Easy programming: A movie birthday!

When I began my job in September, it was only a couple weeks into being the new kid I had to brainstorm programming for the new year. One of my philosophies as a librarian is to keep it simple. I don't see the point in creating something incredibly convoluted when something simple can be extremely effective.

So when asked what I wanted to do for one of my events during one of our school district's Fridays off in the dead of winter (stuck inside time with little excitement here in the cold snowy Wisconsin icebox), I thought throwing a birthday party for a movie would be a good idea. And wasn't I lucky that Disney's classic 101 Dalmatians happened to be celebrating its 50th anniversary? It always was one of my favorites and I thought, why not?

We set the party for January 21, and we were holding it at 1:01 p.m.

The party was extremely successful, pulling in 60 attendees, ranging in age from the littlest to the middle school crowd -- exactly the demographic I hoped to grab for this event. So what did we do?

I remind you: keep it simple.

First, I asked one of my coworkers to make up a spotted cake. I left it purposely vague, but I did suggest a spotted cake could be interpreted any way she wished, down to spotted frosting or even cupcakes (get it?). In the midst of thinking through other events, one of the local community members got wind of our event and came by my office asking if I'd be interested in having him bring his pet dalmatian to the party.

Now anyone who knows dalmatians knows they can be extremely high strung and aren't always the best parts. I spent probably half an hour with this guy talking with him about his dog, who happened to do events at the fire department periodically, and I decided to test my luck on having a dog at the event. I'm lucky enough to have not only a digital camera, but a digital photo printer, as well. I knew immediately we'd have an opportunity for the kids to each have their photos taken with the dog and take the souvenir home immediately. Any parent can tell you that a photo like that is more fun and valuable as a program takeaway than a plastic toy of some sort.

So, cake and a dog. What else could we do? At any good birthday, what do you do?

I didn't have to think too much or too long to come up with pin-the-tail-on-the-dalmatian. I did a little Googling and pulled up this dalmatian puppy image which featured an excellent tail, and then I blew it up using this program. When I printed the poster, I cut the tail out separately, then reprinted the poster post-photoshopping the tail out of the image (that way I got a full size tail and then a full-size poster sans-tail). Because the poster printed up pixelated from being stretched out, I took a black sharpie to it. Easy peasy. Now I had an image that I could tape together and make a larger poster.

At any good kid party, there's also face painting. I had a coworker kind enough to help out by manning a station to face paint the kids into dalmatians. We had a box of face crayons and pulled them out to use. We didn't limit the kids to black and white; we let them become green or purple dalmatians if they wished.

And last, but certainly not least, I brought 2 craft activities for the kids. The first was exceptionally simple: I printed out six different 101 Dalmatians coloring sheets and brought out my huge tub of crayons (which is a big deal, since we just have a small one in our children's area). I ended up moving this activity from our programming room to the children's room since our programming room has a capacity of 30 (and 60 is more than 30. . .) but no one complained.

The second crafty activity was making a dog tag. I used the die cut to make about 50 round tags (which look suspiciously like fish bowls when you don't put a hole punch in the top), as well as about 50 heart tags. I cut plenty of thread for the actual necklace part and pulled out a tub of glitter paint, glitter, markers, and stickers. This was a total hit, as anything that lets kids make a mess should be.

Tables were set up around the programming room, and the cake and cupcakes were on display in the middle with a couple of cool dalmatian posters. When the program began, we all sang "Happy Birthday" to the movie, then let everyone meander from table to table. The kids loved meeting the dog, playing pin-the-tale, and, of course, enjoying cake!

One thing I forgot to mention about the program: one of the original goals was to collect food donations for our local shelter. I don't think we did a great job advertising that, since we picked up only a couple of boxes of dry food. If I were to do this in the future, I'd plug it harder, but there is no denying that 60 in attendance was an awesome success for such a simple program. I think in total, it was about 2 hours of prep for the program -- and it was completely worth it. Parents and kids left happy, and we were able to involve community members, as well as play to the strength of employee talents we had.

If you're looking for an easy program and one with guaranteed fun, think simple. No need to do something wild. And as always, feel free to steal this. Remix it and make it your own or feel free to steal it 100%.

Library Day in the Life!

