Tales from a Loud Librarian

For Teen Tech Week , I wanted to create some kind of contest where I would provide a grand prize. The contest would be designed to have students submit some sort of written piece, and then I would randomly draw two names for the grand prize winners, one from middle school and one from high school. I like the idea that the winners are selected randomly and that just by entering the contest all students had an equal chance to win. Thinking about it, I decided that I would ask the kids to submit a review of a book, movie, or game that they would like to recommend to their friends. I gave wide parameters of what they could review. The students had to submit one paragraph with a brief summary and one paragraph explaining why they would recommend the book, movie or game to their friends. I created a Google form for them to submit, so it was easy to share on the library website and in emails. The students chose from new and old and below is a pie chart showing what they chose to review. It w...

On March 12th, the members of Bookmarked arrived early for their regularly scheduled weekly meeting. Instead of talking about what we were reading, we were going to skype with author, Cecil Castellucci. I had won a skype visit through a contest that I saw on Twitter.  A group of authors living in the Los Angeles area were offering their time for this contest, and the only stipulation to enter was that you could not be in the LA area. I found a number of Cecil's books in the PFTSA library's collection. I chose to read Queen of Cool in anticipation of the event. Okay, I am a girl, and I picked it because I liked the cover. Most of my students do that, too. It was a quick read, and the main character learns how to be a genuine person in the end which was very uplifting. I don't know if Cecil knew that she was being projected larger than life in the library. She was delightful and so gracious to the students. She talked a little bit about her background. She grew up in N...