Kids' Bibliotheque

T-Shirt Tote Bags

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 15:22:00 +0000

Our most recent Maker program was one that I've had on my radar for ages now: Making tote bags out of old t-shirts. I'd seen versions of this project floating around Pinterest for ages and I heard a little buzz about a library or two that did this project at a conference last year, and I decided that it was finally time to give this one a go myself.

If you were to use Google or Pinterest to search for "t-shirt bags" you would easily find TONS of tutorials. Some versions of this project are more involved than others in terms of finishing. There is even a way to do this as a no-sew project, which is great if you do not have access to a sewing machine and don't have the ambition to do hand sewing with needle and thread. The tutorial that I decided to use as a basis for this program was this one. I liked that the finishing was pretty minimal, which would make the project easy for my teens and tweens to complete in a short amount of time. But it also included one sewn seam on the bottom, which I appreciated.

In my advertising for this event I tried to make it clear that all participants needed to bring their own shirt to use for this project. This makes the finished product much more personal for everyone, plus it saves me the trouble of needing to procure the shirts. I sent a reminder email to everyone who had signed up out a few days before the program and asked that anyone who wouldn't be able to bring their own shirt contact me as soon as possible so that we could work something out. No one contacted me, and everyone who attended (4 teens and 3 tweens) brought a shirt with them.

To do the project, we pretty much followed the instructions in the tutorial exactly as written. I gave everyone a pair of scissors to cut the sleeves and neck of the shirts. Fabric scissors definitely would have been ideal since they are sharper and easier to use on fabric, but we made do with the regular scissors that we had on hand. Only one participant had trouble with the cutting but was able to get it done with a little help.

I brought in my own sewing machine from home and showed everyone the basics of how to use it. Each participant was able to sit at the machine and stitch the bottom hem themselves. I was impressed that about half of my participants had done some basic sewing on a machine before, and these people caught on especially quickly. Even those who had never seen a machine before figured everything out pretty easily with some instruction. Sewing a straight seam is actually not terribly difficult or time consuming even for a beginner, and it was very exciting for everyone - even those who had used a sewing machine before - to use this piece of equipment. Because sewing one seam is pretty quick one machine was enough to go around for my small group, but someone with a much larger group might want to try to get a second machine for people to use.

As I instructed everyone, I also pointed out a few areas where a more professional seamstress might work extra hard to make the finished product really nice (sewing finishing hems along the bag's opening and handles, for example). But we also talked about how we weren't professionals and why skipping some of these steps was okay for our purposes. The teens and tweens seemed to think this was interesting and I'm glad that I was able to bring in this brief "real world" application to this simple DIY project.

For the most part, everyone finished their t-shirt bags in about 15 minutes. Most of the participants used their bags to carry books home after the program. I call that a success, and I would definitely consider running this program again in the future.

St. Patrick's Day Storytime

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Tue, 15 Mar 2016 20:33:00 +0000

I was getting a bit tired of my old storytime stand-bys, so I decided to shake things up by making this week's storytime all about a holiday that I'd never shared with this crowd before: St. Patrick's Day! While the first things that come to many people's minds when they think of this holiday are green beer and "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" buttons, there are a lot of really nice kid-friendly symbols that can easily become the focus of this storytime.

Here are the books that I read:

Green by Laura Vacarro Seeger
This books is sparse on text, but the illustrations are full of great things to talk about. Each two-page spread shows a different shade of green, as well as die-cut shapes that take new form as you turn the page. As a group we had so much fun looking at and talking about the illustrations that this sparse 36-word book was easily our longest read of the day.

The Story of the Leprechaun by Katherine Tegen
A miserly leprechaun shoemaker is captured and must therefore grant a man three wishes. Of course, one of these wishes is to know the location of the leprechaun's pot of gold. The leprechaun tells him, but of course is able to pull off a sneaky trick to keep his gold well hidden. Many St. Patrick's Day or leprechaun books out there are a bit too long for my storytime crowd, but this book was a good fit for my preschoolers. Just enough mischief to keep things interesting, and the kids' giggles when she saw the leprechaun's trick made it more than worth the effort.

Good Luck Bear by Greg Foley
One day Bear finds a clover. His friend Mouse tells him that if he can find a four-leaf clover, then he will have good luck. Bear spends all day searching with no luck and his other friends are not very encouraging. Just as Bear fears that he will be unlucky forever, Mouse returns with a surprise for his friend. I chose this particular book because it does a good job of introducing the shamrock symbol in simple terms. It's also a fairly quick read, which was welcome by the end of this storytime since our first two books took so long to get through.

Duckie's Rainbow by Frances Berry
Duckie walks home and sees many colors. Soon purple clouds roll in and it begins to rain. But the curved pages of this book reveal a beautiful rainbow. I did not end up needing to read this story and instead talked about rainbows using the flannelboard discussed below, but it would be a great choice for younger or more fidgety groups if you need to substitute a shorter, more simple story.

I also incorporated a few fun rhymes into this storytime. The first was the action song, "Dance, Leprechaun, Dance." I didn't come up with this myself, but sadly can't remember what my source for this song was.

Dance, Dance, Leprechaun Dance

Tune: “Skip to My Lou”

Dance, dance, leprechaun dance,

Dance, dance, leprechaun dance,

Dance, dance, leprechaun dance,

Do a dance for me!

Bow...

Clap...

Jump…

Search for gold…

Sit...

Suit actions to words

This song was a lot of fun, and I was amused to see that none of the kids really had any idea how a leprechaun should dance without prompting. I just did the first easy arm-flailing, knee-wiggling dance I could come up with the and kids more or less copied what I did.

We also got out my "Rainbow in a Pot" flannelboard, which was a great way for us to talk about rainbows in a bit more detail after seeing one briefly in The Story of the Leprechaun. I discuss the flannelboard and the song that goes with it in more detail in this post.

