From: Steven
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 15:08:26 PST

I've noticed that most of the success stories so far have come from school librarians and teachers. As a public librarian, I haven't yet figured out the best way to connect older kids & picture books. When I visit a class it's usually for 30 minutes of booktalks. I often include one picturebook among the novels & non-fiction, but I never have quite as much success as I think I should. The ones with great stories are usually too long to read all the way through. The fine artwork ("Discovery of Dragons") is hard to share, because they usually listen at their desks rather than gathered in a small group on the floor as younger grades will. Sometimes the book I share will entertain them at the time ("The Happy Hocky Family"), but they don't necessarily come to our library looking for the book or others like it. My nearest "sure thing" is "Harris Burdick", but even that
 occasionally falls flat, I think because it's so different from the rest of my booktalk material. I'd be interested to hear how other public librarians visiting classrooms have approached this. Not so much title recommendations as strategies for presenting picturebooks in a class visit setting.

- - Steven Engelfried, West Linn Public Library 1595 Burns Street West Linn, OR USA 97068 ph: 503e6x57 fax: 503e6'46 e-mail: steven at westlinn.lib.or.us
Received on Thu 06 Nov 1997 05:08:26 PM CST