AboutSusan Dove Lempke writes about children, their books, and their grown-ups, and about life in the public library. She is Youth Services Supervisor for the Niles Public Library District, reviews for the Horn Book Magazine, and writes a book review column for the International Reading Association's newsletter, Reading Today. Recent Posts:Categories:Archives:
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Something Different Every DaySomething Different Every DaySeptember 22, 2008 Learn from my mistakesYou know, when I started this blog, I thought of it as a way to share some of my experiences in 25 years as a children’s librarian. I sort of forgot how often my experiences could be filed under the category “dumb mistake”. Here’s another storytime one! Everyone knows better than to get in front of a storytime group with a book you haven’t read before. If you ever did, it would likely be a mistake you’d only make once. But what you might forget is, you have to look at the actual copy of the book that you are going to read in front of a group. It’s not enough to be familiar with the story–you have to have looked at the book’s physical pages. Otherwise you end up with:
“Hey, Ms. Susan!!!! There are scribbles on that book!” “Oh, no!” “Somebody scribbled on it?” “Why did they do that?” I valiantly continue: “Leonardo snuck up on the poor, unsuspecting boy. And the mon…”
“Oh, no! More scribbling!” “It’s blue!” “They scribbled some more?” “‘Oh yeah?’ replied Leonardo. ‘Then why are you crying?’ ‘My big brother stole my action fig…’”
Collective groan: “Ohhhhhhhh, noooooo!” Sorry, Mo Willems. I feel this may not have been the most effective rendition of Leonardo the Terrible Monster ever. On the bright side, at storytime the week before, The Hello, Goodbye Window was a huge hit! So maybe next week will go more smoothly. One thing is certain: I will have checked every page of every book I am reading. posted by Susan at 3:52 pm | Comments (0) September 8, 2008 National Library Week on Easter?Okay, I get the idea of trying to stay neutral where religion is concerned, but it makes no sense at all to me to kick off National Library Week on a day when virtually all of the public libraries in the United States are closed. We always have our annual Bookmark Contest Awards Ceremony that day, where we invite a guest illustrator to speak, and that makes a lovely way to get NLW started. Not this year. Why? posted by Susan at 4:30 pm | Comments (0) July 25, 2008 The prize dilemmaWhat’s the best summer reading prize? My answer to that used to be automatic: Of course you give them a book. Of COURSE! If you have a lot of money, you give them this: If you have a more normal amount of money, you can only afford paperbacks so you give them this: If you have superpowers, you give them this (and prepare for the stampede): Those all look nice, don’t they? Especially the one that hasn’t even been published yet? But the bottom line is that while books make a wonderful reward for kids who like reading, they make a pretty bad reward for the kids for whom reading is a struggle. You know, the ones Summer Reading is trying to reach? So libraries turn to things like t-shirts and bags, usually with the name of the theme and the library’s name on them, and they’re very cute! But then, aren’t you sending the message with non-book prizes that now that they are done with that yucky old reading, they can have something they’ll like better? Then there’s our other prize dilemma. Virtually everything we hand out as our daily prizes is small stuff made in China. After last year’s bendables painted with lead paint, that no longer looks as appealing. And one of our always favorite prizes, shiny satin sand animals, came this year with big tags stating “NOT A TOY”. Since the company listed it as a toy and didn’t mention their non-toy status on their website, that was a little annoying! So for next year, I can’t decide. Do we get rid of concrete prizes for daily prizes and call it “Going Green”? What do you do with the little guys, who don’t understand the concept of coupons or working toward a bigger reward? I am just not sure, but I’d love to hear what other libraries are planning. posted by Susan at 10:55 am | Comments (2) April 24, 2008 No Child Left Behind @ your library?I am back on my early literacy soapbox, thanks to the checklist someone passed to me of how library staff in one library system are being rated on their storytimes. The checklist is entirely based on Every Child Ready to Read standards. It includes things like: “Presenter makes connections between letters in children’s names and in alphabet book or book title”. Reading is important. Building reading skills is important. Getting young children ready to read using the six skills of early literacy is important. But the most important thing is story. Schools have to implement No Child Left Behind styles of teaching reading to get funded. But I think many of us in Youth Services would agree that focusing too much on the mechanics of reading is a huge mistake. Are we falling into that same trap in libraries? It’s the stories that count the most. Story is fundamental iin humankind–it’s why we pass them along for hundreds of years. It’s why we tell them to our children over and over. Stories help children become loving, connected, ethical human beings by what they tell about how people relate to each other. (Often the “people” are animals in picture books, but it means the same thing.) Stories are also how children can broaden their experience out of their own family into the whole big world out there of the past and the present and the potential future. I love building early literacy elements into the library space. And any good storytime provider is going to work the six early literacy skills into their story programs naturally, because books are made out of words and words are made out of letters and leading children into talking about the stories and predicting what’s going to happen are just the sorts of things you do while reading with children. But you have to start with good stories. In my Storytime for Big Kids program this week (ages 4-K) these kids, like so many others I have worked with over the years, were amazed and delighted by Keiko Kasza’s The Wolf’s Chicken Stew. I could have spent a lot of time talking about how the wolf was making 100 of each food to feed the chicken to fatten her up; we could have speculated on whether the foods were nutritious or discussed if one of the children in the room had a name that began with W, same as Wolf….but all of that would have sidetracked the surprise that makes children burst out laughing, when the Chicken introduces “Uncle Wolf” to the 100 chicks he’s been inadvertently feeding. It’s the story that counts. It’s the story that provides the foundation, and the phonological awareness, letter