So obviously I am posting my playlist.

Unlike Sara, I am one of those writers who very often writes to music. The music generally has to be something I know well (otherwise it distracts me with its novelty and newness), and often changes depending on what I’m working on. Here’s what’s in my current writing playlist and why I think it helps me write:

“Finest Worksong” by R.E.M.
“I’m talking here to me alone.” R.E.M. makes LOTS of good songs for working, and I will often listen to R.E.M. albums when writing, but this particular song contains a lot of good advice.

“This Sentence Will Ruin/Save Your Life” by The Born Ruffians
“Deadline, Deadline, Deadline. Write that essay, pray on the windowsill.” Pretty self-explanatory, that.

“Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac
“It’ll be, better than before.” You can only hope.

“Does This Mean You’re Moving On?” by The Airborne Toxic Event
“And the funny thing is it has no end.” We all need to be reminded to move on at some point.

“I Should Be Allowed to Think” by They Might Be Giants
“I should be allowed to shoot my mouth off.” Seriously, does it get better than a catchy song with a strong literary reference?

“Ahab” by MC Lars
“Hey, Ishmael, can I call you annoying?” YES! Another one! It’s also a good reminder not to take myself so freaking seriously.

“Song for the Dumped” by Ben Folds Five
“So you wanted to take a break?” I get a lot of energy out of the anger in this song when I’m stuck.

“This Year” by The Mountain Goats
“I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.” Or this essay or story or revision or whatever. I like the bit of narrative in this song, too.

“Extraordinary Machine” by Fiona Apple
“I still only travel by foot, and by foot it’s a slow climb.” If Fiona can fight her way through despair, so can I.

As for my BONUS POINTS, here’s my mix minus the two songs that weren’t on iTunes. (BOO iTunes.)

We had a smaller group for Storytime in the Park yesterday, about 80 kids. I knew this before, but 80 is my magic number. Too many more than 80 just freaks me out. Jason and I had more of a plan this week. On Monday, we sat down and made a list of what we thought we’d do, but we left ourselves the latitude to swap around the order. This is what we wound up with:

“Shake Your Sillies Out”
Rocking hit, although one girl who didn’t stand up for the song wound up getting her fingers stepped on. Ouch.

I Am Invited to a Party by Mo Willems
We’ve done several of the Elephant and Piggie books in storytime, but this is the one that consistently gets the most laughs. People seem to love the part with Elephant and Piggie shouting “PARTY!” back-and-forth.

“Two Little Blackbirds”
I do Rob Reid’s extended version (follow link and scroll down). It is brilliant.

“Mr. Spaceman” by The Byrds
Jason went through a Byrds phase a couple months ago, and he’s been singing this song for the kids ever since. He usually favors songs that get the kids jumping around (see “Shake Your Sillies Out”), but I think the kids and parents are really enjoying this. It’s nice because it’s different, it has a bit of narrative, and the kids are finally learning the chorus and singing along. Bravo, Jason!

The Wide-Mouthed Frog by Keith Faulkner and Jonathan Lambert
As anyone who has read my blog for any length of time should know, this is one of my favorite read-alouds. Yesterday was one of those extra-fun days when a lot of people did that oh-I’m-so-scared “oooo” when I turned the page to reveal the Big Green Alligator.

“Sticky, Sticky Bubblegum”
Just like last week.

“The Other Day I Met a Bear”
Jason does the words slightly differently than I know them, so I always have trouble joining in when he does the song. Nonetheless, the story and the call-and-response make it a good choice for a large mixed-age group.

“Little Bunny Foo-Foo”
Another one from Miss A’s Bag-O-Favorites. I heard from a few people that my voice wasn’t always loud enough last week, so I mostly used stuff I know really well this week so I could focus most of my energy on shouting. That worked out.

“Little Miss Muffet”
You can see Jason’s actions for this rhyme here:

This makes me laugh. WITH Jason. Never at him. Of course. Our relationship is characterized by excessive levels of professionalism.

