Picky Readers

My busy week is continuing. I've moved on from the painstaking computer purge of departed library patrons to making a book display for World Book Day on March 5. We've been asking students to name their favorite books and tell us why they like them, and you would think from their reactions that we wanted to pull their front teeth. They are so reluctant to participate! We finally got enough responses to put together a display.

I'm printing out an image of each book's cover, and including the student's review beneath it. We'll then hang these reviews in the library. Pretty straightforward, right? I think it's going to look good when it's done, but it's taking a bit of work, especially when I keep having to drop everything to check out materials.

There's a gang of fifth-grade girls who come into the library every single day and want book recommendations, but when I make suggestions they either don't want to read what I suggest (and no, I'm not always pushing "Misty of Chincoteague") or they check out a book and return it five minutes later, saying plaintively, "I didn't like it." I guess I finally hit my limit with this group yesterday because when they came in and asked me if I knew any good books, I said, "Off the top of my head, no!"

That got a laugh from one of my co-workers, and my boss chose that very moment to take a picture of me, which she tweeted on the library Twitter account with the caption "Decisions, decisions." Don't I look annoyed?

Fortunately, these kids like me, and I took them back to the shelves where we successfully scrounged up some reading material that they no doubt will return today, unread. I think they mostly like the attention. I'm sure they never sensed that I really wanted to get back to building my book display.

(Top: Bleak February, in front of a bleak house under renovation.)