Super Football Party I and II

Hand-drawn by one of
our very own volunteers!

Original Date: Saturday, January 30th, 2016 
Time: 1:00 – 2:00 PM (1 hour program)

I am not what someone would ever refer to as "a sports guy," so when one of our regular volunteers and TAB members proposed hosting a football event to celebrate the Super Bowl, at first I found myself a bit verklempt. "How do you sport?" I wanted to ask. "Where do balls come into it? How many quarters make up a goal, and how many goals are in a gallon?"

Thankfully, our volunteer and Marcus the Teen Librarian were able to assist me in this cultural blindspot of mine.

I actually don't remember much of our first iteration of the Super Football Party, which is appropriate given that this has been my reaction to nearly all the other sporting events that have occurred in my life. Since my note-taking mania hadn't reached its peak at this early stage in my first real attempts at teen programming, there aren't too many transcribed memories for me to fall back on either.

What I *do* remember is that in addition to Super Bowl-esque snacks that we served (chips, salsa, queso, pretzels, soda), we had a videotape (you heard me) of football's greatest hits or somesuch playing on our TV-on-a-cart that the handful of people in attendance generally ignored. On the plus side, one of the activities we did was "Film Your Best Super Bowl Commerical." Using the library's digital camera, we got footage of two girls marketing the deliciousness of Doritos and a brother and sister team selling us on the idea that Gatorade could turn you into a pro athlete. I also made my own contribution, a parody of the Matthew McConaughey Lincoln commercials that involved me driving a wooden car from the children's play area.

It seems that I will, in fact, do anything for a LOL.

Original Date: Saturday, January 28th, 2017
Time: 2:00 – 4:00 PM (2 hour program)

Our Super Football Party was met with enough enthusiasm that it merited a revival the following year entitled Super Football Party II, appropriately enough. We brought back some of the simple, passing-the-time activities that we incorporated during the first event, like tossing foam footballs around the room and aiming them through a set of hula hoops that I wielded through the air like a circus performer. (Remember how I said I didn't remember anything from the first event? Apparently that was a mistake!) I've found that sometimes it's the simplest things that'll keep people invested for seemingly endless lengths of time; such was the case with the hula hoop toss. There was usually at least one teen who couldn't resist the siren call of matching their agility against mine.

During the second event we had an inflatable football player with a hole in it. He thought he could steal my thunder. And he did, a little bit.

What a jerk. 

Yes, but can he ACT?

As you'll notice from the shot above, we were able to up our game in the "motion picture" department considerably from the previous year, here projecting a series of YouTube compilations of the previous year's best plays onto our big screen. That generated more enthused conversations among the attendees than a VHS showing highlights from the '86-'87 season, believe it or not.

In addition to the aforementioned games of skill and chance, we had another oldie-but-a-goodie in the form of paper football matches. Half the fun there came from telling your opponent that you were going to aim for their face, but I think that I may have been the only one doing that. Our football enthusiast TAB member who got this whole ball rolling (your welcome) also brought in an official NFL football board game, the mechanics and regulations of which sounded like a barrage of white noise when Marcus attempted to explain them to me. The teens also engaged in some pre-game discussions and debates as to who the potential victor was going to be that Sunday, an occasion that was marked by an eerie omen in the shape of a falcon descending from the heavens to visit our humble gathering.

Actually, I think it might have been an egret.

Who can say for certain?

Like for many of the other teen events in the coming year, I curated a collection display for this program that, sadly, went untouched. The items were:

• Cover-Up – John Feinstein
• The Football Game I’ll Never Forget: 100 NFL Stars' Stories (Non-Fiction)
• Football’s Greatest Stars (Non-Fiction)
• Friday Night Lights (DVD)
• Gridiron Gang (DVD)
• Invincible (DVD)
• Million-Dollar Throw – Mike Lupica
• Muckers – Sandra Neil Wallace
• Out of the Blue - Victor Cruz (Non-Fiction)
• QB 1 – Mike Lupica
• Stick – Michael Harmon
• Until Friday Night - Abbi Glines
• We Are Marshall (DVD)

Even when the teens tend to ignore the collection display, I still press on in doing them. Generally it's one of the more light and fun steps to do when planning a program, so it can act as a nice break from figuring some of the more complicated aspects out. Not only that, but sometimes it can help to build up a little knowledge in a field you don't know much about, as was the case for me here. Even though I haven't read or watched any of the above materials, I can now use them as recommendations for reader's advisory based on the research I did then.

That's been a consistent theme throughout my time in teen services: filling up blindspots, one program at a time. 

Catch you in the ring.

Star Wars: Awaken the Force & Rogues

Original Date: Saturday, January 9th, 2016

Time: 3:00 - 4:00 PM (1 hour program)

When I was asked by the administration at my former library if I would consider acting as an "official/unofficial" (my words) assistant to the then-current teen librarian, I jumped at the chance. My managers were aware of my previous schooling in Middle Grades Language Arts, and I suppose they thought I might have something of value to contribute to the teen programming and services at our branch.

Like I do whenever I find a new creative endeavor, I dug into it with obsessive ardor, searching online for advice and columns on teen services and program ideas. Looking back on that period of time, it's amusing to see how little I knew about everything, and it's likely a good idea that most of my "ideas" didn't get the chance or the time to make it off the ground. (I'm also highly aware of the fact that though I've learned a lot in the last two years that there's still *plenty* of stuff to which I remain ignorant.)

