August 8th

Nancy Stewart Live!
Children's singer Nancy Stewart performed a program called "The Backyard Boogie" today. She is amazing!!!. Every song was interactive whether we were jumping up and down or singing along or volunteering to go up front to help her out. At one point she had all the kids on their back with their feet in the air (because they were walking on the ceiling like a house fly!). She had control over the audience the whole time! And her props and backdrops were so creative! The backdrop was a piece of fabric with a huge tree on it. It was interactive with little birds, flowers, and ladybugs hidden all over. Bird houses were made from pint sized milk cartons. One song was about insects. She had a easel with a piece of black cardboard with velcro on it. She constructed an insect with all the parts: 2 wings, 2 antenna, 6 legs, and 3 part head/thorax/abdomen! Another song was about counting the spots on ladybugs and she had made six cardboard ladybug costumes with straps that fit over the children shoulders like a backpack. Again, she is AMAZING!!!

Manga for Middle Readers
Kids often come in looking for Pokemon or Yugio! manga comic books. They are always checked out, so what do you recommend for them? The tough thing about this is that young adult manga isn't always age appropriate for younger readers. A couple options that are cataloged as YA but may be appropriate for middler readers are Naruto and anything from Studio Ghibli such as Nausica or Spirited Away.

Don't judge a patron by their looks :)
A man in his early 20s or late teens came into the library. He had tatoos on his neck and he said he just moved to town with his mom from Florida. I have to admit I was surprised when he asked where the poetry section was. I walked him over to the 811s I asked him what kind of poetry he was interested in. He said he wasn't sure so I just started looking at the titles and named off some genres: religious poetry? war poetry? He took the religious poetry and said he was also interested in love poetry. I said love poetry would be a little harder to find because there are so many different kinds of love poetry. We went to the catalog to look for some titles. We found some classic and some contemporary love poetry.

Books on Children of Alcoholics
A woman came in and she was interested in books about children of alcoholics. She wanted the books for herself - but not books about adult children of alcoholics. There are a lot of books about preventing teen alcoholism, children's books about having an alcoholic parent, and government documents about children of alcoholics. We finally found what we needed with the subject heading "children of alcoholics" with a restriction of "not Juvenile". One promising title was "Parenting One Day at a Time"

Someone Took My Computer!
The public library is popular for it's free internet use. When it's busy patrons often have to reserve a computer to secure the next one available. Well, a woman came up to the desk and started explaining how she has problems printing. She was anxious about her print job coming out right so she flipped her keyboard upside down to indicate she was using her computer while she verified whether or not her print job went through. By the time she returned someone had taken her computer spot. So I said, it sounds like you're talking about two different things; your print job and someone taking your computer. After making sure she got her print job OK, I said, "so you really want to know a good way to indicate that a computer is in use if you step away." We suggested that she post a note on it that says "Computer in Use".