The, the, the, the. . . the Grinch!

December library display poster for the children's books. . . 

feels a bit like Seuss blasphemy. 

Have a very happy holiday season.

Back to School

Had to share my Pete the Cat bulletin board. We always have a calendar with our events, but our calendar needed some sprucing up this month so, I added Pete. Then I saw a post with

school jokes and added the jokes.

Yellow've These Books

"Why do you like colors so much?" asks my daily favorite 10 year old library guest. To which I say, "Who doesn't???"

I loved the green Ispy last month so much that I turned it into a yellow display. I love yellow. Sunshine yellow.

It's Not Easy

It's not easy being green, or a library director! I've been avoiding posting for several reasons. One I've been a slacker and haven't posted much at all lately, I have guilt over this. Why? I have no idea. Two I feel like a whiner for even complaining a little about my new job title. A year ago this month, I added Library Director to my job duties and kept the ones I already had. Needless to say, there was a long, long, long period of teaching an old dog new tricks and I'm still learning everyday. I also had to learn to balance my two duties. One of the things I have lost is time. Time to take pictures of all the fun stuff I do, time to stop and write up a reflection (which NEEDS to be done for the next time I run a similar program). So there it is, my explanation of why this blog sucks now.

I lost my partner in crime, my old boss/director. We used to have so much fun putting displays together. We were great at bouncing ideas off each other and a great creative team ( I MISS YOU KIM!!!!). I was thinking about her and missed doing fun displays, so I took some time to put this display together. I found the idea for this display on Pinterest. I started out making an ispy poster, adding little pictures around the main poster. When I put the poster up and all of the books, I was at a loss for what to put on the top... I found the grinch, then I made him a green cage out of building straws, and set him on the top. He was lonely, so I started to round up anything green we had in the storytime closet and made up a small ISpy poster for the sides of the display.

Frozen Display Minus the Snow

I wanted to do a display that centered around Frozen, because even though we are sick to death of snow in northern Wisconsin, the kids are in looooove with this film. This month I did a half romantical/ half sisterly love display and stuck a Frozen quote on it with a slight variation!

Last month's juvenile display was a tribute to non-fiction. I was going to put orange fingerprints all over everything, but I ran out of time. . .  

Honey, What are The Neighbors Reading?

Short staffed, want to skip some shelving? We did. . .

What Does the Fox Read?

The Holidays Threw Up in Our Library

I got the idea for this display on pinterest.

I put up a fleece tree in the children's area for my Early Literacy activity of the month (along with paper ornaments to color and take home).

The kids have the opportunity to add to the tree on our calendar, it is slowly getting more full each day.

I'm pretty sure I saw two or three different pins with this slogan, so I just added my own twist with the wrapped book cart.

What will be under your tree?

Goodreads just finished their reader poll for the Best Books of 2013 so I wrapped our circulation desk in gift wrap and printed out the top two covers for each category. 

The gingerbread house roof is back on the loft and it had a visitor! 

Under the miSTEEL toe with Danielle Steel books.

I helped out with a display in the adult area as well this month.

November Displays

 Our Thanksgiving books were getting checked out before November even started, so I didn't even put up a Thanksgiving display for the picture books. Parents are finding them much easier with our picture book reorganization!

The kids are helping me out with the calendar this month.

Add some eyes, a beak and a waddle to a brown paper peanut shape and you get a turkey! The feathers are being added as kids come to the library and write/draw what they are thankful for.

The sixth grade classes at the public school are reading historical fiction this month.

A clock on a vortex with some book covers in lieu of numbers on one poster, wings with historical fiction on them on another and I have this display. There are also some flying clocks, double sided of course!

Those are MY Jeans!

 

By far one of the easiest displays I've ever done. This was up in September with all of our diary-esque juvenile fiction books. I printed out a big poster that read Dear Diary and printed out the pencil on a different paper and made it pop off the page with a piece of crunched up masking tape under the eraser.

These books will SCARE your pants off!

 My daughter was NOT amused when she came into the library after school and saw her jeans on top of the library shelves! We've had a lot of comments on this display already!

Let Down Your Hair

I had some extra yarn laying around,

 so I made up a Rapunzel braid for my fractured fairy tales display.

Dig Into Exhaustion

Yeah, I said it, but I love it sooo much!!

This past month I have been frantically planning EVERYTHING! Reading logs, decorations, flyers, school visits, sponsors, programs, press releases and more.

I am so excited that we are offering four programs this year!

Each year we have run a kids' program. This year we are using the Dig Into Reading theme! I mixed things up by adding another week, but more importantly I moved up the program so it starts in June rather than mid-July. I'm hopeful that this will increase numbers and early results indicate that we have over 70 kids registered in the first TWO DAYS!!! Last year we had 151 total.

You know you live in Wisconsin when the two year olds know that this is a badger!
Recycled brown packing paper!

Raffle tickets go here please! 
I've been saving brown paper for months.

The loft is looking tropical (at least we can dream of warm sunny days under there!)
More brown paper for the vines.

Curling Ribbon makes everything prettier (and some more brown paper).

Last year we added the Rubber Ducky Club (thank you Marge Loch-Wouters!). We had about 20 participants, but 20 littles getting early literacy exposure is better than none, so we are running it again.

I added a Tween2Teen Program with no gimmicky theme (although one kid thought it was for sex education. . . yeah probably not going there this summer!) Kids read 8 hours, they get a free book & raffle tickets with chances to earn extra raffle tickets by volunteering, reading extra time and filling out a short book review to post in the library. I'm excited about the numbers this early into the registration!

