Jason is joined by Ana and Suzanne from the Children's Services department to talk about online programs for children. Then get ready for cute overload as we get book recommendations from the children of library staff.
Books and resources discussed in this episode:
Storytime with Toronto Mayor John Tory
"Helping your Child Cope with the COVID-19 Pandemic"
Children's Mental Health Ontario
My Hero is You: How Kids Can Fight COVID-19! from the World Health Organization
The Dam Keeper by Robert Kondo
New Kid by Jerry Craft
Dork Diaries series by Rachel Renee Russell
Dog Man Unleashed by Dav Pilkey
Amulet series by Kazu Kibuishi
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne
The Fire Station by Robert Munsch
Real Friends by Shannon Hale
You Hold Me Up by Monique Gray Smith and Danielle Daniel
Jason: Welcome to Shelve Under: Podcast, the Toronto Public Library podcast for readers, writers and everyone practising physical distancing. That's right, today we're bringing you another bonus episode to give some recommendations for library resources you can access from home while branches are closed due to the COVID-19 virus pandemic. My name is Jason and today I'll be joined by my colleagues Ana and Suzanne to talk about some children's resources and programming that's available, as well as some initiatives. We realize this is a difficult time and hope that our recommendations can help those seeking a distraction. Our thoughts are with everyone in the city, especially those keeping essential services running. So this is another one of those special bonus episodes. And today, we're gonna talk a little bit about something different instead of just straight book recommendations and genres. We're going to talk about some services. So let me welcome to the podcast Ana and Suzanne. Hi.
Suzanne: Hi, Jason.
Ana: Hi, Jason.
Jason: Can you start by telling me a little bit about your role in the library and what you do?
Ana: Hi, my name is Ana. I'm a Senior Services Specialist in the Children's Services Department. And as part of my role, I lead and support programs and services related to Summer Wonder, digital literacy, and robotics and circuitry. I also help to develop staff training related to these initiatives and help to expand our services and our reach in that way.
Suzanne: Hi, my name is Suzanne and I'm a Services Specialist in the Children's Services Department as well. And my role primarily looks after system wide initiatives for children. One of my programs that I look after is the Mini Makers program, which is a STEM program, as well as other offerings we have from authors and summer programs as well.
Jason: Great. And obviously, the world being as it is right now, it's difficult to get a lot of our normal work done, especially around programming. We do already have this capacity set up for e-books, so we do have the capacity to do that, but we've really had to transition suddenly towards a different way of delivering programming, which is virtual programming. Can you tell me a little bit about kind of what you're doing and what your initiatives are with that?
Ana: Sure, yes. As you said, we're certainly shifting our focus right now and it's been a steep learning curve for all of us. But the best way we can support children, families and our communities is to to develop programs that will bring our core programming, such as our Ready for Reading story times, our summer programs and our STEM programs, into their home. And so we're really excited because as of this month, we have some Ready for Reading story times at home available and we've got a special storytime with Mary John Tory. So please do check it out. And soon we'll be releasing Fun with STEM, so that will bring our STEM programs into your house where the children can learn by doing experiments and different activities to really engage with learning in a fun way. And this summer, we'll be bringing our Summer Wonder creativity, challenges and our Wonderwall, as well as wonderful programs with authors and illustrators and various workshops, French programs, all of it will be available through our website. And kids will be able to continue to engage with all of the services that they've come to associate with summer at the library online.
Jason: Oh, man. So if you're not already familiar, Ready for Reading is kind of that traditional story time element where we teach different skills of literacy. And of course, that's something we've really always enjoyed doing and been such a huge part of what we do. So that's something we're moving virtually, which is really great and it's so excited to hear that the Mayor is taking part. And Summer Wonder, can you tell us a little bit about what that has traditionally been and kind of what that's going to look like in the online space?