I've been a bad library blogger, but not for naught. I have so much stored up to share. It's just sitting down and doing it. But today, I bring you an installment of Library Day in the Life!

On Mondays, I am the evening librarian, so my day begins later than most!

11:45 a.m.: Roll into work and remember the towering pile of books on my desk is meant to be checked out. Half are circ record check outs from story time (oops) and the other half are meant for two separate teacher collections, one on friendship and one on horses. Noted to self we need more horse stories -- we own more books about sea horses than ponies.

12:15 p.m.: Being by making up a blog post about our new teen book club and creating a GoodReads group for it. Email all the people who joined. Emailed the author of the book we chose about setting up a Facebook chat with my kids. Then tackle this box on my desk with a day care kit. I needed to update the contents, and as I opened the file I figured out someone already did. Print, print, print. Then on to going through the piles of new youth and teen books. I don't read them all but pay attention to titles, covers, and authors, as well as books that look like potential good story time picks. Write up my stats from Friday's programs. We had 60 kids at our 101 Dalmatian birthday party and 5 at my new high school book club. Then I wrote up my numbers from story times and remembered I had a baby bag to make up. Which leads me to . . .

12:45 p.m.: Make up a baby bag for a patron. We have a program where expecting moms can request a Welcome Baby bag. It includes a ton of new parenting information, baby's first board book, and a coupon for baby's first library card. I whip it up and call the mom-to-be.

1:00 p.m.: I remember I haven't even read through the stories for story time today. I breeze through them and make sure everything I need is together. I deal with a few questions from coworkers and talk to my boss about some things she wants me to think about, including putting the I Spy books together. I did a display of them a couple weeks ago, and now patrons are trying to find them but discover that they're by different authors. Sent an email to pubyac asking for help with how to fund a book club. See, we can't get enough current books to borrow from the system, and my boss and I are against the idea of becoming the default book club library (the one people know they can rely on). So we're toying with some other options.

1:30 p.m.: I'm out of the office for story times. I do preschool, kindergarten, and day care story time at the Lutheran school. This week's theme is transportation, and I bring Duck on a Bike, Freight Train, Sputter Sputter Sput, and Sheep in a Jeep. We sing "Wheels on the Bus" (huge hit!) and play a few rousing rounds of Little Mouse.

1:45 p.m.: Preschool story time. This is my all-time favorite group of kids. I get hugs before AND after I start. When I finish their story time, the kids tell me they wish I could come EVERY DAY to sing and read to them. My little heart? It MELTS.

2:20 p.m.: Kindergarten story time. This group is always so rowdy. And boy are they cheaters at little mouse.

2:40 p.m.: Day care story time. I don't do Little Mouse with them because we make a craft. We make Stop Light Necklaces. Yeah, I totally stole the entire story time from here. And the craft they LOVED and did with such pride. One issue I remembered too late from this, though, is that in Wisconsin, we don't have normal stop lights. So, we don't have the up and down kind but the side to side kind. One of the kids put his lights on backward. . .and the teachers? They said they were eager to play "Stoplight" with them. SWEET. Awesome craft as always.

3:15 p.m.: Lunch at home. The best part of where I work is that I get to eat lunch at home every day. I spent the hour catching up on critique work for a crit group I'm a part of, emailing some folks, and putzing on Twitter.

4:15 p.m.: Back at work. I email with the girl who works across town about a meeting we have Friday in the Milwaukee burbs. I do some emailing with a magician and finish putting the order of books together for our book club. My community service person shows up a little early and I'm caught without something for her to do, again. I get her started on shelf reading since she's pretty good at it. This is followed by talking with a coworker about summer reading for so long that. . .

5:05 p.m.: I make us both late for our reference desk shifts. Eesh. I relieve my coworker and set up shop. I'm VERY lucky in my job, since I can read at the reference desk. This is necessary because I need the mental break, and it's actually my thinking time. I have a few transactions all night, including one by a little boy who tells me all about the book he's getting. It's about microscopic bugs. Then he says they live all over our bodies and his mom must have a TON because she's so big. Mom and I were dying of laughter. Kid made my night.

6:15 p.m.: Boss is waiting for her program to begin, so we get to talking about teens and what mine want from programming. She's shocked and not shocked. I give my community service person another small task of shelving books.

