Hello, I'm Patrick Adams. And I'm Caroline Lichier. And this is Librarians of Little's,
a podcast where we share books, makerspace activities, and tips and tricks for helping
librarians with our youngest learners in the library. With March approaching, we are going
to be looking at some St. Patrick's Day books today. The first of which is How to Trap a
Leprechaun published by Skypony Press in 2017. The author is Sue Fleece and the illustrator
is Emma Randall. So Sue Fleece has been on the ALSC Notable Children's Books of 2024
for her Socata Symphony book, the District of Columbia Capital Choice list of 2021, and
the Cooperative Children's Book Center list of 2021 for Flash and Gleam, Light in Our
World. And she's also been on the Junior Library Guild Selection 2023 list for Kid Scientist
Insect Experts in the Rainforest. Sue Fleece has been writing for much of her life as a
child. It was poems and as a teen, she wrote about unrequited love. And in college, she
wrote for the college newspaper, trying to solve people's problems. She was a publicist
for Penguin's Adult Paperback Division. She has also been a copywriter, marketing communications
manager and director of marketing. She began writing children's books when her first child
became two, and she was inspired to write a story. She also does in person and virtual
school visits. Some of her other books include Octopus Acrobats, illustrated by Gareth Lucas,
Socata Symphony, illustrated by Gareth Lucas, Rumble and Roar, Sound Around the World, illustrated
by Koa Lee, Flash and Gleam, Light in Our World, illustrated by Koa Lee, Sadie Sprocket,
Build a Rocket, illustrated by Annabelle Tempest. The illustrator, Emma Randall, lives in a small
village on the outskirts of Bristol with her husband, son, and twin daughters. Not a lot
of information about Emma Randall, but some other books that she has worked on. She illustrated
a version of Over the River and Through the Woods. She also illustrated a version of the
Twelve Days of Christmas. She's the author and illustrator of A Book of Love and Our
Easter Adventure. And the book that we're talking about today, How to Trap a Leprechaun, the
summary is that it's the day before St. Patrick's Day, and there are children planning to catch
a leprechaun in hopes of having a wish granted. But leprechauns are tricky, so the children
build a trap with box gold covered rocks and more, with the hopes of catching that tricky
leprechaun. In the end, they are unable to do so, but the leprechaun leaves them a note
wishing the children a good St. Patrick's Day. This is, I think it's a cute story. There's
not, like, it doesn't go super deep, but there's a rhyme scheme to it. There's some really bright
and pretty pictures. I think that this type of book where it's like trying to catch a
mythical creature is something that a lot of our students at that age are prone to enjoy,
and I think they're kind of engaging because the kids are wondering what's going to happen
next and what kind of crazy traps the kids are going to build. So I found it to be a
fun story that I think a lot of students will enjoy. I think that, I don't know, I felt
like it was kind of short. There's not a ton to the story itself, but it would be a good
story for a read aloud to see what the kids think and, like, see what the kids' guess
will happen next as you're reading through the story.
Yeah, I agree. I really, as far as a book to read in the library, I thought this was
a really cute story. The pictures are bright and engaging. I always love rhyming books
because it is a little bit more engaging, especially for younger kids because they can
kind of hone in on that cadence, even if they're not really comprehending all of the words.
They still, like, that rhyming always kind of pulls kids in a little bit better. If I
was reading this to a class, I kind of love it because it does kind of lend itself to
some creativity at the end there because the kids can build their own leper contracts
and you can kind of lead it into a fun St. Patrick's Day lesson in general. If I was
going to just read this at home, like with my kids, I maybe don't love it quite so much.
I really like this one more for the activities that it lends itself to rather than the enjoyment
of the actual story itself, if that makes sense.
So I think if I was reading it, I would give it like a 4 out of 5 for like a classroom
reading, just because of those fun activities and the fun things that you can do with it
afterward when you're kind of thinking about what you can do to be kind of creative with
it. But yeah, as far as like, if I'm reading it at home just for funsies with my kids,
I think I would give it maybe a 3 out of 5. It's still fun. It's still cute, but it's
not like earth shattering or anything. It's fine.
