Do you still do summer reading?

I was at a dinner party recently, and one of the guests, upon hearing that I am a librarian, innocently asked, "Oh! Yes! The library! Do you still do summer reading?"

I am still so gobsmacked by this question. I just don't even know where to begin. Yes! We are totally doing summer reading. My life is dominated by summer reading! We do summer reading for kids, and for teens, and now for adults, too. We do programs, and displays, and we offer so many prizes, and we do so much outreach to promote it. This is a monumental effort. Summer reading feels like the raison d'etre of our library lives. We literally start planning next summer's reading program as the current summer is ending. Yeah. We still do summer reading.

It really got me thinking... on one hand, this is exactly the same kind of question that falls in the category of, "Do you still use the Dewey Decimal system?" (Answer: yes) or, "Do you still use those card catalogs with the drawers?" (Answer: no) Probably people mean it as a harmless, light conversation starter. But, my number one takeaway when I hear something like this is that, this is a person who has not been to a library since they were a child. And this is the kind of person who imagines that if they are not at the library... then probably nobody is in the library. And they just don't know. They don't know how busy we are. They are nonplussed when they get to the library and they have to wait in line... not to check out a book, or get a computer, or ask a staff member a question or for anything. Because how could that dusty, quiet place be so bustling? It doesn't make sense to them. The same way that, "Do you still do summer reading?" doesn't make sense to me.

I know there's a segment of the population that we don't always reach - working adults in their 30's and 40's don't come to the library as often. They are too busy. Even when we offer evening or weekend hours they may not make it in. Our core users are retirees, stay at home moms, and economically disadvantaged. Still, it's worrying when I hear reactions like these - there's a whole universe that they are missing out on!

Top 10 Beach Reads

This week's topic from The Broke and Bookish is Top 10 Beach Reads. Here are my picks:

Of Poseidon - Anna Banks
What's summer without a mermaid story? This one is actually kind of terrible (the boyfriend is an alpha male stalker, which I hate) but that's what makes reading this one fun. It's a guilty pleasure.

Formerly Shark Girl - 
A little heavier than what I'd normally recommend for a summer read, a girl continues to cope with everything life throws at her after losing her arm in a freak shark attack.

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - Ann Brashares
Each of the girls in this story goes on an adventure either away or at home while borrowing the magical pair of jeans that somehow fits them all. Because the book is divided into four parts, it makes for an especially fast and fun read.

Lies Beneath - 
Another mermaid story. This one features a merman, a lake and a murder mystery.

How to Be Popular - Meg Cabot
Cabot always delivers light and easy to read fare, but this is especially fluffy and fun about a girl who uses an outdated manners book to try to become popular using advice from the past.

The Truth About Forever - Sarah Dessen
A sensitive story about a teen's summer as she works her butt off at a catering company, makes new friends and discovers that maybe her boyfriend isn't worth waiting around for.

We Were Liars - E. Lockhart
A lot heavier than what I'd normally recommend for a summer read, but I loved this story about an upper class girl and her rebellious cousins summer on a private island, with an unbelievably shocking twist at the end.

Meant to Be - Lauren Merrill
A fun school trip to Paris! Plus, a lot boy crazy.

Anna and the French Kiss - Stephanie Perkins
Another fun trip to France! And a bit boy crazy.

Lost Voices - Sarah Porter
Another mermaid story with a "Lost Girls" kind of feel. Abused girls get a fresh lease on life as angry mermaids.

Vacation!

Summer Reading is over... and I'm taking a well-earned August vacation. Look for more posts when I return!

Summer Reading Maker's Lab report

This summer we have been transforming the children’s study area at my library into a “Maker’s Lab” every Thursday afternoon. We have been working on craft projects appropriate for school-age children and tweens. Here's a sampling of a few of my favorites.

Everyone’s creativity was on display using rainbow scratchy paper.

Make-a-Minion craft, featuring the popular inventors from the movie Despicable Me.

One of my favorites was this lightning bug craft, that really glows-in-the-dark. 

I hosted a "Sidewalk Chalk Expo" Plenty of kids and parents showed up to take advantage of the shade during a hot sunny day. 

Just moments after our sidewalk masterpieces were complete, we felt the first raindrops… ah, so long, sidewalk chalk art! The art may not have lasted long, but the children made new friends and memories that will last a lifetime.