To conclude this storytime we did a very simple art project that was surprisingly full of early learning opportunities. I cut out lots of dark green hearts using our die-cut machine and gave four to each child. They were able to glue them onto a lighter green sheet of paper to make a shamrock. Since the paper was so big I also gave them crayons and let them draw whatever they wanted in the margins. Many kids chose to draw other symbols of the St. Patrick's Day holiday that we had talked about like rainbows, pots of gold, and leprechauns, but they could choose to draw whatever they wanted and we saw all kinds of fun choices. I loved the idea of giving the kids a chance to do some free drawing so that they could really get creative and personalize their artwork. Drawing is also a great skill for kids to work on as these motions are very similar to the motions they will use when they eventually learn to write. The two shades of green paper were also a subtle nod to the book Green that we had read.

Fortune Tellers

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Fri, 15 Jan 2016 17:39:00 +0000

This month's passive program in the Teen area of the library is reading-focused. I'm totally on board any time we can tie a program or activity in with our collection and encourage people to read and/or check out books because in the end, the library's collection is one of my highest priorities.

Do you remember Fortune Tellers? Or perhaps you knew them better as Cootie Catchers? These folded pieces of paper had the mystical power to answer all of your deepest childhood questions. Did Jimmy have a crush on you? Should you wear your blue shirt to Jenny's birthday party? Would you mom mind if you ate a few more cookies? Just make a few easy choices, open and close the Fortune Teller appropriately, and BAM! A virtually instant answer from the universe, offering guidance and wisdom during troubling times.

I decided to take this trope and use it as a way to help bored teens pick their next read. Teens can pick up a Fortune Teller (I made three different ones to pick from), make their choices, and then find out exactly which genre of book they are destined to try today. If they don't like the answer that the Fortune Teller gives them (because hey, sometimes the universe gets it wrong), they of course are more than welcome to try again.

I put the Fortune Tellers on top of one of our book displays, along with a selection of books that fell into some of these genres. Amazingly enough, with 24 different book fortunes, some of which are as broad as, "Read a book by a female author," literally anything at all from the collection goes. Sneaky, right? I used this as an opportunity to display books that are under-circulated and that need a little extra help getting into people's hands.

There is absolutely no way to track how many people are using the Fortune Tellers, but I'm really okay with that. In a halfhearted attempt at more concrete usage-tracking I did put out a few slips of paper that people could fill out telling me what their fortune was and which book they selected, but I honestly don't really expect the teens to bother with this without further motivation. I have been keeping an eye on display and have seen that the fortune tellers have moved a bit and that some of the books on the display have been checked out, so I suspect that it's seeing at least a little traffic.

In the interest of full disclosure: I did not come up with this idea all on my own. I found an image on Pinterest that used this idea. However, I am unable to link to the original source as it has since been taken down or moved, and my saved link on Pinterest is no longer valid. So big thanks to whoever it was that originally came up with the idea!

Can You Have Too Many Books?

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Sat, 02 Jan 2016 19:38:00 +0000

I'm part of a local mommy's group on Facebook. I'm not super active there, but there's a question that pops up fairly regularly that I always like to put on my librarian hat to answer:

Q: What is a thoughtful, fairly inexpensive gift that I can get for X Child who is X Years Old? S/he already has everything, so I'm looking for a really interesting/unique idea.

My answer is always something along these lines:

A: When in doubt, I love to give books! You truly cannot have too many of them, you have lots of options to choose from (but you also really can't choose wrong), plus they promote learning / early literacy / parent-child bonding. Board books and paperback books are also fairly inexpensive, most costing under $10. You really can't go wrong!

Occasionally someone will respond to my comment with the following counter-arguments. While these are fair concerns, I think that it's really important for me to provide a few counter-counter-arguments.

I usually present this first answer in much shorter form with a more focused information depending on the situation, but here on this blog it makes sense to elaborate a bit more deeply:

CA: But they already have SO MANY BOOKS! I don't wan to give them more and add to the clutter.

CCA: Oh, honey. That's sweet of you to care about the trouble of having books strewn all over the living room floor. And I get it. I also have a very young child who owns a fairly obscene number of books. And yes, I do occasionally mutter to myself about the clutter. But really and truly: You can't have too many books!

I have observed, both from my own experience and the experiences of friends/colleagues as well as documented research (links below), that the more books a child has in their house, the more they read and the greater their future successes will likely be. The books will not sit stagnant on the shelf. They will be read if they are in the house and easily accessible. It might seem like they have "enough" or "too many" books on the outside, but I can assure you that if you're seeing the books well enough to make this observation, you can be confident that they're being read. A few more will only help this child love reading more, and that to me is more than worth a little bit of clutter.

Is the child very young and still being read to? If so, I can all but guarantee that Mom and Dad are bored to death with most of the books already in their house, no matter how many they have and how wonderful they are. A personal anecdote to illustrate this: My 1.5-year-old daughter has about 75 board books. It's a pretty ridiculous number; more than most people have. But it only takes about two minutes to get through each one and because we have lots of books that are easily accessible, my daughter loves reading them and we go through a big stack every day. It doesn't take very long for us to start repeating books, even with this large number to start with, and when we start repeating too often Mom and Dad get bored. Something new and clean and fresh will always be a welcome addition to the routine.

Is the child older? Are they voracious readers? If so, the same rule applies; The more, the better. The books that you give will get read. Are they more reluctant readers? Then it's all the more important to give books, perhaps in a different genre or style than they are used to, in the hopes that you might help this child discover something new and exciting. Most reluctant readers are reluctant simply because they haven't found That Book that sparks something with them. They need a little nudge to find That Book. They will only find That Book if people give them books.

Finally, the one or two books that you give are also not going to really going to add that much more clutter if they already have tons of books. Mom and Dad find a way to make room on the shelf or in the storage basket. They will continue to do so until the bookshelf collapses, at which point they will either do some housekeeping or buy an extra bookshelf. Either way, it's not your job to worry about the clutter. It's your job as the gift-giver to give a really nice gift, and books are great gifts.

A few links to interesting articles on the subject of having books in the home, both of which relate to the same study:
Pacific Standard
Education World

CA: I just gave this child books at his/her last birthday / Christmas / Easter / other occasion. Wasn't that enough? I'd hate to be repetitive.

CCA: Again, don't stress out about this. As long as you give a different book, it won't be the exact same thing because each book provides a different reading experience.

Did you give them a book about dinosaurs at the last gift giving occasion? Then give a book about colors or farm animals or outer space this time. Variety is always good.

