coloring sheets/what is wrong with the world

On one very popular listserv for youth services librarians someone posted asking if other libraries put out crayons and coloring sheets for kids. This is apparently a hot topic. A shocking number of libraries keep boxes of crayons at the reference desk and make kids come up to ask for them. An even shockingly larger number (ie, everyone who has responded to the whole listserv) put out coloring sheets.

This is what we do: put out boxes of crayons, put out paper. Let kids draw whatever the heck they want.

Some of the librarians were going so far as to create their own coloring sheets using clipart, apparently spending large portions of their day printing them out.

Don't get me wrong, I loved coloring sheets when I was a kid and I still think they're fun. But they do not encourage creativity at a time when the ways in which children are allowed to be creative are already so limited.

Plus I just can't get over the fact that these librarians have the time to print out hundreds of coloring sheets or distribute crayons at the reference desk!

sunday in los angeles

When people can't believe I would ever live in L.A. it always makes me think of days like today. Went to the farmer's market in West L.A. and you would have thought I was in the Northwest.

1. It was cloudy and cold--I was wearing a Patagonia fleece and everything!
2. A bluegrass band made up of middle aged men and one teenage boy was playing.
3. Small children were dancing around to the bluegrass music.
4. Nice people gave tips to the band.

It completely reminded me of my childhood. Normal people, just out and about, doing their farmer's market shopping. A very nice Sunday!

hip hip hooray!

I thought maybe I'd dust off old Blogger to comment on the momentous occasion that is the birth of my dearest friend's baby on January 24. I am pretty much like an obnoxious grandmother, going around and telling everyone about the baby. These people do not care about it as much as I do, but I just can't help myself! When I woke up Saturday morning I saw various Facebook status updates/twittering that indicated laboring was taking place. I tried calling everyone I had numbers for to find out what was going on; when no one answered, I figured that meant big things were happening! I bought my ticket and there and then I got a phone call saying that Maribel had arrived! I feel very blessed that I was able to see her when she was just a few hours old. She is, of course, the best and more perfect baby ever.

Maribel, Auntie Katherine will always love you. I cannot wait to watch you grow, to have adventures with you, to tell you embarrassing stories about your mom, and to give you lots of hugs and kisses! Oh yes and to read lots and lots of books with you, of course!

i'm alive!

Oh dear, I see I managed to skip an entire month, but here I am! What can I say, I've been a busy bee. My most exciting event of the month has been getting to feel the littlest Gibbeadle kicking and flailing around inside her mama. Evidently she is usually a pretty quiet little girl, but she did get excited about something during my stay in the Bay. I'm sure it was the presence of her auntie! I was up visiting for the big baby shower and it was fun to see all the Gibbeadle friends and family and of course the future parents themselves!

Speaking of babies, this past week was my first foray into storytime. Non-librarians reading this may not understand that storytime is pretty much the biggest thing that a children's librarian does and we actually spend way more time planning it than anyone realizes. Anyway, I didn't plan this week's storytime--my supervisor and I share that responsibility--but I did carry out four of them! This session I have two storytimes, but my supervisor was gone on Monday so I did hers too. I did two baby (0-24 months) and two toddler (24-36 months). They are both very fun, but baby is the absolute best. We mostly just do rhymes, songs, bounces, and tickle rhymes and their reactions are so cute. The babies are mostly of the more mobile stage, but we do have a few very little ones. So cute.

I'm trying to remember what else happened in the past two months and I just remembered another baby related event--another baby shower down here for a close family friend. My mom came and visited me that weekend, which was very fun! I took her to my library, we did some shopping, looked for Halloween costume stuff, and went to the baby shower of course. I was a cowgirl for Halloween--it was a pretty low-key costume and you might have just mistaken me for someone dressed a bit to casually for work. But that's pretty much what I was going for, considering my life-long dislike for Halloween and Halloween costumes.

And now it is almost time for one of my very favorite holidays, Thanksgiving! I do get to go home for the long weekend and I can't wait. Turkey, here I come!

what can children handle?

I know no one ever reads links that people send or post to their blogs, but I can't resist with this one that I found on Bookslut. It's an article from the Boston Globe on the watering down of fairy tales. I don't really know when or why this happened, because just a couple of decades ago, we were all pretty much taught the real gruesome versions of most fairy tales. Okay, maybe not the most gruesome, scary Grimm versions, but people died, witches were evil, etc. People are about a million times more overprotective these days, it seems.

This even extends to non-fairy tales. Many librarians don't even do the real version of "The Old Lady Who Swallowed Fly." You'll recall that the rhyme repeats the phrase, "perhaps she'll die," which is evidently too scary for today's children. Instead librarians replace that with things like "my oh my." My supervisor, bless her, does use the real version and even ends it with the "she's dead of course" line. I tend to agree with my library school professor--if you can't bear to tell the real story, you should just pick another story and not butcher the original with goofy changes. We all survived knowing that the little old lady might die; I think children today will survive too and possibly learn a valuable lesson about the dangers of swallowing livestock.

being old

You know you are old when you have to add files titled "Car" and "Job" to your file folder. Today, I went and became the official owner of the Subaru, so it is now a Californian.

Can I just say that AAA membership is worth it just to be able to register your car there and not have to set foot in the DMV? I did enough of that when I was trying to get a CA driver's license a few weeks ago. I will fully admit here that I did not actually pass the written test the first time (yes I had to take a written test). I was all overly confident about the whole thing; after all, I already had a driver's license, so it should be no problem, right? I don't need to read through that silly California driver's manual! But after failing (hey, they had a high standard--I could only get 6 wrong out of 36), I realized my blase attitude was probably a bad idea and I actually sat down and read the darn thing. Needless to say, I passed the second time, thank goodness!

California, despite its progressive reputation, is behind the times when it comes to the DMV. When I got my Washington license, 8 years ago, the test was computerized. In California, 8 years later, I still had to fill in bubbles on a piece of paper which was then hand scored. Oh well.

Oh man, I am so old and boring now, going on about the DMV. Luckily I have a few exciting events coming up that do not involve state bureaucracies. Brunch with friends, a weekend visit from my favorite expecting family, and I get to work tomorrow (Saturday)! Okay, so that last one isn't so exciting, but at least it gave me today to take care of these little odds and ends that cannot be done on the weekend. Woo.

working girl

Yep, that's me! I just finished up my second week as a children's librarian here in the greater Los Angeles area. It's been a great first two weeks. I work with some very nice, enthusiastic people who are passionate about their work and want to do good things. And how can I complain about a job where I get to order toys for the little ones in the first two weeks? It is going to be busy and I'm sure I will be going crazy at times but I am so excited to be starting in on my librarian adventure!