Here's what's keeping us busy at the library this summer.

Every public library offers (or ought to) summer programming for children and young adults. For small children the traditional service is a weekly story time. For those old enough to read on their own, there is usually some sort of book club where children read books and get incentive prizes.

And for young adults—well, what do you do to interest them? Libraries try all sorts of things. Some have movie nights. One library I know specializes in Japanese animated cartoons for theirs. Others have role-playing game contests. Some have begun experimenting with video game consoles. Still others, like ours, are old-fashioned enough to try to encourage them to read actual books.

At our library this year we have set up a program of speakers on different topics for our older students. Each week a different speaker comes to speak in our big meeting room. When the speaker is done, I do book talking. Then we have a door prize drawing and dismiss the assembly with an exhortation to go check out some of the library’s books.

We break our attendees up into three groups. The smallest group goes to the Story Time Room. There they hear stories, do crafts, and perhaps have “activity” songs. The intermediate group—basically grade-school aged—has a similar session with different reading and activities to try to appeal more to them. Those ten and over go to the meeting room for the older students’ program. It’s a rather elastic definition of “young adult”, but it’s the age division that seemed like it would work in our planning. So far every young adult program has started late. This is mainly because we have trouble getting the community groups who bring many of our attendees here in time.

Our most recent meeting was no exception. The speaker, a lady from a local nonprofit foundation, arrived just in time to set up her little projector and laptop for a PowerPoint presentation. The subject was dating and date-related violence. I greeted her and told her how the program would go. We also had two high-school aged volunteers on hand. They sat at a table near the main entrance and signed all of the students in as they arrived. Each one wrote down his or her name on a slip of paper for the door prize drawing. They all took their seats. Naturally they hung back, leaving the front row empty. Mrs. D (that’s what she had everybody call her) urged them to come up front—she wasn’t dangerous. As the seats filled up, they came forward.

About ten minutes after the official start time the Boys’ and Girls’ Club kids came in. This was their best time yet. They boosted our number of attendees to over twenty. As they signed in, a staff member (the other D.L.) came in and informed me that we had a problem. She had invited the Youth Center from across town to bring a large group, but they lacked adequate transportation. The head of the Boys’ and Girls’ Club had agreed to go get them in his van. It would take him a while, and he would probably have to make more than one trip.

I decided to hold off starting for a bit longer to give them time. Mrs. D helped break the ice by chatting with the students about dogs and such. Somebody made a crack about weenie dogs, and then learned that Mrs. D had one herself. Another mentioned having a black lab. I told him about my parents’ huge black lab named Tiny.

The other D.L., stealing a few precious moments from the Circulation Desk (with three groups to manage our staff was stretched rather thin, and one story time reader had failed to show), started calling on students to talk about books they had read. One mentioned reading a book I had told him about in the previous week’s book talk. He had thought it was really good. That made me feel good for suggesting it. I made a mental note to let the author, whom I had talked to online and who had actually donated the book to the library, about that endorsement.

D.L. went back to Circulation. We decided we could postpone getting started no longer. Mrs. D began her presentation. She asked the students how many of them had their own little boy friend or girl friend. Some groaned or sniggered. Most of the group were preteens and not too much into that yet. She told them that within a few years they would be. And then they would begin dealing with the possibility of relationships that went wrong.

In her presentation she described the warning signs of an abusive relationship. I noted ruefully to myself that my newly-concluded marriage, though never actually violent, featured a good half of those signs. I noted further when the slide about warning signs for victims came up that I had exhibited a good half of those.

The presentation went well. Mrs. D used language and examples that the kids could identify with and managed to find a bit of humor in discussing this rather dark subject. She did not hector or try to shock the students, but simply laid things out and told them what to watch out for. The upshot of it all was, of course, that people should be respectful of each other in their relationships, not trying to control and dominate others or let others dominate them. When she asked for comments I interjected (mentioning no names) that I had been around long enough to see this sort of thing actually happening. Abusive behavior and patterns could slip up on people without anyone’s even realizing fully what was happening. People had to be on their guard.