If you think an older child would be up to it, try giving books from a different genre than their usual to mix things up a bit, for example, giving something historical or a mystery to an avid reader of fantasy. Alternatively, introduce them to a new, up-and-coming author in their favorite genre, or an older, classic series that they may not be aware of.

Don't forget about nonfiction too! Has the child recently expressed an interest in anything at all - maybe sports, current events, opossums, the latest video game, or science? I can all but guarantee that there's a book about that. Find one to give as your gift to help the child further explore their new passion.

Most kids, especially those who love reading, will be happy to have more to read and explore. More reluctant readers will hopefully be drawn to new subject matter. The more books, the better!

Arm Knitting

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Wed, 02 Dec 2015 22:54:00 +0000

A few weeks ago we had a very successful Maker program for teens & tweens devoted to a craft that I'd been wanting to try anyway: Arm Knitting.

The idea behind arm knitting is that it is actually exactly like regular knitting, but you use your arms as very large needles. While this might sound a bit intimidating to someone who has never tried something like this before, it's actually pretty easy to catch on. There are tons of videos out there on YouTube that will show you the basics, but this one is the one that I liked best:

I taught myself to do arm knitting by watching this video with some yarn in hand, and I just copied what she did. I already knew how to do "regular" knitting with needles, so I caught on pretty quickly. Even without this background knowledge, it's not too hard to figure out if you pay attention!

This event was hugely popular. I had 12 teen/tween girls sign up to participate, and another two dropped in unexpectedly. We also heard lots of comments from parents who wandered into the library and saw my sample who said that they'd love to do something like this too, so our Adult Services department will be doing a similar program in a few months.

It was a bit challenging to teach everyone how to do the arm knitting because it is a skill that is much easier to teach one-on-one than to a group. I did have the above video playing the the background on a loop for people to watch, and I think that helped. I circled around to show people up close what needed to be done and, if needed, actually held the kids' hands and showed them what the motions needed to be like. This helped a few who were slower on the uptake quite a bit. Things were a bit hectic with so many people to help, and I do wish that I had had an assistant or two to help out with the instruction. But we made do.

Casting on was by far the most difficult part, but once that was done everyone caught on to the repetitive motions needed to knit the length of the scarf. I did have to remind them quite frequently to pull their loops snugly around their wrists so that their stitches would not be overly large (and there were a few who ignored this advice), but otherwise there were no real snags.

To make an arm knit infinity scarf, you will need two balls of super bulky weight yarn. You will hold the yarn double (one strand from each ball held together) to get the thickness that you need. Of course, you could use only one strand for a thinner scarf, or more strands for a thicker scarf. I provided yarn for all participants, and seriously lucked out when bulky yarn went on sale at Michaels just the week before my program. I didn't spend more than $2 on each ball of yarn, which is a steal! If you'd like to do this program, I recommend keeping your eyes peeled well in advance for similar sales, and have a coupon ready to help minimize your costs.

This was a challenging program to pull together, but I would absolutely do it again in the future. Everyone had a good time, and I even had the mom of one of my participants drop in and tell me that they had bought more yarn to make more scarves on their own now that they knew the technique. Success!

Star Wars Reads Day 2015

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 20:25:00 +0000

Guys, it's been awhile. It's not that I haven't had interesting library stories to tell, it's just that I've been too busy to stop and tell them.

But I like to document what I've done, and since I don't believe in reinventing the wheel I think it's important that I contribute to the conversation in case someone else out there might be able to benefit from my experience. So I'm going to try and start this up again. Bear with me as I try to get back in the swing of things.

To kick things off, I want to talk a bit about Star Wars Reads Day. We participated in this awesome national event for the third year in a row, and this was by far our best year yet. We had huge attendance, which was a bit surprising because the weather was so beautiful and I know we actually lost several families to the pumpkin farm as a result. Many of the activities were the same ones I had used in years past (balloon lightsabers, fortune Wookies, stick puppets, word search, trivia, memory, and a checklist to keep it all straight), which made planning super easy. I did revamp an old favorite activity and added two new ones to keep things interesting:

Yoda Ears and Princess Leia Buns

I borrowed this idea from Amy at Catch the Possibilities. I made my own templates because I wanted to tweak Amy's design and printed the ears and buns off on construction paper. I also cut two-inch strips of paper that could be fashioned into headbands. The kids could cut out the ears/buns themselves, and then make headbands. The Yoda ears were the most popular of the two options, but I was glad to have two different choices for this activity.

Scavenger Hunt

The scavenger hunt has been an old standby for the past few years, and while the kids love it and I love how it gets them to visit all areas of the library, I wanted to change things up a bit. I borrowed the new format for the hunt from that same blog post that I linked to above and tweaked it just a bit. I found pictures of eleven different characters and used Publisher to put a letter of the alphabet with each one. These were cut out, laminated, and hung around the library. Each kid got a worksheet that listed all of the places where they needed to look to find characters. When they found the character, they needed to write down the corresponding letter of the alphabet in the appropriate box. When all were found, they had a message from Master Yoda. The kids could turn in their completed worksheets and get a bookmark as a prize.

Costumed Characters

This year, thanks to one of our awesome library regulars, we finally were able to get a few awesome members of the local 501st and Rebel Legion to join us for our celebration. These guys were a big hit! They spent two full hours in costume hanging out with the kids, taking pictures, watching the kids put on shows with their puppets, and generally just being awesome. As a bonus, these organizations always advertise through their own outlets where they will be making appearances, so we got a little extra advertising for our event by working with them. I know of at least two families who came to the library that day specifically because they had seen that the 501st would be there through their Facebook page.

Notes about costuming:

Yes, that's me in the Princess Leia costume. I like to let my geek flag fly a bit at events like this. :)

The clone trooper and Sabine (the two characters on the right in the above picture) were my contacts with the 501st and Rebel Legion. They are parents to one of our long-time library regulars, and dad (the clone trooper) joined up with both organizations last year. Mom, who is the parent we usually see, just completed her costume and I think might be joining the Rebel Legion in an official capacity soon. Having people that we know who were already invested in the library as a contact was a huge help! I was able to talk with our trooper friend before I submitted my request for characters to appear at the library to find out what times work best for people and when other groups were having their events that day to maximize the likelihood that we'd get a good response. You certainly don't need to have a personal contact like this if you want to try to get the 501st and/or Rebel Legion to make an appearance at your event, but having this personal contact had some nice perks, especially since there are so many local events on Star Wars Reads Day.