Top 10 Beach Bag Books

This week's topic from The Broke and the Bookish is: Top Ten Beach Bag Books.

I'm going to shy away from recommending specific titles, and instead talk about the 10 types of books you should be carrying in your beach bag this summer. Here goes!

1) Romance - Light, easy, fun, spicy and sometimes a little ridiculous. Everybody should be reading at least one romance over the summer.

2) A Classic - Hey, maybe it's for required summer reading, or maybe your high school required reading days are far behind you, but everybody should be reading at least one weighty classic over the summer: think Dickens, Austen, Shakespeare or the like.

3) Narrative poetry - Most narrative poetry is fast moving and cuts directly to the emotional heart of a tale. Perfect for summer!

4) A Bestseller - Maybe, like me, you normally eschew bestsellers, seeking out more esoteric tomes. This summer, take the opportunity to read at least one super-popular book that everybody else is talking about right now.

5) Another romance - C'mon! It's summer! When else are you going to indulge yourself with a little brainless fun? Pick up a second fluffy romance book, right now.

6) A kids book - Maybe you don't normally read children's books. Summer's a great time to check out a nice, short book - some middle-grade fiction deals with surprisingly weighty themes.

7) A non-fiction book - I don't mean one of those non-fiction books that read like a novel. I'm talking about something with plenty of sidebar information and great photos and captions, ideal for simply scanning and glancing at while enjoying the summer sun.

8) A mystery or horror novel - What a great way to balance the summer heat! Read a book with thrills and spine-tingling chills.

9) Sci-fi - In the same vein, why not chill out reading a book that takes place in the sub-zero emptiness of space?

10) A book you've been meaning to read - Pick up one of those books that has been on your To Be Read list for just about forever. Summer is a perfect time to get caught up.


Photo credit: Aftab Uzzaman - found on Flicker.com

Dream Big Bookmarks

I was inspired by this craft project. What a simple and appealing idea! Take a paint chip, stamp it, add some pretty ribbon, and voila, bookmark!
I decided to go with a blue-toned paint chip to keep with this summer's theme of "Dream Big, Read." I got the stamps from a dollar sale bin at the local craft supply store. Lucky for me, clouds, moons, stars and inspirational sayings like, "Dream" or "Imagine" seem to be all the rage for scrapbookers. I'm really pleased with the results, and plan on doing a craft program with these at my library.

Summer Reading wrap-up

What a busy summer - I can't believe Summer Reading Club is over for the year. It was certainly a challenge... my first year at my current library, with a programming and prizes budget reduced to nearly zero, and very little time to plan. I think it went as well as could be expected. I managed to scare up some local performers who were willing to put on programs for free, and ransacked our supply closets for craft supplies that I could repurpose. Most of our summer reading program was accomplished through sheer ingenuity. You know that old saying, you can have things fast, or have them cheap or have them excellent, but you can only pick two out of the three. I opted for excellent, thrifty, yet time and labor intensive programs. Here are just a few highlights.


The Summer Reading theme this year was One World, Many Stories, and I started by making a Passport Craft for kids. I had planned to do a Mexican Paper Flower Making craft, using up the last of our tissue paper and chenille stems, but was stymied by much larger and younger crowd than I expected. The planned craft proved too difficult for most of the 3 and 4 year-olds who showed up, so I pulled out my "emergency kit" containing some coloring pages, and a simple caterpillar craft, where kids simply had to glue a precut caterpillar and leaf onto a floral scene.

Mostly, I stuck to affordable fun - the Sidewalk Chalk Art Expo that we hosted at the library was very successful. Patch.com even covered it in their local news. We also hosted a well-attended Spelling Bee. The toughest part was coming up with lists of words, and deciding their difficulty beforehand.

Here's a picture from the International Apple Craft we did. I read How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, and then invited kids to make their own apple faces, Mr. Potato-Head style, using red plates as our background.


A huge part of summer reading was managing people's expectations. A lot of parents (and kids) were bitterly disappointed at the paucity of prizes this year. I guess in years past, there was much better summer reading swag to be had. This year all I had were summer reading folders, bookmarks and a few stickers. I had some very uncomfortable conversations with folks who wanted to explain to the "new girl" that this isn't how Summer Reading Club is supposed to work. They did the reading, so where's the prize? I got through it by playing dumb, and remaining cheerfully psyched about Summer Reading. "Reading is the prize!" I informed them, and then might tell them how excited we were to have them sign up, how much Summer Reading helps kids with school success in the fall, so they don't have that summer gap, and then would solicitously inquire if they had gotten the free bookmark they were entitled to.


