End of the Year Tasks

Photo by Dafne Cholet

Yesterday was my last day of work in 2015 and for the past couple of weeks, with schools out (no booktalks) and our winter programming break on, I've been concentrating on some end-of-year tasks that will have me in good shape when I return to work in 2016.

• I updated my yearly meeting and program planning doc for 2016. I changed the dates, penciled in meeting agenda items, added dates for submitting program publicity to marketing and special tasks like booking summer performers and ordering prize books for Summer Reading Club. This way, as our department meeting approaches each month, I have a starting point to put together our agenda and I can make sure we have plenty of time to brainstorm program ideas, etc. 
• I looked through our brainstormed list of book display ideas and penciled in twice-monthly display themes and started making the display signs. I think this is a task I may delegate to our new part-time person, so I only made the signs through March. While I love putting up book displays and I've found that we get the best results when we change them every two weeks instead of once a month, it was difficult for me to come up with display ideas on the spot. Planning them out and penciling in ideas helps, and of course we can always change it up if we have great ideas later in the year. 
• We decided our monthly Reading Wildly topics at our last meeting and, together with one of my teen librarians, I have been finding and saving articles for us to read and discuss. 
• As I completed annual evaluations with each of my employees, I made sure to print out a list of their goals so we can touch base throughout the year. 
• I started working on compiling our 2015 statistics for the annual report we submit to the State. Of course, we were still doing programs yesterday so I don't have all the numbers yet, but I hope it'll now be easy work for next week since the bulk of the adding-up is done. (This year, I'm going to compile the stats monthly to share with stakeholders and to make it easier as we're putting together the annual reports next year!)

Unrelated, but still exciting: I finished our 2015 weeding this week, having discovered the magic of teen volunteers pulling weeding candidates. We're all working so many more desk hours now that we have two desks to cover that weeding has been a particular challenge for me. I'm hoping to spend more time in the stacks since we're getting additional part-time help this year. 

What end-of-year tasks do you find helpful? 

Reading Resolutions

I LOVE to make Reading Resolutions.

I am not the type of person who needs or wants to make a huge list of New Year Resolutions - I just feel guilty if I don't stick to them and it's hard for me to keep track.

But I love making Reading Resolutions. I love taking a little bit of time to look at what books I have read this year and how I feel about it. I think it's a great professional thing to do to decide where I need to expand my horizons and make some reading goals for the year.

In 2015, coming off my Newbery year, I did not make any Reading Resolutions. I didn't know how I would feel or what I would even be capable of reading after such an intense reading year. I ended up reading quite a bit more than I thought I would, although it definitely still sometimes felt like work.

As 2016 nears, I have been thinking about what kind of reading goals I might want to set for myself this year. In the past I have resolved to read more nonfiction (a habit that definitely stuck with me, as I now love reading nonfiction!), to read more books that I picked up through browsing rather that recommendations or reviews, and it seems like almost every year I resolve to read more adult books.

Our monthly Reading Wildly program helps kick me out of my comfort zone every now and then, so that will definitely continue. Here are the genres we're tackling in 2016.

I have a little bit of a sinking feeling about setting Reading Resolutions for myself this year. Life and work have been so busy lately that I feel like I've been neglecting this blog. I'm guessing and hoping that I'm in one of those fallow field periods that Donalyn Miller so eloquently wrote about. Lately I like the idea of reading and writing, but when it comes down to it I don't always pick up a book or log in to Blogger even when I have the time.

So we'll see what happens, but here are the reading resolutions I'm setting for 2016:

1. I'd like to read more Teen books. Now that our department is Youth Services, I'm working more directly with teens than I ever have and I got out of the habit of reading YA stuff with Newbery and all the elementary school booktalks we've been doing. In 2015 I read 38 books that I would consider teen and that didn't feel like enough, so in 2016 I'd like to read at least 50 teen books.

