Hello, welcome to Encompass Live. This is our Nebraska Library Commission's weekly webinar on all kinds of topics involving libraries. The webinar is being recorded and will be archived, and I'll show you where to find these at the end of the broadcast. Today's show is about one book for Nebraska kids and one book for Nebraska teams, which is a program that's been going on for a little while. As I said earlier, we have a special guest we hope will be able to join us today, Tom Watson. He's not logged in yet, but he'll hopefully be coming along soon. And in the meantime, we'll talk about our program. I just brought up our Nebraska Library Commission main webpage, and this is where you can go to search for one book for Nebraska kids and teens. But I do want to show you, this is our blog part of our webpage. And Chris, to put this up, when was it? Monday or last week? And this is just an announcement about our show today. And here you can see a picture of both books. Our one book for Nebraska kids is Stick Dog by Tom Watson. And our one book for Nebraska teens is The Girl Who Was Supposed To Die by April Henry for this year. Now, if you log in at another time where this notice won't be there anymore, a good way to find it is to just click in our search box and type in one. And there you see one book for Nebraska kids, one book for Nebraska teens, or one book when Nebraska come up. If you click on either of these, you're sent to a list. And this list includes one book for Nebraska kids slash teens. And that takes you to our main page. The things that are on this page, the most recent things are towards the top. We have a general explanation at the beginning here about the program, how it operates, and who's been involved, the regional library systems, the Youth Advisory Board, I'll talk about in a little bit. And then the books. So this year, like I said, Stick Dog by Tom Watson is our one book for Nebraska kids. And then the teens is The Girl Who Was Supposed To Die. And the way we have them set up now is Stick Dog on one side and The Girl Who Was Supposed To Die on the other side. I did want to mention that this program got started after we had begun having the one book when Nebraska. And I called this one book for Nebraska kids because to me, that made sense. But it's confusing to everybody else. So if you think I should rename it, you can send in your vote. Most people call it one book, one Nebraska kids. And that's okay because we all know what we're talking about. But I just plugged that name on it, one book for Nebraska teens, one book for Nebraska kids because I thought, well, that's where we needed to go. Anyway, after the one book, one Nebraska had gone for a few years and I should have looked back to see just when Sharon Osega and I talked. But this was Sharon Osega. She's one of the co-directors of the Central Plains Library system right now. This was her idea. She said, don't you think we should have something for kids, which kind of is how I got us going on this. Wouldn't it be great if kids all over Nebraska were talking about books? That's kind of from Sharon. And her idea was to start with, well, let's just, okay, hold onto your stomachs because we're going way down to the bottom. Here we go. This was one book for Nebraska kids and it had a two-year span when we first started. And that was Rescue Josh McGuire by Ben Michelson. This was her suggestion and we agreed that this would be a good book to start with. And we just said kids at that time. So here we have, again, a flyer, some details, and some puzzles you can use. The next year, 2008, 2009, we did one book for Nebraska teens and that was the book thief with the first book for teens. And we were at that time, we're thinking high school age because not as many programs are geared to the high school age. I had a number of librarians contact me and say, please, please, please make this for the older age group. So we did. And for several years, we alternated. One year we denounced the one book for Nebraska kids. The next year we denounced the one book for Nebraska teens. And that's why these all have a two-year span because Rescue Josh McGuire was our one book for Nebraska kids for two years. And then we did The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages. And she was, she worked out that she could come and tour around Nebraska and visit a number of libraries, school and public, and talk with a whole bunch of kids across the state. It was a terrific opportunity for lots of people. We're so happy that she was able to do that with us. And again, we have puzzles and activities, sometimes discussion questions. And see, all of this is still up here. You can still use these. The discussion questions are ones that we wrote here. If it looks like this, you know that they're ones that the staff here or the Youth Advisory Board wrote for the book. So if you decide, hey, I want to do that book this year, as far as I know, we still have the set that you can borrow from our book club kits sets. And maybe this is when you want to have your kids, your book discussion group read. Along with that, let's see, I'm going to, oh, unwind by Neal Schusterman. He also, it was fortunate that he also was able to come to Nebraska for a week and tour across the state and meet again with lots and lots of kids and teens. As I scroll up slowly, see, we're still doing every other one. The Last Newspaper Boy in America by Sue Corbett. And then up here, in 2012, you know I was going to guess that? That was our last year of just one book because that was Blank Confession by Pete Hoffman, which was our one book for Nebraska teens. And I'd had over time a number of librarians say, can't we have both books every year because I'll have my teens read the one book for this year. And then they say, what's the next book? And I tell them, well, that's two years away. And they go, oh, and are so disappointed. So we thought, okay, let's give that a try. So we did, we got going to kids and teens in 2013, which means they have one year of reigning supreme, but they're still all here and you can still use them for a book discussion group or for your classroom if you want to have a classroom read. The books are here, the puzzles are here, activities. We've written out activities for most of the books, which are just some ideas instead of just, there are also discussion questions, but the activities are something that they can create something along with the book like page 62, grade stands for greeting and review of aliens disguised for Earth. So then we said, well, create some other acronyms for the intergalactic bed and breakfast. That's what the IBB stands for. I can't believe I remember that. Oh, there it is right above intergalactic B&B. And so some kind of fun things that they can do when they can share with each other. Put up on the wall, things like that. Along with this are puzzles. I'm just going to hop down on my little list. Should we start with these puzzles? Should I start with a hard puzzle or an easy puzzle? Easy, okay, crossword. Aliens on vacation. Sometimes the Youth Advisory Board created puzzles, and then I just put them together so they were in a shareable format. I have, I think it's 20 children's librarians and teen librarians across the state who are on my Youth Advisory Board. And they, for most of this time, have been the people who chose the books. I'd send a list of here's the ones that are being considered. And then there was a voting date that they had to reply. And they did that, and then they volunteered for which part of the page they were going to help with. So maybe they made the crossword puzzle. Maybe they found out information on the author, which is a lot easier now than it used to be with everybody having a home page. Makes it easier. But down here are the clues, just so you can kind of see what kinds of clues we have. The Milky Way is a, well, I'm guessing it's galaxy. And after you've read the book, you'll know why the visitors came to the bed and breakfast. And we work hard to get questions that are definitive. So this is very likely the word that goes in there, relates to the book and isn't too hard. And I'm not