And let me now take time to acknowledge how wonderful Bush School parents are. They host an amazing lunch for the faculty and staff two or three times a year and today was one of those days. I got to go enjoy it with Lisa. I even got to take home a plant! (I asked which would be the hardest to kill and they pointed me towards the primroses.)

One last thing: there was a small book shelving crisis at the library yesterday (there were so many books to be shelved they started stacking up on the ground around the carts) so I went ahead and reshelved all the books from the displays that were taken down today (my award winners and the red books for V-Day). At the iSchool they tell you that when you’re doing a DFW you’re not there as an intern everyone can dump unpleasant tasks on, you’re there to learn important skills. This sometimes gets translated as, “You’re not there to shelve books.” But sometimes everyone’s got to pitch in and shelve some books. That’s just how it is. (And, you know, it’s pretty good exercise–lots of deep knee-bends.)

Lorraine Visits

Today my DFW adviser, Lorraine Bruce, visited Bush to check on me. We talked about Facebook and how great the Bush School library is. She only stayed briefly, but it was a nice visit.

We recorded the 3rd grade Readers’ Theater and it went so well. I’m going to fix a few things with Audacity on Friday and then I’ll try to post them here.

Today in Readers’ Advisory:

• Horse Books in series:Thoroughbred
• Black History Books: Henry’s Freedom Box, Jalani and the Lock
• Ballet Books: Graphic Novel (winner of Siebel), Tallchief biography, PNW Ballet book
• Rock Music: Crosby Stills and Nash CD
• Funny Dog Books (read-alike for Chowder, What Pete Ate A-Z)
• Mom volunteer wanted a book to read to her 3- , 4- , and 5-year-old crowd: Charlotte’s Web. Many Moons (If You Decide to Go to the Moon read-alike).
• Hockey Books
• Lego Books (Bush only has one and it was checked out)
• Trickster Tales (Tops and Bottoms)

One small highlight from my day: We had some time with the kindergarteners before they had to go to P.E. today, so I played Simon Says with them. It is really fun to be Simon. Also, tomorrow is their 100th day of Kindergarten. Congats, kiddos.

Prepping

I spent most of Monday preparing for things I’m doing later in the week:

3rd Grade Readers’ Theatre

We’ll be using new digital audio recorders to capture the performances on Wednesday, so Jody and I practiced using them. I read (most of) the instruction manual and we recorded ourselves and successfully uploaded the Windows Media file onto a computer. From there I hope to put it up on my blog. Jody and I had a discussion about the copyright issues inherent in sharing performances of plays. We agreed that posting the play on my blog would most likely constitute Fair Use, but Jody is still considering contacting the author of the play for her permission. An alternative to this (for future reference) would be taking the time to write my own version of the play; because it’s an Aesop’s Fable, it’s in the public domain.

5th Grade Poetry Book Talks 

I’d already gathered a stack of books for this, but when I looked at it on Monday I thought it was imbalanced (too much funny stuff and not enough serious stuff) and too much (if I talk more than 15 books it will take too long). So I took some books out and put some new books in. I also made a sign for the display I’ll put up on Friday and typed up my list.

Friday the 15th (with pictures!)

Two Fridays ago there was no Lower School, which I didn’t find out about until two Wednesdays ago, so I’d already prepared my book talks. Though I didn’t get to use them, I had fun getting them ready and eventually put them on display. Here’s a picture of the display:

(It looked better before it was ravaged, but it’s good that it was ravaged!)

And here is a list of the books I was going to talk.

Midwinter Break was last week, so there were no book talks last Friday either. But next Friday (2/29) I’ll be talking poetry books. I spent part of two Fridays ago (2/15) putting those books together:

Jenine and I did some weeding two Fridays ago, too. Pretty major weeding. We took out anything that hadn’t been checked out in the last three years, anything that was in poor condition, and anything with an unattractive cover. Some things were put in a discard pile, other things we kept with the intention of book talking them and seeing if they’d circ, and others we put in a “buy a new copy” pile (which was further divided into “buy a mass paperback” pile and “buy a trade paperback” pile). It was my first time really weeding, so I got to discover if I’m a sentimental type. I don’t think I am, though I did sigh with relief when I saw that Anne of Green Gables still circs every year.

Here are pics of the YA/FIC area we weeded:

At Bush, each of the librarians needs to check off on piles of books to be weeded out of the collection. That would horrify my Collection Development professor, I’m sure, but it seems to work here, with only a few minor disagreements. Weeding can get emotional, you know. (What? You didn’t know that?)

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Yesterday was a busy Wednesday at the Bush library. Here’s what went down:

3rd grade: Jody and I returned the kids’ computer catalog worksheets and talked about some of the problems we saw. Then we split into groups to do Readers Theatre. I took 10 kids to do “The Miller and his Donkey” and Jody took 4 to do a modern Cinderella. I assigned parts to the kids and we read through the play. We talked about Aesop and the moral of the story. I gave them some notes on how they could improve their storytelling, too. Next week is Mid-Winter break, but the week after that, we’ll record the plays.

