This post is a bit late - I made this display last week, but kept forgetting to blog about it! My fall book display was very successful and all the books were borrowed by last week, so my supervisor asked me to make a new display. Though a bit cliche, I chose Halloween, because it's fun and festive, and who doesn't love Halloween?

I went about the creation of this display a bit differently. While it is still definitely picture book-heavy, I tried to also incorporate chapter books, audio books, and a few non-fictions to appeal to older readers. We'll see if that is as successful as my display that was extremely picture book-centered - I hope it is! Also, while I picked a lot of books that are DEFINITELY Halloween books, I also picked books that might not actually be about Halloween, but are still intended to send a chill down the reader's spine. I think that this approach will appeal to a wider group of patrons. 

(Sorry for the glare on the book in the upper right! It is The Monsters' Monster.)

Books I chose: 

• Crankenstein by Samantha Berger
• Nightsong by Ari Berk
• Doll Bones by Holly Black
• In the Haunted House by Eve Bunting
• Scary, Scary Halloween by Eve Bunting
• Ghost Knight by Cornelia Funke
• T-Rex Trick-or-Treats by Lois G. Grambling
• Halloween Night by Elizabeth Hatch
• Hoodwinked by Arthur Howard
• The Ugly Pumpkin by Dave Horowitz
• The Spider and the Fly by Mary Howitt
• The Vanishing Pumpkin by Tony Johnston
• Bats at the Library by Brian Lies
• Froggy's Halloween by Jonathan London
• The Monsters' Monster by Patrick McDonnell
• Pumpkin Heads by Wendell Minor
• Halloween Night by Marjorie Dennis Murray
• Haunted Castle on All Hallow's Eve by Mary Pope Osbourne
• Happy Haunting, Amelia Bedelia by Herman Parish 
• Junie B., First Grader: Boo... and I Mean It! by Barbara Park 
• We're Going on a Ghost Hunt by Susan Pearson
  Runaway Mummy by Michael Rex
• Moonlight the Halloween Cat by Cynthia Rylant
• Ten Orange Pumpkins by Stephen Savage
• Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz
• 10 Trick-or-Treaters by Janet Schulman
• The Dark by Lemony Snicket
• Little Owl's Night by Divya Srinivasan
• The Widow's Broom by Chris Van Allsburg
• The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams
• Tales to Keep You Up at Night by Ben H. Winters

Hopefully, this will get my library's patrons in the Halloween spirit! 

One aspect of being a librarian, especially a children's librarian, that people don't really think about is program marketing. You can plan the most awesome events in the world, but if you don't advertise them, nobody will show up! This is actually something that I hadn't even thought about, but thankfully, I have a fantastic supervisor at my internship and she is very dedicated to showing me everything I need to know about my career. She told me that she actually dedicates more time to marketing her programs than she does to planning them - and, for that reason, it's really important that I get experience with that, too! 

It just so happens that, up until Wednesday, the library where I intern at did not have an events board. They mainly rely on social media and flyers to advertise programs, but my supervisor thought about it, and she felt that maybe an events board inside the library would be helpful, too - and she asked me to create it! 

After some Pinterest research, this is what I came up with. It's mainly based off of a bulletin board that was featured on the blog of library paraprofessional Carrie Roer, but, as you can see, I did tweak it a bit. We don't have a bulletin board near the children's library, so I chose to use an easel and poster board instead. Because I had much more limited space to work with, I chose not to incorporate the foods that the hungry caterpillar eats in his book. Rather than printing out the circles from the computer, I felt that it would be more efficient to trace them on construction paper, cut them out, and laminate them. That way, we don't need to print out new circles every week - we can just erase the previous week's events and write new ones using a dry erase marker. 

Overall, I'm really happy with how this turned out! Hopefully, it will catch the eyes of our patrons and will bring in a few more people to our children's programs. 

As part of my grad school program, I had the opportunity to get an internship with the children and youth services department of a local public library. I am so excited about it! I think it will be a really great experience and I can't wait to see what I'll be doing there over the course of the next year. I'm going to be posting blog entries about my experience there on this site, because 1) it's book related and 2) I want to be able to have a place where I can go back and see examples of everything that I've done. And, as an added bonus, I can get feedback from anyone on here who'd like to give it! I know there are plenty of library-goers on here :)

Today was my first day and I already was able to jump right in and start getting experience - first, I observed my supervisor's story time and then, I got to create a fall book display! 

I didn't get too specific in terms of a target audience for this display. It's in the children's room, so I stuck to picture books, but I didn't make any distinction as to if I was targeting toddlers or school age children. I included the following titles: 

• Flower Fairies of the Autumn by Cicely Mary Barker
• The Amazing Apple Book by Paulette Bourgeois
• Clifford's First Autumn by Norman Bridwell
• The Pumpkin Fair by Eve Bunting
• Pick a Circle, Gather Squares by Felicia Sanzari Chernesky
• Harvest Festivals Around the World by Judith Hoffman Corwin
• Stega Nona's Harvest by Tomie DePaola
• An Apple Festival: Orchards in Autumn by Lisa Gabbert
• Maple Sugar Festivals: Tapping for Sap by Lisa Gabbert
• It's Fall by Linda Glaser
• Folks Call Me Appleseed John by Andrew Glass
• Possum's Harvest Moon by Anne Hunter
• Picking Apples and Pumpkins by Amy and Richard Hutchings
• The Autumn Equinox: Celebrating the Harvest by Ellen Jackson
• Why Do Leaves Change Color? by Betsy Maestro
• Fall Ball by Peter McCarty
• Ten Red Apples: A Bartholomew Bear Counting Book by Virginia Miller
• How Big Could Your Pumpkin Grow? by Wendell Minor
• Apple Cider Making Days by Ann Purmell
• Pumpkins: A Story for a Field by Mary Lyn Ray
• Plumply Dumply Pumpkin by Mary Serfozo
• I Know It's Autumn by Eileen Spinelli
• Pumpkins by Lynn M. Stone
• Fall by Tanya Thayer
• Pumpkin Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington
• Apple Farmer Annie by Monica Wellington

Hopefully, this gives parents who visit the library a good selection of fall books to choose from! I tried to get a wide variety of topics, while still staying within the confines of autumn and harvest books.