Wednesday, October 31, 2007

All the kids disappear on Halloween... who knew?

So, today I had my first-ever zero attendance at a program. I don't blame the kids. I think trick-or-treating in our village started at 3 or 4 and the program was scheduled from 4-4:45, so there ya go...

Still, it was a nice program. It was part of our After School Adventures fall session, which is for kids in grades K-4th. B and I had picked out some slightly scary stories and we made a pin-the-nose-on-the-pumpkin game (which we both tried out and at which we both suck). I discovered that B was an art minor in college and his pumpkin was fantastic! We shall save it for next year and hopefully kids will actually show up. :)

Generally After School Adventures has been VERY well attended this session and it's been one of the high points of my first year. The kids are great, very funny and lively and they've really gotten into all the activities we've planned.

Registration starts tomorrow for our November programs. I sent out an email to the people who had signed up for our teen mystery over the summer and told them about our second teen mystery, which is coming up on November 9. It's a no-school day, so I'm hopeful we'll have a good crowd, but you can never tell with our patrons... Lots of people like to go out of town on long weekends. S and I sat down yesterday and really got a good foundation on the mystery, so we'll definitely be ready. We just have to finish writing a couple of parts and then put it all together.

In the summer our mystery was an attempted murder at a theatre. This time our mystery is a murder at a restaurant because our theme for November is Food for Thought. The program is called "Serving Up Trouble" and it's set at Bibliotek Cafe. We had a blast writing it and hopefully we'll have good attendance this time around and the kids will have fun. They really surprised up last time with how much they got into it. It was super fun. I hope it will be again!

In other news, we did see many cute little-kid costumes this morning... Most notable were a very realistic firefighter (down to a little red water bottle made to look like a fire extinguisher) and a super cute magic 8 ball.

Tomorrow I have another Family Evening Storytime. We haven't had many kids coming to this program, which is a bummer because we do get comments asking us to offer more programs on weeknights and weekends... When we do offer stuff, very few people show up. It's disheartening, but we'll keep on trucking. Three more FESTs to go and then we can reevaluate for the spring.

That's it from me for now, though I'm reading a great book that I will post about later. Happy Halloween!

Monday, October 29, 2007

Will I keep up with this blog?

That is the question... I intend to... but.... who knows, really?

My intention for this blog is to jump on the Kidlitosphere bandwagon (however marginally I may cling to the underskirts of the big names...), to keep a record of successful library programs, to post reviews of children's and YA literature, and to have a place to participate in all those lovely memes that go around the Kidlitosphere...

Yeah, we shall see what happens.