Passionate Reading

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Wed, 27 May 2015 20:32:00 +0000

Today I visited the 6th grade classrooms at our local school to talk about the Summer Reading Program. After giving my spiel, a boy raised his with a question which resulted in the following dialogue:

"So I can read any book that I want this summer and it counts?"
"Yup, you can read absolutely anything you want."
"So if I want I can read medical textbooks?"
"Yes, you can read anything you want."
"YES! I can read medical books!"

No sarcasm. This kid apparently actually has a passionate interest in the medical.

This brings up a great point to remember about summer reading: Part of the beauty of summer break is that kids no longer have teachers breathing down their necks to do specific kinds of work. Summer is a great chance for kids to take a break from scheduled learning and instead focus on whatever it is that they are passionate about. They can reread their favorite books for the hundredth time. They can learn to juggle. They can read about zombies or LEGOs. They can learn even more about something cool they learned in school, or they can learn about something cool that their teacher doesn't have the time or ability to teach them. Summer is a time when kids can become experts about whatever it is they like with no questions asked.

How cool is that?

So parents, it's okay to let your kid relax a bit this summer. Let them dictate how their reading time is spent. As long as they do at least some reading, they'll be the better off for being able to take some ownership of the effort.

You Just Won't Have Time

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 22:47:00 +0000

A fourth grade girl was at the library with her family. She selected a pretty big stack of picture books to take home. I overheard mom's reaction when she saw the books:

"Don't take those books. They're too quick to read, and you just won't have time to read them all."

The logic is lost to me.

Banana Keyboards

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 18:21:00 +0000

I found a half-finished version of this post saved as a draft in my blog's archives. Oops! I took a few minutes to finish writing and add a few pictures. It's a bit belated, but enjoy!

This month's Maker Monday program delved a bit more into the tech than past programs as we experimented with a Makey Makey.

What is a Makey Makey? Well, it's a nifty little device that can connect to a computer via USB. You then can connect other objects to the Makey Makey to create your own custom keyboard using alligator clips. Any object that conducts electricity would work fine: Fruits, vegetables, houseplants, play-dough, other people, or even water. Couple this with a few simple web programs that utilize the arrow keys and suddenly you can capture Pokemon with potatoes, play a tune on the piano with play-dough, win at Tetris with bananas, or drum a wicked beat on a houseplant. The possibilities are limitless.

Jay Silver, one of the creators of the Makey Makey also gave a really awesome Ted Talk about his inspiration for the device, which I really recommend watching. I did not show the video as part of my program due to time constraints, but it would be great to share if time allows because it helps get everyone into the proper mindset for thinking outside the box. Enjoy it here:

I purchased a Makey Makey starter kit for $50, which comes with everything you need to get started. You can find the kit for sale on Amazon, or you can buy directly from the Makey Makey website. I also definitely recommend exploring the Makey Makey website to get lots of ideas for way that the device can be used. They have links to a whole list of awesome recommended programs that work well with the Makey Makey, which is a great place to start.

Since only so many people can use the program at once, I decided to limit the size of the program to 5 people at a time with two time slots, one for teens and another for tweens. Neither group completely filled (I had 4 teens and 2 tweens), but I was actually thankful for the small numbers as we tested what the Makey Makey could do.

On the day of the program, I set up a laptop and connected the Makey Makey. I pre-loaded a couple of programs that I knew I wanted to try out (piano and bongos) so that they would be ready to go, and kept another tab open with the list of recommended programs to give us more options. I set up another table with some conductive object to connect to the Makey Makey.

When the teens/tweens arrived, I have them a quick 2-minute rundown of what the Makey Makey was and how it worked. Then I basically just let them go to town. I let them decide which programs they wanted to test and which objects they wanted to turn into their keyboards and only offered a bit of advice and encouragement when it looked like they needed it, and occasionally challenged them to try something a little bit different or reminded them to take turns. With such a small group, it was very easy to just let them experiment with the Makey Makey to discover what they could do with it. As the afternoon progressed, everyone started to get even more creative and innovative as they tested the Makey Makey's limits. It was awesome.

Check out these pictures to see some of the ways that the teens/tweens got creative with the Makey Makey.

Two Book Displays

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Mon, 06 Apr 2015 19:08:00 +0000

Our book displays have been especially lovely lately. I give full credit for this to my co-workers, who are very good at making these displays look extra-special.

The first display was done with lot of basketball books, both fiction and non-fiction, in honor of the NCAA basketball tournament. The popularity of this display was, no doubt, helped by the Wisconsin Badgers' incredible run. The big Badgers flag came from a staff member's house, and we posted an updated copy of the bracket every few days.

The second display was full of lovely Cinderella stories, in honor of the recent release of Disney's live-action movie. The staff memeber who set this display up brought in her own shoes to use as the "glass slippers," and the mice and pumpkin came from our stash of storytime supplies.

Maze

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 21:02:00 +0000

We've started doing passive programming in the children's area of my library quite recently, and the month of March was my turn to create one of these programs. Here's what I came up with:

I found this maze* online just by Googling "mazes" and looking at the image results. I tried to pick a maze that had bold lines. It couldn't be too hard (I didn't want younger kids to be discouraged), but I didn't want it to be too hard but not too easy either (didn't want it too boring for older kids). The image size also had to be fairly large so that it would print crisply after enlarging it.

I used Microsoft Publisher to blow the image up to poster size and added the start and finish words/arrows. When it was ready, the maze was printed on nine sheets of tabloid-size paper. I assembled the maze, trimmed the margins as needed, and mounted it on several more sheets of red construction paper.

Once the maze was created and assembled I just hung it up on the wall. Kids who came by could just use their eyes or a finger to find their way through the maze. Easy!

To track participation, I also posted a sign asking them to come to us at the Children's Desk when they finished so that they could get a marble to add to the jar on the shelf nearby (not pictured). It's amazing how well this actually worked. Only a handful of known participants failed to come up for their marble (we'd add a marble ourselves if we noticed), and some of the younger kids were surprisingly excited about adding a marble to the jar. At the end of the month I just counted the number of marbles in the jar to get a number to include with our program statistics.