7:00 p.m.: Coworker and I talk about what to do in the teen area since it's so crammed on space. I tell her I'll go up tomorrow and work on it because I've got some ideas for improvement. Space! We need it SO BAD.

8:15 p.m.: Write myself a to-do list for tomorrow after seeing I'm only on desk 2 hours. I can accomplish so much. My list includes making out the summer reading plans, booking a magician, making magic happen in the teen area, prepping a middle school book talk for February, and planning/buying the supplies for my huge story time next month on pets.

8:29 p.m.: Coworker asks to buzz out early to pick up her kid from sports practice. Apologizes. I am the worst supervisor ever because I don't think it requires an apology. Things come up. We have one minute before close. I lock up the kid's area, then head upstairs to help my other coworker lock up.

8:35 p.m.: I'm at home and popping dinner in!

This was a pretty average day. I didn't get enough done but then felt completely fulfilled with story time stuff. I feel like I am pretty bad at the administration stuff at work but am good at the fun and creative things. Nothing makes me happier than visiting 80 kids and making them fall in love with a story.

Middle school book talk

I haven't forgotten about this -- it's just been busy. A handful of good stories times mixed with a couple of real bummers. I'll tell you about those soon.

But today I'm spending the entire day in 7th grade again, talking books. Lots of books. I've talked a few of these titles before at my prior job, and they're all natural sells. I try hard for this age to mix fiction and non-fiction, though this talk seems heavier on fiction.

Besides these books, I'm bringing a bag of new titles I won't be talking but that either haven't moved much on the shelf or look appealing. I have the honor to give a number of these students their first library cards today, so I'm offering them the chance to browse a small sampling of what all our library has to offer them.

Have you talked any of these titles? Have you had success? Check back to see what these kids loved most!

Phoenixtalk dec2010

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Changing the bulletin board

I've had an idea cooking in my head to change up the bulletin board in the teen area, and this week I was finally able to pull everything together.

After a couple of high school teachers mentioned how hard it was to get the kids to read, both citing not being exposed to much or knowing how to pick something good (one mentioning that discussing book covers is something she thinks is effective), I decided to put MY passion on display: The Cybils.




It's a long and narrow board, and I decided to line the sides and the bottom with some of this year's nominees, both in YA Fiction and in YA Science Fiction / Fantasy.




The middle of the board has the title in a huge font (it's 700 point) and the sign in the middle: "Awards Books that Don't Suck." I have to thank the panel organizer, Jackie, for that little gem. I went back and forth on using it -- the word suck, that is -- but ultimately decided that that is EXACTLY how kids would want a book sold to them.

I printed out "Who," "What," "When," and "Where" labels, and beneath each, I put a small bit about the awards. I took the logo from the site. On my "Where" sign, I've made small pull tabs that the teens can take with them and it will get them on the website.

On either side of the middle and the frame of nominees, I've put up the finalists and winners of years past:









I've saved all of the book covers and the signage into a publisher file, and if anyone is interested in getting a copy, let me know! I'm happy to share since it means getting the word out.

Books Talk: Say Something

If you are a teen librarian, and you aren't book talking, you are missing out on the single most impressionable thing you can do for your patrons: showing them people read.


I've been making the rounds in our local 9th grade classrooms and talking books. The kids have loved these titles, begging to take them from me. Because of tricky card issues, it hasn't happened as much as I'd like yet, but you better believe I'm planning a way for all the kids interested -- even those without cards -- to take what they want to home.


Here's my powerpoint and my titles. Each has had a wide appeal, but top picks have been Love Drugged, Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters, and Half Brother. We start each presentation talking covers, too, so I can guide the kids through making selections.

Nov2010 booktalk

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Most appealing cover for the teens? Not That Kind of Girl. The girls say audible that it looks like an awesome book.

Don't be afraid to not talk, too. As you'll see, a title here has nothing but the cover. I pull up the best trailer on youtube -- usually the publisher's own -- and play it. I emphasize using this sparingly and only with exceptionally enticing trailers.

I won't talk too much more about my methods of book talking because (drum roll) you can read it in the December 2010 issue of VOYA.

My teen space

I've got a very unique teen space to share. I haven't photographed our huge bulletin board, since that'll be for another post shortly, but I thought I'd give you a glimpse into creative space.


