ALA Bound

Inspiring Young Citizens:
The Library as a Forum for Engagement

Sunday, 7/12/09
10:30 am - 12:00 pm
ALA Annual Conference
McCormick Place West, W-190B
Chicago, IL

How do we excite young readers with possibilities for remaking their world without burdening them with responsibility beyond their years? Authors Lita Judge, Anne Sibley O'Brien, and Phillip Hoose, librarian, Kelley McDaniel and children's book advocate, Kirsten Cappy will share books, strategies, and book-specific educational curriculum for engaging young people in age-appropriate social issues and actions. Applications will focus on historical figures and movements that inspire contemporary youth.

Let's Do Nothing!

Giddy to have an activity kit out with the brilliant folks at Candlewick Press. Nothing like working with the best designers in the country to make you look quite suave.

To be exact it is a Non-Activity Kit for animation genius, Tony Fucile's hilarious picture book, Let's Do Nothing. Characters, Frankie and Sal have worn themselves out by doing everything so they decide to try doing nothing for a change.

Poor bespectacled Frankie's overactive imagination makes him anything but Zen. When told to "be the tree," he imagines being peed on by the dog. When told to "be the heavy, tall Empire State Building" he imagines King Kong mounting his heights.

Given the task of creating an event kit for kids to gather and do, well, nothing, I was stumped. I finally had to tell myself if Tony Fucile (of The Incredibles fame) was coming tomorrow and I was supplying a roomful of kids, what the heck would we do?

Then the ideas came in on cat feet--a balance challenge (thank you yoga), a staring challenge, a "don't make me laugh" challenge and a good-old-American-kids-bored-at-family-parties game of statues. And then my first ever board game--The Game of Nothing (will the Candlewick designer forgive me for this one...).

Please--if you are tempted to do nothing in response to this post, buy the book to get the instructions first.

Finding Your Way to The Never-Ending Mountian

I first read Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (in galley form) on a train being tossed by the fits of a winter Nor'easter. With mittened hands I read the last page, breathed out, and said, "perfect." And it was and is after several re-readings. Make sure a copy is in your hands (mittened or not) on July 1 when the book is released.

Curious City was proud to mine Grace Lin's rich pages to create reader and classroom activities in science, math, art, calligraphy, cooking, ancestry, and the fine art of discussion. You can view and download that activity kit (designed by Grace's sister) and use it to spice up your wee reading of the book. (Many thanks to Betsy Thompson for help with the Chinese characters.)

Next up--testing an event kit for the same delicious book.

Adventures with Adventure Annie

Just put the final edits on an Activity Kit with my kickin' designer colleague, Jen Steele for the picture book, Adventure Annie Goes to Work.

Author, Toni Buzzeo declares it "spectacular." The fine folks at Penguin say it is the "best thing ever."

Adventure Annie's superheroine adventures are thwarted when Mom gets called into work on a Saturday to find a missing report. Adventure Annie finds adventure, though, in the hunt for the report and in the many other distractions of the office.

This book (illustrated by Amy Wummer) is a boon for working moms who have to explain that work sometimes has to come first and that with a little bit of compromise and imagination, the change in plans can be (gasp) fun.

The Activity Kit extends that theme by creating ready-made office based activities that can be whipped out at any expected office stay.

Curious City is looking to promoting the book and activity kit to working mom bloggers.

Wee Thoughts for Creators:
-Think about how you make your picture book USEFUL to someone beyond just a good read-aloud
-If you publisher cannot provide an activity kit, use someone like me or a teacher to brainstorm activities. You can likely write the activities yourself (the wunderkind, Toni Buzzeo did in this case).
-Ask your publisher for high res images from the book to jazz-up the activities
-Hire a designer. It is NOT as expensive as you would think. Tips on that (perhaps) later.

Illustration by Amy Wummer.

Speedy Site

Website in a hurry? Okay. Website in a hurry and no money tucked aside to make it quite yet? No Problem...?

Author, Peter Gould and I met on his sweet embankment above the Whetstone Brook in Vermont at the breaking of Spring and decided we had this wee problem.

Peter was soon on his way to talk in front of the HPAlliance, an incredible international online Harry Potter fan group that has stayed together to confront the types of real world tyranny that their Hogwarts counterparts battled in fiction.

How to speak in front of these brilliant readers with even more brilliant web connections without a website of your own? Blogger to the rescue. In two hours, we constructed connected Blogger pages that function pretty much like a website. Perfect? No. But all Peter's info is there in a completely editable format for a mere $150 (including the purchase of the swell title font).

Wee Thoughts for Creators:
-Explore the power of Blogger for quickie websites. The application is quite versatile and easy to use these days.
-Know that Blogger is now 'in like Flynn' with Google so any Blogger posts come up quick nicely in Google searches.
-Explore the "Customize" function of Blogger for all sorts of cool things to appear in the columns.
-Want more than the fonts in your own drop-down? Try My Fonts Category Page. You type in your name or phrase and they show it to you in 100's of fonts. A good time waster if nothing else.