Anime, Dragons, & Mystery Fiction

And so it begins - Day 1 of my project and me with really no clue where I want to take things. Deciding to wake up at 7:00 after only 2 hours of sleep was a mistake - deciding to sleep in when I had to leave by 7:30 was just plain stupid. Nevertheless, I finally arrive at West Hurst Elementary and quickly sign in as a volunteer, not quite ready and raring to go. After stopping in the cafeteria to buy a chocolate milk, I make myself at home in the library and begin munching away on a donut leftover from yesterday.

Within mere moments I find myself being bombarded. A young girl in probably the 5th or 6th grade comes racing in babbling something about a sugar rush. She starts to prepare for the morning video announcements, but doesn't get very far on her own. Instead she begins to talk, quickly, loudly and directly at me. My first thought is, "It's got to be illegal for someone to be this hyper this early in the morning." Did I mention I'm NOT a morning person?

Finally, I catch a question in the babble? "Do you like anime?" Instantly, my eyes move down to my shirt, assuming that in the darkness that morning I had managed to pull on one of my few anime shirts. Instead, I see the logo for my old college. Immediately, I wonder how she knew I was an anime fan, but just as quickly assume that I've talked to her before on one of my previous (purely volunteer) visits. I answer her question with a "yup" and a smile to be polite. She immediately comes closer and begins talking about her favorite characters from her most favorite show, which actually turns out to be one of the few animes on Cartoon Network that I haven't seen.

Soon, other students begin to arrive and prepare for the announcements, but the girl continues to talk, ignoring most of their efforts. More than once she has to be told to calm down and I find myself wondering if she possibly skipped her medication this morning. Several times my mom has to ask her to calm down. Once the announcements are over several of the students remain to checkout books. A few others wander in and I'm informed that these are mostly 5th and 6th graders who don't have normal library times and can come whenever their teacher says it's okay. I help several of them with finding books in their lexile range only to learn shortly after than lexile isn't important if they're over a certain level. Ah well, it actually made things easier.

I spend a lot of the day, while my mom is doing Dr. Seuss story times, checking books in and out. I also get to help recommend some books, which is always fun. I did a small book talk on the Bunnicula series with one girl. Another specifically wants The Westing Game because her teacher has a copy. I always find it really interesting when kids insist on checking out the exact same items they already have available to them in the classroom. More time is spent chatting with one 4th grader about different kinds of spiders in Texas, and he seems to enjoy hearing about the ones I had caught and kept as semi-pets as a child. Another girl is particularly interested in books about dragons for an informative project. I know of some, but we don't carry any of them in the library, so I pull up some public library sites were she can go to check them out. I also promise to bring one of my favorite dragon books from home, Dragonology, which I think might help. Of course, the one condition being that it would be staying in my sights at all times. Hopefully she'll be able to find something useful in it.

My last "job" of the day is helping two 3rd graders find books about the layers of the Earth. My first immediate thought is Magic School Bus because even if it's too young, I know it will still have the information they need. Boy, am I surprised when they don't even want to look and see if it has anything. In fact, they seem very against the idea. I've never seen a younger child turn up their nose at Magic School Bus books. So, I simply take them over to the same area and we look at what else is available. They begin erratically pulling other books off the shelves, so to save the already jumbled titles, I quickly get down on my knees and do my best to walk them through the process of how to see if a book has the information wanted. Eventually, they each find two books and happily go up to check them out with my mom. By then, it's 4:30 and we need to head out for some grocery shopping. So, I lock the door, she gets the lights, and my first day of observation has officially come to an end.