Sunday, February 1, 2026

Looking forwards to February


 This month should be a brief respite before we start the final leg of our renovations. In the youth department, we are starting a basic schedule of programming:

  • Mondays: Paws to Read
  • Tuesdays: Minecraft Hangout
  • Thursdays: Pokemon Hangout
  • Fridays: Words and Wiggles Storytime
My staff member will continue to go to storytime at the Rec center on Tuesdays. The only outreach we are continuing is her monthly visits to our county special education school - some years they come on field trips, but we can reach more of the students with a visit to the school. I have had teachers ask about resuming outreach visits and it's hard for me to say no, but with the new schedule needed to adequately staff the new youth department, it just isn't possible unless I take on a lot more desk time or do the outreach myself, neither of which I have the time or capacity for. We'll also have TAB meetings several times a month while we're continuing to work on the Teen Space and monthly Youth D&D.

I've started weeding and reorganizing our circulating kits - this is loooong overdue, we have a ridiculous number of kits in storage with missing/broken pieces and all the inventory/records need updating. I also need to get started on weeding the juvenile nonfiction - I started more than a year ago and had to move on to work on other things - but that may not happen this month.

We'll end the month with an Eric Carle party on a Tuesday morning - this will substitute for a day when our school colleague can't offer storytime and restart our Read and Grow program.

Only three youth spaces are left to reopen - our activity room, create space, and Quiet Room. We should get the Quiet/Nursing room reopened very soon, since it just needs some paper on the walls as a temporary cover until we're able to get them mudded and sanded so we can repaint.



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Saturday, January 31, 2026

January 2026 in review


 Amazingly we actually managed to finish pretty much everything I had planned for January. The family storytimes offered by a colleague from our local school district are still being held at the recreation center - this will probably continue until summer for consistency and continuity. However, one of my staff has been taking library materials and our outreach library out on Tuesday morning and we've seen a resulting increase in traffic in the youth department.

Our next move went off fairly well. Circulation, Adult Services, and Technical Services were moved into the renovated workroom downstairs, our director moved into his new office, and I and my staff moved into the old Adult Services office upstairs. We did have to do an emergency clean of the office, and a lot of maneuvering to get things to fit and be in proximity to the outlets and access points. Once Technical Services had moved to their new space, the Teen Space was open. 

We had initially planned to move the YA collection into this space (it had not been moved upstairs with the rest of the youth department) and either recycle shelves or purchase inexpensive shelving. However, the committee overseeing our grant and renovations decided the Teen Space should not contain any teen materials. After much discussion, it was decided that the manga collection (and two shelves of circulating toys, kits, and games) would be in the Teen Space and the layout would be rearranged to accommodate the rest of the young adult collection. We removed a seating area (and aforementioned shelves of kits) and our movers shifted the shelves continuing our Young Teen, juvenile audiovisual materials, and popular series (Minecraft, Disney, etc.) farther into the aisle and closer together (keeping the minimum 3 feet). They then brought up from storage in the basement and reconfigured a shelf for the young adult fiction, graphic novels, and nonfiction in this space.




Construction, specifically electrical work, continues intermittently upstairs in the youth department. However, we did get all but one piece of stored furniture moved downstairs and only two spaces are still being used by construction, our Multipurpose Room (as an office) and our Activity Room (for storage). Our Lego Wall has been installed and we have made a lot of little adjustments and improvements to the space as a whole.


Although we don't officially resume programs until February, we did have a few the last week of January. I was able to get the Dungeon Master I had last summer to come in with very little notice and she ran a game for our Youth D&D (primarily ages 9-11). I also had a TAB meeting (now open to middle schoolers) once we had the Teen Space cleared out and they started working on decorating the space. We had NINE kids! Six of them came voluntarily! One was already there volunteering and was bemused but agreeable to painting instead of hauling furniture down to the basement and two middle school students had, I think, come to study, but were pleased to jettison those plans in favor of snacks and paint. My staff also resumed Friday morning storytimes on the 30th - she put in a lot of last-minute work to get the Storyroom usable.

