Program: Daycare Storytime

Our last daycare visits of the fall were scheduled in November and, with the Thanksgiving holiday, we had to move things around a bit. What this meant for me was that I combined my daycare storytime with a colleague's and we did something a little extra special for them. Here's what we did!

Opening: We Clap and Sing Hello - pretty standard opening song. We clap, stomp, and wave to sing hello at storytime.

Rhyme/Song: Sticky Bubblegum - my coworker had been doing this rhyme (song? not sure which is the more apt descriptor) with her weekly storytime group all fall and so we included it for our daycares. It's a very popular song, and very simple. It goes like this:

Sticky, sticky, sticky bubblegum

Bubblegum, bubblegum

Sticky, sticky, sticky bubblegum

Sticking your hands to your _____

Ready? Un-stick!

You choose a different body part to stick your bubblegum to with each repetition. We limited it to 5, I think, but the kids probably would have kept going.

Book: One Potato, Two Potato by Todd H. Doodler - we chose our storytime theme to be friends at least partly because we wanted to include this book. It is so darn silly and adorable. The kids really liked it, particularly when the potatoes all get mashed.

Song: Head and Shoulders - another typical storytime song, though our version gets faster with each repetition for added fun.

Performance: A Big Guy Took My Ball by Mo Willems - our storytime attendees are always clamoring for a puppet show, so when we decided to make this a special daycare storytime, we planned on doing just that. However, we couldn't find a puppet show we really wanted to do and we both love Elephant and Piggie, so we decided to do a performance of one of their books instead. It wasn't a full-scale skit; we showed the illustrations on our projector while I voiced Gerald and my coworker voiced Piggie. We did bring out a whale puppet to be the big guy, who I also voiced. This was a huge hit with the kids.

Song: Shake My Sillies Out by Raffi - one final chance to get up and move around before our last special surprise. 

Movies: Red and Yellow by Josh Selig - so, everyone I work with is obsessed with this little video of Red and Yellow and their noisy night. It's from Josh Selig, one of the creators of the Wonderpets, and is part of a series of shorts that aim at promoting peaceful conflict resolution. We showed three of these short videos to close out our storytime. The kids were absolutely enthralled.

Goodbye: Tickle the Clouds - another of my coworker's traditional bits of storytime, this was how we said goodbye to everyone.

Tickle the clouds
Tickle your toes
Turn around
Tickle your nose
Reach down low
Reach up high
The stories are over,
Wave goodbye!

And that was our special daycare storytime to end our fall visits!

Review: Lola and the Boy Next Door

Lola and the Boy Next Door
By Stephanie Perkins, read by Shannon McManus
Published 2011 by Listening Library

Lola is a unique spirit, but she also leads a pretty normal life. Until the Bells move back in next door. Now, Lola is filled with all the doubts that plagued her in the past and must decide if she's ready to finally face the boy next door.

I listened to and adored Anna and the French Kiss, so it was a no-brainer for me to download the audio of Perkins' second novel and give it a whirl. I wasn't disappointed. So far, both of Perkins' books have been exactly what I want them to be - fun, romantic reads, with interesting characters, but also some depth. I liked Lola as much, if not more than, Anna, and I enjoyed Cricket as much as St. Clair. I also loved that Perkins featured Anna and St. Clair in this book in a way that didn't feel gimmicky - it felt natural, and I appreciated getting the chance to revisit those characters. I'm eager to see if she pulls it off again in book three.

I really appreciated how unique the characters in this book are and yet how real they also feel. Lola is the girl I wish I had the courage to be in high school - she's not really afraid to be herself, she has an impeccable sense of style, and she absolutely adores her dads. In fact, the relationship between Lola and her dads was one of my favorite parts of the book. So often, parents are either absent or awful in teen books. It's very refreshing to see a set of parents who worry about their daughter, but also trust and respect her a great deal. And it's very clear that Lola holds her fathers in extremely high regard, yet still recognizes that they are human and will occasionally be a pain to her or make a mistake. I loved this part of the book.

And the romance here? SWOON. I mean, I'm a grown woman and this book had me feeling all dreamy and nostalgic for that crazy way your first love feels, however long it may last. Perkins develops the romance perfectly and Cricket is an absolute stunner of a leading man. I don't often get all pitter-pattery over fictional characters but I'm pretty sure Cricket is a dreamboat I wouldn't mind meeting in real life.

