Librarian Ginny

Every Child Ready to Read: A History

Talking about, demonstrating, and teaching early literacy is a huge part of my job at my public library. Because I reference it a lot in some of my blog posts, I want to dedicate an entire post to it. Though there are many philosophies of thought on the topic, I’m going to be referencing the Every Child Ready to Read (ECRR) initiative.

What is early literacy? It’s everything a child needs to know about reading and writing before they can actually read and write. More for a caregiver’s standpoint, it’s how language and literacy development inform our choices.

STEAM Challenge: The Three Little Pigs

STEAM is one of those trendy, golden-boy, buzz words now a days. Don’t get me wrong, I am aboard the STEAM train and believe deeply that science, technology, engineering, arts and math are extremely important, but I also think there should be some thought and real-world applications behind STEAM programs.

Why Early Literacy Matters

Children’s librarians talk a lot about early literacy. It can become one of those buzz words that organizations look for, but it is so much more. There’s really so much riding on it for young children, so let’s talk a little about why.

Infant/Toddler Storytimes: What Do They Look Like?

My job at the public library allows me to work with children ages 0-12, but my specific position is to be the point-person for early literacy needs, programming for kids 0-6 and especially 0-3. I hold a weekly lap-sit storytime for the 0-3 crowd and have experimented with timing, age limits, set up, activities, etc. It’s had a lot of tweaks, but I believe that what I’ve settled on is working really well for our community. Here’s what a typical storytime for this age group looks like!

Totally Untidy Toddlers #2: Texture!

Time for messy fun, again! Though my goals and activities were the same as in our first edition, in this session of the program we explored a different theme. Texture. I tried harder this time to make sure that everything included was taste safe and edible. I kept one station the same as in our first edition (the Rest and Read station), but the remainder of the stations were new.

Totally Untidy Toddlers #1: Nature

I’ve been doing messy, chaotic preschool programs for quite a while (our building services people probably curse my name), but I hadn’t ventured into the world of complete mess for my infant/toddler group. Something about it scared me. Maybe because at that age they put literally everything and anything into their mouths and many of the recipes I had were taste safe, but I could imagine my little ones taking handful after handful.

Then I found La La Librariana’s blog. It gave me courage to try it out. I decided to try it out and trust my adult patrons to do as they’re supposed to do. It went fantastically! Here’s some information on the first session of TUT (what I’ve nicknamed the program).

Differing Abilities Booklist

My library happens to serve a really great, empathetic community that really takes to heart the Windows and Mirrors concept. Because of this, we get requests for books that are about diverse characters. Here’s a booklist I crafted for the library on differing abilities since it’s such a common request.

Storytime: Bears!

Bears, bears, bears! There are so many great books, rhymes, and potential for a storytime about bears! It’s a great theme year round, whether you’re talking about what bears do in the fall to get ready for winter, how they hibernate, waking up in spring, or going on a bear hunt and camping in summer. Let’s take a look at how this storytime went!

School Libraries, Graphic Novels & Reluctant Readers

School librarians have it rough in a lot of aspects. First, from what I know of the typical school library, they don’t have a huge budget. Then with the added pressure of it being a school library as opposed to a public library with a completely different and concentrated patron base, it’d be difficult to choose the right materials for the right age groups. After reading parts of Weiner’s Graphic Novels and Comics in Libraries and Archives: Essays on Readers, Research, History and Cataloging, I feel like I have a slightly better understanding of why choosing graphic novels in a school library setting would be especially difficult.

Cataloging and Graphic Biographies

It’s back to the great shelving debate for my comics class after reading Weiner’s section on cataloging. Among the readings, Tarulli’s essay gives a good overview of the difficulties in cataloging and shelving graphic novels and comics. Comics take on all sorts of genres such as biographies, fantasy, horror, mystery/detective, romance, etc. Many people tend find a genre or two that they like (or an author) and stick with them. They tend to browse in that genre or branch out to other authors who are “read alikes.” It would make sense to people who follow this pattern for their library to interfile their graphic novels and comics so that they fit genre.