“I Love Counting”
A song Jason wrote, which you can hear here:

WARNING: If you watch the video, you’ll be singing that “One Two Buckle My Shoe” business for the rest of the day. Don’t blame me.

“For the kid area Make more videos and more places to sit.”

“I like the farry house books and I think you need Farm Frends.”

“Try having more books for tweens, and young teens.”

“I wish they could get a pool hot tub and a TV”

“I think they should have a snack bar or a exsursice room for alduts.”

“buy more Wii games”

“I think you should have a tv and put a movie on because kids have to stay with there mom.”

“Julia, I love you. Love, Mommy”

In his Printz Honor acceptance speech for An Abundance of Katherines last year, author John Green said, “I heard Tobin Anderson say a few months ago that he is no longer opposed to fiction that teaches lessons, and neither am I. In fact, I believe that fiction must teach lessons—after all, any story that we believe in comes with a lesson, be they YA novels or Geico commercials.”

If John Green AND M.T. Anderson say something, it must be true.

Anyway, I happened to read this speech a day or two before I got my advanced reader’s copy of John Green’s newest novel, Paper Towns, which, like any sensible human being, I read immediately. The book follows one Quentin Jacobsen and what happens when his neighbor, childhood friend, and object of affection Margo Roth Spiegelman disappears a la Christopher McCandless (the young man profiled in Into the Wild, a book Green cites in his acknowledgments). In his speech, Green was making a point about moral lessons, but reading Paper Towns, I was struck by how much I like the other things Green teaches me in his books. In Looking for Alaska, he taught me a bunch of last words. In An Abundance of Katherines, he taught me to consider where tampon strings come from. In Paper Towns, he’s teaching me about a whole bunch of other stuff—paper towns, for a start, but also urban exploring, life in Orlando, and how one might go about breaking into Sea World.

Green doesn’t stop there. This is not the first time Margo Roth Spiegelman has gone missing, and when Quentin learns that Margo has always left clues when she’s run away in the past, he decides that he can find her. The clues start with a poster of Woody Guthrie taped to Margo’s bedroom window shade and move to “Walt Whitman’s Niece” on Billy Bragg and Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue album and then to old Walt himself in a copy of Leaves of Grass. If these things weren’t solid parts of a story that had me riveted and laughing, I’d be worried, but in this setting, I can’t help but smile thinking of the teenagers who might read this book and be interested enough to find some of this stuff themselves. It’s nervy the way Green has Quentin reading “Song of Myself” in increasingly desperate attempts to connect to Margo, all the while contemplating whether or not one can ever connect to anyone, which is how we get to that whole moral lesson thing Mr. Green was so concerned about in his Printz honor speech (and his other two novels, which, like this one, explore questions about whether we humans can ever truly understand each other and whether it is even worth trying). I like it.

In the end, well, I’m not telling. You can bet the Printz committee is talking the whole thing up out there in Anaheim, though. Even halfway through the year, I’d take a gamble on this book winning or taking an honor in January (right along with The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson, but that’s another story).

Books mentioned:
Green, John. An Abundance of Katherines. NY: Dutton, 2006. (HC: 9780525476887)
—Looking for Alaska. NY: Dutton, 2005. (HC: 9780525475064; PB: 9780142402511)
—Paper Towns. NY: Dutton, October 2008. (HC: 9780525478188)
Krakauer, John. Into the Wild. NY: Villard Books, 1996. (Only movie tie-in PB in print (BOO HISS!): 9780307387172)
Pearson, Mary E. The Adoration of Jenna Fox. NY: Henry Holt and Company, 2008. (HC: 9780805076684)
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. Ad nauseam and on the Internet.

That’s how it is for me and My Dog is as Smelly as Dirty Socks: and Other Funny Family Portraits by Hanoch Piven.

