Monday's Post: Special Topic-Wonderstruck Exhibition and Brian Selznick talk at Queens Museum of Art

 

 I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to view the aforementioned exhibition and listen to Brian Selznick talk about this book, a little about the Invention of Hugo Cabret, and the upcoming movie based on the book. The reason why the exhibition and author talk took place at the museum was because the museum is a "character" in this book. In the Queens Museum of Art, is the Panorama and its featured in the book! Specifically, the Panorama is a life sized model of the 5 boroughs of New York City. The lighting changes during the day and at "night", a number of the buildings are lit up. They are working to have all the buildings lit up. Also there is a little "plane" that goes up and down a string at the JFK and Laguardia airports.

  For all of you who do not know about the book, Wonderstruck,  the main characters visit places all across New York City, specifically The American Museum of Natural History and Queens Museum of Art.  For more information about the book, here is a good review, Wonderstruck Book Review.

 What is unique about this book is that the two main characters are deaf. Brian Selznick explains that he was inspired to have two deaf protagonists when he saw a documentary called Through Deaf Eyes, which was featured on PBS and covers over 200 years of the culture of deaf people.

 Brian Selznick discusses the painstaking process he undertook to complete the book and the illustrations. It took him three years to complete. He explains how he approached Queens Museum of Art to perform research for this book.  There were several interesting experiences during his research. The first was that he was allowed to walk through the model, wearing "hospital booties". Secondly, he was able to go on the top of the roof of the museum.

 He had approached the curator and another staff member of the museum about the exhibition and author talk. This was just before the release of his book on September 13th.

 During this exhibition, you also learn about the history of the Panorama. The Panorama was created during the 1964 World's Fair and designed by Robert Moses. It is 9335 square feet and has 895,000 individual structures spanning five boroughs all built up to the year 1992. The original Panorama had a 9 minute helicopter ride.

 Brian Selznick mentioned that he is excited about the release of Hugo, based on his book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The film is directed by Martin Scorese and stars Jude Law and Ben Kingsley. Brian Selznick though that the movie was very well done and faithful to the book.

 Finally, Brian Selznick signed a movie poster that is now hanging up in the library. I have a picture of it that I will post here soon. I want to make sure I have permission to post pictures from the event. If so, they will be posted soon. It was a great event and I was glad I had the opportunity to be part of such a special occasion. I can't wait to read the book.

Wednesday's Topic: Reading Levels for Kids

 How do you all organize books in your library? We have it basically by age group for fiction and then alphabetical order by author's last name or series title. Then of course the non fiction by Dewey and then some special sections (mainly in Dewey).

 We have picture books, easy readers, intermediates (what do you guys call your beginner readers and beginning chapter books?) these are our names for them, series, paperback fiction, hardcover fiction, graphic novels, mystery, science fiction and fantasy. We have special non fiction sections called: Science Experiments, Parenting, Test Prep, holiday books, Easy science and math, and foreign language books.

Now to further complicate things, I know the schools use some different way to organize their books and catergorize their books in different levels that may not correspond to our organization. Has anyone ever heard of the Fountas and Pinnell Guided Readers? That is what is used to categorize books by levels in the NYC public schools. They go by letter levels and they are supposed to be organized by grade and also reading ability but I am not sure of the exact criteria. We found this out from the parents and only one parent had it in more detail and I had to do research on my own to find out what it means. Do your schools do the same or do they have a different level system? Have they asked you for books based on a different level?

Oops: Belated Blogcation post

 I forgot to mention that I was going on vacation last week and that is why I have not posted. I went to Vancouver, which was very nice. Any of you been there?

 I am going back to a modified version of my pre summer schedule. I will post about programs, Tuesday book reviews and other interesting library news.

 I am going to NYLA (New York Library Assoc.) Annual Conference in November. I am going to try to post from there and if not, I will post reviews when I get back.

Wednesday's Topic: Summer Reading Parties

Sorry it took me so long to post this. I have been trying to plug away at my book order for September, so I finish it by my vacation next week. Here is the recap of my summer reading parties.

Tuesday's party: I decided to do two parties to make it easier for the volunteers and me. The age group of this party was mainly 8-11. We checked off the names of the kids on a list who were expected to attend the party. The party started with children decorating their summer reading certificates. Then we had an organized plan for serving the food and drinks to the kids. The volunteers were great with this. We ensured that the kids made a minimum of a mess by giving out most of the snacks and drinks ourselves. We also made sure we wore gloves. We served ice cream, cookies, chips, chocolate and popcorn. After the food we did our raffle. We had less raffles this year because of the decreased amount of raffle prizes we had this year. The party was a success. At the end, we gave the kids a yellow Queens Library tote bag with several prizes inside.

Thursday's party: This was for the younger kids, mainly 2-7. The party was very similar to the one on Tuesday, except on the certificates for the younger kids, we filled in all the information for them. Otherwise everything was similar to the first party. I was impressed by the volunteers and how well both parties went.

Book Talk: Moving Day (Book #1 in Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls)

  Moving Day is the first book in the Allie Finkle series. Allie is an a likeable 9 year old. She develops a book of rules to help guide her through the difficulties in her life. These difficulties include: differences between best friends and moving. Allie loves her home, school and her life in Walnut Knolls, aside from her tumultuous friendship with Mary Kay. She is upset when she learns she has to move to Pine Heights to an old home. This great book illustrates the story of how Allie eventually accepts the idea of moving to Pine Heights. There are a lot of amusing ancedotes in this book. Children who read this book will be sure to want to read others in the series.