Summer Reading Wrap Up 2013

I think enough time has passed that I'm ready to think about this party!

Instead of giving away junk prizes for the teen SRP, I give away grab bags that MOSTLY contain just candy, though some contain little junk prizes and gift cards.  The real prize though, is the invitation to the wrap-up party that every teen who completes the SRP gets.  It's the most expensive part of summer reading for me, and really the most expensive thing I do all year.  This year was my third year in a row of doing the SRP this way.  The first year was just a big party with LASER TAG, the second year had a Hunger Games theme, and this year I went with a circus/carnival theme.  The teens were encouraged to come in costume if they wished, and many did!  My teens are the best teens ever.  I'm including pictures, but since I will only use one where any teens are unidentifiable they are not always the best ones.  You get the idea, though!

Because we have outgrown the laser tag arena (we had it for the HG party, and each kid got to play ONCE for all of about 3 minutes. They loved it, but it costs about $1000 to rent, so I knew I could better spend the money) so this year I decided to rent 3 smaller/cheaper inflatables.  I got:

The Bungee Run:

In this game two kids put on harnesses and race to the end of the lanes, trying to slap their flag down as far as possible before they get pulled back.  Hilarious!

The Wrecking Ball:

They stand on pedestals and try to knock each other off with an inflatable wrecking ball (SO HILARIOUSLY hard just to stand up on the pedestal!)

The Fly Wall:

Pretty sure you've all seen this one before.  Way harder to do than it seems!


In addition to the inflatable games, I had a midway with carnival games.

Are you for real not going to let me rotate that, Blogger?  Well FINE, but I want everyone to know it's your fault.

I bought a bottle toss game and a tic-tac-toe game from Oriental Trading.  They were both way harder than they looked!  I also created a game called "Twilight Toss" where the teens threw suction cup balls at cardboard standups of Jacob and Edward.  They LOVED it, because they HATE Twilight!

When I was looking into renting carnival games (Don't do it!  Around here they were asking about $60 bucks for one evening.  You can make it yourself with a roll of red and white striped tablecloth and cheap stuff, and then you have it forever), I saw a PLINKO board and was immediately smitten.  I looked around the internets to see if I could find instructions to make one. I found them, but it was a little beyond my abilities.  I emailed our amazing facilities guy, and not only was he happy to make me one, he suggested improvements to the plans I sent him.  Mega thanks to Phil!

We plan on using this for all sorts of things at the library.  Can't decide where to go for lunch? LET PLINKO DECIDE!

They won candy and tickets by playing these games.

The tickets were entries into prize drawings. I had some leftover gift cards, and I gave them away this way.  The more they participated in the activities, the more chances they had to win Minecraft accounts and Barnes and Noble/Game Stop cards! It was a great incentive for them to keep playing the games, though they loved them anyway.

I also had a couple of games going upstairs--because I really think it's best to have A LOT going on at an event like this where there will be more than 100 teens in the building.  I bought giant inflatable bowling from OT, and made giant Jenga from the cardboard boxes some of our kid's SRP prizes had come in.

There were also a scavenger hunt, tarot readings, and I had Sing Star and Just Dance set up in our conference rooms.  Because I have a lot of friends who are involved in the circus arts, I hired a few to wander around juggling, making balloon animals, and just generally goofing off to create some atmosphere.  Anthony always had a crowd of girls around him, I can't imagine why!

Around 8PM anyone who wanted played a game of Sardines.   Toward the end of the evening I did the prize drawings, and then sent everyone home!  It was a great success, and I think we had about 140 attend this year.  A smaller crowd than last year (216!), but I think the Hunger Games theme drew in a LOT of teens.  I always want my programs to grow every year, but I'll be honest---I was okay with a smaller crowd!

The party went from 6 (closing time) until 9, and the library was closed to the general public.  I do not allow parents to attend teen events, but I had LOTS of adult volunteers--Staff members and friends of mine.  It all went very smoothly, no problems at all.

I have no idea what I'm going to do next year to top it!

