The creators say that we are in need of YA graphic novels! Non-superhero esque, that is. Eva Volin (the librarian on the panel) has the answers… of course the librarian has the answers. Check her out!

Even though it seems like graphic novels have generally been accepted into the greater canon of literary works in their own right, (see graphic novels receiving literary awards previously won by text-only books and a graphic novel presence on recommended reading lists), really we have to get more people to hop on the bandwagon

When your colleagues and customers are hopping on the bandwagon sometimes they do so with skewed views of comics. Graphic novels are NOT just a “gateway to ‘real reading’” as so many people think – they are a valid reading experience in and of themselves. Volin says that she’s actually counted the number of words in a graphic novel and a text-only novel of the same length and found them to be more or less of the same word count. Not to mention the visual literacy involved in reading graphic novels. Some panelists argued, truthfully, that people have no problem with kids reading picture books, which are essentially the same thing, so why all this resistance to comics books? Pictures help readers decode language so to integrate images and words for readers of a certain level, it does a lot more for them in terms of success in reading, rather than a text-only format. I would also argue that graphic novels do what picture books are meant to do, but on visual steroids. Yes – they also provide visual clues to what is going on in the text, but picture books have one image to illustrate what is being described in the text on that page. Graphic novels have, or should have, all sorts of imagery from which the reader can extrapolate meaning from the image alone. This is a wholly different skill that we need to cultivate in our readers.

Graphic novels, especially for children, are at risk of not being published as frequently because they are extremely expensive to publish and also because of scanlation, they are being ripped off via the internet so while they may have a lot of readership, it may have nothing to do with how many copies they actually sell. Stacy King, a YA novelist who also works as the marketing manager for Udon Publishing, (and a friend of mine), actually had to explain this phenomenon to me after the panel was over.  (And I apologize if I mess it up, now…) In the history of manga publishing, it used to be that you had these manga pages in Japanese that people would scan post online and then also have a translated file for each panel so you could read, look, and laugh along.  This became such a big thing with such a dedicated following that now manga lovers have the option of reading pre-translated works (put out by people like Udon). Hooray, right? Well, as the technology has advanced, so has the amount of scanned works that are ripped off as bit torrents and downloaded by children (and everyone else) everywhere! This is problematic for publishers, obviously, but it also is problematic for the creators who are sometimes contracted to write or draw a certain series of graphic novels, but because of the scanlation phenomenon, publishers may choose not continue to produce the work.  I think, this is very obviously where the library comes in. We need to advocate the true value of graphic novels to parents, teachers, and yes, other librarians in our community. We need to make sure we have a wide selection of graphic novels from the commercially popular to the quality (and yes, sometimes they are one and the same). We need to continue to market ourselves as a free service and tell our customers that they don’t need to be dependent on downloading to get what they want to read for free, because … we have it! We also need to teach our customers that downloading is illegal, and hurts a lot of people in the industry of creation. So, in conclusion – Hooray graphic novels! And I will get down off my soapbox, now.

(A big thanks to Toronto Comics Arts Festival (Christopher Butcher in particular), the panelists and moderator for making this possible.)

And it’s not all spontaneous fun and impromptu games – we do have a quota to fill. 20 Storytimes On Demand per month. Eeeesh. At my branch, besides myself, we have one full-time information associate, and two part-time information associates dedicated to Children’s Services. This usually means that the information associates do one on-demand per shift and I help out and even though the quota seems lofty, we’ve able to not only meet, but exceed it on several occasions.

While this is probably mainly to ensure that all of the branches are pulling equal weight on this new service endeavour, I’m not sure if we as a public service institution should be putting a number on services. What happens to the value of a particular service, (especially one so reliant on enthusiasm as story times), if we institute limits based on quantity and not quality? Or at least not one that’s so high that we’re scraping to find appropriate books to read and children for whom to read. Thennn there’s all of the implications for desk time, break time, etc. whew! That being said, we’re still in discussion as to what is the best practice for this service and what is most profitable in terms of customer experience and our service mandates.

There’s also the question as to whether this is, as librarians, what we should be focusing our energy on doing. When I was home for the holidays, my parents had their annual Librarian Spaghetti Dinner (I’m a second generation librarian) and we had a bunch of awesome librarians over for carbs and wine. One of the lovely ladies and gentlemen to grace our table was my former boss at Bloomfield Township Public Library, who I love, adore and use as a model for the way a department should be managed.  I’ve told her a bit about these storytimes on demand, and while she’s not an “old-school” librarian by any means, she was a bit hesitant about whether or not the service actually fit into a model of library service. Her (very good) point was that as librarians, we are not there for entertainment purposes, but to serve our communities by providing information-based services (including storytimes) rather than song and dance routines. (I do apologize if I’m paraphrasing awfully – I was a few glasses of wine into dinner when I had this conversation).

