I'm a Little Bit Famous Now

Just kidding, I am in no way famous. I did, however, get to be on the local news as a library representative earlier this morning.

The local organization Grand Canyon State Model Railroaders have been at our library with a giant HO Scale model train exhibit since Wednesday, and they will be here until the end of the week. The exhibit is pretty amazing. It takes up our entire program room, which has a capacity of over 300 people. All the models are handmade by members of the group, and each is based on a different town with an interesting history. The train cars themselves are one 68th to scale of a real train, meaning it would take 68 of the models to make up one life size train car. The speed they travel around the track is also to scale, which is an interesting tidbit I learned while preparing for my interview.

These are a couple pictures I got from their Facebook page. Click the link above to visit their page and see some cool videos of the trains in action!

In preparation for my interview, I worked with our marketing team to come up with some reasons we wanted to have trains at the library.

• Multi-generational programming: Trains are nostalgic for a lot of people, and interesting to people of all ages. This exhibit is something all members of the family can enjoy and discuss.
• STEM: Science, technology, engineering, and math. 
• There are quantifiable physics involved with the way trains move on the tracks.
• Evolution of the technology of trains over the decades.
• Math of figuring out accurate scale of models to life size trains.
• History: Each handmade model is based on a real historical town.
• Community engagement: Getting people into the library who wouldn't usually come, or who have never been before. 
• The library supports engagement hobbies such as making scale models as part of lifelong learning.

Of course, I didn't actually get to use any of these great talking points in my interviews. They just wanted the bare bones from me: We are excited to have the trains here, everything is free, and it's running all week until Saturday. 

The first video does not include me, but has some great information from one of the Grand Canyon Model Railroaders about the exhibit.

Here are my two big exciting interviews, that are definitely not filmed with iPhone cameras straight off the TV (Just kidding, they are):

(1 more video to come)

Later in the day, Channel 10 also came and interviewed a different member of the group.

Overall, facilitating media visits and being interviewed for the news was a really cool experience. I didn't stumble over my words nearly as much as I thought I would, even though it was 5:00 in the morning and I had had roughly an hour to memorize my talking points. I felt really excited to be representing the library, and the city, on the TV news. Sometimes I feel like a door-to-door salesman or religious zealot trying to spread the good word of the public library, but I'm so psyched every time I get to tell more people about it! I know the news spots were really more about the train exhibits than the library, but even so, a bunch of people will probably visit the library who might have never been in before. That's what library programming is all about!

In closing, here is a selfie I took with the camera guy, Brett, and the reporter, John.

Preschool Storytime 11-21-17: Puddles the Raindrop

We had a special guest at Preschool Storytime today, the author of the self-published Puddles the Raindrop series!

Louise Gabriel has published three adventures of Puddles the Raindrop so far, and has plans for a lot more. They are nonfiction workbooks coupled with the story of Puddles as he travels through the stages of the water cycle. 

As a lot of guest presenters do, Louise asked me to kick off the storytime the way I usually do so the kids have the same structure they are used to. So I did my three-song introduction, which you can view in full here. When I was done, Louise read her Arizona story, Puddles the Raindrop Explores the Grand Canyon State, Arizona. 

In the book, there is an illustration of the water cycle that I recreated out of felt and put up on our giant felt board. So after she was done reading the story, we went over the stages of the water cycle with the kids, moving our little felt Puddles as we talked about each one. 

I made this!

Finally, we passed out a coloring sheet and put crayons out, and gave the kids about 10 minutes to color. The sheet was in the theme also: a rainy desert scene. 

At the end, we sang our goodbye song and had the ritual bubbles. Then Louise stuck around to speak to parents about her book series, sell copies of her book and Puddles plushies, and take pictures with/of me:

Me, Louise, and Puddles

Me and Puddles in front of the water cycle

Having guest presenters in storytime can be fun if they are comfortable in front of large groups of children, skilled at public speaking (loudly) and controlling a crowd, and not afraid to get a little silly with us. You would be surprised how many people, even children's book authors, do not possess even one of those three qualities. Luckily, Louise was an excellent storytime guest. We had a lot of fun, and might even have her back when her next Puddles adventure is published!

Kids-Giving Day 2017

This program was the brainchild of my wonderful and talented partner in crime, the other youth services librarian at my branch, Sara. She conceived, named, and planned this whole thing. Hopefully she will have her own librarian blog soon so that I can link to her entry about Kids-Giving Day and give her all the recognition for this incredible event. Until then, here is my take as one of the staff members who helped set up and run it......

Since Thanksgiving is coming up, we thought it would be a good idea to do some sort of large charity event to teach our younger patrons how to give back to the less fortunate or struggling their community. Three organizations that Sara found out are always accepting donations were Child Crisis Arizona, the Phoenix Children's Hospital, and Operation Gratitude.

Child Crisis Arizona requested donations of new containers of baby wipes, so we announced that people could bring their donations to the library in our newsletter, and set up a small area to collect them. We collected 9 packages by the end of the day.

Operation Gratitude is always accepting donations of cards written to active duty troops and veterans, so we also set up a card making station. One of our staff members donated a large stack of blank greeting cards, which were at the station if anyone wanted to write a note in a card. We also set out art supplies for kids to make their own cards. By the end of the program, we had a box full of 114 cards, which we will send to Operation Gratitude to be dispersed to the troops. 

Finally, Phoenix Children's Hospital is collecting activity bags to be given to their patients who need extended hospital stays, and their siblings. Their guidelines were very specific, so we made exactly what they asked for: bags containing a pack of crayons and several coloring sheets. These were very easy to assemble, and the real charm of this particular donation came from the decorations on the bags. We set it up so that the bag decorating station came first; patrons were encouraged to use crayons, markers, and stickers to jazz up plain paper bags as much as they wanted. Then, a volunteer helped them stuff their bags with one pack of crayons and 3-4 coloring sheets that we printed out before the program. Kids and grownups alike had a great time writing inspirational messages and drawing colorful pictures on the bags for the PCH patients. By the end of the day, we had collected 82 bags!

Here are some patrons (photographed with permission) working on their bags.

And here is Sara and me collecting all the wonderful donations while cleaning up!

The total number of participants was counted as 109! We also got lots of positive verbal feedback from parents about the purpose of the event. Apparently our community here in Mesa wants more opportunities to give back, and teach their children about giving back as well. I think we will definitely be doing another community service-based program in the future!