August 7th

Storytime Hints-

Tell the story slowly – show the whole audience the pictures. Storytime is different from a read-aloud to one or two children. When you read-aloud the child can see the book because they are right there. At storytime there are children to the right and the left and way in the back that need to see the pictures.

There will be vocabulary in the stories that they don’t know. For example in “Silly Sally” there is a Loon. In the Great Fuzz Frenzy there is a fiasco. Ask the audience “Do you know what a fiasco is?” Wait for an answer (or no answer) and then say what it is. “It means trouble, or a big mess.”

I’m looking for…

A boy came up to the desk looking for a book his teacher had read to him in class. He thought the title was “Someone Was Watching” He described the plot, at which point I started to panic, because there are very few books I know by plot. I asked him what grade he was in. He was in third grade, so I limited the search to children’s books and did a general keyword search for “someone was watching”. I didn’t find the book. It was found by limiting the search to children’s books and doing a keyword search for just the word “watching”.

A woman was looking for any illustrated copy of Rumpelstiltskin so she could get ideas to make felt pieces for a storyboard. When I spelled it Rumplestiltskin I only got one hit. I knew something was wrong. I respelled it Rumpelstiltskin and got over 30 hits. I put five different illustrated editions on hold for her.

Very Young Advanced Reader

A mother came in looking for Harry Potter read-alikes for her daughter. She was looking for a list of Harry Potter read-alikes she had heard was available at the library. Well, the list was a little out of date, so we went to Google and entered “If you liked Harry Potter…” and came up with a bajillion hits. Here’s the twist. The mother said, “Would it help to narrow down the options if you knew her age? She’s six.” Well, suggesting books for a six-year old who just read Harry Potter is different than suggesting books for a twelve-year old who just read Harry Potter.

Multnomah County Library http://www.multcolib.org/ has a list of Harry Potter read-alikes organized into categories for Middle Readers and Older Readers. http://www.multcolib.org/kids/booklists/harrypotter.html

In the future I might ask how old the daughter is in the beginning, and if she is very young, ask if the mother is looking for a book to read aloud with her daughter, or something the daughter would read by herself. With a read-aloud you can suggest titles with higher vocabulary and maturity level.

For the daughter I could suggest:

Half Magic by Edward Eager
Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins

For a read-aloud (or an older child) I could suggest

Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy, or
Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus Trilogy

The main objective when suggesting read-alikes is to give the person ideas. A parent will have their own criteria, from which they can choose.

My Apartment is Turning Condo…

With the condo boom in Seattle, there are many questions about renter’s rights in the event that an apartment should turn condo. A man came in looking for landlord/tenant rights for Seattle. My first instinct was to point him toward a landlord/tenants rights book. He was interested in a pamphlet just for Seattle. Our pamphlet was out of date and it was in-library use only. He had been to the Ballard Neighborhood Service Center and they referred him to the Seattle Tenants’ Union. Other resources were:

Where To Turn Plus 2007 – a directory of social services put out by the King County Crisis Clinic, which includes a section on landlord/tenant resources

2-1-1 Community Information Hotline http://www.crisisclinic.org/211KC.html

DPD – City of Seattle, Department of Planning and Development http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/ (formerly known as DCLU – Department of Design, Construction, and Land Use)

NW Justice Project’s website http://www.nwjustice.org/ – to look for real estate law

King County Law Library http://www.kcll.org/ - phone number

Also, because this is a hot topic, another avenue for resources might be current newspaper articles on the subject.

In retrospect I would have asked him at the beginning if he were a landlord or a tenant.

False leads…

A woman came up and asked for the book “Hannah and Her Sisters”. She thought is was written by the same author as the book she was holding. I looked up Hannah and Her Sisters in the catalog and only came up with a movie and a movie soundtrack. I looked up the author and only found two books. I asked her to show me where Hannah and Her Sisters was referred to in the book she was holding. It turned out that a reviewer had compared the book she was holding to a cross between the two movies Four Weddings and a Funeral and Hannah and Her Sisters. It had nothing to do with a book nor the author!