2. I sometimes have trouble picking up adult books since those are almost always purely for pleasure or my own interests and don't directly help me in my work. But since I'm trying to think of reading as entertainment, I'd like to read at least 25 adult books this year.

And I think that's going to be it for me this year. We'll keep it pretty loose and try to concentrate on having fun reading.

What are your reading resolutions??

15 Favorites for 2015

I couldn't post my favorites last year, so  this year I am definitely excited to share my favorites from this year. This is simply my from-the-gut favorites of the year with no attempt to balance and with the caveat that of course I have not read nearly everything that was published this year. You can see everything I read this year on my GoodReads page.

Anna Banana and the Friendship Split by Anica Rissi (Simon & Schuster, 2015). This transitional chapter book tells a friendship story, as so many do, but I was really impressed by how much the author showed about her characters in so few words.

The Boys Who Challenged Hitler by Philip Hoose (Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 2015). This is an exciting true adventure story that I just couldn't put down.

Crenshaw by Katherine Applegate (Feiwel & Friends, 2015). This book made me feel all the feels. Katherine Applegate uses a deft hand to slowly reveal more and more about the situation and the characters' past.

Dumplin' by Julie Murphy (Balzer + Bray, 2015). The voice, the voice, the voice! I loved Dumplin's voice. This is the authentic fat-girl story I wish I had had as a teen (and as a 20-something).

Enchanted Air by Margarita Engle (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2015). The poems in this memoir are so carefully and beautifully crafted that I would not be at all surprised to see this collecting accolades at the YMAs.

The Great Monkey Rescue: Saving the Golden Lion Tamarins by Sandra Markle (Milbrook Press, 2015). This true story of scientists' quest to save the golden lion tamarins from extinction is a great book for animal lovers. I love the big, bold photos of these beautiful monkeys.

Hilo: The Boy Who Crashed to Earth by Judd Winick (Random House, 2015). This graphic novel had me laughing out loud. It ends on a cliffhanger and you can bet I will be picking up the next installment.

The Hired Girl by Laura Amy Schlitz (Candlewick, 2015). I know this book has come under some controversy (read the comments here), but the story seems almost tailor made for me and it's a perfect readalike for some of my all-time favorite books.

The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste (Algonquin, 2015). Not only is the creepy take reminiscent of another favorite of mine (Doll Bones by Holly Black), but it has been SO MUCH FUN to booktalk and the kids at my library have been clamoring for it since I began taking it to schools.

Roller Girl by Victoria Jamison (Dial Books, 2015). This full-color graphic novel is full of girl power and a young protagonist who works hard to get what she wants. I love the storyline and the unstoppable main character.

The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes (Dial Books, 2015). I could not stop reading this book. It's a gripping story and once I finished I couldn't help but push it into the hands of my friends.

Symphony for the City of the Dead by M.T. Anderson (Candlewick, 2015). Quite simply, I think this book is a masterpiece. It's at once a fascinating biography, a testament to the power of music, and a riveting WWII story.

Terrible Typhoid Mary by Susan Campbell Bartoletti (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015). This riveting biography reads like fiction. I love icky medical stuff and this book fit the bill nicely.

Untamed: The Wild Life of Jane Goodall by Christine Hepperman (National Geographic Kids, 2015). Here's another fascinating biography with tons of color photographs and sidebars that provide me interesting information. I'm sold.

The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley (Dial Books, 2015). I read this one waaaay back in January and it's stayed on my mind ever since. The way that Bradley shows us the characters is super impressive to me. This is my top Newbery contender.

We've all seen tons of "Best Of" lists for the year, but what were YOUR favorites this year??

Reading Wildly in 2016

Yes, we will continue to Read Wildly in 2016! (More info on Reading Wildly, my staff reader's advisory training, here!)

