Monday, April 20, 2009

This is why I love my job...

Today was a great day in the red and yellow world of Library Land. This might not be funny or even interesting to you all, but it sure was to me. Here's what happened...

1) I have 3 sixth grade boys that I sort of tutor in reading three days a week. Lately I have just been letting them pick a book and then they read it to me and we talk about it. They really like that a lot better than me picking the books. Anyways, one of the kids picked a book about animal babies and decided to read the page about possums. Yuck! Do you all remember Peter the Possum? Well he/she is back and I discovered today that they can have like 50 babies at one time. Of course they don't all live because there aren't enough *ahem* "feeding stations" for all the babies, but still. So I tell this boy about Peter Possum that lives under my deck and he just kind of stares at me. Whatever. While I'm reading with another of the boys, he is whispering and giggling with the other boy. Before they leave I asked him what they were over there whispering and giggling about and he tells me, "We were just trying to figure out how you could get rid of your possum. Can't you call animal control or something?" After I explained how animal control was just going to give me a cage and let me catch it myself (which is not a desirable option for me), the boys suggested that I could just get my own cage and catch it and keep it as a pet. Ureka! Why didn't I think of that?!

2. Sometimes when I pass kids in the hall, they like to ask me things like, "Did I turn in all of my books?" or "What do I have checked out?" Like I'm some kind of walking database since I'm the librarian. Today, a third grader stopped me in the hall to tell me he really liked The Lightning Thief that I had suggested for him and that he is almost done with it. "Really? Wow! That's great." "Yeah," he says, "I'm on chapter 2." Mmmhhhmmm. You'll have that finished in NO TIME! :)

3. One of the fourth graders that I have in book club tells me that she wrote a book for her teacher. I don't doubt it. She's a very gifted and ambitious child. As she was telling me about it, she also told me things that were going to happen in the second and third book in this series. I asked her how many books are going to be in the series and she says, "Ten". And I'm not lying, she's got each one mapped out as to what is going to happen in the story. That's like more than Harry Potter or The Work and The Glory. And this kid is in the fourth grade!

4. This one was my favorite today and made me laugh the most. Another one of my fourth graders was chatting with me and some of the other students while we were waiting for the rest of our book club to show up. Last week we didn't meet because I had a meeting to go to and of course they asked me if it was fun and I told them how incredibly boring it was and how I would have much rather been with them (which was all true). She then told me something which I immediately forgot and then asked her again. (That's happening a lot lately...I think I have some kind of information overload or something). So she just gives me the look like, "Ms. Johnson! I just told you that!" and I say, "I'm sorry, my memory isn't so good lately." To which she replies, "Maybe it was that meeting you went to."

2 comments:

Matthew Ware said...

2. and 3. Sometimes I worry about our younger generation and their video games and their iPods and their cell phones, then I hear about kids like these and it renews my faith. There are bright, ambitious kids and hopefully they don't give that up.

Alison said...

I loved that last story!

And keeping a possum as a pet is such a typical 6th grade boy idea. :D