the best at writing questions. My friend Janet here at the Library Commission is much better at that. So, and also the people on the use advisory board are very good at that. I'm good at finding hard puzzles. Just kidding. For example, I love the clueless crossword puzzle. And the way this works is there are, it looks like a crossword puzzle except there's no numbers. There's no clues. All there are are empty spaces. And then the words that go in there are divided by how many letters. So you know that there are four words that have eight letters. If you find a space of eight letters, you're not sure what's going to fit in there yet. But there are a few like Amy and Aura, the 11 letter word, 1315, that there's only one. So you find that number and you know it has to be this that fits in there. And that gets you started on what other words fit other places where there are more words to choose from. I like this one because I don't have to write clues, but I can put a whole bunch of words on the page. And I don't know how many of you have used any of these puzzles. Or if you think the clueless puzzle is hard or easy. Or if you think my other one I really like is the tile. Is that tile puzzle? And this is fun because it's a quote from the book. This is out of order obviously. So they cut these letters apart and then they move them around to make the sentences. Sometimes it's just one sentence and then this one obviously it's more than one. That's a long one. Wow. I don't have any clue what that is about anymore. But that's a fun thing to do. So that's what we have here. We also have found websites for the book. Sometimes a book trailer, which is fun. And then other times I care for the teen book Leviathan. We didn't really pull up any websites for the book. That's my fault for not getting on that. So you might be looking at this one day and go, oh look, all of a sudden there's websites for that. Even though it's an older one book from Nebraska Teens, we still can add some things that have either just come into existence or I finally got around to finding. So sometimes it's all my fault. Let's see. I'm just going to check over here. Still waiting for Tom Watson. I hope he can get here and talk with us. Because I really didn't want you to have to listen to me all day, but you might have to. Under Stickdog, we did find some fun things. You can see that we do not have our own discussion questions up yet. I think I wrote a few. But we did find some from Harper Collins. So we just pointed there. Here's their discussion questions on the first book in the series, Stickdog. There are five books so far, and I noticed that a new one is coming out soon. And if Tom Watson gets here, he can tell us more about that, we hope. Anyway, these are the questions from Harper Collins. I said that at the bottom. I should scroll down just a little more. I try really hard not to move the page too fast because I get car sick if people move pages around too fast on me. So I don't want to do that to you. So that's Harper Collins. And I think linking to their information is not a problem because that's why they put it up there in the first place. There's also the authors page and also the Stickdog pages, which are fun because it has a number of things. You can go here and, oh, look at this. The next Stickdog book will be released October 4. What's he doing over there? But there are, let's see, some puzzles over here. Let's see. Learn to draw Stickdog. That's what he was going to talk about today if he can log in with us. Read about the books. Take a quiz. So lots of fun things here. And he did... I have it on my list for conference this fall. Stickcat is a new book by him. And it came out in May. And it also has some pictures to download, how to draw, other things. So again, this is lots of fun. I really like this webpage with all of the different possibilities here. Go back to Stickdog and then back here. And we do have a connection to that Stickcat page right there and also down here. We have several puzzles that you can use and we're working on puzzles for the girl who was supposed to die because I got behind. And we're also working ahead for the future. For next year's one book for Nebraska kids and teens because Janet is going to keep me on board for getting things done in a timely manner. Janet's here with me, but she's not going to talk and that's okay. But if you want to ask her a question, you sure can. You can ask questions at any time by going to that question box and just typing in anything that you might want to know. You can also give me some information if you have already had a discussion group using one of our books for Nebraska kids or teens. Any of them on there. And we'd love to hear from you about how it went. And if you have a microphone, we can unmute you so you can just talk instead of typing. But if you'd prefer to type, we'd love to hear from you too. I know some librarians have had already a discussion on Stickdog. I'm not going to name any names, but I know they may not be here today. But, oh, okay. We have some people who would like to talk. I'm going to unmute them and let's see. Hello, you should be unmuted. Oh, you want Janet to talk. I didn't read that right. I thought you wanted to talk. Okay, you're muted again. Just say hi, Janet. Hi, this is Janet. One of the other people here at the commission and I really enjoy helping Sally with her books because I love reading kids and teens books. And we have a book club group here at the Library Commission. And it is centered around teens and kids' books. So we try to read the books that we have for the one book for Nebraska kids and teens. And then we help Sally out with questions and discuss the books. It helps her make up puzzles and that kind of stuff, which is really fun, you know, help and Sally out. It's always fun. I love having help. And the Youth Advisory Board has done that too. It helps send in information, which I really appreciate.  We're still going to give people any time you want to either type in a question in the question box or have me unmute your microphone and ask your question or have something to say about it just to tell us something about how things are going in your library. We'd love to hear from you. While we're talking, I do want to mention that we are, like I said, looking ahead already and we would love to hear from you. If you have suggestions for titles for next year, then just email me or type them into your question box and Jenna will jot them down for me. The kids' books are aimed at what I call upper elementary, which is like grades 3, 4, 5. And the teen books, most of the time, we, like I said before, we try to have it at a high school level. We try to avoid anything too controversial because this is usually or often used in schools and we know that there are issues there. Controversial is a very hard to define word. That's why I'm using it. But make a suggestion and we'll see what the committee decides because that's how it goes. And we have a question about how are the books selected? And after Sharon Osenga suggested the first book, Rescue Josh Beguire, I asked the Youth Advisory Board to be involved in this and so they would send me book suggestions. I would come up with some book suggestions and when we first started, it was just either one book for Nebraska kids or one book for Nebraska teens. And I would send them the list of what had been suggested and of course, when did they get this list all about April? When did they have to vote all by the end of August? Does summer reading program ring a bell to anyone? These guys did so much helping me out with this in the middle of being extremely busy with the usual library things that are going on. I really appreciate it. So I would have a due date by when votes had to come in and they would email me their votes and I would tally it up and then announce to them what it's won. Most of the time, that's how this has happened. This last year, I only gave them like two weeks. I'm sorry, but it happened that way. And so they had very, I told them, let me know what you're familiar with. Let me know what you think from your experience would be a good