knowledge, print motivation and so on get swept in with that great belly laugh and the longing to read the story again and again. So please, put “Did the presenter use some great stories” on your storytime checklists. Otherwise, all we are providing is No Child Left Behind @ Your Library. posted by Susan at 12:58 pm | Comments (5) September 14, 2007 Love of Stories vs. PhonemicsA friend recently commented that her son had his first day of Kindergarten and they tested his reading. (Right there, that makes me sad.) His mother asked how he did, and he said that he couldn’t really read the words, and that puzzled both of them because he knows quite a few words. Another friend was able to explain that the school was probably using the DIBELS Nonsense Word assessment, one where the children are tested in their fluency in reading words that don’t actually mean anything. In other words, they’re being tested on how well they can sound things out while completely ignoring meaning. Yes, let’s get rid of those pesky words. They just complicate everything. This is why I am beginning to worry that libraries are beginning to go off-track where our mission is concerned. I think we have a vital role to play in getting “Every Child Ready to Read,” but it feels to me like too much of the emphasis in the discussion of storytimes now sounds an awful lot like the same things kids are being taught in school that passes for reading. I see our role as making sure children are exposed to great authors and great art, and to the stories that people have been passing along for generations as well as the amazing new books being created daily. When you do it right, when you pick books that are magical and find fingerplays and songs that match those books, and you include nursery rhymes and poetry, and you invite the children to predict what’s happening next in the story…those are all the same skills they will need to learn to read. They are going to spend way too much of their school years focusing on the mechanics of reading. We can incorporate ABCs and the sounds of letters while not losing sight of the story. Am I all alone on this? posted by Susan at 2:07 pm | Comments (0) July 20, 2007 Dear Ingram: Where Are My Harry’s?Friday afternoon, 2:00, the Niles Public Library District still has not received their promised 30 copies of Harry. The book processors are leaving for the day, and we still have no Harrys for them to process. Next time there’s a big book that people want instantly when it’s open for distribution, I am ordering direct. Ingram, you have let me down, and I say that while still assuming that the UPS truck will be rolling up any second now. It’s not like I didn’t order the copies several months ago… Update: 2:20 posted by Susan at 1:57 pm | Comments (0) July 12, 2007 Keeping them readingIt’s pretty easy to get kids excited about coming to the library to sign up for Summer Reading during a lively school visit. The harder thing is getting them to keep reading through the summer. Our goals here at Niles are: So our games are planned with that in mind–not that they just come through the door once to sign up, but that they keep coming back to the library. I am a big believer in counting the statistic “added visits” along with registrations and finishers, because every time they come through the library door is important. The way we accomplish that is by setting up a game that is unveiled in stages. This year’s game with the theme Mission Read began with astronauts off in a training station. Kids earned a turn on the game for every hour read, and they picked their favorite astronaut and took a turn. About two weeks into the program, an outer space mission was called: We were being attacked by robots sent by Pluto, whose inhabitants are mad that we said they weren’t a planet anymore!
This lure of a new part of the story unfolding brings the kids back in droves, and I would really like to think that it also accomplishes the fourth goal–it gives kids a really memorable experience! posted by Susan at 3:43 pm | Comments (0) July 11, 2007 Harry Potter and libraries vs. bookstoresNew York Times article First, I’m not sure I entirely believe it. I think the Harry Potter books clearly introduced a generation of readers to the idea that reading could be worth a certain amount of effort, and that all that practice has to have paid off in their reading skills. There’s just no way to measure what they would have been like without Harry. But it also strikes me–and I’ll be the first to admit I’m prejudiced on this subject–that when the whole Harry phenomenon got taken over by the bookstores, some kids lost their chance to become introduced to the library as the source for other books that they might like too. After the second book came out and was SO phenomenally popular, bookstores jumped on the bandwagon in a huge way. Our library Harry Potter parties went from being crammed with excited attendees to having okay attendance, but not more than most other programs. The buzz was all with the midnight parties at the bookstores. Libraries can’t compete with the consumer appetite to get the next new thing NOW, and bookstores can. But it’s a shame that some kids who might have found their way to the library through the Harry Potter craze got sidetracked into stores instead. I can’t help thinking it might have made a difference for the kids to have formed relationships with library staff that might have helped them find their way to other books they might have liked just as well. Of course there are some wonderful bookstore staffs, but I will put a dedicated children’s librarian up against most of them any day. Like I said, I’m prejudiced that way. posted by Susan at 4:32 pm | Comments (2) June 30, 2007 Summer Reading: One Month Down, One to GoAwhile back, I promised to show more of our Summer Reading Game, and this gorgeous Saturday afternoon is about the quietest we’ve been since June 4th when the game began. You’ve already seen some pictures of the game being built. This is the first year we have used a wooden frame, and it’s given the foamboard games a lot of stability, which with 1500 kids (and counting) using it, it needs.
Next week, I’ll show the big kids game! posted by Susan at 3:22 pm | Comments (0) June 23, 2007 Walking your feet off@your library conferenceI’m writing from ALA in Washington, DC. At this point, my fingers are about the only part of me still willing to move! So far, I have: I loved PLA and look forward to the next one, but there is nothing quite like ALA. At any given time, there are at least 3 sessions I would like to attend whilst walking around the exhibit hall and perhaps putting my feet up and taking a little snooze. And this was just the first day! More later… posted by Susan at 8:43 pm | Comments (0) Next Page »
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