Chapter V - Life-Sized Clue! - Or you know you have too much time on your hands when...

Okay, I have to admit, this wasn't my idea, but it quickly became my brainchild. I was told that there was a life-sized Clue game that had been planned a while ago, but it didn't have any direction yet. I figured it would be an easy, generic bit of larger-than-life gaming.

Then I got bored.

Less than two weeks before the event, I brought up some brainstorming ideas to my YABers (the teens in the Youth Advisory Board) - we could do traditional, or we could do it as if in the library, or we could do some sort of parody. When I suggested that they take the role of the suspects - and thus tokens - they quickly decided they wanted to do the literary world. We round-robined, had a lot of ideas, and ended with six series: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Warm Bodies, X-Men, Percy Jackson, and Hunger Games. We round-robined again to take a weapon from each series, which netted us a wand, Sting, a zombie limb, charged cards, Medusa's head, and a bow and arrow set.

Their homework was to give me locations and six of them were charged with coming up with characters. Some chose characters from the series (Ron Weasley, Aragorn, and Katniss) but also made up their own color-coded names ("Counselor Orange," "Death Frost," and "Mutant Midnight"). There was some shifting of characters and people, but what matters is that in the end we had enough tokens and I had some prop help.

Then I got even more bored.

I designed a board. I did the locations (one from each, plus two from Percy and Harry Potter to make the secret passage rooms connection between same-universe areas). Then I made cards. Then I made a brand new case. Flyers went up in the children's room with a note from one Miriam Quill, a mystic librarian. She was gifted with a golden quill that brought stories to life (the six tales chosen above) - but one of the characters didn't want to return to the book, and destroyed her quill, trapping her in the storeroom of her magical library. She pleaded with children to find out who destroyed it, and to find out with what and where so her assistant could reverse the damage and free her.

Sign ups doubled after that flyer went out.

Day of, there was a lot of math, lines, and masking tape to make a board that was 25 squares by 15. The rooms were taped out, each tile in the hallways were taped out, doors were placed, each room labeled. Props for each weapon were scattered, and six of my YABers donned costumes and immersed themselves in the roles of their characters. I played the frantic library assistant aiding the children in solving the mystery.

I was expecting a turn-out of about ten, maybe. The day after the flyer, I checked sign-ups. Seventeen. We had twenty by day-of (maybe I should have put the flyer out more than two days before the game). Siblings came. Parents actually stayed to watch instead of wandering the library. All told, including my volunteer YABers, we had an attendance of fifty-two.

That number still astounds me. What astounds me more is that we kept the attention of twenty kids, mostly eight to twelve year-olds. And we kept the attention of their parents, who sat and watched it all unfold.

I am so proud of my YABers. I didn't get to give them much direction ahead of time, and they performed with the tips I was able to give them brilliantly. They put up with a lot from the kids, some more than others, and we kept attention for two hours. I'm a little proud of myself, too, I don't usually have so much control over something and have it actually be so successful. I rarely leave the assistant role - to take charge and to actually do it well was a great way to end the year. Bon temps!

Chapter I: NPR's Top 100 YA Novels - Or lists aren't lame! Sometimes.

So today I learned the term is "Library Assistant" but that doesn't have the same ring for the blog title. Drats. When I learn how to edit the blog title I shall try to remedy this error.

I am not going to review the quote reference from my last post as my first book review, it seems. That reference is to the series ElfQuest and I just don't believe I have the time to dedicate to something that was so influential to me growing up. So instead I'm going to link a list I found: NPR's Top 100 YA novels.

NPR's Top 100 YA Novels

Give it a gander and then bear with me as I touch on just a few of them. (You will soon learn I make huge blog posts. Blogger needs the LiveJournal option of hiding things beneath cut links.)

I'm hardly surprised that two breakout hits from the last decade and change have dominated the list. Harry Potter impacted me heavily, and I still reread the books (and write fanfiction and cosplay the characters and wow that series is apparently huge in my life), and while I'm not the biggest fan, The Hunger Games did a great job hooking more new readers. If you liked the series - and don't mind something just a little darker - a similar novel, Battle Royale, was the reason I read this series in the first place.

I'm pleased that so many classics managed to retain footholds in this list - especially The Giver Series (11th). Giver is easily the most influential book in my life, and since I had to read it in the third grade, I've read this novel once a year, and its sequels, Gathering Blue and Messenger every few years. I eagerly await the fourth book in the series, Son, and strongly encourage anyone who has read Giver to give the other books in the series a read. They aren't as strong an impact, but still exceptional. A little further down, at 17th, I had a laugh at The Princess Bride. The movie was one of my first favorites, and the book is witty and has the same irreverent style as the film.

Then I skim a lot of the list, because I haven't quite gotten a taste for authors Stephanie Meyer or Cassandra Clare or similar novelists, and some of them dominate the teens to thirties in the list. I fully appreciate their impact, and know enough about their books to recommend them, but I have much more on my plate.

I am more than a little surprised at the few literary fiction novels (that is, bookstore speak for grownup fiction) that made their way onto the list, most notably My Sister's Keeper (43rd). It has been on my to-read list for a while, and the fact that it has so many YA fans has only solidified this want. The same holds true for number 50, The Song of the Lioness Series.

And I've been at this for a while so I want to leave off with just three selections from the final fifty on the list. Many people who knew The Last Unicorn animated movie growing up don't realize that it was based on a beautiful novel by Peter S. Beagle (73rd). I've had the pleasure of meeting this wonderful man, and he's as great a person as he is an author. The book explores so much more than the movie, and it's a great insight on humanity. The graphic novel is equally beautiful. At 84 I found a surprise - that other people knew of The Enchanted Forest Chronicles. I grew up on this series, centering on a princess who doesn't want to be a normal princess, but does something most tomboys in fiction don't - she is strong and independent without being a male character in a female body. Leviathan squeaked in at 92. The novel is one of the first YA novels to introduce steampunk to the YA room, a tread I'd love to see continue.

I wish I had a fun picture to tie into this large wall of text. But I don't tonight. What books from the Top 100 are you happy or unhappy to see up there? What should have made the cut? I'd love to have more to add to my list of books to read (and by that I mean to add to the many bookshelves of books to read I own).