Duct Tape

When I presented at MLA last year, my co-presenter and I called it "Beyond Duct Tape: Programming for Today's Teens".   Really though, I have no beef with duct tape.  It remains a staple in my programming wheelhouse--a sentence that I'm not sure makes sense and which also makes me want to slap myself in the face.  ANYWAY!

I've found that teens need a lot more instruction than you would expect them to.  I always hope that they will just play and create and end up with awesome stuff, but their imaginations just don't seem to go that way.  I usually provide them with samples and instructions for roses and wallets, and this time around I had put in the newsletter that they could bring a t-shirt if they wanted to make a t-shirt bag.

While we did have a couple of reluctant ladies who I don't think ended up making anything other than a bit of a mess, most of the teens came well prepared this time around.  I'd only allocated an hour--next time I'll make it two.  They weren't ready to leave!  I let them stay over for about half an hour, but I had tickets to that night's Tiger's game so I had to kick them out eventually.

Lots of the instructions that I have used before haven't been detailed enough for teens who haven't done these kinds of projects before, so I drew my own.  Please admire my awesome skillz!

I need to find a .gif of someone being extremely busy, but I'M TOO BUSY!

Summer Reading registration started one week ago and we already have about 135  teens signed up!  That's pretty good, since teens tend to sign up when they come for their first prize--and prizes started today so those 135 are the super responsible ones.  (edit:  I had to stop here on this post yesterday--today we're up to 160!)

I'm excited about the prizes this year--especially the Above-and-Beyond.  The teens are too, I know this because there's a poster up behind me with the prizes and I can hear the squealing. Here's what I went with:

 Last year my final number of registered teens was about 620, and I've increased by about 50% every year for the past few years.  That means I'm aiming for 1000 this year, which is insane and  probably out of reach but that doesn't mean I'm not going to try!  I'm hoping to spend more time at the branches this summer pushing it--at the main library (where I spend most of my time) I track down teens and tell them enthusiastically about how they can win CANDY AND MONEY YOU GUYS! and it totally works.  The branch librarians do their best but many are not as comfortable engaging teens as I am.  Understandable, I'm totally nuts.

Summertime and the livin' is FRANTIC AS HELL

Summer planning is starting hardcore this week.  I have a Teen Advisory Council meeting tomorrow night, and it's our last before I have to have the newsletter articles DONE.  That means it's all happening now. There's a lot getting in my way this year--uncertainty about whether I'll have an intern this summer, hatred of the theme, the suspicion that I have MONO and that's why I'm so tired.  And the biggest hurdle for me mentally--wondering how the heck I'm going to top last year.

Though I am the only YA librarian for three buildings, I'm lucky enough to have the funding for a paid intern to help me out for about 10 hours a week.  My previous intern has graduated and left the country, leaving some big shoes to fill.  The teens really related to him, and they miss him dearly, so any incoming intern is going to have to overcome some hurdles in bonding with the teens.  We posted the position several months ago, but I wasn't thrilled with the candidates.  They were all nice, but none of them had real enthusiasm for working with teens, and that's important for this sort of job.  Overall I came out of the interviews feeling like I'd have to put in more than I'd get out of the potential interns--a situation that just won't work here.  I need help, REAL HELP. I understand that a library student will have to learn everything, but the hope is that eventually they will be able to carry some real weight around here.  The most promising candidate already had a full time job that would not have allowed her to be here when I'd need her most.  We decided to postpone hiring until the Winter/Spring semester starts, but we haven't had any replies from qualified students.  No intern will mean fewer programs and fewer BIG programs, which will be disappointing both to me and to the community.

I'm making the bold decision this year to completely ignore the collaborative theme.  Every year I MOSTLY ignore it, but still use the name and some of the bad art. This year I'm not using any of it.  The teen theme always seems very slapped together last minute based on a loose tie to the children's theme.  My teens STILL make fun of past themes (Metamorphosis in particular), and so this year my theme is SUMMER READING.  Wild, I know.


 I'm a loner Dotie, a rebel.