NSLS Blogs

 Home » Blogs » Something Different Every Day

Something Different Every Day

« March 2007 | Main | May 2007 »

April 27, 2007

Why kids make better patrons Part 2

Back in October, I listed some of the many ways in which kids make better patrons than adults.

Here are a few more, and feel free to add your own in the comments!

~A (4-year-old) child may suddenly turn to you and announce, "I have decided to change my name to Daphne. I read it in a book and I think it's a lovely name," and then proceed to sign her picture D-A-P-H-N-E, even spelling it correctly. Grownups pick a name and stick with it, by and large, for which Circ staffs are no doubt thankful.

~A child will scurry happily around your department looking for poems to write on their Poetry Scavenger Hunt sheet, and will pounce on a poem as if it is treasure. Which, of course, it is!

~Children rejoice in the repetition in a picture book and will begin to say it along with you, "Muncha, muncha, muncha!"

~They will also notice that making the first little monkey who falls off of the bed a boy, and the second one a girl, and the third one a boy "makes a pattern!" and they announce it with great excitement! In my experience, grown-ups just don't get that excited about patterns.

~Kids treat you like you are A Famous Person if they see you somewhere.

But, to balance things out, I must admit that there are a couple of things that might be better in working with adults.

**You probably never have to match up a receipt for an $.88 sheet of stickers or a $4.63 bag of googly eyes to an entry in a spread sheet like Youth Services Supervisors such as myself get to do periodically. UGH!

**Adults rarely go careening around the library on Heelies.

But you know, on balance, I will still take working with kids every day, despite the googly eyes and Heelies.

Posted by susan at 1:35 PM | Comments (0)

April 13, 2007

I want to like graphic novels

When it comes to the new surge of children's publishing in the area of graphic novels and comics, I feel like I am living in the Flintstone's cave while the Jetsons are zooming around. It's not that I don't like pictures to play a significant role in storytelling--I love picture books! It's not that I don't like comics for kids--I read my share of Archie, Superman, and my favorite, the melancholy Batman.

I already know that manga and I can never be friends. I am too old to learn how to read a book backwards. But I'd really like to like graphic novels. So for my next review column in Reading Today, I decided to tackle the world of graphic novels. That way I'd read a few, and I knew I'd at least like some of them, and even if I didn't I figured that the teachers who make up the main audience for Reading Today probably felt about graphic novels pretty much the same way I do. Maybe we could all learn to like them.

So far, not much success. The new Marcia Williams version of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is gorgeous, bawdy fun...but the teachers aren't going to like that bawdy part too much. Tiny Tyrant, translated from the French reads like the equivalent of 12 cartoon storyboards. It's a little funny, but not funny enough. Kids will love it; their teachers will not care for the guns, the explosions, the cartoon humor.

So far I've hit one that I loved--To Dance: A Ballerina's Graphic Novel. And of course Babymouse is great fun, while also being suspiciously pink and girl-oriented. Makes me wonder...is it graphic novels I don't like, or is it boy humor? I'll keep reading...

Posted by susan at 1:37 PM | Comments (4)