A little storytime with Miss Kitty

Well my friends, the year is winding down for 2014. Here's one last story to read together before the New Year!

Copyright 2003. Peachtree Publishers

Let's read Santa's Last Present by Marie-Aude Murial and her sister, Elvire. Just like Winter and childhood, this blog post won't stay around permanently. But you CAN find this book at your library for quite some time to come and I hope you'll visit soon. I hope you'll also look for more books illustrated by Quentin Blake. 

I hope you keep the joy of reading your whole long lives and Happiest of Holidays to you all! xoxo Miss Kitty.

The Turtle Who Couldn't Stop Talking

It's dark and rainy today in Marin. Let's curl up on the couch with some hot chocolate and I'll read you a quick story. This story is from our folk and fairy tale collection; it's called The Turtle Who Couldn't Stop Talking. You'll find this story and many others in Demi's lovely book The Pandas and their Chopsticks.

Illustrated by Demi. ©2014. Courtesy of www.wisdomtalespress.com

Oh so Pinteresting

I do so hope you'll take a moment and follow my Pinterest boards. Together with the MCFL Kids board, we are migrating most of our reading lists to this platform. You'll find lots of great recommendations. We've included Accelerated Reader and Lexile Reading Levels to help you. Each "pin" will link you to our catalog. So sit down with a nice cup of hot chocolate and get inspired by all the great reading choices you can find our library.

Naturally being the wonderful person you are, dear reader, I'm sure you'll to want to take notes for some excellent HOLIDAY GIFTS this year!!! Print or electronic, there are some many wonderful things to read, listen, or view this season.

Happy Halloween

I love this little skeleton doggy in a fun pop-up book Silly Skeletons that we read this week for our storytimes.

But our Civic Center Library has something even better.... our own skeleton man walking his doggy!!!!

It's grey and rainy on this Halloween day in beautiful Marin County. But fear not! You can download books and music and movies sitting in your jammies at home if it's raining too hard.
But walking in the rain is so nice too; there's still plenty of time to grab an umbrella and your pooch and walk over to the library. We have so many fun Halloween books for you to check out and that's just a treat isn't it?!

We all Steam for Ice Cream!

October is Science Month and the perfect time to investigate science, technology, engineering, art, and math.












Join Miss Kitty for a delicious experiment making our own vanilla ice cream in a bag!  Be sure you sign up to reserve a space and bring a pair of gloves or oven mitts because our hands are definitely going to get cold and then we can eat our delicious results.

Wait for the flash!

Everyone had a great time at our Family Games and Photo booth night. Take a look at all the goofy photos here.

I made all the paper props you see using my Cricut and Silhouette cutting machines. We rented the photobooth from Purple Monkey.

 We'll definitely have a Family Game Night again (without a photo booth), so stay tuned!

Strike a Pose! Photo Booth and Game Night at the Civic Center Library

Join us Tuesday, September 16th for a fun night of family games and a photo booth to snap your picture.

We'll have lots of games to play, some silly props, and even some milk and cookies.

 

Here are all the details. See you soon! 

Don't let the pigeon loose in the library!

Don't let the pigeon loose in the library, okay? 

 Why not? I never get to do anything?!?! It should be very educational.....please? please? please?

The dust has finally settled from our library rennovation this spring and the hundreds of little paws in the library this summer playing our reading game. It's been quite a year for The Civic Center Branch. Behold our wayward pigeon that a colleague spotted behind the corner bookshelves in the Children's Room.

As the bus driver above was asleep, we called The Marin Humane Society  and they sent over their most talented pigeon-whisperer who skillfully captured and freed our pigeon.

So, with your nice new back-to-school shoes, hoof  (or wing) it over the Library. Get a nice new library card if you don't already posses one, and net yourself a few of the hilarious Pigeon books by Mo Willems.  

All images from Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late! Mo Willems. Click through for library catalog.

   

Bingo!

Allow me to hit "pause" for a moment while I share with you something fun I tuned into this week during our "Paws to Read" Summer Reading Game.

The summer reading game is a bingo format this year and as you can read, one of the challenges is to tell a joke to a library staff member, and read a biography- we'll get to that one in a second.

To be honest, 90% of the jokes I've been told have been quite, uhmm, abstract shall we say. But I laugh even if I have no idea what the punchline means because the kids are laughing.

I had to pause a moment, signing up a nice young man, when I saw the name Philo Farnsworth. I was quite impressed and thought this was perhaps the most sophisticated joke I might witness this summer if not in my entire career; using the name of the scientist/inventor credited with inventing television!