Exactly. And that's what I was thinking. My rating was going to be about a 3.5 for it,
which fits with yours. I think that I'm planning to use it this year with my students, and
I think they're going to enjoy it. I think they'll have a good time with it, but I think
part of that will be because we'll have some makerspace activities where they're trying
to build traps and that kind of thing. And so the connections to it are going to be something
that I think they're going to have more enjoyment from than just sitting and reading the book
solely by itself. I think that the book is designed to lend itself to that, and I think
that's a great feature to it. It's just not something I would sit down, like you said,
and read with your own child and just be done with it, as just read it and done. You have
to add in that other part of like, now build something or create something to get the full
effect of the book. Which brings us to the makerspace activity for this book is building
a leper contract. So there's a couple different ways you can do this. You could just give
the kids some materials and say go and see what they come up with. I would maybe, especially
with pre-k, I would be a little bit more controlling in honestly, I would give them
a little direction and a little less freedom just because otherwise I don't know what
would... so many things could happen. So instead, I would say having some construction paper,
having some like, some crayons and markers. If you want to add glitter, that's a personal
choice. I try to avoid that like the plague, but others are more willing to add that in.
You can buy some of like, the decorative tape, some stuff like that. And I even, for my idea,
I would even buy some of the corn pop cereal. And so the corn pop cereal would be like the
gold. And so what I would have the kids do, I would also pre-cut a lot of schools, especially
if you're at an elementary school, you will be able to find somewhere either a die cut
or just a printable paper for when the students are doing geometry where they fold the paper
to make a cube. If you use something like that, you can get them pre-cut, like especially
if it's die cut, that would be really nice. But if not, you can cut out some to have the
kids decorate and then you can fold it and tape it up so that it's a box and you can
have it open and put a couple pieces of cereal in there. And that's your box with the gold
to try and catch the leprechaun. And then you can have them decorate a paper or like a base
to put the box on with maybe some rainbows or they can use some tape and different things
to decorate to try and trap that leprechaun. So I think that would be a fun way to give
the kids a little bit of creativity. They have some different things that they can do
with it, but to narrow it down a little bit because if you just give them... Sometimes
if you give them too many options, they'll either be so overwhelmed that they don't come
up with anything or they might go kind of way overboard. There's two ends to it and
a lot of kids will be one or the other. So kind of giving them a little bit of direction
with what the supplies they have are.
Yeah. I love that idea of using the corn pop cereal as your leprechaun gold. I wouldn't
have thought of that myself. This great plan. I wonder too if you could like pair up some
younger students and some older students with this and have like the younger kids just do
the decorating and then the older kids could do the actual construction and building. That
might be a little bit challenging to kind of pair them up together, but I wonder if
there's a way to like just to near classes with your younger kids, you could just have
them do decorations and then the older kids could slap on the decorations over there and
you could while they're constructing or something like that.
Yeah. That would be really cool, especially if you're on like an elementary campus and
you've got like reading buddies or something like that where like the pre-k kids are working
with like first or second grade kids and they're like reading buddies. You could read this
book to the whole group and then have the pre-kers work with the older kids to do this.
That would be a cool idea for an activity too.
Yeah.
I like that.
This week for our Library of Little's management tip, I was thinking that we should discuss
kind of how we manage makerspace in the libraries, how you control the chaos that can become
makerspace. When you have multiple activities, you get somewhere between 15 and 25 kids in
the library at once. Like how do you manage and get the kids to stay in one spot for any
given time and not just be running around the library? So Caroline, what do you do to
kind of control that and get the kids to be able to focus on the tasks at hand?
Well, in my library, I have my big storytime rug and then I have actually both of my libraries
have a total of five tables and all of those tables have a total of six chairs around them.
So when the kids go to their maker, we do our story on the storytime rug, of course,
and then when they go to their makerspace activities, there's an activity on every table. They're
out in bins in the middle of the table, so it's pretty obvious where they're meant to
go. And then the students go, what they pick their tables and if they have a seat, if there's
an open chair, then they can sit down and start engaging in their activity. But if there's
no chairs left, then they have to go pick somewhere else. That's a pretty quick and
easy way for kids to see how many chairs are left. If there's any left and if they do have
to go pick something else, they are allowed to get up and go to a different center whenever
they're ready. They don't have to stay there the whole time. There are some kids that have
a little bit of difficulty choosing a center, however, and they'll kind of flit around and
go to table to table for maybe like 20 seconds or 30 seconds each. And in that case, if I've
been watching and it's been like two minutes and they haven't selected anything, then I
go over there and help them make a choice and tell them they have to engage in whatever
center for two minutes and I'll set a visual timer for them so that they can see how long
they have to stay there just so that they begin to engage in something because the purpose
isn't for them to just wander around aimlessly. The purpose is for them to go choose something.
It doesn't... I don't really... In the library, it doesn't really matter to me what it is.