The premise of the book is simple: a little girl is told to draw a portrait of her family, which she does in pen on a piece of notebook paper. Her teacher says, “How great is that!” “But,” says the girl, “I didn’t like it.” Then she presents her family redrawn with objects. Her father, for instance, is “jumpy as a SPRING,” “playful as a SPINNING TOP,” and “fun as a PARTY FAVOR,” so she uses all these objects in her new portrait of him. Her baby brother, by contrast, is “sweet as CANDY,” “loud as a WHISTLE,” and, in fact, “loud as a FIRE TRUCK.” These portraits made with objects are reminiscent of the snow people (and animals) in Lois Ehlert’s Snowballs, lively art that explores colors and shapes and textures and invites children to try it out themselves. Piven takes this a step further, though, showing how the choice of objects can add layers of meaning to a piece. He’s teaching his readers about how to make art, yes, but he’s also teaching them about symbolism. Better yet? He’s couching it in this wonderful little story about a girl with dynamic parents, a pain-in-the-butt older brother, a very loud baby brother, and a stinky dog. The big brother’s pig nose, the baby brother’s gummi bear hair, the dog’s sardine feet—I double-dog-dare you not to laugh out loud.

I want to take a minute to draw your attention to the endpapers on this book, too, which consist of numerous portraits made out of objects, none of which appear in the book itself. The author’s note on the verso of the title page reveals that these are portraits done by children and teens battling cancer at the Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel in a “Drawing with Objects” workshop he did there in January 2006. This made me love Piven’s book that much more. I will definitely be using it in a program one of these days so I can have an excuse to use stuff around the library to create object portraits of my coworkers to inspire the children to think about symbols and make object portraits of their own.

Books mentioned:
Ehlert, Lois. Snowballs. San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 1995. (LIB: 9780152000745; BOARD ed. from Red Wagon: 9780152162757)
Piven, Hanoch. My Dog is as Smelly as Dirty Socks: and Other Funny Family Portraits. NY: Schwartz & Wade Books, 2007. (HC: 9780375840524; LIB: 9780375940521)

“Shake Your Sillies Out”
Jason played this on the guitar. It was a big hit, and no children were injured.

My Friend is Sad by Mo Willems
We had two copies of the book. Jason read Elephant, and I read Piggie. Several children exclaimed, "They have two books!" This made it the educational portion of our program.

Bark, George by Jules Feiffer
I read this. I was unusually freaked out by the size of the crowd and how loud/chaotic things seemed on the edge of the group, so it wasn’t my best reading ever. (I kept being distracted by thoughts like, “Why is that child screaming?” “Are those people coming or going?” “Is that woman talking on a cell phone?”) Still, Bark, George is pretty much a sure hit, and everyone laughed at the end when George says, “Hello!”

“Humpty Dumpty”
Jason’s created motions to go with this nursery rhyme. It involves making an egg with your hands way up high over your head and then making it fall all the way to the ground on the “had a great fall.” Fun.

“Mr. Wiggle and Mr. Waggle”
This is one of those stories I tell ALL THE TIME, so a lot of the kids know it. This is an especially good thing, I think, when you’re dealing with a crowd this large.

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems
Jason read this, and it was one of the strangest readings of this book I’ve ever seen, as the children were reluctant to shout NO at the pigeon. I mean, some kids did, but with 115 kids, we should have blown the roof off the pavilion. I keep meaning to ask Jason what he thinks about this. In theory, this is the best book ever for a crowd.

“Old MacDonald Had a Farm”
Jason, guitar, fun. I think we should do this song every week.

“Sticky, Sticky Bubblegum”
I love this song. Happily, the kids do, too.

Do Monkeys Tweet by Melanie Walsh
The kids wouldn’t shout at the Pigeon, but they did shout at me when I was asking them crazy questions like whether or not little mice purr. Plus, they laughed. Walsh’s books always work well with a mixed-aged group like this.

“Six Little Ducks”
I love this song. Jason has the kids all join in with the “quack, quack, quack” parts. They sing AND snap their hands like beaks.

I am a reader, so I don’t really know what it means to be bored. More often, I am overwhelmed by the great many things I want to read and see and do. Even as a child, when my friends would complain about being bored, I’d think, “Don’t you have something to read?” Or as my BFF Tammy tells her eight-year-old, “Only boring people get bored.” That’s the trouble, though. Kids are inquisitive and interesting and often vastly entertaining, but they’re also kids. They don’t have a lot of experience in the world, they are still developing social skills, and there’s a lot about life that they just don’t get. Adults who have children in their care for days and days and days at a time (say all summer) are going to get bored with their bored children, no matter how much they love them.

