Bear Bahoochie

Christmas in the Library

Now I love the festive season and any excuse the decorate the library so I opted this year for a Christ-moose (or a Merry Moose-mas?)

The baubles hanging from the antlers are book wishes from staff – the poor moose became quite heavily laden by the end.

I also made a wreath for the door out of paper. (You cut a circle out of cardboard the size you want the wreath to be then cut out the middle so you have  wreath shape. Next staple holly shaped bits of green paper onto it – work round the circle in the same direction. To finish cut some circles out of red, group into threes and spread amongst the holly).The pupils decorated the tree and then I wheeled out the paper snowman making. I’ve done this before and giving pupils three increasing sized circles, a orange triangle and paper sticks always results in fun. This year I had a bunch wearing hats, smoking pipes and even one throwing a snowball. However I also had a pupil who reminded me of Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes) who made a Siamese twin snowman and another snowman holding a firework who was going to blow them apart plus  a snowman on fire who was melting.  Free reign of ideas is worth thinking about carefully!

Anyway his somewhat worrying snowmen inspired me to replicate the Calvin and Hobbes snowmen that I love so much (see last years tree decorations). So the main notice board got the bowling snowman and the rest were scattered in amongst the pupils creations.

Recent Displays

I have been busy with library displays but kept forgetting to get the photos home to post. I’ve done three displays since I last posted. Hallowe’en is full of photos of the pupils so I can’t post them but we did a haunted house mystery where the pupils had different characters and library users were challenged to solve the mystery. All very Scooby Doo

Next I had my Remembrance Day display. I try and change it every year and last year had a WW1 emphasis so I decided to go with the current war in Afghanistan as this years. I typed up a list of the UK military personnel who have died since we started the conflict including job and age. Simple but very effective.

Then we had my LGBT display. Now this was a result of a staff challenge. At the last in-service day we were challenged to do things that would make LGBT lifestyle accepted (i.e. the same way skin colour and religion have been accepted). I opted for authors who have written great books but happen to fall into one of those categories for the display.  I think the funniest thing about this one was that the depute head sent me an email saying we’d have to discuss this as we don’t want to ‘promote’. Needless to say we never had the talk but I love the idea I have that power – now if I could only make them read!

NB: four pupils have come out to me as a result so the aim of making it an accepted thing in the library worked – none of them took a book though!

The slogan was an adaptation of one I’d seen on the Curmudgeoy Librarian Superstore which had it going ‘into the stacks’ but there was no way my pupils would have understood that.

Turkey Cupcakes

I love a holiday and even though we don’t get Thanksgiving here I still like the idea. So for the first time in years I had people round for the big day itself so I decided to mark the occasion with some themed cupcakes (that and I found a source of Candy Corn!).  I found the idea on the Disney Family Fun site but had to adapt it slightly since it called for Keebler Sandies Right Bites Shortbread which isn’t something i can pick up in Tesco.

So instead I sliced the top off a cupcake and cut into quarters. I put two on for wings and used one for the head. I used decorating gel to finish off the features and the afore mentioned candy corn for the tail.  

Camp badge – back again!

The time has come for the SS100 badge to be designed. This year it’s on the West Coast but it’s main thing is to mark the 100 years of Girlguiding. So the badge was to reflect this (say goodbye to my puffin plan). I decided to limit the options a lot more this year – one badge design but the busyness and colour will have to be discussed with the badge maker. Partly because I don’t have the official centenary colours as pens and partly because the size is supposed to be the same as the past years to it’s tiny.

Janet Evanovich

The latest Janet Evanovich is ‘Finger Lickin’ Good’. Now these are simple fluff but very enjoyable fluff. The end even had me laughing out loud in the middle of a silent reading reading english class!

Stephanie Plum once again is split between two steamin’ hot men, more people try and kill them and there is some serious attempts at BBQ (as you would expect these are not hugely successful).

Not much character development, complex scene setting or advanced language but what it does have is a whole lot of fun and a decent crime mystery – exactly the stuff for lazy Sunday reading!

How to talk about books you haven’t read

Pierre Bayard has written a book called ‘How to talk about books you haven’t read’. It’s classed under humour and he spends a lot of the time in the book showing how you don’t need to read a book to know about a book or to be able to discuss it. I don’t think it was particularly funny, rather it raised some excellent points – not least that it would be impossible to ever read all the books in the world – even all the ones we are ’supposed’ to. Instead we should start to think about reading in a new way.

From my take on it (though he did point out that once you’ve read a book you only have your flawed memory of what it was about) was that you can become aware of books in a range of ways and all are just as viable as reading it cover to cover. Even just knowing the context of a book can allow you to make a judgement without cracking the spine.

In the interests of honesty I should point out I gave up reading this book when it got to the ‘how to section’. Mainly because a skim of the book showed that I already applied most of it!

Oscar Wilde continued

Well I continued with my Oscar Wilde pre-occupation (though totally failed to see Dorian Gray in the cinema). I listened to Dorian Gray in the car on the way to work – though I remembered it was excellent, I had forgotten just how good the  story was.

I also read the first of Gyles Brandreth’s Oscar Wilde mysteries – Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders. Having read the second one first I found this one wasn’t as good – though this was probably because this one does more background and scene setting. Useful if you aren’t in the middle of a Wilde obsession.

I’d say well worth a read if you are interested in Wilde as it is full of useful background and scene setting – plus a pretty interesting murder mystery.

Camp Blanket

Camp blankets and badges are serious things in the world of Guiding and Scouts. Despite my involvement for the past twenty years it’s only in the last two that I’ve made the camp blanket (hand sewn of course).

I was asked about what badge is my favourite – this one is

I’d love it to be deep an meaningful but a lion eating an oreo is really all it is (well the cookie says ‘78 and that is when I appeared on the earth).

Dinah meets Dinah

I was at a Guiding event in Edinburgh the other week and I have a travelling bear (part of the centenary fun) anyway I made said bear a green beanie hat and a green sling bag. Though more excitingly from a Guiding perspective was that the bear is named Dinah after the current Scottish Chief Guide and at the event I finally met the real Dinah and  so did the bear

Devil in a Blue Dress

Speed Hallowe’en Costume and cunning literary joke in one.

I read Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress this week. Loved it. Lots of good stuff for Higher kids doing personal studies but much more excitingly a really good story and I love the character of Easy Rawlins. I admit that the main reason I read it was so I could wear devil horns and a long felt devil tail and a blue dress for Hallowe’en but it was well worth it.