Last week, my staff and I sat down to choose genres for our 2016 Reading Wildly meetings. I was really proud of the thought they put into it and I think we hit on a great mix of repeats (those genres many of us don't gravitate to naturally) and new-for-RW genres. Here's what we decided to explore this year:

January: Reader profile swaps (basically reader's choice, but you can read about what we're doing in this post)

February: Sports

March: Survival

April: Sad/Tearjerkers

May: Funny

June: Reader's choice, but Teen staff read something from Children's and Children's read something from Teen (and if you read equally, then you pick!)

July: Graphic Novels (always accepted, but my staff don't always choose them)

August: Transitional chapter books (2nd/3rd grade)

September: Nonfiction

October: Thriller

November: Gentle ("Clean" reads, although I hate saying "clean")

December: Fantasy

Watch my Reading Wildly page for updates on how these meetings go and what we read each month!

And what about you? What are the genres that are a stretch for you to pick up and read?

Reading Wildly: Fairy Tale Novels

Hello, blog. It's been awhile. Things have been a little crazy around here. But we are still reading! This month for Reading Wildly, my staff and I read fairy tale novels. Frozen, The Descendants... fairy tales are all around us and there are lots of opportunities to find readalikes for the books and media kids are loving.

Here's what we read: 

• Fairest of All (Whatever After #1) by Sarah Mlynowski
• Flunked (Fairy Tale Reform School #1) by Jen Calonita
• The Frog Princess by E.D. Baker
• Frogged by Vivian Vande Velde
• If the Shoe Fits (Whatever After #2) by Sarah Mlynowski
• The Island of Dr. Libris by Chris Grabenstein
• Of Giants and Ice by Shelby Bach
• A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz
• Wednesdays at the Tower by Jessica Day George
• A Wicked Thing by Rhiannon Thomas

Confession: I missed most of our book discussion this month because I was at a meeting that ran way late. However, my staff were on the ball and shared their booktalks until I could join them. 

The second half of this month's meeting was spent discussing what genres and topics we want to tackle for next year and explaining the activity we're going to do for January's meeting. 

For January's meeting, I had asked everyone to fill out Becky Spratford's reader profile, as discussed on her awesome blog RA for All. I collected these before the meeting and at our meeting, we each picked one. I'm asking folks to work with their partners to come up with a list of at least 3 book suggestions by the end of next week. Then I'm asking everyone to read at least one of their suggested books for next month's meeting. I am hoping this will be a fun exercise and result in everyone having something enjoyable to read over the holidays and the beginning of the new year. 

I'm really excited to talk to everyone about their process in completing this activity and what they learned about themselves by filling out their own reader profiles. I typically leave January's Reading Wildly meeting as reader's choice since I know everything is so busy during the holidays and I think this is a great way to do that while still incorporating some RA practice and thought. 

We also discussed what genres we'd like to explore next year and I was really proud of my staff members for putting a lot of thought into this and making some great suggestions. Everyone was a little quiet at first when I asked what they'd like to feature next year, but once people started making suggestions, more and more came flying! 

Reading Wildly: Horse Books

For this month's Reading Wildly meeting, we read horse books! It was a great genre to explore because almost everyone (including myself) read their horse book(s) very reluctantly, which, yes, means it's a genre we need to push ourselves to pick up and explore from time to time. 

We kicked off our meeting with a discussion about our common text, the article "What Makes a Good Horse Book?" by Anita Burkham from The Horn Book. This article was helpful for mt staff and me because it gives some clear guidance as to what horse lovers are looking for in a good horse books. I know it helped me to pick up on these elements as I read my books.

Here are the horse books we read this month:

• Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
• Bramble and Maggie by Jessie Haas
• Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder
• A Hundred Horses by Sarah Lean
• Paint the Wind by Pam Munoz Ryan
• The Princess and the Foal by Stacy Gregg
• Racing Savannah by Miranda Kenneally
• Runaway Radish by Jessie Haas
• The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
• The Winter Horses by Philip Kerr
• The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
• Welcome Home! (Misty Inn series) by Kristin Earhart

Next month, we'll be talking about fairy tale novels and reading a couple of articles about the fantasy genre: "Stepping Into the Wardrobe: A Fantasy Genre Study" by Maria Colleen Cruz and Kate B. Pollock (Language Arts, January 2004) and "Finding Fantasy: The Genre That Makes Difficult Topics Easier for Students to Discuss" by Robin Fuxa (Reading Today, October/November 2012). 