Our mural is neeeeeearly finished, I have more or less finished the early reader weeding project, and I have settled on a blend of Bound to Stay Bound, Ingram, Mackin, and Amazon for vendors.

If anyone is curious, my location did NOT get snow, we got subzero temps. But we stayed open as we are a county-designated warming shelter and anyways I had a lot of stuff I needed to get done.

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Saturday, January 10, 2026

Picture Book Neighborhoods: Mammals


This is a large neighborhood, with close to 300 items, and is primarily nonfiction. The instructions I've written for it call for only realistic fiction, but I admit that has not totally eventuated, although I have tried to keep the fiction realistic. There's a lot of informational picture books as well, most of which I've included under the Dewey numbers. The most popular animals tend to have more books, so those sections have more detailed call #s including big cats, bears, dolphins, elephants, monkeys (including apes), sloths, whales, and wolves. It took a lot of my self-control to keep these categories child-friendly and simple and not get into the weeds of classification!

Recommended Nonfiction series

  • Amazing Animals from Creative Company
  • Young Zoologist: A First Field Guide
  • A Day in the Life: What do.... get up to all day?
  • The truth about... by Maxwell Eaton III
  • Just like us by Bridget Heos
  • Hello I'm a... by Hayley and John Rocco
  • You are a... by Laurie Ann Thompson
Recommended Authors
Recommended titles - Nonfiction
Recommended titles - Fiction
Other titles I've previously reviewed

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Sunday, January 4, 2026

Looking forward to January

Tree mural being painted.

  I am tentatively planning not to resume programs until February. We are starting another big shift of staff and materials and there are several things that aren't finished in the new youth department. We still have construction workers, supplies, and library storage in our program areas as well. I'm working on getting orders set up with our new book vendor(s), reorganizing the early reader section (again), and planning ahead for programs not only when we resume in February but also when all our new spaces are complete.

Hopefully this month we will get my department moved into a different workroom (we are currently in the program spaces), get our Lego wall installed, and get our self-check back up and running. I'm also hoping to finish my early reader project and get the Storyroom (one of three program spaces) ready to go for February.

We had planned to have the tree/meadow mural, shown above, finished by the end of the year so we could get the Read and Grow program materials back up. However, the delay in finishing the bathrooms which are directly opposite, meant this was delayed. So this will be finished in January sometime and then we'll get Read and Grow back up (that's our version of 1,000 books before kindergarten).

It looks like a very busy month, although we won't necessarily have much in the way of numbers (other than our hopefully increasing circulation) to show for it. I'm not, btw, actually looking forward to January, but it sounds like a good title.

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Tuesday, December 16, 2025

This week at the library; How it's going

My former aide painted a giant butterfly on our wall. 
She's currently working on a larger mural for our
Read and Grow program.

My school colleague's final storytimes at the Rec center went very well. Due to ongoing construction, we've decided she's going to keep Tuesday/Thursday storytime there through March and then in April she'll be holding one storytime at the library and one at the Rec center. Two of our Board members will start an afternoon storytime at the library in April, because they are made of bunnies and unicorns.

The bathrooms are not finished, but we are very, very close. I am tentatively going to start our limited slate of programs in February, since we don't know how things will go in January, moving staff spaces around and the big shift of shelves in the general, downstairs area.

There are a lot of reasons I am relieved storytime is being postponed; one of them is definitely that I need some more time to discover all the interesting little quirks about my "new" program rooms. Like the marble-sized wooden balls on the molding that have started falling off randomly.

Among many other things, I have started making a processing guide, which I'm hoping my staff will fill in the details of, and working on various weeding projects which never end.

