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!

Huck Finn and the Canon

I got to school early today to sit in on an interesting discussion. Lisa Keller visited Andy’s 10th grade English class to talk about why they read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and why they maybe shouldn’t. Mark Twain’s classic novel has been required reading in many high school English classes for decades, but it’s also controversial because of its use of racial slurs and its portrayal of Jim. Lots of important questions got asked, such as:

• Why is it important to read classic literature?
• What is it about some books that makes people want to ban them?
• Why is it important to read things that may make us uncomfortable?
• Who decides what we “should” and “should not” read in school?
• What if Young Adult novels were added to the English curriculum?

It was great to see Lisa advocate for YA literature. At the end of the class she offered to send the teacher a bibliography of great YA books. Maybe he’ll consider adding one (or two or three) to the curriculum? Time will tell. In the meantime, here are a couple YA books that would be worthy of being taught in IMHO:

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• Touching Snow by M. Sindy Felin
• The Pigman by Paul Zindel

Today was also my day to teach 3rd grade classes how to use the catalog. It was much harder than I thought it would be, particularly because the kids seemed to have a bad case of the wiggles. Still, I got through it. I’ll look at their worksheets on Friday and go over things they didn’t get next Wednesday.Jody and I talked about Groundhog Day with the Kindergarteners and 2nd graders. I read aloud several different books about groundhogs (including a book from the Fluffy series that was a big hit). Because of the Kindergarten bake sale, we had quite a few interruptions, so it was a bit of a challenge to keep the kids focused on the stories.

I have noticed that I haven’t been asked many true reference questions since I’ve been working at Bush. The most common question I answer is how to find a particular book (which we call a “known item” question at the Engineering Library at UW). It’s usually a matter of looking the book up in the catalog and then locating it on the shelf. I make an effort to demonstrate to the younger kids what I’m doing so it will be more familiar to them when they learn it. And for the older kids, now that they’ve had their lesson I’ll be asking them to try to find the book themselves before I help.

The other kind of questions I get are readers’ advisory, which means suggesting something to read for fun (I never get to answer these kinds questions at the Engineering Library!). I tend to automatically suggest books I myself have enjoyed, but I’m trying to train myself not to jump right into “Oh I just love so-and-so” and instead ask more questions and think harder about what would be best to recommend. So far I’ve pushed:

• Encyclopedia Brown on a 3rd grade mystery-seeker
• Clarice Bean on a boy looking for a picture book about a girl
• The Stinky Cheese Man on a kid in search of fractured fairy tales.

Happily, a lot of the Batchelder Award winners I book talked have been checked out. Jenine and I filled the display table up again with more award winners today.

I <3 Libraries

With Valentine’s Day coming up, the American Library Association is urging enthusiastic library users to show their love by sending “I Love Libraries” valentines to politicians.

More information is here:

http://www.ilovelibraries.org/takeaction/index.cfm

Another Snowy Day

No school today, so I’m curled up with my laptop by the fire. Today I was going to work on the “Let’s Get Trivial” bulletin board, but I don’t have my materials at home. Luckily, I can work on writing up the content with the books I’ve checked out from the Seattle Public Library: 15,003 Answers: The Ultimate Trivia Encyclopedia and The Giant Book of Bulletin Boards.

Also, I’ve been asked to spread the word about Fund Our Future, a group of mothers trying to pass legislation in Washington State that would require schools to have at least one professional librarian each. Bush is lucky to have four amazing librarians, but many schools in our state don’t have any.

There’s a rally this Friday in Olympia. Here’s the information:

RALLY IN OLYMPIA!
Support School Libraries
and Senate Bill #6380

Friday, February 1st, 2008 12:00 noon

Capitol Steps, Olympia WA

wear black and white it’s a black and white issue
bring signs posted at our website
bring your favorite book for a group READ poster photo
bring a carload make it a day!

Say THANK YOU to the Senate sponsors!
Senators Eide, Brown, McAuliffe, Marr, Shinn, Kohl-Welles & Weinstein.

Senate Bill #6380 will provide permanent essential funding for school library programs across Washington State, and will benefit every child, every teacher, every school, and every community.

To RSVP, sign the petition, and get all the information you’ll need, please visit our website:
www.fundourfuturewashington.org

After the rally visit your legislators’ offices and voice your support for Senate Bill #6380. We’ll provide you with talking points.

Join your legislators at a reception for Bill # 6380 from 4-5pm in the Pritchard Building. More info available at the website www.fundourfuturewashington.org

Thank you, and please pass the word!

Lisa, Susan and Denette
WCS-Lit
www.fundourfuturewashington.org

Visiting Grade Five

I got to Bush earlier than usual today so I could visit the Fifth Grade classes at 8:30 and tell them about those Batchelder books I’ve been reading. I was a little nervous, and I felt like I wasn’t really connecting with my audience. But afterwards I asked one of the teachers who observed me how she thought it went and she told me I did a great job. I still think I can improve, and I’m encouraged by the compliment. When I got back to the library I made a display of the Batchelder books so the kids will be able to find them if they want to check them out. We’ll see!

Now I’m working on my lesson for the Third Graders. I’ll point you to the documents I’m working on here and here.

It’s very quiet in the libray today.