I'm attending #alaac16

I'm headed to the American Library Association's Annual Conference in Orlando , or #alaac16, if you're following along on Twitter.

I won't be posting here, but I'll be tweeting from @shelfemployed, and I'll be live-blogging for the ALSC Blog.  If you're #alaleftbehind, or interested in all things bookish and librarianish, follow along.

Saturday book humor and Father's Day favorites

Here's a little fun for the day and two great dad books.

If you're on Twitter: In honor of Father's Day, Barnes and Noble @bnbuzz  is using the hashtag #DadBooks to solicit groan-worthy puns and corny dad jokes based on well-known books. Be sure to check it out or join in the pun. 

Here are a few (with links to their posts):
Oh, the Places You'll Mow
The Girl Who's Certainly not Getting a Dragon Tattoo
Gone Grill
 If you're on Pinterest, check out my board, "Comic strips featuring books."  I've been collecting comic strips that feature books and libraries for the last several years. If you have a good comic strip that I've missed, please feel free to send it to me and I'll pin it.

And lastly, since Father's Day is tomorrow, I'll share two of my favorite "dad" picture books.

•  My Dad by Anthony Browne (Macmillan, 2010) is a funny, homage to the classic jack-of-all-trades kind of dad.  On each page, tribute is paid to the bathrobe-clad dad's many great qualities. The illustrations are wonderful - even as he is depicted as a fish or an owl, he retains his brown, plaid bathrobe.  You can see them here [http://us.macmillan.com/mydad/AnthonyBrowne].

• Tell Me a Tattoo Story by Alison McGhee and illustrated by Eliza Wheeler (Chronicle, 2016) is lovingly written and illustrated.  A young tattooed dad weaves a tale for his son using his tattoos.  A sweet story that should appeal to many young families.

My article published yesterday

I don't always write about books and libraries.  I like to ponder things that I find curious or interesting, and sometimes I write about them as well. 

BonBon Break, "an online magazine for modern moms," has purchased my article "If It Doesn’t Have a Face, Will They Eat It?" It began appearing on their site yesterday.

The article is a satirical commentary on the current marketing trend of anthropomorphizing common fruits and vegetables with comic representations and new names, e.g., Mighties, Halos.  

Sadly, it doesn't include my photos (I admit to being an amateur in photography), so I will include them here.  

The article has nothing to do with libraries, but you might get a chuckle from it, and I hope you read it.

If you missed my last article on BonBon Break, "Five Things You Didn't Know about Librarians," it's linked here and in the sidebar.

Miscellany on stuffed animals and audiobooks

I'm over at the ALSC Blog today - complaining about stuffed animals.  

Max Braun CC BY-SA 2.0 *

Feel free to join me if you're so inclined. 

In other news, I hope you've been downloading your free books from SYNC.  Two free books are available each week beginning on Thursday.  The books for that week are available for one week only.  Books are yours - forever - no strings attached.

"SYNC is a free summer audiobook program for teens. Starting May 5th 2016, SYNC will give away two complete audiobook downloads a week - pairs of high interest titles, based on weekly themes. Sign up for email or text alerts and be first to know when new titles are available to download at www.audiobooksync.com."

Today is the last day to get Zac & Mia by A.J. Betts, and I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson.  Tomorrow, it's How it Went Down by Kekla Magoon (with a full cast narration!) and The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson.

Below are the titles for the next few weeks (there are more to come after these!):

* Photo credit:  Max Braun – 60 Jahre Allgemeine Erklärung der Menschenrechte, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37203687

Pea Storytime

Pea Storytime

Three Little Peas by Marine Rivoal,  2014, Enchanted Lion Books

I don't usually (ever?) post about storytime, but I do a LOT of them.  Yesterday, however, I had so much fun that I thought I'd share.

• The color of the day was green.
• The letter of the day was P, which led to the fun question of the day - "What letter does "pea" start with? (Sometimes I crack myself up.)
• My welcome sign read, "Welcome to storytime. I'm hap-pea to see you!"

These are the books and activities I shared:

Three Little Peas is a beautiful book that adds an opportunity to discuss (at a very basic level) flora and fauna and the growing process.The illustrations are gentle and lovely and invite discovery - what else is underground with those two little peas?  We followed this up with the song (complete with motions), "Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley Grow."  If you don't like to sing, Raffi can do it for you.

Little Pea by Amy Krause Rosenthal, 2015, Chronicle Books

Amy Krause Rosenthal's books are so much fun. Rather than read Little Pea, I showed the TumbleBooks version instead. It was a great way to show off one of the library's online resources. Parents and kids enjoyed it.  We followed it up with the fingerplay, "Five Fat Peas."

Pease Porridge Hot illustrated by Paige Billin-Frye, 2011, Child's World

There are many book versions of "Pease Porridge Hot."  This one, illustrated by Paige Billin-Frye is small for reading to a large group, but it worked fine because the illustrations are simple. We had a good laugh over whether or not one would eat soup that's "nine days old!"  We followed it up with a simplified version of the classic clapping rhyme.  If you don't know the clapping sequence, it's included in the book.


I had planned to bring in fresh peas to share with the kids, too, but I left my bag of snow peas at home.  Good thing - there were more kids than I had peas.

Update: 
Shortly after I had finished storytime, a patron came to the desk and wanted a book, but couldn't remember the name of it.  He described the story and I knew it.  It was another wonderful pea book: The Pea Blossom by Amy Lowry Poole, Holiday House, 2005.  Funny how that happens.