So is it “Do the storytime and they will come?” or “They will come, so do the storytime?”

My answer would be a bit of both. (I know, I know, do I ever have an opinion that isn’t based on compromise?) True: We provide scheduled storytimes and it is in our best interest to focus our energies on ensuring that these are of the highest quality and truly promote reading and literacy awareness because we have the education and the knowledge to make them of greater value than a simple “song-and-dance.” Also true: The nature of libraries and the services provided therein are changing and we have to be willing to try new things. (Please note: I do not believe that “relevancy” is an issue when it comes to early literacy – but … that’s another blog post in itself). And we can use our statistics for on-demand as feedback for how we could schedule our “official” storytimes to better serve our community. Basically, it’s my belief that these traditional and informal programs can coexist and possibly even help us to improve library services with reasonable expectations and best practices in place of course.

As a children’s librarian, I believe that education about literacy and promotion of reading and books is a fundamental part of my job and I should try to do that however and whenever possible. This is especially crucial in terms of school-age kids: We have a whole curriculum for storytimes specifically for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, but beyond age 5 the children in my system are so overly-scheduled that they usually participate solely in the educational programs at the library rather than good, old-fashioned, free storytimes. So, realistically speaking, there’s little demand, but it doesn’t mean it’s not important! And perhaps these brief quick-and-dirty storytimes aren’t the most fulfilling pedagogically speaking, but if I can randomly squeeze in 15 more minutes of book-time into the day for these kids, why not? Moral of the story(time): I can’t make parents bring their kids to storytime, but I sure as hell can bring the storytime to the kids.

In addition to this change in our storytime philosophy, we’ve also started offering “Storytimes On Demand.” Quite literally, going out and offering storytimes to the people as they’re in the library. We’ve been offering story times on-demand since the beginning of 2009, so this is more or less still a relatively new service for us and I find we’re still trying to work out best practices in terms of delivery: a several stories or just one? 15 minutes or five? In its inception, I provided these services when there we had reached “critical mass” in the children’s department, sometimes giving a storytime on the fly to more than 30 people. And subsequently, the spontaneous story times were a bit longer (about 15 minutes) to compensate for the time it took to gather a decent sized crowd in one location and get all of the kids settled.

One issue we’ve come across is competition from the toy collection that we’ve recently added to each branch at MPL. Being the sort of library diva that I am, storytimes on demand usually fed my need to be centre-stage and to make babies happy, etc. but it was a little nerve-wracking to walk around to the groups of children who were happily running up and down the ramp, jumping around our story nook, playing with cars and legos, and savagely beating each other with cloth blocks and try to peddle books as a more worthwhile activity.

Imagine this if you will: It’s Saturday afternoon, the children’s department is so busy it’s become a sentient, writhing being in its own right. I grab some books and slowly shuffle up to a group of kids gleefully destroying MPL property and their oblivious parents. “Uhm, hey kids – do you want to listen to a story?” (no response.) “Hey, uh… HEYYY YOU GUYYYYSSSS.” (everyone freezes. I’m painfully reminded of my nerd-dom as a zygote). <breathes through mouth and reflexively pushes now non-existent glasses up nose> “Who … uh… who wants to read stories with me? It’ll be fun! Storytime! C’mon!”

At this point, a couple of things can happen:

1) The parents think that I will be putting on a storytime and am asking them to move out of the way and they’re confused and sometimes upset. Or the parents think that I’m asking them if they’ve come for a storytime, and they’re confused. By the time I finish explaining what it is that I’m doing and start the actual storytime, I’ve probably screwed up the break schedule back on desk.

2) The parents are absent and the kids throw blocks at me and say “NOOOOOOOO that’s BOOOORRRRRING!”

3) The parents are enthusiastic and present, but the kids are having a better time playing so they throw blocks at me and say “NOOOOOOOO that’s BOOOORRRRRING!” and then either their parents politely say “Thanks, but no thanks,” or their parents force them to listen and they cry.

4) Everyone is delighted and on board and we have a really awesome time.

Once everyone is settled, (I usually try to collect as many kinder as possible), I read one to three books and do like a “greatest hits” rhyme/song set list and say “goodbye.”

Say goodbye with your feet,

Say goodbye with your knees

Say goodbye with your bottom

Say goodbye with your tummy

Say goodbye with your elbows

Say goodbye with your hair

And say goodbye with your hands! Bye, bye, bye!

