Report from Jessica Ormonde, Half Moon Bay Library:
Saturday Ignite Session – Adventures in Preschool Science
Erin Berman from the San Jose Public Library shared tips, and ideas from her preschool STEM program. They focused on simple and fun activities where preschoolers and an accompanying adult could observe, investigate, and ask questions. This program had the added side effect of helping to show parents how to act as better teachers with their children.
A description of the program on the SJPL website: www.sjpl.org/blog/adventures-preschool-science
Saturday Ignite Session – Here It Is, Your Moment of Zen
Jesse Henning from the Westerville Public Library presented a talk about creating timely, funny, interesting book displays, and how to best use them to engage your community. He creates small displays (less than 15 books) that stay up for 1-2 weeks. His goal with these displays is not to increase circulation but to start conversations with his patrons.
Some of Jesse’s displays can be found here: www.jessehenning.com/displays/
From Maker to Make-HER: Leveling the STEM Playing Field for Girls
This session was about the Sunnyvale public library’s Make-Her program encouraging girls to build STEM skills. They shared a cheap and easy maker activity you can do at your branch. Makers create a piece of wearable paper circuitry by folding a paper template and using copper tape and a battery to complete a circuit that lights up an LED.
Instructions for the wearable paper circuitry gem: https://sunnyvalemakeher.wordpress.com/workshop-materials/
Saturday Ignite Session – Diversity’s Action Plan
Jason Low, of Lee & Low Books, presented a quick overview of diversity in children’s publishing and the steps Lee & Low is taking to create more diversity. One step is Lee & Low’s Diversity Baseline Survey. This survey is for publishing houses, and review journals. It asks their employees to state their race, gender, sexuality, and disability. The goal is to generate data on diversity in the publishing industry.
For more info on the survey: www.leeandlow.com/about-us/the-diversity-baseline-survey
Welcome to Nightvale and Librarians
Robin Brenner mediated a Q&A with the creators of the popular horror comedy podcast Welcome to Nightvale. She also talked about her experience hosting Welcome to Nightvale listening parties in her own library for teens.
Here is an article about a library hosting Welcome to Nightvale listening parties: www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2013/10/11/new-breed-teen-services-librarians-emerges/mybVRaDDY2mPgezrxMWSmN/story.html
Detroit Meets the World of Manga
Amy Seipke from the College for Creative Studies held this poster session. My takeaway was that manga is a medium not a genre. It’s a format that allows for the telling of many types of stories for many audience groups. She has made a manga bibliography available online that gives an overview of the different manga genres with examples.
Amy’s manga bibliography: www.lib.collegeforcreativestudies.edu/screens/Manga_Bibliography.pdf
YA Author Coffee Klutch
A few interesting forthcoming novels from the coffee klutch. 
- Never Said (Carol Lynch Williams): Realistic YA fiction on the dark side. Focusing on twin sisters who deal with family and relationship problems.
- The Looney Experiment (Luke Reynolds): Middle grade fiction, about a middle school student who’d rather live in his awesome imagination than the real world. Then he meets a teacher who shows him that reality can be pretty cool too.
- The Rest of Us Just Live Here (Patrick Ness): YA fiction that pokes fun at current post-apocalyptic trends. It’s set in a world where a select group of chosen teenagers must save the world, but the story actually focuses on a teen named Mikey who has his own non-saving the world related problems to deal with.
- The Scorpion Rules (Erin Bow): YA science fiction. Set in a world where the robots have taken over and instilled global peace. This is done by enacting a system where every world leader must give the robots one of their children to keep as a hostage until the child turns 18. If a leader declares war, then their child’s life is forfeit.
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