LIBRARY MEDIA SPECIALISTS ROAR!

Welcome to Library Lions interviews Raising a Roar for libraries and the outstanding librarians serving youth in schools and public libraries across the U.S. Please Roar today’s guest Library Media Specialist, Julie Hembree! This is the first of two posts with Julie Hembree. Welcome Julie!

 

I’m the Library Media Specialist at Bell Elementary in Kirkland, Washington, which is located in the suburbs of Seattle. This is my 9^th year as a librarian after many years as a classroom teacher. We are a K-5 school with about 340 students. After being in the midst of a two year construction period, our old school was torn down in the summer and our new school opened in September.

The library is on the second floor with huge windows where we can view the playground and trees that surround the property. We have reading posters all over our walls celebrating reading, lots of fun cubes and couches to sit on and great display areas to showcase books.

Our students come to the library every week for 30 minutes in grades K-2 and every other week for 60 minutes in grades 3-5. We are also open during all of the recesses for kids to come to find books, read, research, play board games or do homework. It’s a busy place and there’s always a hum of voices in the background.

 The Skinny

What I love about my work is that I get paid to be a reading and technology cheerleader! I believe that my job is to sell the importance of reading and research. To do that I try to merchandize the “reading product” in fun and engaging ways. I try to make sure my students understand that they are part of a global reading community by taking part in larger activities such as International Dot Day or World Read Aloud Day. We have bright book displays that draw students into the library from the busy hallways.

My students and I love to make book trailers to showcase new or well-loved books in our library. I have found that this type of visual advertising really connects with kids. As soon as the trailer is over, the arguments begin about who gets the book first! Using technology makes my job as a reading advocate so much easier because I am talking the language of today’s digital learners. The students also find making trailers a fun and engaging way to share books they love with other students.

Our trailers are hosted on our Bulldog ReaderBlog where anyone can view them. I also have a great time showing other librarians and teachers at conferences the process to make their own trailers. We are all connected and the more we share with one another, the more it positively impacts our students.

Why are libraries important

Libraries are vital in schools because they are nurturing the imagineers of our future. Libraries are the place where anyone can freely come to seek information, become engrossed in a book or daydream about what could be. In an age where classroom lessons are becoming increasingly prescripted, the library is one of the few places where creativity has a home. Everyone is trying to find the way to obtain test scores that match or exceed the students in Asia and Finland. In that pursuit of test scores, creativity and innovation is shoved to the side.

Yet, creativity and innovation are the hallmarks of our country. Innovators are developed in libraries where a student can lose themselves in a book or research the background for ideas that are important to them. When we lose libraries, we lose a piece of our future.

Library Laughs

Once a year we have a favorite character day. Everyone, students and staff included, is encouraged to dress up as a favorite book character. I have dressed as Little Red Riding Book, Captain Underpants and Viola Swamp.

In the week before the event there is a reading buzz around the school as kids and staff have conversations about who they will choose and how they will dress up as that character. I never reveal who I will be ahead of time.  It’s hysterical to overhear whispered conversations as kids speculate what character I will choose for the year. One year, I thought I had kept my ideas firmly to myself. Yet, on Favorite Character Day, I found that I had lots of company when I arrived as Fancy Nancy! Twenty girls also came dressed in their finest Fancy Nancy clothes. It’s too bad that Jane O’Connor wasn’t here to see all that glitz and glamor!

Author! Author!

I’ve had some fabulous opportunities to meet a variety of authors. This fall I was part of Kirby Larson’s book launch for Duke at Third Place Books.

A few years ago Matt Holm came to our school and entertained all of us with his Babymouse stories and drawings. The kids talked about him for weeks afterwards. The Babymouse books are still some of the most popular books in the library.

We have had large author assemblies, and author Skype visits. However, we had the perfect author visit nearly two years ago when Katherine Applegate came to our school. This was a year before she won the Newbery Award. A student had given me a copy of The One and Only Ivan, insisting that I read it right away. I took it home and fell in love with Ivan that night. I made a book trailer for Ivan and put it on YouTube. Somehow Katherine Applegate saw it and wrote to me sharing how much she enjoyed the trailer and asking if she could visit our school the next time she was in Seattle.

Her visit was a wonder from beginning to end. She shared her story in a dynamic slideshow about how she developed the Ivan story with photos that were both age appropriate and engaging. She had lunch with a group of students and talked with them, answering their questions about her life as an author. She signed books and allowed students to have their picture taken with her.

We tried our best to treat her like a rockstar and she captivated us with her stories and love for her work. It was a magical day. This year we are looking forward to some graphic and mystery fun when Jarrett Krosoczka, author of the Lunch Lady and Platypus Police Squad series visits in February!

One last big roar

I’d like to make a big roar to all the librarians and teachers who come early and stay late to make sure that kids have what they need to be successful. They not only work hard to make a difference for the students in their classrooms and libraries, but they also share their ideas with others. It’s through collaboration that we can learn from one another and strengthen how we teach.

Let’s Link

Blog: I would love your visitors to know about the Bulldog Reader’s Blog where I share ideas about books, library lessons and technology. Here is the URL: http://bellbulldogreaders.edublogs.org/

Twitter: I love connecting with other librarians and educators on Twitter where I’m known as @mrs_hembree

Thank you Janet for giving librarians a chance to roar about the importance of reading and libraries!

