After nearly a year, Comics Club/Comics & Crafts had run its course, and it was time to try something new. I came up with STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) Time: once a week, kids in kindergarten through fifth grade can come and try out something new and different, from building challenges to puzzles to coding games to art projects.
Our first STEAM Time was a success! Nine kids of various ages showed up, and I presented the options: Robot Turtles (a board game that teaches the basic principles of coding) and Caesar ciphers (I had prepared several of these – from this PDF – with cardstock and brads for kids to create and decipher each other’s codes). As a backup option, I also brought Spot It, a picture-matching game.
Three of the younger kids started with Robot Turtles, and the others began making codes for each other to decipher. I gave a basic explanation about how to use the Caesar cipher (or shift cipher), then helped the kids get Robot Turtles set up, then helped the ones who were having trouble figuring out the ciphers. (I think one thing that tripped them up initially was the letter-letter correspondence, rather than letter-number correspondence; the only number you need with this kind of cipher is the “shift,”; it’s not an A=1, B=2 kind of code.) But eventually, everyone figured it out, and then they could swap ciphered messages to decipher!
Meanwhile, back in Robot Turtle land, each kid got a chance to give instructions (the coder role) and follow instructions (the turtle role). And when the Caesar cipher kids got tired of (de)ciphering, they switched to a rousing game of Spot It!
In the next few weeks, we’ll have a building challenge with blocks (we have both regular and life-size Jenga), a puzzle challenge (a 36-piece jigsaw with the picture showing, then upside down), penny boats, Snap Circuits, primary color painting (think Mix It Up!), and more. What STEAM activities do you like to do with kids?
The kids’ graphic novel book club I started last fall is still going strong, with about 4-7 kids attending each month. This month we read Lucky Scramble by Peter Raymundo, about a kid named Tyler who goes to a Rubik’s cube competition. Our icebreaker question was “What’s your favorite kind of puzzle?” and a lot of the kids said “Rubik’s cube,” even though none of us could solve one. (I said word puzzles, like wordle, and it turns out all of the kids also do the NYT puzzles!)
Last, the kids voted on which book to read next. The choices were Curveball by Pablo Cartaya, Pebble & Wren by Chris Hallbeck, and Puzzled by Pan Cooke. The first two got one vote each and Puzzled got two votes, so that will be our February book – but all three books got checked out. It was a good afternoon!
WeNeedDiverseBooks: 189. Less than last year both in terms of numbers and percentage of the total, though I do suspect myself of undercounting/tagging.
Passive programming, or self-directed programming, is a type of program that library patrons can participate in independently or with only minimal interaction with library staff. This recent 
I wish I remember where I heard about Once Upon A Time We Ate Animals: The Future of Food by Roanne Van Voorst, but I requested it mainly based on the intriguing title (I love speculative fiction – and nonfiction). Van Voorst is a “futures anthropologist” and her premise for this book is that we are currently in the middle of a shift from “carnism” (eating meat and animal products) toward vegetarianism and veganism. The book is nonfiction, but spliced in are short fiction pieces set in the future, looking back on a past in which (many) humans ate animals. Whether you’re an omnivore, vegetarian, vegan, or other, this is a fascinating book, and will make you think differently about the way you eat – no matter which way that is currently.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life was published in 2007, but I didn’t get around to reading it until 2022. It is a year in the life of the Kingsolver family at their homestead, where they’ve committed to eating only what they can grow or source locally for one year. There are many good reasons to eat local, from climate to animal welfare to supporting the community you live in, though you don’t need to devote your life to growing all your own food and raising chickens (unless you want to!). There are farmers’ markets and CSA shares and local groceries in a lot of places – other places, unfortunately, are food deserts, and there’s plenty of advocacy to be done there – and when you eat foods that are in season, they taste better too. (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle also includes recipes.)
Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn’t Food by Chris van Tulleken draws the reader’s attention to how much of the “food” we eat isn’t really food at all (as the subtitle indicates). Van Tulleken introduces the NOVA framework for classifying foods, from (1) unprocessed/minimally processed to (2) processed culinary ingredients (e.g. butter) to (3) processed food (e.g. canned beans) to (4) ultra-processed food (e.g. Coke, Doritos). One of the shocking pieces of information in this book was that the FDA does not regulate foods, or the ingredients that go into foods, anywhere near as much as you might imagine; there are giant loopholes for additives; companies can just say that various chemicals are safe without having any real scientific evidence to back that up.
Jenny Arch 