GreenBeanTeenQueen

Ok, first off, I knew blogging with a baby would be hard. But my goodness, it's tough! Especially when he stops napping well and the moment he goes to bed I want to go to bed too because I've exhausted myself at work. But luckily I've got my handy iPad to blog from whole I'm holding Baby GreenBean, so please excuse any typos! We're almost a week into Summer Reading Program at my library. This is my eighth Summer Reading Program and it never fails that after a few days, I start to feel like a broken record saying the same things over and over again. I can give the Summer Reading spiel in my sleep-and have actually dreamt about it! Yet no matter how many times I go through another Summer Reading Program, there are always things that surprise me that people don't know. Here's my wish list of what I wish people knew about Summer Reading. -Listening to a book counts as reading. Yep, it might seem like a given to people who are avid readers or who work

My Favorite Thing About Zita the Spacegirl Tour I love the moments when I can recall a book off the top of my head and impress my library patrons with my book knowledge. It's always fun and makes me feel a bit like a superhero. It's easy to remember the popular always asked for series and where they are located, who the author is, or the order of a series. But it's even more fun when you are given just a few details about something and you can come up with the book a patron is looking for. I had a young boy come into my library one evening with his very stumped grandmother. He had been talking about a book where a girl and her friend hit a red box and that's all he could remember. His grandmother said he had been looking for it for awhile and couldn't recall the title. I immediately said "Zita the Spacegirl!" Luckily we had the first Zita book on the shelf that evening and my young patron went hope very happy to rediscover the book he was look

Please welcome author Sasha Dawn to GreenBeanTeenQueen! Her debut novel, Oblivion, is out this month.  I always ask authors about libraries and reading and the impact it's had on their lives. I love her post-I tell the tweens and and teens at my library that you're never too old to be read aloud to and Ms. Dawn's post proves that!  I LIVE; THEREFORE, I READ. My teen years were among the most tumultuous of my life, and that’s saying quite something, considering some of the challenges I’ve faced since. While I was in high school, in the interest of my safety, I lived with another family. I didn’t often have the power of choice, given I was essentially sponging off the family who’d welcomed me as child #7 in their home. For this reason, I found escape in books and tended to read whatever I could get my hands on—anything from romance novels to sci-fi to classics. While my pseudo-sisters were attending rock concerts and going on vacations, I was reading. Books w

Today I'm over at the ALSC Blog talking about a new idea we implemented for our tween and school age programming . Come visit me and tell me about how your library is reaching tween patrons through programming!

Why I Love Upper Middle Grade Stories Natalie Aguirre is an aspiring middle grade and YA fantasy writer. She’s an attorney by day, a wife, and a mother of one child. She blogs at Literary Rambles and interviews mostly debut and/or middle grade authors, spotlighting their books with ARC or book giveaways on Mondays and some Wednesdays. You can also follow her on Twitter @NatalieIAguirre or on Facebook . I’m a huge fan of upper middle grade stories because they’re usually very plot driven, have great main  characters and voices, move the story along quickly, and often have sweet romances that don’t overtake the plot. And middle grade is such a fantastic time for kids to get excited about reading before the demands of homework, sports, and other activities often sadly make it harder for high school kids to find time to read for pleasure. Good upper grade books help kids make the leap from shorter novels to longer, more in depth ones. I thought I’d share a few of my fav

2014 is turning out to be a great year for middle grade! Here are even more 2014 middle grade releases to look forward to this year. And if you missed part one, be sure to check out Middle Grade to Look Forward to in 2014. -A young restaurant reviewer? Love it! -It's hard to believe that it's been long enough for September 11th to be the main plot of a novel, but this one sounds intense! -Haven't you always longed for a middle grade book about band geeks? -A great cover and I've read some great reviews which have gotten me excited to read this one! -The tagline "Saving the school one con at a time" sold me. -Family secrets and a mystery? Yes please! -Maps, mysteries, and a gorgeous cover-I'm in love! What other middle grade novels are you looking forward to this year?

(My goal this summer-to be as relaxed as Baby GreenBean when reading picture books!)  In the public library world, Summer Reading is the busiest time. My library has been gearing up for this year's Summer Reading Program since October. The questions have started coming in from families about when the program starts (May 24th!) and my staff and I have started our visits to our schools to promote the Summer Reading Program and tell kids what's coming at the library. Summer Reading is a lot of fun, but it's also a lot of work! We have programs every week and we see more patrons on a daily basis than we do during the school year (and there's no quieter nap time lull!). This year we are expanding our storytimes to have eight storytimes a week, plus outreach storytimes, plus a weekly tween program, plus a weekly young school age program, plus our weekly Summer Reading performers, plus our weekend programming! PHEW! It made me tired just writing all our programs on t

First off, thanks to Sarah at YA Librarian Tales for pointing me to the We Need Diverse Books Tumblr . The timing of this couldn't have come at a better time as this is a topic I've been thinking about a lot. For the past several years, I've presented on YA Lit at our state library conference and I will be doing so again this year. I start preparing for this presentation early on in the year, as it requires a lot of reading and keeping up with YA so I can book talk the titles I want to share. A few weeks ago, my friend Angie at Fat Girl Reading  was talking about a presentation she was giving and how she tried hard to include diverse titles in her presentations. It got my thinking about how I really wanted to make sure I included diverse books in my YA presentation too and I wanted to get a head start in reading them. But when I started searching for them, diverse releases in YA for 2014 turned out to be few and far between. There are some being published, but it