Highlighted book reviews so far this month:

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Monday, November 24, 2025

This week at the library; Looking forward to holidays and end of the year


Programs
  • Family Storytime (offsite at Rec center)
  • Santa Storytime (offsite at Rec center)
Outreach
  • Lakeland School
Self-directed programs
  • Pokemon Hangout
  • Minecraft Hangout
Notes
  • Technically I am not looking forward as I do not really like holidays. Time off is nice, but the whole holiday thing... eh.
  • We will be ending programs December 11. For the first time in several years I'm no longer responsible for organizing our participation in the Christmas parade, since my windows no longer look out over the parade grounds.
  • We are continuing to work on our projects as well as plan for next year and get ready for the big changes in January. On the schedule (tentatively):
    • Staff temporarily in the Teen Space move down to the new staff workroom.
    • YA collections downstairs move to a new area, under discussion.
    • Director moves into his new office downstairs, construction manager moves into director's old office, my staff and I move into a smaller workroom upstairs.
    • Storytime resumes in January in the library and Pokemon/Minecraft Hangout and Paws to Read move into the Activity Room, resuming in February
  • There's other stuff happening downstairs, but I'm just trying to focus on the many things in my own department. I am doing major plans for summer, which will, tentatively, be our "official" grand reopening.
See you all in 2026! I do plan to catch up on a lot of reviewing over the holidays, so check out my review blog, https://flyingoffmybookshelf.blogspot.com/

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Sunday, November 23, 2025

This week at the library; Settling in, November 4 - 22

Kids checking out the barn
and animals - first toys we put back
Programs
  • Family Storytime (offsite at Rec center)
  • Paws to Read
Outreach
  • Lakeland School
Self-directed programs
  • Pokemon Hangout
  • Minecraft Hangout
Notes
  • We had some Dav Pilkey-themed stuff for Children's Book Week, but since we had literally just moved everything and the area wasn't ready it wasn't as... organized as it might have been. However, people enjoyed it - we gave away posters, raffled off a prize box of books, and did a sticker poster of Dogman.
  • I took about a week and a half off and I encouraged my staff to take some time off too. We all needed to recover from the stress of the last few months and the physical labor of the last few weeks.
  • We are focusing on getting up new signage, sorting and organizing toys so we can start restocking our new play areas (we have 3 spaces now!), and organizing the huge mess of supplies and misc. crammed temporarily into various spaces. I'm also still in the midst of several weeding projects and am trying to do some research into alternate vendors.
  • Most of the construction is downstairs now, but we are still waiting on some things to be finished upstairs, and there are a couple moves for youth services still coming in January, maybe.
  • I am physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted at this point. I will be slowly working on catching up on chores and getting back to having a life outside of work.

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Tuesday, November 4, 2025

This month in the collection: October


Although it was a busy/crazy month and my ordering is winding down, we did still add a little over 100 items to the youth collection this month.

Library Pinterest - new materials
Unless otherwise noted, all items were purchased for or added to the library collection

Board Books
Picture Books
Beginning Chapter Books (new series)
  • Marguerite Henry's Misty Inn
  • Mermaid Academy by Julie Sykes
  • Superpower puppies by Corey Powell
Juvenile Fiction
Juvenile Nonfiction
  • Vanishing of Lake Peigneur by Allan Wolf (graphic novel)
  • Dragons : meet the legendary monsters of mythology by Caitlin Stevenson
  • Deadliest Sea Creature by Eleanor Spicer Rice
  • Dead ends by Lindsey Fitzharris
  • Invisible : the (sort of) true story of me and my hidden disease by David Soren
Young Teen
  • The Academy by Layton (additional copies)
  • Love Lucas by Sedgewick (requested by a middle school student)
  • War Games and Refugee the graphic novel by Alan Gratz
Young Adult
  • Sisters in the wind by Angeline Boulley (hold request)
  • Fake skating by Lynn Painter
  • Fearful by Lauren Roberts
from Hello Dog! by Sarah Levine


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Sunday, November 2, 2025

This week at the library; The big move, October 20 - November 1st

Old children's area, slowly being emptied.

 Meetings, Hosted events, etc.