We'll also be choosing topics for our 2016 Reading Wildly meetings (exciting!!). We may repeat genres we have done before or add new ones. We're Youth Services now, which includes teens and expands our reader's advisory responsibilities. I'm excited to talk about the possibilities for next year! I know that in June & July we're going to do Reader's Choice and that in January we'll do kind of a variation on Reader's Choice using Becky Spratford's Staff Reader Profile that she posted on her awesome blog RA for All. 

Big Top Burning

Big Top Burning: The True Story of an Arsonist, a Missing Girl, and The Greatest Show on Earth by Laura A. Woollett. Grades 5 and up. Chicago Review Press, June 2015. 168 pages. Review copy provided by my local library.

Book Talk: [I start this one off by reading from the Prologue on pages 1-2.]

"Some say they saw the flickering of a small flame on the side of the wall of the tent just above the men's bathroom. At first no one moved; surely the circus staff had it under control. But by the time the circus workers reached the fire, their meager buckets of water had little effect. As the crowd watched, the flame grew, spidering up the tent wall. Then someone yelled "Fire!" and the panic began. A frightened crowd of 6,000 spectators began jostling down the rickety bleachers and across the grandstand toward the exits...

"The tent burned to the ground in fewer than 10 minutes, and 167 people died. It was one of the worst tragedies the country had ever seen. From the ashes, questions arose: How did the fire start? Was it an accident? Could a madman have set it on purpose?...

"The mysteries surrounding the Hartford circus fire are still being explored today, more than 70 years after the disaster occurred. Professionals and amateurs alike have examined the evidence and argued their theories. Now it's your turn."

Big Top Burning tells the story of a tragic fire at the circus in Hartford, CT in 1944. Even today, people aren't certain exactly what happened, but this book gives you the facts and lets you make your own conclusions. This is a great read for anyone who likes exciting, true stories from history or adventure series like I Survived.

My thoughts: This is a pretty riveting story about a disaster that I literally knew nothing about. Plenty of archival photos help bring the time period to life and the action starts very quickly. Much of the book concentrates on the mysteries that arose after the fire was over and survivors started to piece together the remains of the dead.

I would be hesitant to hand this to sensitive readers (and will warn them when I booktalk this title) because the chapter about families identifying the bodies of dead children was especially harrowing to me. However, I tend to be a little more conservative about things like that and it might fascinate rather than bother most children. (Pro tip: "warning" children about gruesome content can be a great way to get them to clamor to take the book home!)

I think that kids who enjoy disaster stories (like Titanic, I Survived, etc.) will eat this one up. A friend of mine said on GoodReads that this book is "well-suited to the budding true crime reader" and I couldn't agree more.

Readalikes: Kids who enjoy reading about true disaster stories might also enjoy the book Fighting Fire!: Ten of the Deadliest Fires in American History and How We Fought Them by Michael L. Cooper.

Kids who like reading about disasters might also enjoy the fictional series I Survived by Lauren Tarshis or the Survivors series by Kathleen Duey and Karen Bale.

Science Playground at the @alscblog

Today, I'm over at the ALSC Blog with a post about our recent Science Playground. Please click through and check out this easy, cheap, well-attended fall break program!

Is Reading Entertainment?

Laying in bed the other night, I put down my phone and told my fiance "Okay, I better be productive and read a book."

And he said, "That's not productive; that's entertainment."

And I was totally surprised that he thought that.

And then I was surprised that I was surprised.

Because of course reading is entertainment. Millions of readers all around the world read because they enjoy it. It's a hobby. It's FUN. That's what we believe and tell kids and grownups all day, every day at the library, right?

