A new sketchbook

I started a new sketchbook, finally, and made a couple of entries:

This is Janie, a character from The Apothecary, by Maile Meloy, which we are reading for this month's 6+7 Book Club at the library. Actually, Janie is a girl, but in this book apothecaries are kind of like magicians, and Janie and her friends drink a potion that turns them into birds so they can escape from evil Russian defectors and German operatives. So this is Janie as a robin red-breast.


My other entry is also library-inspired: We did a fun thing yesterday! November is Picture Book Month; we've been wanting to do some kind of readathon; teens at our library branches are always asking us for service hours for school; so we brought all those things together and had a "Teens Read to Tots" three-hour readathon in the Children's Room at the Buena Vista branch of Burbank Public Library.

Seventeen of our teens checked in with the children's librarians to get picture books appropriate for toddlers--some new, some old favorites--then took them home to practice reading them aloud. Friday afternoon we had a practice session at which we librarians gave the teens tips about how best to read to little kids, and then Saturday we had constant reading of picture books by teens from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for anyone who showed up.

We didn't draw a huge crowd, it was mostly regulars who were happy to find something extra going on, but we always had at least one kid willing to listen, and sometimes as many as 10 or 12. We discovered some new, fun picture books, the kids were happy, the teens got their service hours (and enjoyed themselves)…it turned out to be a great program! I think we'll do it again!

Here's a drawing I made of three little girls who provided a constant audience through about eight books. If you would like to see the photos of the teens reading to the kids, take a look on Facebook at the Burbank Public Library Teen Page, where I have put up an album of pictures.