Guest Wednesday! Jayne Garry EZ Rock Radio!

Yay! Are first Guest Wednesday is coming up this week! So Wednesday, July 11th, we will be welcoming the great Jayne Garry to our humbly-bumbly home at the Beaver Valley Public Library!

I grew up waking up to my alarm clock blaring off the morning show on the radio, where Jayne works! So phoning her last week was a little odd! Plus my horrible awkwardness on the phone is never helpful! But Jayne was really nice! And I'm exciting for her presentation! She be sharing about her career at the Radio Station and then afterwards we're thinking of doing the classis tin cup/string telephones for the kids to make and decorate! To tie into the theme of radio and communication!

Should be fun!

Library Book Reviews: Children Books! "The Legend of Ninja Cowboy Bear", "Extra Yarn", and "Wumbers"

So, I've been planning out the program for this coming week, Week 2, which has the theme: Biggest, Fastest, First - World Records and Incredible Feats. So I've been devouring through the Children's section of the library once again to find books that fit into the theme, or that are just awesome and here are my findings that I'd like to share!

"The Legend of Ninja Cowboy Bear" by David Bruins and Hilary Leung (2009)

This book is perfect! One thing about this week's theme that I was a little weary of, was the idea of competition. I know at a young age we can sometimes become very attached to the thought of being a winner and not a loser and I didn't want to encourage the kids to think this way! 

This book tells the lesson of how everyone of us are different and have different strengths and abilities and talents. It also ends with a fun variation of the classic "rock, paper scissor" game and also ties in well with the game "ninja" that I plan on teaching to the Mad Scientists! 

Besides loving the story itself, I really really enjoy the design and illustration of the book. Hilary Leung did an excellent good and my goodness everything is just too cute! 

I think the kids will really enjoy this story! Its beautiful (story, lesson, and art!) and fun. 

"Extra Yarn" by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Jon Klassen (2012)

I'm so lucky to have found this book among the shelves! I know it doesn't really fit into the theme for this week, but its so lovely that perhaps I'll save it for a future week. I'm thinking Week 5: True Story or Week 6: Trick or Truth? 

Anyways, the book tells the story of a young girl named Annabelle who finds a wonderful box of yarn of every colour! The illustrations and juxtaposition between the black, gray, white and dreary world against the colours of the yarn is beautiful! It's a book that just leaves you happy in the end.  

I totally agree with Lane Smith's - author of "It's a Book" - review on the book of the book "There's only one thing to say: 'perfect.'"

"Wumbers" by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld (2012)

This is a fun book that I'm hoping the kids will enjoy! I'm thinking I'll get everyone sitting in a circle and one by one each person will read a page aloud - if they are comfortable reading! This book is cute because it does that sort of internet short hand of using numbers in place of words... like to become 2 and for becomes 4 ... and takes it to - or should I say 2? - a new level! for example the front cover says wri10 by Amy Krouse Rosenthal + Illustr8ed by Tom Lichtenheld! So each page is full of scenarios and sentences with numbers that are lovingly illustr8ed 2 boot!

TLDR: These books are all awesome! I grant thee three eacheth its owneth 5/5 rating-eth

Movie Review: Brave (2012)

So Thursday night after all the fun and work of cleaning up after the Mad Scientists, I rewarded myself with a trip to my other place of work - the Royal Theatre - in Trail, to watch Brave!

Now I've been working at the Theatre for almost a year! And it was my first "real" job - before which, friends always bugged me about my perpetual unemployment! But I'm so happy to have the opportunity to work of the theatre - and the BV Library or course! They have been the best jobs I could have ever asked for! I grew up with my family owning a chain of video stores and VHS movies were my babysitters growing up - come one guys: Fern Gully?  Beauty and the Beast? Sleeping Beauty? The Aristocrats? The Lion King! A Troll in Central Park!?

I watched 'em all - and perhaps a little too many! But needless to say, I've always been a big fan of movies!

Also, since I waited til the last day of the show's playing, I already been aware of many spoilers of the movie! Especially when I'm at work and can hear a lot of the movie as I'm cleaning... or from customers leaving the theatre... or just from the fact that we've had the trailer playing over and over and over, over that past couple of months that I basically memorized everything from it! And trailers these days do a very thorough good of giving away all the funny, action packed, and most valuable plot points of the movie away! Talk about selling a movie ... They're basically giving it away for free in a desperate plea for the audience to watch!