Additionally, the complications throughout the book felt very realistic to me and I think Perkins has really done a fantastic job of capturing the ups and downs of young love. I can't wait to tune into her next book.

Review: The Peculiar

The Peculiar (The Peculiar, book one)
By Stefan Bachmann, read by Peter Altschuler
Published 2012 by Greenwillow Books

Bartholomew and his sister are Peculiars - changelings. They try their best to remain unnoticed. But when a mysterious lady arrives in his neighborhood, seemingly up to no good, it's going to be very difficult for Bartholomew to keep himself away.

It's never a good sign when I start a review by saying I think I would have done better with this one in print rather than audio. I'm really sad that's the case with this one, because I was really looking forward to it.

When it held my attention, I really enjoyed what I was hearing. But that's the problem here - this book did not continuously hold my attention in audio. I've a feeling that, plot-wise, it's not exactly a thrill-a-minute and didn't translate well to audio. However, the story was interesting and well-written. I liked what I heard, but unfortunately, I had a hard time staying completely engaged in the audio. As such, I'm not sure what more I can write in this review. I liked the alternating of the story and, as I said, when it held my interest it was enjoyable. I think I'll read it in print before picking up the sequel, as I'd like to have a better idea of what I missed in audio and I am indeed interested enough to want to pick up the companion novel.

Review: The Islands of Chaldea

The Islands of Chaldea
By Diana Wynne Jones and Ursula Jones
Published 2014 by Greenwillow Books

Aileen comes from a long line of powerful witches. Unfortunately, the magic seems to have skipped her. So, she's a bit perplexed as to why she's accompanying her Aunt Beck on a mission from the king to work some serious magic. As their travels continue, though, it becomes clear this mission is much more than meets the eye. And Aileen may just have the talents they need to succeed.

Bad Librarian confession time: this is the first Diana Wynne Jones book I've read. As I've mentioned before, I pretty much stopped reading fantasy during my formative years, so there's a lot of it that I've yet to go back and revisit. Diana Wynne Jones happens to be one of those authors. This is her final book, completed by her sister (also an author) after her death. I figured my time to read her was long overdue, so I snagged an ARC at ALA Midwinter and set to reading.

This is probably not relevant to anyone not reading this in ARC form but I was really annoyed at the packaging of this book. There was absolutely no blurb or plot description to be found anywhere on the ARC - not on the back cover or inside front cover or the first few pages. The back cover was devoted to the explanation of how the book came into being. So, essentially, I went into this book knowing nothing about the plot. I found that very frustrating.

But, since that probably won't impact readers of the book in finished form, let's move on. I found this to have a pretty slow start. It seemed like there was a bit more introductory information than was altogether necessary, and I didn't find myself caring too much about the book until the main journey was underway. Once the merry band of travelers begins their journey, however, things pick up pace and I found myself quite engaged in their story. I liked exploring the islands and the differences among the lands the characters visited. I think this probably points to at least one reason why Wynne Jones is a respected fantasy author - it's easy to get swept up in the worlds she creates.

I also quite enjoyed the many characters we meet in this story. Aileen was easy to root for, though she was a bit frustrating and stubborn at times (particularly with regards to Ivar, though it was quite clear early on how that storyline was going to play out). I liked all the other travelers as well, with Aunt Beck most likely being my favorite. I liked meeting more characters along the way and it never felt overwhelming or confusing, which I appreciated.

Though I think the ending was incredibly easy to see coming, I still found it a satisfactory resolution for the story. I'm definitely interested enough to check out some of her other titles. Any advice on where to start?

Thanks to the publisher for an advance reader's copy.

Program: Adventure Club

In the fall, we finally decided to tackle a topic in Adventure Club that we knew would be a hit: Lego Ninjago. Thankfully, many other brilliant librarians have run Ninjago programs in the past, so we found numerous ideas to use in our program. Additionally, I did spend some time on the Wiki myself, which was helpful the day of the program, as the kids wanted hints for things and liked having an adult they could talk to that actually knew what they were talking about. Here's what we did!

