January 2004

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

Upcoming Events for Children's Librarians

NEWS AND NOTES

Spanish Books: There will be a Book Fair for Spanish Books, to be held on Friday, Feb. 6, 2004, 9am-5pm, at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library at 150 E. San Fernando St., San Jose, CA 95112. The book fair will have Spanish language books for adults, teens, and children for sale, and is co-sponsored by Bibliotecas Para la Gente/REFORMA and the San Jose Public Library. The Book Fair will be held on the library’s 2nd Floor, suites 225 and 229. The MLK Library is a joint use library on the campus of San Jose State University.

Nina Lindsay in SLJ: Congratulations to ACL member Nina Lindsay, from the Oakland Public Library, for her article “I’ Still Isn’t for Indian: A look at recent publishing about Native Americans ” in the November 2003 issue of School Library Journal.
Author Joan Aiken Dies at age 79: Children’s author Joan Aiken, popular in England and the U.S., died January 4 at age 79. One of her most popular books is The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.

ACL Meetings, beginning in February: At the Thursday, Feb. 12, 2004 ACL will begin meeting at the Berkeley Public Library, corner of Kittridge and Shattuck. We will meet in Berkeley from February until the end of the year, due to construction at the Oakland Main Library, our usual meeting place.

Distinguished Round-up: Sunday, February 8, 2004, noon – 4pm at the home of Penny Peck.
Performers’ Showcase: Saturday, February 28, 2004, at the San Leandro Public Library.

THE 2004 SCOTT O'DELL AWARD FOR HISTORICAL FICTION

The River Between Us by Richard Peck, published by Dial, is this year's winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. A landmark writer of historical fiction for young people, Scott O'Dell established the annual $5000 Award in 1982 for a children's or young adult book published in English by a U.S. publisher and set in the Americas. The members of the award committee are Ann Carlson, Hazel Rochman (chair), and Roger Sutton.

Set during the Civil War, The River Between Us is a powerful mystery in which personal secrets drive the plot and reveal the history. Two mysterious young women get off a boat in a small town in southern Illinois, and 15-year-old Tilly Pruitt's mother takes them in. Who are they? Is the darker-complexioned woman the other woman's slave? Tilly's older brother falls in love with one of them--rich, stylish, worldly Delphine, who shows Tilly a world of possibilities beyond her home. It's a riveting story of young people facing war, not sure what side to be on or why. Each sentence in Tilly's voice is a scrappy, melancholy, wry evocation of character, time, and place. The revelations are astonishing up to the very last page.

“CAT: SERVING YOUNG TEENS” WORKSHOP

BALIS Children’s Services Committee will be holding a workshop entitled “CAT: Serving Young Teens (middle school students) – Doing it Right with $$, Doing it Right without $$.” Guest speaker Patty Carleton of the St. Louis Public Library will talk about the Computer Assisted Technology Evaluation program, which developed a public service model to provide access to technology for children 4th-8th grades.

The workshop is scheduled for Friday, Feb. 27, 2004, 9:00am-12:30pm, at the Berkeley Main Library, 2090 Kittridge (enter at 2031 Bancroft staff entrance). The cost is $20. For registration form call 650-349-5538.

Reading the World – March 2004

The Center for Multicultural Literature for Children and Young Adults at the University of San Francisco presents READING THE WORLD on March 13, 14, 2004. The conference will be held at the University of San Francisco, Presentation Theatre and School of Education Building, 2350 Turk St., San Francisco.

Speakers include Ashley Bryan, Alma Flor Ada, F. Isabel Campoy, Cynthia and Greg Leitich Smith, Suzanne Fisher Staples, UNESCO Award Winner Ruth Starke of Australia, and storyteller Ruth Stotter. Over 40 break out sessions will feature Judy Sierra, Milly Lee, Teri Sloat, Diane Wolkstein Melba Beals, Jorge Argueta, and many others.

Celebration Dinner speaker is Gerald McDermott. There will be a Book Market and more. Contact Barbara Hood, Conference Registrar rtwconf@socrates.usfca.edu or (415) 422-6878 for registration information.

CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS PARTY

Recently on the PUBYAC listserv, there was a compilation of ideas for a “Captain Underpants” party, based on the popular series by Dav Pilkey. Special thanks to librarians Georgi Sandgren, Elizabeth Murphy, and Barb Scott for posting these programming ideas.

Where to Start: Online Adventures of Captain Underpants; www.scholastic.com/captainunderpants/home.htm will have lots of game ideas. Also, go to www.pilkey.com for even more ideas, crafts and games to print out, etc.

Decorations: Hang underwear from clotheslines strung around the room.

Icebreakers: Open with participants sitting in a circle and passing around a roll of toilet paper. Each kid had to take anywhere from 1-5 pieces. Once the roll was passed, this was the icebreaker game. Each person had to tell as many things about themselves as they had taken pieces of toilet paper. At this point, have the children’s librarian read a short, humorous biography of Dav Pilkey, author of the Captain Underpants books.

Nametags: Everyone, parents, teen volunteers, and staff included, need to make a nametag with their special secret code name. Find the code in CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS AND PROFESSOR POOPYPANTS... or on Pilkey’s website. This is hilarious fun!

Games: Underwear Toss was particularly fun, as a large toilet seat had been cut from foamboard and mounted on a large white crate, making a milk crate potty. The object was to get all three pair of underwear (yes, real, CLEAN underwear) into the crate. They could not hang from the rim of the seat!

Mad Lib- Captain Underpants vs the Evil Monster - Hand cards out to pairs of kids, and write with marker on the big chart. Say "Underwear" ten times fast.