book. Before they tried to read all of the books, this time they didn't have that chance. So they voted on something they were familiar with that rang a bell and then Janet broke the tie. I think you broke the tie this year, wasn't it? Yeah, because sometimes it's a tie. And I do vote, but I only get one vote and I try not to... I mean, I know what my vote is, but I wait until everything's done. I try not to influence anybody to change their... I want them to change their vote. So basically, that's how the books are selected and I ask all the librarians in the state to please send me suggestions because I read a lot of books, but there's no way I read anywhere near to what's published every year. And I talk with librarians and they'll mention a book that I haven't even heard of. How did that happen? I mean, I think I should have at least heard of all the books, but that's not how things go. So that's why I especially like to have people send me suggestions. So send me an email, type something up on the questions list here. If you know of a book that you think would be a good discussion book. If you suggest something, I probably won't put you on the spot and say would you like to do a crossword puzzle for this book, but you can always say no. I might ask you, I don't know. Anyway, another thing I'd like to ask is if you've used our books and our puzzles and information here, I'd also love to hear from you if things are working. Is there a type of puzzle that I don't know about that kids love and I'm not doing because I'm not aware of it? Let me know. Show me how it works. Try to devise one that goes with the book. My Youth Advisory Board has done that before. That's how some new puzzles have come up. While we're talking puzzles, I do want to show you the letter drop puzzle, which is really hard to write instructions for. So I'm going to click on the stick dog book with the letter drop puzzle and it looks like this. So you have these columns. This is a quote from the book. When you read across, like we all do, that will be a quote from the book. On top of each column of letters are letters that all these letters go in these boxes. You just don't know what order they go in. It isn't going to be this order, that much you can count on. This one is not going to start with a B. But that's how you work. We gave you an example here with although the A goes there. We crossed that out in the list. You can see how that works. You can see the comma with the H. Anything with a comma, like this T here, that probably goes at the end of a word too, because you're not going to have a comma in the middle of a word. I'm hoping that my description makes it fairly clear how this works. I think it's fun because you've got all the letters there. You just have to figure out where they fit and what's going to be a good word. When there's a two-letter word, some things that will probably go there. When there's a three-letter word, you can probably figure that out. Then you don't have as many letters left over to go in the other spaces. Yes, I'll go back here because on all of our puzzles, where did I just go? Letter drop puzzle, there is the answer page, which I'm not going to click on here because I'm just that way. When you're looking at these and thinking about using them with your kids that come into your library or your students in your school, you can look at the answer and see if it seems reasonable to give them this puzzle. All of these have answers, a separate page, and on the answer page, hey, let's go to the crossword answers. There's the crossword answers and down at the bottom, no, I'm wrong. Oh, that's because this is so big. Excuse me, I was looking for the request for more. Is it on the answer pages most of the time? Okay, we'll go to the letter drop puzzle because the answer is that bad. Okay, here's the answer. It's in the puzzle, and then it's also as a just phrasing down below and what page it came from. And I just love this quote, so I thought, well, we have to go with that because that's how these books are. They're so fun. And we continually ask you on different things if the readers in your library come up with another one-book idea, anything from a type of puzzle, a book to choose, an activity that should be included in this particular book, please let me know. Send it to me. We will add it to what we have already up there for our book. I'd love to hear from kids and teens and librarians about that. Okay. I'm just hopping back here. There's a question over here about do you have a favorite one-book title? Oh, that's just I don't have a favorite book. There are too many that I love. I love Aliens on Vacation. I love the book thief. I love Stick Dog. It's an excellent book. I think Love It is tough to say about a book that's about abduction and threats and things like that, but it's a well-written book. So I guess the answer is no. I don't have a favorite one. There's too many I like. And there's some books I like that didn't get voted to be a one-book, and that's how it goes. I really thought it was a great choice, but I didn't win. My choice didn't win. Does participation change when the author visits? Another good question. And I would have to say yes. The author visits that we've had, Ben Michelson came for rescue Josh McGuire. He came for a week. He said later that we just about warm into the ground and important. He was right, but he was so wonderful with the kids and with the adults. So we had Ben Michelson and Ellen Cleges and Mr. Sherman all came, all were excellent with relating to the kids that they talked with. And they all went to both school libraries and public libraries. And the kids, I think that they were hungry for this. And they so related they were buying books and getting them autographed and they were asking questions about the books and what they were going to read next. So the whole idea of this program as we say at the beginning was just to get kids another way. There are many ways. But this is one other way to get kids reading and talking. And it's great when they can talk about the same book because they can get more into either the meat of the story or the fun of the story and the activities that kind of bring things around again and make them think some more about the book. And I just think that's wonderful when that can happen. So we've talked about kind of how this all came about. How things are decided. What kind of things we put up on the web page. And I'm just thinking now why don't we have pictures, a picture of each of the books up here. Is that an issue? Because when we saw that, here I'm going back here, when we saw this, it was really fun to see the cover of the books. And I'm just thinking how could I have not thought of that for all of this time. But there we go. Janet's writing this down as something else to do. Because I think that really I'm expecting that librarians and teachers are looking at this page and not the kids themselves. Although they might learn about it and go there to see the answers to the puzzle. And that's just fine with me because they're being active and they're finding out more about the book. But it still can be a little more interesting with a picture of the covers on these. So you know what the book looks like. And then you can, you know that Stick Dog is the first one and you can start looking for what are the other ones. Because that's another thing that happens with kids is when they talk about a book and especially with an author. And they find out that there's more books they want to get their hands on them. Because they've enjoyed this one. I said with Stick Dog there's five books so far and the next one is coming out. It is titled Stick Dog Slurps Spaghetti. So this is all all these books are about eating. Because what is important to dogs? Food. And so they in each book they have some kind of an adventure trying to get a particular kind of food. One's about donuts. One's about pizza. There's hot dogs and ice cream. Stick Dog is the first one and that's mostly about getting the hamburgers that the people are barbecuing in the park. And if you haven't read the books I just would like to say a little bit that Stick Dog