Good Luck, Bear by Greg Foley

I’ve recently begun using Greg Foley’s picture books during my story times and they are a hit! I didn’t discover the delightful bear stories until I stumbled upon Good Luck, Bear while looking for St. Patrick’s Day books.

Simply written, this compassionate bear and sagacious mouse duo are a delight.

His first picture book, Thank you, Bear won the Charlotte Zolotow Award in 2008. The sequel, Don’t worry, Bear was a highly recommended book in 2009.

Read an interview with Foley before Thank you, Bear at cool hunting and after being published at School Library Journal.

Author Interviews: Sara Pennypacker

The Clementine books are some of my favorites. I stumbled upon these author interviews from Scholastic (not going to get into the rude Scholastic people at their booth this past ALA annual) and enjoyed them muchly! Now if only they would interview the illustrator, Marla Frazee (recent Caldecott honor winner), who is just lovely… I just might forgive Scholastic booth staffers for their ignorance.

The best part… knowing the next Clementine book – Friend of the Week. Based on the school programs like ‘star of the week,’ Clementine attempts to “win friends and influence people” but makes mistakes along the way.

From Sara’s site: In the fourth book, due next year, Margaret makes Clementine worry that her classmates won’t find enough good things to write about her in her “Friend of the Week” booklet. Clementine devises a campaign to win the kids over, which backfires. Meanwhile, her beloved kitten, Moisturizer, vanishes, and Clementine must face the possibility he is lost forever.

Libraries as Conversation

Why I adore Dave Lankes, my former Prof.:

“Libraries do what we tell them to do because they’re people driven organizations. Librarians are what make libraries… If we want the library to really reflect the user, the patrons, the communication, the human part of knowledge, that’s a decision we make. And those decisions are how we structure libraries and how we create libraries and how we innovate… And everyone from people manning the desk, to running the library, to working the budget are in charge of figuring out what that future’s going to be.”

Children’s Librarian: Phone Interview

This phone interview began with introductions to the panel members (4 children’s librarians) and a review of the job description. I was told the interview would last one hour (with the last 10 minutes alloted for me to question them):

1. What attracted you to the job and what experience do you have that qualifies you?
2. A large part of this job is about promoting books. Take some time to choose one book for a 4th grader or older. How would you promote this book to a student? A parent? A child?
3. (They emailed me a list of 5 picture books in advance for this question and asked me to choose one.) We have a copy of the book you have chosen. Please read this story to us as you would during a story time. When you finish, please list some other activities you might do after reading this. What other titles might you also read during this story time?
4. List the advantages and disadvantages to working in teams. Give an example of a time when you worked on a team. Who and what was involved and what was the outcome?
5. What experience do you have in creating and selecting web content?
6. Scenario: You are the only person working on the children’s desk. An irate patron wants to sign up their child for a story time but the child is 1 yr old and the story time is for 2 yr olds. another patron is eager to get their preschooler signed up on a PC. and your most experienced shelver is asking where to begin shelf reading. What do you do?
7. What did you do to prepare for this interview?
8. Talk about either or both of these titles: The Higher Power of Lucky and And Tango Makes Three
9. How would you outreach to teens and how do you captivate that audience?
10. What else would you like to add and what questions do you have for us?

I then asked them a series of questions including:

1. Is your collection development and programming centralized and if so, to what degree do branch librarians have input?

2. What Team Building exercises do you do and how do you promote flexibility and adaptability among staff?

3. How does your library support professional development?

4. What is the next step in your hiring process?