  • Managers' meetings
  • Wisconsin Library Association Conference
Notes
  • Moving week! We had a moving company to do the actual moving of shelves (based on my much-measured and detailed plans), the help of our public works department to move other furniture, and staff to put all the books back on the shelves (we packed them on the moving company's carts on Friday the 17th). Then our teen volunteers would help move all the misc. toys, office stuff, and supplies at the end of the week.
  • Of course, there were hitches in the plan. The construction wasn't quite done - the bathrooms weren't ready, lighting still needed to be installed, and there was still duct work in the ceiling going on. The construction company worked super hard to get everything finished enough so we could move though, and got all their equipment packed away. Initially we were supposed to be completely closed the week of the 27th and then partially closed the following two weeks, which would have let us settle in, but that didn't happen. It was also the decision of our Board that we should remain open during the move, which was a little tricky, as all of the youth services materials, plus all of the furniture stored in the youth spaces, had to be moved through the main walkways of the library during open hours. Then the schedule changed and we needed to clean out both the technical services and circulation/youth workrooms by the end of the week as well. However, we got it all done and the stacks and play areas look very nice, if a little bare.
  • The next week, our new space opened to the public on Monday the 27th. We had that day to settle into the new space, then Tuesday to get our school colleague started on offsite storytimes. After much discussion, we agreed our two main storytimes, Family Storytime on Tuesday/Thursday, are going to be hosted at the local rec center through the end of the season. The new program spaces are partially full of furniture, the bathrooms and lighting aren't done, and the spaces need a lot of work before they are safe for small kids, let alone inviting, and we also need time to figure out how to set up storytime. We decided it was better to be consistent than move back and forth.
  • Wednesday, the entire management team plus my full-time associate left to attend - and present - at WLA, our state library association conference. The library was left in the hands of three part-time associates and our circ assistants, we wished them luck, and took off. (This is not as bad as it sounds - the conference was only about an hour away and our director was not presenting so could pop back if needed in an emergency.)
  • These are the two sessions I co-presented
  • As you may guess, I am absolutely DONE. I am going to take some time off in November - I have bulbs to plant now that we're finally getting frost - and we are going to take our time and think ahead as we set up the new area and settle in - until the next move in January.

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Sunday, October 19, 2025

This week at the library; Getting ready to move, October 6 - 18

Families packed into the old teen
area for storytime crafts.
Programs

  • Family Storytime
  • Words and Wiggles storytime
  • Paws to Read
Self-Directed Activities
  • Pokemon Hangout
  • Minecraft Hangout
  • Read and Grow
  • Ghost scavenger hunt (run by circulation)
Outreach
  • Lakeland School visit
Meetings, Hosted events, etc.
  • Managers' meeting
Notes
  • I had a couple weeks to finish up the plans for moving. No matter how much work I did in September (and prior) constant changes, things I forgot, updates, and keeping everyone in the loop meant I had to keep redoing things. I did get the juvenile fiction collection weeded (barely) in time and also finished (i.e. I have no more time so they are done) the two sessions I am co-presenting at our state conference. We also needed to cover a couple storytimes, because our school collaborator was called in for other duties. The week of October 13th we started packing things up, and the move officially began on Friday the 17th, when we were closed for our annual staff work day.
  • On the 17th, with the help of staff from other departments, we got all the books loaded onto the carts from the moving company and all the toys etc. moved out of the way.
  • Of course, I was scheduled to work the following Saturday, because that's just how things are now. And we are dealing with the collapse of Baker & Taylor. I called it months ago, so no surprise for me and I cancelled all my backorders last summer.

