I consider my Reader's Theater program part of my school year repertoire. So it came as quite a shock when I started to get calls and inquiries asking me to PLEASE fit in another program before summer reading starts. This lucky librarian could not say no. The struggle was the writing... I write my own scripts (thanks to the guidance and format of fellow librarian, Jessica) and script writing is time consuming. I also have a group that is made up of tweens. They are demanding. They want substance! Scripts need to have an impact, prompt discussion and it needs to encourage more reading (partly my rules). I've written from Wonder, Harry Potter, Matilda, and more. I decided to try to adapt a scene from The One And Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. It's such a moving story and the emotions of the animals can easily be transferred to the format of a play. I am sure it will lend itself well to our upcoming "back by popular demand" program. I am including the script here, for those of you who wish to try and need to save a little time during these very busy summer reading months. Enjoy!
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I love to travel (which is probably why I love to read so much) and I was fortunate enough to visit Vermont for the first time this weekend! Aptly named "The Green Mountain State", Vermont's landscape was lush and beautiful. So many writers and artists call Vermont home. My son was there participating in the New England Young Writer's Conference, in Ripton, Vermont, the home of writer and poet, Robert Frost. We stayed in the heart of the Green Mountain National Park and almost all the roads in and out seemed to be "less traveled" - not a single one was paved. Frost's poem "The Road not Taken" was a bit cliche' around town, but it seems to always fit. I like it. As I sit here working on our upcoming summer reading activities, the quote and poem are fitting. I like to think that we approach every summer with some fresh, new ideas, some "less traveled" roads, if you will. Sure, the good ol' standby's work well, and they are worth keeping, but it's nice to see that we can attempt new things as well. Sometimes it's the new, underdeveloped idea that sparks the best of summer reading. I'm really excited about a community service club that I'll be starting. The idea sprang from our deluge of teen volunteers in the summer and the idea that we can keep them year round, doing good, and helping the community. What are some of your "less traveled" ideas this summer? THIS, ladies and gentlemen is what I love about being a librarian today. Right there. Wigs and costumes and workshops on how to do them better! Yesterday I had the pleasure of being a part of the first annual LIPopCon, a pop culture conference for librarians and educators. I attended three workshops, and all of them had me excited and planning for some fun things this summer and fall. I try hard to vary my literacies, but being a part of the comic and pop-culture world can be intimidating and overwhelming. Libraries, and especially teen librarians, are the gateway to these creative interests. At PopCon, we talked about the legitimacy of graphic novels in the reading and art realm, as well as how to serve the fandom teens and create a welcoming and inclusive spaces for all. Everyone who was there, was there with purpose and it was truly a great experience. I hope to see more of LI PopCon in the future! Summer Reading is nearly here and I'm up to my eyeballs in pinterest pages of crafts and activities. My summer calendar is jam-packed with activities and performers of all kinds and lots of things to keep families, kids and our teens engaged and feeling the "power" of libraries this summer. This week I went to the NLS Summer Reading workshop for a morning of idea sharing and motivation. It was great (and we made a craft!) I am thinking of those masks for our teens, as well as bringing in some real-life heroes for a weekly "Hero Hangout", in addition to the many programs and activities we will have on hand. What are some of your summer reading plans and activities? Share!
