First things first: gratitude to the youth librarians on the statewide listserv, massyac, for their generosity in sharing tips and tricks for a stuffed animal sleepover program! Their collective advice was quick, clever, and invaluable, as usual. Being part of a profession whose core values include sharing really has its benefits!

 

Above: Group shot! All the stuffed animals on the library boat (or in the ocean)

So, what’s a stuffed animal sleepover? Kids bring their stuffed animals to the library, leave them overnight, and pick them up the next day. While the cats (people) are away, the mice (stuffed animals) do play! They make friends with each other, take rides on the book cart, play with library toys, and snuggle up to listen to a story. At pickup time, each stuffed animal gets a little packet to take home with photos and a note about their overnight activities, and a library book recommendation, which they can choose to check out.

Above: Three stuffed animals in rocking chairs read a picture book together

Here are the most important (and repeated) pieces of advice I received and used from massyac responses:

• Allow more time than you think you need for setting up and taking photos; use an assistant if you can!
• Collect information (kid’s name, stuffed animal’s name, adult’s contact info) at drop-off time, and attach a tag to each stuffed animal.
• Make a take-home booklet, post to social media, or create a slideshow of photos

Thank you, massyac! I employed my nine-year-old as assistant, and she was an excellent helper. Staging and taking the photos didn’t actually take that much time – an hour or less. Creating the personalized book recommendations and packets, creating the photo album, and posting to social media took about two hours. If you wanted to save some time, you could do less personalization and give everyone the same booklet – it’s still fun!

Above: All the stuffed animals snuggling on bean bags, reading a story together

At drop-off time, kids filled out a “sleepover permission slip” with information about their stuffed animals (name, personality, favorite book, a portrait), and a tag we tied on with ribbon. The favorite book question helped us decide which book(s) to recommend.

Above: Pigeon and Piggie play in the Lego bin

Miraculously, everyone who registered for the program showed up during the drop-off window, and everyone came to pick up their stuffed animals the next day! There was a waitlist for the program – again, on the advice of other librarians, I capped registration at 10 (and still ended up with 12) – so we’ll be doing it again in the spring, and those on the waitlist will get priority.

Above: Grapes, Munchkin, and Peanut Butter hang out in a cool MagnaTile house

Overall, our first stuffed animal sleepover was a success! Have you hosted one at your library? What are your favorite tips and tricks? Is this the most adorable program, or what?

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 SLJ article  mentioned several ideas, including collaborative art projects, community collections (show-and-tell), livecams and interactive displays, photo booths, play dates, polls, readers’ advisory activities, scavenger hunts, sensory gyms, and stuffed animal sleepovers.

Here are some self-directed programs I’ve offered over the past year+ in the children’s area of the library:

• Coloring table with crayons and seasonal coloring pages
• Seek-and-find with Shelly the Turtle: When kids find Shelly (a hand-puppet turtle), they get a hand stamp and the chance to hide her for the next seeker to find. (We used to have Inchy the Bookworm, but Inchy went permanently missing after a few months.)
• Desk mailbox (“bear mail”) and answer wall
• Play area with wooden boat and wave seats, MagnaTiles, chunky wooden puzzles, MegaBlox, a flannel board/magnetic board, activity cubes, and tic-tac-toe cushions; secondary play area with a train table and dollhouse. This will look different in every library depending what you have the space/budget for, but it shows that the library is a welcoming place to play, as well as a place to get books.
• Sticker votes: These are great for all kinds of fun topics. We’ve done traditional fairytales vs creative retellings, Caldecott picks, and which dinosaur are you?
  
• Summer reading scavenger hunt for familiar literary characters (Pete the Cat, The Princess in Black, Lunch Lady, Fancy Nancy, etc.). Kids who complete the hunt get a sticker or temporary tattoo for a prize. Working in teams is encouraged!
• Winter vacation scavenger hunt for the animals from Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
• Book buttons (reader choice and librarian choice): These are little laminated circles that can be taped to a book’s spine to show browsers that another reader recommends the book.
• “Book Browse Bear”: A bear-shaped jar filled with book suggestions, color-coded by type of book (picture books, early readers, graphic novels, etc.).
• Pom-pom polls: In the weeks before the U.S. presidential election, kids could vote for Gerald & Piggie or Frog & Toad for president/VP. (One grown-up, enviously: “Nice for the kiddos to have two good choices.”)
• Caregiver cafe: Sort of like playgroup, but less structured; gives the adults a chance to socialize while the kids play in a safe area with age-appropriate toys and board books.
• “I got a library card!” photo frame: I made this with a deaccessioned copy of Ramona and Her Mother, tissue paper, mod-podge, and posterboard, and I keep it at the children’s desk. When kids sign up for their first library card, I ask if they want a photo. Some say yes, some say no – either way is fine! I like to think that at least a few photos will be shared with family and friends to celebrate young readers, and if they give permission, we put it on the library’s social media too.
  