Kindergarten and 2nd grade: I performed a story for the little ones today: “The Monkey’s Heart” which is an old Sawhili/Indian (depending on the version you read) tale. I wrote my own version to connect it to Valentine’s Day and when one of the students suggested a really good alternative ending, I put it in my final telling and the kids really liked it. Jody and I talked to the students about the differences between storytelling and story reading, too.

As usual, after we finish our story room time, Jody and I help the kids pick out books. I had, as usual, many requests for Star Wars. I also did some readers’ advisory with a boy who said the last thing he really enjoyed was a Woody Guthrie cd. So we found him a book about Woody Guthrie so he could learn more. There were also two 2nd grade girls who wanted to read the same book together. I helped them find books by just browsing the Beginning Readers section of the library. It’s not very big and we have a few duplicates there (though, in general, the Bush library has very few duplicates).

When I had some free time today, I also checked the catalog to see which books Bush already had from a list of Notable Picture Books Jody gave me. Bush only had 3 out of 12, so I think they’ll be ordering some.

I also contributed to a list Lindy and Lisa were making for a student designing an independent study. She wants to look at how written works are interpreted as movies, so I suggested we look at the list of Oscar nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay. I also had a few favorites that I suggested:

• Clueless, based on Emma by Jane Austen
• The Shawshank Redemption, based on the short story by Stephen King
• The Hours, based on the book by Michael Cunningham and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• One Flew Over the Cuckoos Next, based on the book by Ken Kesey
• The Golden Compass, based on the book by Philip Pullman

When I took my storytelling class last quarter, we made a list of “fillers” or things you can do when you have a few minutes and a bunch of kids. I already knew a ton from my experience with preschoolers, and today I had a chance to use one while the kindergarteners waited to go to P.E. I lead them in a chorus of theme song from “The Elephant Show” which goes like this:

Skinnamarink e-dink e-dink
Skinnamarink e-doo
I love you.

Skinnamarink e-dink e-dink
Skinnamarink e-doo
I love you.

I love you in the morning
and in the afternoon.
I love you in the evening
underneath the moon.

Skinnamarink e-dink e-dink
Skinnamarink e-doo
I love you.

I love you in the morning
and in the afternoon.
I love you in the evening
underneath the moon.

Oh, Skinnamarink e-dink e-dink
Skinnamarink e-doo
I love you.
I do.

What is the title of that book about that thing?

In library school, they tell you that the easiest kinds of reference questions are “known item” questions. This means the patron knows the exact book (or whatever it is) that they want and they just need your help finding it. As it turns out, today we did a known-item search that was pretty hard. In fact, Lisa and I were both working on it for the better part of half an hour. This was the basic request: “It’s a book about a kid and no one can tell if she’s a boy or a girl, so she gets thrown in a river or something. And it’s got a scary-looking cover.” Well we tried googling lots of different search terms, but we got nowhere. I finally found the book by going to the KCLS catalog and searching “gender identity.” Some thoughtful reader had tagged it as such. Let’s all take a minute and be thankful for social tagging.

By the way, the book was What Happened to Lani Garver.

Today I also did the 5th grade booktalks again. To see what I recommended, you can click here. Or, if you ever find yourself in the Bush School library, you can check out the display under the sign “Award Winners” and all the books are right there. Actually, a couple of them got checked out pretty fast, so they won’t be there. But I made a copy of the list and left it on the table if you want to write titles down and find the books at the public library.

Since I’ll be doing these booktalks regularly, I started to work on my next set of booktalks, too. I’m currently reading The City of Ember by Jeanne DePrau to see if it makes the list.

I entered the grades for the 3rd grade worksheets, too. And I put up more trivia questions on the bulletin board. It was a good day!

Does feminism still matter?

Here’s a link to book lists from people who think it does:

http://libr.org/ftf/bloomer.html

It’s called the Amelia Bloomer Project.  Here’s a quote from the website:

“This year’s list includes books challenging the young women of today to take a new look at what it means to be feminist, showcasing who fought for our rights. These books bring to light the stories of women who break boundaries, from civil war doctors and journalists covering WWII to graffiti artists and girls demanding to be accepted for who they are.  The 32 books on the 2008 Amelia Bloomer Project list encourage and inspire girls to be smart, brave, and proud.”

Grading Worksheets & Reading Aloud

The 3rd graders finished up their computer catalog worksheets today, so I spent some time looking over them. To my delight, a lot of them did really well. Now they seem excited to be able to use the catalog–so much so they were lining up to get a shot at the one computer that’s designated for catalog use. (Jody and I had to tell them they could log in and use the other computers, too). I may sound a little crazy saying this, but it both warms and chills my heart to see the little ones going to the catalog instead of casually wandering the shelves. Obviously, it’s good for them to have catalog searching skills, but it also means they’re growing out of their openness to serendipity and caprice. Sigh.

