Student begins to work with wire.

The Red Clover book we selected was Sandy’s Circus by Tanya Stone.  I did research on the internet to find two You Tube sites to show students after reading the book to them.  The first was an old black and white video of Alexander Calder actually performing his circus and the other was a kids’ Art Display made by K-5 students in Calder style with wire circus figures and mobiles after Tanya Stone had come to their school.  My students found it totally fascinating.

During Art Class in the following weeks, Kate had the students make wire circus creations with fanciful odds and ends.   Among the materials Kate used were twisteez wire, pipe cleaners (regular and shiny), wire edged ribbon, buttons, beads, feathers, toothpicks, pencil eraser heads, pom poms, marker caps, and shish-ka-bob sticks.  Large detergent bottle caps and styrofoam were used to stand up figures.  Styrofoam used in packing allowed for the display of several youngsters’ work in one scene. Several students got so excited about the project that they worked on ideas at home.  One class’s work was on display in the library.  Many students wanted to take their work home to give as holiday gifts.

Student displays her first finished product

Kate also had the book Roarr: Calder’s Circus, by Maria Kalman (copyright 1993 so it needs to be found in an out of print book source).

Kate and I also used this project as one our Professional Development goals for the year.
Pat Cook, Librarian at Dothan Brook School, Wilder, VT (Hartford School District)

Fanciful creature

Trio of performers

Complete circus scene

Interested in some new ideas to help promote the Green Mountain Book Award?  It’s difficult to get students to read beyond what’s required of them for class.  We have been trying to get increased participation for years and came up with a new plan.  We created a new promotion to encourage our students to read more GMBA books.
It all began with offering the sweet incentive of ice cream!

Our Plan:

•    Create New Shelving Section:  We moved GMBA books to an area where they are more visible and accessible.

•    Implement a GMBA punch card program:  Each time a patron reads a GMBA nominee we punch the corresponding image on their card.  When they’ve read three titles, they get a personal invitation to our “GMBA Make Your own Sundae” voting party.

Punch card: The student puts his/her name on the back of the card.

•    Create Promotional Advertising: Designed new signage, buttons and displays to get the word out.

•    Library Staff wears buttons in support of the GMBA.
•    Library Staff actively includes GMBA nominees when recommending books to individual patrons and during book talks for classes.

The End Result; We’ve tripled the number of student participation in the GMBA program!
We’re really excited about our increased participation in the program and are looking
forward to our “Make Your Own Sundae” voting party in the spring.
If you have any questions regarding our promotions let me know via e-mail.

This is a snapshot of the poster that we’ve displayed above our books. If you’d like a jpeg file, or the original publisher file let me know and I can e-mail it to you.

Written by:
Jill Abair< Library/Administrative Assistant jabair@ccsuvt.org
Philip Crawford, Library Director
Pictures taken by: Jill Abair