Introducing He-man!

Our library has a pair of pet gerbils. After a very popular "gerbil-naming contest" our patrons named them "Zap" and "Zoom." (We had over 400 patrons participate in this contest.) I love these little gerbils as much as our patrons do and after seeing them day in and day out I wanted a little pet of my own.

While driving around to pet stores one day I found a store that sold hedgehogs. I had never seen a hedgie before and I was blown away by how adorable they were.

Ever the librarian, I had to do some research first. Turns out, hedgehogs make great pets. They do not smell, they are quiet, and they are inexpensive to take care of. So my husband and I adopted little "He-man" into our family.

We are hand-taming him right now because he is a little timid. When He-man is more comfortable around people I will be sure to bring him to work. The kids would just love him at storytime.

Chocolate Bunnies

At storytime this week we celebrated Easter by talking about bunnies. When I asked the kids what was happening this weekend one particularly vocal child yelled "I get candy!" For a 2-5 year old all they understand about Easter is that a giant bunny comes to their house and leaves candy. Even if they did understand more there was no way I would open up that "Easter egg."

So along with talking about bunnies we made "chocolate bunnies" by finger painting chocolate pudding on cardboard bunny shapes. It left an bunny imprint on the paper when you pulled off the bunny shape as you can see in picture of the chocolate aftermath of the activity. I think a lot of the pudding ended up not on the paper but on little kid's faces.

Monsters in the Library

There are some clever thieves in my library.

A few weeks ago my darling stuffed cow went missing. Someone suggested she "jumped over the moon" but after scouring the library I knew she was stolen.

I was using the stuffed cow for my display in the children's department on cow books. (You'd be surprised how many books about cows there are.) So my coworkers and I put the word out to get my cow back. We found a picture of it online and made up "Missing Cow" posters. We asked all the teens that came into the library "have you seen her?" After only one day a teen girl came up and said she "found the cow in the snow." Of course we didn't believe her especially after we saw the snickering of teens around the library but we played along and said "Thank you so much!" We thought that she might have learned a lesson that when she takes things it affects others. So we hugged her and gave her a box of Milk Duds as "reward."

I thought things were hunky dory until the pirate hat went missing a bit later. It was for a pirate display and it had only been up two days before it was hatnapped. A week later a little stuffed frog has mysteriously vanished. I believe the teens have figured out that if they steal something and return it they get candy. Even if they don't return it they get to keep what they stole. It's a win-win situation for them. I told my coworker I thought I had created a monster. My coworker told me the monster was already there.

Evil St. Patrick?

A lady came into the library today asking about St. Patrick. I retrieved information about the holiday and the man, trying to please this very grumpy woman. Nothing seemed to satisfy her and then after ten minutes of searching she clarified her request: she wanted to find "bad" things about St. Patrick so she could get her child out of celebrating that holiday at school.

This led me on a fruitless quest over the Internet trying to find a reputable source bashing the Irish saint. I found nothing until the woman spotted that St. Patrick was once a pagan in Britain before he was sold into slavery and came to Ireland. (Never mind the fact that this was about 400 A.D. and that region was full of pagans. Even if he was a pagan does that make him evil?) However, this information made her happy and she took it and left. My coworkers told me I should just wait for Halloween, she's here all the time then.

Anime Art Contest

We had the judging for our anime art contest last week. I had the anime club vote for the best art. I was concerned it would turn into a popularity contest since many of the entries were from the club. However, I was pleasantly surprised when the club members did not choose their friends as the grand prize winner but someone completely out of the club. A picture of handsome man holding an attractive dying girl won the contest. The picture was full of emotion. The girl was slumped against the male and he had tears running down his face. I think the picture really spoke to the teens and they voted for it over thirty something other entries. I included pictures of some of the notable entries including the first, second and third place winners on this blog. I never knew the teens in my community were so talented. They just needed an outlet.

Happily promoting childhood obesity

There was a debate a few weeks back in our library system about giving children and teens candy for incentives. ONE patron complained and then a whole uproar of intelligent, terse, angry, and sometimes pompous e-mails were exchanged across all the libraries. Everyone had an opinion on the subject. One claimed we were making them sugar addicts and others claimed we were promoting childhood obesity. (Never mind that we were giving them out sparingly, one piece at a time and only for good behavior.)

No one ever stopped to ask the children and teens what they thought of this reward system. So in the last few weeks I have done my own informal survey of the children, mothers of children and teens in my library. At storytimes I sometimes have edible crafts. The other week we decorated cookies. I asked mothers what they thought of this and some of the other crafts. They all thought it was great and had no problem with it. I asked the children and between mouthfuls of cookie they thought it was wonderful and were eager to come to more storytimes. I also asked a number of teens what they thought of the candy incentives. I asked them if they would prefer a bookmark, or healthy snacks which were other alternatives suggested in the flurry of e-mails. I liked the response of one teen who comes in very regularly. He looked at me disgustedly and said "Hell no!"

Chatty Moms

Usually the moms in my storytimes are very good. They listen attentively, actively participate, and get their children when their toddler wanders behind me to knock over the piano bench or pull out the cord to the CD player. I'm very grateful to them for their politeness but this past week I don't know what happened but it was as if this storytime was the social event of the season and a good part of the ladies gabbed the whole way through. When over fifty people are in a room and a good percentage of them are talking the noise compounds on itself and during this storytime I was wishing for a microphone.

I'm pretty good at getting the kids to be quiet. I can do a wiggle rhyme: "I wiggle my fingers/ I wiggle my nose...etc. until "no more wiggles are left in me so I'll be as quiet as I can be." They really like that one and they are very quiet after it. But the adults don't respond to that. (Why would they?) I've heard of one librarian who does not let the adults in the storytime at all but I don't agree with that. A good many of the adults in my storytime really like to participate and I believe they learn a lot by being there.

One librarian suggested that I have the children turn to their neighbor and ask their neighbor to be quiet. That might work; I'll have to try it. Maybe a short talk at the beginning of storytime for the children AND the parents might control the behavior. I understand why the moms want to talk. Some of them don't get a chance to go out too much and this is one of the opportunities they get to meet other moms. They are probably bursting with things to say. So I should probably make a point that they can have all the time they want AFTER storytime to talk with the other parents while the kids are working or playing with their crafts.