September saw ladies in waiting, October brought wish fairies, and March meant cats in hats and scuba divers! Why were all these characters in the Tye River Elementary School library? To promote our library and reading, of course! Students, staff, and parents are always surprised by the different characters that show up in our library to help get students excited about reading and our various events. As a first year librarian, I am working hard to find ways to promote the library. My students are very excited about the library, and they seem to love to visit and check out books. One of my personal goals is to inspire a love of reading through excitement about what is going on in the library. I try to be creative with the library space and the events that we hold throughout the year.

To help my students feel ownership of the library, I created a “wish box.” Students put the name of a book or movie that they feel would be a great addition to our library into the wish box. A few times now, I have opened the wish box and have granted some of the wishes. The students have asked for some great books, such as books about potbellied pigs, some popular series books that we didn’t yet have, and even some biographies they were interested in. The first time I ordered books from the wish box, I wanted an exciting way to promote the new books and let my students know they were available. My assistant and I donned fairy wings and flitted around the school, joining in with the PE classes, catching a few wishes floating around the cafeteria in our wish nets, and popping into classrooms to spread the word that wishes have been granted. Now, whenever the wish fairies are spotted, the students get excited to see which wish books are available and they rush to the library! Students love to make wishes and can’t believe that those books get purchased and put on our shelves. I had a student request a pie cookbook, and he was so thrilled and grateful that I was able to add one to our collection that he baked me a delectable chocolate mousse pie from a recipe in the new book! The sparkle that comes to the children’s eyes is worth more than any wish I could make for myself!

A New Approach to the Book Fair

The fall book fair had a medieval theme this year, and we decorated the library with a castle, knights, a dragon, and two ladies in waiting! Again, my assistant and I wore costumes, this time to promote our book fair and reading (we told the students to enter the kingdom of books). We held a contest for the students to guess how many mints it took to freshen the dragon’s breath, which gave them a chance to win books from the book fair. We had our first Parent Teacher Organization meeting on the opening night of the book fair, which had the parents and students enchanted to see the ladies in waiting selling books! This book fair was the most successful the school has had in many years, and it helped bring a lot of new books and incentives to the library.

The spring book fair had an “under the sea” theme. We donned scuba gear and encouraged everyone to dive into a good book. Guessing how many seashells were in a jar was the contest challenge for this promotion, and books from the book fair were, once again, the prize. Even though the theme had us thinking about the beach and sunny weather, we got snowed out for several days during the book fair, but it didn’t deter our students’ enthusiasm for buying books.

Read Across America

As expected, Dr. Seuss’s beloved Cat in the Hat was bopping around the library, this time as twins, with the principal and assistant principal getting into the act as Thing 1 and Thing 2! We celebrated Read Across America week with our costumes and schoolwide reading activities. Again, snow days forced us to delay the activities, but that may not have been a bad thing since it extended the activities beyond the week! We started out with dressing up in our costumes and having guests come in to read to the students. At the end of that day, we had a schoolwide DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) time. Students were given pencils to celebrate reading. The principal also gave all the students stickers and bookmarks. We had a theater troupe come in and present “Jack and the Beanstalk” for us. As a culminating activity, members of the local minor league baseball team came in to offer a reading promotion, encouraging students to read and earn tickets to a baseball game. The kids were thrilled! It was exciting to have students come to the library to exchange books so that they had enough to read throughout the week and over the anticipated snow days.

Sometimes It Takes a Silly Costume

I never get tired promoting our library and encouraging students to read. Embarrassment is not in my vocabulary when it comes to having my students want to visit the library. If it takes wearing silly costumes, dancing around the school, or just being silly in general, I will go to those lengths to bring in my young patrons. My goal is to create a place that students want to come to and check out what is new, sit and enjoy a good book, and feel that they are welcome and important. Our efforts so far have brought smiling faces, interested readers, and student ownership to our library. I hope to continue the momentum and would be willing to dress up in a silly costume any day if that is what it would take to get students to love books and the characters they can become through reading!