Summer Reading Program 2014. Week 1: Robots!

Long day of programming for me - it's been since last summer that I had to do more than one program in a day, and I forgot how draining it is to be "on" and "performing" for an audience more than once in a day.

I got my undergrad in theatre, and while I enjoyed playing "bit parts" I always knew that as an introvert, I didn't have the sort of energy that would let me be a performer.  I love the science and the discipline behind acting, but it isn't for me.  Days like this remind me that I made a wise choice to be a tech nerd instead.

So - Robots!

First off was the Family Storytime for the wee ones (ages 0-5)

Clink

Kelly DiPucchio, illustrated by Matthew Myers
ISBN: 9780061929298 (library binding)
Obvious brushstrokes. lots of detail, bright colors, and an old-timey feel.

Clink is an old-fashioned robot, designed to make toast (he burns it) and to play music.  Sadly, he's a bit out of date, and also has a tendency to lose parts when he's excited.  All of his friends in the robot store are newer than he is, and are quickly bought by excited customers.  Clink gets depressed and lonely because he's not chosen, until a very picky young man comes into the store, looking for the one perfect thing.  

I found Clink specifically because I was looking for robot books, and I really like it.  It's a teensy weensy bit long for my family storytime group, but the story was quirky enough to hold their attention.

Doug, Unplugged
Dan Yaccarino
ISBN: 9780375866432
Yaccarino's trademark color-blocked minimalist expressive spreads.

Hate to say it, since it got so much attention, and everyone loves it so, but I really like Boy + Bot much better.  I'm sort of sad that I didn't go with my first inclination and use it instead, but this one didn't do badly either - I just didn't like it as much.  Doug is a great robot child - his parents plug him into the wall in the morning to download information while they go off to work, and today he's learning about the city.  The info-dump isn't particularly interesting (and it's difficult to read in a storytime situation - very small print, scattered along a busy circuit-board pattern) so Doug is easily distracted by a pigeon, which then prompts him to investigate the city in real life, learning about everything that his infodump failed to inform him about - wet cement, a cool fountain on a warm day, the rush and clatter of subway trains - until he finds a human boy and learns about the best thing of all - play.

Robot Zot
Jon Scieszka, illustrated by David Shannon

ISBN: 9781416963943

No, David!'s illustrator does perfect justice to the oversized ego of our robot protagonist.

Robot Zot is here to destroy!  Except he's smaller than a toaster-oven, and he keeps getting distracted by insulting appliances and having to destroy them.  It may take a while to get to conquering Earth after all.  But he is committed, at least until he discovers the Queen of Earth (a young girl's toy telephone) being assaulted by her evil guards (the girl's dollbabies) and falls in love.  His daring rescue is a beautiful love story.  Don't forget to page through to the very end where a comical coda is taking place in Zot's wake.

With the number of kids and the amount of energy in this particular group, again I was wishing I had a slightly shorter story, but the super-vibrant larger-than-life messy pictures and fun language did their best to keep attention focused.

Then I took a mental health break, a throat lozenge, a lot of caffeine, and got ready for our second installment!

Summer Reading Program (ages 5-12)

Thanks to a nearby child-care facility that just opened for the summer, we had a lovely and attentive group with a wide age-range, and I'm happy to say that the stories, activity, and craft all went over well with everyone (heartfelt thanks to our Children's Department for working out the basic bones of the activity and craft)

We started with Clink again, and then a new longer one for the older kids:

The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot
Margaret McNamara, illustrated by Mark Fearing

Tiny green "minion-esque" aliens and an enormous squiggly-lined robot inhabit wispy spacy environments - lots of black skies.

This is a re-telling of The Three Little Pigs, and it's fairly cute.  I will say however, that if I ever meet Ms McNamara, we're going to have words about her naming one of the aliens "Nklxwcyz."  Seriously, that's like Storyteller abuse.  Cute, but not a personal favorite.  I do like the variations on "huff and puff and blow your house down" which artfully manage to reference different spacy housing situations AND have rhyming answers from the aliens that still make sense.  A strange (long) author's note at the end explains how the aliens travel from their home planet of Mercury out through the orbits of the other planets to end up on Neptune at the other end of the Solar System.  

Then we ended the reading bit with Robot Zot again, because I really just adore reading that book.  It's trippy and wild and silly and overdramatic and perfect.

Next week I get a break because we have a guest performer coming (yay!) and then the week after that we're on to Animals!