It all started with an app. Installing just one little app. Two hours later, there's no app and the iPad is hanging out of its kiosk shell. Why oh WHY is technology so incredibly frustrating?!?! In light of my recent talk on the glory of iPads in our tech-savvy-modern libraries, I am knocked right back down to size with today's recent escapade. You see, my department head/colleague found a bilingual app. We talked about it. We read up on it. It sounded great, had great reviews so we moved to download it to our children's public iPads..... But before we could download it we had to disable restrictions. Then we couldn't disable our restrictions until we connected to our secure WiFi.... Which we couldn't do until we closed out all our running apps... ....and opened our homepage for the WiFi terms and agreement page... Finally, 20+ minutes later we watched as the app slowly.... ever so slowly... downloaded. When it finally completed, we knew we would have to backtrack that whole process to enable restrictions once again, but first we decided to try the new app... Hello? Testing... 1,2 3. HELLO? Do you hear that? Right oh. Neither did we.As luck would have it the app had no sound. This is certainly not a good attribute for a language learning application. I closed the app and tried again. No luck. We opened another app. THAT app had no sound. Hmmmm... We deleted the app. We rebooted the ipad. All apps had sound once again. We re-downloaded that app. No sound on the app or the others again. So here we sit on a gray and rainy afternoon, struggling to get our bilingual app-less iPad to make a sound. For the price of only $2.99 you too can enjoy the hours of technology-maddening meltdowns and have nothing to show for it but a huge headache. Till next time my friends... .
Inform, Inspire, Ignite! The Youth Services Section of the New York Library Association's 2015 Spring Conference is this Friday! It's always great to share and discover new ideas and get a renewed enthusiasm for what we do each day. The best part for me is that I have been invited to participate as a panelist! I've blogged about my experiences using iPads at events and traditional library programs and now I'll have the chance to share that live and in person. I am proud and honored to be in the company of colleagues and panelists that inspire me as well. It is sure to be an informative and exciting workshop. So if you're going, join us for the iCan:Integrating iPads and Apps into Youth Programming, session #3, and be sure to say hello! And if you're not, do not fret! I'll be posting our workshop and pinterest board for you to gather ideas from. Now... what do I wear? SPRING! It's still a bit chilly outside, but we are all about SPRING here in the library these days. The bulletin boards have gone from frosty white snowflakes, to bright, warm and colorful displays. Storytime themes are bugs and flowers and bunnies and my favorite today... clouds. It Looks Like Spilt Milk, by Charles G. Shaw is a librarian favorite. Who doesn't dream of lying back in the thick, green grass and watching the over-fluffed summer clouds float by? Today we are going to use our imaginations to do just that (indoors, of course). Shapes are fun for kids. I love how they interpret what they see..which is why I'm also including Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal on the iPad in Tumblebooks. Is it a duck? Is it a rabbit? A good librarian will never tell.... We'll wrap it up with our "kites are flying" song with scarves and have ourselves a sunny good spring-time morning here in the library today and ignore the stubborn snowflakes (shocker!) still falling outside. Happy Spring to you all! I didn't realize I wanted to be a librarian until I was already wayyyy into grown-upville and had an undergraduate degree and a career in marketing and promotion, and two kids. I skipped out on PTA meetings and followed my passion until I found my way into a Library Science program at CW Post. I had been out of a classroom and off a college campus for over a decade and I was petrified at the thought of going back. "Would everyone look at me as an old lady?" and "Do they still use notebooks and pens?" And the dreaded one...."Will I make any friends??"
Ladies and gentlemen....Let me introduce you to my friend Laura, one of the very first people I met in my very first class at Post. Laura and I went on to be in many of the same classes together as we both pursued our librarian degrees. We worked on zillions of projects together and also shared a boat load of laughs and Panera coffee meet-ups in off hours. Laura and I have been through virtual life and real life together over the years. We met celebrities! We are friends and colleagues. The best thing about Laura is that she is an awesome librarian and she has continued to inspire me professionally. She's creative and smart and she shares my passion for being a librarian so we can talk nerdy librarian stuff endlessly and it's perfectly ok. Laura is the real deal. And now Laura has a BLOG! I am super-excited about Library Laura because Laura has amazing programming ideas that I plan to steal all of. I hope that Laura and I can share a few ideas back and forth and maybe even guest blog on each other's site... Laura? Maybe??? So head on over and send my first librarian friend Laura some blog-love. Check out her recent programming for Valentine's Day, (the "love is blind" game is amazing!) and let her know if you use any of her awesome ideas! XOXOXO |
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