As others have done before, we set our program up in stations, representing the different characters. We like having stations, as they usually keep the program flowing well, and the different talents of the characters made it easy to differentiate between the tasks.

Zane's Villain Knockdown: I printed out a picture of one villain from each of the three main categories and taped the pictures to cardboard tubes. We set them on a table and provided the kids with origami ninja stars and they set to work taking out as many of the villains as they could. Each kid got five stars to throw. Needless to say, they liked throwing them.

Jay's Gadget Station: We definitely took this idea directly from another librarian's Ninjago program, asking the kids to create a new ninja gadget using as few Legos as possible. Our kids seemed to completely ignore the last part of the instructions, but we had plenty of Legos for everyone, so it wasn't really an issue.

Sensei Wu's Brain Training: The obligatory trivia station - but I was surprised by how many kids had never seen the show and still shown up. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by this anymore, but I find it interesting. I left the answers, covered and clearly marked, on the table so that the station would run itself, but the kids seemed to like it better when I was over there providing them hints before telling them the answers.

Kai's Morning Course: Another idea we borrowed from someone else, we created a pretty basic obstacle course for the kids to navigate. They had to collect bones and retrieve a sword while avoiding lava and balancing on one leg. Pretty hilarious to watch - they really liked this station.

Cole's Building Station: This was the one that I had the hardest time coming up with and it showed in the program - it was the least popular station. I had the kids trying to build houses of cards, since Cole has the ability to move earth and build mountains. A handful of kids tried it, but no one seemed that interested.

In the last few minutes of the program, we had a raffle to give away a couple of the books. Overall, we had a good turnout and the kids seemed to enjoy themselves, so definitely a success. Maybe our more successful Adventure Club to date!

April Check-In

Once again, it's time to check my stats for the month! Here's what I read!

Middle-grade: 14

Teen: 5

Adult: 7

Picture books: 14

Library books: 25

Books owned: 15

So, here's what happened this month. First, a bunch of new picture books came into the library, so that accounts for a lot of my library book numbers. Also, I read all the Big Nate chapter books in preparation for a program (though each book probably only took me 90 minutes to read). And lastly, of course, are the audiobooks that I continue to power through. I am starting to feel a bit disheartened with my progress on my physical TBR - there are still boxes of books next to my bed and they are not going away as fast as I want them to. I know part of the problem is that I'm still reading a lot of e-galleys so that's cutting into my reading time for the physical books in my house. But I don't want to fall completely behind on what's being published while I try to read down my pile. I guess I still haven't found the perfect balance, but I'll keep trucking along. Of course, any youth services librarian in a public library knows that summer is crazy season, plus my personal schedule for May is pretty jam-packed, so I'm not feeling too optimistic about making much progress in the coming months. Words of encouragement are appreciated!

Review: Always, Emily

Always, Emily
By Michaela MacColl
Published 2014 by Chronicle Books

Emily and Charlotte Bronte are sisters, but they are also quite different. They each have their own unique talents, talents that they will put to use in an attempt to solve a series of mysterious occurrences in their village. Can they figure out what's going on before someone else is harmed?

Almost exactly a year ago, I read my first MacColl novel, a mystery featuring a young Emily Dickinson. I'm tempted to just copy and paste my review of that book here, switching out a few details, because I feel pretty much the same way about this book. I love seeing authors reinvent famous folks, and the Bronte family is a particularly interesting one. Once again, what I enjoyed most about this book was the characters - Emily and Charlotte. As with Emily Dickinson, it's interesting to imagine what these girls were like as teenagers and I think MacColl has done an admirable job bringing them to life. Once again, I find it a bit disheartening to know that neither Bronte sister lived a terribly long life, particularly once you read about them so young and spirited.

As with the previous title I read, I found the mystery in the book interesting enough, particularly with the involvement of the Bronte brother and the Masons. I felt this mystery was a bit more successful in terms of feeling exciting or dangerous, so I think it has slightly more appeal to teens than the previous book might have. I appreciate the author's note at the end, encouraging readers to find out more about the Brontes and particularly to read their works if the reader hasn't done so yet.

Ultimately, while I found this a pleasant enough read with an interesting mystery, I'm not sure how memorable it is. Thanks to the publisher for an advance reader's copy.