Reluctant J(uvenile): August 2011

These aren't new books, but they're new to me!

I thought this book was really cute, especially because I know that they are teaching the alphabet out of order now in some pre-school classes.

This book wins the cuteness award this week. Mostly because I have two kittens at home.

This was my favorite of the week. David Carrow's illustrations were absolutely beautiful. Plus the story was very cute, about a little girl who refuses to stop painting. I like any story that encourages creativity.

This is the book I wanted to like but just didn't. I've always liked Lane Smith and this book is an amusing friendship tale... But the punchline of the book I just don't know that children would understand.

I have always enjoyed reading the "day in the life posts" so here is mine.

This week the boss lady and the youth services guy are on vacation. For some reason I said "Oh it won't be crazy, it's been so calm lately". Bad idea. I jinxed the library. The last hour and a half we were open yesterday our system went down. No internet, no circulation, etc. I think it was a little more hectic today.

I went craft shopping last week for the library. I'll write up the whole list of purchases and their intended crafts later on... But for now I have a slight obsession with doing friendship bracelets. So today I had the aide look through the book with the embroidery floss and pick out an easy project to do later in the week.
Since the system was down yesterday, we had to manually check things out (write down all the info), First thing I had to do today was enter in all that info. One bar code at a time.
Decided to update the website list hanging by the children's computers. I added a couple new sites with education aspects to them and a couple silly gaming sites. Also, I printed out smaller copies of each list to be taped right next to the computers. This is for the kids that don't quite know how to spell, or get to the sites. Hope it helps.
Got a phone call, didn't know the answer to the question, told the woman to call back in 30 min when the other librarian came back.
I went up to the desk to help a clerk with a patron. The patron was denying she ever checked out the lost items on her card...blah blah blah. All I know, is that by the middle of the conversation I was lying or accusing them of lying, one of the two. By the end, the situation was wrapped up (and I explained the confusion that I wasn't lying and neither was she) and I told her to follow up next week when boss lady was back from vacation.
Probably 10 minutes after the phone call from the lady, she called back again. Not only to repeat her first question, which I told her again I didn't know the answer to, but to now complain about a lost DVD on her card. All she kept saying was that it wasn't fair the stupid DVD was lot on her card. I put her on hold and when she called back (after someone hung up on her, apparently), the page handled the call. She gave her the phone number she was looking for and tried to tell her about the DVD but she also got yelled at. She gets brownie points for being polite.
Started the Where's Waldo project. I found an old Where's Waldo book on the shelf that was falling apart so I decided to take each set of pages out and laminate them. That way, they were protected from damage and you could write on them with marker (and wipe it off). Since there are so many random kids here, I thought it would be one more thing that's out all the time to entertain them. It was my genius idea of last week.
Sometime during the Waldo Project I was asked who Waldo was. I cried a little on the inside, and felt old at the same time.
At some point another library called, saying the woman who called us earlier called there because we told her to. Um, nope, never happened.
Crowning moment of the day: At the same time, the adult librarian and I, noticed a teen using one of our phones. I told her to get off because she didn't ask permission. She replied that it wasn't that a big deal and that I got an attitude with her and I didn't need to do that... I then told her to leave the library, and she said she'll leave whenever she wants and I don't need to get an attitude with her. There were multiple uses of the F word. That was my breaking point. It had been a while since a teenager yelled at me, I forgot what it was like. But, seriously, disrespectful behavior is intolerable. I remember a time when children and teenagers respected adults and didn't curse at them for correcting their behavior.

Since then it has been kind of quiet. I am not going to further jinx myself though!