No Shhing Here

We've been invaded. I'm not entirely sure what's going on in the back of the library, but it involves one hundred WII army tanks, cotton balls, and red checker pieces. I think it's some kind of battle reenactment - maybe France vs. Russia? Don't know what it is, but I love it anyway. This has been a CRAZY five days. Between author visits, National Library Week, Mesoamerican research projects, and general lunacy, I'm about to loose my mind (never mind the engagement ring that went missing for 48 hours only to be recovered from the bottom of the kitchen garbage bag). I promise updates on this week's events. Just as soon as the crazy dies down. They just called for a cease fire in the back. Spring break here we come!

April is a busy month in the library world. Besides celebrating National Poetry Month, we're also recognizing National Library Week (April 10-16) and National School Library Month. Although we've got events scattered throughout April, most of our "BIG" activities will happen next week. What's the point of School Library Month? According to the ALA , "Every April school librarians are encouraged to create activities to help their school and local community celebrate the essential role that strong school library programs play in a student's educational career." This year's theme is "Create your own story @ your library" so we're focusing on writing and storytelling activities. Back in September (How I had time to think about this back in September is beyond me....) I collaborated with our local YA public librarian to plan activities for this week. Up first: an author reception with Ellen Yeomans. Ellen's written a wonderful YA...

We've never gone out of our way to celebrate National Poetry Month, but this year we've made an effort to focus on poetry. A celebration means a display and this month is no exception: Our April poetry display in the library. I don't know if this is true everywhere, but our poetry collection was starting to rot (metaphorically). For the most part, it just sat on the shelves, buried deep within non-fiction or randomly scattered throughout our "Teen Fiction" section. Students who wanted it couldn't find it, and many others didn't realize it was even an option. Our solution? We created a poetry genre. Our library is already organized by genre, so it made sense to pull out all the poetry books (I'm including novels in verse) and give them their own special shelf. Here are the genre stickers our secretary came up with: Poetry genre stickers on book spines Since creating a special section devoted to poetry, we've seen circulation increase --...