In the last week of August, I took my loon storytime on the road. I led storytimes at 10 Central Minnesota locations. It was a great reminder of how libraries are treasures.
Here’s a lovely activity sheet from Capstone. It’s for my newest book, Line Leads the Way (illustrated by Alice Caldarella), which celebrates libraries. I’d love to have students fill these out and then have their libraries display them. What do you think?
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I haven’t made my list on paper yet, but here are the first 5 answers that come to mind when I think about how libraries are treasures. And here are a bunch of pics from my storytime tour, too!
Of course, libraries are treasures for the books and other materials they curate. But also, libraries are treasures because they…
- are filled with librarians and other amazing staff and volunteers. [Here are some of the fabulous librarians I met on my tour of Kitchigami Regional Library. Thank you, Allison Royce, for inviting me!]
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- create colorful and engaging spaces for patrons. The children’s areas were so fun. And I saw jigsaw puzzles laid out, beautiful welcome signs, hand-crafted decor, and of course, books by friends.
- partner with other local organizations to try to broaden their outreach. I was lucky to visit the National Loon Center and the Green Island Preserve with my storytime.
- invite non-locals to visit. This gives the visitor (in this case, me!) a wonderful dip into another region, another culture, another way of looking at the world. And it gives a small sample of all that to those who attend the events too.
- support and celebrate their communities in so many ways! Food pantries, hygiene supplies, resources to useful social services, displays by local artists—the list is long and varied.
I hope you’ll download and complete this treasure of an activity sheet. Let your library know just how much you appreciate them! I’d love photos of your own sheet or your students’, if I can share them online. Thank you!
[My Classroom Connections posts share a way to connect one of my books or poems to a classroom topic–often something timely that you might be covering in the next month or so. Please share this post if you have educator friends who might be interested–thanks!]