My first public library storytime performance! Here’s what I did:

Lynn, the teen librarian, observed my storytime and this is what she reported back to Pamela:

I was lucky to attend Destinee’s first public library preschool story time this morning. What a wonderful job she did!

The audience was wiggly but attentive. Her stories were very well chosen: The Cow that Laid an Egg was a big hit. They loved the chicken sounds!!

The pre-schoolers liked Waking Beauty and some even got the fact that he should have been “kissing” her to wake her up instead of all the other stuff. (The parents seemed to REALLY like this book.) She explained that it rhymed.

The Terrible Monster was quite touching and was an excellent choice for this crowd. The visuals were so large that even folks sitting way back where I was could see them very well. What a beautiful story!

Also, her use of I’ve Got Ten Fingers, I’m a Little Teapot (sung 5 different ways), the flannel board Flip-Flap Jack (with a knee slapping refrain) and If You’re Happy and You Know it made for a rollicking time and helped the wigglers a lot.

I think she adapted things from your repertoire very well to suit her style and her audience. She did a great job commenting on the pictures and drawing their attention to the funny faces, to the silly illustrations. Very engaging!!

I am very impressed with Destinee’s abilities. She is a natural, exuberant story teller. She obviously has wonderful rapport with children. And they were delighted by her story time.

I think is already an awesome Chidlren’s Librarian and has a long career ahead of her.

Best,
Lynn Mille

Also, my grandma was in attendance with my little niece Amelia. She took some pictures:

• Today I helped somebody learn how to use Google Maps so he could try to beat traffic going from Renton to Bellevue. He came in looking for a paper map of the City of Renton, but we didn’t have any, so I suggested using the Internet. I think it worked out really well!
• I helped a women find an article about the 8 healthiest foods. Her sister told her about it over the phone and all it took was a simple search to bring it up. In case you’re curious, the healthiest foods, according to BestLife Magainze are: spinach, yogurt, tomatoes, carrots, blueberries, black beans, walnuts, and oats.
• A man came in asking for all the movies we had with Danny Kaye as the star. He also brought in a list of books his wife wants and asked me to place holds on all of them. It was a little challenging because the handwriting was pretty messy and some of the titles weren’t exactly right, but I eventually got it done for him.
• I got to do some heavy searching for a patron over the phone who was looking for really old (1901-1929) issues of the Ballard News. I eventually found some of them at the University of Washington Libraries on microform.

By B. G. Hennessy
Illustrated by Boris Kuliko

by Marie-odile Judes (Author), Bourre Martine (Illustrator)

And interesting thing happened during story time last week: Time stood still. It’s not just that Pamela is that good of a storyteller, the clock actually ran down and stopped. Pamela inadvertently ended storytime early because she glanced up at the clock and thought that she had gone way over.

Maybe I should invest in a wrist watch.

T. Rex and the Mothers’ Day Hug

Piggybook

“Head Shoulders Knees and Toes”

“A Rump Sump Sump”

The Mommy Book by Todd Parr

Felt Board Story: Mommy’s Portrait (Based on a Frank Asch book titled Bread and Honey)

Just Like Daddy

As my months as the Ballard Library pass, I’m finding it more and more cumbersome to write down every reference question I get, mostly because there are a lot of questions that get asked over and over again, such as “How do I sign up for a library card?” and “How do I put a book on hold?” There are also a lot of nuts and bolts questions that I can now answer without having to look anything up or ask a librarian. So I think from now on I’m just going to blog about the really interesting and/or challenging questions I get.

Here they are for April 30th:

• A patron came in today looking for a good book to read. I know that doesn’t sound particularly out-of-the-ordinary or challenging, but this is actually one of the most exciting questions to get. Answering this type of question well means finding out what kind of books the patrons likes, searching your memory and shelves for something they’re likely to enjoy, and selling that book to them as honestly and convincingly as you can. In this case, the patron said she liked historical books that were well-written. Pamela and I browsed the shelves and came up with The Hours by Michael Cunningham and Kindred by Octavia Butler. I also showed the patron how to search the catalog and place a hold, since she remembered as we were talking that she’s been wanting to read My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn (we didn’t have it in at Ballard).
• Lynn handled a really interesting question about a Pablo Neruda poem. The patron wanted to find a version of the poem “Farewell” that was translated into English. It ended up taking quite a few internet searches and phone calls to determine that poem was from his first published book of poetry Crepusculario and that, as far as the resources at SPL go, he’d probably have to go to Central to find a translation. I didn’t actually get to observe what Lynn told the patron to do.
• A man was looking for ski equipment reviews, so I showed him how to look for ski magazines in the library catalog. It turned out that all the ski magazines were at the Central Library, so I started to show him how he could access the magazines electronically from Ballard, but he politely stopped me and said he preferred to flip through the physical magazines.
• Marty, a librarian from the soon-to-open brand new Magnolia Library, asked if I had any suggestions for good books for 6-8th grade boys. I immediately thought of John Sciescka’s website Guys Read, which usually has good suggestions (Marty herself is a fan of Reading Rants). I just finished reading Repossessed by A.M. Jenkins, which is a good guy read, but it’s more appropriate for high school. So I recommended The Bartimaeus Trilogy and Tangerine, both great middle school guy reads.
• Anne, an LA who is also a classmate of mine, gave me a tough question: Can you find any juvenile Scandinavian poetry books? Since Ballard is an historically Scandinavian neighborhood, I thought the library would have something, but there was literally nothing that met Anne’s exact parameters. I asked Pamela for help and she couldn’t find anything either. The best we could do was Beowulf. Hm, sounds like a good area for collection development.