All this lengthy preamble is to say that for those first six months things were very slow-going, and it really wasn't until that library's new and current teen librarian, Marcus, arrived on the scene at the tail-end of 2015 that I would start getting my first real taste of what it was like to plan and execute a library program. This whole crazy adventure began with our virgin voyage, Star Wars: Awaken the Force, in January 2016.

Marcus, being a big fan of the series, had wanted to capitalize on the fanatical anticipation that the first installment of the newest trilogy had awoken (ha-ha) in fandom earlier that year. It was originally meant to be a strictly YA affair from what I remember for the grades 6-12 crowd, but for reasons I don't believe I was made privy to the event ended up being open to all ages. As such, the response we got from the public was pretty massive; considering that the major activities we had on hand were a "Make Your Own Lightsaber" craft with colored duct tape and gift wrap tubes, an election for the participants to either choose to be a Jedi or a member of the Sith by how many cookies they ate from the opposing camps (sugar for Jedi, Oreos for Sith; you tell *me* who won that bout), and a trivia contest that involved one of our teen volunteers shouting out questions over the din of excited toddlers, people turned out for this program in droves. Between little ones, parents, and a fair number of freshman-aged teens, there was easily at least 50 people crammed into our sizable Youth Activity Room.

The other main highlight was the staging of "choreographed" lightsaber battles for the enjoyment of the masses. Marcus and I led off the proceedings with our hastily-blocked match that had his Jedi defeating my black-hoodied Sith. I like to think that the crushed and limp state of our lightsabers by that time in the program lent an air of gravitas to the battle that George Lucas could only dream of. The other battles were certainly more... enthusiastic than ours, including a match between two teenage boys that managed to move out of the established "ring" and undoubtedly gave the people sitting up close an unexpected thrill.

We had A New Hope playing on the projection screen for the duration of the program; Marcus started the film at just the right time so that by 4:00 when we handed out our prizes (including a movie gift card for The Force Awakens) the film had reached the point where Luke, Han, and Chewie receive their medals of valor. Our winners were standing at the front of the room right as the crowd in the movie was cheering. I still can't get over that!

Eagle-eyed readers will quickly notice that the above photo contains a scene that is certainly *not* from A New Hope on the projection screen and that the attendance is slightly more underwhelming than my tall tales of two-score attendees would have it. That's because both of the pictures included in this post are actually from the library's *second* Star Wars event, Star Wars Rogues. (This was in the days before my obsessive photo-taking and record-keeping had properly matured.)

Original Date: Saturday, December 17th, 2016

Time: 2:00 - 4:30 PM (2.5 hour program)

We managed to head off the premiere of the new film at the pass this time out. As a callback of sorts to the earlier program, this time we had The Force Awakens playing as our in-program film. We revived the lightsaber craft and cookie-voting system from the previous event, this time featuring the introduction of those lovable anti-heroes, the Chocolate Chips! (I mean the Rogues!) Our trivia contest was tuned-down to a simple testing of the attendees' knowledge to name as many characters from each camp as they could. I was surprised that even as a relative newb to the Star Wars verse I had to actually school some of the teens on the villains who belonged to the Dark Side. (How the heck can you forget about a character named Count Dooku?)

I can't claim to know why attendance was markedly lower at this event in comparison to Awaken the Force, but I suspect the fact that we did limit Rogues to grades 6-12 this time out had an influence on it. Still, the amount of folks we had were all generally interested and/or passionate about Star Wars that the afternoon passed pretty pleasurably.

And yes, I wore the same black hoodie to announce my allegiance to the Sith. The Dark Side keeps things pretty simple, fashion-wise. 

Hiya!

That's "hiya!" as in "hello!", not "hii-yaah!" I'm not a ninja.

Or a cyclops.

For those of you wondering what this here bloggity is all about and if you're going to be hearing more jokes of that caliber, allow me to explain. (You will be.)

For the last near-decade, I've been posting on the Interwebs at a fairly consistent rate, mostly about the horror genre, a lifelong passion of mine. Only recently has it occurred to me that a change of pace might prove fun and worthwhile. By day, I am a part-time library assistant focused mainly on information services and, more to the point of this entire enterprise, young adult services. You know, "teens." This is, in fact, the branch of librarianship that I am currently working my way towards as I acquire my MLIS from the University of South Florida.

Pictured: two teens in their natural habitat.
Approach with extreme caution!

After stumbling upon a series of wonderful sites geared towards this same subject (many of which you can find in the blogrolls to the right), I thought that a space dedicated towards this aspect of my life would not only give me a different kind of creative outlet for my writing, but also act as a handy way for me to archive my past programs, events, and stories for the purposes of professional development, networking ideas, and for picking my mood back up whenever I started to question the meaning of it all.

So you mean like Tuesdays?

So add this site to the increasing milieu of library-themed blogs and online journals (or don't!), one that will predominantly take as its subject the services that my home library makes available to its teenaged patrons.

My goal is to work my way through the "backlog" of notable events that I've been a part of ever since becoming the "unofficial assistant" to the Teen Librarian in the summer of 2015, so it might be a bit before this blog catches up with the rest of us in real time. Along the way I may sprinkle in some different business like my personal journey to Library Land, but I'm chomping at the bit to start broadcasting the work that the Teen Librarian and I have done (and are doing), so chances are highly likely that that stuff will come first before I get into the far-less interesting biographical flotsam. (If I ever do.)

Sound exciting? Great! Then let's Dewey decimal this thing!

Strap in, folks.