That Time of Year Again

It's my first giveaway post!

Well, duckies, it's that time of year. I'm determined to keep my workload at 40-45 hours per week and NO MORE. Since I was a bit sick last week and it was my Saturday to work I ended up making up hours on Sunday and essentially worked all weekend. Then I looked at the calendar for the next two weeks and basically had a panic attack. So. I'm taking the blog off my plate for a little bit--don't worry about me if I disappear for a few weeks. My goal is to just take the rest of June off and come back in July, but we'll see.

In order to share how much I appreciate all of you who read my words here, I have a giveaway!

I have a copy of "Bugs Galore" by Peter Stein and illustrated by Bob Staake (LOVE Bob's illustrations, which you may have gathered from my homage in felt) I received this copy for free by reviewing it for School Library Journal, but I'm going to share it with you.

Just leave a comment and tell me why you like to read this blog. Your comments will fortify me during the C-R-A-Z-Yness of summer.

You have until July 1st to enter the giveaway contest--good luck and see you soon!

<3
Miss Anna

Storytime Power

I give out hand stamps at storytime, and when kids stop by to see me in my office. They are VERY IMPORTANT to my kids.

During most of the T-ball season, L had a temporary tattoo of a dragon which he credited with his fast running. Last night he didn't have it, and Coach H. asked him if he'd be slow since he didn't have his dragon. He said, "No! I've got a new one!" and he showed off the SLP "READ" stamp that I had given him. Coach H (who is a regular ST parent) asked if L got the stamp at storytime. L said yes, and that he'd run super fast with storytime power! And he did indeed run super fast to first base after his hit, fueled by storytime power.

Storytime Power!

SLP Outreach/Confessions of a School Visitor pt. 3

I've expressed my frustration with SLP school visits before--they stress me out BIG TIME, take a huge toll on my workload, and my data shows that they don't have much effect in terms of SLP sign-up.

Despite my well-laid plans for this year, I ended up making the decision not to do SLP visits to the schools this year. The reasons were many, and I had an awesome discussion about it over Twitter with several other librarians, which led Marge Loch-Wouters (who I'm delighted to call one of my stealth mentors) to write about SLP visits over on her blog, Tiny Tips for Library Fun

Sara, at Bryce Don't Play, also hit on some of the issues I've had with presenting SLP as well--I've definitely been struggling with 'The Way SLP Visits Have Always Been Done' ie: costumes and puppets. (I LOVE costumes and I LOVE doing puppets with the kids--but that just doesn't fly or seem authentic when you're trying to convince the fifth graders that the program isn't just for the first graders).

(I need to learn from Marge how to not write a book with each blog post...sigh).

Last summer I did collect data on what schools had the most participation so I could compare that with my school visits. And, as I suspected, there's little or no correlation. Regardless of whether I visited, the biggest factors were location (nearness to library) and the school's own library situation. Unsurprisingly, schools that had dedicated library staff had kids who were more likely to participate in the program. Readers gonna read.

In my geographically spread out library population, I've often considered that it doesn't matter how excited I get the kids about the program, if they can't get to the library they can't participate. It's the parents I have to find.

So with that in mind, when I was invited to participate in the City's Healthy Way Walk (booths and giveaways along the new trail around the lake to encourage families to get out and walk), I said "YES!"

I had FORTY FIVE kids sign up, fifteen of which were teens. MANY of whom said they'd never doen the program before. Let me put that into perspective for you: last year I had a total of 275 kids, 42 of which were teens (yes, small numbers overall, but steadily growing each year I've been doing this).

Onward!