• Gratitude paper chain: For December, I’ve replaced the usual coloring pages on the coloring table with paper strips (made from a year’s worth of coloring table scrap paper). People draw or write what they’re grateful for on the paper strips and add it to our paper chain throughout the month.

Many/most of these ideas I’ve borrowed and adapted from other libraries that I’ve visited or read about (as in the SLJ article above). What self-directed programs do you like?

It’s been a very busy summer at the library, which is good! This is the first children’s summer reading program I planned pretty much solo. Fortunately, there is a children’s librarian at the branch library, and a teen services librarian here who were both able to tell me what had been done in the past, what worked, and what could change, so I leaned on them as I tried to simplify and streamline as much as possible – and plan fun programs people would want to come to, as well as continuing all our regular offerings.

Our summer reading program officially ended on Friday, August 9, with all-ages indoor mini-golf. Over 125 people attended over three hours, and it was pretty rowdy and fun. Since then, things have quieted down just a bit, the back-to-school books have been flying off the display (I felt kind of bad putting up a back-to-school display on August 1, but it was obviously the right call – those books are in demand!), and thoughts turn to fall…

September is Library Card Sign-Up Month. Hispanic Heritage Month begins halfway through the month, on September 15, and Banned Books Week – when we celebrate the freedom to read (#fREADom) even more than we usually do – is September 22-28. (People will also certainly begin asking for Halloween and spooky books before October 1.)

To prepare for Library Card Sign-Up month, I cut a square out of some foam core to make a frame, then used the pages from a copy of Ramona and Her Mother I’d had to weed (based on condition – I replaced it!) and some colored tissue paper and modpodge to create a photo frame. You know, like they have at farm stands and Renaissance Faires:

This is something we can use year-round, and adults and teens can use it too (if they want). It took about an hour, and actually turned out pretty much the way I had envisioned – not always the case with arts and crafts projects.

Setting kids up with their first library card is a great part of the job. (At our library, kids have to be five years old – some come in on their birthdays! – but other libraries have different rules.) It’s also a good time to emphasize that our library is fine-free (no late fees or overdue fines) and that if anything happens to a book in their care – torn pages, water damage, etc. – they should let us know when they return it, because a lot of times it’s something we can repair! A big reason lots of libraries have started going fine-free is to reduce the barrier to library use. Don’t let one damaged (or even lost) book keep you away from the library forever.

This fall, you can be a library ambassador. Look up your local library’s policies, and tell your friends if your library is fine free!

I hope that, by now, we have largely dispensed with the myth that librarians spend all day reading in buildings that are temples of quiet. There’s not much quiet, there’s not much sitting, and there’s barely any reading, unless you count reading aloud at storytimes, or reading professional review journals to decide what books to add to the collection. So what DOES a children’s librarian do all day? Here’s a sample of one day this week, during which I…

• Updated the whiteboard in the lobby with the day’s programs
• E-mailed the statewide listserv of youth librarians with a readers’ advisory question for a patron
• Read the Library Link of the Day and Betsy Bird’s blog, Fuse8
• Withdrew some old books from the science section
• Posted to the library Facebook and Instagram accounts
• Created a new flannel board to go with Bear in A Square by Stella Blackstone
• Vacuumed the storytime rug
• Storytime (four books, several songs, one game of “Little Mouse” on the flannel board) and craft project (decorating paper popsicle shapes with crayons, markers, and stickers, and gluing them to popsicle sticks)
• Took down the first half of summer scavenger hunt and put up the second half of summer scavenger hunt (these are laminated literary characters, e.g. Pete the Cat, Fancy Nancy, Dog Man, that I tape up around the children’s area)
• Helped a kid find picture book versions of “City Mouse, Country Mouse”
• Added a kid’s photo to the 1000 Books Before Kindergarten wall of fame
• Stamped kids’ hands when they found Shelly the Turtle
• Handed out temporary tattoos to kids who completed the scavenger hunt
• Got a hug from a shy regular
• Finished reading Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley while eating lunch
• Helped a local bookseller’s kid request some books from another library, and chatted with the bookseller about upcoming titles
• Added books to a list to purchase from our vendor
• Put Lego and board games in the story/craft room
• Withdrew old fiction books
• Received replies from librarian listserv and compiled book recommendations for the patron who asked
• Performed surgery on Zoe the Snake (i.e. sewing up a busted seam on a beloved stuffed animal)
• Made an example yarn animal (a tiny turtle) for a craft program (idea from the ALSC blog)
• Cleaned up Lego and board games
  
• Helped a kid find a book about Neil Armstrong and the moon landing
• Went home! (At home we are reading The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) by Rick Riordan.)