We, and by we I mean Kim, sets up an adult raffle in which adults can fill out a ticket with the name of the book they read for prizes.

(Oh, yeah. . more brown paper vines)

Everything is set up and ready to go, our first program is this afternoon! 

Super Worm! or May Displays

When I found this cool Avenger font on fontspace, I wanted to make a graphic novel display. So I did. The graphic novels are interfiled with all of the fiction (I sense another reorganization project for March) and hard for some kids to find. Also our awesome, awesome tech guy fixed my printer so I can print posters from my computer and don't have to bother poor Kim every time I need a poster printed! Yeah Kris!!!

My co-worker Bridget has been talking about the fishing opener this past weekend (with 22 inches of ice on the lakes) and I was inspired to use the overhead projector to make a giant worm on a hook to display our fishing AND worm books. I also printed some covers of books to hang on paperclip hooks from the ceiling cuz' you know, they were hooked.

That's it for May displays. . . coming soon Summer Reading Program deco!

April Displays. . . or Cats & Dogs and Poets in the Air

It's a poet tree! Prelutsky, Silverstein and others who have written books that are in our library are all stuck in a tree! This display has been moving some books this month. Yeah for poetry!

My director Kim and I co-brainstormed this display. Kim did almost all of the work and brainstorming, I just contributed a little bit, but it was too cool not to share! I am sad to report that it hasn't just been raining cats and dogs, but spitting out that nasty four letter s-word stuff too. 

April Fools!

There was no school today, so not many kids were in the library to see my April Fools Day display. 

I like it so much, I might leave it this way all month.

Monstrous March Madness

I know that a March Madness Tournament at the library is not an original idea, but I don't know where I first heard of it, so I'm sorry I can't give the credit that is due. Nevertheless, I wanted to conduct my own March Madness Tournament this month, but didn't feel like NCAA tourney time was long enough for book voting (I have a TON of after school kids on Wednesdays which would boost my numbers a little if I ran the voting rounds weekly). I spent some time making the bracket and getting my hands on all of the books I wanted to use. I used books from Best of 2012 lists and the Caldecott winners.

I chose to use picture books so that all of the books could be available for the kids to read when they were voting and filling out brackets. This is the first time I've ever done a "hands off" display (and I don't like it). There are four rounds so it will take all of March to run. I had twenty kids fill out brackets (and one adult and two librarians). After one week of voting, I had 10 voters the first week and tomorrow will tally up the votes for round two. Their incentive is a $15 Walmart gift card that I've had sitting on my desk for months.

I wanted a fun Music History Month display and the idea of floating notes and rainbows wasn't tripping my trigger. I chose to use a popular misquoted quote to enhance my display. The original quote is "Musick has charms to sooth the savage breast." -William Congreve. I've always heard it as "Sooth the savage beast" so I made a ginormous beast to pop onto the top of the display. Guess what, I've had the books up on display for two weeks now with no takers and I had two different groups of after school kids looking at my display items today (on its first day up)!

I'm probably the only one who appreciates this display, but that's okay. Its eye catching and is getting the kids looking at what is on it!

PS I'm not sure exactly where I got the idea that is was Music History Month from, but I can't seem to find it anywhere now. So it will just be March History Month at our library!

Love is in the Air

I used our bulletin board to make a gi-normous calendar with this month's programs on it. A few people have remarked how nice it is to have the events laid out, and the after school crew knows what's coming up each Wednesday.  Also, it is nice to have a LARGE handy reference when people ask what day it is!

I love this giant snake, a tribute to the Year of the Snake, with a wide variety of books on display. Fiction and non-fiction books about snakes, China and Chinese New Year. I included them all: picture books, easy readers and chapter books. I used an online coloring page blown up on yellow paper and painted it bright red and orange. My daughter is claiming her for her wall - if I can give her up. Summer Reading Program is rapidly approaching...

January Displays (a little late)

I used the books themselves to title this display.

 I wanted something a little playful for the Battle of the Books books and since I didn't have real boxing gloves, I printed boxing glove coloring pages on red paper.

I found a Super Bowl voting bulletin board on Pinterest and thought what a great way to get some stealth numbers. So I put up a Super Bowl vote. It sparked a lot of conversations with the kiddos!

Bribe them with Candy

Kim and I were trying to come up with a catchy bulletin board for Christmas the holidays in which we could use her naughty and nice wrapping paper. We thought we could make a list of "naughty" and "nice" book characters, but I just couldn't decide which ones were naughty (they all have good qualities). Why don't we let the kids decide? They like labeling things, especially when the word naughty is involved. I ended up using some of the words to Santa Claus is Coming to Town with an emphasis on "check it out" as my title.

After I had some book characters picked out, and had to decide what to do with left over candy canes from Santa's visit, I thought I would make a game out of it. Kim made a sheet of ten of the children's characters and we had the kids identify the characters for a candy cane. Each kid got to play one time, and they had got to eat their candy canes out in the lobby (librarians are Scrooges). We went through over 30 game sheets in the first two days! I have found that candy is a great motivator for children. Needless to say, I need to go buy some more candy canes.

From Above

The kids have been loving the loft we added to our library in September. In November I had a grand vision to change it into a gingerbread house for the holidays.  It’s not grand per say, but the kids know what it is and there are colored lights on it, so it is good enough for me. Santa visited the library and some of the smaller kids were more interested in playing with the loft than talking to Santa. The little ones who were afraid of Santa could climb up on the loft and spy on him "safely" through a layer of plexiglass.