GreenBeanTeenQueen

This is part of a three part series about the LibraryCon program we hosted at my library. Be sure to check out: LibraryCon-Part 1-The Planning LibraryCon-Part 1-The Big Event And check out Valerie's post about LibraryCon! Many cool people who helped make LibraryCon awesome! (photo credit: E.M. Ervin So there were many, many things that went wonderfully at LibraryCon and we pulled off an amazingly fantastic event. I'm so proud of all the work that everyone did and what a fun program it turned out to be. Here's what worked well: -Involve the local geek community.   We reached out to so many organizations, cosplay groups, gaming groups, authors, illustrators, and other area cons to create our booths. In turn, those groups gave us names of others to include. This worked well because it helped us find people who really wanted to be part of this event. - Provide water! And food if possible. We provided lots (over 100!) bottles of water for the people st

Since LibraryCon was such a huge event, I've split these posts up into three parts. Find Part One-Planning here and stay tuned for Part Three-What I'd Do Differently ! And check out Valerie's post about LibraryCon! After lots of meetings, prep, and planning, LibraryCon was finally here! (photo credit: Valerie) On Friday, we set up the concourse and meeting rooms with our tables and labeled everything so everyone could find where they were assigned. I also set up for my Fandom Starts Early Geeky Storytime. We started LibraryCon with a Friday night screening of a local webseries, Drifter . They screened some episodes from Season 1 and then hosted a Q and A with some of the cast and creative team. We had a small but very interested turnout (we had around 30 people attend for this event). We weren't sure if it was the timing, the day, or having two days worth of events, but the people that came loved it. Valerie and I didn't know if we would have a smal

I've been wanting to host a huge fan convention at the Library for awhile now and I knew it could be done! Many years ago I hosted a Mini-Anime Con for the teens and it was a great event and our Cosplay prom was always huge, so I knew we had an audience ready for an event like this. When I hired Valerie as the Teen Librarian , I knew she would make an excellent LibraryCon partner in crime and so our first annual LibraryCon was born! (Here's myself and Valerie, all smiles and ready for an epic day!) photo credit: Valerie The planning: Planning for this event started many, many months in advance. We are very lucky that our branch manager is a huge comic fan and fellow geek, so we had great support. The three of us met and had several brainstorming meetings of who to invite and we made a field trip over to our local comic book store to talk to the owner about local artists we should include. Valerie also made a trek to another area con that happens in the winter to scout

So the Meet the Music Hero was pretty much born from this book and Angie's post about doing a program around this book. I had read it and loved it and knew I had to include in this series. Plus, Melba was born and lived in Kansas City as a child, so I loved that there was a local connection to our state! We started this program with going over some background info, talking about jazz and how girls didn't often play jazz. I talked about how picture book biographies are amazing because you can learn about people you never knew about! I told the kids that I hadn't known about Melba until I read this book and I'm glad I learned about her because her story is wonderful. Then we read Little Melba and her Big Trombone by Kathryn Russel-Brown. We also got to make a week to week connection with this book and the previous week because Melba played with Charlie Parker! Then we watched a video of Melba playing her trombone. I loved it when we could show a video of our

For our third week of Meet the Music Hero, I wanted to introduce the kids to jazz. I first fell in love with jazz when I was around 8-years-old, so I thought this would be the perfect time to introduce this style of music to kids. Plus, Charlie Parker has some Missouri ties (he was born and lived in Kansas City) and there are many great picture books about these two, so Miss Pamela and I thought it would be a great storytime. We started by dancing to some jazzy music and moving around the room. Then Miss Pamela gave some background about Charlie and Dizzy, what instruments they played, and how Kansas City was a place for jazz. She showed pictures of each musician to the kids as well and had them try to puff out their cheeks like Dizzy. Then it was storytime. We used the book Bird and Diz by Ed Young . After reading the book, we had the kids watch some videos of Charlie and Dizzy playing music.  First up, a video of both of them playing (it was actually hard to find a cli

For the Meet the Music Hero program that Miss Pamela and I did this summer, I wanted to make sure we highlighted musicians that were known and some that weren't as well known. I also wanted to include a diverse group of musicians. For week two, we chose Tito Puente. I started with some basic facts about Tito Puente, told the kids about the instruments and music he played, and then read the fantastic picture book biography, Tito Puente Mambo King by Monica Brown.  Unlike our previous week's hero Mozart, I could show video clips featuring Tito Puente! He appeared on Sesame Street, so I used those to introduce his music. I had some older kids who rolled their eyes a bit (Sesame Street-that's a baby show!) but the younger kids loved it! I was also able to show a clip of Tito Puente performing live, which the kids loved. I even had them get up and try dancing the mambo along with the video! I then passed out some rhythm sticks and used good old Hap Palmer&

So one Sunday afternoon I was working with Miss Pamela and I came across this fantastic blog post from Angie about her Meet the Music program . It got me thinking about programs and since were in the middle of planning for our Summer Reading Program, I immediately thought of a Meet the Music and Art Hero program. I asked Miss Pamela if she wanted to team up-she has more of an art background and I have a music background-and our program was born. We decided to host a program on musicians once a week during the month of June (we dedicated July to artists). I went through picture book biographies and chose titles I thought would be good for storytime or to build a program around. This did limit us a bit, since I was looking for shorter books and I was working with ages 4-8 for the program. But you could adapt this program for any age and use longer books if you wanted. The first week, we kicked things off with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. We started the program by giving the kids

The Terrible Two by Mac Barnett and Jory John Add to Goodreads About the Book:  Miles is not excited to be moving to Yawnee Valley-how exciting can a place be when there's a yawn right in the name? Miles was known as the best prankster in his old town, always pulling stunts on his friends. When he discovers that Yawnee Valley already has a prankster, Miles has to figure out who it is-and take the prankster down. Each one tries to one up each other, leading to more epic pranks and jokes in a hilarious prank war. GreenBeanTeenQueen Says: This book is sure to inspire tween pranksters everywhere! The Terrible Two  is the hilarious tale of two epic pranksters had me cracking up. I listened to the audiobook, so while I'm sure the book itself is great (there are illustrations inside making a perfect book to give kids who are enjoying chapter books with illustrations) I loved the audiobook so very much. Adam Verner, the narrator , offers up a variety of voices for the character