But the truth is that it sometimes feels like work for librarians.

Sometimes it legitimately is work; if you're serving on a committee, for instance, or if you're prepping for booktalks or if you're reviewing for professional journals. It might be fun work, but it's still work.

But what to do when all reading has started to kinda feel like work? What to do when you're surprised that reading is supposed to be fun?

It's not that I'm not picking up books I enjoy. But somewhere along the way, I've been more focused on hitting (and exceeding) my GoodReads goal. I've been obsessed with my ever-towering mountain of to-be-read books. I've been reading because it feels like an accomplishment to finish a book and mark it down. This is especially true if it's a library book because then I can return it back to the library.

Donalyn Miller had a really great post recently about those times when we take a break from reading or from writing. It got me thinking. Maybe I'm still in Committee Mode after serving on the Newbery Committee last year. I don't remember what a normal reading life is supposed to look like. I read a bunch on my recent Readcation, but I also kind of stressed out about it, which was not very conducive to, y'know, vacationing.

And when I think about other ways I like to relax - watching TV, playing games, taking walks and talking with friends - I never feel like I want to do those activities so I can "be productive" and finish something and mark it down. Not the way I do with reading.

So, I'm going to strive for more balance, and that may mean less reading. But I'm going to strive to be more thoughtful about what I'm reading and why.

Because reading should be entertainment. It should be fun, at least some of the time. Otherwise, what are we doing this librarian thing for?

Do YOU ever feel this way? How do you keep reading fun instead of allowing it to just become part of your job?

The Great Monkey Rescue

The Great Monkey Rescue: Saving the Golden Lion Tamarins by Sandra Markle. Grades 3-5. Millbrook Press, October 2015. 40 pages. Review copy provided by my local library.

Book Talk:

Okay, so first of all, how cute is this monkey?


This beautiful monkey is a golden lion tamarin and it’s sad to say that it’s an endangered species. Due to deforestation - the cutting down of trees in the tamarin’s home in Brazil - this species was in danger of becoming extinct.

This nonfiction book tells the true story of the scientists who helped bring the golden lion tamarins back from the edge of extinction. And they did it by building a tree highway to help the tamarins reach protected habitats.

You see, for the tamarins to survive in the wild, they need a large territory so they can find enough food during the dry seasons. The forests in which the tamarins can live are now separated by large pieces of land that have been cleared so cattle can graze there. The tamarins would not cross the open land to get to the next piece of forest. Even birds would not fly over the cleared area to travel from one forest area from another.

So scientists came up with the idea of making a special highway for the animals: a highway made of trees that connects the areas of the forest where tamarins can make their home.
To see how they did it and the other work scientists have done to save this cutest of monkeys, pick up The Great Monkey Rescue.

My thoughts: I have really loved Sandra Markle's science mystery titles (including The Case of the Vanishing Golden Frogs and others) and this one is also awesome. The books read a little bit like the Scientists in the Field series (which I also love) in that you accompany scientists attempting to help an endangered species and see what work and investigation goes into it. The reading levels are a little easier and the books are shorter while still including lovely full-color photographs. I think it's a little easier to find a readership for Sandra Markle's titles because of these formatting choices.

This particular title is so adorable that I knew I had to add it into my booktalking rotation and kids are going to be clamoring for it. I mean, look at that gorgeous monkey! How can you not want to know what's happening to him?

This book is a great one to suggest to teachers doing lessons about nonfiction text features since it incorporates photo captions, maps, and sidebars. Back matter includes an author's note, a timeline, a glossary, a list of further resources, and an index.

Readalikes: Don't miss Sandra Markle's other titles about animals in trouble:

• The Case of the Vanishing Golden Frogs
• The Case of the Vanishing Honeybees
• The Case of the Vanishing Little Brown Bats

Readers who are ready for more of a challenge may enjoy some of the Scientists in the Field books. Try one of my favorites, Kakapo Rescue: Saving the World's Strangest Parrot by Sy Montgomery.