Librarians! I LOVE Librarians!

Imagine my enthusiasm to be asked to speak to a roomful of librarians!! Teachers have so many pressures and expectations. It is my experience that teachers can discover my work, love it, and use it with great enthusiasm and yet the average teacher has no way to tell others about my various projects. (The one exception are teachers that have blogs & share with the wider world thru their blogging efforts. See Deborah Stewart's kind words.) But librarians?? Librarians are ALL about sharing resources with others. Librarians love to alert others to a unique resource. It is their reason d'etre. It's the cream in their coffee. It's the cherry on their banana split. It's their get-up & go!! It's what excites them: telling others of their latest discoveries is what gets librarians jumpin' for joy!! And that's why I LOVE librarians!!

Here we are with a roooom full of library ladies and an honorary music-teacher-in-the-making. (That's DJ: son of a librarian, that I've known since he was in 8th grade and wearing the Larry-the-Library Lion costume for my library visit.) These photos are from my visit to Bowling Green way back in May. We had an entire day together. That's lots of singing and dancing!! Lots of time for sharing. Lots of ideas. Lots of time for answering questions.

So I taught them the sign language to support my original dittie "Going to the Library" from Debbie's Ditties 3: At the Library. 'Oh, yeah!!!' [****My shameless marketing ploy to lure them, the beloved librarians, into my web of simple and repetitive original children's songs -- suitable for children's story time adventures all year long.] 'Oh, yeah!!!'

Here is my simple Dollar Store paddle ball paddle with the chorus-refrain placard for "Going to the Library". Every time we sing 'Oh yeah' in response to the lyric, everyone in the audience gets to see the print simultaneously. With six verses and three 'Oh Yeah'(s) per verse -- that's a whole lot of old time rock'n'roll 'Oh yeah' opportunities for beginning readers to connect the dots between sung words and words-in-print. These letters are cut from Ellison die-cut stencil letters for precision and then the construction paper placard is folded over for stability and laminated for wear and tear over years of singing the story-time theme song. In it's review of this album, way back in 2003, School Library Journal said "many of the songs are destined to become story time staples." A gazillion years later this story time staple still brings an honest smile to my face when I share it with the library team, because I have it on authority that they enjoy using it with their patrons.

"I like going to the li-brar-y, Oh, yeah!

I like going to the li-brar-y, Oh, yeah!

I like going to the li-brar-y, it's a great place, come and see!!

I like going to the li-brar-y, Oh, yeah!"

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"I like being at the li-brar-y, Oh yeah!

I like being at the li-brar-y, Oh yeah!

I like being at the li-brar-y, there's a million books,

for you and me!!

I like being at the li-brar-y, Oh yeah!"

Then comes the great big huge guitar riff. When I perform this song at libraries I ask several of the children in attendance to join me on stage with inflatable electric guitars. Everyone in the audience plays their own air guitar at this fun bridge instrumental (the music between the verses) and we're all in great spirits for the new verses. Whenever I sing this song I just feel all "zippy" inside!! And of course I feel all zippy with Vickie & DJ in the audience!!!