I would absolutely call this program a success. We had 92 marbles in the jar at the end of the month, which is a fantastic number. What I especially liked was that this maze was a quick thing to do - most kids only needed a minute or two to find their way to the end - but it was still lots of fun. To me, that's the perfect recipe for successful passive programming.

*I may or may not have violated some sort of copyright law by using the image of the maze in this way. Honestly, I am never quite sure what qualifies as "fair use" and what qualifies as infringement, so I decided to just go with the best image I could find. Judge all you like. And if you're the creator if this maze and you're mad that I used it, please know that I'm very sorry and intended no harm. And if anyone wants to better explain how "fair use" does/does not work, I'm all ears.

Maker Mondays - Lava Lamps & Pet Jellyfish

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Wed, 25 Mar 2015 21:23:00 +0000

This month's Maker Monday program was a combination of crafts and science as we did two hands-on projects, both involving plastic bottles and colored water.

The first project, and probably the easiest of the two, was the lava lamps. I got the basic idea for this idea from a project I saw on Pinterest (check it out!) and many similar projects with tutorials can also be found online. The basic idea is to fill a bottle half with water (colored with a few drops of food coloring) and half with vegetable oil (baby oil also works and is clear in color, but is more expensive). The oil and the water will not mix no matter how much you try to stir/shake the two together because of their differing densities. To make the lava lamps work best, I recommend filling your bottles with water first and then topping them off with oil. If you do it the other way around, you'll need to give the bottles more time for the liquids to sort themselves out before moving on to the next step or the effect will not be very exciting.

Extra bling like glitter and sequins could be added at this point to give the lamps a bit of pizazz. Once the bottles are prepped, the real magic begins. Simply break an alka-seltzer tablet into pieces. Drop a piece of the tablet into the bottle and watch the colored water bubble up through the oil. Neat! Our testing showed that with a one-liter bottle you could put up to half of a tablet into the bottle at once, though any more than that was overkill.

The second project was a little more involved, but the finished product was totally worth the effort. We made jellyfish in a bottle! Instructions for this project can be found here, but I do have a few tips for anyone who might want to give this project a try.

When you're cutting the plastic bag to give your jellyfish legs/tentacles, remember that you're cutting off and throwing away A LOT more plastic than you're keeping. You really only need 15-20 super-skinny tentacles.
Related to that: Be sure that your tentacles are skinny, skinny, skinny! If you're looking at your tentacles and think that you could cut them in half pretty easily, then you probably should.
Instead of using a string to tied your jellyfish's head, we used tiny rubber bands used for hair braiding. Seemed much easier to use and provided the needed stretch.

The finished product was super cool. I put one of these jellyfish out as a sample, and tons of people stopped to play with it. It helped to drum up lots of interest in the program! I tried for ages to get a good picture, but my timing wasn't very good. Enjoy this video instead.

I had eight participants in this program, four teens and four tweens, and they all seemed to enjoy themselves. Part of me wishes that I would have had an assistant to help them with their projects since everyone, especially the tweens, needed a little guidance and/or reassurance that they were doing everything correctly. But we made do, and everyone's projects turned out really well.

The cost of this program was pretty minimal since most of the materials were easily upcycled. Both projects required empty plastic bottles. Fortunately, I have a friend with a crazy soda addiction who buys his soda in one-liter bottles. He saved tons and tons of bottles for me to use for this program. We had food coloring left over from another project, and plastic shopping bags were easy to come by. A staff member with daughters who were totally over the hair braiding phase donated tiny rubber bands to use for the jellyfish. The only supplies that I had to purchase was the vegetable oil and alka-seltzer for the lava lamps.

Pi Day Display

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Mon, 16 Mar 2015 16:45:00 +0000

Pi is a pretty magical number. For those of you who haven't taken a math class recently and/or do not use pi on a regular basis, pi is a number that is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi is always the same number no matter the size of the circle. It is a never-ending, non-repeating, very very very long number, usually truncated down to two decimal places: 3.14.

Math geeks in recent years have taken to celebrating Pi Day on March 14 since the date, when written out with numbers, uses the first three numbers found in Pi. This year's Pi Day was extra special because when we included the year along with the month and date, we could expand Pi by two additional decimal places (3.1415). Neat!

To celebrate, I did a little display all about Pi in the teen area of the library. I found lovely printables online and mounted them on construction paper, pinning them to the bulletin boards on our shelves' endcaps. One of these was a super cool infographic with some neat facts about pi. The other was a printout of pi's digits in much of its glory.

I also wanted to add an interactive element to this display, but didn't want to put out math worksheets because a) we're not a school, and I'm not a math teacher, and b) that's not exactly super exciting or attention-grabbing. Instead I found a Pi-themed crossword puzzle and put them in a folder for teens to take. Since voting has been a popular passive program for us, and since eating pie is one of the more popular methods of celebration on Pi Day, I also asked the teens to vote for their favorite kind of pie. (For the curious, apple pie was the clear winner with 20 votes.)

Truffulla Trees

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 23:30:00 +0000

Credit for this beautiful Dr. Seuss display goes to one of my lovely co-workers. Isn't it lovely?

The display is certainly dramatic, but my co-worker tells me that it was surprisingly easy to make. The truffulla trees were made with large tissue paper flowers (there's lots of tutorials out there - here's one). They were affixed to white cardboard poster tubes wrapped with black construction paper to give them their stripes. The trees are propped up in a planter pulled from storage and surrounded by more tissue paper for the grass. Writing with a Sharpie on a smooth stone made the "unless" stone - the perfect finishing touch.

Dr. Seuss' birthday, as well as the Read Across America initiative that celebrates this renowned author, falls on March 2. How will you celebrate?

Books for Boys

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 19:11:00 +0000

I discovered the below blog post hidden as a draft in my archives. I have no idea what happened there. This is still an important topic that I feel pretty strongly about, so I'm going to share this now, backdated to the day I first wrote about this.

Yesterday I came across this blog post, written by author Shannon Hale. Please take a moment to go and read this post. I'll wait.