Brave, however, did do a good job - in the trailer sense - of keeping the major twist in the story a secret!  My friends, and a lot of other people, I'm sure, were under the impression that the movie was to focus more on Merida's suitor situation, when really that was really just a sort of catalyst that brings the relationship between Merida and her mother to a very very strange predicament - one that I won't spoil for you here ! :)

I think the main fault of this movie, is the huge reputation that Pixar has gained with its stories. After seeing movies like Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Up!, Brave sort of didn't stand up so well in comparison.

Brave, was visually breathtaking and beautiful and I found the first part of the movie to be very promising! The family dynamic I think was something very applicable to children and parents alike! Not the whole arranged-marriage-thing but the lack of communication and sort of distorted view of each other. Merida sees her mom and possessive and manipulating and her mother sees Merida as rebellious and unruly. Both point may at times be true but are not placed well in seeing each other as a real fleshed out person! John Green my favourite YA writer often says that you have to imagine people complexly and that is something that the two main characters - and many people today - fail to do.

However, after the first part of the movie, which went about building up the characters very well, the movie, as I said before takes a major twist. And I think for me the twist sort of lessened the impact of the story... made it less believable. A youtube reviewer said that for him the twist sort of divided the movie into a very adult-like first have and a very juvenile second half... which I totally see. But it didn't really make me hate the movie or anything, perhaps I'm still deluded to think I'm still in between an adult and a child and that's why I enjoyed the movie so much!

But I think after seeing Pixar movies dominate so well in the way they appeal to both children and adults, Brave sort of took a step back from the formula and didn't deliver it so well, leaving the movie sort of fragmented in what it wanted to accomplish.

I did enjoy the experience of the film though! The 3D didn't seem as powerful as I've seen it utilized in other films. But the visuals, the hair! and the scenery were beautiful! I loved the setting of past historical Scotland and the voices/accents had me hypnotized! Beautiful!

I remember Rhonda saying that she felt that the movie seemed to have been rushed into being made after all the success of this "bow and arrow, archery" fad that's been occuring in movies, books and other media.

Legolas .... I blame you! or thank you? I can't decide....

And I think that I may have to agree with her... and after all the "success" from the Tangled Disney movie, perhaps Disney and Pixar wanted to continue their fantastic hair adventures with another beautifully-coifed princess, taken to another extreme with gorgeous ginger curls!

Oh! and of course my love for Craig Ferguson did not deter me from enjoying this movie! gosh, he is lovely! The father's were all hilarious!
Oh! and Merida's brothers were the cutest!

All in all, I enjoyed Brave, I went into it spoiled by spoilers and also having been told by lots of people that it wasn't as good as previous Pixar movies, so I didn't expect a lot out of it! But I think that low expectation set me up better for the movie then going into the movie bright-eyed and expectant of another Oscar-worthy Pixar movie!

I loved the Scottish scenery and culture, the music - even the bagpipes had great comedic timing! - the characters were great, and truthfully I was near-tears for a good part of the movie beginning and end, and I really did enjoy the story, even if people have pointed out the faults to me! I'd say on a scale of 1-10 this movie would get a 8.5 from me :)

Oh and also, on tumblr today I found this beautiful Brave poster done by artist Michael DePippo:

Awesome right? Heres a link to his website http://michaeldepippo.com/?p=2433

Hot of the Presses!

Woot! woot! 

So to the achievements of the day! I have booked off all our Guest Wednesdays!! The Guest Wednesdays are an addition to the Summer Reading Club! They occur on - guess when? - every Wednesday! and we invite community members, groups and companies to present their own craft/story/activity/presentation to the kids from both the Young Professors group and the Mad Scientists group! 

So anyone interested in sending their kids our way on a sunny - hopefully sunny - Wednesday, please be sure to register your lovely kids to each Wednesday Event, as we will need to prepare for the number of kids attending! 

So here I'll post the calendars I ran off today, and just click on 'em to get a bigger view of them - makes it easier to read!

