Slackin’

Hi all. I apologize for the absence of postings over the past few days. I was recently hired by a local elementary school to be their new school media coordinator and the changeover process has been taking up most of my time. I do plan on continuing with the blog, but it may be a few more days before regular posts pick up again. Thanks for stopping by! As a bookmark until I return, I present you with a picture of the best book I’ve read all summer:

Sara Pennypacker, my hat is off to you. This is some of the best writing I’ve read in a while. It’s one of those rare books that displays a true understanding of people, the things we keep bottled up inside, and how it comes busting out in awkward, unexpected ways. It’s also a book about connections and how we need them to feel alive. So yeah… read this book if you’re a fan of things that are excellent :-).

Beginning Top Ten-ing

Worst title I’ve come up with yet? Perhaps… Anyway, I was going to try and do a quick WTSG newsflash for my posting today but I couldn’t pull together any fascinating news at the last minute. Also, we’ve been somewhat busy this evening and despite the fact that I enjoy blogging, patrons take priority. So, for a quick posting, just to try and stay regular, I thought I might share my first Top Ten list. I was inspired the other day when I heard about this fun blog called The Broke and the Bookish. They do a cool thing called Top Ten Tuesdays where they choose a different theme every Tuesday and then fill out the list with items that fit the theme (all book related of course). The coolest part is that they invite other bloggers to join in the fun and post their lists to the site. This week, just to get a list out there on this site, I won’t be participating in their theme. Instead, I’ll simply post my Top Ten Picture books, since that fits the more

Music in the Shelves

Sometimes I think that as librarians, one of the things we truly love are shelves. This seems like a silly concept, of course, but stay with me a moment. Books are great, stories are great, sharing with others is a great thing; these three things combined are probably, in fact, three of the main reasons that all of us out there who pursue this noble profession decided to do so. But once inside, we find other little pleasures that we can’t help but fall in love with. For me (and, I think, for all of you probably) among these things, these pleasures of the job, are the shelves in the library. Now of course, there is the physical aspect of the shelves, which, honestly speaking, are not always the most attractive in terms of outright beauty. At least in a regular library. Most of us are used to

Friends with Boys: Meta-High School with a Ghostly Twist

Graphic Fridays- Friends with Boys by Faith Erin Hicks

(9th grade & up) When it comes to books that take place in high school, one is often faced with two distinct story types: you either get the idealized, everybody is friends and graduation is the great happily ever after, or you get the gritty realism where all the cliques are at war and people genuinely hate each other, pick on each other and do their best to humiliate each other… like people so often do. Every now and then, however, you get a book that falls between these two poles. Faith Erin Hicks’ webcomic-to-printed-piece Friends with Boys (First Second Books) is one of those kind of books. It’s a story that recognizes the bitter truth of high school: that people generally don’t get along and that there is a very real hierarchy in which everyone has their place. But it is also somewhat

And then there are days when…

…you get paid to make a tree of books. It’s hard to complain about being a librarian, isn’t it?

Our Friends of the Library are hosting the upcoming High Country Festival of the Book and they needed a tabletop display for a children’s table. Not my most shining achievement as a youth librarian… well, not even top 10 (or 20) really… but it’s still good to know that I work at a place that appreciates creativity of the… leafy kind.