This afternoon I read Toot & Puddle to both 2nd grade classes. I also recommended all the other Holly Hobbie books Bush has and a book by her kids Jocelyn and Nathaniel. (Isn’t it interesting that her kids ended up writing picture books, too?) Theirs is called Priscilla and the Pink Planet. It’s very Dr. Seuss in its illustrations and the rhyming text. I liked it.

Because there was some interest in fractured fairy tales, I pulled John Scieszka’s The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales. Jody also pulled Sleeping Bunny, Kate and the Beanstalk, and some others.  When we were out of fractured fairy tale options, I showed some girls the Tall Tales display I made for the fourth graders and they snatched some book off of that.

Popular right now @ Bush (from my perspective anyway):

• A to Z Mysteries
• Amelia’s Notebook
• Star Wars
• Football
• Ivy and Bean
• Fluffy

Cataloging and Observing

Today Jody brought in one of my all-time favorite picture books: Toot & Puddle. She bought it for the library’s collection over the weekend and suggested this would be the perfect opportunity for me to see how new books are cataloged and added to the system at Bush. And she was right. I mean, who knows? I could be running a library all by myself in the future without a library technician’s help and expertise.

Thankfully, the Bush library has a wonderful library technician in Lindi Wood:

She gave me the rundown of everything she does and I was amazed. She touches every book in the collection! She organizes the parent volunteers! She provides AV support for the entire staff! In my School Library Media Management class we’ve been talking about making ourselves integral to the school and Lindi definitely has that down.

The Bush library has such a generous budget that new books are added to the collection all the time. Lindi buys MARC records that are seamlessly entered into the Bush catalog, but she also tweaks the subject headings to enhance findability. This is one of the great things about small libraries–you have the opportunity to really tailor your services to your users. For example, during my time with Lindi, Lisa Keller stopped in to ask for Lindi’s help in finding a hip hop video. Lindi discovered the video was cataloged only as “hip-hop” with a hyphen, so you couldn’t find it if you didn’t use a hyphen in your search term. So Lindy added “hip hop” no hyphen entry right on the spot. This may seem like a small thing, but coming from a huge system (UW Libraries) I’ve seen it take weeks for a catalog record to be corrected when it had serious errors. So it’s refreshing to see how painless things can be in a smaller system.

After observing the cataloging process, I worked with Jody to plan our Wednesday classes. I’d spent some time at home looking over the 3rd graders worksheets and it seemed like they were actually getting it, so we’ll just spend a little more time on it on Wednesday and then start our Reader’s Theatre project. I’m going to read Toot & Puddle to the 2nd graders and we’ll do a postcard project after that to tie in with the story.

At 11:00 Lisa invited me to observe her doing book talks for the 9th grade classes. It was a great opportunity for me to see a pro in action, and especially helpful considering I’m doing the 5th grade book talks on Fridays. Lisa promoted 10 books, of which the 9th graders have to choose one to read for a novel project. I was surprised a the difficulty of some of these books–the 14-year-olds at Bush are very strong readers, but I’d still expect to see a few YA novels offered. This seems to be an issue we run into from time to time: Adult Literature (the canon, etc.) vs. young adult literature (books written specifically for teens). Bush is an academically rigorous school, but it seems like there should still be a place for YA lit in the 6th through 10th grade curricula.

In other news, we found out that Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. In true Pratchett style, he called the ordeal “an embuggerance.” You can read about it here.

Let’s Get Trivial

Today I devoted most of the day to taking down the old bulletin board display and putting up my new display: Let’s Get Trivial.Here’s a little explanation for the trivia theme: In my classes at UW, we’re taught to be guided by what patrons want and need. So, I did a little informal poll of students re what they’d like to see on the board. I got such a wide variety of answers (Animals! Star Wars! Theatre!) I decided to pick a general theme that would address lots of different areas. I also wanted the board to be interactive, so I picked a theme that would allow the students to participate by testing their knowledge. I also thought it would be a good board to have up for awhile because it’s easy to take questions down and put new ones up.In order that the display would support the collection, I got all my questions from facts in books in the collection and then made a display of those books. When I remember to bring a camera to school, I’ll post pictures of the bulletin board and my book displays. Here are some pictures:

I did some readers’ advisory today, too. More and more fifth graders are coming to the library for award winning books (because they have to read two during the month of February), so I pulled more books for the display and helped a few students pick something to try. Today I recommended:

• A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer
• Dicey’s Song by Cynthia Voigt
• Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
• Everything on a Waffle by Polly Horvath

All excellent books!