LEGO Movie Party at the Library

A few weeks ago I held a party to get everyone pumped up about the LEGO movie coming out in February. Promising nothing but watching the trailers and talking about the movie with other LEGO fans, and some playing with LEGO, we had nearly 40 attendees on a sub-zero no-school day (read: they had no other reason to leave their houses, but they came to our program)! I also had WAY more parents come and stay for this than any other program I've held (it was about 2/3 kids) so it made me think that just inviting people of any age to come to a public place and geek out together about their favorite things might be a good idea for a program.

(I might just have adult programming on the brain, too, thanks to Audrey Barbakoff's awesome webinar at the Wild Wisconsin Winter Web Conference. I collected all the tweets on Storify here. Check out all the great programs, including one about unprogramming by Marge and Amy!)

As an aside, I wonder how much I could charge to live-tweet the shizz out of someone's webinar. You can't multi-task while you live-Tweet. 

Live-Tweeter for Hire.

I'll be all like ...

...all over you webinar about whatever.

Pinky-swear promise. 

(GIFs extra.)

ANYWAY: Here's how the LEGO party program went:

Prescriptions for Literacy: An Unsolicited Rant

Source

“If children know six nursery rhymes by age four, they are more likely to be in the top reading group at school by age eight.”

“Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they’re four years old, they’re usually among the best readers by the time they’re eight”

These are two quotes attributed to Mem Fox. That is each quote in its entirety. They both get at the same thing, but have different ages and different numbers of rhymes. And, there is no citation

These are the things that keep people like me, Amy at Catch the Possibilities, and Mel at Mel’s Desk awake at night. Probably because I found a great cohort of nerds that I have the pleasure of talking shop with at all times. In case you’ve ever wondered what my Twitter feed is all about, it’s mostly discussions that lead to rants like the one you’re reading right now. You're welcome.

Readability Measures and Libraries: An Unsolicited Rant

Yesterday I got an e-mail from a friend, for whom I had run long-distance reader's advisory. She was looking for a historical fiction book for her 4th grader to write a book report. Her fourth grader is an avid reader and so I knew I could have fun with it. I gave her about ten titles, from Gordon Korman's Titanic series to Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos.

She got back to me and said that based on their AR established book levels, and since he tested at a 6th grade level on his readability test, he actually is not allowed to choose any of the suggestions I gave for his book report. Including two Newbery award winning contemporary classics; one of which was Bud, Not Buddy, which should probably be read by all 4th grade boys everywhere. The aforementioned Gantos title even has a copy housed in the teen section of our library. But no matter; its book level comes in at a lowly 5.9.