A little library ditty

Part of the joy of being an Assistant Librarian here at Ethical is I get to act like I’m not listening to idle conversation while checking out books to the students.

A kindergartener chose to take a Miami Dolphins football book yesterday, and proudly exclaimed his love for the team. The girl behind him chimed in, “My dad likes the Dolphins too, but he loves the Yankees: but not more than he loves me and my sister. First he loves me and my sister, then he loves the Yankees, then he loves chocolate ice cream.” She seemed to pause and reflect deeply for a moment and with deep conviction she corrected her statement. “No wait! Wait. First he loves me and my sister and my mom. Then he loves the Yankees. And then he loves chocolate ice cream.”

---Andrea Dolloff

Visit Brian Selznick's World

A city---an adventure---a new book!

Perhaps your family saw the film Hugo during the vacation and were wonderstruck. Prolong the wonder with Brian Selznick's new illustrated novel, Wonderstruck and explore the additional resources listed below to deepen your understanding and enjoyment.

Selznick's story takes you on a journey from the woods of Minnesota to the World’s Fair city panorama in Queens, NY and from the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan to the skyline seen from New Jersey. You will want to explore the sights with your own eyes after seeing them through Selznick’s--and you can!

The Panorama of the City of New York is amazing, and it's one of the real locations you can visit. Constructed for the 1964 World’s Fair, this architectural model includes every single building in all five boroughs, and it's still being updated! Walk up the ramp around this landmark and see if you can find your home. I found the Ethical Culture building and my apartment building.

Until January 15th, 2012, if you take a trip to the Queens Museum of Art where the panorama is found, you can see an exhibit of Selznick’s drawings and sketches for Wonderstruck. Additionally, the links below offer a virtual field-trip and other resources to add to your enjoyment of the book.

If you comment on any entry in our blog by the end of January, you will be entered in a drawing to win a copy of the book.

Related Websites:
http://www.queensmuseum.org/
http://www.wonderstruckthebook.com/home.htm
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/collection/vitural-field-trip-teaching-resources

Detail of Selznick's sketch of the Museum, from Wonderstruck, photographed 12/2011 by J. Still.

Our New Library System

It's been a fascinating process watching students negotiating Metis, our new categorization system, and tracking how they have been using our collection. While some of the new categories, such as Animals, represent more or less the same books as the corresponding Dewey sections (differently organized and named), there are some categories which I think of as synthetic, in that they pull together books which were scattered in Dewey. One such category is "G MakingStuff."

In the MakingStuff category we put all the books about crafts, activities, games, drawing: in fact, anything that kids might want to do for fun, including putting on plays, magic tricks, cooking, origami and collecting stamps. This includes books on models scattered through the 620s, cooking and sewing books from the 640s, and books from many different sections of the 700s.

The category, like nearly all of our categories, is arranged by subdivisions with the name of the craft or activity organized alphabetically. The use of whole words in the call number and on the spine label, along with the picture label on each book, makes it possible for students to easily identify where the category begins and ends, and to jump from one subtopic to another.

Watching students use this section has been interesting and exciting. There is quite often a group of students clustered around the area, and students help other students to find books on a craft or activity. I watched a third grader one morning begin by looking at a book on paper crafts, and then move on to a book about how to sew, which was the book he eventually checked out. This natural and simple segue from paper craft to sewing could never have happened with Dewey: it would have entailed a jump from 735 to 646. Our cooking books have never been better used; the same goes for the drawing books and many other crafts.

Our circulation statistics bear this out. The books in this section have seen an amazing 87% increase in circulation for the first three months of the school year. This is a category that 4th grade students specifically asked for last year when we discussed with them the ways that they thought about categorizing information and books, and it has been one of the most successful areas of our new system.