In years past, I've used a couple of complicated systems for tracking how much kids have read over the summer - including counting minutes read, pages read, or my personal favorite, pounds of books read. Kids loved "weighing in" their weekly reads on a kitchen scale. This year, I kept things simple, simple, simple. Just write down 10 books read on one's summer reading log, and you're entered in the grand prize drawing. We handled it on an honor system, since I didn't have the time or energy to play policeman. I did double-check all the drawing slips before I handed them in to the Central Library, and did find several duplicates. I'm going to be big-hearted and assume that those who entered multiple times, must have done it by accident. I went ahead and made sure we only had one entry per child.


Ultimately, I was really satisfied with our turnout. We had some respectable numbers, especially considering there hadn't been a children's librarian in the branch for so long, and so many families had started going to other branches in the interim. If I'm able to get similar size crowds next year, I'll be very happy. It's a comfortable number: busy enough to keep you on your toes, but with room to grow. Viva Summer Reading!

In My Mailbox 10

The Smurfs: Off to School
by Peyo
Simon Spotlight
May 2011


Just one title this week. It's an easy reader. I plan to give it away as a Summer Reading prize. I'm pretty sure the kids at my library will go nuts for it! School is fresh on their minds, as school starts ridiculously early here, in August. The folks at Columbia Pictures have been so generous! They also sent along Smurf-themed t-shirts and posters to promote the new movie - more great summer reading prizes.

Passport Craft

I had fun creating this passport themed craft for our summer reading program. The kids really enjoyed it. I made photocopies from one of the pages of clip art included in our Collaborative Summer Reading Program binder to use as inspiration images on the covers. The cover is simply blue paper folded in quarters. Most of the kids needed help with the hole-puncher - luckily I had plenty of parents and teen volunteers to help me out in that regard. I suppose yarn would have been easier to tie, but I had this ribbon left-over, so decided to use that up. For an added touch of authenticity, I printed up some pages for the middle of the passports with watermarked graphics from the summer reading theme of "One World, Many Stories" -- I was able to use the few pages I had left over as scrap paper for the library. I encouraged participants to get creative and design the cover of their passports however they liked. To finish up, we brought out some stamps and stamped the passports to represent all the countries we'd like to go to one day.

Read or review?

Remember that picture of ARCs I snagged a while back?  I've been busy reading, reading, reading, and now I've got a backlog of a jillion (okay, more like five) reviews to do.  I like to get them on my blog relatively quickly, when everything from the story is still fresh in my mind.
The worst part of it all, is that I'm totally not in the mood for working on reviews!  I just want to curl up in a cozy chair and keep on reading!

Summer Reading Finale

The kids read, they weighed-in and they voted. They got exactly what they wanted. A totally ninja-themed end-of-summer party.

For some reason, I had imagined that hosting a ninja party would be a cinch. I'd planned on hitting the 99 cent store or perhaps a party goods store, going straight to the "ninja" aisle, and picking out a bunch of decorations to purchase with a donation from the library Friends' group. Alas, it was not to be so. I went to at least four different stores, and found absolutely nothing. Well, ninjas are supposed to be stealthy... I did find quite a lot of pirate decorations, though. I found Spongebob Squarepants dressed as a pirate, Mickey Mouse dressed as a pirate, sports pirates, sea pirates, party pirates. Pirates, apparently, do not lie low.

In the end I lit upon a far cheaper option than purchasing decorations... I printed out some ninja pictures from the internet and hung them up. I added some red and black crepe paper we had lying around. I think the black was left over from a black and orange set from Halloween, and the red came from a former Valentine's Day celebration.

I printed out the large ninja on the left using the rasterbator site. It creates an enlarged multi-page version of whichever image you upload. I created the flag of Japan by using an old poster. First, I hung it up with the plain back of the poster showing. Then I added a red construction paper circle. Easy.

We had the favorite food of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: pizza. And I handed out free paperback books (donated by the publisher) to all the kids who participated in the Read-a-Ton challenge this year.

I can hardly believe this was all only a week or so ago. The start of the school year is just around the corner. And! I'm now at a different branch! (but more about that in a later post...)

