How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Passive Programming: guest post by Ariel Cummins

Behold, a Boredom Buster!

Ariel Cummins started her career as a teen librarian, but quickly decided there was far too much drooling with teens and switched to the under 13 set. She writes about her (sometimes bumbling) exploration of what it means to be a children's librarian at http://hushlander.wordpress.com/ and frequently Tweets about authors, librarianship, and ridiculous things at https://twitter.com/hushlander. She works at San Antonio Public Library, and will probably never leave Central Texas because: breakfast tacos.

When I transitioned from teen programming to children’s programming, I also transitioned from a very busy neighborhood branch to a huge Central Library located in a downtown area. While the collection at our Central Library is huge, it was really, really hard to get people to actually attend programs on a regular basis. It was more of a “tourists drop in on vacation” or “residents come once a year to get books for reports” kind of place, rather than a “part of families’ weekly routines” kind of place. We tried programming in the mornings, in the evenings, on the weekends, and on weekdays, with varying success.

Story Action Pod: BOT edition

C/O Mr Schu Reads

So after the overwhelming fun that emanated from our last Story Action Pod (which, by the way, was a landslide victory with a write-in candidate) I was energized to create another one. After all the sharks and trains, I decided that the Story Action Pod was severely lacking in the robot department.

I went with "Boy +Bot" by Ame Dyckman and Dan Yaccarino, which I snatched greedily from the fingers of an unsuspecting child while laughing maniacally and possibly pointing before tearing off on my Harley. 

Or from the new picture books display. I promise. It's another one of those, though, that we probably should have more copies of, because it is literally never available. So after I checked it out to myself, I smacked one of these bad boys on it to prevent it from walking away: