December 2024 Recommendation

Our jobs are focused on the 0-11 crowd, but we also pride ourselves on serving all youth, including teens! This month we’re sharing a resource for older kids, teens, and the grown-ups in their lives. Sex education is a human right and we love the work that Scarleteen is doing, especially their focus on queerness.

- The Childish Librarians

October 2024 Recommendation

This dynamic duo would like to let you know about another dynamic duo whose work we love: journalist Jane Lindholm and producer Melody Bodette!

These two are the masterminds behind “But Why: A Podcast for Curious Kids.” They’re on a mission to celebrate the diversity of childhood experience and encourage lifelong curiosity, just like us!

The cool part about this podcast is that the audience asks the questions (kids, with help from their grown ups) and the podcasters find the answers! 

The best part? You can submit your own questions and they might do a whole podcast about it! This informational and fun podcast is available on Spotify, Apple podcasts, NPR, and their website through Vermont Public.

A few of our favorite episodes:

Why do ballerinas wear ballet shoes?

Why do we like being scared?

Why do bison run fast but walk slowly?

- The Childish Librarians

September 2024 Recommendation

Happy Fall, y’all! This month’s recommendation is a resource from the Minnesota Children’s Museum (MCM). MCM is a huge proponent of playful learning, but they also have great tips about “Playful Parenting.” Playful parenting incorporates play and/or a playful mindset into daily life with your child.

One of the things we notice in our work is that some adults have trouble being playful. We get it.

It can be hard to let go of self-consciousness (especially in public), caregiving is tiring emotionally and physically, our days are packed with work and activities, and “play” is something we associate with childhood, not necessarily adulthood.

But changing our mindset to be more playful helps us better connect with the children in our lives. It’s also a great tool for emotional regulation while caregiving. If you haven’t heard about playful parenting, you may have heard of inner child work, which has become a part of the mainstream. Nurture your inner child by being extra playful with your children.

We love being childish. It’s our middle name! We’re lucky to have jobs that combine work and play. We get to dance, sing, pretend, create, and more. Think about how you could implement more of these types of play into your day. Remember, a child’s “work” is play; it’s fundamental to their learning, growth, and mental wellness.

Check out MCM’s Playful Parenting page for videos, activities, and more all about play.

- The Childish Librarians

August 2024 Recommendation

Does your family have an emergency plan and an emergency kit or “go bag?”

Does your family have a safe word? Does every member of your family know these plans, including children? Being prepared for an emergency is important, no matter where you live.

Ready Kids from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is an online resource for emergency preparedness. Follow their guides for preparing for a family emergency or extreme weather and building a kit so you’re ready to go when disaster strikes. Make a plan, now, so that you will know what to do, how to find each other, and how to communicate in an emergency. Children can also prepare with online games with Pedro the prepared penguin.

- The Childish Librarians

July 2024 Recommendation

We’ve got another music recommendation for y’all this month...Mother Moon!

They are a content creator, songwriter, and now a published book author! We have been fans since discovering “I Love My Body,” a song that went viral on social media awhile back. It’s a song for kids but it also resonates with the inner child, something Mother Moon is passionate about. We sing that one at least once a week at one or both of our storytimes.

Lately we’ve also added “The Belly Song” to our storytimes. It’s even a board book! We are always looking for ways to promote body positivity, body diversity, and self love into our programming. Mother Moon puts those concepts together into catchysongs. You can find their content on Instagram and YouTube. “The Mother Moon Show” on YouTube is a new favorite, even though only one episode has been released.

- The Childish Librarians

June 2024 Recommendation

It seems everyone knows who Ms. Rachel is but do you know about Miss Katie Sings? We actually prefer her content.

Miss Katie is a children’s songwriter and does a great job of integrating informational learning and social justice into kid-friendly music. We use her stuff at storytime often, one of our favorites of hers is “Raise Your Hand,” a song about agreements (raise your hand if your skin is brown...white...tan). It’s a great tool for preparing littles for the task of raising their hand at school and asks them to think about what they look like, what they’re wearing, and what they like/dislike.