They make a book for that.

In fact, they make LOTS of books for that. We have stacks and stacks of them here at WPL. Most libraries do.

Take, for instance, the bestselling The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden and The Daring Book for Girls by Andrea J. Buchanan, Miriam Peskowitz, and Alexis Seabrook. When I first heard about The Dangerous Book for Boys, I thought, “Gimmick.” But, no, it’s good. Both books are. They start with great design and wonderful old-fashioned covers that put me in mind of the 10-volume set of Junior Classics I so loved when I was a child (except The Daring Book for Girls has sparkles on the cover, which the Junior Classics people would not have tolerated). Each book consists of short entries such as “The Five Knots Every Boy Should Know,” “Making Cloth Fireproof,” “Telling Ghost Stories,” and “Cootie Catchers.” Maybe you and your children will never make your own marbled paper or seine net, as the books suggest, but, personally, I like knowing I could if I wanted to. Other entries about things like pressing flowers or folding the best paper airplane are gimmies. OF COURSE you’re going to try them. How could you not?

Summer is a time of activity, and science is a natural way to blend activity with a little intellectual stimulation. That’s when you want a series like Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science. It’s designed for lower-elementary kids who are developing reading skills, but they make equally fine read-alouds for children who aren’t yet reading. Books like Air is All Around You by Franklyn M. Branley and John O’Brien and Why Frogs are Wet by Judy Hawes and Mary Ann Fraser explain some of the things kids may be seeing and noticing in their daily outdoor adventures; you may learn something, too. Each book concludes with a couple pages of activities the whole family can try, encouraging further exploration of the topic in the library and out in the great wide world.

For upper elementary kids, I love the Kids Can Do It series from Kids Can Press. This crafting series is all bright covers, excellent photographs, and clear instructions. With tempting titles like Hemp Jewelry, Knitting, and Wind Chimes and Whirligigs, adults may want to leave kids out of the fun, but, I’m sorry, you must let them play, too.

Another series of sorts that I like is the art and history activity books available from Chicago Review Press. Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors: An Activity Guide by Marian Broida, for example, offers suggestions on making clothing like ancient Egyptians might have worn, an imaginary Nubian house, and Hittite lentil soup. As another example, Monet and the Impressionists for Kids: Their Lives and Ideas by Carol Sabbeth offers instruction on how to make an “Art-to-Go Knapsack,” draw a face, and how to bake “Seurat Sugar Cookies.” The books in this series blend information and activities in an engaging way and focus on creating the types of multi-layered and multi-sensory experiences in which most children (and adults!) learn best.

One of the biggest benefits I get from working with children is a daily reminder is how much we humans learn through play, children and adults alike. So if it turns out that you and your children hate knitting, return the book. Check out another few books. Try something else. Play around. You’ll all learn more in the end if you’re having fun, and fun is what summer in Western NY is about.

Even if it is an ARC, I have to believe that line is a keeper.

He came with this note:

I feel like I recognize that handwriting, but I don’t know where from. This mystery is vexing, especially since I think I love this puppet more than all my other puppets combined (if you’ve never seen my office, you might not realize this is saying something, but I find that being a children’s librarian is an excellent cover for my enduring fondness for puppets). Hopefully whoever gave me this wonderful gift reads this blog, because I FREAKING LOVE TUXEDO CAT. Whoever gave him to me should know.

Here we are together:

It was love at first sight for Tuxedo Cat and me. He is, by far, the highest-quality puppet I own. He’s made out of beautiful, soft cloth. He has great eyes that look like he’s really seeing something. I’ve never used a full-arm puppet like this before, but I’m amazed how expressive he can be with relatively simple movements. I’ve even been working on a voice for him. I’m trying to make it sound a little meow-ish, but in reality it might be a combination of Snarf and Fran Drescher. I’ll have to keep working on it.