But it was no joke! Allow me to introduce Philo, the great grandson of Philo T. Farnswoth!
It really was a red letter day for me (he's proudly wearing his run for reading T-shirt from school)
and my new buddy could not have been more sweet and charming.

So, of course for Philo's biography challenge, I knew exactly what to hand him. I do believe I see a family resemblance as well!

click on image to go to library catalog

While we're all enjoying our summer vacation watching The World Cup on television, let us applaud Philo T. Farnsworth who's brilliant mind made that possible.

Keep reading all summer long and who knows what brilliant ideas you might come up with.

Play the Critter Quiz!

I bet you spy some of your favorite library book critters on the flyer above....all four of them are near and dear to my heart. 

Visit your local Marin County Free Library branch May 4-18 and play a fun game that challenges your knowledge of literary critters. 

You'll win a free pass to the 2014 Marin County Fair and if you read a book about animals in the library, you'll win a 2nd pass.  

As always, tickets are limited; when they're gone they're gone! Grab your favorite critter, real or not, your library card, and take a nice little walk over to the library. 

See you soon!  Miss Kitty

 

  

A little yarn

As you know dear reader, I am endlessly fascinated by what shows up on my desk. Here we have a certain Miss K's Kindergarten art class project from 2010. Now a third grader, I guess she had to really ponder the emotional investment of giving it to  me.

What I love about this art exercise is the possibility that there was some subversive art rebellion being born. Obviously a class about shapes and colors, I love it that Miss K elected to put red scraps in the green triangle shape and green scraps in the blue rectangle shape.

Which brings us to one of my very favorite "unauthorized" street art movements; yarn bombing!!
The MacMillon Dictionary defines it as "The activity of putting knitted coverings on statues, posts, seats and other public objects, especially secretly and without official permission."

Blogger Laurie Jess has a wonderful post about this with some great images. Check it out!

Are these trees in Seattle not fantastic!  

I just love this chain link fence lace bombed by Demakersvan. There is wonderful post about this on
If It's Here It's Hip's blog.

Where does this yarn I'm spinning meander off to you ask? With this wonderful new picture book in our library.

Winner of many awards, including a Caldecott Honor, Mac Barnett's Extra Yarn is clever and charming. Jon Klassen (A Caldecott winner himself) is the perfect illustrator for this fresh picture book. I want to keep this yarn a mystery, so I won't tell you the story. You'll have to place a hold on this or meander over the library and check it out along with a couple of books about knitting. And do check this earlier post on the subject of yarn and knitting as well....

Just don't yarn bomb Miss Kitty {wink}

Snicket is the Ticket

Question:
A mom in the children’s room asked for “light reading” for her 5^th grade son who is home sick.  He likes 39 Clues, but we didn’t have the next in the series.  I gave him Chomp by Carl Hiassen, and we looked for Louis Sachar but didn’t have any he hadn’t already read.  Other suggestions?

Answer:
You've come up with excellent suggestions already, you smart cookie! Might I suggest the dastardly delicious Who Could That be at This Hour by Lemony Snicket. Somehow a little Snicket is just the ticket when one is home sick in bed especially for a mystery fan. Do check this previous post.

 It's a fair bet you will find some Big Nate books on the shelf and those go down pretty easy. Lastly I would give Tunnels by Roderick Gordon a whirl as well.

 

Gratitude List

We begin this new year with a bright, blank, new page.  Thinking about keeping lists and diaries and journals made me immediately think of one of my all time favorite chapter books, Time Stops for No Mouse by Michael Hoeye.

Hermux Tantamoq (pronounced more along the lines of "hair-mew", rather than "her-mux"), is a mouse and watchmaker. His quiet life changes forever when he meets a daredevil aviatrix named Ms. Linka Perflinger. Hermux has a pet ladybug named "Terfle" and dear friend named "Mirrin" who gifts him a sketchbook. Hermux decides to use the sketchbook to keep lists of things he's grateful for. A mouse after my own heart. This is his first entry;

Thank you for friendship most of all. Thank you for cuff links. And for singing larks dressed up like carnival moths. Thank you for dark theaters. For mousetraps even. Thank you for Terfle. For cotton sheets and soft pillows and apple juice. And cheese.

I hope you'll check this lovely read-aloud out. You know, Hermux even has his own website. I guess they must make teeny tiny mouse-paw sized computer keyboards somewhere.

I hope you'll start a list of all the books you want to read and all the things you're grateful for. Like having your very own library card.

Thank you for surprises, for adventure. Thank you for nice mice like Blanda Nergup, for intrigue, for rascals like Nock Noddem, for skeptical policemen. Thank you for elevators and trolleys and newspapers. Thank you for friendly neighbors. For rules to follow and rules to break. And thank you in advance for a good night's sleep.