As long as they're engaging in something and it's meaningful and they know what the meaning
is behind everything because we've already explained all of that as part of our story
time lesson. But yeah, just for a few of those kids, they just need a little bit of help choosing
at least for a few minutes and then after that timer goes off and they've sat for two
minutes and they've started engaging. A lot of the time they do continue just playing
wherever they are. They just need a little bit of inspiration to sit and stay in one
spot but if they're done with it at that point, then they're allowed to get up and go elsewhere.
Yeah, that's what I found also is that sometimes you just kind of... And when I was at the pre-K
on the campus, that's one of the things that I did was I let the kids choose where they
were going to go but I told them that they had to stay at the first table. I would set
a timer for everybody. Everybody went to their first choice. They'd go sit down and for two
minutes they had to stay there and be actively working. And I would set it... Once the timer
went off, then I would let them know, okay, now if you would like to change to a different
location, you can do that. But like you said, once they get going, most of them will stay
and continue. But it's that getting started part that's really hard for some of them.
And if they're told, okay, you have to stay here and work, it helps them. My library is
similar. I use... My current library is similar. I use four tables and so, yeah, we have the
materials that are in the middle and we've gone over the activities that they are doing.
I also try to... Usually I have like a card stock instruction with like a picture of what
they're trying to build or just to give them an idea kind of thing. So like if they're
building a robot out of magnet tiles, I have a picture of a robot so they know they're
trying to build a robot kind of thing. And yeah, the number of seats or I know at one
point in the makerspace labs at your campuses, you guys used clips, the way the clips work,
is that... The way we use them. Because we found that if you have to have every kid's
name on a clip, it's a lot of clips. But if we color code the clips and color code the
areas... The kids, when they enter the area, they take a clip and just pin it to like a
clothesline clip and pin it to their shirt. And when there's no more clips, no one else
can be in that area. And then when you're done in that area, you take the clip off and
put it back on a card so that someone else can take the clip and be in that area kind
of thing. So that was a nice way to manage when the students were in our makerspace labs.
And so there's a lot of good different management styles. Giving the kids those visuals though
of either there's no more clips or there's no more chairs so we can't stay at this station
so that they can choose another spot is a really good way because that visual helps.
If you're asking them to count or something like that, a lot of these friends are still
struggling with that one-to-one correspondence. And also when you're counting kids that are
moving around, that's a whole other challenge. So giving them a solid visual representation
is definitely helpful to have them see, oh, there's enough people here, I need to find
somewhere else to be. And maybe next time I can do that or maybe later in this time,
I'll be able to move to that station.
And I really do like the, like you were saying, the clips system is the one that we use in
the specific makerspace lab on our campus. And I believe it's still in use today. The
teachers are the ones that take the students to the makerspace lab. That one is a little
bit different on our campus because it's not, that one's not in the library, although
I do obviously do makerspace centers in the library as well. But I especially like that
one for the makerspace lab because the lab is more of an open space. There's like no
tables anywhere. Well, actually, I think there's one table for the creation station where the
kids are kind of creating art and things like that. But because it's such an open concept
and like the goal is for kids to build like really big structures and to kind of be a
little bit more creative and maybe use more of their like gross motor skills in there
because you're building like large structures because there's no tables or anything. That's
an exceptionally good way to do it. There's just no, because there's no other way to really
designate how many kids go to that center and how to tell when it's full. So that's
really exceptional, exceptionally helpful when you have a big open space that you need
to manage a little bit better.
Yeah, I agree. And we will save some of our info about the makerspace labs for another
episode. So little teaser for that. We'll talk about those makerspace labs in another
episode. So if our listeners are interested in finding out more, they'll have to listen
to more of our episodes.
Yeah. All right. Our next book is Leprechaun versus Easter Bunny. It is published by Little
Brown and Company in 2023. The author is Todd Tarpley, and the illustrator is Steph Leveris.
This particular book hasn't won any awards, but it does have some positive professional
reviews and got a star review from school library journal. Todd Tarpley grew up in Colorado
and he currently lives in New York with his wife and two sons. He's written 17 picture
books to date, including Leprechaun versus the Easter Bunny. Most of his books are written
in rhymes. This one is written in rhyme as well. He's written seven of the Cat and the
Hat informational books, as well as four books in the voice of the Lorax. His 2016 book,
Beat Beat Go to Sleep, was an ALA notable book.
And the illustrator, Stephanie Leveris grew up in New England. She graduated from the
Rhode Island School of Design, specializing in illustration and character design for animation.
