Lisa: Reason #156 why being a librarian is the best job ever

A few weeks ago I attended the BYU Symposium on Books for Young Readers for work. Most of the events were held at the Provo library (below, swarming with librarians and schoolteachers):

While we were there, we checked out their children's area for good ideas. Here are some display cabinets we liked (but aren't going to get approval for in our budget):

And here are some letters that I think we are definitely going to copy. They are foamcore wrapped with felt, with felt cutouts and pipe cleaners glued on. I'm not sure if they were following templates or what, but maybe we can at least use the general idea.

There were a bunch of authors and illustrators at the conference, giving workshops and signing autographs. They're listed on the page I linked above, but most relevant to this entry is the author Garth Nix. I just read his Abhorsen trilogy for the first time and loved it, so I was excited to hear him speak. I am totally fifteen years old, because he is from Australia, with the cutest accent, and has this dry sense of humor, and he is cute in a slightly nerdy way...

OK, so that picture is really bad because I took it all stealthily so he wouldn't think I was a crazed fan and I didn't want to take another picture and call attention to myself. I'm sure he would have posed for a picture with me if I had asked, but I was too embarassed. But I did get a chance to ask him questions at one small Q&A session, and he autographed four books for me with my name.

Anyway, I decided he is added to my nerdy boyfriend collection. I now have a nerdy musician boyfriend, two nerdy TV boyfriends, and a nerdy author boyfriend. Please feel free to suggest new categories and candidates in the comments.

BONUS:

I wanted to post a picture of the castle I made for the library before we have to dismantle it or throw it away. It was originally for a beanbag-toss game, but we have kept it up as a decoration in the story room for the whole summer. Basically, I drew a picture of a castle on a piece of paper, traced it onto a clear piece of plastic from the laminating machine (in lieu of an actual overhead sheet), and used the overhead projector to project the image onto several big foamcore sheets. I copied the projected lines onto the foamcore with pencil, then laid it down and traced the pencil lines carefully with permanent marker. I painted the castle with Crayola paints, let it dry, and then cut out the pieces and window openings with an X-Acto knife. I taped the pieces together with packaging tape on the back side, anchored it to a big sign-holder thing so that it would stand up, and added the stars with the point values for the bean bag game. The stars are Cafe Rio take-out lids cut out with a Sizzix machine. Yay! I think it turned out really cute.