National Book Festival 2017

This year was my second year attending the NBF at the Washington Convention Center.  When it moved locations, I was disappointed to hear that it wouldn't be held on the national lawn anymore, so I boycotted for a year. But I have to say, last Saturday was an UGLY day in DC--humid and rainy all day.  It was a pleasure to be inside, getting to meet authors and seeing friends as we waited in lines snaking around the convention center.

I stuck with middle grades authors, while my sister and nephew transversed children's authors up to YA. Here are the highlights of the day:

The ride to DC was miserable.

Meg Medina signing her Yacqui Delgado book for me.

Melissa de la Cruz signing Alex and Eliza for my niece.

Jack Gantos using a fancy Montblanc fountain pen to sign books.

Kelly Barnhill, author of thisyear's Newbery Award winner.

One of my favorite authors, Nicola Yoon.

My sister took and tweeted this photo of Angie Thomas, and the LOC retweeted it!

Condoleezza Rice passing by with her entourage.

My sister got this pic of Jesmyn Ward, who is more YA than MG.

My nephew with Lincoln Peirce (pronounced Purse!).

Christmas in the library

I know that it's terribly un-PC to celebrate Christmas in school, but we couldn't resist jumping on the book-tree bandwagon that's making its way through libraries everywhere.

The week before winter break was our second (very slow) week of bookfair, so we had plenty of time to get creative.  Staff and students loved the trees.

Can you see the chairs set up in a tree shape?!

We have some plans to make a snowman out of books, too, during January.  Here's the inspiration photo:

Weeding, weeding

I know there is a rule that one is not supposed to weed the collection in one's first year at a school.  I have broken that rule.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.

The age of the collection is not good.  The average age is 1998--16 years old.  There is so much to do.  I started out working on fiction, innocently enough just moving books to spread out the collection a little.  But as I moved books, it was obvious that some of them just had to go.  How many Dear America and books of that oeuvre are there?!?!?!  We had over 200.  HAD! Those books are gone, gone, gone.

There were lots of old and ugly books, and after discarding them, I put them on a cart called "Old & Ugly" and the students still scooped them up. Here is one of  my favorites:

I just love that little blurb next to the kids' heads: "Is gorgeous as great as it looks?"  If only someone could answer that...

But this book has been my all-time favorite, and I even learned a little something about James Michener AND South Pacific when I looked it up:

Priceless, just priceless.
There is a lot to do, but I've done a preliminary weed of picture books and biography, in addition to fiction.  Non-fiction is the crazy-big part that is left to do, but I seriously don't even know where to start.  Between the outdated titles and the mis-labeled (damn that Melvil Dewey!!) books, I will have to touch and fix every single book if it doesn't get weeded.

I think that I won't even start non-fiction until Christmas.  There are a lot of other things to do before tackling that half of the library.  But it's exciting!! I love it!

I Have the Money!!

This is what sweet little Thomas was yelling (yes, YELLING!) to me as he came into the library first thing Friday morning.  No one else was there yet, and he was so excited to find me.  "Miss R, Miss R! I want to buy this book!" and he was holding the book up high for me to see.
I was laughing as he explained that he had enough money to buy the book.  He loved it so much.  He came right into my office and gave me the book and his money:

Why, yes, he did have enough money!! That is a bill for a trillion dollars.  And President Abraham Lincoln is right there on the front.
I am indeed glad that Thomas loved that book so much, but I had to explain it to him that he couldn't buy it, no matter how much money he had, since it was a library book and lots of other boys and girls love that book too.
It was a great way to start my Friday.

Award Winning Thoughts

I am so happy with the Caldecott Awards this year! The week before the awards were announced, I had read This is Not My Hat to the first grade classes, not because I was predicting anything, but because we'd read I Want My Hat Back as part of our state readers' choice list.  So I thought they'd like Jon Klassen's new book (which they did).  They were very excited to hear that it won the Caldecott, and we put the Award sticker on it right away. Notice it has the perfect cover for a medal.

Because of our subscription to Junior Library Guild, I had most of the award and honor winners already.  Great choices all around.  This fall, I got our copy of Extra Yarn signed by Mac Barnett. Double win for Jon Klassen with that one!! Where to put the silver medal, though? Maybe cover art designers can think of this in the future--just a little corner, that's all I need!