Underwear Boxing Ring - Cut out photocopy of underwear and decorate it. Sit along the side of the shower curtain "ring" and put your paper underwear in the middle. Everyone grabs a fan and furiously fans the underwear until they blow out of the ring. Last person with underwear in the ring wins.

Underwear toss - tack a pair of big boxers to a basketball hoop and shoot baskets through it. Or, shoot baskets through a glow-in-the-dark toilet seat.

Underwearball - Stuff a pair of printed briefs and sew the openings shut. Play basketball or soccer with the underwearball.
Concentration/sorting - match overturned pictures of socks, t-shirts, and boxers.

Relay race-two teams line up they must jump into circle wearing huge t-shirt and socks. Undress and tag the next person. Next person puts the shirt and socks on, removes them, etc. First team completed wins. Or, make a simple Pin the Underwear on Captain Underpants game.

The best part was the underwear flinging (how far can you snap a pair of white and cottony underpants?).
We had printed a 'cafeteria menu' on a large piece of paper and had the kids rearrange the letters to spell goofy stuff.

Crafts: The kids make "boogers" in honor of the Bionic Booger Boy. Use the standard recipe for gak (a Google search will result in tons of recipes), and the kids add green food coloring. I had the kids mix up the concoction directly in a Ziploc bag, and that reduced the mess somewhat. Be warned, though - this is a messy, slightly chaotic craft! Table covers helped tremendously. I liked this craft as it contained a bit of a science lesson.

George and Harold's Flip Books-participants were given a pattern to make their own flip book (or simple moving picture book).

Participants were invited to decorate a pair of
underwear for Captain Underpants, as we're sure he gets tired of wearing those white ones all the time. Once finished, these were used to display with the pictures from the event in the library.

Perfectly Portable Pilkey-Powered Paper Pilot

Pug-Plane - let participants color and fold their own paper airplanes with Captain Underpants at the controls.
Superhero Masks-participants were given materials to make their own superhero masks.

Refreshments: Then, it was time for refreshments! Participants were treated to Toxic Slime Cupcakes and Day Old Bathwater punch, both of which they pronounced excellent. Or make Toxic Punch (green Koolaid).

Media Watch

Mary Lee Sunseri. “Mother Goose Melodies.” CD, $15, Piper Grove Music, 2003. For order information call 831-649-1790 or www.maryleemusic.com.

Many Bay Area librarians know Mary Lee Sunseri, from her many successful library concerts. She has also performed at the Monterey Aquarium and the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. This new recording of Mother Goose songs evolved out of her performance at the Renaissance Faire, as the music originated at that time in history. She has adapted the songs for modern children, but uses authentic (non-electronic) instruments.

The 24 songs included on this CD are accompanied by guitar, recorders, banjo, and percussion instruments, all played by Mary Lee. Many of the songs will be familiar: “Old King Cole,” “Humpty Dumpty,” “Mockingbird,” “Bobby Shafto,” and many others. Many are done in harmony with very creative arrangements that make them stand out from other versions of “Mother Goose.”

A few were new to me: “Singing School” and “Five Wild Dragons.” “Hayride Road,” a variant of “Turkey in the Straw,” had wonderful Andrew Sisters-like harmony. “The Farmer’s Apple Tree” sounds like a madrigal, and is a counting song. “Little Brown Dog” is a story song that is quite engaging.

Mary Lee’s strong soprano voice is clear as a bell, and will engage babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, as well as their parents. Mary Lee has received numerous awards for her recordings, including three Parents’ Choice Awards, and two of her CD’s were named to ALA/ALSC’s Notable Children’s Recordings lists.

Many of her concerts have themes – ocean songs, Irish or Italian songs, lullabies, etc. She has included a new Mother Goose-themed concert in her repertoire. She can be contacted on her website, listed above, for both scheduling concerts or ordering recordings.

Daffy Dave Mampel. “The Little Monster (and other silly-scary stories and songs).” CD, $15, Treefort Records, 2003. For order information call 650-326-3711 or www.daffydave.com.

Three original stories and two songs compose this not-just-for-Halloween recording. Popular comedy juggler and singer Daffy Dave, who has his own television program on a Peninsula cable TV station, is also known to many Bay Area library audiences for his energetic, hilarious live shows.

“The Little Monster” story kicks off the recording. A rhyming story with a subtle anti-prejudice message that even monsters can get scared, features ethereal space-age background music.

“Scared of the Dark” is a fun, rocking song about being scared of the dark. Who hasn’t gotten up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and been startled by something you can’t see in the dark? Featuring electric guitar and organ, this reassuring song uses humor to remind kids that everyone can be afraid of the dark sometimes.

“The Fiery Dragon Visits the Cold Castle” is a fairytale spoof of a latte drinking, SUV driving royal family. The king and queen despair at their “tree hugging” son until he shows them how to live a more environmentally friendly lifestyle. Parents and kids will get the jokes in this kind-hearted satire.

The other song on the album, “Halloween Night,” has great musical accompaniment and sound effects of thunder and lightning. Kids will quickly learn the chorus and sing along with the slightly scary lyrics.

“The Princess Witch” is about a girl named Isadora, who is both a princess and a witch who can change her appearance from beautiful to frightening. A brother and sister are lost in the woods and encounter the princess who is disguised in a candy house like the witch in “Hansel and Gretel.” Lots of Daffy Dave’s typical puns and asides lighten this not-so-scary but funny story.

Penny Peck,
San Leandro Public Library