[kids-lib] Online Graphic Novel book club

[Korie Jones Buerkle]

Library friends,
I just had my first graphic novel book club since the world changed and it was so good to see my young people that I'm crying now that it's over. It is emotionally HARD to do this distancing thing, AND I know it's the right thing. It was a really simple program, here's what I did:

-Kids pre-registered by emailing me. I emailed out the Zoom link and password. I used the waiting room feature and let the kids in as they arrived.
-We had all read The New Kid by Jerry Craft, which they unanimously loved. (They are 3-5th graders)
-We start with "Would you rather" questions from things that happen in the book and they voted by touching their nose for one thing or their head for another. I always give them a chance to ask their own questions which they love. Right now I think it's especially important to find ways to empower kids since so many choices have been taken away in this time. 
-We talked about the book. I'm always most interested in how they related to characters or events, how they felt. All of my kids identified as white, otherwise I would have made sure I wasn't putting a person of color on the spot.
-We watched a video of Jerry Craft drawing blindfolded (they laughed hysterically) https://youtu.be/DluRrU1Lp6k 
-They came up with questions and comments that I'm going to send to Jerry Craft.
-They decided that they DEFINITELY wanted to meet again, but at a slightly later time. 
-Since our local bookstore is delivering books I'm looking into buying the books through them and having them delivered by the bookstore. Hopefully I'll be able to buy our next title through Overdrive as well.

Also, I just want to acknowledge that as we give up what we've been used to doing, and look for new ways to serve our families there is grieving to be done. Grieving that we can't see people in person, grieving that right now it's not safe for us to reach out in person to perhaps our most vulnerable people, grieving that we've been through really big changes in a short time period and we are saying goodbye to how it used to be and figuring out how it looks to work differently, grieving that some of our colleagues don't get the opportunity to work right now. Grieving takes a lot of mental and physical energy. AND we are headed into what has always been our busiest season. We've done so much planning and now we are re-doing probably most of that planning. It's a lot. I hope you are able to give yourself grace and find a bit of space to process.

However you are doing library friends, I'm sending virtual hugs. 

Korie
 
Korie Jones Buerkle
Children's Librarian | Assistant Library Director
Work Cell: 971-281-1796
Newberg Public Library
(She, her, hers)