Top 10s List with Hilary Weisman Graham

Top Ten Places To Take a Road Trip To

Glacier National Park, Montana

1.      The National Parks of Utah, Montana, Idaho, & New Mexico (A trip I just so happen to be taking with my family this summer. Yay!)

2.      Cotsa del Sol (the southern coast of Spain) through Lagos, Portugal (I did this trip with my sister and a friend when I was 19.)

3.      Burning Man – an eclectic arts festival in the Black Rock Desert, NV. (A mind-blowing celebration of creativity and freedom of expression.  I’ve been three times & I want to go back.)

4.      Route One in California (Drive the coastline from San Francisco to Los Angeles at least once in your life.  Gorgoeus!)

5.      The Amalfi Coast, Italy.  (My husband and I did this stunning drive when we’d only been dating a year.  Very romantic.)

6.      Cross Country—coast to coast.  I never quite did this trip, but I did once travel from Boston, MA to Juarez, Mexico with four of my girlfriends while shooting a movie along the way.

7.      The Scottish countryside.  My husband and I spent many days of our honeymoon rambling through the rolling hills on tiny, one-lane roads.

Sapporo during the Snow Festival

8.      Sapporo, Japan.  Japan’s more of a train-taking culture, and though I’ve been there twice, I’ve never been to the island of Sapporo and really want to go.

9.      Australia – anywhere.  I’d love to rent an RV & just send two months exploring.

10.  Hawaii – a friend who lives in Maui just started a company where you can rent fully-tricked out, wifi-enabled vintage VW vans (just like the Pea-Pod in REUNITED!) and tool around the island.  I’ve never been to Hawaii and I totally want to go do this.

Hilary Weisman Graham is an award-winning filmmaker, screenwriter, and novelist.  She lives in rural New Hampshire with her husband and son, roughly thirty minutes away from the nearest grocery store. 

Library Chick Storytime

Incubating eggs has become an annual spring tradition at our library. Two years ago, a local preschool class raised money, after incubating eggs themselves and having fun with the project, so that other children could incubate eggs as well. We were the lucky recipients of their generosity and thus our springtime ritual began. 

a few hours old

This year we incubated 10 eggs and 9 of them hatched! Five of them hatched overnight and were waiting in the incubator all fluffy and adorable when we came in. The other four hatched throughout the day and we even got to witness most of the hatchings. We were quite surprised with the 90% success rate, but happy that we had so many chicks for our patrons to visit. The chicks lived in the children’s reference office for a week after they hatched, by the end they were getting too big for the small space and were brought to a local farm to live an organic, free range life.

helping out at the reference desk

It was a great experience all around, even if days 20 and 21 of incubation were nerve wracking with too high humidity and even higher temperatures. And, I have to admit that we did spoil our chicks, all named after book characters, by hand feeding them, letting them run around the office, and having them hang out at the reference desk.

The focus of last week was our chick themed storytimes. We held three of them; two for the toddler and preschool set and one for all ages (which ended up being our smallest session of the week).

 

On Wednesday morning we read:

MinervaLouise by Janet Morgan Stoeke

TillieLays an Egg by Terry Golson

An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Hutts Aston, illustrated by Sylvia Long

And we sang songs like:

I’m a little chicken (to the tune of I’m a Little Teapot) - lyrics are about halfway down the page

If you’re a chicken and you know it... (Just like, "If you're happy and you know It!"

The Chicken Pokey

HiggeldyPiggeldy My Black Hen

As well as favorites like, Old MacDonald, Wheels on the Bus, and Zoom Zoom Zoom.

 

I also brought out the flannel board, I’ve just recently gotten into flannel boarding and I try to do at least one flannel story or poem during my storytime sessions.

Staying with the bird theme, we sang Five Little Ducks Went Out to Play using flannel pieces and then "Ten Fluffy Chickens," which I found on Mel’s Desk in one of her Flannel Friday posts, where she had a link to Storytime Katie’s felt version. Too adorable! And relatively easy to make, once I figured out how to make the baby chicks.

To be honest the kids were more excited for the chicks, which were brought out after the "Good Morning Song," than for the songs or the books. The songs were more successful than the books by far and the highlight was getting to pet one of the chicks.

