Yikes.

So, in case you’re wondering, Mockingjay totally destroyed me. (I mean, in a good way. But still.) I finished the book last Tuesday (it’s possible that my roommate and I both bought the e-book at midnight, and then read it until work, then bought it in hardcover and read the rest on the way home) and have been more-or-less unable to accomplish anything since then. We discussed it at book club last night, and some of my library school pals have arranged a conference call (not kidding) to talk about it again next week, and I get to talk about it constantly with my co-workers and our fabulous t(w)een patrons, so…maybe at some point I’ll be productive again. But probably not for a while.

Plus, the library’s been closed for a couple weeks. We’re open again and back on our feet, but we will be playing catch-up for a while.

Upcoming programs for the fall: back-to-school party (in two weeks – maybe I should get on that); a program about fantasy books, which no one here reads, but I’m still determined to increase circ because come on, who doesn’t like dragons; a Wimpy Kid release party (and why is Jeff Kinney suddenly being so vague about whether or not this is the last book in the series?); and lots of fun things for the tweens: gaming, crafts, book club (we’re reading Gregor for October – I’m so excited), and a murder mystery party. We loved solving the Sammy Keyes mystery, so that should be a lot of fun.

Maybe I should plan those.

…or I’ll go think about Mockingjay some more.

Casting for the Hunger Games movie, obviously

So this has been a hot topic for a while now, and after (an embarrassing number of) hours spent considering the question, I have decided who should play the main characters in the Hunger Games movie. Since there are a lot of pictures, you’ll have to click through.

P.S. I definitely can’t wait 12 more days for this book, and I am super bummed that there were no ARCs this year.

Continue reading “Casting for the Hunger Games movie, obviously”

Review: Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth

Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth, by Sandra Dutton

I was so excited when I saw the reviews of this book. Someone wrote a novel for kids about science and religion? AWESOME. I know a number of kids who feel tension between what their parents believe and what they learn in school – how great to have a novel where the protagonist is dealing with exactly that issue!

The good news is that Mary Mae competently tackles this problem. Mary Mae is a pleasant, relatable protagonist who is curious about her teacher’s world while remaining respectful of her family’s beliefs. The people she encounters in church, at home, and at school are, to a one, good and reasonable people with Mary Mae’s best interests at heart – they just have different ideas about what’s best. The conclusion Mary Mae eventually reaches is age-appropriate (i.e. she doesn’t suddenly launch into some lengthy, deep philosophical diatribe) and, again, respectful of her religious beliefs while remaining open to the possibilities of science.

So this book is a success, in that sense. BUT – and this is a big, important but – every sentence sounds like this: “But there’s this little crab a-setting in the corner all by hisself.” (Other examples: “Some of them pages is real old,” “His wife is a-setting off to the side,” “Don’t want nobody in the class to know I been crying.”)

I cannot tell you how incredibly distracting the dialect (Appalachian, I guess? What other dialects are there in southern Ohio?) is. If it were only present in the dialogue, or otherwise scattered throughout the text, I could have dealt with it. I might’ve even found it charming. But when every single sentence has multiple folksy-isms, it actually makes the book difficult to read. There were sentences I had to work pretty hard to parse – so how am I going to pass this off to a nine-year-old? Are they really going to have the patience to wade through the irritating writing to reach the book’s message? I don’t know. I barely did.

In short: This book is sort of a mixed bag. I like that it grapples with the tension between science and religion, and I like Mary Mae, but the dialect made reading the book feel like a chore.

News from the outside world

1. Dora the Explorer celebrated her 10th birthday yesterday, to great fanfare. We’re celebrating here with a Dora book display and, of course, some very adorable Dora coloring pages.

2. It turns out that the adults-who-read-YA book club I’m in here is not as unique as I thought! There are lots and lots of adult women (and men!) reading and enjoying young adult literature. And no wonder:

“A lot of adult literature is all art and no heart,” [Amanda] Foreman, who is currently working on a book about British involvement in the American Civil War, said. “But good Y.A. is like good television. There’s a freshness there; it’s engaging. Y.A. authors aren’t writing about middle-aged anomie or ­disappointed people.”