This is the "entrance" to the teen space. It's shaped like an L, which this part being the bottom part of the L. The shelving you're looking at is our new books. They're only things published 2009 or sooner and acquired in the last three months. I go up there every day to face out new titles and spruce it up a bit. The shelf on wheels next to it houses our magazine collection.

Rounding the corner:

Our top shelves on the left have our popular teen non-fiction, as well as a suggestion box and a huge box of bookmarks. I don't believe it keeping bookmarks in my office; I like putting them out for any time. I've had a couple fabulous authors send me bookmarks, too, which get to live there, too (and I always pop one in the book, too). I have a love/hate relationship with that water poster, too. It might not last too much longer there. And the closet you see is a storage closet for our cleaning crew, so nothing exciting.

A little more face-on:


We have a chair and rug to brighten the space up. Above this photo, which you can't see, is the Jacob READ poster, hanging from the ceiling (you can see it in the very first photo). Above the chair is an awesome poster with the actors in Simone Elkeles's Perfect Chemistry book trailer. We serve a huge hispanic population, so having a poster with very attractive Latino guys was a must have, in my book.

As far as shelving, I like to keep it mixed up a bit. Some are shelved left and some right, and some are actually just stacked. It gives the shelving a little more personality. On the very bottom is the embarrassingly small audiobook collection for teens. I've recently purchased about 50 new audiobooks and 20 playaways for teens, so you can bet this will change!

Then, there's this entire back wall of shelving, too, which makes up the long part of the L shape:


We have the entire back wall for teen books, too. The shelving is built into the walls, so there's not too much flexibility in terms of shelving. You can see in the middle my heating unit and the small shelf above it where I put up my displays. I face out books on each shelf in different places for the teen appeal factor.

And the big black corkboard I plan on taking advantage of. Right now, my coworker's daughter made a display which impresses the heck out of me: she drew characters out of a number of popular teen fiction and has a "Guess who I am?" going on with it. Characters included Katniss, Katsa, Bella, Harry Potter, and a bunch of others. I think my next display up there will be all about the Cybils. It's just finding the time.

I don't have too much more room to grow, but grow I will. I'm just going to have to get creative.

Do you have photos of your teen spaces? I'd love to see realistic spaces -- not the kind that get featured in books or journals. I want the kind that happen when you don't have money to spend on new furniture, shelves, or other gadgets.

The best (and most stressful) program ever

When I began my new job, I inherited some tried-and-true programs. This is one of them, and it's one I will continue over and over. Despite how much work and stress it is, it was completely worth it for a final attendance of 121. That isn't counting the 30 or 40 people the next day that I sent home with pumpkins, either.

What is this program, you ask? Pumpkin carving.

What you need: pumpkins, buckets of water and rags for cleaning, carving tools, table cloths, apple cider, napkins, hand wipes, plastic bags for seeds, heavy duty black garbage bags, and crafting supplies. For crafting supplies, I purchased a mega box of sharpies, paper for kids who wanted to practice their drawing, pom poms, pipe cleaners (the biggest hit!), stickers, sequins, and tacky glue.

Nuts and Bolts: The biggest stress of this program is finding pumpkins, since every attendee who wants one gets a pumpkin. I called around to a number of local farms, and I had 2 farms that donated a total of about 160 pumpkins. If you aren't so lucky to get such a donation, ask your local retailers for discounts on a large lot. Some stores sell them at $2.99 each, and if you can get 100 for half price, it's still not that expensive.

All of the pumpkins needed to be transported, and between a coworker and myself, we did it in 3 trips. It took a few hours and a lot of manual labor, since our programming room is downstairs in our building. We borrowed a cart from the store next to the library, piled them in, then lined the perimeter of our programming room with pumpkins. Naturally, we had a few other programs prior to the pumpkin carving one, so we needed to keep some space clear.

Prior to the program: We clean and gut the pumpkins before the program in order to make it run smoothly. Our room capacity is 35 without tables and chairs; with tables for carving, it's probably more like 25-30. To get 120 people in and out within 4 hours we have to do some work beforehand. If the idea of cleaning and gutting 160 pumpkins overwhelms you, think about the community resource you already have: teens needing service hours.