is kind of the leader of this group of other stray dogs. They never talk about oh I wish we had a home. Oh I wish that we weren't stray. Nothing weird. They're just functioning fine on their own. They don't hurt anybody. But they do want to get to the hot dogs before the raccoon in the tree does. They don't hurt the raccoon. They just want to get to the hot dog vendor first. And they're focusing on yes I think that is Book Two. Janet asked me if that was Book Two. Let's go find out. Oh I'll never mind. We'll find out later. What's Stick Dog? Oh Stick Dog Home. You can talk. That's okay. The books. That's a good idea. Okay. Stick Dog wants a hot dog. What a good idea to go to that page. There's the first one which is about the hamburgers in the park. And the other dogs are some part of the fun is how they're named. The Dalmatians name is Stripes. No explanation given. He does have spots on him. There's a Doxon named Karen a mut named Mut named Poopoo. And each of the other dogs have ideas for how they can get like for this one the first one the hamburgers. Their ideas are usually extreme. I think it's in the first book where someone mentions a trampoline if they could get on the trampoline and then bounce on it and get over and they could somehow grab the hamburgers. Stick Dog is always very diplomatic. Well that's an interesting idea he would say. Now does anyone here have a trampoline? No, no one does. Well that's just not... We'll keep that as a good idea for the future but for right now we can't use that. This is approach I think it shows great leadership and understanding and respect for the others. I said it in more of a condescending way. He isn't condescending but he does know first off we don't have a trampoline and second, bouncing on it isn't going to get us the hamburgers but he doesn't say that to them. So they come up with some strategies but eventually they do end up with a delicious dinner just so you know. So there's Stick Dog wants a hot dog it's book 2 Chases a Pizza is book 3 Dreams of Ice Cream is 4 Oh tries to take the donut see now this hasn't been updated for a while so I feel better. No bad on you Tom Watson or whoever's working on this but this book is out and I've read it. It is also fun and it made me hungry for donuts. And it's fun because there's also the British version of the covers for these books some quite the same as ours Janet was pointing out that this is a good book for everybody but particularly when you have reluctant boy readers this one will grab them because not only is it stick feet, dogs in the book, everything is drawn like stick person, stick dog, stick everything there are lots and lots of illustrations Allah, Diary of a Wimpy Kid but it's really fun and the type has got some good white space between the it doesn't have like lines like it's it's like lined paper it's like a journal in school with lightly lined paper and so there's a great deal of white space it's not not written as handwriting but printed as type but very readable and there's a stick squirrel in this one and a stick tree pretty much a stick tree so it's fun it's good for reluctant readers which often are boys but not always and something that no one's going to be embarrassed to be carrying around in their hands because it's a good book okay I have another question what if I have a group that wants to borrow a set of books how do I do that how convenient but they would ask that let's go back back here sorry is it book club kits let's see what we type in here whoops guess I need to use the right letters book club kits there it is right down there book club kits you can so here's our search book club kits from the Nebraska Library Commission there are other possibilities but of the sets that we have here you can search for a title or author I'm going to search for what are you saying Janet do what keyword under keyword if you'd put in O B O K one book one kit see and then search and here's O that's so handy here are all of them that we've done for one book for Nebraska kids and one book for Nebraska teens are right here you can see this one was kids aliens on vacation blank confession and you can look at what the grade levels are suggested there are the discussion questions included if it's number one in a series there are I read the second book I'm thinking there might be a third one that I haven't read yet in that series all fun and it lets you know where you can go find okay also the puzzles you can just click here for the book thief and hop over to the page we were on before and scroll down to where that book is highlighted and find the puzzles so this is very helpful I'm glad you had me type that in there so if you no one you want like the last newspaper boy in America you can click on request this kit and then you get a form to fill out who you are what your library is your name email that plugs in the one that you want to request and then if this isn't available and the time frame you have in mind you can put in a second or third and third choice if you need to and then how many copies you will need if you want our whole set and it's available good you can borrow that up to 30 copies are available for this title oh it's directed I just thought it said sometimes up to 30 thank you so this particular title you could request 25 or 30 if you're doing this for a classroom read for example that would be good to have then you then it says if you need more copies than we own you're going to have to request them through interlibrary loan and that means asking for them two to three weeks in advance so what date do you want to hand these out what date will your group meet anything else you think we ought to know for example you might say looking for an audio version a few of our books that have an audio version but not that many so that's rare I guess I'd say and then you send the form and we'll respond and let you know if those are available and when we're going to put them in the mail things like that for you so that's a good question thank you now we go back back again if we scroll down a little bit if you forget that the search term is obok if you go down more down just a little entire collection Nebraska there it is because that gives you suggestions at the bottom ways to search you could have also put in one book let's try that just for fun that might also include one book one Nebraska titles let's find out yes it does because now we have some titles that are not one book for Nebraska kids but other one book one Lincoln title there so you can get a lot of ideas from this besides the one book for Nebraska kids and teens for books that your adult or teen or children's book route might be interested in this is a wonderful page that Vern designed for us and I should remember who put all this information in there I think a lot of people added entries for this to be as efficient and complete as it is so again book club kids is what we searched on and this page came up in case you want to borrow some books let's see now where were we just go back here go back to your block here I'm going to take the shortcut because then I don't have to type aren't I lazy back here go to the top a little bit oh Jenna wants to point something out on this page up in the second paragraph at the bottom says the library commission has many other book bags available check them out here which takes you right to our book club page right off of Sally's one book for Nebraska kids page you can go right to this that's good to know and as I was looking at that I was reminded earlier that you had mentioned before the show began which is we do have guidelines for choosing for books that are on our list they're not very involved but you can find that here see the youth advisory board also votes and chooses the books and then helps provide the information here's our guidelines it cannot be a golden soar one of the ten golden soar nominees for that year except for the teen choice because the teen group said that's okay we need to get more teens reading not as many teens are involved in the golden soar program as the younger kids so we can still do that until they tell me to stop and then I'll change it we want