Display: LGBTQ+ Pride Month 2019

Time for my annual Pride display! Pride Month is like Christmas for me. I joke that it's the only month of the year I get to be gay at work. It's not, my workplace is super inclusive and accepting, but it IS the time of year that I get to hang rainbows everywhere with relative impunity! This year, I focused on YA fiction and nonfiction books, but invited the whole staff to add books as they found them.

Throughout the month, a lot of books made their way through the display. You can also check out 2017's display list for more titles. Here are the ones you can see in the photo:

• Traffic by Ellen Hopkins (YA fiction)
• Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (YA fiction)
• Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan (YA fiction)
• Queer America by Vicki Lynn Eaklor (YA fiction)
• Stonewall by Ann Bausum (YA/adult nonfiction)
• And She Was by Jessica Verdi (YA fiction)
• The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza by Shaun David Hutchinson (YA fiction)
• Being Transgender: What You Should Know by Thomas E. Bevin (YA/adult nonfiction)
• At the Edge of the Universe by Shaun David Hutchinson (YA fiction)
• Ship It by Britta Lundon (YA fiction)
• FML by Shaun David Hutchinson (YA fiction)
• The First Man-Made Man by Pagan Kennedy (Memoir)
• Hold Me Close by David Levithan (YA fiction)
• Here We Are Now by Jasmin Warga (YA fiction)
• Alice and Frida Forever: A Murder in Memphis by Alexis Coe (YA/adult nonfiction)
• Journey to Same-Sex Parenting by Eric Rosswood (YA/adult nonfiction)
• Becoming an Ally to the Gender-Expansive Child by Anna Bianchi (YA/adult nonfiction)

To draw even more eyes to the display at the front of the library, one of my volunteers made this bulletin board strategically placed in the teen area. The writing on the shooting star reads, "Check out the PRIDE display in the front lobby!"

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!!!!!!!!!!

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!

Make a Grandparents Day Card

In preparation for Grandparents Day on Sunday, September 10th, I thought it would be great to give our kids the opportunity to make a card for a grandparent or other loved one. So today being the Friday before, I set out some art supplies and encouraged everyone to make their own card!

I made some examples and displayed them at the entrance, in case any of the kids were stuck on where to begin or needed some inspiration.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get pictures of anyone's finished product besides mine, but we had some great ones.

I'm excited about the high participant count for this program for several reasons: One, it shows that Friday afternoon is a good time for all-ages children's programs, when this was previously written off as a dead time. Two, it gives kids who might not have the supplies at home an opportunity to make cards for their loved ones. Three, it gives kids who might have the supplies but not as much inclination to be creative a fun environment with ready-made ideas and a group of their peers already making things. Those who might not want to do arts and crafts at home might have figured out that the public library is just the place for it! I'm looking forward to a lot more drop-in crafts on Friday afternoons to come.

Book Notes

This is a program I put together as a drop-in for teens and tweens, but it would have been applicable for readers of any age. The goal was to write inspirational notes that we will leave in books in the Young Adult section, especially books with difficult themes such as suicide, drugs, abuse, rape, and difficult LGBTQ+ issues. It was a really easy one to put together, and well-received by out summer visitors, especially a group of teen volunteers.

Here are some of the many amazing messages the teens wrote, on the template I made so they can be recognized by our staff as a piece of a library-sanctioned program:

They had a good time coming up with encouraging, funny, and uplifting messages to add to our circulating library books.

I will be making color photocopies of the originals and replenishing the supply in our YA section every few months. I kept the originals so that they will not get damaged in circulation, and I always have them to refer back to.

June 2017 Display: Pride Month

Because June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month, I decided to make a display celebrating pride in the Young Adult section of our library. Here are some pictures I took of the display right after I finished it. (Sorry about the weird warping on a couple of them... I attempted to do panoramic view pictures)

Below is the list of books I displayed. For the record, I have not read too many of the books on this list yet. My favorite genre to read is YA fiction, so this list could easily double as my to-do list for the next couple years. Feel free to use as a jumping off point for introducing more LGBTQ+ positive lit in your classroom or library!

• YA Fiction
• Meg & Linus by Hanna Nowinski
• Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley
• Our Own Private Universe by Robin Talley
• Pretend You Love Me by Julie Anne Peters
• How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity
• Beautiful Music for Ugly Children by Kirstin Cronn-Mills
• Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan
• Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan
• Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden
• Freakboy by Kristin Elizabeth Clark
• None of the Above by I. W. Gregorio
• Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan
• One Man Guy by Michael Barakiva
• Hero by Perry Moore
• I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
• Ash by Malinda Lo
• Lies my Girlfriend Told Me by Julie Anne Peters
• Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn
• How I Paid for College: A Novel if Sex, Theft, Friendship, and Musical Theater by Marc Acito
• True Letters for a Fictional Life by Kenneth Logan
• If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan
• Thinking Straight by Robin Reardon
• Promposal by Rhonda Helms
• The You I've Never Known by Ellen Hopkins
• Drag Teen: A Tale of Angst and Wigs by Jeffrey Self
• Seven Ways We Lie by Riley Redgate
• You and Me and Him by Kris Dinnison

• YA Nonfiction
• The ABC's of LGBT+ by Ashley Mardell
• Queer: The Ultimate LGBT Guide for Teens by Kathy Belge
• "You Can Tell Just by Looking" and 20 Other Myths About LGBT Life and People by Michael Bronski
• It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living 
• This Book is Gay by James Dawson
• Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out edited by Susan Kuklin
• The Full Spectrum: A New Generation of Writing About Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and Other Identities