Hale is the author of a number of highly-acclaimed books for children, including The Goose Girl, The Princess Academy, Rapunzel's Revenge, and The Princess in Black. She's a great writer. Many of Hale's books do feature girls as the central characters and they do often feature fairy tail-esque characters and settings. But her characters also have a lot of spunk and many of her books feature adventurous plots. In my opinion, there is nothing to be found in these books that cannot be appreciated by boys and girls alike.

Yet when I look at all of the reader's advisory that I have done over the past several years, how often have I given one of Shannon Hale's books to a boy? I'm not sure that I ever have. I do, however, regularly give her books to girls.

I truly don't think that this is a choice that I have consciously made. I think that it's just the sort of response that comes from years and years of social conditioning regarding what boys want versus what girls want.

This phenomenon is not something exclusive to libraries. We see situations like this at toy stores all the time. Think about LEGOs, for example. There are "girl" LEGO Friends sets, hued with pink bricks and featuring larger character figures great for storytelling. The good news is that we live in a refined enough society that we know that it's also okay for girls to pick up a Star Wars LEGO set, or the Pirates set. But is it socially acceptable for a boy to play with the pink LEGO Friends set? Not so much.

I'm glad that we've become the sort of society where girls have, for the most part, been told that they can do whatever they want. They can read "girl" books, or they can read "boy" books. But we still have a ways to go when it comes to gender equality. We now need to also lift our boys up and tell them that they can play with the girls and read "girl" books and play with the "girl" toys. Let's dare to take this even a step further. We need to stop categorizing books and toys in this way at all. Let's just call them "books" and "toys" and be done with it.

It's one thing to have these noble ambitions in one's head. It's one thing to understand them logically. It's another thing entirely to actually put these gender-equalizing views into practice. After all, we're looking to undo more than a 200,000 years of gender bias.

So my challenge to myself is this: When a child comes to the library asking for a book suggestion, if it seems appropriate to the child's interests I will attempt to give a boy a book with a female protagonist. I will not apologize for it.

Maker Mondays - Cupcake Wars

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 21:26:00 +0000

This year I have started a series of programs for teens and tweens (grades 5+) affectionately dubbed, "Maker Mondays." Once each month (yes, on a Monday) participants gather to do some sort of hands-on project. Sometimes we might do craft projects, sometimes we might do something more science based. No matter what the project may be, each month's activity is very hands-on and often requires some creativity. I'm also trying hard to make sure that there's a component where the participants are working together and collaborating/sharing as they work.

Our first Maker Mondays program was Cupcake Wars. This is a program that I've had on my radar for some time, and it seemed to fit in nicely with the theme. I set out a ton of frostings and toppings, and gave each participant three cupcakes. The teens were given three challenges for decorating their cupcakes:

1) One cupcake could be decorated any way desired. Anything goes!
2) One cupcake had to be decorated to represent a book. Any book was fine! A book display was on hand to provide inspiration.
3) One cupcake had to use at least one of the ingredients from the "unusual toppings" table.

I decided not to do any actual voting or judging to declare a winner, though I did ask all participants to take turns showing their cupcakes to the group and talking about their inspirations and what ingredients they chose to use. At the end the kids were allowed to eat their cupcakes and/or take them home.

Food-based programs are always hugely popular, and this one was no exception with 16 total participants. Everyone seemed to have a great time, and it didn't even take too much cajoling to get the teens to share their creations.

It's a good thing that food-based programs are so popular, because they unfortunately are always a tad expensive. Let's face it, junk food and candy aren't cheap!

To save a bit on money, I bought boxed cake mix and made my own cupcakes to use in this program. This saved us a ton of money compared to the cost of purchasing cupcakes from a bakery, but required a bit more time and effort on my end. I also suggest that other librarians looking to do this program double check their library's rules regarding serving food before making their own cupcakes to be sure that your policies allow for this.

I purchased several different types of canned frosting for the teens/tweens to use. I also provided a few containers of easy-squeeze decorating icing.

Toppings for the cupcakes were easily the largest expense. To put this program together, I suggest first raiding your own cupboards at home to see if there is anything that you can spare a small amount of. There were tons of leftovers since we really only needed a very small amount of each topping, but we did want to have a wide variety of toppings to choose from. Many of the leftovers were saved to be used as snacks for upcoming programs.

Some of the toppings that I made available included:

Oreo Cookies
Chocolate Chips
Butterscotch Chips
Raspberries
Blueberries
Sweedish Fish
M&Ms
Pixie Stix
Snickers Bars
Reece's Peanut Butter Cups
Pretzels
Graham Crackers
Marshmallows
Peanuts
Trail Mix

I also had a table full of "unusual toppings" that you might not normally think to include on a cupcake. The teens were allowed to use toppings from this table at any time, but were required to use at least one of these for one of their cupcakes:

Flavor-Blasted Goldfish
Chex Mix
Corn Chips
Sun-Dried Tomatoes
Crispy Pepper Chips
Beef Jerkey
Olives
Jalapenos
Shredded Cheddar Cheese

Cover Art - Coincidence?

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Tue, 17 Feb 2015 21:40:00 +0000

While perusing my Goodreads account, I went to visit my "medical issues" bookshelf. (I have various shelves that describe themes/topics addressed in the book.) I couldn't help but notice something:

All of these books - the most recent 20 books that I put on this shelf all have covers that contain lots of blue and/or green. I wonder if there's something about this color that publishers associate with this theme, or if this is all just a striking coincidence.

Thoughts?

Today at Work...

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 01:24:00 +0000

Sometimes I find myself doing some pretty interesting things at the library. Today, I spent a little time playing with magnetic poetry.

I promise, this was a completely legitimate use of my time! The poetry and easel arrived in today's delivery, and I just had to open it up and ~~play~~ try it out as a way of getting ready for an upcoming passive program in honor of National Poetry Month in April. Stay tuned for the full story!

2015 ALA Youth Media Awards

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Wed, 11 Feb 2015 17:19:00 +0000

On February 2, the American Library Association announced the winners of their Youth Media Awards. The oldest, most prestigious, and most well-known of these awards are the Caldecott Medal (given to, "the most distinguished American picture book for children") and the Newbery Medal (given to, "the most outstanding contribution to children's literature"). For a complete list of the medal and honor books for all 22 awards, please visit this website.

