The Skinny
For the past 9 years I’ve been lucky enough to be the
librarian at Open Window School in Bellevue, Washington, just outside Seattle.
We are a K-8 school with just over 300 students, sitting on top of Cougar Mountain
with a gorgeous view and some “interesting” weather. We share our campus with
assorted wild animals – deer, bobcats and more – who mostly wait until the
humans have departed to make an appearance, though deer are regularly spotted running
behind the buildings. Some classrooms keep tallies of deer sightings! So far
none of them have tried eating the artificial turf – at least, I hope not!
What I enjoy most about my job is that our library
is a happy place – filled with mind-expanding books, excited readers and
supportive parent helpers. I never tire of the thrill that comes from matching
a child, teacher or parent with exactly the right book or helping a student who
has reached a dead end in his research find the source he needs to make his
research paper even better.
Library
Laughs:
One of the best parts of working with kids is the
many surprising, insightful, inspirational and humorous things they say.
One year I told kindergartners a Scottish variant of
the Snow White tale, and finished off with “and they all lived happily ever
after.” One boy wondered aloud why stories always end that way, so I asked the
children what they thought. A little girl raised her hand and said, “Because
that's how you know it's not real life.”
A third grader said she wanted a book about bees,
adding “I used to be afraid of sharks, so I read a lot of books about them and
I stopped being afraid. But I’m really freaked out by bees, so now I want to
get some books about them.” She had designed her own experiment in exposure
therapy, but I thought it would be best not to give her the one called Inside and Outside Killer Bees!
A fourth grader stopped by and asked, “Do you have
any books about Harriet Tubman? I’ve been worrying about her since second
grade.”
I was teaching second graders how to search the OPAC
to find books by title, and one child was all fired up about finding a book on
his own. He approached me and asked, “For Moby
Dick should I type ‘Richard’?”
From a third grader: “Hey, Ms. Simeon! You know a
complicated name for librarian would be Dewey Decimal Technician!”
A kindergartner squealed and exclaimed, while
clutching Art and Max by David
Wiesner, “This book is an old friend of mine!”
Two second graders asked, “Do you have any books on
hypnotism? We need a book on how to get people to do what we want.” I gave them
the closest thing I could find, a book called Mind Tricks. They skipped away happily, one of them saying, “And if
that doesn’t work, we’ll go with Plan B!”
A
Lion’s Pride of Programs:
I consider research to be an endless adventure – but
learning all the necessary skills can feel tedious or intimidating. We try to
make the process fun and our 4th graders’ mystery square project is a
good example of this. First, students search the OPAC to locate a nonfiction
book about a country of their choice. Next they select six “just right” (not
too obvious, not too obscure) facts about their country from the book and six
from a database. They reflect on their clues, choose the four they think will work
best, and create a mystery square with one clue on each flap and the country’s
name and flag on the inside. Finally, we record a video of them reading their
clues. On the final day of the project, we play each video clip and students
make their guesses on handheld whiteboards. This allows everyone to participate
and gives the students instant feedback on whether their clues were too easy,
too hard or just right.
Mystery square flag
More Roars!
One of the many things that make this job fresh and interesting is that you’re only limited by your imagination when it comes to teaching information literacy skills and encouraging people to read widely and often. Inspired by an ALSC blog post, http://www.alsc.ala.org/blog/2011/03/national-poetry-month-is-better-with-book-spine-poems/, our middle schoolers ran around the library creating book spine poems. In the process they had fun, practiced their catalog search skills, and stumbled across a lot of books with titles that piqued their interest!
Here are just a few examples:
Cassie:Reckless
Dead girls don’t write letters
Dead girls don’t write letters
Phoebe: Here comes our bride!
What a beast
What a beast
Rachel:Beware!
Each little bird that sings
Ruined
Each little bird that sings
Ruined
Readers Roar: Let’s hear from the kids!
“I love the library because it is welcoming and fun to be in.” Griffin, 3rd grade
“When you tell made-up stories they’re really funny!” – Abby, 1st grade
“I like that we can check out lots of different books.” – Lleyton, 1st grade
“I like coming here because I learn.” – Bess, kindergarten
“I love the library because I found my favorite book here.” – Dylan, 3rd grade
“I like reading because it gets your mind going.” –Shannon, 1st grade
Book Brag:
I have a sense of which books never sit for long on our shelves – the Star Wars cookbooks, chess books, optical illusions, folktales, graphic novels, and anything to do with rodents! But when I ran a circulation report, these three titles came out on top:
Encyclopedia
of Dog Breeds by D. Caroline Coile
Meanwhile
by Jason Shiga
Peach
Fuzz
by Lindsay Cibos and Jared Hodges
Author!
Author!
We love bringing authors to campus! For years
afterwards, students remember and talk about them. They look at all books in a different way after
they’ve had a peek at the hard work that goes into writing. They also have a
better understanding of the creative process and this informs and improves
their own writing.
The perfect author visit, in my opinion, includes a
lot of information and concrete examples about the writing process. What
obstacles have you encountered and how did you overcome them? What does your manuscript
look like after your editor has had a go at it?
Students also love to hear personal details about
you – your pets, your kids, what you do when you’re not writing. When they
read, they love to speculate about why you made certain decisions – character
names, settings, and so on. Meeting a real live author
who can answer these questions brings your books to life in a whole new way.
More than anything, we appreciate it when authors
find a way to personalize their talk for our student body. I try to provide
enough information about our particular school and why we really wanted to
bring you – and not some author –
here so that the presentation can be pitched at the right level or otherwise
feel like an organic extension of their everyday school experience.
Phillip Hoose’s author visit – Phillip
with Laura
Let’s
Link:
Thanks
again for the interview, Laura!
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.