Have a good weekend everyone! Enjoy that sunny sunshine :)

Week 1 - Wild Wild Life with the Mad Scientists (ages 10-12)

Mad Scientists with their well-studied specimen, of the phylum Cnidaria! Whose tentacles contain harmful stinging cells  called cnidocytes! Groups of jellyfish are called a smack! So here's our smack of jellies!
Kids Back Row: Justice, Caleb, Allison, Hannah, Haley, Emily, and Kyleen
Kids Front Row: Chase, Kiri, Sara, and Aliah

Whew! What a day! I'm exhausted! Even yesterday I left work with the soul goal of enjoying some of the sunshine outside before nightfall ... yet alas! I feel asleep... which ended up turning into a very deep slumber!

Today marked the beginning of the Mad Scientist's Program! All went very very well! We started with a small number of kids, which grew and grew until eventually there were a lucky 13 of us! (one girl and I are missing from the above photo) I awkwardly started the group we all introduced ourselves and I managed to murder everyone's name within seconds! Those poor kids! I got extremely flustered with my talking skills... but lucky me! the kids were super gracious!

Newly added books to our display! Extreme Animals is an
awesome read, with cute pictures too!

We quickly played a memorization game I like to call Circle of Animals, where in a circle all of us pick our own animal and make an action for it than we start with one person doing their action followed by a choice of someone else in the circle's action who than repeats their own action and passes on to choose the next person ... and so on...

That probably made no sense!

Needless to say the kids picked this up faster than the lightning of Thor! These guys are truly mad scientists!

Afterwards we read the Wild About Books, which you already know I adore! The kids seemed to like it even when I messed up the rhyme!

When the story ended we moved on to play the game I played with the Young Professors, called Guess My Animal!? With the animals taped to their backs, these guys ate the game whole! We must have played about 5 rounds of these and the kids were still asking to play more!

Unfortunately for them I decided to end the game since in the interest of time we needed to move on! We read a story from the same science/biology series I read yesterday called Down in the Sea: The Jellyfish by Patricia Kite (thank you Ms. Kite!)

The pictures in here are awesome! and great to look at and the kids were both equally interested and grossed out looking through this book!

After reading I set the kiddos lose on the craft table where I set up my two octopus pencil holders - this time bearing lots and lots of scissors - along with various streamers, ribbons, pipe-cleaners, tape, glue and so on! Yesterday I had already painted a 12 paper bowl shaped plates to use today... and lucky that I made 12 (we had 8 kids registered so I made extras - just in case!) - just in case indeed! whew! Two of the girls from today were drop-ins, but were an absolute joy to have! And a few that registered were unable to attend this week ... but I look forward to meeting them all next week hopefully!

Anyways the kids had a blast with the jellies! They are so creative, no a single one looked the same! We had a queen jellyfish, a puppet jellyfish, a very pipe-cleaner happy jellyfish and lots of awesome other ideas!

And lucky for me I had the awareness to start taking some pictures whilst the kids worked away with creating their jellyfish friends!

It was lots of fun. Of course again I ran out of time to do all the activities I had planned! Dear oh dear, there is just not enough time in an hour to do everything! I was hoping to introduce the idea of animal classification and taxonomy and Linneas to the kids ... and even further reinforce those concepts through a hands-on activity involving candy!!!!

And of course I was hoping on reading a chapter or two from "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler" ... WHICH IS AN AMAZING BOOK! A co-worker of mine from the theatre lent me her copy ... I read it, and I feel in love with it! It was like reading a missing piece of my childhood! I was hoping to read a chapter a week with the Mad Scientists - just like I was hoping to read a chapter a week of "My Father's Dragon" (which I absolutely adored as a kid) - but alas there was no time!!!!

But today was lots of fun nonetheless ... the kids had fun (hopefully) and left full of books and with their jelly friends. They also left behind a very formidable mess for me to clean up !!!

The mess my monster's left for me! haha, the octopus guys
were completely trampled over!

Once I finished cleaning up I was greeted by a very lovely patron who being of an age not so familiar with computers required my assistance to set up her email and such! She was a joy and we spent a good time getting her computer needs sorted!


