Fancy a February Display?

Oh, I have to admit...I kind of REALLY loved putting together our two February displays.

Our Author Spotlight is on THREE authors this month.  I knew I wanted to have a female author.  I was super stoked when I found three awesome YA female authors with birthdays in February: Meg Cabot, Donna Jo Napoli, and Jane Yolen.  I love the varied styles and themes of these authors' works, but they all have one thing in common: they champion female characters and give girls something amazing to read.

I didn't want to do a humdrum Valentine's Day display.  I'm not anti-Valentine's Day: it's all about the LOVE, people!  But, at the same time, I didn't want to do drippy, sappy romances, or anti-romances, or anything like that.  Then, I finally hit on it: BOOKS WE LOVE.  Since Valentine's IS all about love (as I previously stated), I wanted students and staff to celebrate the books they love.  I sent out a couple of emails asking for titles.  All that was needed was a simple reply: no summary, no huge effort, just the title.  I think this helped drum up initial support.  

I think the display looks great.  I wanted to give props to all the books that I was sent, even if they aren't in the Uni collection.  I took old magazine boxes, attached construction paper to dress them up a bit, and made little book bouquets for the ones we don't have in our onsite collection.  I think these book bouquets add an extra fun element to the display, and if someone is interested in those books, we can still get them from another library.

"Book Bouquets" on the top shelf.

 We put our three picks on the bottom shelf, so the students could see their peers' selections easier.

The coolest part about Books We Love?  As more and more students notice it, they want to add their own favorites to the display.  I love this participation!  Yippee!!!

Celebrities Reading--Christmas Edition!

By now, you might know what a huge David Tennant fan I am.  If you didn't, just know that I would probably twist and finagle anything to be able to legitimately link Libraries + David Tennant (because those are two of my favorite things). 

At this time of year, it's always good to think about your favorite things, and people also start to talk about Christmas wishes, so here's one of my wishes kind of coming true: David Tennant reading a Christmas story to me...I mean to US...I mean to the WHOLE WORLD!!!

Enjoy!

Book Trees

My new obsession is Christmas trees made out of books. We all have our things, and this is just one of mine.  I started looking at them on Pinterest  a couple of weeks ago, and all I can do is think about the book trees I'll make in my future library.  I can see it in my head: maybe three or four, spread out around the library.  *sigh*  They would be beautiful.

Book trees look spectacular, and they're the perfect use for weeded books.  If you are bored with weeding, and don't want to do it, just motivate yourself by looking at some of these amazing book trees:

See???  Don't you want to go and weed the heck out of your library's collection, so you can make one?  You'll also be keeping your collection up to date in the process.  It's okay: you can thank me later.

The day after I started obsessing about book trees, my brother-in-law sent me this photo:

He had made his own book tree!  It's like great minds think alike or something.  I love the jaunty Santa hat on top and the NOEL blocks, too.  Great touches.  My kids were super impressed with this and want to do one at our house.  If we get one done over holiday break, you can bet I'll post a picture.  (That is, if I can take quick enough.  Our lil one year old is the fastest crawler in the midwest, and she'd LOVE to destroy a book tree.)

Now, go get creative and create a tree out of the most unlikely of objects.  If you do, share them with me! 

HOLIDAY GIVEAWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK.  It's really just old magazines we need to get rid of, but still...we made a pretty sign and a pretty fan out of them.  The holiday season means weeding out old magazines here at the Uni Library.  A few of them will go to the Undergrad Library Collection, but most will stay here for giveaway.

 If I was a student here, I'd be so excited!  You see, back in the day, I LOVED making collages of all my favorite heartthrobs.  I used to troll the teen magazine selection--Seventeen, Sassy, YM--at my middle school library for hotties of those magic years, 1991-1994. Here are just a few of the covers that I VIVIDLY remember swiping photos from:

If my middle school library had done this annual giveaway, I wouldn't have had to my besties, Sandi and Cori, surround me in the Edison Middle School library and cough really loud when I ripped out pictures of the likes of Antonio Sabato, Jr., Sean Astin, Eddie Furlong, Christian Slater, Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonhard, and Leonardo DiCaprio.  Too bad the librarian didn't make it easier, and less guilt inducing, to get these pictures.  I still feel kind of guilty...but it was also kind of fun livin' on the edge!

Halloween Storytime!

It's never too early to start thinking about Halloween storytime!

I may be working in a high school library, but I want to sing the praises of one of my favorite Halloween books, which just happens to be a picture book...by Jerry Seinfeld.

Seinfeld took one of his best bits and, with the help of illustrator James Bennett, created a Halloween book that should be in every library--personal, public, or school.  The illustrations are childlike, whimsical, full of color, and lil Jerry Seinfeld is adorable.  The font is engaging, big, and bold.  Even if you haven't seen Seinfeld perform this bit of stand-up live, you can still create voices/sound levels and movements that go with the text.  I feel it's the perfect read for Halloween storytime.

When I was a 6th grade reading and writing teacher I would read this every Halloween.  (And, I'd be so sad if Halloween fell on a weekend, because I couldn't perform it for them.)  My students had never heard of Jerry Seinfeld, but they still loved the book, because of the energy and enthusiasm I put into the reading of the text.  And, please, PLEASE let's not forget that picture books are for everyone.  Think about doing this awesome book for a Halloween storytime.  It doesn't matter if you're in a pre-school or a high school, it's sure to be a crowd pleaser and totally awesome!

And, if you haven't enjoyed Seinfeld's original stand-up bit, watch it NOW!

Books About BOOKS

Thanks to a quirky little website called Holiday Insights, I found out that there are a couple of interesting book-related "holidays" coming up: Read a Book Day (September 6) and International Literacy Day (September 8).  So, I had to make a display...of course.

I used the space of our smaller display area (the top of our new magazine shelf) to house this display.  It will only be up for a week and a half (before we go full-on Banned Books mode), but I still thought it would be fun to pay short tribute to these holidays I just became aware of.

Here is the short and sloppy METHOD to my display madness:
Since our fiction collection is rather small, I pulled the books that I could find.  (NOTE: Markus Zusak's The Book Thief was checked out [yay!], so it's not on the shelf...yet.  I'm nabbing it once it comes in.)  I wanted to include fiction and non-fiction, but I could only find two non-fiction titles about book/reading in our collection.  I did find a graphic novel by Audrey Niffeneger (The Time Traveler's Wife) that I wasn't aware of, called The Night Bookmobile.  Good times!  Besides walking through our collection, I also sourced books from Goodreads' Popular Books About Books Shelf.  There were SO MANY quality titles on there, that I wish we had access to more in our library!

If you know of any other great books about books, send me an email!