What an exciting week it has been.  We began having kindergarten, first, and second grade classes in the library during their exploratory time.  The kindergarten students enjoyed the book Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns to Listen.  Howard is a rabbit who always gets in trouble because he doesn’t listen.  After being sent to time-out, Howard decides to become a better listener.  He gets a star at school the next day for being such a good listener.  After the story, we talked about how to be good listeners and the students made rabbit ears that said “I’m a Good Listener.”

The first graders enjoyed reading What Happened to Marion’s Book.   Marion is a hedgehog who loves books so much that she wants to be a librarian when she grows up. She is excited to go to school and check out books from the Media Center.  But Marion spills jam on her library book and tries everything to get the stain off of the page.  After rubbing toothpaste on the stain, putting the book in the bathtub, and washing it in the wash machine, Marion realizes that she will have to pay for the book.  When she takes the book back to the library, Mrs. Carlson the librarian shows Marion how she fixes up books that need repair.  After the story, we talked about ways to take care of our library books and keep them healthy.   The students colored a picture of Marion reading her book in the bathtub. 

The second graders listened to The Library Dragon.  The Library Dragon is Miss Lotta Scales, who doesn’t want the students to touch the books for fear that they will mess them up.  The students soon quit coming to the library.  When Molly Brickmeyer accidentally wanders into the library and begins reading aloud, Miss Lotta Scales realizes that the library is for the children.  Her scales fall off, but Miss Lotty keeps her tail, because “every librarian needs to be a bit of a dragon—or else, WHO WOULD GUARD THE BOOKS?”  After the story, we talked about which of the Library Dragon’s rules were good rules and which were not.  The students pretended that they were librarians and made posters listing their rules.