She's been the character and prop designer for Lucasfilm's Young Jedi Adventures and
Disney's Puppy Dog Pals. She has worked for other television clients such as Nick Jr.
and Sesame Workshop. Some of her other books, she's illustrated over 50 children's books,
including the little golden grumpy cat books.
So the premise of this story is, as St. Patrick's Day nears, Leprechaun decides to bury his
gold treasure in a patch of tulips. Unfortunately, he chooses the exact same spot that the Easter
Bunny has chosen to hide his eggs. The Easter Bunny gets angry that his eggs have been disturbed
and starts throwing eggs at the Leprechaun. To retaliate, the Leprechaun pushes the Easter
Bunny into a patch of clover, and their shenanigans continue to escalate until they must join
forces when Cupid appears in attempts to get ready for Valentine's Day by clearing the
disputed patch of land. I liked this book because it was kind of an original take on
some holidays. I think a lot of these holiday books can be a little bit repetitive and not
necessarily as original, but I really liked that this, with this book, the author was
really pulling in some different holiday characters. It kind of made it a little bit easier to
tie it into, like, not just St. Patrick's Day, but just like spring in general. Really
anytime, since you got Cupid showing up in there right after Valentine's Day, and it
does say, like, in the book, it's like Valentine's Day already passed. So really, it could be
anytime past Valentine's Day that you pull out this book. It really lends itself to,
like, all of springtime. There's a lot of rhyming words to kind of help with story
flow again. I liked how expressive the illustrations were, and there was a lot of, you know, slapstick
humor up in there. So, yeah, I thought it was a cute book.
Absolutely. I agree. When I was reading it, I wasn't sure, like, how the problem was going
to be resolved, but the fact that basically the leprechaun and Easter Bunny decided to
join forces against a common enemy was a cute way to get to a solution, and there's, like,
that tentative... they kind of just come to an agreement at the end of the book. So that
was a cute take. I wasn't sure how they were going to come to that conclusion, and so that
was nice. I do agree with you that the pictures and just the expressiveness of the characters
with that goofy humor will keep the students engaged, and I just... I like that, like you
said, this is a very unique take that a lot of the holiday books... we were talking about
the fact that there's not a ton of really quality St. Patrick's Day books. We've got
lots of other books for lots of different holidays. St. Patrick's Day isn't one that,
I guess, there is many stories that are just good stories, and I think this is just, like,
a really fun story that kids will enjoy, and so yeah, I think this is a pretty good one.
I like it a lot.
So I was thinking for a fun makerspace activity for this book would be to make catapults. In
the book there's a scene where the Easter Bunny starts catapulting his eggs toward the leprechaun,
and then at the end, that's how they kind of get rid of Cupid as they catapult him away.
So since there's multiple pages over there that have catapults, I thought it'd be fun
to kind of make some catapults together, and you could either get plastic gold coins or
apparently corn pops, that would be a fun thing, you know, catapult across the library
too. I don't know if you'll want crumbs everywhere though. Or you could get Easter eggs and catapult
them too, and try and see how far you could make your objects go.
I like that idea, and I know, like, the kids would enjoy seeing everything go flying across
the room, so that'll be a lot of fun for them. Yeah, and you wouldn't need a ton of materials
for that, you know, some plastic spoons and some, like, rubber bands maybe, and some,
like, the wooden popsicle stick kind of things, maybe. Could be probably enough to make the
catapults, and then, yeah, like you said, some gold coins or Easter eggs or cereal. Maybe
you could buy some lucky charms and send that flying across the room, right?
Oh, that's a good idea too. That'd be fun. I like it.
So yeah, that would be a lot of fun. I think that would be a really enjoyable time, and
you could even, if you wanted to even extend it further, you could see who could make their
catapult send the objects flying the farthest, so you could kind of measure, like, have a
starting point and have the kids test their catapult and measure the distance that they
send their objects.
Oh, I like that. That's a great way to tie in some, yeah, some measurement and math in
there.
Yeah.
Yeah, love it.
Awesome.
Thank you all for joining us today on this episode of Librarians of Littles, and we hope
you found some fresh ideas for inspiring our young readers. Please be sure to subscribe
and connect with us on social media.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Librarians of Littles. We hope that you've
enjoyed it. Check back each Wednesday for a new episode.
Librarians of Littles is a podcast produced and hosted by Patrick Adams and Caroline Legere.
Editor Patrick Adams. Our theme song is performed by JD Adams. You can follow us on Instagram
at librariansoflittles. You can follow us on Blue Sky at littleslibrarian.bsky.social,
and you can send us your emails at librarianoflittlespod.com.