I had the great good fortune to go to Buffalo yesterday to celebrate Jen being sworn into the NYS Bar. WOO, JEN! I can tell you from watching Jen work hard that getting to the point of being sworn into the Bar is no freaking joke. It’s also had her home twice in the last several weeks, so I’m a fan of this particular event on many levels.

Hail, though? Not so much.

We were having drinks with friends at Shango when the second hail storm started. Outside, it was that weird it’s-not-quite-dark-but-not-quite-light where there’s still light in the sky but the streetlights are on, and the hail fell for a few good minutes. I caught a small piece in my hand; some of the larger pieces were about the size of a jawbreaker. I was fully expecting the storm to be followed by a plague of locusts or perhaps a zombie uprising that would force us to become a rag-tag band of survivors and lock ourselves up in the bar to wait out our troubles, just like Shaun of the Dead. I think between Jim and I, we’ve probably seen most of the zombie films currently available on DVD. We would have had the situation covered. It didn’t come to that, though. We had another round, waited out the storm, and then went home in our freshly dimpled cars. Maybe next time. You never know with Buffalo.

I’ve been having other adventures. It’s fun here in Lake Worth.

Here are the rules:
Link to the person that tagged you, post the rules somewhere in your blog, answer the questions, and tag four people in your post. Don't forget to let the tagees know they were tagged, so leave a comment on their blog! And remember to let your tagger know that your entry is posted.

1. Who's your favorite all-time author, and why?
I’m going to go for Tolkien. I know it’s kind of cliché, but he is the author I reread most often. He combines so many things that are important to me: language, fantasy, big themes, humor. As a second, I’d go for Jane Austen because her books CRACK ME UP. Third, Robert Frost.

2. Who was your first favorite author, and why?
Alice Provensen, no question. I loved Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm and read it over and over. The cover fell off. It’s so sad that this book is out of print.

3. Who's the most recent edition to your list of favorite authors, and why?
Libba Bray. I can’t wait to see what she writes next.

4. If someone asked you who your favorite authors were right now, what would pop out of your mouth?
The authors mentioned above, plus Sara Lewis Holmes, Robin Brande, Jack Gantos, David Sedaris, Anne Lamott, Sarah Vowell, Adam Rex, Lemony Snicket, Jane Austen, John Green, Sara Pennypacker—I’d go on and on. A lot of authors’ work interests me for a lot of different reasons.

I don’t want to put anyone on the spot with a tag, so I’ll just say if you’re interested in answering the questions, please do!

I finished this on the plane today. It’s all marked up with post-its. Good stuff.

At the end of the school year, we endeavor to visit as many schools as possible and attempt to convince groups of children to visit the library repeatedly during the summer. On some level, elementary school children are easy. I have their attention the moment I utter, “We have Wii games.” I aspire to something, more, though. I want to do something memorable, something they’ll feel good about—and I want that something to be connected to a book.

For years, I’ve been showing off my string tricks. The kids in Webster are kind of used to my string tricks by now, but some still suspect that I am capable of magic (which I TOTALLY AM). They’ve also heard a lot of my stories, although I’m encouraged to find that they don’t mind hearing them again. Still, I’m always on the lookout for something new to add to my repertoire and grab their attention. This year, it was 2006’s Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? and 2007’s Knock, Knock!

As is so often the case with these things, my decision to use these books was a whim. I was running around the morning before I had to visit a school fretting that I didn’t have enough cool stuff in my Cool Stuff Bag when I saw Knock, Knock! on the shelf and tossed it in. Then I very randomly picked it out of the Cool Stuff Bag when I was standing in front of the first class and opened to the joke by Brett Helquist (“Knock, knock! Who’s there? Ima. Ima who? Ima gonna huff, Ima gonna puff, and IMA gonna BLOW this house down.”). We all laughed, so I tried some more. The most successful jokes were the old “lettuce in” one by Saxton Freymann (perfect, right?), “a mosquito bit me” by Boris Kulikov, and the loooong Easter bunny one by Henry Cole. I never shared the whole book with any of the classes. Rather, I shared a few jokes and encouraged kids to come in and check it out. As I became more comfortable, I started connecting the artists to their books. (Me: “Brett Helquist is the artist who illustrates the Series of Unfortunate Events books.” Two or three children: “I’m reading those!”) The whole thing worked as well with fourth graders as it did with Kindergarteners. It’s a book, it’s funny, it celebrates art—what more could a librarian want?

