November begins: Looking for natives

As the new month begins and librarians everywhere take down their Day of the Dead and Halloween displays, we are putting up a display of Native American books, authors and posters about tribes. I find it sad that I have so few books by acknowledged Natives and wonder if anyone knows some authors or works that I should put on my library wish list for when our phantom funding becomes reality? I have Joseph Bruchac, Sherman Alexie, and Russell Freedman, but am looking for more sources to celebrate this rich heritage.

First Author Visit

East Valley HS had our first ever author visit on October 8, 2009. We won the 2008 Ed Pert Award from California Readers and the last part of the award is a visit by a California Author. We chose Caroline Arnold. She has published over 140 books in mostly fact format. Our library had nine before her visit and we purchased a few more and had them autographed for our school.

Ms. Arnold was prompt, organized, friendly, knowledgeable and patient. She spoke to seven classes of history students and even stayed after school to sign books for teachers. A lovely lady who shared her experiences with travel, choosing a career, editing process, and the creation of some of her artwork.

Banned Book Week

We just celebrated Banned Book Week in the EVHS library with a large display of banned classics and books challenged in the last year. And it is true what they say, "If you want a teenager to do something, tell them they aren't allowed to do it." We had great circulation and lots of interest in why was this book banned?

I talked about Banned Book Week in my freshman library orientation and the freshman class took off and ran with it! Obvoius favorites were the Bunny Suicide books and Rennison's Full Frontal Snogging, but I really enjoyed the renewed interest in reading and the busy open lunch periods with over 100 students per day.

Now to prep for our Author VIsit from California readers and get read for Teen Read Week.

May 2009

Life has gotten very busy. We won a grant from California Readers and got 100 new books by CA Authors and Illustrators! So we are processing and shelving on a special cart so students can start reading new books.

We also finally got some School Library and Improvement funds from the school site council and spent it on new books and videos and playaways for our school. We got nine boxes of books, and two more of audiovisual materials. I love unpacking new books and seeing the excitement on student's faces as they see things they requested finally arrive. The bad news is that we already have a new wishlist of over $300 of books that we now want. But we are always trying to improve our collection and make it more accessible to all students.

I still have a job! Budget concerns are very scary in a cash-strapped school, district, and state but it looks like I will still be here to serve the North Hollywood community for at least one more year. We are going to start inventory in a few weeks and are reminding our seniors of overdues and fines so no one is held back from graduation by uncleared debts to the library.

We will be losing at least one administrator, our literacy and math coaches and at least two, maybe 6 teachers. I repair and reuse as much as possible, but new books and videos are a must in today's society. Wish us luck and government funding.

Cambric- I still cannot view your blog. Please re invite me since it is listed as private.

Finishing First Semester

I have finished grading all the research project powerpoints and am waiting for the last January bookmarks to hit my desk today. I thought I would share the subjects students chose for their research. They were allowed to choose a person, place, or thing. The last research paper was a biographical paper so no one chose a person this time, but we did get lots of animals. ( This may have something to do with the last database we wrote up, Science Online from Facts on File.)

Anyway, I got projects on African Lions, giant pandas, chimpanzees, wolves, Bengal tigers, Panthers, hurricanes and Amsterdam. Even their bookmarks are reflecting diversified reading interests: manga (Tsubasa and Bleach), Fantasy (Skellig and Harry Potter), Biography (Tupac Amaru Shakur) and Adventure (the Ranger's Apprentice series). It makes my job much more fun, to read the reviews they do in bookmark format and provide them to our patrons on cardstock. Kids pick them up almost everyday and we are getting the news out about books that other students are reading now.

I will get allnew students in a week to train about OPAC, Dewey Decimals, order and database uses and citations. Life is good. I love living where the temperature can change 35+ degrees from 7 AM to 3 PM. I love having an avaerage of 200 studetns per day come through our library and I'm glad I have a job in this economy. Good reading to all.