Teen Passive Ideas- Summer Reading Round Two

Summer is sneaking up on us quickly. I basically went into panic mode and forced myself to plan and settle on ideas for Summer Reading this week.

I've mentioned this before that we have terrible teen program attendance, yes even in summer when we have over 100 teen volunteers visit us but very few stay for our programs. However we do have a great group of teen patrons who check out our books. ( I call them the "Invisible Ones") So having interactive passives on our display end caps is a good way to engage teens who might not be able or not want to come to our programs.

I wrote a post last year when out theme was Fizz Boom Read everything was loosely related science fiction. This year it is all about super heroes or with my twist...Super Villains!

We are having a "March Madness" style voting (all be it in summer) for our favorite super villains. There are four divisions- Comic. Disney, Movies, and Books.

Right now I'm totally stuck on Movies- I want to pick 4 villains the teens today know about but aren't from comic book movies or movies based on books. I'm hesitant to do just a match up of slasher horror villains. It's a work in progress.

For our other passives I'm rotating on a opinion poll and an interactive display every other week, Last years quizzes had their issue. Mostly I had little kids trying to fill them out and wanted to get a prize right then and there (which wasn't the point; it was an entry for a prize) Since teens have no seperate area and bump right into kids I get this issue alot.

Poll passives include would you rather questions such as...
Would you rather be a hero or a villain?
Would you rather be able to fly or be invisible?
Would you rather write your own adventure story or live inside your favorite book?
Would you rather eat pancakes or waffles?


Display passives include:
Make your own comics, with blank comic strip pages
All About the Games: A Hunger Games Display (This came from CSLP maunnel) Check out the recently released posters The Heroes of Panem
Literary Heroes- A display about Classic literature
And this most excellent Adventure Time Scavenger hunt found at Bryce Don't Play!

If you have a suggestions for favorite villains, leave them in the comments!

Teen Passive Ideas-Summer Reading

Do you do passives with teens at your library?

We do. In fact, our passive numbers are higher than the number of teens that participate in our programs! Because we don't have a teen room and low attendance at our programs, I'm forever trying to catch the "kids in the stacks". In the past we've had opinion polls, library bingo and trivia. During the summer I try to do a new passive every week.

I'm sharing some of my ideas for this summer. Our theme is Fizz Boom Read. Feel free to borrow anything you might be interested in using at your library!

Post it Note Art Show

We've had varying success with art share walls for teens in the past. On the scale of a wall full of lovely artwork as good to chasing off two punk boys defacing others artwork as horrible. I got so mad at them I swore off teen art walls forever.
I lied. I can't help it. I love art.

Quiz: Guess the Symbol

I have a sheet of symbols of the nine planets and the signs of the zodiac for teens to fill out and drop in out box to earn a prize. I've included the Dewey decimal numbers of books on astronomy and astrology so they can research and find the answers. That's not cheating in my opinion. Begging the librarian to look up the answers for you, is.

Periodic Word Generator

I saw a graphic on the internet were nerdy was spelled out with periodic elements Nerdy. I made colorful slips of paper with 3-4 boxes as well as a mini table of elements. I'm pretty horrible about word games like Boggle and Scrabble so I'm curious to see what the teens come up with.

Binary Code Messages
Similar to the word generator. I'm giving them the option of posting messages on the wall or taking them home. If you have the Collaborative Summer Reading Program manual for "Fizz Boom Read" there is a section in the kids' program that has the binary code and fun activities you can try with it.

Quiz: Robot Roll Call
For this quiz, I printed out pictures of famous robots from big and little screen. Fill out a sheet with your guesses of who's who and bonus points if you can tell were they are from. Using books and the internet is allowed because I threw in some tough ones. There is Robo-cop, EVE, R2-D2. But do you remember these guys?

Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo of MST3K

I'm pairing each passive with a display. Sticking with our science theme, I'll have book displays featuring  the Science Fiction genre:

Time Travel books/Doctor Who, Mad Scientist books, Steampunk and Dystopian.

Goodbye Movember..Hello Decemeber Displays!

Time to switch the displays in the teen section. Thankfully I was able to do it without interrupting any patrons, who usually love to sit in the armchairs at the end caps just as I'm ready to work on them.

This was my display for "Movember" I've seen variations on the mustache display posted about the internet and decided to give it a try. The letters are all hand cut and the result was quite striking. (IMHO)

Absent from this photo is my mustache box. 

I've been trying a new "book-mark-marketing" campaign to give away freebie or passives in my displays as well as promote upcoming teen events. I hand cut over 100 mustaches and attached them onto craft sticks to serve as bookmarks and general silliness. 

"Please take one" pleaded the little box that held them.  While I hope most of them got into the hands of their intended audience, most did not. They were raided after preschool story times and by flocks of second grade girls. But the most annoying was a shevler (an adult) took two dozen for herself and then gave them away to circ staff. Rather awkward situation trying to ask for them back, as they were given as "gifts"

So I just placed them in the books as bookmarks and I think maybe a few books went home. Happy to have brought joy to some folks....but I couldn't spend the entire month of November cutting out mustaches.

Onto December! "Make Reading a Hobbit" at the suggestion of my boss who liked the ALA poster but didn't have time to order it. We had some Hobbit book marks already on hand. I'm waiting to see how long our one available copy of "The Hobbit" stays on the shelf (Who wouldn't want to read it with Martin Freeman on the cover and his face on a super cute bookmark?)