Miss Katie’s content is great for toddlers, preschoolers, and school-agers! And, she has a SCREEN FREE OPTION. Check out her “Singalong Story Collection” on her website for audio productions including storytelling and music, no screen necessary.

- The Childish Librarians

May 2024 Recommendation

Social Justice Books is one of our favorite resources for evaluating children’s books. They have reviews, booklists, articles, and a fantastic guide for selecting for anti-bias when building your collection, whether that be a home bookshelf, a school library, a classroom library, or a public library (if you are involved in the collection development process).

Use this guide to determine if the books you are collecting and/or highlighting (such as reading at Storytime) contain harmful stereotypes. Take note if you are missing groups of people in your collection, especially those that have been historically excluded from books for children.

- The Childish Librarians

April 2024 Recommendation

Rosie’s Rules is an animated series on PBS Kids aimed at preschoolers. Rosie Fuentes is an inquisitive and hilarious Mexican-American girl just beginning to learn about the wow-mazing world beyond her family walls. Like many children across the country, Rosie is part of a blended, multicultural family; Papá is from Mexico City and Mom is from rural Wisconsin. Rosie has a little brother, Iggy, and an older sister, Crystal. The Fuentes family lives together in suburban Texas with their cat, Gatita. Tia Margarita and cousin Javi live nearby too! Rosie is bilingual and loves to celebrate her identity. Throughout the series, she joyfully introduces viewers to the art, traditions, and foods of the Southwest, Midwest, and Mexico.

Rosie’s Rules aims to teach children concrete social studies lessons about how a community works, helping them develop an awareness of themselves as individuals and as part of a broader society. It features a comprehensive social studies framework that encompasses civics and government, geography, economics, and history via engaging, character-based narratives. Each story builds on a preschooler’s budding understanding of a concept (mail, transportation, family roles) and extends the learning from there. Learn more at: https://pbskids.org/rosiesrules

- The Childish Librarians

March 2024 Recommendation

This month we’re featuring something that just for the grown-ups, Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong! Wondering why a great deal of children (and grown-ups) in our country aren’t really reading? Start listening to the Sold a Story podcast! 

From their website: 

"There's an idea about how children learn to read that's held sway in schools for more than a generation — even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this podcast, host Emily Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It's an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn't true and are now reckoning with the consequences — children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended."

Available widely and produced by APM.

- The Childish Librarians

February 2024 Recommendation

Work it Out Wombats is an animated series and podcast on PBS Kids aimed at preschoolers. It stars Malik, Zadie, and Zeke - three energetic and creative marsupial siblings who live with their grandmother (Super) in her treehouse apartment complex - the Treeborhood!

The playful trio demonstrates computational thinking for preschoolers, a way of thinking that enables them to solve problems, express themselves, and accomplish tasks using the practices, processes, and ideas at the core of computer science.

The series takes place in the Treeborhood, the biggest treehouse in existence! It has secret passageways, gondolas, and rope swings. The residents of the Treeborhood — wombats, snakes, moose, kangaroos, iguanas, fish, tarsiers, and eagles— bring varied skills and abilities, assorted ways of thinking, and different family structures and traditions to this diverse and vibrant community of neighbors, a place where even the grown-ups regularly play!

- The Childish Librarians

January 2024 Recommendation

We The People is a modern-day Schoolhouse Rock incorporating a range of musical and visual styles available on Netflix. H.E.R., Adam Lambert, Brandi Carlile, Bebe Rexha, and Janelle Monáe are all featured in this amazing series!

Whether or not you have access to Netflix, you can listen to all the songs on Spotify! This content is exceptional for ALL ages and we've got a PDF ready for printing below (2nd page contains four to a page).

- The Childish Librarians