I’ve seen three of Pamela’s baby storytimes now, and she’s given me the chance to help her out with them, too. Basically, baby storytime at Ballard is wild. With something like 30 babies ranging in age from 8 weeks to 11 months and their respective caregivers all crowded into one room together, the noise level alone is only slightly less distracting than the general chaos of all those tiny, wriggling bodies–not to mention the overwhelming cuteness going on. With baby storytime, the basic goals are to give parents a chance to learn about the library and early literacy and give the babies some fun time with books, finger plays, and songs.

Pamela usually begins the baby storytimes by asking the parents to introduce themselves and their babies. She explains a little about the purpose of the program and offers parents packets with the song lyrics and information about early literacy (i.e. the six skills you need before you’re ready to actually read). Then we jump into the songs, books, and finger plays. Here are some of my favorites:

Jelly in the bowl

Jelly in the bowl, jelly in the bowl
(jiggle baby’s tummy)

Wiggle, waggle, wiggle, waggle

(rock baby side to side)

Jelly in the bowl (jiggle baby’s tummy)

Biscuits in the tin, biscuits in the tin

Shake them up, shake them up

(bounce baby up and down)

Biscuits in the tin

Sausage in the pan, sausage in the pan

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, sizzle

(wiggle or tickle baby)

Sausage in the pan

Candles on the cake, candles on the cake

Blow them out, blow them out (blow gently)

Candles on the cake

There were so many people at the April 30th storytime! Of course, there are always “so many people” but today seemed especially crazy. The theme was, fittingly, the zoo.

Here are the books Pamela read:

Do Kangaroos Wear Seatbelts?

The Seals on the Bus

Tanka Tanka Skunk

Felt Board Story: Polar Bear Polar Bear What Do You Hear?

It go so noisy that Pamela had to stop and regain everyone’s attention a few times. She handled it very well.

The same patrons came back on 4/23 for more basic computer/internet instruction. I’m learning about information literacy right now in one of my classes, so I tried to think about how I could apply what I was learning in class to working with the patrons. One useful thing I read about for class is Humanist learning theory, which focuses on the learners’ affective needs and is based on the learners setting their own goals.

More to come on this!

• Do you have any Star Wars books?

Yes. The thing with those Star Wars books is they’re all by different authors. (Pamela reminded me to ask if they’re looking for stories or information about the films, too.) I checked the catalog and found a couple on the shelf.

• Do you have any books about dogs as pets?

This is a Dewey number to memorize: 636.

• Who wrote The 3 Little Wolves?

Helen Oxenbury! We didn’t have it in, but a nearby library did.

• A group of 4 and 5 year olds are coming tomorrow to learn about the library. They’re studying rain forest ecology, so can you pull any books we have that would work for them?

Between Pamela and me we found almost 20 books (both fiction and non-fiction). Not bad for such short notice.

• I need these acupuncture books for a class, but the library doesn’t have them.

I showed the patron how to ILL the books. I also ended up showing her how to check her account online. Great!

This was an important storytime for me: my first time reading to the big Ballard crowd! The theme was PIGS! Here’s what Pamela did:

Usual Intro: “I have ten fingers that belong to me” and “The  More We Get Together”

Teeny Weeny Bop by Margaret Read MacDonald

The Pig in the Pond by Martin Waddell

Felt Board Story: The 3 Little Pigs

Closing: “If You’re Happy and You Know It” (with the pop-up book)

If this seems like a shorter program than usual, it wasn’t. I might have taken quite a bit of time with my story (which was The Pig in the Pond). But Pamela said I did a good job and the audience responded well.