This year was a fairly landmark year when it comes to these awards. Here are this year's winners:

Caldecott Medal

The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat
Beekle is an imaginary friend. All imaginary friends live together in a magical land until they are imagined by a child and join this child in the real world. Unfortunately, Beekle's turn never seems to come. So he takes mattes into his own hands and journeys all alone to the real world to look for a friend. Eventually he finds a child, Alice, who is the perfect companion. Dan Santat's signature style really shines in this story.

Honor Books:
Nana in the City by Lauren Castillo
The Noisy Paint Box: The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky's Abstract Art by Barb Rosenstock, illisturated by Mary GrandPré
Sam & Dave Dig a Hole by Mark Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen
Viva Frida by Yuyi Morales
The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus by Jen Bryant, Illustrated by Melissa Sweet
This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki, illustrated by Jillian Tamaki

Newbery Medal

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander
Josh and his twin brother Jordan are the best there is on their middle-school basketball court. After all, they learned the game from their father, who once won a European championship and would have played pro for the Lakers had an injury not ended his playing career. Josh narrates this story of his own potential championship season with fantastic poetry that really captures the movement and intensity both on and off the court.

Honor Books:
El Deafo by Cece Bell
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Wilson

Thoughts
What a year! There's so much to say that I don't even think that I can do it properly with prose. Bullet points it is.

NONE of the Newbery award winners are written in traditional prose. Two are written in verse and one is a graphic novel. Wow. Speaking of:
A graphic novel (El Deafo) winning a Newbery Honor! That's a big deal. It's never happened before. This is history in the making, folks. I'd seen this book in the talks but wasn't sure if or how the committee could consider it because graphic novels rely so heavily on illustration (a factor that I think that the committee is not supposed to consider when awarding this honor). But now we have our answer, and I think it's fantastic. Nice to see graphic novels get a little credence. Speaking of:
Another graphic novel (This One Summer) winning a Caldecott Honor! This is somehow less shocking since graphic novels rely on illustration and this award is given specifically for illustration. But somehow it's never happened before until this year. In retrospect, this is shocking. More literary history! What surprises me a bit more about this particular honor is that the Caldecott is specifically for books for children up to age 14, and I really think that this particular book really pushes that limit. Fourteen is about the youngest I'd give this graphic novel too, and I kind of feel like that's pushing it a bit. It's worth noting that this book also was graced with another silver medal, a Printz Honor, given to outstanding books for young adults. Still, there's no denying that these illustrations are gorgeous.
So many Caldecotts! Six honor books, plus the medal. And I did not see most of these books coming - only Sam & Dave Dig a Hole and Viva Frida were really on my radar. Not sure if that speaks to my lack of reading this year, or to this year's field of published material.

A Big Number

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Mon, 09 Feb 2015 16:03:00 +0000

This month in the children's department we are doing a Valentine's Day passive program. We have a big jar of conversation hears on display, and we've challenged everyone to guess how many are in the jar. It's all quite charming, and that big jar of candy has been a real attention-grabber.

Today a group of our regulars (two kids, age 5, and their nanny) came in and noticed the jar. The nanny tried to get her kids to take a guess. This activity is naturally a bit of a challenging for younger kids who do not yet possess refined estimation skills. The nanny knew this, and really just tried to get the kids to guess a really big number. The first child's guess? One million.

The conversation with the second child is what really cracked me up:

"How many hearts do you think are in the jar? Think of a really big number."

"Infinity!"

This lead to a brief, but very nice conversation about how infinity is never ending and there was definitely not a never-ending number of conversation hearts in the jar. The kids seemed to accept this restriction on their guesses and the conversation continued.

"So let's guess again. Think of a really big number that isn't infinity."

"Ten!"

From one extreme to the other. Well done, kid.

All the Books

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Sat, 07 Feb 2015 17:16:00 +0000

A mother comes in to the library with her son, four or five years old, and a list of 12 recommended books. I'm not sure exactly where the list came from, but I'm guessing it came from her child's school or daycare. She asked if I would please help her find all of the books on the list.

I asked, in the interest of clarification, "Do you need to get all of these books, or just some of them?"

Her response: "All of them please."

So I take her book hunting. We're actually doing really well, tracking down such lovely titles as The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf, Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears by Verna Aardema, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett. Eventually we have a stack of seven or eight books. As I hand her a lovely Robert Munsch book her eyes grow big. She looks at the stack, then looks at me and says, "I think this is enough books for now."

The moral of the story: Twelve books looks pretty manageable on paper, but this number is surprisingly heavy to carry.

The second moral: It's okay to pace yourself. No need to READ ALL THE BOOKS!**

Image not mine. Parody of a lovely image from Hyperbole and a Half.
Origin of the parody unknown. It seems to be all over the interwebs.

**You can read as many books as you want, or as few as you want, as fast or as slow as you want. No pressure. It's supposed to be fun.

Doodles

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 22:16:00 +0000

During the months of December and January, our passive program in the teen area was very simple. I put out some quarter sheets of colored paper and asked the teens to draw something. They were then invited to pin their drawings up on the bulletin boards.

In two months time, we had 21 doodles posted up on the bulletin board. Not bad considering how slow of a month December usually is in Library Land. It was also really interesting to see what kinds of things the teen choose to draw. Subjects ranged from flowers to fan art to winter scenes to animals. The artistic rendering ranged from super basic to very detailed. But since it's all anonymous, there was (I hope) no real pressure for anyone to do anything in particular - which is in my mind one of the major appeals of this activity.

Mock Awards

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Wed, 14 Jan 2015 17:19:00 +0000

Once again the children's librarians in my system gathered together to discuss the best books of 2014 and try and predict which books would win the prestigious Caldecott, Newbery, and Printz awards. Here are the books that we loved:

Mock Caldecott:

Medal:
Sam and Dave Dig a Hole by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassan
Sam and Dave are sure they will discover something exciting if they just keep digging their hole. Little do they realize that as they dig, they are constantly just missing the treasures that they search for. As with so many book illustrated by Jon Klassan, the pictures in this book tell a whole other side of the story that is never mentioned in the book's text.