Ana: Yes, of course. So Summer Wonder is an exciting suite of programs that we have for children ages 6 to 12 years old and their parents and their caregivers. These programs promote wonder and creativity and discovery through fun things like creativity challenges that really help kids to build and create something new based on, you know, the challenge that we provide that week. Sometimes it could be build a monument. Sometimes it could be design your dream library. Or if you were a superhero, what kind of superpower would you be? And really have it providing like prompting questions to get them to think about what that means to them. So creativity challenges will be taken online. We also have a Wonderwall where kids and families can post a question about whatever it is they're wondering in the world. We've got some funny questions like "why is poop brown?" As well as questions about shoelaces and questions about just fun things that we all probably wonder about and maybe it's a fleeting question, but we encourage kids to post them on our wall and our dedicated staff will respond to it in a very, you know, lengthy post where they can find online and it points to other resources in our collection. We've also got our wonderful programs. As I mentioned, we've got authors and illustrators developing workshops. We've got Mini Makers, which has been traditionally one of our Sunday programs, which throughout the summer we will be taking online as well. And we've got a Wonder Workshop, which is a design thinking workshop where kids will really think about a real world problem such as too much plastic in the world or how to adapt to changes in our environment. And they're centred around a fiction title so they get to really connect with their love of reading and expand on that into a problem solving, design thinking approach.
Jason: That's really interesting. And I've been really interested to kind of follow this switch to virtual programming because it's been this kind of huge undertaking. But at the same time, it's just figuring out the logistical ways of making it work. But I'm curious a little bit about resources like how do you make sure it's very equitable for everybody and that you're providing the same service and the same kind of quality of service, but you're also making sure everybody has access to what they need to take part.
Ana: So any of the materials that we recommend, we're not just framing it as you need to have these specific materials to take part in a Wonder Workshop or a creativity challenge. We're really taking this sort of approach of build with what you have at home. So if the challenge is build a monument, you could use Q tips, you could use boxes, you could use sugar cubes, you could use whatever you have at home to take part in that challenge. And then the second part of that, which we hope children and families will engage with is we're asking them to take a picture and send it either to our Instagram or our other social media channels, like Facebook or Twitter, and really share what they've created to sort of foster that sense of community that would otherwise be missing if we were just strictly one way online, one path online, I mean. And so really making sure that they can build whatever with whatever they have at home and that any book titles that we recommend, for example, for the Wonder Workshops, were making sure that the titles that we've selected, we have e-book copies available. So that's how we're trying to make it more equally accessible to others. And we understand that technology is a challenge. And we're still working as a team to find a way to make these resources available off-line. It's certainly been impactful having our libraries closed and not having so many of our members of our city to not have access. So we're really talking about that and we're still working on that. But for now, the main way is to make sure that the challenges don't require specific materials and that the titles are e-book titles that are quite accessible.
Jason: Yeah, I totally appreciate that. We all are craving so much this social interaction and so much of what we do is an in-person service, right? And that face to face interaction is kind of gone, but we can recreate it in different ways or create that kind of community in different ways. And it's really exciting to see what you have been doing, so thank you for that. I want to shift a little bit towards some author events. So another thing that we would often do is have authors coming, either visit the library or present their books or do a reading. So are we still doing things like that? Is there a way that we're doing that virtually right now?
Ana: Certainly. I think, Suzanne, could speak to this a little bit more in detail. She's our busy bee coordinating all of these programs, but we're definitely bringing them online. We're asking the authors to read from the books or to connect with their material through leading exercises or through leading illustrating workshops as well for the illustrators. So, Suzanne, would you like to expand a bit more?
Suzanne: Definitely. So one of the ways that we've been working with some of our authors is encouraging them to let their personality shine, right. Because I think that's really important, especially if you're offering something that's pre-recorded. So many of the authors have been working with us to create content that's engaging, that's fun and that will support kids throughout the summer as their school e-learning will be stopping at that time. So we're hoping to be able to support them throughout the summer months as a way for kids to be able to engage with, you know, some of their favourite authors, to encourage them to engage with these illustrators. So we're hoping that we can offer a variety of these for kids to be engaged with over the summer. And we're really excited for that because, as Ana said, we're trying to make sure that kids can work with materials they have at home. So, I mean, a great thing about a writing workshop is, you know, you need a paper and you need a pencil. So we're really happy that we can offer something that can be accessible to a large number of people in our city. So, yeah, so we're we're really looking forward to having these workshops and also pre-recorded videos available for our patrons.
Jason: If I've learnt anything during this time, it's that you can boil a lot of stuff down to these very low conceptual levels and still offer these really great services and programs without much material or like with limited materials. And that's been really fun and interesting to me to see, like seeing this stuff that the TPL reading challenge is doing and this kind of workshop or continuing to do the kind of stuff that we do in this new environment and kind of treading the way as we go, because there's not really a workbook or a textbook you can follow along with this, right?