A second one, of course. Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? was equally successful. As soon as I held it up in one class, one boy shouted, “OH YOU HAVE GOT TO SHOW US THE ONE WITH THE MUTANT ZOMBIE CHICKENS!!!” This boy’s advice is good: show them the one by Harry Bliss with the mutant zombie chickens. Marla Frazee’s chicken running toward a slide was popular, as was David Shannon’s “Because the light was green!”

Since I love you, I will share my Patented Favorite Way to End a Summer Reading Visit: “Go home and tell your parents you want to go to the library RIGHT NOW!”

As far as I’m concerned, Jon Scieszka (“rhymes with Fresca”) can do no wrong. He’s the author of many of my favorite laugh-out-loud-funny books: Math Curse, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, Cowboy and Octopus, Summer Reading is Killing Me, and more. I’ve seen him speak at numerous conferences, and he’s one of those people who manages to be both funny and intelligent. I love the way he’s drawn attention to boys’ literacy with his Guys Read initiative, and I was happy when I heard he was chosen as the first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature (say that five times real fast).

So it’s been with no small amount of interest that I’ve been watching the development of Scieszka’s new Trucktown series. The series focuses on the adventures of a group of anthropomorphized trucks (Dump Truck Dan, Monster Truck Max, Rescue Rita, etc.) and is geared toward hooking kids on books and supporting developing literacy. Most of Scieszka’s previous work has been best appreciated by children who are reading or very close to it (say, your average second-grader), but he’s aimed the Trucktown books at pre-readers—preschoolers and Kindergarteners. A former elementary school teacher himself, Scieszka knows as much about literacy development as he does about writing, making him an ideal candidate to put something like this together.

I’ve finally read some of the Trucktown books, and what I’ve seen so far is—dare I say?—exciting.

In the world of children’s literature, it’s rare to see a marketing campaign that equals the quality of the work being done. The publisher started things off right by putting together a team of excellent children’s book illustrators to bring Scieszka’s truck characters to life (David Shannon, Loren Long, and David Gordon), and that’s paid off in characters that are easily recognizable and engaging. The publisher is also releasing a number of books at once: board books, interactive board books, picture books, beginning readers, even coloring and activity books. This is the kind of treatment publishers normally reserve for television characters like Dora the Explorer or Bob the Builder. There’s even a website, WITH GAMES.

Aside from the illustrations and brilliant marketing, Scieszka’s written books that every child who goes through a truck phase is going to love (and A LOT of kids go through a truck phase). The first picture book in the series, Smash! Crash!, follows best friends Jack Truck and Dump Truck Dan as they drive around town smashing into things. Are there preschoolers who don’t squeal in delight when playing the Let’s Smash Toy Cars into Stuff Game? I was happily playing this with my friend’s preschooler just last week, and I’ve never even been through a truck phase (well, maybe I was for, like, five minutes when I was sixteen, but that’s quite a different story). One of the board books, Vroom! It’s Color Time!, is a color concept book that has those pieces you can pop out and play with. My favorite so far is probably the beginning reader Pete’s Party, which tells its story through the illustrations and street signs. This is brilliant on a lot of levels. In terms of a beginning reader, it makes for a short, easy-to-follow text. With signs like “Trucks Use Fake Mustaches,” it’s also pretty funny. In terms of literacy, it builds on a child’s developing awareness of signs and the ways the printed word is used in everyday life. Nifty! It’s kind of like mixing medicine with apple juice, but way more fun.

I think these trucks are just getting started. For more information about upcoming releases, visit the Parent’s Area of the Trucktown website.