Treat Tuesday: 2/26

For Treat Tuesday today we enjoyed popcorn with our books. We read Sleep Like a Tiger, One Cool Friend, Horton Hatches the Egg and The Dentist From the Black Lagoon. One Cool Friend and Sleep Like a Tiger are Caldecott Honor books so I'm counting them towards my total for the faculty reading challenge that started today. Horton was in honor of the Dr. Seuss activities going on in my son's class this week and The Dentist From the Black Lagoon was the library book he brought home this week. Sleep Like a Tiger is a great bedtime story and my son loved the surprise ending in One Cool Friend.

Celebrating Strong Female Characters

March is Women's History Month and I wanted to recognize the month in some way.

I saw this blog post about female characters in books and movies and thought I could adapt this to be similar to the Book Crush display we did for February. I made a simple background inspired by my favorite poster and we are taking pictures of students holding the books they love with strong female characters. My favorite is The Girl Who Owned a City by OT Nelson. I love the character Lisa and imagined myself as her when I read it as a middle schooler. My library helpers are already lining up to be the first to get their pictures made.

If you are looking for books with strong female characters, try this list of children's books and this list of YA books.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 2/25/13

I'm working on reading all of the SC Junior Book award nominees right now. I finished Hidden, Notes From an Accidental Band Geek and The Underdogs this week and just started The Running Dream.

Treat Tuesday: Pigeons!

Today (and for the past several days) we have been reading the Pigeon books that we purchased through a class Scholastic order. The treat we enjoyed with these was tater tots. I'm not known for my culinary skills. My son thinks these books are hilarious!

Admin Survey About Libraries

There have been a few articles lately that have inspired me to want comprehensive feedback from administrators about their expectations for the library program. I read this article today about "What Teachers Want From Administrators" and this article about admin perceptions of librarians in SLJ.

I tweeted out the link to the first article and mentioned that I would love a version for what teachers and administrators want from us. Shortly after that tweet, my new co-conspirator Sue (@spkowalski) offered to help put something together and then Lisa offered to help as well (@noveltalk). Don't you love Twitter?!

Sue put together this Google form to gather thoughts from other librarians and then we'll put a survey together to share with administrators in our schools and on Twitter.

We would love to have your thoughts included. Please take a moment to let us know what you would like to ask administrators. Please also share with others on Twitter, Google +, your blog and anywhere else you would like.Thank you.

Faculty Reading Challenge

We have had a great time reading books together as a faculty this year. We read The Future of Us, Wonder, Divergent, Code Name Verity and This Dark Endeavor. Now I'm going to challenge the faculty to a reading competition.
I was inspired by The Hub's Reading Challenge.
Teachers are asked to read as many titles as they can from these lists with a goal of at least 25 books.

There are links to the lists on my library homepage.

We are using a Google doc to keep track of the books we read. There is one sheet on the doc for our classroom teachers and one for "everyone else" including our related arts teachers, guidance counselors, and administrators that are part of the book club. We are going to compete with each other a la summer throwdown (librarians vs. teachers). Luckily it worked out that there are 11 teachers on each team. I'm excluding myself and plan to challenge myself to read the most individually. I'm expecting a baby in May so my reading numbers will not be as high as in the past, but we'll see how much she sleeps.
I'm hoping that this challenge will encourage the teachers to read outside of their comfort zone, learn about the book award lists out there and have plenty of titles to recommend to students when we return in the Fall.
I'm going to be on the look out for prize ideas throughout the summer, but plan to create a gift bag of books and other treats that teachers will appreciate when school begins.
Even though I'm calling this the Summer Reading Challenge we are starting next week. I don't want them to see the goal of 25 and panic.

Do you have a summer reading program for faculty? If so, what do you do?

Do you have the luck of the Irish?

I pinned this site on Pinterest a while ago, but wasn't sure how I would use scratch off tickets. Then I saw a post on Facebook from Cathy Jo Nelson sharing how she will be using them to reward her highest readers. Monique, Kristen and I talked about how we could use these on our level and I wanted to share our ideas with you all so that you could give it a try.
We are going to display books with green covers in the library and use Monique's sign to advertise the event. We are all targeting different students with this event, but I have lots of overdue books so I'm stealing Monique's idea to target those students.

Homerooms with no overdue books or lost books that need to be paid for will qualify for scratch off tickets. If I have a lot of homerooms I may have to draw teachers names and then give a ticket to each student in the class. If I only have a few then I should have enough for all of the students in those classes. They will choose a ticket, scratch it off and be rewarded with scented bookmarks, green bead necklaces and books.

This should be a fun and inexpensive book promotion for March. Good luck!