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Sunday, October 5, 2025

This week at the library: Getting ready to move, September 8 - October 4

First storytime in temporary location

Programs

  • Paws to Read
  • Family Storytime with Ms. Andrea
  • Family Storytime with Miss Esther
  • Wiggles and Words storytime with Ms. Andrea
Outreach
  • Lakeland School visits
Self-Directed Activities
  • Read and Grow
  • Construction scavenger hunt
  • Pokemon Hangout
  • Minecraft Hangout
Meetings, Hosted events, etc.
  • Managers' meetings
Notes
  • I measured, measured, and planned over and over again. Constant new information, constant updates! I hadn't planned to actually shift any shelves until the beginning of October, but it turned out that I needed to start earlier to make sure my moving plan was accurate.
  • I labeled all the picture book shelf ranges with their proper location. My first go-through they all came out even... until I got closer to the end. Redid it. Redid it again. Finally came out right! Hopefully. Sadly, not every neighborhood fit perfectly to a full shelf, but at least there should be no divided ranges.
  • Next project was getting the two long shelves - Young Teen, juvenile AV, and JPOP (popular series and characters) arranged. Soooo much shifting and moving of shelves, but on September 10 it was finished! We will NEVER HAVE TO MOVE THOSE SHELVES AGAIN. I mean, they have to be moved upstairs, but that's what we have a moving company for. We are all a bit bruised, possibly slightly bloody, and sore, but the slotted shelves are in place!
  • Really exciting news is that my colleague figured out the source of the slotted shelves and, even more importantly, the dividers! No longer will I have to do elaborate mental calculations to match up the shelves with the collections. This is a HUGE relief.
  • I FINALLY FINISHED THE LAYOUTS. Stayed late on Friday the 12th to finish, but it's DONE! 
One of the simpler layouts

My projects for the next couple weeks were shifting and relabeling projects - I got the holiday picture books reintegrated into the neighborhoods and went back to working on juvenile fiction - the details of getting ready to move, presentations for the upcoming conference, figuring out the temporary locations for storytime, dealing with rapid changes in the plans, remaking the plans, and of course the "normal" library work.

Paws to Read - temporary location in the lobby



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Saturday, October 4, 2025

This month in the collection: September 2025


I don't even know what month it is. I am very tired, it's getting near the end of the year, and Baker & Taylor appears to be going bankrupt. However, routine is good for a person, I suppose. I will probably skip this feature for October, since that month is going to be even more... more-ish than this month and I don't order in December.

Library Pinterest - new materials
Unless otherwise noted, all items were purchased for or added to the library collection

Board Books
  • Peekaboo Dinosaur by Camilla Reid
  • This little puppy by Ingela Arrhenius
  • Very Hungry Caterpillar's first signs
  • Dinosaur's wobbly bottom by Kit Frost
  • Hoot Hoot by Georgette
  • To the other side with mommy by Esther van den Berg
Picture Books
Early Readers and Transitional Chapters
Beginning Chapter Books (new series)
  • Branches: Sports Zone by Andrew Maraniss
  • Decide & Survive
Juvenile Fiction
Juvenile Nonfiction
  • Archives of the unexplained: Area 51
  • Haunted U.S.A. : spine-tingling stories from all 50 states by Heather Alexander
  • Fantastic Flora by Ann Staats
  • They battled in blizzards by Deborah Hopkinson
  • Did you hear what happened in Salem? by Katie Kennedy
Young Teen
  • Nansi by Carl Brundtland
  • Blood in the water by Tiffany Jackson
  • Steps by Wendelin Van Draanen
Young Adult
  • If looks could kill by Julie Berry
  • Falling like leaves by Misty Wilson
  • Mismatched by Anne Camlin
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Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Picture Book Neighborhoods: Fish


 This is a small - and relatively new - neighborhood. Originally, I had a section in the animal neighborhoods called "Oceans" but I also had some ocean books in Nature. It was getting confused between the two, so I reworked the sections so the one in the Animals was labeled "Fish" and included all non-mammal underwater creatures while more general ocean habitats were included in the habitats (577) section in Nature/Earth. Most of these are shark books, of course, including several series nonfiction sets of different sharks. There's a definite shortage of freshwater fish books, something I get requests for on and off, but for now the kids will have to be satisfied with fishing books (Nature/Fun or juvenile nonfiction). Other than the shark books, I try to keep the fiction realistic, more or less.

Must-Have Nonfiction and Fiction

Fiction and Nonfiction about Sharks

Other titles in this neighborhood I have reviewed in the past
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