(My thanks to 100 Scope Notes for pointing me to bitstrips.com for the cartoon image. It really is easy, and very fun to do)

Henna program

Low turn-out at one of our recent teen programs, and I reap the benefits.


For some reason, we had a pretty low turn-out at the henna workshop yesterday, and so the presenter had extra time to give me a temporary henna tattoo. Isn't it gorgeous? I'm loving it! I can't believe we didn't have more young adults show up for this awesome (free!) opportunity. What's the matter with these kids today, anyway? Gosh, I feel old, saying that.

Pirates vs. Ninjas, Part III

During our most recent weekly Summer Reading Club meeting, I set our regulars to work on a puppet-making project.

For the pirates, we used this paper-bag project. I had some teen volunteers help me pre-cut the beards and mustaches. What I didn't expect was that most of the kids in our Summer Reading Club used multiple beards. These were some very hirsute pirates!

For the ninja puppets, I improvised something out of a toilet-paper tube. I wrapped it in black construction paper, added an oval for a face and a strip of white paper for a belt. The toughest part was probably the shuriken. I practiced drawing it a few times, and then cut it out. I glued it so that the pencil marks don't show.

I think he looks pretty sharp!

Pirates vs. Ninjas, Part II

We've all been having a lot of fun with the "Pirates vs. Ninjas" contest I'm having at the library this summer.

Recently, we had a little sing-a-long, with verses that I mostly made up on the spot.

We alternated between pirates and ninjas.

It's to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It"

If you're a pirate and you know it, swab the deck! (make swabbing, mop-like motions)

If you're a pirate and you know it, swab the deck!

If you're a pirate and you know it, and you really want to show it,

If you're a pirate and you know it, swab the deck!

If you're a ninja and you know it, stay alert! (make spying motions)

If you're a ninja and you know it, stay alert!

If you're a ninja and you know it, and you really want to show it,
If you're a ninja and you know it, stay alert!

more pirate verses:

...walk the plank! (make jumping while holding your nose motions)

...get the gold! (make grabbing motions)

more ninja verses:

...sneak around! (make sneaking motions)

...battle crime! (make ninja motions)

This was really a lot of fun. I suppose I even could have had the kids help me improvise some more verses.

Each week the kids bring what they've been reading so that we can weigh it and keep track of how many pounds of books everyone's been reading. So far, ninjas have a pretty healthy lead. I've been exhorting them to start voting for pirates now, if they're going to; which only seems to incite the ninja fans to read more.

Another school/public library connection

There's nothing I love so well as helping children with summer reading lists. In an ideal scenario, school and public librarians work together to create a scintillating collection of titles and avoid common pitfalls such as listing books that are out-of-print, hard to get or simply not ideal for the suggested age range. School librarian Luke Robertson has created one of the most appealing lists that I've seen in a long time. (PDF's for each grade-range are on the right hand side of the page) He also points kids to their local library while the school library is closed for the summer. It's a real pleasure helping children find things to read when I'm working with lists like these!

Pirates vs. Ninjas

This summer, our Summer Reading Club Theme is “Treasured Islands.” The idea is that each branch is like a little island within the city – an island of culture and learning. And of course, many librarians are including pirate-themed activities as part of their summer line-up. This however, wasn’t enough for me. I decided to bring in that age-old conflict: Pirates vs. Ninjas. So, keeping with our islands theme, it’s the Caribbean Islands, vs. the Islands of Japan.

For the past couple of years I’ve done a program called Read-a-Ton. I have all our summer reading participants bring in what books they’ve been reading that week, and we weigh them on a kitchen scale. We keep track of how many pounds of books everyone in the community has been reading all summer. Last summer, I think we read 183 pounds of books! So far, everyone has been endearingly honest with their weigh-ins. I fully expected to have to fend off ridiculous claims of books read when I started doing Read-a-Ton, but that really hasn’t been the case.

This year, while brainstorming what to do for summer reading club, I decided to mix things up a bit. Children will still get all the fun of weighing their summer reading, however, now they get to vote for what kind of end-of-summer party we’ll have. Each pound of books counts as a vote that can be applied to either pirates OR ninjas. Who will emerge victorious? Will we be hosting a shindig suitable for buccaneers, or a soirée fit for martial-arts masters? Only time, (and our young readers) will tell!

(Image created by Wellington Grey under a Creative Commons license)