Mrs. D’s finished her piece. I asked everyone to give her a round of applause. She began to pack up her presentation equipment. I stood up front at the table she had used and called everyone’s attention to the books that I had placed there earlier. Two of them were resources relevant to what Mrs. D had talked about. One was actually about dating violence. The other dealt with teen relationships in general, with advice on how to keep things from going bad in the first place.

Then I shifted gears for what I hoped would be the fun part of the session. It was time for the book talk.

This time around I spoke on science fiction. I pointed out that a lot of the movies they were familiar with, and movies like “Iron Man” and “The Hulk” that were coming out this summer, dealt with science fiction. Science fiction, I said, was about asking “what if” questions, imagining what a world would be like if something were different about it. In quick succession I showed them several books, some for younger readers, some in our adult sci-fi section, by writers like Anne McCaffrey. I showed them a “Star Wars” tie-in novel, and a couple of sci-fi comics like “Star Trek” (the old Gold Key adaptation) and “Cryptozoo Crew.”

Then I brought up Nancy Farmer’s “House of the Scorpion,” about a world a century in the future where a boy learns that he is a clone of an evil dictator, raised to serve as a set of spare parts for the aging tyrant. As he reaches his teens the boy flees and then…well, I encouraged them to read the book to find out. I began the talk by asking them if they knew what cloning was. Many of them did. I pointed out that cloning was something that was coming true right now—science fiction was becoming science fact, just as moon landings had once been fiction and then come true. I noted that science fiction was one way of thinking about where science might be taking us, so that we could think about what we wanted to do with the knowledge we had.

While I was doing my book talk, in came a group from the Youth Center. The younger children had arrived earlier in time to join the story times. The second batch, of older kids, had missed Mrs. D’s presentation and almost all of mine.

They had come in time for the drawing of door prizes. I had one of the high school volunteers draw the four prizes. Four fast-food gift certificates went to attendees. I thanked everyone for attending, reminded them that we would be having more programs and incentives, and encouraged them to check out books.

In the main area of the library we now had scores of children, parents, and volunteers milling around. I circulated through the stacks offering help in finding items. I hooked a couple of kids up with things they were looking for and recommended a couple of items for others. I hoped that they liked them.

Those who were already participating in book clubs registered the books they had read since the previous week. The Circulation area was a madhouse for a while. It looked like a lot was being checked out and returned.

I noticed that the Youth Center group had mostly ended up in the children’s area, looking rather awkward. The transportation problem had brought them in too late to really be a part of the events. We began talking about possible ways to provide more reliable transportation to prevent this in the future. Perhaps we can get the schools or a local church to provide a bus.

In all we had over seventy children and teens there. That’s a lot for a small library like our own to have at once. Things went very well, apart from the problems associated with the transportation snafu. I was impressed by how well all the kids behaved. Nobody seriously acted up. Overall, considering the numbers involved, they were fairly quiet.
Still, I was relieved when everyone had cleared out and the library had returned to normal. These events are a nervous time for someone like me who isn’t used to organizing large children’s events. Fortunately my staff, especially the other D.L., have organizational skills along those lines that I lack. The numbers did produce some problems, of course. But it was a nice problem to have. We had the equivalent of over one percent of the town’s population there all at one time.

Number-wise we’re definitely succeeding. Impact-wise, the jury is still out. It is sometimes hard to gauge young people’s responses to programs. Are they just listening to be polite (itself a good sign), or are they really involved and learning? Are we going to be able to work the bugs out of the transportation situation (and that reminds me—I’ve got to talk to the superintendent of schools about that)? Will we have enough volunteers to keep from collapsing under the sheer numbers?

The response we’ve had is a challenge. It’s a good problem to have. We’ll work on rising to meet it. One thing is sure. This is turning into an exciting summer.

It seems like your programs are totally going very well, DL. Hopefully you'll have lot's of students showing up the rest of the summer. Thanks for sharing your story...