Fourth of July Parade!

We marched in our city's Fourth of July Parade!  It was a blast and easy to do!  I would encourage you other bookmobile librarians out there to give it a try!


Here's what we did:We decorated the bookmobile, of course.  That is, we added crepe paper, flags and literary characters such as the wild things you can barely see in this photo:

 



We had about 15 people total.  A few were volunteers but most were library workers.  Several dressed up as fictional characters.





The Cat in the Hat pulled Thing 1 and Thing 2 (his two daughters) in a wagon--until one of the wheels fell off one block into the parade.  The wagon was thrown into the bookmobile, along with Thing 1 and Thing 2.  Thing 1 eventually walked with her Papa, but Thing 2, being only two years old, rode shot gun with my daughter and eventually fell asleep.  Here is a photo before the wheels fell off:



Here is a photo of my daughter and our dog Pearl, riding shotgun:



Little Red Riding Hood passed out library bookmarks.  The evil witch teased people with her poisoned apple.  Snow White was part of the library book cart drill team of which there were four total.  They did not rehearse until just before the start of the parade.  They had four moves which were started with the blast from a whistle.  Very easy and fun, except you need a little physical stamina!

  Here is a photo of my husband dressed up for his book cart drill team fun:

 

This was such a blast!  The only problem was that the parade went too quickly!  Try to get into a parade if your community has one.  It's great outreach for the library.  I can't tell you how many kids shouted out "Miss Leslie!"  or "Library Lady!" or plain old "Bookmo!".  A great time was had by all.

 





Decorate your Bookmobile or library with Book Banners!

I have started making banners out of tatty old books.  I use these to decorate the bookmobile, but you could use them for library displays or bulletin boards.

Here are the basics:

Rip the pages out of a damaged, but otherwise desirable book.

Measure the center of the bottom of the page and mark it with a little pencil marking.

Use a big paper cutter and go from the upper outside edges to your little mark at the bottom of the page.  You can cut about three or four pages at each chop.

Make your pile of triangles and put them in either a narrative or attractive order.  Some pages will be better than others!  I did not use the big tree page seen here, but used the reverse side instead.

Get some seam binding and your sewing machine.  I purchase seam binding at tag sales where it is about 25 cents a packet.  It's ten times that amount at fabric stores.  You can't be picky about your colors or widths.

Start sewing a tail of the binding with the 'opening' on the outside of your machine, like so:

Insert the triangles as you go, like so:

leave an inch or two between triangles.

You could add embellishments, such as little pumpkins or pom-poms.

Voila!  Here is the finished product:

And a different bird banner hanging in the bookmobile:

Yay!  Have fun making your own quick and easy pennant decorations!