Did y'all watch Glee this week--the part where the AV Club president girl sneezes on Principal Figgins, and you see the sneeze in slo-mo?

Well, that sort of happened to me today.

Twice.

First, I had just bent over to point to something in a student's book, and he went "coughcoughcoughcoughcoughcoughcoughcoughcoughcoughcoughcoughcoughcoughcoughcoughcoughcough" on me.  I am not kidding. 

Then later, there was a kid who normally is a sweetheart.  He came in to do research with this look on his face, sat down and would not do a single thing.  I asked what was wrong, but he wouldn't talk to me.  I cajoled him into doing a little, and when he came in later to check out a book, I leaned in close and whispered, "so, what was the deal with social studies class?  What was wrong?"  And he replied, "well, I have a REALLY sore throat and I feel terrible."

*headdesk*

Also, this today:

child:  *sits and stares at questions he's supposed to be answering*
me:  Ok, time to get to work!
child: *rolls eyes* I'm using my prior knowledge!

Allllllllso, these are pretty hilarious for library school humor:

Library School: Hurts So Good

and

Library School: Get Swingin'

Happy Thanksgiving, all!  I'm off to make pies!

Played a fun game with a couple of classes on Friday.

I was able to place a good-sized book order recently and got all the lovely new fiction books ready to go. On Friday, a 7th grade class came in and sat in a circle. I gave each of them one of the new books. I had them talk about how they evaluate a book and what criteria they use to determine whether a book might be the right one for them. They came up with good answers--the cover, blurbs on the flyleaf and back, whether the author is one they're familiar with, whether the book is in a series they've read, the genre, how hard or easy the vocab seems, etc. All the same things adults do without thinking much about it.

Analysis and evaluation is an important skill at this age. It plays a much bigger part of their writing assignments and, in a lot of cases, thinking about it as a skill we all do is new to them. You'd be surprised how students's thinking changes about this age (12). Some of the 11-year-olds cannot understand that the hardback and pb of the same book (with different covers) are the same. I tell them that every word inside is the same, but they're just not buying it. It's weird how concretely some of them still think. At 12, on average, they become capable of doing a whole lot more.

ANYWAY, as jade would say, I told them they had 30 seconds to look at the book they were holding. At 30 seconds I said, "Switch" and they passed the book to the left. We continued switching books for 15 minutes until they'd looked at 30 books, then they got a chance to check out the ones they liked. It was pretty cool. You could have heard a pin drop while they were looking at the books. They seemed to really enjoy it. I wish they could have had longer than 30 seconds per book but we just didn't have any more time than that.

Ah, new books. How I love you.

A couple of days ago a small 6th grader came to the library because he couldn't get his computer login to work.  I looked up his login info and told him what he was doing wrong, then we had this conversation:

Me:  Here's the correct login information.  Why don't you go ahead and try it now?
6th grader:  Ok.  *types in login and password info*

*waits*
*waits*
*waits*

Me:  C'mon computer.  C'mon baby.  You can do it.
6th grader:  *studies me for a moment*
6th grader:  C'mon computer.
Me:  C'MON BABY!  YOU CAN DO IT!  LOGIN!
6th grader:  *getting into it* YEAH!  C'MON!

*computer logs in*

6th Grader:  BOOYEAH!

And he holds his fist out...

TO FISTBUMP.  WITH THE LIBRARIAN. 

Sometimes it's just the smallest things.

The display (including the darling duckies).

( Arrr! )

The kids could use the rope to tie knots, and the laptop to translate English to Pirate or to learn their cool pirate names. Mine?

We finally had our school author visit this week! 


Wow, what a long post.  Feel free to skim. 

Being at the beginning of a book challenge, I found this particularly amusing.

I want to tell everyone in the world about my awesome, awesome, AWESOME school book club.

Anyone who thinks libraries should arrange their books like bookstores is a fricking idiot.

Oh, and Borders?  "Should be in store"?  That really doesn't help a whole lot and I disapprove of that phrase.  Either it's in the store or it isn't, and your computer ought to know.

But thank you for the 25% teacher discount, and the Buy-Four-Manga-Get-the-Fifth-One-Free deal.

In preparation for ALA this weekend, I've made an effort to read the Newbery winners and some of the Printz books.  Since I discovered Google Alerts I'm a little nervous about reviewing books.  Authors and crazy fangirls (Sounisians, for example) can find these blog babies with no trouble and I'm not thrilled with most of the books.  But I'm entitled to my opinion and won't be too harsh.


I admit that I prefer books for older readers more than most for younger, and that may have something to do with my feelings about these.  

I also read American Born Chinese and am on my way to pick up An Abundance of Katherines.  I started Rules but don't know if I can prod myself to read it.  We'll see.