the book to be out in paperback we buy them one set for our book club kids usually Tim and then for other people if they want to buy some either to give out to the group or to have in their library the paperback approach is less expensive so we want it to be in paperback we want the book to fit the suggested age group which is tricky I know but there are things that we know are great for kids in grade school to read and books that are great for kids in high school to read and they're not generally the same and also we want some good discussion point in our book group that Janet talked about where we get together and discuss all kinds of children and teen books there have been a couple three times where we had a book that we all really liked it was great it was fun and we had nothing else to say about it there just weren't discussion points and that's not to say that book was bad it wasn't bad we we loved it enjoyed it but there really wasn't much to discuss it just happened that way so we want the book that we select to have some good discussion points some issues that it could be bullying it could be divorce it could be a fantasy where they get lost in the universe all kinds of different things but there needs to be something happening in there that you can talk about with kids and one of the things I like best about discussion books is that it's everybody's viewpoint and it's so amazing to hear the different things that kids and adults come up with that I never thought of about a book and so nobody's wrong when I read this I thought they meant this when I read that I thought they meant that and it's just interesting and it kind of broadens the book for everyone when that happens so when you're on this page then you can also return to one book for Nebraska kids etc oh I have another question do we track participation in this program number of readers and programs etc we do have forms available I haven't looked for that lately I better get on the ball, Jen it's writing it down so the people who do have discussion groups can choose to send us an evaluation we had this discussion this many kids attended or teens this is how it went to let us know who's using it and how things are going and also if they have suggestions this is not a requirement I know there are people out there having book discussion groups that I'm not aware of who they are or what books they're reading or what age group it is but it's fun if you don't mind when you have a book discussion group particularly using one book for Nebraska kids or teens to send that into me so that we can kind of keep track of the people we hear from at least but like I said I'm not sure I have that on here right now Jen it says no oh by the way, we did take a hiatus last year 2015 because we needed to get reorganized and you can tell how organized I am because I let the ball drop again and we were slow getting this up not Janet's fault, my fault but she's got a time frame for me now so I'm going to keep up with it and my youth advisory group will help me keep up with it too some other things that we were going to mention oh I just I don't know if I really brought this up but if you're using any of our books and you're using any of our puzzles I said tell me about puzzles that you are aware of that I don't have but I also want to know if the puzzles that are there that the kids are using are are too easy too hard too complicated or too simple so we can adjust what we offer now is kind of how we think the group a general group of kids or teens would go and someone one year some people on my advisory board mentioned that they didn't think that teens really did puzzles and that could very well be true but I still do we still do puzzles for the teen book because I just don't know I think some of them are might be take home puzzle here's a puzzle take it home if you want to do it or not particularly for teens it can also just be sitting out there so kids who've read the book could just sit and do a puzzle about the book or they can do a tile puzzle even if they haven't read the book and maybe that'll get them to read it it could just be a what's it called a program one of those there's a word for it anyway just something that's sitting around that kids can look at or not sitting there on the table an appetizer an appetizer should Janet said because what's our goal here is to get kids and teens reading and having a discussion about the same book when that works out for them there's no rule about how this happens in your library if it's easier to say hey teens if it's summer for example this June everybody who wants to can read the girl who was supposed to die and then at the end of the month we're going to have a quiz or what is it like a jeopardy program you could make up something like that that they could do this on their own read it think about it do some puzzles to kind of get the thoughts in and then you can either have a live jeopardy program where everybody comes at the same time or you could have a quiz page for them to do on their own to turn in and get points for summer things like that it doesn't have to be always the same so how it works for your library it's great and that's something else we love to hear from librarians is what kind of program how you're using it maybe you're using it like I just said as a suggestion let's all read this book and then we'll do our quiz pages and with stick dog you just got to draw stick dog right I think that's a law you don't have to draw the original characters stick dog you could draw stripes or poo poo if you want to but you just got to draw a dog I think maybe you could get away with not doing it but I think the kids would yell and want it so I'm looking again and for some reason Ted Watson has not logged in I'm thinking something came up he told us that he was traveling to several libraries this week to give presentations and that at the time that we we booked him he was available this morning but things come up sometimes that we're not aware of I'm going to double check my email to see if anything here's Tom oh he sent it to me I'm going to type to him to log in I don't know where it is I have to go find that out okay let's see it's got to be here calendar calendar yeah that makes sense and today okay and then because it tells him to go here on this tell him to go here where does he click okay click on number one let's see sorry I know this is on the air and we're just typing some things in here okay I sure glad I checked my that was at 10.09 oh gosh I thought I checked sooner than that okay well maybe he'll log in now and we can hear a little bit from him before the show was over that would be terrific and this way he doesn't know all of the things I said and he can be fresh so I'm hoping that he'll be able to log in we'll give him a couple minutes in the meantime we don't really need to see those instructions do you let's go back here I think this has been a successful program because our books do get checked out we do occasionally hear from someone who's had a book discussion group and how things went which is always enjoyable and we do sometimes get things from people who make suggestions for something to add to our page here they found a website that they thought went along with it for like under the girl who was supposed to die we have Kirkus reviews there that Janet found for us which gives a review from Kirkus of the book and she also found a book trailer online for that so this connects you to that site where these things are we do not pull that into our web page but connect you to the web page where these are which is good okay let's see see I think if I click twice and all of a sudden he'll be up there as an attendee that maybe he gave up on me oh I'll be so sad do we have any other questions or thoughts while we wait just in case Tom Watson is able to connect Janet do you have anything you'd like to add from your viewpoint of giving me nudges to get these things on our time frame we need um I will mention just one thing about the teen book the girl who was supposed to die as I was reading it I was paying attention to how long this is happening you know the book is so many pages