(Continued in Part 2…)

“Appropriate.” Such a dangerous word when it comes to children and literature. Is it too violent? Too sexual? Too profane? All of these are parental concerns, naturally, but taken too far can be … limiting to a child. Exposure to different viewpoints via literature is a powerful experience, and something I personally wouldn’t deny a child without good reason. On the other hand, reading material meant for more mature audiences (even the difference between children and teenagers) is a delicate balance when you’re young, but ultimately, I find it hard to prescribe censorship of any literature. A book might be perfectly acceptable in my opinion, but I’m a 20-something, idealistic, extremely liberal woman with no religious affiliation or children of my own. So, what’s acceptable for me, might not be so for the parent at the other end of the sociopolitical spectrum. Overall, it’s my opinion that parents need to read what their children read – especially in the case of these so-called “controversial” texts – so they can be aware of issues that may come up and address them if necessary.

So is Twilight “appropriate?” Having previously vowed a life of Twilight-celibacy, I wasn’t in a good position to answer such a question. Well, abstinence-only sex-ed doesn’t work, and neither does a life un-touched by Twilight, especially when you work with kids in a library. So, I read it. I read the whole thing. Why? So I could write a BOOK REPORT on it. It’s forthcoming, probably in several instalments… What I plan to do is give summaries of each book (with as much brevity as can be expected) and then let the criticizing (for better or worse) begin. Stay tuned!

Programming: I’m still trying to find best practices for programming, but it’s helped a lot that MPL has started conducting programming planning by committee. Also MPL is restructuring the programming itself (more on that later) and ideally this will standardize the programming delivered across the system. I have finally found some one-off programs that have worked, though! Over March Break I ran Very Merry Un-Birthday Party and Pizza Extravaganza and they were a huge success! Well – at least the kids had fun, and I felt distinctly less chaotic and stressed than I did for the Anne of Green Gables program last June. So progress, no?

Collections: I still have a LOT to learn about collection development, but to be honest it’s not as interesting as I thought it would be. I love to read, of course, and you definitely don’t have to twist my arm to read anything in the Juvenile department, but the actual mechanics of knowing what’s what, ordering, reading, weeding, and suggesting… OHhhhhhhh the suggesting, feels like a chore, no doubt. Reader’s advisory still sends me into little tiny butterflies of panic and I tend to suggest books that I’ve read as a child and enjoyed. This might be due to the fact that I abhor the pop-lit that a goodly portion of kids read (Hannah Montana and Pokemon, for example) but more likely it’s because I haven’t yet done the legwork to really learn about reading levels, my collections, popular titles and authors, etc. So – I find I remain fairly ignorant. To remedy – I’ve started on a mission to read more books in my collection. It started off with Neil Gaiman as a compromise of my sensibilites – Coraline and The Graveyard Book (both FANTABULOUS reads – I’m so, so happy he won the Pulitzer Prize for The Graveyard Book!!!). Now I’ve moved on to others, Alvin Ho: Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Things and Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything (both by Lenore Look) were great as well. ALSO Stanford Wong Flunks Big Time by Lisa Yee – the not quite a sequel to Millicent Min, Girl Genius (which won the Sid Fleischman humor award) – was phenomenal. Most recently, but not least – I’ve started reading the Joey Pigza books by Jack Gantos (starting with Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key), having been turned on to him by his novel for adults The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs. Whew… so I’m hoping this will help with my collections knowledge and hopefully I’ll sit down and write proper reviews some day soon…

Management (Time and otherwise): Hahaha… with my wedding (last November) out of the way I’ve gotten marginally better at not being completely rushing around like the proverbial decapitated chicken, but I still have a ways to go. This isn’t really helped by the fact that all job descriptions are currently under review in terms of responsibilities and committee work, etc. BUT it should all be worked out soon and then I’ll have a better idea of how much I need to freak out about various deadlines on a daily basis, haha. People management – still not very good. Because I can’t stand doing it! Especially since the people I’m … well not “managing” per se – but delegating, suggesting, requesting, etc. are mostly a few decades my senior. I just don’t feel comfortable telling people what to do. I even feel like I should be paying the teen volunteers! Argh. Well that’s just my temperament – I’ll work on being bossy this year. Probably…

Story Time: Story times, I think, are my biggest accomplishment of the year. I think I’ve grown a lot as a story teller and a performer, and I think it shows. (The ABC Canada rep said I was one of the best readers of Robert Munsch he had seen this year!!!) I’m definitely not as nervous as I was December 10, 2007 when I gave my very first story time, haha. I was… petrified. I’m an out-in-the-open champ, more or less… and I’ve also just about conquered the Baby Goose Beast, too!  So I guess it’s safe to say it’s taken about a year (a little less) to hit my stride in story time. But there’s always more to learn!!!