I think my reward for today's Summer Reading Club success will be to go out and watch Pixar/Disney's "Brave" at the theatre tonight with some friends! Rhonda saw it this week and I totally gave her the best popcorn ever - since I was working! And she had some very insightful thoughts about the film, so I'm interested in checking it out! I've been drooling over Merida's hair and the sound of Craig Ferguson's voice this whole week!

I'm also excited for "The Amazing Spiderman" which the theatre is premiering this Friday! AW YEAH!

For now here are some more pictures from today! Enjoy!

The updated bulletin board and display books!

This picture is so darling... I love Kiri's photobombing there in the middle! Awesome!

Week 1 - Wild Wild Life with the Young Professors! (ages 6-9)

Hurray!

Today marks the first day of me conducting a Summer Reading Club session and it was awesome! We had 7 young professors join us for today and all of them were fantastic!

I started the class a little late since we were waiting for a couple more scientist to join us! And I tried desperately to figure out each little ones names - by next week I'm hoping I get the swing of things! I introduced myself and talked a little about how science deals with everything and anything around us and that this week we would be exploring the world of biology and more specifically zoology. The kids were so good at listening and answering questions... or even just knowing everything - super smart  and a joy!

After introductions I read from this fabulous book by Judy Sierra who pays homage to the great Theodore Suess Geisel ... or rather Dr. Suess. It's a fantastic book filled rope with various colourful animals and awesome references to library books! I highly recommend it! Which reminds me! I'm going to start doing some book review posts as the summer goes on - so look out for those .... or remind me, as I'll probably forget! OH oh!!! And I'll try to fit in some movie reviews since I love the movies so!

Anyways! We read through the book which everyone seemed to enjoy!

Speaking of which... we got to the part with a tasmanian devil and I couldn't recall what they look like! One of the girls remembered the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil, which was awesome! So here I enclose a photo of the real Tasmanian Devil - such a ferocious thing!

So after reading the read we sang a song and then played a guessing game called "what's my animal" were I taped photos of various animals on the kids backs and they then had to walk around asking yes/no questions in order to figure out what animals they were! It was lots of fun, the kids were also very very patient waiting to be animal tagged! However, I may have chosen some very hard animals to guess! The real winner for toughest animal to guess was definitely the seahorse! Perhaps next week we will talk more about seahorses and I'll be better prepared!

New friends to add to our bulletin board!

After that we read some octopus books which the kids were very keen on listening to! And once we had learnt some more about octopi we went about creating our own octopus pencil holder!

This pretty much took us to the end of the hour! Although I still had plenty of activities planned out! At the beginning of the summer Rhonda and I discussed time-fillers and other strategies to compensate for the kids who finish quickly and have nothing to do, but I never even needed them. The kids were very meticulous and worked very hard on their octopi and the results were very cute!

I wish I had the awareness to have taken some pictures of the kids! But I was too distracted, I managed to catch a couple pictures while cleaning up after the kids. I'll try to remember to get a few shoots in tomorrow!

Next week I'm going to try to manage my time better and try to schedule everything out so everything runs like a well oiled machine!

All in all things are going swimmingly! Tomorrow brings our Mad Scientists (ages 10-12) to the library and I plan on continuing out underwater exploration through to the world of jellyfish, sea horses and perhaps some narwhals! Narwhals are awesome!!!

Oh! and also! we talked about fruits and vegetables .... turns out cucumbers are fruit! These kids are smart! 

So Long Long Weekend!

Alas! The long weekend has past us :( and tomorrow I return to the caverns of the library! Hurrah! And due to popular demand - haha, or lack of any demand or audience - I give you photos of the hallowed hall of our children's section of the library! Marvellous, no?

While this weekend was lovely... albeit hectic and packed with activity ... I am very excited for this week's events! The Summer Reading Club is beginning! I'm both excited and scared and I hope we get some more people registering for the Club.

This week's theme is Wild, Wild Life - Weird Creatures and Extreme Environments! and with our Young Professors we will be making some paper towel roll octopus pencil holders! I love these guys!!! We have a little blue friend of ours hanging on our bulletin board! :)

Our jellyfish friend! 

I went a little crazy with the camera! I finally remembered to bring it to work and I plan on taking full advantage of using it!

The Mad Scientists will be making hanging mobile-like jellyfish friends! They are too cute.