Review: A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend

A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend, by Emily Horner

This is one of those books that I wish had come out a decade ago, because I could really have used it back then. I saw a lot myself and the people I knew in high school in this book, and I suspect it will resonate with a number of teenagers I know today. Don’t get scared off by the beginning, which is sort of weird and irritating – the rest of the book is great.

Cass’s best friend Julia dies in a car accident, and A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend follows Cass and her friends as they attempt to pick up the pieces, move on, and memorialize Julia as best they can. Cass memorializes her dead best friend in two ways: she takes the trip out west that she and Julia had planned, and she participates in the production of the musical Julia had been working on before her death. The road trip takes place during summer break, and the play is staged early on in the school year. The novel skips back and forth between the two stories, which normally bothers me, but here, the stories just work better this way.

The great thing is that both stories are equally engaging. I love road trip novels, and I really love Route 66, so I enjoyed the chapters about Cass’s struggle to bike from Chicago to Los Angeles. Watching Cass return to the “real world” and attempt to navigate her changed relationships with Julia’s friends – and enemies – is equally compelling. Horner’s portrayal of this gang of grieving teenagers rings true for me – I know plenty of kids, especially theatre kids, who watch a lot of obscure horror movies and would do anything for their friends.

I never got any real sense of what Julia was like – for all that the novel happens because of her death, we don’t know very much about her life. She liked theatre, was really into her boyfriend, was great at writing music…that’s about all we know. And that’s okay. This book is so not about Julia, and I like that. Instead, we get a smart, sympathetic portrait of smart, sympathetic Cass as she works through her grief by making mistakes, getting in trouble, and maybe even falling in love.

Book Club: Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life

Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life, by Wendy Mass

1. What did you think about Jeremy and Lizzy’s friendship? How do you think it will change as they get older? How did the arrival of the new neighbors, Samantha and Rick, change their friendship?

2. Do you think Jeremy ‘s dad really was destined to die before he turned 40? Did hearing the prophecy as a teenager make his life better or worse? What would you do if a fortune teller told you that you would die when you were 40 years old?

3. What do you think Jeremy learned from Mr. Oswald (the pawn shop owner)? What about the people he visited to return the items they had pawned? How did they feel about the decisions they had made?

4. Were you surprised to learn the truth about the keys and Jeremy’s quest? Do you think that the adults should have told him the truth earlier? What about Lizzy’s decision to keep the final key from him until his birthday?

5. Jeremy decides not to tell Lizzy the truth about her last playing card. Why? Do you think he made the right decision?

    Activities (from here and here – this second link is Wendy Mass’s ed guide, which is super helpful)

    1. When Jeremy finally opens the box, he finds a pile of rocks – each one signifying an important moment in his dad’s life. If you were to make a box of your most important memories, what moments would you put inside it? What items could you use to represent those memories?

    2. Imagine a situation in which you would have to sell your most prized possession. What would you sell, and what reason can you think of to sell it? Fill out one of Mr. Oswald’s pawn shop forms.

    3. Playing cards! OR Hula hoop contest! (They picked the hula hoop contest. Everyone was VERY happy.)

      Program: Gone Fishin’!

      You’re invited to go on a fishing trip right here in the library! We’ll learn about fish, ducks, turtles, and other pond creatures through stories, fun games, and a craft.

      Ages: Kids ages 3-7 and their parents or caregivers

      Budget: Nothing. We had all this stuff already. (That’s the best kind of program.)

      Stories

      Piggy and Dad Go Fishing by David Martin

      Little Quack by Lauren Thompson

      Swimmy by Leo Lionni

      I LOVE Piggy and Dad Go Fishing, and so did the kids. As a warning, this book is awfully sympathetic toward the worms and fish, and Piggy and Dad are not able to go through with killing them. As a vegetarian, I got a kick out of this, but I could see this book leading to some picky eating/unwillingness to take that fishing trip to Wisconsin with kids who are old enough to understand why the fish is sad. YMMV.