but the time frame of how it happens isn't very long so you know sometimes books are like months or weeks or days or years or whatever but when you actually sit down and look at it the time frame is it's less than 48 hours wow so it's like happening very quickly you know it's really it's fast paced I've kind of forgotten that time frame part of it I'd like to point out that Janet pulled together the description of the girl who was supposed to die and it sounds a little freaky when you say do you like abduction, escape and paranoia but um yeah she was supposed to die and they're still after her so it is a very action oriented but also trying to figure out what's going on who am I, what's going on and where should I go to be safe is another good question and all the while thinking first of all she didn't know anything about her family and then once she started getting more information back she got oh maybe my family doesn't exist anymore maybe they're all dead so in addition to what's happening to herself personally there's this other thing, what happened to my family so it can be a very emotional book you know but and April Henry is a popular author too with the teens, she's an adult author as well she has a number of adult books that are popular and a number of teen books series that of course I can't remember the name of right now that are popular Janet says we should go to author information what a good idea here she is books for teens and adults, for adults and teens okay the body in the woods, oh excuse me that's the first book in the point last scene series which I've read and well that is so fun it's not fun because they're looking for evidence for a murder but that's a great picture, the body people are going on a hike and they find a body in the woods and this is the first book in the series the point last scene very well, very good book and the other ones are good too so you just never know which one should be the one book for Nebraska teens and should we ever have a different book by an author we've had before or is that fair all the other authors in the world that's another good question and I did notice when Sally when we looked at guidelines is that here? under our guidelines it doesn't say anything about how old the books should be do you read things that are do we select books that are more than 5 years old? 6 years old? yes we do I guess it's kind of not really stated but the book must be out in paperback it's kind of my way of saying it does need to be available and there are a number of books that are around for a long time still available in paperback so that's good and yes if you have an old favorite check it out see if you can still buy it and then send me the title if you'd like and we don't always buy brand new books true because we have purchased some used books from Amazon or other online retailers also from library book sales yes we are your customers too and sometimes when I go to the Scholastic Warehouse sale I find a title that of one book for Nebraska kids that we can include in our books we get the books all kinds of ways well oh there's Tom oh yay hello Tom I'm going to make you an organizer a presenter yes I want you to be a presenter and I'm going to unmute your line and let's see can you talk to us okay let's see can you hear me yes we can okay so I need to go my screen right yes okay hold on a second have you already started oh yes we're kind of winding down whoops but you have plenty of time don't worry about it I did something bad hang on just a second because I'm going to change our screen sharing to your screen because I think oh well I can't do that just now I'm going to ask the people in the laptop room if you can see Tom Watson screen how am I going to know that because you'll be you'll be seeing an incredibly handsome man oh here we go let's see we can see Tom's face yay okay so you are being recorded thank you so much so can everybody hear me too I assume oh that's a good question I believe so Linda and everyone can you hear him oh they say yes incredibly handsome and yes okay well I'm just going to usually what I do with a school visit is I will go to I will do a drawing lesson with the kids for the stick dog books and I'll draw all the characters and I thought if you guys are teaching the class or you know if you're talking about stick dog in class it might be kind of a fun interactive thing to do with your own kids in class to be able to draw the characters so the idea here is that we're going to draw them together so I hope you all have pencil and paper or you can get them relatively easily and we'll draw the characters and then you can draw them with the kids if you're actually using the book in class does that make sense yes it does thank you I have pencil and paper myself good this will not take very long it'll take about five minutes and then if you know if anybody has any questions or anything I'm happy to happy to take those and it sounds like Sally maybe you're going to have to kind of be the person who gets them back and forth right yes okay that's no problem okay so let's draw stick dog and here's what I'm going to do I'm going to draw it down here then I'm going to hold it up to the camera okay great let's see stick dog starts with a rectangle make sure you're seeing that I can do that the idea is that kids can copy these even the little guys can copy these drawings if you show them step by step how you do it here is a triangle a triangle of one corner and I always tell the kids that the only difficult thing is the head and it's not really hard after you do it a couple of times I always tell them it looks like a pair of pants turned sideways I like that pair of pants oh gosh I can do this his nose goes right here so Sally how many people do you have today got a few we have a few yes we have had 15 registered and not quite as many showed up but the thing is this will be viewed many many many times as an archive that's the thing so this is his eye two circles over the okay and kids are using pencil and paper that can erase that line if it goes through the eyes technically I'm using pen I told you I had a pencil but it's a pen his tail is a squiggle just a squiggle how am I doing Janet legs very very difficult oh so that is stick dog one of the things that I really try and get across in the books there are six of the well the six one comes out on October 4th one of the things I really try and get across in the books is that stick dog is really the leader of the pack but and his friends not that bright sometimes and but he's really patient he's an incredible example of a good friend and his sort of his leadership I think is something that kids can identify with so it might be lead a good classroom discussion like listen to these ridiculous ideas that his friends have for him and how he kind of diplomatically says they're dumb without saying they're dumb so four more dogs we'll do the Dalmatian next and I'll speak up a little bit we have a comment while you're drawing it says this is great huh I could put this on a bulletin board there you go so these are Dalmatian I went ahead and did the body and the ear at the same time but it's exactly the same as stick dog going the other way okay I can do this I get a little freaked out by the ear but I'm doing okay another pair of pants same nose same eye except she's the girl she gets eyelashes okay that's the only thing that distinguishes my characters as male or female eyelashes I didn't realize that Dalmatians have thick tails so I always say we need to draw a banana at the end oh a banana same legs now if you look at those two I purposely did them on the same piece of paper because you can tell they're pretty much the same dog except for eyelashes in a thick tail right but she's a Dalmatian so she gets spots everywhere and that's when she starts looking like her own dog and her name is Stripes and she's covered in spots okay three more dogs okay we'll do the poodle next his name is Poopoo and I can tell you quite honestly that there are times when I really regret naming that dog Poopoo he starts with a rectangle but then I go into schools and I'm with like 200 second graders at the