Librarian helps kids discover the joys of reading

| DANNY GAWLOWSKI | THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

• LOCAL LIBRARIES
  
  Check out what's at your library at these locations:
  Bellingham
  210 Central Ave.
  778-7323
  Fairhaven
  1117 12th St.
  778-7188
  Blaine
  610 3rd St.
  332-8146
  Deming
  5044 Mount Baker Highway
  592-2422
  Everson
  104 Kirsch Drive
  966-5100
  Ferndale
  2222 Main St.
  384-3647
  Lummi Island
  2144 S. Nugent Road
  758-7145
  Lynden
  216 4th St.
  354-4883
  Maple Falls
  7509 Mount Baker Highway
  599-2020
  Point Roberts
  Community Center at 1487 Gulf Road
  (360) 945-6545
  Sumas
  451 2nd St.
  988-2501
  
  
• GOOD READS FOR YOUNG ONES
  
  Long-time reader and librarian Catherine Sarette shares a few of her top picks for children's books and her reasons why they stand out.
  
  Non-Fiction
  Brenda Guiberson "Cactus Hotel"
  Nicola Davies "Big Blue Whale"
  The writing is wonderful: "Reach out and touch the blue whale's skin. It's springy and smooth like a hard-boiled egg, and it's as slippery as wet soap."
  
  Picture Books
  Martin Waddell "Owl Babies"
  Bill Martin Jr. "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom"
  Who knew an alphabet book could be so entertaining?
  
  Books for Developing Readers
  Annie Barrows "Ivy and Bean" series
  Dav Pilkey "Captain Underpants" series
  Rude and crude and full of clever wordplay deliberately designed to attract boys to reading.
  
  Books for Accomplished Readers
  Louis Sachar "Holes"
  Christopher Paul Curtis "The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963"
  Two novels very worthy of their multiple awards.
  
  Great Classic Read-Alouds
  Tove Jansson "Moomin" series
  These have an almost cult following. Just Google the words Moomin Jansson to see.
  
  

"I think for children they're essential," she says of books. "There are so many distractions these days, but there's nothing like a book for certain kinds of brain development. The ability to think, the ability to reason, the ability to imagine and picture things and follow a complex thought, the ability to speak; those things really require reading."

Though she discovered her love of books at school, she says that researching and reading aren't the focus they once were, partially because of "No Child Left Behind" and the WASL tests.

"Schools are very intent on teaching kids the mechanics of reading, which is great because you need to know those kinds of things," she says. "But the library's job is to make it really fun and to have such a great variety of materials that you can find anything you're interested in."

On a recent visit to the Blaine Library, Sarette saw a young boy with a stack of books in his arms who told her enthusiastically, "I'm going to build a robot!"

"It was great to see that kind of joy," she says. "You see that with kids when they're reading."

THE COMPETITION

Between TV, video games, computers and tech toys, kids are being drawn further away from the books in which Sarette spent her childhood hours.

American children ages 2 to 17 watch an average of 25 hours of TV a week - more time than any activity aside from sleeping - according to the National Institute on Media and the Family. Studies show that all that TV time can displace reading time, and for early elementary children, this can lead to difficulty in acquiring reading skills.

So Sarette decided to create programs that involved more than just quietly reading a book in the library.

"How do you make it compelling when kids are used to multi-million-dollar productions?" she says. "What I came up with is that you go ahead with making it casual and making it fun, but make it human and involving."

Sarette started involving kids in plays at the library. The plays are an hour-long program, and Sarette chooses kids on the spot to perform. One of the plays she uses is "Tiger Soup," in which Anansi the spider tricks a tiger into going swimming so he can eat the tiger's sweet soup. The spider then gets a group of monkeys to take the blame. She reads the story aloud while the kids act it out for their peers.

"It's really a simple story," she says. "But they aren't saying to themselves that production values aren't good - because they're in it."

Getting up and acting also can give the kids a new sense of confidence.

"If I send them home with a sense that, 'We could do that, we could act something out,' then I feel like they have gained some real skills," she says. "(It's a) simple thing, the kids like it, it costs almost nothing and it gets away from that comparison with things I can't compare with."

For Glacier residents Holly Johnston and her home-schooled daughter KayaMae, 7, the plays are a chance to get involved with other kids in the community.

"I really appreciate when they have programs for the kids," Johnston says. "My daughter loves to act. She's always excited for the plays. I don't remember anything like that when I was a kid."

THE DRAW

What sounds like fun and games is serious business for Sarette, who is always trying to come up with new ways to draw kids and families into the library.

"If the parents didn't do a lot of going to the library when they were kids or they're super busy, having a reason (to come to the library) becomes really important," she says. "Once they're in there, then we can say, 'Look what else you can get.' "

The libraries also do story times for toddlers and preschool-age children as well as a craft fair. A recent Lego contest was a huge success, with about 75 kids competing to create structures for judges who were architects and designers.

In the fall, the library will offer a "Could you be a Superhero?" event, where the kids can design their own costumes, do tests of strength and hearing and sight, and Sarette will read stories about superheroes.

"I love it. I have the best job in the world," she says. "Having been there so long, I'll be buying something at the store and the clerk will recognize my voice, and it's usually my voice, and they'll tell me they remember being in a play. ... There's such pleasure in their voice that I know I gave them a good memory. There's such a pleasure in that."