GreenBeanTeenQueen

Batman loves the library Part of being a librarian means the ability to be flexible and spontaneous. When I got to work on Wednesday (which was Batman Day) I was told that we had been getting calls about a Batman Day at the Library celebration we were hosting on Saturday. Turns out we were advertised on the DC Comics Blog as a location hosting a Batman celebration on Saturday. (I think this occurred when I requested some promotional Batman items, but I'm not exactly sure) All I know is that we were given three days to plan an unexpected program. Luckily, I work with an amazing team (and a wonderfully nerdy team!) of people so we threw together an amazing program. Planning a program in just a few days took a lot of brainstorming and Batman research. But I'm amazingly lucky to work with a great group of people who all jumped on board and helped out. Everyone took on a task, worked together, and created a pretty incredible program that was a lot of fun. We tried to ke

Rating: 5/5 Stars Genre: Contemporary Release Date: 9/17/2013 Add to Goodreads About the Book: Billy Miller is about to enter second grade-and that means a lot of new things are on the horizon. Billy is growing up and he's not quite sure what to think about it or how to navigate elementary school. He wants to be a responsible member of the family, help his younger sister and his working mom and stay at home dad. Second grade is going to be quite the year for Billy Miller. GreenBeanTeenQueen Says: Every summer it seems like the early chapter books fly off the library shelves. As young beginning readers are starting to branch out and read chapter books on their own, books like Junie B Jones and Magic Tree House can't stay on the shelf. Yet every once in awhile I get a young reader who isn't interested in reading about girls-and there are oh-so-many titles about spunky, creative, engaging girls. So when I first read The Year of Billy Miller , I knew this was going

(My set up for digital storytime-iPad connected to a large screen TV and my storytelling stool) This past weekend I did my second Digitots Storytime. I am so glad my library is finally incorporating digital components in storytime and so far the response from patrons has been great. They love that we're highlighting apps for them to try with their kids, giving them a chance to see them and how their child interacts with an app, and it's a great way to model a wonderful use of media and how it can be beneficial.  For this storytime I decided to focus on more stories than game apps and modeled it much like my traditional print storytimes but using the iPad for most of my resources. I loaded my music onto the iPad so everything was all in one place. Since I didn't want the iTunes screen showing my playlist, because that's a bit boring, I used the Smoothie Feltboard app and created a screen that showed "digitots storytime" to put up when we were singing

Today I'm over at the ALSC Blog talking about what I learned from attending a workshop for music educators. I found learning from another profession challenging and invigorating and it gave me lots of great new ideas! Any professions that you've learned from that you think librarians should collaborate with?

Our Fizz Boom Read Bulletin Board Sigh....oh Summer Reading Program. I love you and yet you tire me out year after year. This year I made a goal to go easy on myself and try to read picture books this summer. And while I've read some picture books, I still have sadly not been reading much at all! My grand total for books read (or listened to) in June was four, which is incredibly low for me. The Summer Reading Program is super busy/taking care of Baby GreenBean/working a lot is making me tired and cutting into my reading (and blogging) time! But there are some good things about SRP this year. This year we revamped the format of our Summer Reading Program and it's actually made things easier on the staff side which has been great. In past years the program was 3 levels, 12 hours of reading and 12 activities. This year we changed it to 2 levels, 10 hours of reading and eight activities. The activities are things like, read a book on the five senses or put an ice cube outsi

Recently I've noticed some books appearing on my library shelf that have a great seek and find feel to them. Seek and Find books are always popular, but sometimes it can be hard to find something new after my kids have gone through all the Where's Waldo books for the hundredth time. These might be a bit easier than finding Waldo in a sea of people, but they're still a lot of fun! The Bear's Song by Benajmin Chaud What a fun book! This is an oversized picture book that is one you will want to pour over the pages with. Papa Bear goes looking for Little Bear and they wind up in the city and then at the opera house. The details in each picture are fantastic-I wanted to look at everything that was happening with all the characters. Each scene has multiple stories happening all at once and it's fun to see what the surrounding characters are up to. The book is also a seek and find as the reader is looking for Little Bear and the bee he is chasing on every page (and

Me and my teen librarian J cosplaying as books. So I may have been ALA Left Behind this past weekend, but at least I got to have fun at the library with our fifth annual library prom! The themes over the years have changed ( Moonlight Masquerade , Geek Prom , Zombie Prom , Nerd Prom-which apparently I never posted about!) This year, my teen librarian J came up with the idea for Cosplay Prom. It was a huge hit and the most popular prom we've done so far! Setting up the Event:  J actually did the setting up and we brainstormed ideas of what to put out to keep the teens entertained in case they didn't want to dance (which is always a possibility). He bought food supplies to make candy sushi and we also had some animal crackers out for a snack. We didn't provide drinks because it's messy and we have a cafe in the library that many teens purchase drinks from anyway, so we decided food was enough. For activities we had easy origami owls , paper bowtie making, pi