Looking back, I can see a few things that could have been changed. But, since this was a “special” storytime, we had a lot of first timers and also a lot of teeny tinies (the under 12 months set). Not everyone was familiar with our storytime expectations and we in turn had to be flexible. It didn’t help that we had scheduled Kindergarten visits for the same day. We didn’t have the eggs yet when the dates were picked for the visits, so we couldn’t anticipate which day the eggs would hatch or when we would be having chick storytimes. But, it was a bit overwhelming. The day ended up going fine, but I will strive to be more careful next year when scheduling class visits.

It seemed like everyone had fun and that was really the most important part.

On Wednesday afternoon we had our smallest turnout with only 2 kids and 2 parents. This was the all ages storytime and we really thought more people would come. It was also the session when the reporter for the local Patch news site decided to visit. And while we were happy that the chicks were newsworthy, we wished he stopped by the morning session when there were 20 excited storytimers with their parents/caregivers.

We did a repeat of

Tillie Lays an Egg and Minerva Louise

And we added Chicks Run Wild by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen, which has a great rhyme and was perfect for a tandem reading; the other children's librarian is so much better at voices than I am, so it was fun to have her read the mama chicken's lines.

Thursday morning brought the last of our chick themed storytimes and since we didn’t know how many kids from Wednesday would come back (a lot of our regulars normally come to both Wednesday and Thursday sessions) we pulled:

A Friend for Minerva Louise by Janet Morgan Stoeke

Chicks Run Wild by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen

Hurry!Hurry! by Eve Bunting

Stuck in the Mud by Jane Clarke

We also put up a display of other chick/chicken related books for patrons to check out.

This was the craziest of all the storytimes! We had some very enthusiastic children who wanted to dance and sing (which is normally awesome, but not when there are four little chicks running around!). The chicks were also at their most intrepid.

We had outlined a small square using colored tape, which was supposed to be the chicks’ space. During the first two storytimes the chicks sort of huddled together and cheeped, walked around a little, but mostly stayed in the square. On Thursday, they started walking all around the program space! It became more a matter of chick control than actual storytime. There were a couple of close calls – the chicks almost being stepped on and one of the chicks attempting to run behind one of the benches.

We ended up reading only A Friend for Minerva Louise and Chicks Run Wild, and sang some of the chicken related songs. We walked around with the chicks and then ended storytime. 

The chicks went to the farm on Thursday afternoon and while the children's room is much quieter without them, they are very missed.

This is the craziness that was Library Chick Storytime! 

Does anyone have any storytime tips they would like to share or a chick/chicken related picture book they think would make a good addition to a storytime? I would love to read them!

A Long Time Coming...

Hi! It's been way too long!

Okay, that's not the best way to start...but I've been at a loss on how to start this post since... January.

So here it is...It's been over five months since anything has been posted on this blog. I did need a break from blogging (for a few different reasons), but that break has gone on for too long.

I miss it. I miss talking about books with people who understand about getting so thoroughly wrapped up in characters and in worlds that it's hard to come back to reality. I miss sharing my feelings about books, covers, characters; sharing reactions to bookish news; and even sharing library goings on. I miss hearing about what other blogger, librarians and readers are reading, what they're loving or hating, what they're passionate about or excited to read next.

You might be saying, "But, you're a librarian! You get to talk about books everyday." True, part of every day does involve discussing books and making recommendations, but it's not quite the same thing as blogging. In my non-Internet life, I don't have as many people who get why I love books so much. Some of my friends are readers, but not in quite the same way. You know what I'm talking about: They don't understand about loving an author's writing so much that you research and find all of their published books or the delicious feeling of finding out a favorite author has a new book coming out or loving a book so much that you want every person you encounter to read it and love it as much as you do.

I also needed for The Serpentine Library to evolve and I wasn't sure how to accomplish that. I still really enjoy reading YA. There are an absurd amount of YA book piles on my office floor. I also read lots of picture books for work, especially when planning story times, and I try to read Middle Grades and early chapter books too, so that I can make better recommendations to library patrons. Plus, I also enjoy the occasional adult fiction or romance book. So, I feel that this site needs to be a better reflection of my reading life.

What does that mean?

