Read-A-Thons

Posted on January 13, 2011 Updated on January 14, 2011

I fought this suggestion from the teens for a long while. They’ve been asking me and pleading with me to do an all-night readathon for several years. All night? Really? Really?

I finally caved in last year and agreed to do a six hour readathon. It started at 4pm and went until 10pm. Everyone adhered to the rules, which they had spelled out in great detail at the prior advisory board meeting:

• No walking around.
• No outside music (ie. iPods or mp3 players of any sort).
• No cell phones.
• One five minute break every hour, on the hour.
• No talking. Just reading.

It went great. We had a pizza break around 6pm for 15 minutes and then they got right back to reading. It’s a fun, low-cost program that the teens really enjoyed. Last year I had six teens attend, this year it’s up to 12 (two of them are bringing friends).

What they loved the best about the program? I let them move the furniture around. They were the only ones in the library since we did it on a Friday night after we closed. They got to read for six straight hours.

We’re doing it again this week. Our now annual January readathon. They wanted an all nighter again, until I told them I turn into a pumpkin at 10pm, and so they settled for 10pm instead. Whew.

I give prizes ($10 gift cards to a book store) for most pages read and most money raised. They have pledge sheets for people to pledge either a dollar amount per page, or a flat rate donation. All funds raised go towards their trip to NYC in the spring.

Cheryl

Murder Mystery Program

Posted on October 25, 2010 Updated on October 25, 2010

Hi everyone!

I am very excited to report that I had rave reviews from both parents and teens on the Murder Mystery Program I ran this past Friday night to celebrate Teen Reads Week theme: Books with Beat! (bah-dum-bum)

I had borrowed from the Murder Mystery: Rock ‘n’ Roll Over DEAD! and had 20 teens to the program (at the limit I could have handled running the program all by myself-it was a high activity, high energy program-plus they were all sugared up!). They all had so much fun with the elaborate crime scenes I set up solving the crime. They worked really enthusastically together to use deductive reasoning to hash out the crime scene specifics and really had a great time at it!!

It was worth all of the work I put into it for sure.

I served Pizza and Ice Cream to start and then we went into the Murder Mystery part of the evening. The program took the 20 teens about 1 hour 15 minutes to solve, beginning to end. I didn’t know what to expect time wise so I allotted 2.5 hours for the entire program. When we were completed with the dinner, dessert and finally the Murder Mystery, we all played a lively game of charades. We were a rowdy group but laughter and fun times were had by all. woohoo!

I highly recommend running this program. It was so well received by both the kids and the parents, I came in to many happy emails commending the “different program”!

Last week I had a very successful Author Talk with “Life, After” author Sarah Darer Littman. I was at first not getting a very good response for the program. I decided to change my “marketing techniques” in the hope to attract more people to the program. I advertised its significance and importance about the creative writing process, the importance and value of interacting with a YA author to understand how the author develops characters, and plots as well as the useage of imagery. I created a list of 15 questions tailored to this subject matter, I collaborated with the schools and students who came got extra credit with their English teachers. I handed out the questions, encouraged the teens to take a turn to ask and also encouraged their own questions. It was very well attended, 27 people in total (only 2 were registered the 3 days previous) and everyone is asking for more Authors to come in. I attribute the change in attitude to the way I decided to market the program. It really was beneficial and so appreciated.

Happy reading everyone! Susie

Susan Redman Parodi

Young Adult Librarian*Old Lyme Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library*Old Lyme, CT 06371

New Blog Page

Posted on August 13, 2009 Updated on August 14, 2009

Check out NEW page on Teen Programs – it’s a listing of potential ideas in case you get stuck.

~ Jennifer R.