My Very Own Library Card!

left work and went by the post office to mail the truth
to my mom. she doesn’t understand that her poodle, cooki, is a bad girl
dog. i mean, the dog is a demon creature with red devil eyes way scarier
than any goat. so with the truth in the mail, i accomplished one of my
remaining to-do’s for the week—no doubt the change of the week! (note
that you have to have changes if you’re creating a changelog)

this will sound dumb to anyone with a real life, but today, this very
evening, all by myself, i got a library card! i am now a card-holding
patron of the champaign public library. ok, it’s true that as a fun-filled
employee of NCTE, an affiliate organization of the University of Illinois,
that i can use the u of i library whenever i want. but who the hell wants
to figure out parking on campus to get some picture books?

so public library you are my goal, but, wow, have things changed in libraries
since i was a page at chesterfield county public library back in high
school. then again, that was twenty-thr, er, a few years ago. there was
a wild game of chase going on in the picture books. all computer terminals
were being hogged for video games. and there was a group of teens supposedly
playing candyland, but making so much noise that the security badge guy
had to come over and ask them to hushinate.

what a darned shame eric wasn’t around! he could have just sauntered over
and glowered with that Dwight
D. Eisenhower Statuary Stance (TM) and the hush that would have fallen
over the room would have been adequate for papal mumblings to be loud
as a foghorn.

oh well. i minded my own business and fetched books and stuff. i scooped
up three cds (Aladdin and the Magic Lamp with John Hurt and Mickey
Hart, Brer Rabbit and the Wonderful Tar Baby with Danny Glover
and Taj Mahal, and Brer Rabbit and Boss Lion with Danny Glover
and Dr. John). plan to listen to them while walking. then i meandered
over to the picture books. got June 29, 1999, which i want to create
a lesson for that we’ll hook up to the calendar
on the site. besides Wiesner’s books are always so lovely to look at.
got Jumanji for a tech writing lesson plan we have in the works,
by Erin Crisp. she has students writing the instructions for a game, and
after all, in Jumanji it’s so-o-o-o important to "read instructions
carefully" : )

then i got four books on monsters! for another lesson plan. i own sendak’s
wild things, so i didn’t get that. with the librarian’s help, we found
Nothing Scares Us, Go Away, Big Green Monster, It’s Bedtime,
and Five Ugly Monsters (which is strangely like Five Little
Monkeys). we have a lesson proposed on using monsters to teach about
writing detailed descriptions.

it’s my job to think up an ‘interactive’ for each lesson. understand that
‘interactive’ has a special definition. pdfs count as interactives. though
the more ‘interactive’ an interactive is the better. for the monsters,
i was thinking about the silly Fraser
the Eraser "rub-a-dub-dub" BBC monster, and then mr. potatohead
danced through my head, and i thought that maybe I could create a "monster
machine." sort of a cross between magnetic poetry and mr. potatohead.
ok, maybe not that original. we’ll have to see.

i’m not sure about the interactives for the other two books i have. i
guess it wouldn’t be too difficult to come up with some ‘follow the instructions
or things go horribly wrong’ thing. but how do you make things go wrong
on the Internet? well, what i mean is how do you make them go wrong in
ways that allow you to keep a job in k12 education?

enough on my day occupations though. i should get back to the brainclogging
blogging that gravel-lord rich wants me to do. sigh…