Suzanne: Absolutely. And I think we've all been learning from each other and, you know, we've been working together and sharing ideas. And I think that's been one of the biggest helpful parts of this whole process, is that we've been leaning on each other. And I think we want to make that known to our patrons too that, you know, yes, we're at home and we're experiencing our life in a new, different way right now, but we can still lean on each other and we can still make these connections in a different way. And, you know, it will obviously take some adjusting and there's some new things to learn, but we want everyone to feel supported. So I think one of our biggest goals as we approach virtual programming is to keep that in mind, that we want to try to make people, you know, have something that they can access, that they can learn with our support, and that we have the staff and resources to be able to support them in this transition.
Ana: Well said. We also want to encourage families to really brainstorm together, like, how can we take part in this, right? How can we solve this problem? What do we have at home? There's so much resourcefulness happening in the world right now because of the restrictions that we've had and in terms of the materials that we should use and in the way that life has been, that it's if you look online, it's just sort of mind blowing the things that we can achieve with this opportunity to be creative.
Jason: Absolutely. So if you could tell me a little bit about the Growing a Reader program as well. So we've talked a little bit about the story time aspect, but what is Growing a Reader and how does that work?
Suzanne: Sure. So when you go onto the Toronto Public Library's main web site and scroll all the way to the bottom to blogs and publications, there's a blog called Growing a Reader, which outlines a variety of useful initiatives and resources for kids and families. Specifically, I'm thinking of a blog post called "Helping your Child Cope with the COVID-19 Pandemic." And I thought this was a helpful post to highlight for today because it really talks about the whole child and how there's a variety of things needed for kids to feel supported during this time. So, for example, having a routine which, you know, it's even hard for us adults. So imagine for a child right during this time. So it talks about that. It talks about supports for homework and learning. So, for example, TPL has a great resource called Brainfuse, which offers online homework help and support with the curriculum. But then it also talks about other aspects of well-being, so exercise and mindfulness, which has also been, I think, a really important part of this whole journey that we're on is discovering ways that we can stay well and feel healthy both, you know, from a learning perspective, but also, you know, psychologically and mentally and mental health is so important. So I think that is a really helpful post for families to visit.
Suzanne: And there's there's other resources on there. For example, links to resources outside of Toronto Public Library such as the Children's Mental Health Ontario. And there's been a number of free resources, actually, that are available online to support kids during this time. The World Health Organization created a book to explain this whole pandemic to children. There's a lot of things out there.
Jason: Oh wow, I didn't know that.
Suzanne: Yeah, so there's a lot out there and we're just trying to bring it into one centralized place where parents and caregivers can have these resources at their fingertips, because as we know, the Internet has... There's everything out there and, you know, it's hard to sift through that. It's overwhelming. It's hard to sift through all of that. So we're hoping that, you know, we've done some of that work for our patrons already and they can come in and have this curated information that can support them.
Jason: Obviously, I work for the library, so curation is such a huge, important part of what we do. And it's good to see that we can continue to do that as well. I'm so excited to hear that the WHO has a book like that. That's amazing.
Suzanne: It is. And there's even a series of animation that have been created to explain, you know, physical distancing and make it funny and kid friendly. So there's a lot out there and we're just hoping that we can share what we think are the best resources for families during this time.
Jason: And all of those resources that we're in referencing today, they are available on our web site, TPL.ca. We will be providing links for all of them in our episode page, so if you're wondering about any of that, you'll be able to find it there. So speaking of books, I wanted to ask you if you two had any book recommendations or virtual resources that you think might be appropriate or that you'd like to recommend.
Ana: Sure, one of my favourite graphic novel series is actually it's called The Dam Keeper. It's by Robert Kondo. And it's the story of a little pig who live works running a dam, protecting this village. It's called Sun Valley. And unfortunately, he is quite isolated, which I think we can all relate to. Not only is he alone, but he also doesn't quite get along with the rest of the town who have lost connection with why the dam is so important and why it needs to be upkept. And as the story continues across the three graphic novels, you learn a bit more about why the dams exist, how important it is to be protected, but also how important it is to be brave and adventurous and to find a way to connect with people who maybe we don't quite understand on the offset.
Jason: Oh, great. Where's that available?
Ana: It's available through our OverDrive online resources, so it's all three books, The Dam Keeper book one, two and three are available as an e-book. So I highly recommend it.