I took Creepy Carrots to the book festival, too, to be signed.  It's very fun, although I haven't read it to any classes yet.  My nephew sure enjoyed it!

I wouldn't be any kind of librarian if I didn't give a shout-out to One Cool Friend, written by Toni Buzzeo.  She's a librarian, so I triple-love this book.  Anything that David Small illustrates is tops in my book, but this was still a total surprise to me! Notice the area in the lower-left corner for the medal. 

When I took I Have a Dream: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. out of the box recently, I knew instantly it was Kadir Nelson.  His books are just classic.  There is no mistaking his style or his books' shape.  It is beautiful and of course a shoe-in for the award.  We got it just in time for MLK, Jr. Day, and the teachers ate it up.

Ellen's Broom was an enjoyable book, but not on my radar for the CSK illustrator award.  I am partial to the style to the illustrator, Daniel Minter.  Woodcuts? Scratchboard?  I'm not totally sure, but I know it appeals to me.  The story does not seem all that original to me; where have I read something like this before, I don't know, but I feel like I've heard it already.  At any rate, I'm glad for Daniel Minter.

This is the book that threw me over the edge, though: Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson.  I just cataloged it the weekend before it won the CSK Author Honor, but I hadn't read it.  So I brought it home on Monday night and read it Tuesday morning over breakfast.  Then I cried.  And cried.  And cried.  I cried some more on my way to work.  I cried when I told my assistant about it.  It is just so sad! It is the most perfect  book for discussion, though.  But I don't know if I'll be able to read it aloud to a class! I plan to show it to my principal this week because it is a great accompaniment for the 26 Acts of Kindness program that we're doing at my school.  It's amazing, really.

Same, same, same

Is it wrong that I am this week reading the same book to the kindergartners that I have done at least 9 years in a row?  It's Book, Book, Book by Deborah Bruss.  I love it.  We read it, make the animal sounds, and then act it out in a kindergartenesque Readers' Theatre. 

I love how they react to the story.  It's the first time for them, even though it's the 100th+ time for me.  Today as we were checking out books, there was this little guy walking around saying, "I already READ IT, READ IT, READ IT," just like the frog on the book.  Love it!

Harry and Horsie pics

As promised, here are some photos from the kids' work on Friday. 
This first one is from the beginning of the book, in Harry's bedroom.  I love the toys inside the bubbles.  I'm not sure which toy this is, but it's perfectly recognizable as a toy, I think!

The next one is from the middle of the book, in outer space.  It's a cat on the Milky Way, of course!

And this last one is at the end of the book, where Harry finds Horsie hanging from the crescent moon.  The kids loved learning that phrase, "crescent moon."

Hooray for the kids! They did such a cute job on this!

Inspiration

I love my fellow librarians (well, almost all of them). This afternoon, I was still trying to come up with a lesson for kindergarten (which was due to arrive at 3 pm sharp) and just not having much luck. I looked through their curriculum map to see what had been going on recently and what was coming up, and nothing struck my fancy.

I thought I should do something on natural resources with them, especially reusing materials, since that's one of their curriculum standards and I hadn't touched on that at all. I IM'd my good friend at a middle school (she used to be an elementary librarian) and just like THAT, she had a book idea for me. Of course, then she had to teach a class and didn't give me anything else but a title, but that was enough! I put together a pretty darn good lesson plan, I think.

This is one of the things I miss about not being on a grade level. Being the only one in my building who does what I do gets a little lonely sometimes. Thanks for the idea, Jenny!

Blah...

Ugh...I am sick. Sick as a dog, although my dog is never sick. It's just a cold, but woah--it has hit me like a ton of bricks today. I even called in sick this morning. The woman I called was like, "You never call in sick!" I know...I know. I slept all day, me and my dog curled up on the bed snoring together.

I got a new book in the mail today from Amazon. It is so very cute, and I am already thinking of ways I can use it with the kiddos. It's called Mouse Was Mad by Linda Urban and Henry Cole. I love Henry's illustrations--there is just so much fun in them. I just noticed now that it is not scheduled for publication until May 4, 2009. How did they release it already? I am confused; I don't know how that happens. Oh well, I am thrilled to have it. Look how the words in the title get bigger. So cute.