And thank you Julie for your terrific interview!

Love Libraries? Give a Roar in “Comments” below.

Note to Librarians: If you’re a Youth Librarian working in a school or public library we’d love to hear about you and your library. Contact Janet at jlcarey@hotmail.com for an interview slot. 

 

Librarian Turned Author, Carole Estby Dagg!

Please Roar today’s guest, author Carole Estby Dagg!
Carole has stopped by to share her Library Love with us, and what better person to do that than a former librarian turned author!



A Bit of Background – Carole the Librarian
Carole started volunteering in her school library in 1952, later she worked her way through the University of Washington at the NE Branch of the Seattle Public Library in the early 60’s, earned her library science degree at the University of British Columbia, and has seen school, academic, and public library operations from the standpoint of volunteer, page, circulation desk clerk, children’s librarian, branch manager, and assistant director.

And Now Author!
She crossed over to the other side—the writing side—with her first book after she retired from Everett Public Library.



The Year We Were Famous
“Would you walk over four thousand miles to save your family's home?”
(Clarion Books, 2011)



Tell us about Your Library Love When You Were a Cub
In fourth grade, I looked forward to Thursdays, when my teacher let me spend most of day in the school library. Then, as now, school libraries were understaffed and librarians appreciated unpaid help from eager wanna-be librarians.


“Carole the cowgirl” this was taken a couple years before I started volunteering in the school library; 1950 was the year I met Great-aunt Clara.

I read to kindergarten and first grade classes as they came in, checked books in and out, repaired books, and processed new magazines. I loved rotating the date due stamp to the next due date, the smell of library paste, dipping the metal nib of a wooden-handled pen into India ink to letter date due cards, and most of all, having younger kids calling me the ‘library girl’ on the playground.

More Library Love
The Year We Were Famous couldn’t have been written without the help of the librarians across the country who scrolled through microfilmed newspapers of 1896 to locate articles about Clara and Helga Estby (my great-aunt and great-grandmother) as they passed through on their 4,000-mile walk from Spokane, Washington to New York City.



Sketch of Great-aunt Clara and Great-grandmother Helga which appeared in the New York World in 1896

For each chapter, I checked out armfuls of books—often children’s books with lots of illustrations—on everything from President McKinley to the eating habits of cougars. When The Year We Were Famous came out, the biggest event was at my home-town library, where the staff made me feel like a rock star, with my name in lights on the reader-board.


Here I'm in 1896 costume for a program about TYWWF at the San Juan Island Library


Here is my writer's shack. I currently write in Everett, and a converted woodshed on San Juan Island library.

Author’s Roar
School librarians, with their involvement in Battle of the Books and reading circles, encourage love of reading—the basis for the lifelong learning students need. I saw first-hand how understaffed school libraries are when—after retirement from the local public library—I volunteered a morning a week at the local elementary school. The school librarian had a steady stream of classes coming in, so she had no time for collection maintenance. After I had weeded the entire collection, tossing geography books on Africa from the 1960’s and sports biographies of people who were stars before even the students’ parents were in school, the shelves so bare the PTSA had to organize a series of fund-raisers to replenish the shelves.

When I worked at a public library branch where nearly a third of the users were new to this country, I saw whole families came in for materials for the citizenship test and videos and DVDs that were the Rosetta Stone of learning a new language. I felt almost maternal joy when I saw a child who had known only a few words of English three years before come into the library speaking with nary an accent and acting as translator for his grandmother…or when an immigrant’s daughter who had been in my preschool story hours came in a dozen years later for materials for her research paper on Freud.

Hooray for ALA!
ALA is the most important link between publishers, writers, librarians, and readers. My most memorable conference was in Seattle of January, 2007. As I came up to the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators booth, I found out that one of our own, Kirby Larson, had received a call that morning to tell her that her book Hattie Big Sky, had been named a Newbery Honor Book. I also took advantage of having so many publishers in one place to talk to representatives of publishers which had expressed interest in my manuscript – and ended up shaking hands with Jennifer Wingertzahn at Clarion Books, which ultimately published The Year We Were Famous.

A Lion’s Pride of Programs
I love bookstore programs, but not every child has transportation to bookstores and the money to buy books. School and public libraries provide the accessible link between authors and their readers. As a children’s librarian in a public library, I visited all the classrooms in the area to share my favorite books and talk up the summer reading program. As a new author, I’ve already talked to roughly seven hundred middle school students in their schools. As a member of The Class of 2k11, I visited libraries in New York City during Book Expo America Week.


The photo is in front of the Seward Park Branch of NYPL; I'm the one waving in the front row.

My Favorite Librarian
My daughter, Emily Dagg, of course!



She’s carrying on the mission of bringing children and books together and following literally in her mother’s footsteps by having worked in three of the libraries I worked in many years ago. As current head of children’s and young adult services for Everett Public Library, she has been involved in a series of fundraisers to create a new teen area. Here she is, showing off the new teen area at EPL.

Let’s Link Up

Website Carole Estby Dagg

Thank you,Carole for sharing your story and Library Love with us.

Love Libraries? Give a Roar in “Comments” below.

Note to Librarians: If you’re a Youth Librarian working in a school or public library we’d love to hear about you and your library. Contact Janet at jlcarey@hotmail.com for an interview slot.