wrapped up in books

First off, I want to thank everyone who took the time to answer my question about what you’d like to see on my blog, and especially to those who left comments and sent me notes. It was very enlightening. I know more casual readers or people who find my blog through searching or social media may have different thoughts, but what I love about blogging is the community, so I’m not so much worried about regular readers.

To my surprise, about 75% of you liked the mix of library related content and book reviews of all genres. So that was a pretty heavy endorsement to continue the way I’ve been blogging. I’m planning on still sharing thoughts on library school (someone specifically asked, and boy, do I have many!) on the programs, displays, etc that I help out with at my library, as well as book reviews on all sorts of categories, formats, and genres.

The only change I plan on making is to also share the books and activities I do for storytimes. I’ve taken an early literacy class and am leading storytime every other week at the domestic violence shelter and agency where I have been volunteering for six years. While mothers attend community support group, I read and do crafts with the children. It’s fun and challenging! While I’m by no means an expert, I’d like to document it for my own benefit.

I’m also going to try to do feminist fridays posts more often.

Other than that, you may have noticed I revamped the design and layout of my blog. I’ve still got some formatting work to do on old posts, but I like it so much better (and hope you do too!). I cleaned up my categories and menus which hopefully made things more organized.

I’ll be sharing more posts in the near future, but in the mean time, I just want to share a recent post and article I’ve written.

I know, how is it that librarians can already be thinking about Summer Reading 2015? I know we’re not quite ready for that in my library, but in big systems where you have to orchestrate things across multiple branches or for libraries who put out their calendars months in advance, it’s really time to start planning. I wrote about programs for kids and teens that tie in to the 2015 Collaborative Summer Reading Theme “Every Hero Has a Story” and “Unmask!” for NoveList Kids and Books. It’s no secret that as much as I love my current job, I do wish I could do more outreach and program planning, especially after researching and putting together this article.

I also recently compiled a list of young adult novels for fans of Edgar Allan Poe for YALSA’s The Hub. It’s a mix of gothic, horror, and mysteries.

Thanks again!