So that’s it – my year in review. A little bit of good and a little bit of “needs improvement” – but when are we ever done? We’re 3 months into the next set of adventures in librarianship and we’ll see how it goes!

The program itself was bit harder because I was exhausted and I got really hot jumping around with the kids. Usually their enthusiasm has proven to give little attention seeking me the fuel to finish the 20 minutes or so of story times. But I think the kids were as restless as I was tired so it was a struggle. Not to say they didn’t have fun… they shook their sillies out, but they spent more time kicking each other than actually listening, haha.

Here’s the outline of the program:

Song: Shake My Sillies Out

Book: What Did You Put in Your Pocket?

Song/fingerplay: Five Green and Speckled Frogs

Five green and speckled frogs,
Sat upon a speckled log,
Eating the most delicious bugs!
Yum! Yum!
One jumped into the pool,
Where it was nice and cool.
Then there were four green and speckled frogs!

Glub! Glub!
Repeat for 4,3,2,1

Action rhyme: Bouncing Ball

Book: The Mud Puddle

Song: Mr. Sun

Oh Mr Sun, Sun Mr. golden Sun
Please shine down on me.
Oh Mr. Sun, Sun Mr. golden Sun
Hiding behind those trees.
These little children are asking you
To please come out so we can play with you.
Oh Mr. Sun, Sun Mr. Golden Sun
Please shine down on me.

Song: The More We Get Together

Book: Jamberry

Song: Head Shoulders Knees and Toes

Book: Peanut Butter and Jelly

Song: Do Your Ears Hang Low?

Book: Slop Goes the Soup

Song: If You’re Happy and You Know It

Actually, I didn’t get to Slop Goes the Soup, cuz the kids pretty much were just bugging each other by the time I got around to “Mr. Sun” but… I had planned it. Overall, I think The Mud Puddle (by the wonderful Robert Munsch) was a bit too old for the majority of the kids, although it’s a great book for story telling and they listened politely. What Did You Put in Your Pocket (Beatrice De Regniers) was possibly a bit too trippy for the kids. It’s a strange book – great visuals , putting pudding in your pocket, but it doesn’t really flow as well as I’d like. I feel like there should be a rhythm (“What did you put in your pocket? What did you put in your pocket? In your pockety-pockety pocket? Early Monday morning…) but somehow I’m not getting it very well. It lent itself well to a great tie-in craft, though: I had the kids make their own “pockets” by cutting out a pocket shape in construction paper, and then stapling a plastic baggie to card stock under the pocket shape. It made a transparent pocket which they could decorate then stuff it full of strange things, just like the book. I gave them glitter, feathers, foam shapes, crepe paper and cotton balls. Hm. Might have to post a picture of that one, haha. So, I think they had fun… Wellll, that’s my report for this “Family Fun Day Monday”… tune in next time for “Hilarious Hats and Headwear” (ohhhhh I am such a children’s programming cheeseball).

Family Story Time 1

Shake My Sillies Out

Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See? by Eric Carle

Little Bunny Foo-Foo

Bouncing Ball

I’m bouncing, bouncing everywhere

I bounce and bounce into the air!

I’m bouncing, bouncing like a ball

I bounce and bounce until I fall!

Oh My Gosh, Mrs. McNosh by Sarah Weeks

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Row, row, row your boat

Gently down the stream

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily

Life is but a dream!

Row, row, row your boat

Gently down the river

If you see a polar bear

Don’t forget to shiver

Row, row, row your boat

Gently down the stream

If you see a crocodile

Don’t forget to scream

Row, row, row your boat

Gently to the shore

If you see a lion

Don’t forget to roar

Row, row, row your boat

Gently to a stop

And if you see a bunny there

Don’t forget to hop!

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom

We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen

The More We Get Together

Do Your Ears Hang Low?

We’re Going to the Zoo words by Tom Paxton

If You’re Happy and You Know It

We’re going on a Bear Hunt was really popular… actually one mother actually asked to check it out after the story time! All in all, despite the thrown-together, last minute nature of it all, the kids loved it! (or appeared to) and the parents didn’t make any comments on the … “crappyness” of the craft. Lesson learned? Marian maybe is right. Maybe you don’t need to re-invent the wheel every time you do a program. I guess I’m still learning to stop trying to go above and beyond time and time again. And I don’t mean that in a bragging way… Summer Reading Club case in point, my bright ideas aren’t always the easiest way of doing things.