I'm lucky to have some regular volunteers and their families who eagerly volunteered. One mom wanted to so she could take all of the innards home for cooking (which I was game with). In addition, I put a call out to the sponsor of our high school's National Honors Society; from that alone, I got an additional 10 volunteers. I also put an announcement into the school's daily announcements and begged a good friend of mine to help. All together, I had 20 volunteers who came. Oh, I forgot: I advertised free food. I got a deal with the pizza shop next door to give us 7 pizzas for $50 (I am a HUGE proponent of not asking for free things from local vendors -- I ask for discounts because I believe all businesses deserve the actual business. Too many hand outs isn't good partnering). I also picked up a bag of candy and a few bottles of pop.

We made it an assembly line: a few people cleaned pumpkins with the bucket of water and rags; my friend and I cut the tops off the pumpkins (since I'd rather we get hurt than the teens); and then we passed the pumpkins off to the teens who gutted them on the table clothes I had laid on the floor. I told the teens they were welcome to take home seeds if they wanted to separate them from guts and had plastic bags for them to do so. As soon as they finished cleaning out the pumpkins, they relined them up along the wall and waited for their next one. With that many volunteers, we were done with cleaning in an hour and a half. The kids got service hours, free food, and time to hang out with their friends.

I also contacted our local newspaper about the program a week prior to the event. We had a member of the press show up and take a ton of photos. This ended up being prime opportunity to tell him who donated the pumpkins, and I'll be thrilled to see the photo spread in next Sunday's newspaper! Perfect pr opportunity for the library and our generous donors.

The Program: The next morning after story time, I pulled out 7 tables and covered them with new table clothes. One table had cider and cups, one had craft supplies, and all of the others just had an assortment of cutting utensils. The table with cider also had a sign thanking our pumpkin donors and thanking the volunteers from the night before.

I sat by the door and let people come in in groups, limiting capacity to the best of my ability without cutting families apart. They were told they could pick out their pumpkins and have fun. After they finished, I took a photo of each group with their creations, which apparently was the thing some of the kids MOST looked forward to (one ran upstairs to our adult services area and told the librarians there they got their photo taken - too cute!).

We did have a backup with people at the beginning, so my boss pulled out tickets and numbered them. I then called ticket numbers to let people in. No one seemed to mind waiting since it wasn't a lengthy wait to get in, and I had pulled out a ton of new coloring sheets and had them available in our youth services room for families to use.

Aftermath: When the program ended at 4 p.m., the floor was a mess. Thanks to the table cloths, tables were mostly clean, but the floor was another story. Craft goodies were everywhere. But fortunately, after sweeping the floor of the big pieces and then vacuuming carefully, clean up was finished in 30 minutes with two people. That was worth it for the crowd, the work, and the endless thank yous we got for this program.

We had tons of pumpkins remaining after this program, and the next day, I offered them to anyone who came in the library. So many people were thrilled to take one home -- and we had even hidden some small ones that stayed ungutted for those who really wanted to have seeds or pumpkin pie.

Lessons Learned: I followed notes from my predecessor about cider quantity, and I wish I had purchased a little more. No one complained at all, but I think more people would have taken advantage of it had I had more. I would also invest in an additional electronic cutter or two and I would probably bring out more craft supplies. My other big lesson was that I should have pulled out the photo printer: I think families would have LOVED taking home a photo of their creations.

Other information: I get asked a lot about the size of my library with the turnouts we get, and I will say my community is about 8,000 people. We do not take sign ups for this, nor do we expect people to even have a library card. So, turn out can be tough to gauge but since this program has gone on for a few years and gets nice press, we know it grows. In fact, this year's turn out was the highest yet (and the turn out for the night before for clean out was a huge leap from the year before). This is the kind of program that would work best in smaller libraries or in branches. You could make this a sign up only program to get an idea of numbers, but always be prepared for those who just show up. I hate turning anyone away and I'm fortunate I did not have to do it for this one.

Bonus program: My coworker runs our on-site storytime and was able to use the small pumpkins we chose not to gut for her storytime craft. Again, the kids and parents love it and thank us for letting the mess be made at the library and not their home.

Total cost: After the pizza, pop, candy, and new supplies we needed to purchase, I spent probably around $110-120. For a turnout that huge and the press we'll be getting, it was worth every penny.