Thursday, November 06, 2008

Good idea

I just thought I'd pass along what I thought was a terrific idea. While I was leaving the children's section of the library recently, I noticed something I hadn't seen before: Grab Bags of books in age categories. So there was a crate labeled "2-3 yrs" with 10 or so bags of books that the staff had put together to check out. Brilliant! I love going to the library, and I love getting new books to read with Katy at home, but I feel totally overwhelmed by those shelves and shelves of books, and have no idea what to pick up (not to mention I'm toting a 20 pounder on my hip and chasing a tornado). When I do pick something, I get home and realize that it's way too old for her and she gets bored too quickly. So these bags are perfect.

And to top it off, guess who is responsible for these particular bags? My local children's librarian is fellow mommy blogger Kate. She makes it all happen!

4 comments:

Giselle said...

I am jealous. People who live in Ohio have no idea(or maybe you do?) how wonderful their libraries are compared to the rest of the country. I totally took it for granted when I lived there. I've now lived in 3 other states, and the libraries have been dismally worse than Ohio's.

So make sure you also pass around the idea to your fellow Ohioans that you need to keep funding your libraries!

Pam said...

Thanks for the tip. I also spend too long browsing and not sure what to get.
I'm going to check it out this weekend..

Weed said...

I wish our library did this! Do you go to one of the CML libraries? If so, I wonder why they don't do it at all of the branches. It's a GREAT idea and would help moms out so much, I would think!!

Kate said...

Actually, we're going to up the ante. Apparently some people have been confused and have been taking the bags home thinking that they are library books that we're giving away (what?!)

So anyway-- soon we're going to have book bundles. What's so cool about this is that you can see the titles AND we're going to have themed bundles in addition to the age level bundles.

I think we're getting a nifty new sign for them next week. So glad you enjoy them. A colleague of mine came up with the idea. So many parents have to skedaddle with their kids right after storytime and don't have time to browse without a meltdown. This helps them still get some books to take home.

By the way-- have a GREAT cruise. I bet it will be more fun than you think!