Jason: That's excellent. And if you're not familiar, we haven't really talked about this on our show so far, but there's a lot of great graphic novel resources on our OverDrive and our Hoopla apps, which I am just loving. It's great. You can get so many great things from there. And it's.. If you're a big comic book person and graphic novel person like me, you can't go wrong there.
Suzanne: I agree. And Ana you've made me want to read that book series now.
Ana: Oh, I'm so glad.
Suzanne: It sounds so good. So my book recommendation is a book by Jerry Craft, it's also a graphic novel. It's called New Kid and it's something I've been reading throughout this pandemic. It's about a young boy in middle school who is starting at a brand new school. And that whole experience of new peers, new experiences in another part of town, it's not in his own neighbourhood, and he's just navigating this new world. And I think, you know, I see a lot of parallels between our life right now where we're navigating lots of new things. And so I really enjoyed reading that and that one I accessed using Hoopla, which I think has been really great for accessing comics. There's also the Garfield series that I've been reading on Hoopla. But I would recommend those two things. And e-books have been such a such a lifesaver during this time.
Ana: Definitely.
Jason: Such a huge, yeah. I've been listening to a ton of audiobooks and reading so many books, it's been kind of great in that sense because I'm getting to do all of these books that have been on my to do list forever, which has been great.
Suzanne: Yes. Agreed.
Jason: I want to thank you both, Ana and Suzanne, for being here today and taking some time to talk with me and just letting us know what Children's Services has been up to. Sounds like there's some really fantastic stuff going on.
Suzanne: Thank you. We're really happy we could share this with you.
Ana: Yeah, it was great. Thanks for having us on.
Jason: And what would a children's episode be without the voice of children? So we actually did have staff members who have children to get them to record a couple of recommendations of books that they've been reading. So here are our staff's children recommending what they're reading right now.
Lainey: Hey, guys, it's Lainey and I am nine year olds and today I'm going to be recommending a book called Dork Diaries by Rachel Renee Russell. Why I think this book is super humorous and funny is because Nikki does super funny things and it's super funny, but sometimes this mean girl MacKenzie just talks about her. But I'm not saying Nikki's bad or anything. She's super funny. And I think that these books are the best. But what's even better is the podcast, cause I'm on podcast nine and the last one I just listened to was super funny. When you listen to that one, you're gonna laugh your pants off.
Hugh: I've been reading Dog Man Unleashed since I was six and I really like it. And the author's Dave Pilkey and I like it because of Flat Petey, a new villain.
Frances: I like e-books because I can make the font size bigger and it's really helpful. Today I got Amulet on the Best Bets that I've been waiting for for a long time. It was awesome.
Parent: Hi. What's your name?
Henry: Henry.
Parent: Hi, Henry. How old are you?
Henry: Five.
Parent: What have you been reading during your school break?
Henry: Where the Sidewalk Ends.
Parent: Do you remember who writes it?
Henry: No.
Parent: Shel Silverstein.
Henry: Okay.
Parent: And what do you like about the book?
Henry: That there's many pages and that they're funny. Look at all of these pages.
Parent: You like the pictures?
Henry: Yeah. And look, even this one is funny. Bup-ba-bup!
Maeve: I like listening to stories on the speaker in my room. I'm six years old and my name is Maeve and the story is called Winnie the Pooh and I really like it. It's about Winnie the Pooh really loving honey and trying to go and get honey. And then squishing himself in his friend bunny's door and bunny painting his butt.
Travis: My name's Travis and I like the book The Fire Station by Robert Munsch.
Frances: Hi, I am Frances and I am eight. My book report is about a book called Real Friends. It is by Shannon Hale. Her autobiography is a comic about mean friends and understanding that there are nice friends too. I have read this book five times and never got bored of it. If you like Real Friends then you will like Best Friends. It's book number two. Bye.
Lainey: Hey guys, it's Lainey again. Today I'm going to be recommending another book called You Hold Me Up by Monique Gray Smith and Danielle Daniel. And why I think it's such a great book is because, one: it has colourful pictures, two: it just talks about how you should respect others, including Indigenous peoples, and the pictures, when you read it, it's just so colourful. And I love it because it makes me feel super calm and relaxed. And you should be thankful for your family and your friends, even though COVID-19 is going on. Stay safe and stay well.
Henry: Goodbye, Toronto Public Library. I miss you.