same time and I say Poopoo into the microphone really loud and they all crack up so I guess I'm glad I just his ear is still a triangle but it's made out of squiggles I'm going to try and hold this up here triangles okay I'm going to start at the top and then go wider down and see how I do and this time we're not going to do a pair of pants one of the things you need to know about Poopoo and it's evident in the books is that he hates squirrels he really doesn't like squirrels so we're going to give him a different kind of head he's looking up into a tree at a squirrel so we're going to draw like an angry Poopoo sorry to be doing this I can't tell if it's in front of the camera or not it is thank you perfect so nose is regular but we're going to make him snarling and the way we do that is we do a flat squiggle for a mouth okay got that he doesn't know we're going to do a regular eye but we're going to give him a mean eyebrow because he doesn't like squirrels the tail is a squiggle but at the end of the tail there's a puff ball it's squiggly like the head same legs but at the end of the legs more puff balls that's what makes them look like a poodle hopefully it was really interesting when I first started the books that what breeds I could use you know I really wanted to use a German Shepherd but I couldn't figure out how to draw a stick German Shepherd so you know a Dalmatian you just throw some spots on stick dog you got a Dalmatian Poopoo you just add some puff balls you got a poodle so it was really the drawings that helped determine how what kind of characters I had which is kind of interesting two more dogs we have Mutt and Karen I'll do Mutt right here he's a little bit on the bigger side so his rectangle is just a little bit more like a square not too much but just a little bit chubbier okay he's the only dog who does not get a triangle for an ear he gets like a dinosaur footprint or a penguins flipper I'm gonna have to see this it's not colored in in the book I'm gonna color it in here so we can see it better thank you who would have it's kind of interesting if you're gonna draw with kids because we changed the proportion of his body we changed the proportion of his head just slightly to match his body and the way we do that is we make the top of the pair of pants just a little bit thicker than the bottom to make it match a little bit better okay nose and eye he's a boy no eyelashes he has two girls next one's a girl squiggle legs but we're not done with him yet because the thing you need to know about Mutt is he's shaggy he's furry and the adventures he's gonna lose things in his fur or even store things in his fur on purpose that they use as tools to snatch the food sometimes so we need to make him look shaggy so we just draw squiggles all over his body so how much could you practice that that would look like the squiggles would look like hair because they do because I've read the book and I know he has a lot of hair I originally did it kind of like the ear on poop it was just a squiggly mess and then I was like no that doesn't look great it took a little bit of time to nail down the real thing that was driving the process was that I wanted him to be so simple so that kids could copy them so our last dog is named Karen he's a doxin so she's long and skinny and short so her rectangle is long and skinny triangle for in here again in the book it's not filled in I'm filling it in here so we can see it better and then I always tell the kids you know we changed Mutt's head to match his body so we have to do the same thing for Karen so she doesn't get a regular pair of pants she gets skinny jeans oh great to match her body nose eye eyelashes perfect really simple tail for Karen and short legs I accidentally gave poo poo short legs I had to make them longer so that is Karen she is without question the biggest spaz in the books in the fifth book and the stick dog tries to take the donuts she drinks a great big coffee and just becomes over caffeinated and just freaks out for the entire foot which is really a lot of fun for me to write so those are the five characters there's also as some of you probably know is there's a stick cat series I will draw the stick cat that first book came out four or five months ago I got one here somewhere I haven't found my list for this fall yeah I'm so happy with it I think it's the funniest I love the stick dog books but I think this is the funniest thing I've written the second one of those comes out in April and the next stick dog book comes out in a couple of weeks October 4th so I'm happy to do any questions you have? I was so pleased when I heard about this one book one Nebraska thing stick dog has won a few awards here and there but I love the idea that kids and a whole state might be reading something at the same time I think it's a terrific idea we do it here in Chicago actually it's just a Chicago reads kind of thing and I think it's an idea that's catching on and I was so I got just some Google alert or something about it and I thought it was really neat so I was happy to reach out and contact you Sally and be able to make this kind of thing happen it's a lot of fun for me so if you have any questions I'm happy to take them if not I know you all got jobs to do and I got things to write so I can just scooch too I'll leave it totally up to you well we have a couple of questions one of them is as you came up with the names for the dogs and Poo Poo the poodle makes sense and stick dog makes sense Stripes is fun because she spotted but how do the kids react to the names of the dogs or do they pay attention to that oh they totally pay attention and I've always thought it's funny when people name their dogs human names so I had to have one of those that's how Karen got her name she was almost Mildred but I wanted to do something a little bit more common I guess I love old fashion names the raccoon in the second book is named Phyllis I love that name too and I'm looking for a character for Gladys I really want to use the name Gladys I just love those old fashion female names they're just great so the kids yeah they do pay attention to the names a lot and like I said when I say Poo Poo out loud you know I get big laughs especially from the younger guys especially from the younger guys well a quick question now also about stick cat I know that stick cat is stick cat's name and her friend her friend am I right his friend yeah his friend excuse me is Edith right are there gonna in that you said another book's coming out in April are there gonna be any more stick cats in that group or do you I don't think so one of the things I know I just finished the third book and it's all approved and everything we're working on I'm working on the pictures now but so I know in the second and third books there are just stick cat and Edith one of the things I found in the stick dog series is with five characters it's hard you know these books are 28 to 22,000 words long and it's hard to give everybody a role to play when you have five characters that's a lot to keep organized on the page and in the story so I kind of purposely with stick cat said I'm gonna start with two cats and it gives me a lot more sort of creative freedom to develop the characters in that first book you know it takes a while in the stick dog series to find out that you know Karen's a spaz you know you kind of get hints of it then you kind of realize it you know you kind of three or four books into it before you're like oh this is sort of you know set in cement now that this is who this is so there won't be any more cats for a while I don't think we have another question someone wants me to ask you about the pets that you own or have owned yeah yeah I have a dog here at home he's upstairs now his name is Shadow he's a Labrador Newfoundland mix I like to say he looks like a lab with a bad perm he's all black he's a big dog he weighs 120 pounds and I get a lot of my ideas from him I'll tell you I share this story with kids all the time when I'm at schools that when we're in the car it's my wife Mary and I in the front Elizabeth and Jacob are in the back but Shadow will be sitting back there with