      Games

      Parachute fishing: Throw paper fish in a few different colors on the storytime rug. Have everyone grab a handle on the parachute. Send one kid at a time under the parachute to catch fish of a certain color while everyone waves the parachute over them. After some length of time, count to three and bring the parachute down. If the kid escapes with all the fish of their color, they win! Hooray.

      Go fish: Let kids take turns playing with the magnetic fishing game as they finish their craft.

      Duck, duck, goose: I hope you know how to play this already.

      Craft (from Alphabet Soup): Catch a paper plate fish!

      Materials (for each child): 9″ paper plate, fish on colored paper (using this template, re-sized), paperclip (optional), 14″-16″ length of yarn, and small dowel rod about 1′ in length

      Prep: Cut two triangles out of one side of the paper plate – this will be the fish’s tail. Tie one end of the yarn around the dowel rod and glue it down.

      What they do: Decorate the paper fish, then glue it on so that the tail of the fish lays on top of the tail on the paper plate (the original website has a picture of this). Make sure that the hole in the fish’s mouth is on top of the paper plate, then punch a hole through the mouth and the plate. If the kids are older, put a paperclip through the hole and attach the yarn to the clip. For younger kids, just tie the yarn through the hole.

      How’d it go?

      Yeah, we LOVED the magnetic fishing game. I really just brought it out as a way to deal with the fact that kids would finish the craft at different times, but they could have spent the entire hour just playing that game. Weird. The parachute game, less surprisingly, was also a big hit. The craft was easy and cute, but maybe a little too open-ended – I had a LOT of questions about how the fish should be decorated. (Answer: However your heart desires!)

      Program: Pirate Party!

      Come to the library for adventures on the high seas! We will make pirate crafts, play pirate games, tell pirate jokes, and have an all-around ARRRR-mazing time.

      July 6th, 2010 from 2-3 p.m.

      In keeping with this summer’s theme, Make a Splash, I made another attempt at a pirate party – minus the princesses this time.

      Grades: Going into 1-6

      Prizes: Pirate pencils, chocolate coins

      Raffle prizes: Magic Tree House: Pirates Past Noon and Magic Tree House Research Guide: Pirates

      Music: Pegleg Tango

      Budget: $15 ($7.50 for pirate pencils, $5.50 for coins, $2 for roll of black elastic)

      Crafts

      Skull nametag with pirate name: Give each kid a cardstock rectangle and a skull and crossbones to glue on top. Give some examples of pirate names, then encourage everyone to write their own on their nametag. Attach with tape.

      Pirate hat: Using this fabulous template, have each kid decorate a pirate hat. Punch holes in each side of the hat and attach with elastic.

      Eye patch: Cut eye patches out of black felt. Fold the top over a piece of a elastic and glue in place. Tie elastic in back.

      Activities

      Pin the parrot on the pirate: Using the template in the Summer Reading packet, copy a parrot for each kid and have them decorate it and write their name on the back. As they finish, take them up to a very large pirate poster (we taped together and laminated four 11″x17″ sheets of paper), spin them around, and have them attempt to put the parrot on the pirate’s shoulder.) The closest wins a pirate pencil.

      Pirate freeze dance: To Pegleg Tango. Winner gets a pirate pencil.

      Treasure hunt: Before the program starts, hide chocolate coins around the room. Mark two of the coins with an X. Let the kids search for the coins, then round them up. Kids with the special coins get the raffle prizes. Everyone should get at least one piece of chocolate – it is a good idea to have some extras handy for those who do not find any.

      On the way out, everybody gets a pirate pencil. Hooray!

      How’d it go?
      Unlike at the Pirates and Princesses party – which rapidly devolved into a “just princesses” party – I saw a lot of pirate enthusiasm at this program. We had 25 kids – mostly 1st-3rd graders – and two adults in attendance. For a few reasons, we capped this program at 30 rather than our usual 15 or 20. With the large crowd (and a younger group than I expected), I was glad that the craft projects were limited to cutting, gluing, and coloring. Freeze dance wasn’t the success it usually was – some of the younger attendees were feeling a little shy, I think. “Pin the Parrot” and the treasure hunt were very popular, though, and everyone loved their hats and eye patches.