LEAF again

Another days' worth of LEAF workshops tomorrow, this time in the Memorial Gardens. I hope the weather holds!

This is a good opportunity to sell our services to the children and the accompanying grown-ups. Last week's session in Littleborough Library let me present the library as a friendly, welcoming place with fun things to do and simply heaving with interesting books. This week's session lets me demonstrate that library services don't stop at the front door of the building and that the public library service is more than just a building with a sign stuck on it and some neat stuff inside.

These events are also always a good opportunity for networking and sharing ideas. I'm always happy to borrow or adapt ideas that will keep my "act" fresh with my audiences. (I wonder what I would think of some of my earliest storytimes.) Keeping a high positive profile with partners and potential partners is also money in the bank for possible future events and programmes.

Richard and Judy's Kids' Book Special

A few weeks back we were one of the library authorities contacted by somebody from "Richard & Judy" to see if we'd be interested in getting one of our children's book clubs involved in the programme's children's reading promotion. Sadly, in the end the groups we suggested weren't able to get involved but it was nice to be asked and it certainly generated a bit of interest!

Rochdale Readers children's book club has decided to "shadow" the Richard & Judy Book Club by reading the titles in the list and getting back together to share their impressions. If you want to try it yourself the list's on our Kids' Portal.

Big Wild Read

The Big Wild Read officially finished on Saturday. I'm now busily collecting all the "finishers' cards" so that we can make sure we get everybody's certificates out to them. Some children have elected to pick up their certificates from the library but most are having them presented at school.

It's a lot early days for doing all the number-crunching for the performance indicators. For the next few days I'm just focusing on getting the ends tied up and hoping that all the children enjoyed themselves and got something out of it, whether they finished or not.

LEAF

I spent all day yesterday at Littleborough Library, providing the Library Service's contribution to the Local Environment Action Fortnight. This is something we like to get involved in each year as it's a subject close to my heart and it gives us another opportunity to present our libraries as learning and information venues for organisations working with children.

The event went really well. The workshops I presented gave the children the opportunity to do some environment/natural history-related craft activities (Big Wild Read leftovers with a few garnishes but popular with the children anyway).

I also made our Kids Portal available on the People's Network PCs and encouraged children to have a look at it and then let them look at some of the linked sites in our "Wild Stuff" list. The jigsaws in the Smithsonian's "Great Cats for Kids" page proved very popular.

CIPFA plus surveys

I had a long-standing arrangement to meet a class at Balderstone Library this morning, which was a good opportunity to get the children to give us their views in the CIPFA Plus survey, which starts today.


An unanticipated tripping-up point: some of the boys were putting a cross in the box for "I am a girl" and some of the girls were putting a cross for "I am a boy." We actually want them to put a cross in the box that applies to them. After a bit of a think the teacher came up with the explanation for the confusion: schoolchildren see a tick as meaning "yes" and a cross for meaning "no." So putting a cross in the "I am a girl box" meant "no, I am not a girl." Now we know I can warn everyone to make sure to explain that we want crosses in the boxes that apply.

Percy is a Punk Postscript

A really nice trip out to Kentmere Primary School. They've made a nice reading area for the children to use and it all looks very neat and friendly.

The teachers are running a "featured author" promotion with the children, the first one being Anne Fine.

They even managed to rustle up a ribbon for me to cut for the opening!

Percy is a Punk

Off to Kentmere School for a bit of a performance. They're opening a new library space in the school and they've asked if I'd help launch it with a recitation of "Percy is a Punk," which the children have enjoyed in the past.

It's an opportunity for me to burn off some of my youthful energy!

It's still not too late to finish the Big Wild Read!

Thanks to everyone who joined in this summer's Big Wild Read events. We hope you enjoyed them!

If you haven't finished the Big Wild Read reading game there's still time: the game doesn't finish until 22nd September.

• Wild Reads!

Picture Book Parade

We have thousands of picture books for younger readers in our libraries. The story books include many favourite characters including Postman Pat, Kipper and Maisie. There are also lots of books telling stories in rhyme, which are great fun for reading and sharing (there's some brilliant bedtime reading amongst them!) And many of the books are introductions to the world around us, involving colours and shapes, animals and machines, and people of course!

We've listed a few of these titles in our Picture Book Parade. If you want to find more picture books, follow the links in the authors' names or the series. And you can see far, far more in any of our libraries!

Children's and Young People's Library Survey

Monday September 17th will see the start of the CIPFA Plus user satisfaction survey for children. Our libraries have done similar surveys for adult users in the past, now it is the children's turn to give us their views.

I hope the survey will be fun for children to do but most importantly it will give us valuable information to direct our library services for children in the future.

Booked up

Booked Up is the new national programme which encourages Year 7 children to read for pleasure. This autumn every 11-year-old in England will be able to choose a free book from a list of 12 specially selected titles.

The Reading Agency is working in partnership with Booktrust to promote the Booked Up programme to public and school library services in England. The aim is to provide children with the opportunity to read all the Booked Up titles for free at their public library; to encourage and promote opportunities for joined-up working between public libraries, school library services and schools and to give positive library messages through the programme and its website.

To support this programme we've added more copies of the Booked Up titles to our library stock. You can check the Library Catalogue to see whether or not a copy's available at your local library.