Misadventures of the Monster Librarian

One of our young friends modeling his Very Hungry Caterpillar hat, standing near our Happy Birthday card! We expected maybe 40 people for our The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle) Birthday Party on Friday here at Sticks Library--71 people showed up. 71!!!!!! We are hoping to expand the Library one day, and when people ask me why I use instances like that--the meeting room is maybe designed for 40 people, so folks were overflowed into the Kids Dept. area. We had a great time. Prairie Dawn was kind enough to let me read The Very Hungry Caterpillar to the kiddos, as it's my favorite kids book, and then we let the kids make Hungry Caterpillar hats, decorate butterflies, color the foods that the Caterpillar eats, and we also had a station set up for kids to get their hands painted and printed on a huge "card," which I will be mailing to Mr. Eric Carle himself, via the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art . Some Eric Carle books for checkout. We serv...

Thank God for Wednesdays which are movie days during Summer Reading--the day when Prairie Dawn and I can breathe and take a break. We break it down so that there's a family friendly movie in the morning (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 this week) and teens friendly movie in the afternoon (City of Bones). Thursday was a lot of fun: Sensory Science for the 18mos-4years old crowd. Prairie Dawn read a book about Sinking & Floating, then each child was given a plastic bucket filled with water and a variety of objects, grown-ups asked the children if the item would sink or float (hypothesis!) and then watched as said item did it's thing. The kiddos loved it! Prairie Dawn also showed the kids a simple experiment with raisins (they sink), and Sprite (makes raisins float), talking about why that happened. Science made simple! Families had a blast. Good feed back. Family Games and a speaker on Bigfoot in Ohio Thursday afternoon and night respectively--both things drew respec...

...every other day of the week is for the disasters: cakewrecks Today's cakes are an awesome tribute to books! My favorites are the Go, Dog, Go! and the Very Hungry Caterpillar cakes (maybe I am prejudiced since I LOVE both those books). I also want to eat the bejeezus out of the Berenstain Bear family!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar turned 40 years old in 2009; M & N and kiddos, Mummy Dearest and I were all able to see the Very Hungry Caterpillar atop his 40th cake at the Eric Carle Museum. I just now stumbled upon this wonderful, short video about the story behind the caterpillar as told by its creator--my favorite children's illustrator--Eric Carle. I love that he published this book the year he turned 40 years old; it makes turning 40 seem less scary--knowing that I too may one day make my own masterpiece. Also, check out Eric Carle's blog, found here.