them but he will sort of lean forward to look out the windshield with us you know he wants to see where we're going and every time the bridge he ducks that is great which which I always tell the kids that's kind of how dumb my dog is he thinks the bridge is going to hit him in the head but I get ideas from Shadow because the story is the stick dog story is that stick dog is the leader he's a smart one and he really helps his friends who have kind of ridiculous ideas in ways to get the food to kind of calm them down to keep them on the path to get them away from squirrels they're distracted by all that kind of stuff so Shadow is very useful as a frame of reference for those four kind of dumb dogs well someone's asking you so no cats at your house no I'm actually allergic believe it or not the cat stuff is totally fictionalized some of my college roommates had cats about it the stick cat book was actually supposed to fit into the stick dog series it was supposed to be the fifth stick dog book and I had worked out a way with the narrator to kind of explain why he was going to do a stick cat story instead of a stick dog story and I sent it to Harper Collins and they just went crazy for it and they were like oh my gosh this thing has to be its own series and I really think the reason they wanted to make it its own series is not necessarily for stick cat it was a terrific character but it's sort of similar to stick dog but it's because of his best friend Edith she is just an absolute character and they just fell in love with her at Harper she's prissy like a lot of cats are she's fluffy she's very standoffish she's not the brightest cat in the world she's also incredibly brave their adventures are not about food, they're completely different and it takes sort of her courageous courage to help them achieve their mission sometimes and you'll just have to read stick cat and I think you'll agree that Edith is crazy she's my favorite character to write about right now she is great I'm looking forward to the second book in April just a question about you said you were doing the drawings on the book now and I'm assuming that even though they are stick dogs and cats the drawing isn't as quick and easy as we all think it would be no it isn't it takes some time but I have help with the final illustrations on the book and that's something I always try to point out who does the final illustrations in the book so I will do all the original sketches and then I will send them to Harper who sends them to Ethan who does the final sketches and the thing I've realized it's sort of like I don't know if it's co-illustrator or what we've talked Ethan and I have talked about it I don't know how to talk about this one of the things I really appreciate he's an artist and I'm still saying I'm not and but he shows motion with stick figures that is just it's like magic to me he's a real artist and he can show a dog like nodding its head or turning it away or going around a corner or speeding up or slowing down with motion lines that I just think is incredible so he takes sort of my basics but he's able to add his own little tweaks that bring them to life more than I can and I'm so happy that we have him to help but really the story of the illustrations as I said before is that kids can copy them and kids can draw I can't tell you I mean I've visited with thousands and thousands of kids and there is never a time when we don't have a good time drawing these characters together and then I'll do actual illustrations from the books too I do Karen the doggy tornado which is in the first book some other things and it's if you can sort of as teachers or librarians or whatever get the kids with pencil and paper and go through these drawings like we just did and do it with them you're going to find that they that this little spark happens and it makes them identify with the books in ways that I think are really interesting and fun thank you so much and I just want to point out that earlier before you were on we were on your stickdog webpage where there is a link to how to draw stickdog so anyone watching this and needs a reminder I'm hoping that that will help them remember what you just showed us today so they can get a reminder of how to do that with their kids there's a video that I always want adults to look at the website too it's it's on the videos page along with how to draw stickdog and stuff I forget what it's titled but it's something like family reading fun with stickdog or something and it's a father and a son in bed and they're reading the third stickdog book and their mom is actually the mom in the family is a librarian and she took a short video of the dad reading to the son in bed just threw a crack in the door they didn't know it was happening and she sent it to me and she let me put it up but it's essentially the dad laughing so hard that he has to stop reading to his son and I just think it's hilarious it's my favorite video that's stickdog related out there and I'd love for you guys to see it and it's also indicative of what I try to do in the books and that's to make them not just fun for kids the humor in the books I think is really sort of adult humor in kids books so I get a lot of nice things from parents that say you know things like I enjoyed reading this too I got a lot of laughs from this too and that's something I'm sort of proud of this isn't you're not going to find like snarky mean-spirited slapsticky humor this is all irony self-deprecation I like to think it's sort of sophisticated for the third and fourth grade crowd so check out that video it's a lot of fun while you were talking we went back to stickdog webpage and clicked on videos on the side and we scrolled down and there it is at the bottom it says hilarious family reading time with stickdog so take a couple minutes of your life and look at that it's a lot of fun well thank you so much I don't want I don't have any more questions right now I don't want to take all your time we know I'm glad we were able to do it Sally it's a lot of fun I've never used this go-to-webinar thing it's kind of cool Sally and I practiced this last week and I couldn't figure out how to work the camera on my computer so I'm glad I'm glad we got that working anyway and I will go ahead and sign off if I can figure out how and thanks again and Sally just email me if you need anything else I love this one book one Nebraska thing and I'm certainly willing to help you in any way get that moving thank you I'll contact you if I think of something maybe somebody will send me a suggestion I'll go let's see what Tom thinks of this there you go okay thanks a lot I'll see you later thank you bye bye okay so I'm not really sure what screen you guys are seeing anymore let me just I think it's over here probably still under questions we have thank yous to to Tom Watson and I'm just going through the questions because things went goofy on me but thank you to him for his time and so we're really I'm still feeling bad that I didn't check my email sooner I guess but anyway for those of you who want just a quick I don't like when that happens okay let's go here and go home I'm going to drag this over here because I think this is where things are showing up and if I'm wrong then I'm just kind of wasting your time but I just want to show you where the end cup of slide see when you type in end compass here comes end compass live show at the other one are are are and here you click on that you'll see what shows are coming next week we have Pokemon Go at your library and down below this list of what's coming up are archived end compass live sessions and that's where you can go and look and see something that you missed or you want to watch again maybe you just want to see the part where Tom Watson was talking again and that'd be great you can find them on our web page with a quick search and that's all it takes okay now I have to find my gizmo there it is thank you for joining us today and thank you for your questions for Tom I'm so glad that he was able to connect with us and be on our show today and we'll see you next Wednesday at 10 o'clock Central Time for our next end compass live