Youth Services Librarian Erin, will have her last day at NPL on Wednesday, July 30th to take on a new role at the South Burlington Public Library. After her last Storytime!, we will celebrate Erin here at NPL from 11:30am-12:30pm and send her on her way! We asked Erin what some of her stand-out stories were from working at NPL over the past few years, and we’re sharing some of them below:

“I knew nothing about Norwich and the Upper Valley when I first found the job online, yet the job description read like it was made for me. I didn’t really know anything. I didn’t know what I was getting into. I just knew the basics: that it was a small, rural library in Vermont. I didn’t know Dartmouth was across the bridge. I didn’t know anything. When I came here, we were still partially shut down, which was actually a blessing to me. I got to inventory the whole department. We were closed more, we were only open for certain hours, no programming, masks all the time. So it was a really unusual time to start a job. 

“The very first family I remember. The caregiver came in and said, ‘Just so you know, you’re going to know us because we come in every week.’ And I was like, ‘Great! I’m really excited.’ I think the kids were in second and fourth grade. The fourth grader didn’t want to talk to me, but I quickly realized they liked the exact same kind of books I did, which is realistic fiction. So I started just like, ‘You should try this one. Try this one.’ And as a result of that, that kid – who is now going into seventh grade – still comes to me and is like, ‘What do I need to read? Tell me what to read, Erin.’ The younger kid was very into cats at the time and came in with ears, and possibly a tail, but definitely ears and meowing. As kids do. The caregiver asked me to recommend a book, and I recommended Catwings by Ursula Le Guin, which is about cats that fly. It was probably on a Wednesday, and by the following Monday, the caregiver had sent me a picture. The kid had spent the weekend making a diorama of the world of Catwings. And I was like, ‘Oh, these kids. They just did that for fun? These kids are special.’ And that continued to be the case throughout my entire time. Unlike my previous library, [NPL] kids came to the library to read. They found the nooks and wanted to read. Kids picked books off the shelf, didn’t check them out and curled up in one of the corners and read. The first couple of months, I could not get used to the fact that kids said thank you to me all the time. That was not my experience at my previous library. I recognized pretty quickly that this was a really engaged community with really engaged caregivers, who want a space for them and for their kids, and I think we did that. 

“I have some favorite programs that we’ve done. I will never forget the cat program as long as I live. We do the either/or voting once a week or so, or I ask the kids to engage with something. One week, we did cats vs. dogs – some of the most robust conversations I’ve ever heard in my life. I had a kid, who was in 5th grade at the time, came to me and said, ‘Erin, I want to do a cat program.’ And I said, ‘Let’s talk about that. What does that look like?’ And we ended up having a program that we developed together where we had cat trivia, we played cat videos on the screen, we did racing with our noses and pawses with balls of yarn. My absolute favorite was that for our snack we had plates of whipped cream with gummies in them, and they had to put their hands behind their back and eat just with their faces. I’ve told that story to many children’s librarians across the state and it has been adopted many, many times.”  

“That first full year of programming, I came in here convinced that we were going to do programming five days a week. And wait for it, I burned out by October. 

“We did marble runs one year.  One side of the folding table legs were up, and the participants got recyclable materials to tape to it to make a maze. 

“This was another moment where I was like, ‘These kids are different.’ I had some sixth graders at the time who were building together and they built this crazy elaborate thing next to a kid who was probably in kindergarten or first grade at the time. And that kid is one of my best engineering builder kids still to this day, but was much younger at the time and very confident this kid was. They kept getting frustrated because what they wanted to do wasn’t working, and one of these sixth graders turned to the kid and was like, ‘Would you like me to help you?’ And genuinely helped this much younger kid build something so they felt successful. That culture of kids working together is 1000% percent a result of MCS. That school, they foster that, and it filters over to this space, as well.

“I will never forget the year I did slime and we used food coloring, and I didn’t know it at the time but it was the night of the holiday concert and everybody went with blue hands.” 

“I have been incredibly lucky to have some motivated kids who are volunteers. 

“Another one of my favorite programs that we did this past year was finger knitting. All of the sudden, all ages, everybody was sitting on the floor teaching each other how to do it. Those are my favorite programs. It was the simplest thing, yet it became one of those incredible community building events. 

“I really love modeling for kids that it’s okay if you don’t know how to do something. It’s important to acknowledge you don’t know and find somebody to help you. Just ask and people will help you, especially in this town. 

“Storytime is obviously, hands down, one of my all-time faves. If I don’t do Zoom Zoom Zoom every single week, I would be run out of town. I used to think if I didn’t do Little Mouse — which is a felt game that we learn about colors and clap along to the syllables so that we can hear that words are made up of smaller sounds — people would be upset.

“It’s funny—when I came in, Pete the Cat was my favorite book to read out loud. That is not the case anymore. I love reading anything about trucks. Kids who are not engaged are all the sudden immediately focused and so excited about hearing about trucks. I’m very intentional about including that sort of stuff.”

“The introduction of the Switch has been incredibly fascinating. I know that there has been a little bit of pushback, but this past year, watching a group of fifth grade boys come into the library almost every day after school, taking turns on the switch has been awesome. When I first introduced it, we always had it on the big screen, and I watched older kids teach younger kids how to play. Watching the evolution of the Switch has been great. Watching this group of kids choose to come to the library every day after school, and when they were waiting for their turns they started playing this Star Wars card game they’re all obsessed with. Seeing kids choosing to come to the library to spend time together is a dream come true.

“It is heartbreaking to leave. Didn’t want to leave. Don’t want to leave. Don’t want to think about leaving. I keep telling people this is the best library to work in.  I can’t imagine a better community than this. From my colleagues who are *chef’s kiss* perfect. It doesn’t mean everyone’s perfect, we all get along. Leadership is incredible. The board is so supportive. I have felt free to develop my style of librarianship and this is the best place I could have possibly imagined. To be able to be the kind of children’s librarian I wanted to be, which is an advocate for kids and a reflection of their interests, not a reflection of my interests. That it comes from them and not from me is what makes the space so special.”

“I will say I think about the books the least amount, which is maybe not usual for a children’s librarian. I like ordering books and it’s fun to order books. I love suggesting books for kids, but I also know that kids are more likely to read books recommended by their friends than they are recommended by an adult. I try to foster that. That’s why we have the book reviews out. I try to encourage kids to tell each other what to read because they’re most likely not going to listen to their parents.

“My proudest collection moment is the expansion of the graphic novel collection, by far. I think it’s probably the most popular collection in the library. This community knows the value of reading, but what I found myself doing more was defending graphic novels to caregivers who wanted their kids to be reading “classics,” and me being like this literacy is just as valid. How often are we reading just words on a page or a screen? So often there are images and you have to decipher what the images are telling you and the words. It’s a really critical kind of reading that the kids are doing. Being able to defend that for kids who love it so much and reassure caregivers, ‘but they’re reading, and they love reading.’ I have the incredible privilege and the bonus of not having to be in a school. My goal is to have kids read for fun. If they read for fun, school will be easy. If you can find the right book, which is truly all I’m ever looking for, you can then suggest more. 

“I was so touched that a sixth grader included me in their things that they love to do outside of school, and the number of sixth graders who said that they love coming to the library afterschool was really heartening. I did the work here. It’s not done. I always wanted and still hope that whoever comes next thinks about how we can serve our middle school and high school students and create spaces for them that are more independent. The library is a place for them too.”