Maybe it’s the digital education doing it to me… I feel like I have to do these pioneering and great things in the department and in programming. In all seriousness, the children’s department doesn’t necessarily need to be on the bleeding edge of anything, as much as I would like it to be. The dire reality of the situation is that in order for something cutting edge to really work in a children’s department… well of course, it needs to be something that kids will like doing, but even more importantly, it needs to be something that the parents will understand and support. Oh well, for the time being I’ll live vicariously through my teen librarian coworkers and their forays into Facebook. I wonder if I could do Webkinz story time?

]]> http://garz4lib.net/2008/07/15/family-story-time-a-lesson-in-not-being-cool/feed/ 0 http://garz4lib.net/2008/07/08/family-fun-day-monday-week-1-funny-foods-i-can-haz-out-in-the-open/ http://garz4lib.net/2008/07/08/family-fun-day-monday-week-1-funny-foods-i-can-haz-out-in-the-open/#comments Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:26:06 +0000 mmgarza http://accidentalchildrenslibrarian.wordpress.com/?p=19 My very first story time that I have created… planned… and will do for longer than 15 minutes! Hooray! I was really really nervous. This is also Angus Glen’s very first “out in the open” story time ever.

Good thing it went much better than expected!

The kids were incredibly cute. I’ve found that small children like stickers and clapping their hands and jumping around more than … oh, I don’t know… Donald Trump likes money? That much. Kids would maybe even eat bugs for a sticker. And if anything involves clapping and jumping around it’s an instant hit. So “Shake Your Sillies Out” = instant success! Altogether this was a much more positive experience, despite my nerves, than previous story times. Hurray!

Funny Foods

The Beastly Feast by Bruce Goldstone

Shake My Sillies Out

Apples and Bananas

I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas
I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas

I like to ate, ate, ate ay-ples and ba-nay-nays
I like to ate, ate, ate ay-ples and ba-nay-nays

I like to eat, eat, eat ee-ples and bee-nee-nees
I like to eat, eat, eat ee-ples and bee-nee-nees

I like to ite, ite, ite i-ples and bi-ni-nis

I like to ite, ite, ite i-ples and bi-ni-nis

I like to ote, ote, ote oh-ples and bo-no-nos
I like to ote, ote, ote oh-ples and bo-no-nos

I like to ute, ute, ute, ooh-ples and bu-nu-nus

I like to ute, ute, ute, ooh-ples and bu-nu-nus

Mmm, Cookies! By Robert Munsch

Betty Botter bought some butter,
But, she said, the butter’s bitter;
If I put it in my batter
It will make my batter bitter,
But a bit of better butter
Will make my batter better.
So she bought a bit of butter
Better than her bitter butter,
And she put it in her batter
And the batter was not bitter.
So ’twas better Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter.

If You’re Happy and You Know It

Who Took the Cookies from the Cookie Jar? By Philemon Sturges

5 Little Cookies

5 little cookies sitting on a tray

5 little cookies smiling all day

Along came a little child rubbin’ her tummy

One cookie disappeared, yum, yum, yummy! (Repeat 4.3.2.1)

Do Your Ears Hang Low?

Bee- Bim Bop by Linda Sue Park

I guess when librarians plan programming consistently, we don’t realize how much we also program customers. I had maybe 2 families here for the actual story time itself… the rest were just people I wrangled and co-opted to come to the story time, and those who just happened to stop over. After the program ended and during the craft portion of the program itself I got all sorts of questions like “you really have a story time Monday nights? Every Monday? Really?” I was told later it was because Mondays at AG have traditional NOT been story time nights. So have we confused them or “delighted” them? Who knows? At least the kids seem to enjoy it. Too bad it all ends in the fall. We’ll see what happens to the customers then! Mwahahaha…

Flash forward through graduation and 4 months into the future:

I am finally hired as a children’s librarian at Angus Glen Library (yay!), which is a branch of Markham Public Library in Markham, Ontario, Canada. So here I am: I know how to build a webpage and digitize photographs and audio, but have no experience with collection development. I have no reader’s advisory skills, and I have done one story time ever. Intentional? You bet. Accidental? For the time being, I definitely feel like it! This is a chronicle of my attempt to become a “real” children’s librarian with no traditional education and precious little training. With a bit of luck, this might also serve as an informal guide to new librarians and librarian hopefuls… or just a dose of familiar humor for those in the field. Enjoy!