Junior Friends of the Library

I was lucky enough to come to a library that has had a strong middle school program for at least the past 15 years.  In the township where I live and work the middle school includes children from 5th – 8th grades, this can pose problems because of the developmental differences between the ages, but we have a very strong (and large!) group of kids that hang out with us on a regular basis.

Our Junior Friends of the Library is a community service organization for the middle schoolers in the area.  Our first meeting of the school year found us with 33 middle school students full of excitement and ready to jump into pretty much anything I could ask of them.  During the school year the kids meet just once a month, but there are a number of projects that the kids can work on depending on their availability.

The kids can help with our Pajama Story Time – our librarians plan the program, but it’s the middle school kids who read the stories, sing the songs, use the flannel board and puppets.  The young children coming to story time really respond to seeing some older kids enjoying themselves and being silly with them.

They can also write book, video game, and movie reviews for the Junior Friends newsletter, or help maintain their own website.  We also assign them small tasks around the library such as taking down bulletin boards, cutting out nametags and craft pieces for other programs.

Theatre and art are also very exciting for the middle school students.  Simple art projects such as q-tip skeletons for Halloween and paper kites for march decorate our bulletin boards and the kids have a great time working on them.

The key to working with this group of kids is to harness their energy and find something that can help the library and is still exciting too!  I’ll let you know how our try-outs for our Enchanted Library program go tomorrow… wish me luck (I’m expecting close to 30 for tryouts tonight!)