Honors:
Where's Mommy by Beverly Donofrio, illustrated by Barbara McKlintock
Draw! by Raúl Colón

Mock Newbery:

Medal:
The Night Gardener by John Auxilier
Irish orphans Molly, fourteen, and Kip, ten, travel to England to work as servants in a crumbling manor house where nothing is quite what it seems to be, and soon the siblings are confronted by a mysterious stranger and secrets of the cursed house. This book is not only creepy, but is also characterized by superb storytelling. All subplots are woven together seamlessly, and it's fascinating how the horror elements Besides, don't you think that a shiny Newbery Medal would just look lovely on this cover?

Honors:
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd

Mock Printz:

Medal:
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton
Born with bird wings, Ava Lavender is well aware that love has long made fools of her family. When pious Nathaniel Sorrows mistakes her bird wings for angel wings, 16-year-old Ava faces the man's growing obsession, which comes to a head with the rain and feathers that fly through the air during a nighttime summer solstice celebration. Lyrical prose makes this work of magical realism come to life.

Honors:
I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Sandy's Favorites 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Wed, 31 Dec 2014 17:03:00 +0000

It's been a pretty ridiculous year for me. I had a baby, and they aren't kidding when they say that it changes everything. My free time has diminished a bit, and I've found myself wanting to occupy this free time with new activities.

What all of this boils down to is the fact that I haven't read nearly as many books this year as I have in the past. According to Goodreads, I've read 43 books, most of which are novels for children or teens. Not included in this total are several works of adult nonfiction all about pregnancy, parenting, and making baby food that I didn't feel the need to review.

Forty books doesn't seem like much when you consider that in 2009 (a year post-grad school where I only worked part time) I read 175 books. Even in 2013 I read 75 books, nearly double this year's total. Still, 40 books is perfectly respectable. Besides, I like to think that I've made up for the lack of quantity with the quality of the books that I have read since many of these books have completely blown me away. Here are a few of my favorites:

Chapter Books

The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier
Molly and Kip are Irish siblings who don't seem to have parents to care for them. Molly takes a job as a housekeeper to a formerly wealthy family that is down on its luck. But it's not just the money that seems to be troubling this family. The entire family seems sickly, and everyone seems to be getting treasures from a mysterious source. There is also the Night Gardener who appears during the night, and though know one know exactly what his intentions are, they certainly do not seem to be good. This bit of Gothic horror features fantastic storytelling, and I love how the horror elements mirror some of the other issue that the characters are dealing with. Given the masterful writing, I think that this book has a shot at a Newbery Honor.

The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm
One evening, Ellie's mother comes home with a teenage boy in tow. Strangely enough, her scientist grandfather seems to have uncovered a sort of fountain of youth and have given himself a young body. Through a series of episodes, Ellie and her grandfather explore the wonders of science and discover what it really means to grow up and to grow older. This book is an unusual blend of sci-fi and contemporary fiction that will appeal to fans of both Wendy Mass and Madeleine L'Engle.

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Wilson
So much has already been said about Wilson's memoir told is verse, which recently won the National Book Award. It's a bit of a patchwork dealing with Wilson's family, the era in which she lives, race, and other small details from her childhood. This memoir seems to be this year's "it" book and is widely favored to win this year's Newbery Medal. It's worthy of the hype.

Teen Reads

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
The Sinclair family is everything they are supposed to be: Beautiful, athletic, and incredibly wealthy. Every summer they vacation on a private island near Martha's Vineyard. Cadance, the oldest grandchild, looks forward to spending these summers with her cousins and Gat, the nephew of her aunt's boyfriend. But then one year Cadance has some sort of accident. She can't remember what happened and no one seems terribly interested in telling her. During her 17th summer on the island, Cadance tries to piece together bits of memory to figure out what happened. What makes this story stand out is Cadance's narrative voice. The way that this story unfolds and the fact that she is so unreliable make this book stand out in the crowd.

Six Feet Over It by Jennifer Longo
Leigh's father decides to uproot the family and operate a cemetery, and he does not seem particularly willing to look further than the kitchen table for ready employees. Leigh finds herself working in the cemetery's office selling graves after school. Meanwhile she has her own grief to deal with after being uprooted from her beloved home by the sea, the death of her best friend, and her sister's cancer treatments. This book sounds very dark and while it certainly does have its morbid moments, Leigh's sarcasm and ready wit help to keep it from being depressing. Leigh is a character that I grew to love as she developed over the course of this novel. This is my favorite book of the year.

A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller
Victoria dreams of being an artist. Unfortunately, as a woman in Edwardian England her options are fairly limited. Getting into a proper art school will be next to impossible without some assistance, and her father absolutely refuses to pay her tuition. The plot thickens with a sweet police constable / artistic muse, some periphery involvement in the suffragist movement, and a wealthy finance who might not be the easy solution Vicky was hoping for. This book was a tad predictable in terms of plot, but this author definitely did her research about this era. Readers will enjoy being pulled into this fascinating time period.

Lily Rose May

noreply@blogger.com (Sandy) — Mon, 29 Dec 2014 16:15:00 +0000

A little girl, 5 or 6 years old, came in to the library today looking for a book that she had checked out from the library before. She told me that the name of the book was "Lily Rose May." I looked this up in our catalog and nothing came up, so I assumed that she was misremembering the title of the book. I asked if she could tell me what the story was about. To paraphrase:

"It was the story of the Princess and the Pea, and there was a princess in the castle who didn't like peas but then she tried the peas and she liked them."

Hmm.

I turned to my handy friend NoveList to see if the database could help me solve this puzzle. I decided to try searching for "Lily Rose May" first to see what came up since the girl seemed to remember that particular phrase very distinctly, even though I couldn't at all figure out how this phrase connected to the story. Sure enough, the first title the came up in the results was the book she was looking for!

The book in question was, "The Princess and the Peas" by Caryl Hart. In this story a girl named Lily-Rose May dislikes peas. Her father takes her to the doctor who diagnoses her with princess-itus and sends her to live in a castle where she discovers that peas are the perfect princess food. It seems that she eventually learns to like peas. Turns out that the girl who was searching for the book has remembered the little girl character's very distinct name. The fact that both the book's description and reviews of the book contain this name make finding this book a lot easier than I'd originally expected.