• Lifestyle

    Tips & Tricks for Booktalking

    bookcase

    Yesterday, I posted about the disservice of labeling books “boy” or “girl.” Today, I’m going to give you some tips and tricks for booktalking great books to kids – hopefully pushing beyond stereotypes and focusing on pairing children with their right book at their right time. Because it’s not our…

  • Lifestyle

    Sharing Picture Books with Preschool Teachers

    This week, I got the chance to speak in front of preschool teachers during an in-service day about children’s literature trends and share some great new titles that have been published in the past couple of years. The preschool reached out to the library looking for some sort of presentation…

  • Lifestyle

    School Visits… Or Why I No Longer Have a Voice

    School visits invariably exhaust me and crack me up!  We don’t get into the schools as often as I’d like, but we are able to see the kids for about 30 minutes in May to promote the summer’s upcoming reading program.  How do you entertain, educate and encourage 80+ kids…

  • Activities

    Summer Camp Outreach

    We provide outreach to a couple of different summer camps in our area.  Adventure Day Camp is provided by the township’s Parks & Recreation Department whom we partner with to provide services to camp throughout the summer.  The camp actually has two sites which I visit for the six weeks…

  • Lifestyle

    The Last School Visits and Summer Reading

    We had a group of 100 third graders visit this past week for a library tour and a quick highlight of upcoming library programs for summer reading.  We had already seen them at school a few weeks ago, but they got the chance to come into the library, which for…

  • Activities

    Summer Reading School Assemblies

    As I type this it’s 31 degrees outside and feels like a heat wave after the temperatures we’ve been getting over the past week.  But, as they say in the theatre, “The show must go on.” (The summer reading show, that is)  We’ve got most of our entertainment shows booked,…

  • Activities

    Summer Reading School Visits

    Every year (like many other public libraries) we visit each of the schools in our service area to let kids know about our upcoming summer reading program.  For the past few years we’ve used a trivia game that I’ve created using PowerPoint slides that corresponds to the summer’s theme and…