First, while there will be YA book reviews or discussions, YA won't be the sole focus. I'm going to try to post a mix of YA, MG and picture book reviews, with occasional looks at early readers and chapter books.

Second, there will be more posts about what I'm involved in at the library. Going forward, I'm envisioning that The Serpentine Library will be more of an extension of my work as a librarian. Now, I don't mean that blogging will be work (not that it doesn't take a lot of hard work to keep a blog running), but that it will be a more organic result of things that I'm already doing for my job. Really, all that means is that there will be posts about story times, podcast interviews, and the occasional Flannel Friday post mixed in with reviews.

Thirdly, I don't think that I'll be posting every day of the week. To start, two or three posts a week will be the norm. We're gearing up for Summer Reading and I know that it will take up the majority of my energy over the next two and half months. But, I need to start blogging again and two to three posts a week will be a good, manageable starting off point.

Next, I'm going to be better about being interactive by responding to comments and reading and commenting on other blogs. This will be the hardest to keep up with, but I'm committed to being an active member of the blogging community.

Finally, I'm going to try not to focus on the numbers part of blogging so much. I'm thinking of removing the Google Friend Connect widget from the sidebar. It's something I've been thinking about, but am not quite sure about. Any thoughts?

Everything gets started tomorrow with a post about our "Library Chick" themed story times. There will be pictures and some talk about what happened when the chicks got to visit the program room and participated in story time. It was slightly crazy, but a lot of fun!

I look forward to hearing your thoughts. And, now can I just say how good it feels to be back in my own book blogging space!

Taking A Break...

It's been pretty quiet around here lately. Not because I want it to be; life has just been kind of crazy. Family stuff is going on and my work schedule changed. So, there hasn't been a lot of time for blogging. Or rather, the time I would normally have for blogging is getting eaten up by other things.

I want to be blogging and I feel guilty about not posting. Mainly because I've been reading some terrific books and I want to talk about them, sing their praises. I miss posting reviews and reading reviews and posting comments and just discussing books. Every day I think, "Today's the day, I'm going to sit and finish that review." But, more often than not, something else takes precedence.

So, rather than feel guilty about not posting, I'm going to take a break, a smallish one, through the end of the year. Once the holidays are over, I'm hoping (and praying) that things calm down.

I'll be back the first week of January (January 3rd to be exact) with renewed enthusiasm and some reviews and book discussions.

So until then...I wish all of you Happy Holidays and lots of bookish gifts

Waiting on Wednesday - For Darkness Shows The Stars

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine

For Darkness Shows the Stars
Author: Diana Peterfreund
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
To Be Published On: June 12, 2012

Generations ago, a genetic experiment gone wrong—the Reduction—decimated humanity, giving rise to a Luddite nobility who outlawed most technology.

Eighteen-year-old Luddite Elliot North has always known her place in this caste system. Four years ago Elliot refused to run away with her childhood sweetheart, the servant Kai, choosing duty to her family’s estate over love. But now the world has changed: a new class of Post-Reductionists is jumpstarting the wheel of progress and threatening Luddite control; Elliot’s estate is floundering; and she’s forced to rent land to the mysterious Cloud Fleet, a group of shipbuilders that includes renowned explorer Captain Malakai Wentforth—an almost unrecognizable Kai. And while Elliott wonders if this could be their second chance, Kai seems determined to show Elliot exactly what she gave up when she abandoned him.

But Elliot soon discovers her childhood friend carries a secret—-one that could change the society in which they live…or bring it to its knees. And again, she’s faced with a choice: cling to what she’s been raised to believe, or cast her lot with the only boy she’s ever loved, even if she has lost him forever.
 
Inspired by Jane Austen’s Persuasion, For Darkness Shows the Stars is a breathtaking romance about opening your mind to the future and your heart to the one person you know can break it. (summary from Goodreads.)

I really enjoyed both Rampant and Ascendant - who doesn't enjoy reading about killer unicorns occasionally? So, I was happy to hear that there would be even more books by Diana Peterfreund out in the world (in addition to the also wonderful Secret Society Girls series). After reading the summary, especially that sentence that says it is inspired by Jane Austen's Persuasion, I'm even more excited to read For Darkness Shows The Stars.

What book are you eager waiting for?